All of my heroes are junkies. They all died looking for something, some high they could never find.

Orson Welles never got close to making a movie as great as Citizen Kane, a movie no one recognized as great when it came out. He ended his life making wine commercials and yelling at copywriters like me. Fat, bloated, unable to get money to finish any of his movies, stuck in Muppet Movies, doing voices for Transformers.

Andy Wood dreamed of being a rock star and when he was close, a week before it would happen for real, he overdosed.

Jack Parsons lost his job, his dream woman and blew himself to pieces trying to create life.

Bill Hicks kicked drugs and influenced people and was never afraid to get in people's faces. He died from cancer that came fast and hard.

James Shelby Downard said this quote that I live my life by: "Never allow anyone the luxury of assuming that because the dead and deadening scenery of the American city-of-dreadful-night is so utterly devoid of mystery, so thoroughly flat-footed, sterile and infantile, so burdened with the illusory gloss of "baseball-hot dogs-apple-pie-and-Chevrolet" that it is somehow outside the psycho-sexual domain. The eternal pagan psychodrama is escalated under these "modern" conditions precisely because sorcery is not what 20th century man can accept as real." His girlfriend was kidnapped or left him or whatever reality was to him and came back as a robot, circuits hanging from her ass, used as a sex doll for the corrupt government that he would spend his life fighting. He was insane, he wrote crazy things and yet, I find so much to love.

Tesla was the smartest man who ever lived and was thought to be a crackpot. Probably because he was. He was more in love with a pigeon than any woman. He hated earrings. He made things that we can't even understand today. The world would be so different if he was followed.

Hank Williams last song was "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive." And he didn't. He was dead in a limo at 29, injected with b12 and morphine, trying to get his life back. I'm not gonna worry wrinkles in my brow/'Cause nothin's ever gonna be alright nohow/No matter how I struggle and strive/I'll never get out of this world alive. Five days later, his illegitimate daughter was born. He left behind the saddest songs ever recorded.

Does creativity come with a price? Does making beauty come with pain? Why don't the drugs always work?

Photo - N
Words - S