Original Comment Thread Below

Comment by Becky |Edit This
2009-06-04 09:04:56

Kerouac was technically an overdose. It just took a reeeallly long time.

Now they’ll throw fruit.
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Comment by James Michael Blaine |Edit This
2009-06-04 09:46:34

A list of those would be a much much longer post…
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Comment by D.R. Haney |Edit This
2009-06-04 21:50:08

To a tiger? No way.

You’re dead on. There’s a documentary entitled “What Happened to Kerouac?” in which someone interviewed says that he expressly stated was trying to slowly kill himself, the faster route violating his religious beliefs.
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Comment by Becky |Edit This
2009-06-05 04:58:59

I meant rotten fruit. For my incessant mentions of Jack Kerouac.

I hadn’t heard that his was a conscious, intentional suicide, but I do know that much of his writing and life philosophy was suspiciously death/mortality-centric, i.e. “I wrote the book because we’re all gonna die,” which he said of _On the Road_. So it makes sense, in a way. Life is terminal.
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Comment by D.R. Haney |Edit This
2009-06-05 06:16:43

I understood your meaning.

Pardon me for attempting to play.

I thought tigers played.

I was wrong.

You won.

Game over.

Now I’ll go play with humans.

Comment by Becky |Edit This
2009-06-05 06:51:58

So touchy.

If you’re going to be that sensitive, it’s probably best.

But if you want to try NOT being a scaredy, I will tell you that the source of confusion was “TO a tiger” rather than “AT a tiger,” which has a different connotation entirely.

Just relax, man.

Geez.

Comment by D.R. Haney |Edit This
2009-06-05 07:14:44

It probably is best.

And why don’t YOU relax, instead of trying to prove yourself as THE brain of all time in all matters?

A little “Well, yeah, I see what you’re getting at, but isn’t it more like…?” would go a long way, at least with me.

The strange this is that I agree with many of your opinions. I just don’t agree with the way they’re expressed.

You place a chip on another’s shoulder and, when it’s brushed off, say: “Why are you doing that? There’s nothing there. Why don’t you just relax?”

You’re obviously a bright person. No need to prove it at the expense of others.

Comment by D.R. Haney |Edit This
2009-06-05 07:21:24

I made an obvious typo. Seize on it, why don’t you, to go on proving how unbelievably bright you are.

Comment by Becky |Edit This
2009-06-05 07:36:08

I have no idea what I said here that upset you so much in the first place. I don’t understand what all that “going back to the humans” stuff was about. Totally inappropriate and defensive reaction to a pretty benign comment. I thought you misunderstood what I meant because of the way you phrased your reply. So I clarified.

I pointed out the misunderstanding and teased about the overreaction it caused. I’m sorry you don’t like the way I express myself. With all due respect, and I DO mean with respect, truly–I don’t care. You’re not the first, and I’m sure you won’t be the last to misinterpret something I’ve said or have a problem with the things I say, but it doesn’t help when you’re so on guard against vitriol, you see it where it doesn’t even exist.

I am sorry if my remarks came off as aggressive. It wasn’t my intent. In my own defense, I will only say that you might try giving me the benefit of the doubt once in a while.

Comment by D.R. Haney |Edit This
2009-06-05 07:42:47

The same in return. I offer a truce.

Okay?

Sincerely.

Comment by Becky |Edit This
2009-06-05 07:55:51

Apologies to JMB.

Comment by jmb |Edit This
2009-06-05 09:23:26

One time in high school
when my parents were gone
I had a party
and two of my friends
got in a fistfight

Of course the next day
it was spoken of
as the highlight

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Comment by Brad Listi |Edit This
2009-06-04 09:10:14

That was great, Mr. Blaine.

Didn’t even realize Carradine was a suicide.

Another one bites the dust.

Sticking it out until the bitter end with sense of humor in-tact is a hero’s way to go.
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Comment by James Michael Blaine |Edit This
2009-06-04 09:49:22

Thank you sir.

try myofascial release, a little egoscue stretching.
Pilates too.
All things work together for good.

live til you die.
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Comment by Dawn Corrigan |Edit This
2009-06-04 09:39:39

Bill is dead. Long live Bill!

