what's the blues when you've got the greys

I'm really doing this more, I promise. I actually have a lot to catch up with myself about.


*

Scott Hutchison, the guy behind a band I like, Frightened Rabbit, took his own life a week or two ago. I'm not much on feeling sad about celebrity death, but this one kind of hooked on me. Frightened Rabbit was my go-to music I could listen to when I was in an actually bad place and couldn't stand to listen to anything else. Scott wrote very candidly about his depression and struggle with mental illness, and what he created was powerful. It was so simultaneously bitterly real, and yet somehow kept this upbeat, fierce, hopeful note. There was an optimism and energy to it that was easy to connect to. I feel much better, and better, and worse, and then better. His work spoke a lot to  the unique experience of having a mental illness/depression and also trying to be in any kind of successful relationship with the other people in your life without feeling like you're damaged goods and more trouble than you could ever be worth. The Modern Leper is such a good song about that. You are not ill and I'm not dead, doesn't that make us the perfect pair?

That's not to say there was anything inspirational about it particularly. Poke is one of the most bitter songs about letting go of someone I've ever heard. His songs just always felt so reassuringly genuine. His death feels unfair and it makes his music almost feel untrustworthy. I know no one's life is there just to prop up something for someone else, even people who choose to share and make their experiences/feelings public for their living--maybe especially then. Hell, half the major female poets of the last generation killed themselves. But it just fucking sucks. Maybe just tonight, I'm feeling alone, and like damaged goods, and I wish I could just listen to it.