Can dead birds still sing a short sweet song?

Some few weeks ago a friend asked me what I thought about the February 20 suicide of gonzo journalist Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. I replied:

I tried to read Hunter Thompson's stuff but it was just so far off the wall for me I couldn't get into it. It was a fun diversion but no long lasting relationship there. Hemingway is an equine of a variegated spectrum however. He started out as a journalist. Unfortunately both were cliches and died as such. And I'm sorry for them.

I am sorry for these two writers. They were artists who painted pictures in the mind's eye with words and the world is the greater for their having lived and the lesser with them gone. Their writing should be admired and celebrated not their weaknesses.

As Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe opines:

Could anything be more ghoulish and egotistical than making your unsuspecting wife listen while you put a bullet through your skull? Absolutely: Making your unsuspecting wife listen while you put a bullet through your skull - with your son, daughter-in-law and grandson just a few yards away. Juan Thompson was in a nearby office when his father blew his brains out in the kitchen. Winkel Thompson and 6-year-old Will were playing in the living room next door. It takes a real sadist to arrange his suicide so that his loved ones hear him die. But what kind of degenerate inflicts something so traumatic on a child of 6?

In Thompson's defense, it must be said that he was a hardened alcohol and drug abuser who over the decades had ingested, inhaled and imbibed a staggering quantity and assortment of recreational poisons. The cumulative damage to his brain must have been considerable. By the time he fired his .45, who knows how clearly he could think about anything? But there is no excuse for the treatment of Thompson's suicide as some sort of ultimate gonzo coup by a rebel who never played by society's rules.

Was it because that Thompson continued to wear the lampshade on his head even though the party had been over? Was he the funny drunk who became obnoxious and abusive as morning grew nigh, and he suddenly came to that realization? I suspect it's because he kept going so close to the abyss that he became part of the abyss and didn't have the weapons needed to resist.

I keep meeting writers, artists and musicians who believe self-destructive behavior is the key to their art, somehow convinced of it by the legacies of the Hemingways and Thompsons and Joplins and Hendrix' and Parkers and the Presleys -- or at least the legacies as depicted by the hucksters, vultures, pretenders and poltroons who survive on the carrion.

People have asked me throughout my life, how is it that writers can write? They have ideas in their heads and they want to put the idea on paper, or internet ether as the case may be. My answer is invariably the same. Writers write because they have to. Artists paint because they have to. Musicians compose and play because they have to. How they write, paint or compose is by exposing their souls for the world to see, and that's something that takes courage. It's confessional in nature: "Bless me readers for I have contemplated. My last missive was several days ago. These are my thoughts."*

You have to be willing to have strangers and friends alike be critical of your weaknesses, from the spelling and grammatical errors to the actual thoughts. Some people find the courage to expose these vulnerabilities within themselves -- heart, history, humor, family, beliefs -- and others seek it elsewhere and end up as dead cliches or insane. You have to be able to take the full force of the universe on your chin and trod on.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the death of jazz saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker, a musician who changed music forever and who died at 34 in a body so abused by alcohol and heroin the attending physician believed Parker to be 60. Emulate his music or his art if you wish just don't emulate his tragic life. He could have accomplished so much more had he lived. And it's all just such a waste.

*[I should probably clarify my use of "Bless me readers for I have contemplated. My last missive was several days ago. These are my thoughts." for folk who weren't raised Catholic. Most people know, I assume, that Catholics have a sacrament called "Confession" where they confess their sins to a priest (who is referred to by the title "Father" instead of Rabbi or Imam), ask forgiveness and are given a penance to perform, usually in the form of prayers to say. Or at least that's the way it was when I was a youngster and a practicing Catholic. Before Catholics confess their sins to the priest, they begin the religious ritual with the words: "Bless me Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was X days/weeks/months/years ago. These are my sins."]