RIP.
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Comment by James Michael Blaine |Edit This
2009-06-04 09:45:36

carpe noctem
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Comment by tip robin |Edit This
2009-06-04 12:19:15

nice little homage to the easily-crushed artist. i was expecting a straight-up poem, not a list poem of names, occupations and the manner of which they offed themselves.

also, i just read about Carradine a few hours ago. did you just write this down as soon as you got the news? or did you have it all ready, waiting to put one last name on there? i assume the former, but would like to think the latter.
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Comment by James Michael Blaine |Edit This
2009-06-04 12:47:04

just spilt it out in homage to old grasshopper
and all the artists down.

I should have added the question to all the artists here

How would you go?
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Comment by James Michael Blaine |Edit This
2009-06-04 12:48:33

i would jump a short bus
soaked in kerosene
into the mouth
of an active volcano
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Comment by Phat B |Edit This
2009-06-04 12:26:42

Is that HST’s real suicide note? I remember them talking about one, that his son Juan had it.
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Comment by James Michael Blaine |Edit This
2009-06-04 12:49:53

No, the real one was handwritten.

At first I was a little disappointed in ole HST
then I figured that was exactly his way to go
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Comment by Irene Zion (who is visiting Illinois) |Edit This
2009-06-04 12:44:53

For these people and more, creativity has a high price.
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Comment by Gina Frangello |Edit This
2009-06-04 17:21:48

Are YOU in Chicago too?!!
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Comment by James Michael Blaine |Edit This
2009-06-04 12:50:12

Preach it.
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Comment by Irene Zion (Lenore’s Mom) |Edit This
2009-06-04 13:56:19

jmb,
How did you do all the squiggley wiggleys on facebook and get me here?
You are the magic man!
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Comment by josie |Edit This
2009-06-04 15:11:19

See you soon grasshopper

Josie Renwah

Failed poet

Drowned in the icy Pacific,
choking on her own words
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Comment by jmblaine |Edit This
2009-06-04 16:48:10

I tried to think of something snarky to say and then the sadness hit me.
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Comment by N.L. Belardes |Edit This
2009-06-04 16:24:27

I bet more non-artists than artists kill themselves. I have no statistics to back my opinion. Just sayin’ it’s a scary world.
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Comment by Becky |Edit This
2009-06-05 03:14:27

That stands to reason, since there are many more non-artists than artists.

I suspect you mean per-capita for each population?

Subjective. Maybe one could be a suicide artist, in which case 100% have died of suicide?
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Comment by James Michael Blaine |Edit This
2009-06-05 17:31:48

We are not
all artists
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Comment by Becky |Edit This
2009-06-07 03:58:47

Not even bullshit artists?

You sell us short, man.

Frankly, I’m offended.
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Comment by jmb |Edit This
2009-06-08 10:53:14

Well, bullshit is a totally different genre.

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Comment by N.L. Belardes |Edit This
2009-06-04 17:01:46

Darn, my comment just disappeared. It was a good one too, JMB.
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Comment by jmb |Edit This
2009-06-04 18:58:34

Can you not recall it? In some form?
I hate to miss anything.
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Comment by N.L. Belardes |Edit This
2009-06-05 07:05:20

It was long and there were links! I have loved all your pieces….until now. I have to say I wasn’t fond of this one. In a nutshell I disagreed with you. And I had some links to suicide-related articles. It was a discussion builder. But it’s all right, most of my stuff is drivel anyways. Hell, on my homepage today I write about donuts. Lol.
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Comment by jmb |Edit This
2009-06-05 09:30:11

Well darn.
I come from a college
that loves a good debate

I cant defend it though.
I work knee deep in the suicide industry
of the common folk.

It does seem curious as to
how someone the world
would call successful
gorgeous
talented
would take their life.

Most of the people I see
are broke
in trouble with the law
old
chronically ill.

After ten years of suicide response
I have no response or judgment.
But it does seem
that the same thing
that makes one an artist
makes them acutely
emotionally sensitive.

Reply here

Comment by Gina Frangello |Edit This
2009-06-04 17:20:29

This is incredibly sad, weirdly beautiful, and your extemporaneous and spontaneous talent with this and your responses to other people’s posts always wows me, JMB.

Yet I agree with Nick that suicide, like depression and addiction, is just as prevalent in the “civilian” world of non-artists (and non-Buddhist-monks, and non-Emperors.) I worry a little about the tendency to glamorize self-destruction in the artistic . . . not so glam to just shoot yourself in the head if you’re a bitter cop (like my friend’s dad) or jump off a building if you’re in gambling debt (like another friend’s husband) or slit your wrists like all the dumb teenage girls who somehow think their cheating 16 year old boyfriends will love them more once they’re dead, you know? Being a junkie with no talent and no fame/money just doesn’t look as good on paper as when you’re Kurt Cobain. No one immortalizes you then. If you’re a mom of young kids and leave them in another room while you suck down some oven gas, but you’re not a gorgeous and crazy-talented young poet married to another famous poet, you can bet your ass the nightly news just portrays you as a psycho, borderline-infanticide-committing bitch.

