“My first impression though was that she was … she was in tremendous pain. But I think she was an individual, and I think that’s brilliant. She was a total one-off. To be so unlimited as to be able to actually go onstage and say … Here! It’s all here; there you go! This is how people feel. This is how I feel. I’m a normal person. Do you feel like this?”
Toni Halliday (Curve) talking about Janis Joplin
Whether you like her music or not, it is hard to argue that Janis held anything back, and that is something pretty special. If you watch any of her live performances you have no way to deny it, no way to turn away from the raw emotion and nakedness that came through her singing to connect with everyone who was willing to listen, to watch, to feel along with her. She put it out there for everyone to see, in all its messiness.
That takes guts, it takes the kind of guts most of us wish we had. It takes strength most of us cannot summon; it takes the willingness to let another see where you are most vulnerable, no protection, no safety net. And that’s fucking scary. That leaves you wide open to the kind of pain that needs to be dulled from time to time if you are to continue living to do it again and again. And she did it in front of not just one person at a time but thousands; all the time. No wonder she was in such tremendous pain.
I can see how someone like Janis would have a difficult time finding another human being who could handle being, really being with her, loving her. That kind of passion and intensity is not for the faint of heart, you have to be made of pretty sturdy stuff yourself to not be sucked up and drowned by the sheer force that lived inside that tiny little body.
I can’t help but wonder where that force, that intensity, that overpowering brightness (that easily becomes imploding darkness) comes from? Was she born with it? What happened to her that caused that kind of pain, that despair that could find no solace? That restlessness that led her down the path of destruction, even against other forces within her that wanted to live, wanted to succeed.
It’s supremely frustrating to me that I cannot answer those questions, that I cannot know why. And why does it rule some while it never even touches others. That’s an even bigger mystery.
Is it that some people are that much better at managing the internal rage and keep it in check? Or is it just not there to contend with? Why do some of us feel so utterly alone and disconnected, so certain we can never change our separateness and can never feel whole, can never feel at home in our own skin? How did we get so broken?
In most cases, it doesn’t seem to have any correlation to the actual events of our life, our childhoods even. So where does it come from? Some internal defect, some missing or deficient chemical as so much of pop psychology and neuroscience tells us? Some irreparable lack of nurturing at some critical moment in our development? Is it fear? Is it inability to love another because we cannot love ourselves? Is it that some of us cannot accept the delusions that make life bearable, that we cannot fool ourselves into believing the little white lies we tell ourselves and each other that then become our escape from the pain, the unbearable pain that only death promises to heal?
I cannot, of course, know how Janis really felt. She offered us a glimpse at it but ultimately only she could feel that pain completely. No one could take it away; no one could make it better. Not even her, although it sure does seem as if she tried her best. “On stage I make love to twenty five thousand people, and then I go home alone,” she said.
But somehow, I think Janis was the kind of person you could go to in your very darkest moments, at those times when you are barely hanging on and she would pull up a chair and sit with you in that place, with no reservation, no discomfort, no attempt to talk you out of it. She would just sit and let you be, let you ride it out, hold your hand and just be there to let you know you were not totally alone.
I wish I knew someone like Janis. I hope someday I can be someone like her.
Someone who can put it all out there and be OK with the danger that brings, without fear, knowing that I can handle the pain, that I don’t have to hide from it any more, that I can live with it as if it is my very best friend and there is no other place I would rather be.
“You got the mind like a child girl. You got the fight like a woman.”
From Blow My Mind
You write so beautifully, express feelings and ideas so eloquently, that it’s hard not to be seduced into believing that what you say is truth, the final word. But I know that reality and truth are tricky business, chameleons that can change like the flipping of a light switch. What is/seems true can be dashed with a change of perspective, point of view, reattribution, reframing, whatever you want to call it.
One thing you’ve mostly convinced me of is that I’m just not good enough/smart enough/empathic enough (You pick.) to help you do that. You think you need a Janis to sit there with you and, indeed, that should be a part of it so you really know you are not alone, that you are understood and accepted as you are. But I don’t believe that’s enough. Carl Rogers made a contribution but it wasn’t the cure all. At some point, you need to recognize that the pain in all of its manifestations, emotional and physical, is a part of you, not You, and not all of you. That other part that revels in life, in what’s important in this life, gets silenced by the pain and that’s wrong because it’s not the whole truth. The whole truth means you can live with it all and know there is this core that can manage both the pleasure and the pain and everything in between.
You are so good at finding supporting voices for your pain and good at trivializing some of the honestly good things humans do. There’s an abundance of both in this world, it’s just harder to find the good stuff at times because the horrific is just that. Try anyway.