Rest in Peace, Chris Cornell.

Shock. Just pure, heartbreaking shock. That is what I felt this morning when I saw the story gradually trickle in: Chris Cornell was found dead in his hotel room in Detroit, just hours after a somewhat erratic performance. Then the real punch to the gut: it was suicide. Just the absolute worst news possible for any fan of him, any fan of what the 90s “Grunge Era” stood for, just the most twistedly perfect thing for him to do as he now joins the likes of Kurt, Layne, Scott and yes, Andrew (Wood, of Mother Love Bone, his former roommate) who died far too soon. Yes, 52 is too soon. Anytime is too soon when you do it to yourself.

Obviously the rest of this piece will focus on Chris Cornell the musician but I want to take a moment to point out that he was also a man and he leaves behind a family that includes three young children by two different mothers. My thoughts, condolences, sorrows, feelings of horrible solidarity, my empathy, and every good wish I can muster all go out to them. A suicide of a loved one is a literal bomb set off right in the middle of the family unit. It ruins you emotionally for a time, and in many ways you have to tear down and rebuild yourself, and your bond with one another, all over again. I’ve been there, I’ve seen, I’ve felt every agonizing second of it. It’s better now. It will never be the same.  I am thinking of them right now.

That being said, it’s still difficult to process that the somewhat shambolic Soundgarden performance I saw in the summer of 2014 was the last time I would ever see them ever again. I was debating with myself back and forth for weeks as to whether I could muster the time off to see them May 25th or 26th in Dallas or Houston, shows which now are cancelled because they can no longer be played. Soundgarden has hit their final curtain, and it fell May 17th, 2017 in Detroit. These words catch in the back of my throat.

Readers of this blog need only scroll through some of my archives, particularly a long post I made in 2014 to ascertain how much the music Cornell created wove its way into my life, how it is fundamentally a part of my past, and a part on some formative level of who I am not only as a person, but a musician. I’m just an idiot with a drum set who jams with friends but still, what Cornell did was what I always wished I was able to do. Many musicians shared that wish. This death is a big hole in my heart.

Cornell was a titan of music, deservedly etched into the Mt Rushmore of rock history. An ongoing injustice, one now laid bare and made permanent by his sudden departure last night, was how Soundgarden managed to not be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame all this time. Respectfully I need to ask, what in the goddamn hell was the fucking hold up? Nirvana made it in, and of course I have absolutely no argument with that. But with all due respect, how the fuck were Chris Cornell and the rest of Soundgarden not the next band up to be inducted right alongside them the same night? What soulless curmudgeon saw fit to deny a founding member of whatever you consider “the Seattle sound” or “grunge” to be, someone whose talents overflowed in not only the actual singing of songs but the amount of raw talent and creative vision brought to bear in each and every album, his rightful place among the greats? I know, the Rock Hall isn’t supposed to mean anything. But goddamn it, this bothers me, so I’m going to complain about it. Now just like Nirvana, even if the band itself is honored one of these days, the man himself, the captain of the ship from the very beginning, will not be there to accept the award and bring the house down with a performance afterward. It’s a historical injustice, and we as fans have all been robbed today.

I need to talk now about suicide. It is a common thing in our culture, and the 10th leading cause of death in the United States using the most current statistics. Each year, just north of 44,000 people succeed in doing it, and for those 44,000, an estimated 25 times that amount attempt suicide and do not succeed or decide not to go through with it.  Those are amazing and horrifying numbers. My step brother was one of those numbers in 2015. When someone commits suicide, and especially when a famous person does it, the culture sometimes does not know how to feel about it or how to respond. It’s a difficult subject, and one shrouded by taboo so it tends to not be fleshed out as a thing until someone they know or know of goes through with it and there’s an acute reaction that comes from ignorance. I have seen it myself, and felt it too. Two years ago today I would feel differently about what Chris did last night, less understanding of what would compel someone in his shoes to go through with it, more confused by the lack of logical foundation for such an act. Right now, today, I get it. I still do not accept it, I still do not agree with it, but I know pretty damn well what turns light to dark, what can happen to a person when depression, bad brain chemistry, substance abuse or a cocktail of all of these turns the simple act of existing into a torturous, never-ending nightmare that only has one escape. It’s the worst thing imaginable, and it is all too real to so many who have seen it firsthand like I have. Suicide is never really the answer to this though, and if you find yourself in this situation, know that NO you are not alone and YES there is help out there. Or, especially if this sounds like someone you know, HELP THEM. Call them, talk to them, ask them how they’re feeling, ask them the questions you’ll find on suicide prevention sites all over the place, know the signs. Do not take even the seemingly idle musing of suicide lightly. Sometimes people whose friends and family had no idea were struggling make their intentions known in subtle ways: a subtle comment here or there. The only way to know the signs is to read about them. Do it, go read. Here, let me get you started.

So the lights of the world’s musical stage got a bit darker today as a supernova-level talent was snuffed out by his own hand. Right now it’s hard to see the silver lining, but my hope is this can, as Kurt Cobain’s suicide was many years ago, be a wake-up call to those who do not know how bad it can get, even for famous talented people. It reminds us to cherish life, to never take the time we have here for granted, and to do the most we can with what we have. It reminds us to hang onto one another as much as we can, through thick and through thin, because none of us really knows what will come when the next day dawns. I do know that tomorrow, the music Chris Cornell leaves behind will still be a part of me, part of the tapestry of my life, and a source of both comfort and inspiration until my number is called.

Call someone you care about tonight out of the blue and ask how they are. And be good to one another.

