A tale of how the brain can truly be so powerful in great ways and in tragic ones. From being one of Kurt Cobain’s favorite inspirations to making music I find truly integral to the soul. Thus he has become one of my favorite and most beautiful artist stories, with his would be 65th birthday this month, let’s look inside.
For the sake of time I’m going to skip through a bit but don’t think this makes the in between any less important.
Born in California, the story really starts when after dropping out of college, Daniel began to sell his debut mixtape “Hi How Are You” out of the McDonald’s in Austin Texas. (If you haven’t heard the tape, it is the one quintessential albums to me of the 80’s and is truly an underrated piece of emotion.)
(the majority of all of Daniel’s work consisted of cassettes recorded by himself in his home in single takes directly to the tape.) After an incident heading back from one of his first shows where Daniel had a mental break believing he was Casper the friendly ghost which caused him to crash the airplane he and his dad were in. Although they both made it out alive, this caused Daniels first full fledged mental outbreaks aswell as the beginning of a life in and out of forced psychiatric help that would completely alter his life.
This same insanity is also what I believe made his music so special. His childlike qualities are so prevalent because he never forgot or stopped feeling how scary and vulnerable he was to the world which I think truly assisted in bridging the gap that allowed us to feel through the artwork and music of Daniel Johnston.
For the sake of space I must end here but I greatly encourage if you’re interested to watch his documentary “The Devil And Daniel Johnston”. It gives much better context than I ever could in an Instagram caption. hope you have a good day today.ph ++ “I’ve always got something to live for, because I always wanted to be an artist” - Daniel Johnston