Townes Van Zandt

I do not think I will live a long time. I planned it that way.

Townes Van Zandt

Van Zandt County in northeastern Texas is named after Isaac Van Zandt, one of the founders of the Republic of Texas and the great, great, great grandfather of Townes Van Zandt. His great, great grandfather was John Townes, the first dean of the University of Texas Law School. The main building of the law school is named Townes Hall. I spent many days in its library.

Townes Van Zandt, the great and doomed country blues singer, had Texas in his veins. No one was more Texan. Van Zandt County is known as The Free State of Van Zandt. The citizens of Van Zandt County were Unionists and opposed slavery. They did not agree to secede from the Union and attempted to form a government to secede from Texas at the beginning of the Civil War. Military intervention was threatened and the secession movement died. This was a portent of the iconoclasm of Townes Van Zandt.

Townes is now more famous than he was when he was alive. Several posthumous documentaries and biographies try to decipher the puzzle of his life. He was a manic depressive and found peace only in solitude. Much of his life was lived in a remote shack in Tennessee which had no running water, heat or telephone. Despite being something of a recluse, he worked hard singing in dive bars in Texas and later in concert halls around the country. When he had money, it made him uncomfortable and he usually gave it to strangers or gambled it away. He was a terrible card player.

His songs were recorded or covered by Bob Dylan, Emmy Lou Harris. Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, Lyle Lovett, the Cowboy Junkies, Robert Earl Keen, Steve Earle. He was seen as a genius in these circles. Steve Earle said, “ Townes Van Zandt is the greatest songwriter in the world and I will stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say so.” Townes replied, “I have seen Bob Dylan’s security detail and Steve would not get close to that coffee table.”

Townes was the lost boy of country music. He was addicted to alcohol and there are bizarre stories about what he would shoot up in his veins. His idea of moderation was to use heroin only in Houston because you could not avoid it there. People, especially women, wanted to save him. He had an innocent face that reflected no cunning or wariness or caution or ambition. Townes did not want to be saved. He spent his whole life committing suicide.

Once during an interview he was asked why his songs were so sad. His response, “ Not all my songs are sad. Some are hopeless.” He jumped off of a four story building because he was curious as to what that felt like. In front of Steve Earle, he picked up a .357 Magnum, put in a bullet, spun the chamber, put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger twice.

His voice did not have the range or complexity of Willie Nelson or Billy Joe Shaver. There are notes he just could not hit and his voice cracked when he tried. He sometimes seemed to be doing more talking than singing. Still, there is a simplicity in his voice that reminds us how little we need to be satisfied. He was like Thoreau in that, but he undercuts the simplicity with lyrics that reflect his sense of tragedy in life.

As he once said, “The Blues make me happy.”

The tension between the sweetness of life and his fascination with death was what made him a genius. He did not deny death as most of us do. He wanted to get on with the business of dying, but he stayed around long enough to leave us some astonishing songs that he sang in his simple and beautiful voice.

One of his great songs was “No Place To Fall.”

LAGNIAPPE

BOURDAIN AND THE CRITTER

There is only one really serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

Albert Camus

Anthony Bourdain committed suicide a few years ago.

He was 61 and still handsome. He traveled the world discovering and eating exotic foods and filming his travels. He was in Kaysersberg, France when he killed himself in an 18th century mansion converted into a five star hotel. He was dating an Italian actress. He was rich. He drank beer in Vietnam with Barack Obama. He was cool and one of the few oldish men who could pull off tattoos.

It appears there was a critter in him that had the essential qualities of a cat turd. In some, it is a sad little tabby; in others it is as big and loud as a monkey house. I don’t know where it comes from; probably it grows as you try to prove your innocence to yourself.

The critter is furtive, scheming and filled with Shakespearian grudges. It amuses itself with schadenfreude. It reeks of the sewer. If it acts on its impulses, it will be shot down like a mad yellow dog, so it usually turns those impulses inward. No one will shoot you for poisoning yourself. In parts of our American culture, you are honored for doing that.

Bourdain tried to anesthetize the critter - marijuana, whiskey, quaaludes, LSD and above all, heroin. None of that worked. The critter may have grown large or small but did not go away.

Bourdain, with his restlessness, his openness to unusual cultures and places, his amiable cynicism and easy camaraderie with all people, his love of women and strange foods and his documentaries and books showed us, but apparently not himself, the way we should live.

Who knows what killed him? I suspect he never really believed in the seriousness of what he was about and was afraid that despite appearances, the critter was really all there was to him, and the rest was bravado.

The things of the earth, your works and your human soul are only greater than the critter when you have faith that they are.

We will miss Anthony Bourdain. I wish he could have known that.

Maybe he did.