A letter to Jimi Hendrix
Dear Jimi,
It’s now the middle of the magnificent month of July, in the year two-thousand and twenty-five, or 54 years, 9 months, and 27 days since you left us, and I am here in Seattle, which I know was your birthplace and your home for a time.
You and I were actually born under almost the same stars, astrologically speaking (for whatever woo-woo bollocks that’s worth), but we are separated by a vast and unnavigable swath of space-time, and what I imagine to be an even more vast and unbridgeable cultural divide. I think, had that not been the case, we just might have been friends. I certainly would have loved to have the chance to know you, or even just to meet you—even if the encounter only lasted exactly long enough for you to tell me to fuck off.
That would’ve been OK.
Because you’re one of those rare and singular beings who I believe leaves traces of some kind of elemental magic in your wake wherever you pass, and makes everyone and everything you contact somehow ‘more’ than before. Perhaps a few molecules of your innate enchantment would have floated free and landed on me, and then helped to light the way in my eternal darkness. That truly would have been enough for any mere mortal, and certainly would have been more than enough for me.
(Wow, that sounded awfully metaphysical and airy-fairy for someone who is at my most central core a dedicated rationalist. Or at least that is what I aspire to be. I don’t want you to get the wrong first impression of me, so I did want to make that much clear. You, though—I mean, forgive me, but I find it nigh impossible to write about you without at least a little bit of mystical nonsense creeping into my prose. You’re just like that. I can’t help it.)
Enough of the rambling introductions though. I do have an actual reason for writing to you now, so I should try to get to the point before I lose track of it entirely. (If there even was one…hmmm.)
You see, I think I’m a bit lost, and for some reason I imagined that you might be able to help. Or maybe I just supposed that getting my thoughts down in words could help, and that addressing them to someone who has such an influential gravitational field within my mind-orrery would help me focus*. Either way, here we are. So I’ll continue.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…no, hang on, wrong movie.
A long time ago, I discovered words, and then I discovered music. Songs became my only true friends and confidants, at least for what is at this point in time approximately the first half of my mortal existence (and if I’m honest, they remain my most constant friends and my most trusted confidants).
Forgive me if this seems harsh, but songs are just better than (most) people in a lot of ways. Songs are always there when you need them. They are steadfastly loyal, they never play mind games, they never have ulterior motives, and though your relationships with them can and do change over time, the ones you truly connect with will never really leave you. Songs don’t ever die either. They just exist in an infinite moment of time—one frozen point that stretches from the instant of their creation out across the event horizon. (I’m sure if I had a better grasp of quantum physics I could explain this concept better, but I’m guessing you will understand even if my words are a bit clumsy.)
Songs can be simple and straightforward, things of pure joy, or pure sadness, or pure love, or pure rage, or anything else one might imagine. Perfect little gift-wrapped packages, containing curated capsule collections of the basic things that make us human, to keep us honest and remind us of the things that truly matter, and best of all, which can be called up on demand whenever we may need them, and will never complain or begrudge.
And of course songs can also be deeply complex, like intricate tapestries of music and words, with a million different threads to follow that can take you to all sorts of vastly different places, when and if you are ready and willing to submit to their multifarious lessons.
Songs are, quite frankly, absolute wonders—wonders that I couldn’t even begin to define even in a general way using only words without doing some pretty ridiculous interpretive architectural choreography that I don’t feel remotely up to at the moment, so I’m just going to proceed on the basis that it’s not something I really need to explain.
Not to you, of all people, anyway. That’s for damn sure.
So, yeah, songs.
I think all I ever wanted to do from the moment I experienced their power to heal, to enlighten, to understand, to lift, to support, to invigorate, to soothe—was to create them myself. To pay forward to someone else out there in the world at least a small measure of the things the songs I have known and loved have given and continue to give me.
Anyway, that’s pretty much the crux of what I’ve been attempting to do for all this time. I want you to understand that about me, even if you don’t understand anything else about me, because it’s definitely the most important thing, and the one thing that feels most integral to my soul, if such things exist at all.
I was born into this world like everyone else is, and I’ll leave it the same way, but between those two signposts, I still really want to do something that means something to at least someone besides myself.
