Buried Alive: A birthday tribute to two great artists--by Bryan F.

It’s Sunday morning and I was nearly finished with my article for my Monday post when I noticed and remembered that today is Janis Joplin’s birthday, January 19, 1943. She would have been seventy-seven.

Well, I always drop everything for Janis. She had a significant impact on my youth and I will be forever grateful for her contribution to the culture and to my own perspective. So this piece will honor this artist's life. I will only focus on how she and her music impacted me personally and leave the deep study to those that do that.

I first read her biography, Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin, in the mid-seventies a few years after it’s release, waiting only because I couldn’t afford to buy it sooner. I related to most of her life on a personal level. Her demons seemed like my own. Her feelings of low self-esteem resonated with mine. I actually can’t remember much of the book, only how it made me feel. Her sister has written one that delves more deeply into her personal relationships with her family and makes clear according to the reviews I scanned that she was indeed a compassionate, highly intelligent woman that cared deeply about her family. I actually got that from Buried, if I’m remembering correctly. I do want to re-read it and the newer one soon. 

I might owe her, maybe, my life. When I was in a deeply depressive state in my youth and twenties I suddenly had someone to relate to. I knew her death was not suicide and that she was only medicating just like I was. I’m grateful I never escalated to her level of drug use but had I had her resources, connections and the stress of her fame, I probably would have suffered a similar fate. I don’t believe Janis lived long enough to discover her true value, to begin to love and appreciate herself. 

It has taken me into my sixties to more fully appreciate my value. It’s never all gone though, the insecurity and self-loathing can return without warning. It’s only age and a lot of experience that allows me to turn it away more quickly now than then. She made me feel better about not being as physically attractive as many of my family and peers. I know now that that wasn’t true, but it was then. She made me feel better about being different, gay that is. I knew she was more free with her sexual identity and I admired that.

Had Janis lived, had she not encountered that bad batch, I think she would have been a great force for good. She would have likely been a fierce advocate for women’s and LGBTQI rights. She would have discovered her self worth and she would have been a speaker at this weekend's Women’s March. She would have shredded the likes of Trump and Bush and been an advocate for immigrant rights. I know in my heart she would have been all of these things had she survived. But of course, she did not and that’s OK because she left her heart in her music where we can pick it up anytime we like and make it our own. 

Because of my deep love for the city of San Francisco, one that I’m pretty sure I shared with Janis, I like to fantasize about meeting up with her in the Haight and sharing a snort of Southern Comfort. Then being invited to a club where she’s performing that night, probably frying on acid and seeing the music. But seriously, she must have felt the magic that was San Francisco at that time and still mostly existed when I got there and spent a few minutes of my life absorbing it.  Sure most of the hippies had gone by the late seventies, but the bohemian vibe still persisted. 

Janis isn’t the only singer that inspired me. Joni Mitchell was a big influence on my younger years as was Joan Baez, different in style but both singing about life and social change that inspired me to dig deeper. 

Nina Simone with her fiery and brave protest to inequality but still able to enjoy a Beatles cover; she was a prolific and eclectic artist in my view. Mississippi Goddam, is iconic in my estimation.

In the same way that Janis more fully opened my eyes to the vibrations of music and it’s potential healing energy, writers have similarly affected my perspective. Today is also Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday. Born in 1809 he captured the darkness in my mind and made me scream in delight. No other author has so awakened me more fully to my own existential terror than he. I am on the table in The Pit And The Pendulum, I am crouching in terror to the beat of The Telltale Heart. His dark tales made me feel alive and less fearful of death.

Dickens similarly awakened my social consciousness in his works. I am Pip in Great Expectations. J.D Salinger allowed me to be OK with being awkward. Faulkner’s stories grew my already formidable empathy.

I am forever grateful to all of these artists and many others for their works that feed and heal us when we allow it to.  May they rest in peace, and return soon.

Happy Birthday Janis Joplin and Edgar Allan Poe.
A special acknowledgment to the great civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., on this Monday holiday in recognition of his birthday.

Racial inequality will be a theme that I include in some of my future posts. As a person of certain privilege, it is my duty and honor to speak up, even when my voice shakes.

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