I Live My Broken Dreams

My best friend put “True Love Will Find You in the End” on one of the infinite chain of mix CDs we shared back and forth during highschool. The simple, innocent straightforwardness of the song stood in stark contrast to a lot of the louder, faster, heavier music we were listening to at the time. It wasn’t until I saw the documentary, “The Devil and Daniel Johnston”, though, that I really understood the quiet, fragile genius of Daniel Johnston.

In this performance, his eyes shifting constantly between the audience, the camera and the distance, Daniel sings of seeing his reflection in the shattered mirror of his hopes. Despite the fact that the face looking back at him looks “scattered” he still takes the stage, grabs the sweet angel of his muse and steps under the bright lights of the stage and lives his broken dream. 

20-odd years after this video, that same friend who originally introduced me to his music bought us tickets to see Daniel at the Metro in Chicago. He only got through three or four songs before an excitable audience member threw a water bottle which flustered him to the point that he left the stage and never came back. Nevertheless, it was abundantly clear that he was still following those broken dreams, torn between his desire to connect to the world through his music and his crippling anxiety, bouts of schizophrenia and manic depression.

A few years later, I would see his street art piece, “Jeremiah, ‘The Innocent’”: a fanciful froglike character bearing the words “Hi, How Are You?” at 21st and Guadalupe, as I made my way to the street corner across from the University of Texas where I busked for hurrying students. It was a reminder to me that in the face of my own self doubt, pursuing passion was worth the pain and uncertainty that comes with living one’s own broken dreams.

Daniel passed away today at the age of 58. He will be missed.