Our lives are so tragically short (yours was of course even more so than most), so I guess the best any of us can really hope for is that the people who live on and live after us will remember something of us when we are gone. By that measure, you’ve certainly achieved immortality. And the most admirable thing of all (to me, anyway) is that you got there by being true to yourself, and by uncompromisingly doing the thing that you loved most in the world.
If only I could find some way to do the same.
If I can trust the honesty and accuracy of your biographers, I do know that you struggled inside your mind, in the places where no one else can follow. I feel like I can understand that aspect of you, at least to some extent, because I have struggled in that way too. I’m sure that our struggles have been very different, but maybe—just maybe—they were similar too, in some ways. There’s no way to know for sure, and there wouldn’t have been any way to know even if I could ask you in person, because the sad fact is that only you can truly know your own mind, and only I can truly know mine, and we can never truly share the most intrinsic parts of ourselves, but what I do know is that I am overflowing with empathy when I think of you, especially knowing how primitive the whole field of mental health was in your time, and how incomplete and ineffective the treatments that were available to you probably were.
Now, fortunately I think, we have a much better (certainly by no means perfect, but better) understanding of mental health conditions and neurodiversity, and much better and safer treatments and medications with fewer side effects, but that still doesn’t make it easy for those of us who struggle. Far from it. It’s still so hard. And it’s still so hard to know which parts of what feel like reality to each of us are actually real, and which ones are false phantoms—distortions wrought by our (immensely creative, granted, but) sometimes impossibly devious brains when we weren’t paying close enough attention; poltergeists of our own making, that seem for some reason to be dead set on sabotaging all of our best efforts to succeed in this weird and wonderful endeavour that we call life.
When I was younger, I didn’t really think I’d still be around now. I figured I’d blast off like a rocket and set the world on fire, and then probably go out in a spectacular blaze of glory (kind of like you did, you know?), but that I’d leave behind a body of work that was known, respected, and valued, by other humans, and that I was immensely proud of having created, and that I felt confident would be remembered long after I (as a person) had been forgotten.
That’s…not quite how it happened. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I am sure that I am not sure where to go from here.
I mean, I’m not suicidal. That’s something.
I have some official diagnoses now, and I understand myself so much better than I did years ago. I’ve got modern medications that help me to survive, and even to have some kind of quality of life in a world that still often feels strange and cruel and alien to me. Remarkably, there have even been times when I was truly happy—something I’d never have thought possible when I was 20.
But I still feel empty and incomplete in some ways. I still feel like something fundamental is missing. And I’m finding it really hard to muster the energy and courage to start yet again and put together a whole new band after half of my old band decided they no longer wanted to walk this path by my side. It just feels kind of futile and Sisyphean, you know?
A lot of the time I feel like very few people would even notice if I just blinked out of existence tomorrow, and that my entire body of work so far is really pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, even though it is the sum total product of an entire life up to this point and I am personally immensely proud of what I have achieved.
And that was not the plan. Not even close.
I know that some of the way I feel is because I was born into a society that indoctrinates its children with a mythology of meritocracy that is really utterly false, and sets every one of them up for certain failure (unless they’re fortunate enough to have privilege on their side and/or a generous measure of luck).
Some people do realise they’ve been duped at some point, and then find a way to re-frame things and carry on (I like to think I’m one of those people—still hanging in there, against all odds). Others figure it out, but then are so utterly broken by the truth (or perhaps by the realisation of the lie) that they are simply unable to continue. I think there are also quite a lot of people who never really figure it out, and leave this world still thinking they simply didn’t work hard enough, weren’t strong-willed enough, or weren’t good enough at their chosen craft to hack it.
That’s tragic. I wish that as a society we could stop poisoning children’s minds this way, but I feel powerless to effect change on that kind of scale (or much of any scale that extends beyond my own arm’s reach, really).
The only thing I’m completely certain I can change is my own mind. The way I feel. The way I see things. And, if I’m honest, even that can be extremely difficult sometimes, but I know with certainty that I can do it, if I only want it enough and work hard enough at it.
I still find it very disappointing and discouraging that the above doesn’t really apply to anything else in life (as we were falsely told when we were children), but I’m trying to make my own peace with it. Not quite there yet, but I’m trying. And like I said, I know I can change my own mind if I work at it hard enough. It’s a process though. It takes time. There will be setbacks along the way. But I’ll get there eventually.
