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“You haven’t seen the best of me yet.” I could feel it—some spark still deep in me and dying to burn. That little bit of me that I’d always been holding in reserve, for a time like now, perhaps. I still needed to prove—to myself and to the world—that I mattered.
So once in a while, to prove I was alive, I would put on some makeup
It’s easier, and safer, to love anyone—everyone—from afar, where love lives forever, like a song; lives on and on, remembered in its beauty and perfection.
Can two artists be a couple when each possesses, already, what the other embodies? We don’t need each other on a day-to-day basis. We don’t need anyone, most of the time. And that is both the solution and the problem. How can you be with anyone if you don’t need anyone?
When I’m asked to give something more, that’s when I get into trouble. Sometimes I hurt or disappoint people when I’m not what they want me to be or when I say the wrong thing. I’m very shy and I don’t know how to talk to people—that’s why I write songs. So they can speak for me.
I think many performers have a sort of masochistic desire for painful negative feedback. They hope someone—some friend—will cut through all the complimentary bullshit and disparage them a little, so they can feel authentic, and alive, and not like they are dreaming. Bad press is something they can really understand and relate to, because they are used to hearing it from the little voice inside of them that says, “You are pathetic. You are worthless. You are stupid and untalented and you will never amount to anything. You will be forgotten. Oh, and you’re ugly, too.”
I wanted to be loved by audiences and critics. I thought it would make up for the absence of close, meaningful, supportive personal relationships in my life.
Sometimes I think that just to simply be alive, still, at my age is a triumph. If I have nothing else, I have that. I’m still here.
But self-destruction is such a personal, private pursuit; no one can really help someone who’s hell-bent on it. All one can do is to say, “Be careful,” and hope for the best. Only the one who is self-destructing can pull himself out of his downward spiral.