I also worry that suicide almost seems like a get-famous-quick scheme to aspiring young artists, like if they off themselves they’re verifying their talent and genius.

Yet none of this undermines the power of this list, either. It moved me deeply.
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Comment by Becky |Edit This
2009-06-05 04:13:22

I’m not convinced Plath isn’t characterized that way as well. I think the wildly-talented poet thing (and the cheating famous poet husband thing) is just the excuse/explanation given for the psycho. As a matter of tradition (and bafflement when it comes to the legendary and peculiar psychology of artists), people accept it more readily than they might, say, a wildly-talented-plumber thing, but I’m not convinced that she doesn’t get the shit end of the stick, reputation-wise, pretty often. Especially among writers and artists who don’t like it when writers and artists kill themselves. I mean, no one turns their nose up at HST for being a stereotypically cynical/pessimistic/depressive writer type who took the coward’s way out, abandoning family and friends. Somehow Plath has become the poster child for this behavior, bearing a huge burden of references, and HST is just the late, great HST. I wonder if it’s a male/female thing. I don’t hear anyone speak derisively of, say, John Berryman’s suicide, either.

Sorry. I get defensive of Plath. I feel like people pay too much attention to her death (glorified or villified) and not enough to her leviathan (if morbid) intellect.
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Comment by Gina Frangello |Edit This
2009-06-05 06:39:34

The Plath thing is like a snake eating its own tail where it’s become impossible to discuss her without the suicide coming into it. I, too, love her actually, so I wasn’t trying to diss her in any way. What I mean is that she has a cult following that is largely tied to her death–a posse of women who demonized Hughes and worship Plath, all that personal drama–and for better or worse (you could argue either way) the “average” woman who kills herself over a man, over mental illness, over ANY reason, doesn’t get that fanfare. The fanfare distracts from Plath’s work at times, which stands alone. But it also puts weird ideas in the minds of young artistic women about the glamour and infamy of early death or suicide. (Which, btw, is not remotely Plath’s “fault” and all happened after she was already dead.)
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Comment by Becky |Edit This
2009-06-05 07:00:11

The average woman doesn’t get that kind of fanfare when she gets a haircut, either. Or knocked up. But Angelina Jolie? Magazine cover.

That’s more a general truth about celebrity and fame…haircut, pregnancy, suicide…all more important if you’re famous.

But on the whole, I see your point and agree. When I see an adolescent, morose-looking girl reading a copy of Ariel, I want to snatch it from her hands, bop her on the head with it, and tell her to go away and come back to it when they understand that it’s about HER and not THEM.

But I’m mean like that.

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Comment by N.L. Belardes |Edit This
2009-06-06 06:51:40

I agree with Gina, only she was moved, and I got bitter right away and forced myself to read the rest… hahahaha… It’s all good man, you know I’m still your #5 fan (I am not fighting your fans for the #1 slot cause I know how tough hot TNB fans can be!)
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Comment by Kimberly M. Wetherell |Edit This
2009-06-04 18:08:19

I love that you mentioned Darby Crash. Too may Germ-a-phobes out there.

Not to make light or anything - punning’s just my way. Helps me deal with sadness.

Too bad I’m not funnier.

Inside, we’re all Kung Fu fighting.
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Comment by jmb |Edit This
2009-06-04 19:00:46

That Darby flick should be out soon no?

Laughter and crying sound so much the same.
Prince said that.
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Comment by D.R. Haney |Edit This
2009-06-04 22:10:01

Do you mean “What We Do Is Secret?” I know it received a brief theatrical run, and I think it’s now available on DVD. When it was shooting here in L.A., I was approached numerous times at Amoeba Records to be an extra. I guess they were hard up.

In any case, for me, your opening lines — and I hope this doesn’t come off as pretentious as I fear it may — evoke(d) the closing lines of Baudelaire’s “The Albatross”:

The Poet is like this monarch of the clouds,
Familiar of storms, of stars, and of all high things;
Exiled on earth amidst its hooting crowds,
He cannot walk, borne down by his giant wings.

