Waiting Around to Die
Song of the Day 07/29/2022
Waiting Around to Die By Townes Van Zandt
Some days, for whatever reason, music can be more starkly felt than usual, even though you’re sober, tired, apathetic, angry, depressed, whatever. On these beautiful days, as today, with some really great songs, I’m convinced that there’s a gnostic force moving through the world that possesses musicians who are vulnerable and open enough, allowing a preternatural tune to be composed. Just have a listen to Townes Van Zandt’s album, Townes Van Zandt, and tell me with all honesty that this music is purely terrestrial, material. I might be an insane person, but for whatever reason, it appears so clear to me that Townes didn’t write any of this, that he was just receptive and sensitive enough to allow a spiritual force to move through him; the melody isn’t his, neither are the words. What makes the album belong to him is merely his pure, elegant, beguiling receptiveness to the world around him. Now that’s music. Even if you’re an atheist, there’s something about the right song that will appear to be divine.
When Hemingway said that the worst things always happen to the best of people, he was referring to the delicate, sensitive, and generous souls among him, i.e., real artists. Townes Van Zandt was an alcoholic and heroin addict and died on New Year's Day, 1997 in the bleakest of ways (just take a look at the ‘Death’ section of his Wikipedia page). Carl Jung thought the craving for alcohol was the ‘equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with god.’ Further, Jung believed that the ‘evil principal prevailing in this world leads the unrecognized spiritual need to perdition, if it is not counteracted either by a real religious insight or by the protective wall of human community.’ In the same letter, Jung points out how the word for alcohol in Latin is spiritus; the word used for the highest religious experience is the same as for the most depraving poison.
We forget that composing work constitutes just a small part of an artist’s time. How is such a sensitive person, with so little protection against the world, so few imposed boundaries, supposed to interact with the rest of the 24-hour cycle? If not carefully approached, this interaction can lead to a great amount of despair. When not creating, a musician’s craving for the godly, for the spiritual, will often manifest itself in the worst types of poison on offer; how else is one supposed to immediately transcend? As Rainer Werner Fassbinder said, an artist becomes destructive when they do not create. Unfortunately, in most cases, a productive artist’s creative output is limited to only several hours per day.
One hopes that the creative hangover would be enough to clear an artist’s mind, that it would settle their thoughts and calm them down—but as Jung implied, without the aspect of human community or real religious insight, the artist is fucked.