So five years ago, it went kinda like this:
Purple Mountains released their eponymous debut in July of 2019 and announced a September gig in Portland, OR a few weeks later. My calendar looked clear and I have friends up there, so I booked a cheap flight to PDX, bought concert tickets, and started emailing people dates I was going to be in town. I was looking forward to an early Fall weekend of music.
Then, on the 7th of August, David Berman hung himself.
Mother fucker. It was more than surreal to cancel my tickets and get refunded in a near real-time response to suicide. It made listening to the sadder songs on Purple Mountains something of a white knuckle dive into the perils of mental illness than chuckling along with the sardonic humor so many of us love about Berman’s writing. And while the indie rock world was abuzz discussing the circumstances of his death, most people I told the news to said “David who?”
So I’m not sure who this post is for. David Berman was not Kurt Cobain. He was an acquired taste even for people into obscure music. So I’ll do my best to hew towards the non-musical issues here – because there are many.
I’ve lived long enough to know way too many people who’ve died by suicide or overdose. The terrible thing is, I can’t say much of anything positive about the final state of those relationships because things got so chaotic near the end. The isolation and loneliness often becomes so acute, even those closest to the person are shut out – perhaps especially so. If substance abuse is involved, you’ll find money and belongings disappearing and you will be lied to. And lied to again. If they have serious mental illness, you’ll find your capacity to answer the phone at 3:00 AM slowly eroded with each call.
It is now established biology that addiction changes the brain of the addict. But I’d argue it also changes the brains of the people around them too, we get exhausted, jaded, and lose perspective. And when it’s a family member, the difficulty and stress are compounded to the point where the definition of love itself enters a ontological tailspin. In these situations, even an act of necessary self-care can inadvertently isolate the person in crisis and lead to truly disastrous results. It’s an absolute mind-fuck.
Apologies if that got too dark…
The reality is, this same drama is being replayed across the country over and over every day. I don’t know what the specifics with Berman were, just the info anyone can find floating around online. He had a history of addiction and treatment resistant depression, so basically a ‘dual diagnosis’ person. What makes his death even sadder to me is that virtually every American family is touched by addiction or mental illness in some way.
So the hugely counterintuitive thing is, I’ve experienced so much joy and laughter with Berman’s catalog that it always seemed like the guy had a decent handle on the big picture, the freakish absurdity of it all. From Natural Bridge to American Water to Purple Mountains, his death makes me wish that somebody had made that 3:00 AM phone call and managed to talk him down. His gift was communicating with words so you have to wonder who might have had the words he needed to hear in that terrible moment. We will never know.
Anyway, whether one appreciates the music of Silver Jews or Purple Mountains seems to be hugely unpredictable. Most people I share his catalog with don’t appear to share anywhere near my enthusiasm. Certainly no one would ever classify Berman’s voice as particularly good but his lyrics are gold for me. I very much appreciate the countless stories, characters, and images Berman has drawn in my head. It’s a world of forlorn jukeboxes, homeless guys with suspenders made of extension cords, glass tables crashing at the Sam Wong hotel, sex with a Christian rock ingenue during a lighting storm, and snow falling in slow diagonal fashion. These worlds are still tangible and resonant for me even if the person responsible for creating them is now five years dead.
It’s clear Berman put a lot of heart and care into what he did, that he filled endless wastebaskets with crumpled pages of self-critique. My sense is we’ve been treated to only a tiny fraction of what he created. I want to think there is a trove of unheard gems out there that will be released at some point. Maybe that will happen. But it’s equally likely he put a preemptive kibosh on anything like that. Which is fine, because all that quality control and delicate handling of the muse translated into a big, sloppy lyrical hug for the rest of us.
Alas, it was a hug that sadly didn’t come full circle far enough to save the man from himself. RIP.