And the list that follows put(s) me in mind of Vincent Bugliosi’s roll-call of the victims of the Manson Family in his final argument to the jury before Manson and his followers were convicted. It was apparently, for those who heard it, powerful in the extreme. This, too, is powerful.
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Comment by Kimberly M. Wetherell |Edit This
2009-06-05 07:52:52

“What We Do Is Secret” is excellent! Saw it on the fest circuit last year. Total side note, The Germs have reunited and Shane West is their lead singer. Tru ’nuff.
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Comment by jmb |Edit This
2009-06-05 09:33:12

Oh man
what an excellent comment.
Those closing lines are beautific.
Mine are more like some
Corn Flakes I spilled on the floor.
I’ll check out that roll call of victims.
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Comment by Becky |Edit This
2009-06-05 04:21:54

Oh yeah! Hey!

John Berryman
Poet
Swan dive from Washington Avenue Bridge

That’s on the UMN campus, where I work (and he used to). I get to look at it every day. I think about Berryman a lot.
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Comment by jmb |Edit This
2009-06-05 09:33:59

There’s so many I left out.
Here’s to Berryman.
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Comment by josie |Edit This
2009-06-05 05:56:40

After reading through the comments I think there is something missing here. There is a difference between poetry and a poet. One is a thing the other the creator, and creators are all artists.

We look at the lives of celebrities and musicians, poets and writers, dancers and athletes and declare anyone great in their field an artist. Art is a process of expression and development of a human being.

By that social inclination the policeman is too an artist, the love slumped teen and any other person doing their best to cultivate an original personal existence.

Would I slit my wrists because I could not write a great poem? Hell no. Would I slit my wrists because I couldn’t accomplish a poetic life by my intended design? Absolutely.

It is the struggle of failed artistic creation that causes many to commit suicide. Suicide is an artform. It is the artist’s final creation.

And like most artists it is their death that often brings them any artistic recognition.

You can argue with that until the cows come home but there’s a lot of damn truth in this sad fact. We are all artists.
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Comment by Becky |Edit This
2009-06-05 06:46:00

I just can’t get behind it. We are all artists in the same way that we are all African.

If you open up the definition enough, everybody fits. Every human’s ancestors walked out of Africa 100,000 years ago. I could apply for African-American scholarships and be the Nation’s next African-American president.

But we are not all African, actually. Not really. “African” indicates something else entirely.

If there is no human that is not an artist, the word would not exist because it would not have ever been necessary. “Artist” indicates something other than “creator” or “person with creativity.” That’s why we don’t say, “I live in the creator’s quarter.” Or, “I am a creativity major.” “Come to my expression exhibit.” “Art” indicates a specific KIND of creativity. It is a THING. And if it IS, there is, necessarily, something it is NOT. (This is an assumption of predicate logic, based loosely on the mathematical truth that –1 = +1.)

Maybe I’m totally out of my head on this linguistic philosophy thing, but it seems to me that to even use the word is to acknowledge that there is someone who is not an artist.

I don’t know. I’m confusing myself now. I think someone put LSD in my yogurt. I’m so glad it’s Friday.
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Comment by Becky |Edit This
2009-06-05 06:48:05

That should be two - symbols in front of the first 1. Negative negative 1. They were both there when I typed it.

Thanks for your help, internets! Der.
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Comment by josie |Edit This
2009-06-05 09:40:46

I’m going to totally agree with you… on that totally out of you mind point :p

Comment by Becky |Edit This
2009-06-05 11:17:43

It makes perfect sense if you stand on your head and read it backwards.

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Comment by Gina Frangello |Edit This
2009-06-05 06:54:31

Sure, but if suicide is an art then there’s good art and shitty art, just like in other forms of art (like poetry.) There is self-indulgent art that nobody really cares about. If we all killed ourselves whenever our lives didn’t seen poetic or when we seemed to have no control over their intended design–well, pretty much most of the human population, including artists, would be dead, no? We all have moments, days, months, years that fit those descriptions.

What about, as Brad says, having a sense of humor and the balls to stick it out?

I am all for suicide when a person’s life has truly moved irrevocably beyond his/her control in an irrevocable way. Not just for artists (or if we’re all artists, then okay, for everyone.) Euthanasia for the terminally ill who are in pain; a soldier captured and tortured in a prison camp who finds a way to off himself before his entire spirit can be broken; those like Virginia Woolf who lived in a time before any real treatments for bipolar disorder and who saw themselves becoming someone they couldn’t live with being, with no end in sight. Nothing is black and white and there are of course “good reasons” to kill oneself, and where doing so is an act of creation or defiance or independence or even art.

