Category: Personal Reflections and Diary

(off topic rumination)
I’m actually angry still that Cobain and Bennington committed suicide. Now I know it may. not make sense to you, but I’m trained in the arts, theory and history, and view great artists possessed of talent, maturing it, developing excellences in it, as having an sort of moral obligation to produce emotional goods for mankind just as scientists, engineers, technologists, biologists seek to produce goods for mankind – except their obligation is greater because they are rarer.

But look at this list since Cobain?
Kurt Cobain (Nirvana) – 1994
Michael Hutchence (INXS) – 1997
Brad Delp (Boston) – 2007
Chris Cornell (Soundgarden, Audioslave) – 2017
Chester Bennington (Linkin Park) – 2017
Keith Flint (The Prodigy) – 2019
Avicii (Tim Bergling) – 2018

Well, we know that actors and acting both attract and create mental health issues. We know that music can attract marginal cases, but that the alcohol and drugs, combined with the stress, rise-and-fall, and loneliness in particular of anyone who seeks to escape ‘non-real’ attention in favor of those who share their experiences and conditions, all push people over the top.

I’ve felt for a long time that ordinary people with windfalls should be protected both from themselves, and from ‘predatory’ financial managers and lawyers. But It appears that this also applies to themselves when it comes to mental health.

I mean, she’s harmless, but since the little blonde musician I won’t name was released from her father’s ‘protection’, she hasn’t exactly demonstrated her father’s objection that she’s not mentally healthy enough to manager herself, her assets, her affairs, her reputation and brand.

Most of us need someone who loves us to insure we don’t go off the rails – which is yet another example of the dissolution of the family and the excessive emphasis on individual freedom and hyperconsumption.

CD

While I still prefer Portugal, and while as an activist I should at least contemplate proximity to DC (VA), at present it seems like TX or WA to ‘be with the men’. ;).