The Sudden Audience

Daniel Johnston, singing the hymn "Careless Soul" a capella, on his album 1990, has devastated me every time I've heard it and I don't expect there to be a time when it doesn't.

I'm not a religious person and don't know if "Careless Soul" is a famous hymn. It was written in 1909 by John H. Stanley and that's about all I know of it or any hymn.

I know a little more about Daniel Johnston, but still not much. I watched The Devil and Daniel Johnston when it came out. I own a couple albums. I think "Walking the Cow" is profound.

The kind of attention Johnston got and gets from some people has always struck me as lurid. You get labeled an outsider artist and a huge chunk of your listeners become people who care less about the music than they do about the mental illness. I can barely listen to "Some Things Last A Long Time" or any of the songs Johnston wrote about the big unrequited love of his life, knowing that sadness seemed to permeate everything. Maybe the documentary is deceptively edited. But I don't think so. I think these are songs from a person who never felt the kind of love he wanted to feel from the person he wanted to feel it from, and that devastates me. I think he said exactly what he meant and it was labeled "childlike," like there's something immature about the way he expressed that sadness, like he needed to be kept in glass so he wouldn't mature and make, I don't know, a Nick Cave record. It wouldn't be the same if he was properly medicated, that kind of horseshit.

If you're reading this, I'm sure your intentions are pure. The upsetting attention is the "wow, I can't believe how fucked up this guy is!" stuff.

At least according to the documentary, Johnston was seriously damaged by a bad acid trip and came out the other end with deep religious convictions. That's the perspective he sings "Careless Soul" from. He's begging the listener to repent before they die.

Careless soul, O heed the warning,
For your life will soon be gone;
O how sad to face the judgment,
Unprepared to meet thy God.

He cries. He can barely make it through the hymn.

And then, as the track ends, there's applause. There's a sudden audience. Johnston's been singing "Careless Soul" face-to-face with a congregation of music fans, rather than alone in the home studio you may have assumed he was performing in.

His religious conviction is then that much more serious, his desperation that much more sad, his purpose that much more defined.

But I'm not sure why. Wouldn't it be the same if he'd sung this into a four-track and expected it to reach his listeners? Actually, wouldn't it be more profound if it was going first to the thousands of people across the world who would buy the record, instead of just the small crowd in Hoboken? Why does somebody bearing witness to Daniel Johnston's hymn become so affecting?

I think it's the love coming at him. The good kind, not the patronizing kind. I doubt anybody was converted on hearing Daniel Johnston sing "Careless Soul," but I believe a room of people understood what he was saying to them. And if Daniel Johnston's life can be too sad for me to consider, given he maybe did not have the one specific kind of love he idealized, I can remember he was beloved.

I want to believe we all get what we want or at least what we deserve. Maybe the sudden audience is the consolation when the rest of it doesn't come. That'd be pretty nice.