So, here’s the thing: I couldn’t possibly stop being who I am, and who I am is an artist. I create. My purpose in life, and my reason for being, is to create art. But nothing has really gone the way that I planned, and it feels so hollow and so pointless a lot of the time now. Don’t worry, I’m not depressed (like I said, I’ve got medication for that, and it does work), but it’s kind of like I’m still as driven as ever, and I still feel this anxious lightning force cracking all around me, propelling me forward, but I no longer see a clear direction or destination before me, so I’m kind of hanging on to this wild runaway train that’s trying to barrel off into the unknown somewhere, and I have absolutely no idea where it’s going, or indeed why, or to what end.
Not that there’s necessarily anything inherently wrong with that, but it is well outside of my comfort zone.
I’ve always had a plan. I’m a born strategist and problem solver, and that’s how I’ve always approached my life.
Basically my method for tackling almost anything is something like this:
Observe the situation and identify and state the problem.
Take stock of resources.
Brainstorm some ideas about how I could solve the problem using the resources I currently have, or if that’s impossible, what else I would need to do the thing, and how I could acquire whatever resources I require to solve the problem.
Get the fuck on with it.
Lately, I’m stuck at step 3 some days, and other days I’m stuck all the way back on step 1.
It’s pretty frustrating.
I mean, I still get inspired often enough, and I even write some words down, and some days I even pick up a guitar or turn on a synthesizer, but it just feels sort of hollow without any other creative people to share the process with—to collaborate with, and more often than not I have been finding that I let something else distract me or divert my interest.
Goodness knows I’ve got plenty of other stuff I can do, some of it even rather well, but none of it comes with the same feeling of triumphant accomplishment that finishing a new song, or recording my band, or finally nailing a mix that’s been driving me up a wall, can bring me. And I know deep down that I must, for my own sanity, get back to doing the thing that I am most devoted to—my music—or slowly perish.
So I suppose I’m just trying to find a way back to the road I know I should be travelling, but have somehow wandered off of. I’ve just lost my way somehow, and I feel as if I need a guide, or a signpost, or some breadcrumbs, or, hell, I don’t know, a mystical vision would probably do the trick
Any oracles or shamans or Voodoo priestesses you could recommend to maybe point me in the right direction?
Help me find my mojo again?
Cthulhu knows you have got more mojo in your left pinky toenail than anyone who has ever lived, before or since, so you kind of seem like the right guy to ask.
I’m sitting here writing this letter in a little monument pavilion in a cemetery that takes about an hour on a bus to get to from the city, which allegedly is sited above where your bones are buried. It’s a peaceful enough place I guess, surrounded by some fine old trees, and there are a lot of vibrant purple petunias, but I’m really not sure you would’ve liked it much. It’s all a bit too slick and generic and contrived to be truly appropriate for you. You were the realest of the real, the most human human, the most artistic artist, the most creative creator, and the most electrifying performer that I can think of. You deserve so much better than this bland paint-by-numbers construction protruding from a preternaturally manicured green lawn. Please accept my humble apologies on behalf of whoever was responsible. At least they have reproduced some of your handwritten lyrics here, so there’s something of you that comes through, even though the rest feels all wrong.
But, hey, this is what you’re stuck with I guess, so in this place I have left you a heart-felt offering of one of my glow-in-the dark guitar picks, and an entire carrier bag of leftover (slightly wilted, I’m afraid) flowers from my sister’s wedding. It ain’t much, I realise that, but it is what I have, and I hope you understand that my humble gifts to you represent a very deep feeling of homage, and the utmost respect and gratitude and love for you and your art, despite the shoddiness and utter insufficiency of the material itself.
If you happen to feel like it, or if you just get really bored one night and at a loss for something to do, it would mean the world to me if you’d haunt one of my dreams sometime, and maybe slip me a little clue to help me work out where I’ve gone wrong and how to get back on track.
Or you could, of course, just tell me to fuck off.
I’m sure I deserve the latter, and that’s still OK.
All my love,
Cary
[*Clearly it did not…]
