The Story Of An Artist and What His Music Means To Me
Relationships come in many forms. You’ve got the relationships you form with actual humans, and you have those relationships you form with art created by actual humans. Both types of relationships carry such an impact on you, of course, and sometimes we don’t realize it until our favorite art becomes so intertwined with how we look at ourselves and perceive the world around us. If you know me in real life or have followed my work on the internet, you’re probably aware it’s nearly impossible for me to discover a new musician or artist without letting their work completely consume every part of my world.
An artist who affected my entire worldview and whose entire body of work centered around his worldview is Daniel Johnston. Yesterday while endlessly scrolling through my newsfeed, I quickly zeroed in on a headline announcing his death. I immediately sent a text to one of my dearest friends, whose presence in my life and relationship with me has impacted my entire existence and outlook on human relationships and connection much like Daniel’s music, simply reading “Daniel Johnston.”
Johnston died on September 11th at the age of 58, after a long battle. He passed away from a heart attack, but he spent his entire life fighting his inner demons and giving the world the gift of being invited into his head and access into his innermost thoughts through his lyrics and drawings. Johnston delivered his creations unabashedly and without a second thought; his lo-fi tape recordings and signature out-of-tune guitar sound quickly illustrate his passion and yearning; Daniel wanted you to know how he felt, and he wanted you to know it right now, but he would like you to navigate his heart at your own pace.
To discuss Daniel Johnston’s music requires me to talk about myself and my own personal exploration of thoughts and feelings and mental health. Typing the words “mental health” makes me want to quickly hit the “delete” button, and look over my shoulder to make sure those people in my life who believe it’s not possible to consistently live with depression aren’t looking over my shoulder. Their thought process is “You’re sad today, but get some sleep and you’ll feel better tomorrow.” My process is to keep saying things along the lines of “No, I’m still going to be depressed tomorrow. It’s still living within me like my never-ending desire to be a figure skater.”
I’ve been writing in notebooks and journals since the fourth grade. In high school, I was so careful to keep my poems in a separate notebook so they wouldn’t spill over into my personal laments about boys and trying to conceal any trace of my emerging love of nicotine. Oh man, I want that boy, and wouldn't be cool if that boy had a cigarette? We could smoke and listen to Tom Waits together!
I first discovered Daniel Johnston’s music in high school. His song “Come See Me Tonight” was on the official soundtrack for the cult TV hit My So-Called Life. I skipped the song a lot when I first bought the CD. Daniel’s voice and playing threw me off at first, but I was still curious. Here was a song which was only a minute and a half, and the lyrics sound just like my diary entries! The song’s about longing and telling someone you miss them. It may seem like a no-brainer or a big “DUH!” moment to some, but I thought it was so innovative and such a new territory to declare your feelings in a simple way through art.
Much of my writing as a teen whether it was in my journal or through blog posts on seemingly countless blogs I’d started on the internet, was covered in allusion. I would never express point-blank what was wrong. Maybe it was because I was afraid my parents would find my journal, or maybe it was more intricate than the fear of getting caught; the young Carrie Bradshaw in me couldn’t help but wonder if I was afraid to truly express exactly what was wrong. Being completely candid with myself would mean I’d have to come back later to face my thoughts.
The theme of returning to everything that troubled me became a theme in my life down the road. In the two years since I graduated college, I tend to look back sometimes and think, “I never worried back then. I never had any problems. God, what happened to that girl?” Reader, she’s buried in the now defunct Applebee’s my best friend and I would go to hang three nights a week with the “beer of the month” menu.
Daniel Johnston’s music re-entered my life in 2017, which is a period I like to refer to as the era where EVERYTHING FELL APART when I’m feeling a little “extra.” I mean, Donald Trump took office to be the leader of the free world, and the country collectively began to exasperatedly screech “What in the ever living hell?” multiple times a day, so I don’t think I’m too far off.
Johnston’s album 1990 and the compilation Welcome To My World became the soundtrack to the dissolution of my first serious relationship which occurred simultaneously alongside having to move back home because I didn’t have the means (or frankly, the steam) to finish my last semester of college on campus. To say I was crushed to leave the city I’d grown to call home, and the place where my boyfriend and I had met and started to sculpt the rest of our lives together is an understatement. I know it’s naive to the nth degree, but it was then at the age of 23 when I first learned life didn’t go according to plan. I can feel your stare through my screen: I know. I know.
Coming back home and back to my roots produced A LOT OF EXTREMELY INTENSE FEELINGS, all of which I was not prepared to work through. I’d never felt consistent sadness or deep confusion before. I had to stand on my own two feet for the first time in my life and I didn’t have my partner’s tall frame to hide behind, or his Jerry Garcia reincarnated beard to bury my face in.
I knew I had to find some tools to help guide me through these newfound long days and prolonged feeling of bleakness. Headline news began to reflect the sorrow and confusion I and so many others felt on the morning of November 9th, 2016. I was beginning to feel like I didn’t have any source of relief from the madness going on in the world, and the uncertainty beginning to take resident in my head, so I decided to begin navigating the so-called “new normal” going on in the world, and within my own personal existence.