--Joe

The Five Stages: A Democrat's Guide to Grief

It will all soon be over.  No, really.  I mean eventually on a long enough time line we all live and die and spend way more time being dead than we ever spent worrying about money, relationships, the environment or politics, but that is not what I am talking about.  The Electoral College process, the end result of which will be (just as it is now) a man named Donald J. Trump as the President-elect.  Then, on January 20th, he will officially take the oath of office and proceed to loot the country blind as his designated cabal of corporate raiders descend en masse onto Washington to flick on the flashing "Open for Business" sign, lest some lobbyist or corporate scumbag kickback agent not get the memo right away.  We have seen this movie before, sadly.  Rest assured, with the system we have in place, we will again.  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

But there is still a flicker of hope this week amongst spurned Democrats, a flicker that will be stamped out under the cheaper-than-it-looks polished shoe of Donald Trump.  That flicker of hope is that somehow, someway, someone will rise up and, with the will of the Electoral College's bravery behind them, will silence all critics and banish the Donald back to the television from whence he came.  Surely there has to be a storybook ending to this roller coaster ride we've been on these last eighteen months, right?  The good rise up to slay the bad guy?  Hate to say it folks, but life is not a storybook.  It's ugly, messy.  And it looks to be both ugly and messy for some time to come.  No, the electors will not save us.  I am here to map out the stages of grief Democrat/Hillary supporting folks will experience this week as events unfold as I think they will.

Stage 1: Denial

This one we're already in and have been since November 8th: not MY president!  Love Trumps Hate!  In protest after protest, all across the country, sloganeers have been sloganeering on countless signs, shirts and poster boards, usually hoisted high by someone screaming their contents at the top of their lungs.  Surely this cannot be happening.  Surely he did not win.  But, look at how many popular votes Hillary got over him!  How could he win when he said all those horrible things?  Look, I'm sympathetic.  Really, I am.  I was a Bernie supporter but I never wanted Trump.  But this is the system we're stuck with, sadly.  I urge you to weigh the consequences: we continue on with the system we have, leaving it intact for 2020 when we have a chance for someone to throw Trump out on his ass, or we upend the whole apple cart and make it impossible for anyone to ever win ever again.  Do you honestly think this country could rationally amend the Constitution right now, to make things fairer?  Do you honestly think we would not immediately descend into chaos if the electors did not vote how they were allocated under the system we've had in place since this country's founding?  Quote Hamilton all you like, he would not even come close to comprehending what happened in this election, so I doubt his words are very instructive right now.  Just stop.  Hillary lost, and there are many legitimate, controllable ways she could have won.  Destroying the system to help her, or anyone else, end up being President next January is suicide, pure and simple.

Stage 2: Anger

We'll see this starting today: protests, protests, protests.  We will see the following in the next few days, mark my words: large, loud, angry protests in existing flash points like Seattle, Oakland, Portland and other Democratic enclaves, despondent editorializing aplenty, social media reports of angry, sometimes violent confrontations between Democrats and Trump supporters, and enough half-informed memes to make you want to crawl into a warm cup of cocoa from now until New Year's Day.  It will be noisy, and it will be ugly.  Ignore it as best you can.  The anger right now, the death threats against electors, it is all an incredibly misguided waste of time.  Do not waste or use up your anger now.  You will need it later on, when it serves a practical and actionable purpose.  But many will not heed my advice.

Stage 3: Bargaining

The manifestation of this stage, to me and as it pertains to this election, is the Russian hacking narrative.  Is it possible that things happened, possibly things that need some sort of Congressional investigation to get to the bottom of?  Well, they spent four years in Congress to find that Hillary herself did absolutely nothing to warrant any criminal action, and with her defeat chairman Trey Gowdy quietly closed up shop on December 7th, so why not investigate this?  That seems only logical.  But it ends there.  We may never be able to prove Putin knew anything, that Russia had some sort of collusion with the Trump campaign, or that any of this mattered on Election Day.  It may be years before we have any answers at all.  But no matter what we find, it does not change the history written on November 8th and 9th: Trump won.  He lost the popular vote, but captured the requisite number of electoral votes to ascend to office.  Nothing we find on the subject of the Russians or anything Wikileaks did will change that.  I do recommend we find out everything we can, to prevent it from happening again.  But it changes nothing in the here and now.

Stage 4: Depression

This is obvious.  Trump becoming President is depressing.  Having a staunch EPA foe and climate change denier running the EPA, and surely gutting it from within, is depressing.  A Secretary of State cruising the globe to make it easier to burn every drop of fossil fuel possible between now and 2020, with untold damage done to the climate as a result, is depressing.  A union hating fast food chairman as Labor Secretary is depressing.  A cabinet full of Goldman alums surely put there to rub the place blind and blow another bubble guaranteed to explode and cost the taxpayers even more billions is depressing.  But we have to rise above this, to obstruct, to take action, and to expose corruption wherever possible, and use the impeachment process if possible.  But this can only happen after he takes office.  We cannot let depression make us complacent though.  Trump must be obstructed wherever possible.  Act like a Republican and Just Say No.

Stage 5: Acceptance

Optimally the many forces against Trump will be united in criticizing him, obstructing him and defeating him politically in any way possible before the end of his first 100 days in office.  This requires the Hillary supporters currently pushing this "faithless electors/Russian hacking" narrative now to accept that these were losing strategies, just as encouraging Hillary supporters to not worry about picking up Bernie supporters and ignoring much of the American heartland to campaign in coastal liberal strongholds were losing strategies.  Optimally, we're all in this together in 2017 and beyond but honestly, going forward the defeat of Trump is so important, and its base of potential voters so broad and wide-reaching we may not even need most of them to come to their senses.  But hopefully, most of them will.  We accept what happened, and we accept our duty to do everything we can to change it and make sure it never happens again.  Will it happen?

Time will tell.

--Joe