When I heard that Jay Reatard —a preternaturally talented and prolific songwriter that I regret never seeing live — had died last week, my immediate reaction was that it wasn’t surprising. In one regard that's fair enough: When his touring band quit last October it suggested behavior that was erratic at best, and with song titles like “It Ain’t Gonna Save Me” and “Death is Forming” — not to mention their lyrics — I had always assumed that he was as cripplingly depressed as he was talented. On its face the Elliot Smith Formula is pretty straightforward.
But then, Elliott Smith’s death was never officially ruled a suicide and there are rumors that Jay’s death is currently being investigated as a possible homicide. Experimentation with drugs may be sensation seeking as opposed to addiction and an artist’s tendency to explore dark subject matter doesn’t mean they need to be kept away from sharp objects; they may just be less afraid to think about certain things than most people are. Most people are afraid a lot of the time and it governs not only many of their actions but how they react to what the people around them do as well. Thinking about my initial response to Jay’s death brought me back to when I first fully absorbed that fact, which happens to also be the time in which I listened to Jay Reatard the most.
In the summer of 2008 I had just moved to Chicago and was apartment sitting in a non-neighborhood situated between Lincoln Park and Cabrini Green. At the other side of the street there is a warehouse and on the other side of the warehouse is a strip of clubs — the kinds that attract men who would urinate just outside the window of my garden apartment before they hopefully hailed cabs but more likely got behind the wheel, and the sort of women who'd stagger past the door screaming "Lindsay! LINDSAY!" at 2 am on a Thursday night. I’d made the terrible decision to quit the sleeping pills I’d taken almost every night for years at the same time that I was putting some 800 miles between myself and my entire support network, my vegetative mother who no longer recognizes me, and a city I knew like the back of my hand. My brain chemicals were in revolt just as the reality that I knew almost no one in Chicago started to hit me, and it was also starting to get very hot and loud outside. Since I had way too much free time on my hands I did what I often do to burn my excess mental energy: I went running. I ran all the time, no matter how hot it was, usually up and down Halsted so I wouldn't get lost. I ran until I thought I might pass out and I was soaked with sweat, as far as I could go, at least once a day. Part of me hoped that if I went far or fast enough my skin would slide off and my bones would clatter to the ground and I'd be free from the constant exhausting effort of finding a job/friends/my way around. Or maybe I'd get just get hit by a car; either would have been a welcome way out at that point.
I couldn't outrun my impending mental breakdown forever, obviously. What happened that summer and fall left a black stain on me that won't ever go away completely, the memory of how it felt steps on my heels sometimes and scares me. It’s less about how far down I got but more about how easy it was to fool everyone, and the ways in which that compounded the loneliness of the whole thing — but learning that I can never guess what’s going on in somebody’s head at any given time is another lesson I wouldn’t trade for anything.
These days I'm afraid of getting hit by a car when I run because I like the life I’ve made now. And when I think of Jay Reatard I will always associate him with death just like I already have for years. It's hard for me to listen to Singles 06-07 without remembering what I almost did back then, the morbid but practical plans I made, before my last vestige of sanity prevailed and I realized badly it would fuck up five other people's lives forever (it was five people, I had a list, and five was enough). Jay Reatard probably deserves an honorable mention on that list because the running times were my only respite from constantly turning things over in my mind. All that mattered was staying in perpetual motion and going as fast as the music was, and I didn’t want the running or the song to end.
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