Speaking as a child in their mid-late 20's, I find it fair enough to say it's a shame that this person was not common knowledge. He first came into my scope in the mide 90's, not because I was into fringe culture, but because mainstream culture had, for a minute, bridged a gap that brought Vic into magazines, on PBS and even MTV (specificially in regards to a compilation benefiting Sweet Relief, in which groups like Garbage, R.E.M. and Smashing Pumpkins covered his songs).
The fact that Vic was suicidal has always been common knowledge, as was the fact that he was partially paralyzed from a car accident when he was 18. What I found most upsetting what that in the past year, he has had so many neat things going on, and I had secretly been allowed to feel all the lightest better knowing this to be true. (Specifically, he recorded a new record with some of the Godspeed You Black Emperor guys and Guy from Fugazi, and just finished a tour with them as his band, too. On top of that, he was just on NPR, talking for an hour about doing so, his former work, suicide and his life. I wouldn't have been delusional to think that this would mean, "he will never try it again", but it made me feel optimistic and good, that he had gotten to another place that was nice.
Rather than write my own long winded explanation for how / why I felt Vic Chesnutt was so important and valid (cause I am getting there, believe me), I'm just going to go ahead and repost his friend Kristen Hersh's eulogy, instead.
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Surrounded by family and friends, Vic Chesnutt died in Athens Georgia this afternoon, Friday 25 December at 14:59.
In the few short years that we knew him personally, Vic transformed our sense of what true character, grace and determination are all about. Our grief is inexpressible and Vic’s absence unfathomable.
We will make more information available according to the wishes of Vic’s family and friends.
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What this man was capable of was superhuman. Vic was brilliant, hilarious and necessary; his songs messages from the ether, uncensored. He developed a guitar style that allowed him to play bass, rhythm and lead in the same song — this with the movement of only two fingers. His fluid timing was inimitable, his poetry untainted by influences. He was my best friend.
I never saw the wheelchair—it was invisible to me—but he did. When our dressing room was up a flight of stairs, he'd casually tell me that he'd meet me in the bar. When we both contracted the same illness, I told him it was the worst pain I'd ever felt. "I don't feel pain," he said. Of course. I'd forgotten. When I asked him to take a walk down the rain spattered sidewalk with me, he said his hands would get wet. Sitting on stage with him, I would request a song and he'd flip me off, which meant, "This finger won't work today." I saw him as unassailable—huge and wonderful, but I think Vic saw Vic as small, broken. And sad.
I don't know if I'll ever be able to listen to his music again, but I know how vital it is that others hear it. When I got the phone call I'd been dreading for the last fifteen years, I lost my balance. My whole being shifted to the left; I couldn't stand up without careening into the wall and I was freezing cold. I don't think I like this planet without Vic; I swore I would never live here without him. But what he left here is the sound of a life that pushed against its constraints, as all lives should. It's the sound of someone on fire. It makes this planet better.
And if I'm honest with myself, I admit that I still feel like he's here, but free of his constraints. Maybe now he really is huge. Unbroken. And happy.
Love,
Kristin
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