'if I were another person observing myself and the course of my life, I should be compelled to say that it must all end unavailingly, be consumed in incessant doubt, creative only in its self-torment...' - franz kafka, diaries, 25th february 1915.
'bluegrass music destroyed my life' - john fahey
kafka/ fahey
could they be more different?
kafka dies before he gets old.
fahey doesn't. he gets old bloated and fat (and only then does he die).
kafka is ennobled by TB (even as it kills him - check susan sontag on this).
fahey is dragged down by alcoholism, prescription drug abuse, obesity, diabetes, epstein-barr syndrome and eventually a monstrous heart attack. it's just not a fashionable way to go and he doesn't leave a good looking corpse.
both are clearly mad as biscuits. maladjusted.
kafka has a reputation for the short stories published during his life time. but when he dies more of his material is posthumously released and translated. his reputation gets bigger until he is some kind of a secular saint and we have the adjective kafkaesque, a word so overused it may have lost all meaning.
fahey has a reputation as a guitar player. but then he lunches it. he goes into internal exile in salem oregon. when he is rescued even as he doesn't want to make the old music anymore. but does this term apply to his music or his character. if the music he no longer wanted to make was faheyesque, is the music he made at the end of his career faheyesque also? or are they closer than he claimed?
yesterday zoom beers with howard (he did not go off to yoko ono after all). two beers. feeling slightly muzzy this morning. yesterday some sunshine - horsemouth almost managed to sit out and read. so far nothing he has 'planted' has come up (but it is early days yet). the bbc weather claims rain today but then decentish for the new week.
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