Mark Linkous from Sparklehorse killed himself over the weekend.
It is really, really sad & horrible when people leave this world… I know. I’ve come to believe though that given the fact that we are brought into the world beyond our control it should be the most basic human right that we are able to leave it under our own control. I think I’m indifferent to the idea of it being a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ thing, it’s just a choice. It is kinda self indulgent though, when you think about the effect that your decision is taking upon all the people that love you… and that for me really is reason enough to eschew it – besides, I’m enjoying my life right now.
I got into the Sparklehorse album Good Morning Spider a few years back. At the time I read about how depressed Mark Linkous was, about how he had attempted suicide before. The below track is about as poignant manifestation of that mindset as they come, I’m sure we can all associate with it on some level.
Did you know that Kurt Cobain and Duff McKagan were seated next to one another on the flight from LA to Seattle that Kurt took after he broke out of his rehab facility in LA to go home and kill himself? This makes Mr Duff (ha… Duff, how more monolithic rock band could it possibly be??) one of the last people confirmed to have seen the man before he died.
At the 1992 MTV music awards there was some slander of sorts between Nirvana and Guns N’ Roses during which Duff somehow threatened Kurt. I don’t know the specifics, but I know that it certainly is a strange set of circumstances that should end up having Duff a couple of years later being in the situation on that plane that he was.
As I am the human being that I am, for no reason my interest in Kurt’s death has piqued recently, and I’ve been reading about it. I follow Krist Novoselic’s blog, the other day he posted a link to this. I’m not sure… I think it’s quite nice, it’s a shame though that people so often have to live through their idiot youthdom to arrive at such a sense of rationale, that Duff couldn’t be this person sixteen years ago… that it’s not possible for so many men in this world to exercise such perception at a younger age.
So we keep living on, bearing witness to our contemporaries dependably making impulsive, uninformed &/or self-indulgent decisions that so consistently come to burn them not too far down the line. I’ve always told myself that as we the youth of now have the benefit of hindsight to make choices in our lives in a way that is informed by the mistakes of the generations above us, society as a whole is only ever capable of improving. Seems as though I’m pretty fucking idealistic with regards to that though.
It’s possible that this is my favorite song in the world right now… maybe it’s just because I’ve been drinking.
Wow! I clearly lack social prowess! How about that?? Fuck. Once again, last night did intrinsically serve to consolidate the fact that I am all too often terribly incapable of relating to people. It irks me out , I really do possess this overwhelming ability to weird people out. It’s this fucking face. Rosie tells me that I don’t have an ‘outward’ personality – that’s not how I feel inside, all I really desire is to give off the vibe that my intentions are sincere… because they really are. Somehow it all just gets lost in this fucking affectation that exists in me, that I seem to be completely unable to control. During these circumstances, it’s just so often that I succumb to the eventuality of an abject repugnance of myself… it’s not nice.
Humility, integrity & sincerity really are such beautiful, wonderful human qualities. With Mum now dead, it’s kind of like I’m missing a piece of that from my life. In this world that’s so full of bullshit, she was so real.
I ran very far this morning. It’s such a good mitigator for these things. I don’t feel quite as frenzied any more. I burnt somewhere in the vicinity of nine hundred calories (again). My tight ass jeans aren’t so tight ass any more, I’m not sure if I like it, though I have lowered my heart rate considerably… and that’s good. Soon I will have it in the forties.
I used to think alot about what processes I would go through to stay alive if a nuclear bomb were dropped on Sydney, with regards to my sick mother and my family in the city and such – what stuff I would have to take to keep people alive, which roads I would drive on to avoid the resultantly massive traffic implications on the highway and escape the radiation storm, etc. Now I lie there in bed and think that I can feel my heart ceasing to beat, and get nervous.
I’ve been reading about River Phoenix’s death. I’ve just looked at a photo of his dead body.
That afternoon I found the lady next door dead in her backyard will probably be etched into my consciousness for the rest of my life. There was such a strange vibe in the air that day. It was January and it was a incredibly hot, hot day. I had come home from work early due to the heat and fallen asleep half naked on the couch in the lounge room of the house that Chaz, Nick and I were living in at the time. The ceiling fan was on and the big heavy curtains which blocked out all the light on the other side of the room were blowing about the place as a combination of the fan and the hot, afternoon summer air coming in through the open window. A result of this was shards of light sporadically shooting about the room, occasionally hitting my eyes, disrupting what would otherwise have been a calm, smooth sleep. The house was empty and quiet. I was lying there sort of half awake alone in the hot, dark silence thinking about nothing, absorbing the vibe.
I got up and grabbed a yogurt from the fridge, opened it and breifly glanced out the window which looked over the neighbours yard. Something caught the corner of my eye as I turned my head… at first I thought it was a sheet that had come off the clothes line nearby, but it wasn’t.
I ran out the back and across into her yard and put my hands on her shoulders in an attempt to ascertain whether she was still conscious. I’d never really understood the true extent of rigor mortis until that point, her body was very much stiff and cold. The condition of her skin was such that she had obviously been deceased for some time. She lay half way between her wheely bin and her back door, she had died bringing it in.
At the time, because we partied so damn much, our phone had been ripped out of its socket on the wall and was totally non functional. I ran to about four or five of the houses nearby to use their phone, but nobody was home at any of them. I had to rewire our phone before I could contact the emergency people…
The lady on the phone was nice. She asked me if I needed support, I said no. Eventually the ambulance officers arrived and rushed out into the backyard with their gear. As soon as they saw her they could see that she was dead, and that was it.
Chaz arrived home just as the undertaker people were wheeling her covered body into their car. It was a strange and intense afternoon.
Yesterday was a little bit disconcerting for me, in that it was my first birthday where Mum hasn’t called me up to wish me a happy birthday. It really did generate an emptiness in me that I kind of haven’t felt since she died.
There are times when I wish I could control what was going on inside my head, especially such as those at four o’clock in the morning when I’m lying there in bed with a thousand trillion little pieces of thought buzzing around my brain like millions of bees to the hive. The worst of it is that I’m never able to sleep in anymore… it’s been a while since I have.
As with so many other facets of my being it’s not necessarily reasonable, but I’m never complacent with the amount of sleep that I get.
Today, after feeding the lovely ducks & ducklings in the pond by the way cool pool at Blackheath, we had a lunch at the lake in Wentworth Falls. It was overall a muchly enjoyable day.
Here is a photo of Rosie and I.
I’ve not cut my beard since Mum died. A couple of days before she died she was telling me how much she liked it. Funny huh… the physicalities we associate with death.
There’s this guy in Katoomba, he seems to be a really nice man… he’s one of those local faces that you see about quite alot. I frequently pass by him on Katoomba Street, I see him walking down Lurline Street quite often, sometimes he’s at the bar. Whenever he walks past me, he always points at me and abruptly exclaims ‘John Lennon’.
He has cerebral palsy. He used to have this really nice border collie that accompanied him everywhere he went named Bailey. It was such a nice dog, he never had to have it on a leash, it would just conscientiously meander along in front of him as he struggled up the street – it would take him to the edge of the road then stop and wait for a break in the traffic then guide him across. You could see its good will in its eyes. It was a fucking awesome dog.
Today when I passed by him he wasn’t with Bailey, he was with a new dog. It wearies me to think that dog may no longer be around. I imagine that, given the fucking horribly inevitable social manifestations of his disability, that dude would have had a pretty special relationship with his dog.
I don’t feel great tonight. Depression is a nasty thing, the way it just creeps up out of nowhere and hits you in the back with no good reason. Maybe the christmas thing holds more significance than I thought.
I think this is my favourite post Beatles John Lennon song.