But there are also times when it’s just dumb. When someone couldn’t suck up what is actually a very ordinary problem that would have been fleeting, and therefore never gets to live a full life or live to see another day where his/her life–poetic or whatever they want it to be–would rebound and flourish. There are so many ways to find Meaning in this world. Killing oneself seems, to me, low on that list in most, though not all, cases.

I guess the extreme glamorization or demonization of suicide both seem . . . well, extreme . . . to me.
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Comment by Erika Rae |Edit This
2009-06-05 07:14:21

I believe the latest is that they may be ruling out suicide for Carradine? What an embarrassing way to go…

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ipVUX_BySIOm7FCTgbyATYx9NrywD98KJTJ00

This was amazing, jmb.
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Comment by Becky |Edit This
2009-06-05 07:40:57

Yeah. Autoerotic asphyxiation or something, right? Bummer man. If you’re gonna go, go…umm…sexy, I guess? Yeesh.
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Comment by josie |Edit This
2009-06-05 13:33:43

Sounds like foul play to me… pun and all.

I would just like to take this opportunity to publicly decree that if I am ever found hung dead, no matter the state of my genitalia… it was not a sexual accident. Send out the investigators.
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Comment by Gina Frangello |Edit This
2009-06-05 07:36:33

yep, i heard that too about carradine on the radio this morning.
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Comment by jmb |Edit This
2009-06-05 09:38:53

Yeah I should remove his name from the list - but Hutchence went the same way if you recall.

Geez, everytime I just throw a post up it seems
to get the most response.

Spend a week crafting something
& it gets stomped out by posting peers
and barely noticed.

Not gonna jump my
kerosene soaked
short bus
into the volcano just yet
though

(when I do will you guys claim it was just sex play gone awry?)
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Comment by Becky |Edit This
2009-06-05 11:01:25

First thought, best thought.

That’s what they say.

Sometimes.
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Comment by Reno |Edit This
2009-06-05 13:58:08

too heady of a conversation. yikes. anyhow, thanks, 11. i like poetry. heard the dude bailed on stern. not good. too bad it wasn’t that con-artist that runs the saddleback church.

if that happens i’ll turn into auden and blow these boards up, yo!

ni modo,
r
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Comment by James Michael Blaine |Edit This
2009-06-05 17:34:11

Ah but Reno
folks like
you & I
are immortal.
We’ll Fly like Icarus.
forever
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Comment by N.L. Belardes |Edit This
2009-06-06 06:53:33

Your shadow is sexy.
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Comment by jmb |Edit This
2009-06-06 13:19:28

What a cool pseudo death comment that is.

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Comment by Zara Potts |Edit This
2009-06-06 12:17:10

I just want to say, I think this is very cool. That’s all.
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Comment by jmb |Edit This
2009-06-09 19:11:42

No, thank you.
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Comment by lance reynald |Edit This
2009-06-10 08:39:27

hmm.

a few early failures and I managed to stick around for this…

sure, sometimes I wonder if I’m going to be able to hang as the stakes get higher… the first book was tough… but it was the life after signing it that challenged me the most… not professionally, writing is what I do, I guess.

but, managing “life” when you’ve been let in on getting your dream… not a lot of advice out there on that.

One of the weird things about success is there aren’t really a lot of people out there to talk to it about.

oddly, I often find myself understanding how the list above came to be… as Art… self determination is tempting. You dedicate yourself to creating worlds on the page, canvas, screen or a tune on the air… sharing something you believe all are capable of, a more ideal place… but then even knowing how to do that you still have to manage to live with the world and the limits everyone else accepts… fatal self determination may just be a last grab at the perfection you know everyone is capable of.

dunno.

I’m avoiding purchasing and length of rope for the immediate future…

but, Constance Meyer? damn, that’s intense.
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Comment by lance reynald |Edit This
2009-06-10 08:44:40

where the f-ing edit button?

sheesh, get me babbling and the typos make me look like a nutter.
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Comment by jmb |Edit This
2009-06-11 21:17:34

All good Lance.

someone said, two great tragedies in life:
Not getting what you want,
getting what you want.

The same thing that makes you notice the way the
quarter moon breaks through the cypress leaves
near midnight
also makes you feel and think
entirely too damn much

Director’s Commentary: The comments in this one were really good. I had collected it for a few months and mulled it over and when newspapers reported David Carridine had likely committed suicide I posted it with his name at the bottom. Soon enough though they changed their opinion to likely death by misadventure.