Folk singer Vic Chesnutt died on Christmas after going into a coma from a suicidal overdose of muscle relaxers a few days earlier.  It seems his desire to die was caused, at least in part, by him being overwhelmed by debt from doctors’ bills—over $70,000 according to reports. Vic was a quadriplegic from a car accident in his teens—in addition to the money he already owed, he couldn’t afford to pay for other operations that he needed.  It’s another tragic case to add to the fucked-up chronicles of America’s long broken system, as reported by the Guardian UK:

At the risk of turning a personal tragedy into a political issue, it’s hard not to draw lines between the details of Chesnutt’s passing with the shortcomings of the current US healthcare system. While insured, Chesnutt reportedly owed $70,000 in unpaid medical bills and had recently been served with a lawsuit by a Georgia hospital. On the Constellation Records homepage, Jem Cohen, a filmmaker and producer of Chesnutt’s North Star Deserter vented his spleen at the United States’ “broken health care system depriving so many of the help they need to stay around and stay sane, and a society that never balks at providing more money for more wars but fights tooth and nail against decent care for its citizens. Vic’s death, just so you all know, did not come at the end of some cliché downward spiral. He was battling deep depression but also at the peak of his powers, and with the help of friends and family he was in the middle of a desperate search for help. The system failed to provide it.”

Although I hadn’t kept up with his latest albums, I’ve been a fan of Vic’s since the 90s, and was lucky enough to meet him once backstage after a show at Joe’s Pub in the City.  He was very kind and charming, with a calm demeanor offset by intensely bright eyes.  Those eyes lent a haunting glow to the dark oscillations (to paraphrase one of his lyrics) Chesnutt channeled through his poetic lyrics and evocative, nylon string guitar strumming.  The show at Joe’s Pub had been a mix of new and old songs, including a selection from West of Rome, which had just been remastered and re-released.  I’d discovered that album in college, and consider it a masterpiece of artistic vision and spiritual disasters.  Despite it’s title the album was a definitive product of the Southeast United States—“smoked and honey-cured” gothic indie rock—you could hear it in Vic’s twang and picture it through the descriptions of dusty settings described in the songs.  I’d go somewhere else when I listened to the album—somewhere in between my books and notebooks filled with my scraggly attempts to sound like the great writers I read in my literature classes—a place at an undefined clearing up ahead where I was brave and free enough to represent my own style of writing just like Vic represented own style of rock n’ roll.

The following is a blog post from the beginning of the end of the first version of this blog, in which the narrator, long since outed as playing all three characters at once, attempts to invoke the fictional threesome to allay her own impending sense of doom—imagining a scene in which a similarly depressed TRUE describes her feelings of loneliness and loss by invoking the the art of Vic Chesnutt:

04.15.2007
Become Famous 4 Me

I need the characters…the Magick 3. I need to call upon them again. TRUE, Sterling and Fitz. For the best time and also for the last time. I need them to help me get this right. I need to parcel out just the right words using their eyes as measures. As I’m walking down the street I imagine them pulling up alongside me in a car with tinted windows and a secret symbol stenciled across the windshield in iridescent ink. There they’d be—a few years older but still light years ahead. They had the attitudes and the style, miles of style, so much style it was waaaasted…


***


TRUE and I listened to “Little”, by Vic Chesnutt. She was lying across the couch—sick—but nearly recovered from a nasty summer cold. I was supposed to be taking care of her. Meanwhile my stomach ache got worse by the second. I’m always harboring these crazy longings to have a chilled-out time with just the two of us, but when it finally happens I can’t pull it together.

She sang along to the music, sweetly mimicking Vic’s loopy Georgia drawl.

“’A cup a day to curb visibility…’”

She closed her eyes and shuddered.

“Tea time,” I announced, hating the shrill note in my voice.

I pushed off from Fitz’s prized easy chair and headed to the antiseptic kitchen. He was still in Chicago, picking up sad and skinny indie rockers. “Can’t get enough of those assymmetrical bangs,” he liked to say.

“Hey.”

TRUE’s hand suddenly shot out and grabbed my wrist. I jumped and stopped in my tracks.

“Sterling.”

I looked deep into her blue eyes. For once they weren’t glassy.

“What is it?”

“Have I taken it too far?”

I peered down at her hand. Her grip was tight.

“How do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Tell me.”

I didn’t know what she meant, but I liked the conspiratorial tone she was using. It made me feel a part of something.

“I think it’s art for art’s sake.”

“Really?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Oh, come on!”

“What?”

“You only fuck around like you know what I’m on about.”

“That’s right. What are you on about?”

“You haven’t got a clue, do you?’

“I might have half a clue.”

“Oh, yeah?” she shook my hand free. Her eyes grew heavy.

“Maybe you do, what the fuck.”

“You’ve got to rest. I’m going to make the tea.”

“Fine, fine,” she arched her back and collapsed with a sigh against the pillow. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her so tired.

“Just tell me one thing…”

“Yes?” I said.

“Are we still recording?”


***