Marsha’s Reviews > Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story > Status Update

All told, I spend only two hours with my parents, which probably makes me a relatively shameful son. However, I am so unbelievably glad my parents don't mind that they don't know any details about my life. They don't understand me, but they understand me.

In the middle of every summer, there comes a point when the bean fields become populated with large weeds, but it's too late in the growing season to spray them with herbicide or to remove them with a cultivator. The only option is to "walk the beans." What that means is that you get a bunch of teenagers. The entire group walks up and down the field, manually removing any rogue plant that isn't supposed to be there.

How or why Buckley died really doesn't matter at this point; what matters is how his death is perceived by the rest of the world. Buckley's demise is viewed 100% positively (from an artistic standpoint). There is an entire cult of disciples who inject the knowledge of Buckley's demise back into his work, and what they hear on songs like "Drown in My Own Tears" is something that couldn't exist if he were still alive.

This is why you will hear rock academics say things like, "I never appreciated the Allman Brothers sonically, but I understand why that band was so important to working-class Southerners." This is also why you can walk into any working-class bar in rural Alabama and ask someone if Eat a Peach is important, and a dude in coveralls will say, "Important? Fuck no. but I love that shit. That's real music, brother."

I'm lost. My car is specially equipped with a device that is supposed to stop this from happening. But this is still happening. I tried to get on the interstate, but I ended up in the heart of Washington, D.C. Could it be that satellites purposefully give incorrect information to operating systems within the D.C., as such information could be used by lazy terrorists who intend to blow up the White House?

I want to figure out why the greatest career move any musician can make is to stop breathing. I want to find out why plane crashes and drug overdoses and shotgun suicides turn long-haired guitar players into messianic prophets. I want to walk the blood-soaked streets of rock 'n' roll and chat with the survivors who writhe in the gutters. This notion became my quest. I would get my death on.