I began to scrawl Johnston’s lyrics in my journal and post his songs on social media when I fell hard and head-over-heels in a classic rebound fashion in love with a Daniel Johnston fan. Boy howdy. I have to admit the beginnings of appreciating Johnston’s lyrics and learning to equip myself with the tools to understand it was okay to be vulnerable and communicate the fact things were Not Good, started as a hunt to figure out if this guy was referring to me when he posted Silly Love to Facebook after we had a fairly intense conversation about feelings and unrequited love.
My relationship with my fellow Daniel fan will always be symbolic to me because it was the first time where I eventually grasped that everyone has their own story to tell. Everyone is in search of some solace when navigating their personal journeys.
Our stories are our stories alone. His story is his story to tell, and my presence in his life was for him to determine, but I couldn’t understand it at the time. My initial reaction was to post lyrics from “Despair Came Knocking” as Instagram captions. The intoxication of this unrequited crush made me believe the entire world owed me something because I hadn’t figured out that I owe it to myself to work on my own personal struggles. The first step was for me to admit I was scared to be completely vulnerable and open with myself.
I knew what it meant to be vulnerable. I was constantly projecting my feelings and sadness on this guy, expecting him to fix and love me when he needed to do both for himself. When he would disappear for days, so would I. I’d spiral further and further into my own head, wondering not only why I wasn’t the perfect girl for this guy but largely why I believed wholeheartedly I wasn’t equipped to deal with the world at large anymore; it was a brand new and all- encompassing sinking feeling which kept engulfing me through the rest of 2017.
Sure, my life was still equipped with sweet moments. My childhood best friend and I were finally back in the same city and we were able to paint the town red as emerging adults for the first time since I had been away from home during college, so we nursed heartbreak and hacked ourselves silly every Saturday night at one of the city’s last dive bars to allow smoking. One of my friends drove me home on the night of my 24th birthday, a weeping basket case, because I was holding two shrimp po-boys on both knees from the bar that I didn’t want to eat.
My childhood best bud didn’t like Daniel Johnston, nor did she like having to endlessly nurse me through my unrequited crush, but she was instrumental in gently showing me it was all right not to be scared of vulnerability. Someone else who told me not to be scared, you ask? I would put on Daniel Johnston’s Don’t Be Scared and sometimes, I would listen to him. I would have little tingling moments in my heart where I would think to myself how life would be okay, but the true test to comprehending this, would be understanding I had to face the fact I was struggling with mental health.
“Mental health” seemed to always be two dangerous words in my world. It was never openly discussed. I had internalized somehow going to therapy or reaching out to someone else wasn’t a universal experience, and having the need to do so was shameful. Society had taught me you had to keep your struggles to yourself, and you just needed to shrug off the fact you were crying on your grandmother’s lap nearly on a daily basis. It was only a phase. You should shrug off the alarming fact you’re telling her “I just want the world to stop. I want it all to just stop.” Every single day, you just want it all to stop.
Watching Daniel’s 2012 appearance on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert was something I did constantly at the time. He performs the song “Sense Of Humor” which features Daniel repeating “You know you need some help” over and over. It was true. I needed help. I needed help understanding it was perfectly acceptable to feel like I didn’t know what was next and it was very much okay to let your guard down and let “her” in for a while. For me, “her” meant my mother.
Cleaning up the muddled mental mess I had been living in began with speaking candidly to my mom one afternoon about how awful I was feeling. I don’t think I attempted to keep anything mental health-related secret from her, but I’m sure as sunshine she noticed the near-constant stream of Daniel Johnston songs from my room. My mother is one of the smartest and most intuitive people I know; as nervous as I was to open up to her about my depression and how the man who played guitar pretty badly and sang childlike songs was helping me try to make sense of it, she had to know Baby T needed a hug, and lots of them.
I sat in Mom’s car and let her know I was depressed. When she told me she had struggled with mental health in the past, I burst into tears. I had finally learned how to be vulnerable enough to the woman who brought me into this weird-ass universe, and it was almost like she was giving me permission to understand we are all works in progress.
Daniel sings in his most famous song, “Don’t give up until true love will find you in the end.” I don’t want to define what ‘true love’ means for everybody and I know Daniel was referring to romantic love. At this point in my life, “true love” means working on myself. I haven’t moved on from these two relationships I’ve mentioned in this piece because they are both an integral part of my perception of who I am.
I am still learning to recognize behavior patterns in myself from the break up with my ex, even two years later. It’s not a revolutionary idea that people learn about themselves in the wake of a break-up, but it was the reason I was introduced to the notion of everyone always being a work in progress, but it’s important to keep our wits about us and hold ourselves accountable. It’s important to let your life proceed by its own design, or any similar lyrics from his favorite band I can’t stand.
Daniel Johnson’s passing left me momentarily stunned. I was sad he was no longer with us in this life, but it also seemed like a final send-off to the first extremely difficult period of mine. When he sang “Do yourself a favor and become your own savior” in “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Your Grievances” it helped me understand true love will indeed find you in the end. It’s you, baby.
