Hours Before the End — My Friend’s Last Video Before He Died.

(It’s a fairly quiet video. I don’t know if it’s better to watch it before my words or after — though I recommend watching it before. In any case, make that split second decision now.)

A Day (week) in the life of The Medical Show Physician. — YouTube

One might even call this video a suicide note. The timeline is unclear. His official death is recognized as the 4th of June and this video was uploaded on the 3rd. Jesse at two distinct moments references Bud Dwyer — who famously shot himself with a revolver at a recorded press conference. Though only briefly showing the needle in his own video (and recognizing doing so might get him removed from youtube) it’s clear Jesse is shooting some mixture of opioids at the time of record and towards the end begins to nod out. But this doesn’t necessarily tie the act to a purposeful suicide. For the years I’d known him; Jesse was fascinated with fleeting media sensations who died at the exact moment of their infamy. He introduced me to Richard Russell, the kid who walked into the cockpit of a plane and took it for a joyride before crashing (suicide perhaps as well; though far from cut and dry).

This information is pertinent, but not why I’m typing these words.

In usual writerly fashion — I feel compelled to start with a thematic tangent.

The word creativity is one which I’ve never completely captured with my critical faculties. What’s clear is that most people are comfortable throwing the word creativity around like candy. Oh, you’re creative! Here’s a CrEatiVe badge to sew onto your jacket like on a Letterman’s jacket in highschool. (Knowing full well while throwing around terms like creativity that there’s no risk to themselves. The lion’s share of the creative act can be easily ignored. If you are granted creativity by another they may as well be acknowledging the act as something which they can expect, by default, to have no real impact on their lives. So, be creative! It costs me nothing to encourage it and can only possibly help me if I ever need it.)

What’s less discussed is the necessary anti-pole. Most people who are creative can be very self destructive. The French call an orgasm La petit mort. The little death, pleasure, ego death, you know the drill — banal, really, for you edumicated in internet-land but since Jesse opens his video talking about this little death the theme sticks out to me. Also, noticeably, the way we’re both apologizing for our banality in ways most no-one would give a shit about or bother to deconstruct (popularity is popular for never risking the need to apologize). We bore ourselves; the ‘true’ creatives one might call us — we do something a bit extra self destructive or self indulgent or just fucking extra for no good reason. Another hit when you’re high. Why I would be a terrible therapist even though I’m quite good at listening — there’s moments I want more and I’ll cross a line forgetting the line was there. A little bit of intimacy, well how bout we push it a bit. Some’s good, more would be better, right? In short order I’d start piling up lawsuits.

My mom sent me this shirt. READ BANNED BOOKS. It says, plain and simple. Running out of clean shirts I wear it sometimes and became fascinated by how often I got compliments. Something one doesn’t expect from a t-shirt and around the third time it happened I started to get distracted. Wanted to go on diatribes to anyone who commented that I wasn’t simply virtue signaling. I think the saying that all press is good press still holds true. A banned book isn’t hurt by being banned; if anything, the banned book is helped since most books are functionally banned by their obscurity. My t-shirt, if I made one, would read THE BOOKS BAN THEMSELVES. Cause that’s what really happens to much if not most of human “creativity.” It’s the extra on top of the essentials. And in a world well and truly bursting with humans (a stat I read recently — “98 percent of Earth’s land surface; where rice, wheat, or maize can be cultivated, is directly influenced by human activity”) most of that extra is the glaze on one more donut. That is: tasty, but far from special.

Seriously — and I have no good objective way to understand this inside myself which is to say I don’t know how this could be proved for me except by popularity numbers which I’ve never really known how to parse, meaningfully — I think Jesse’s last uploaded video is good. I feel weird writing about it. There’s a part of me who knows of him as a creative person — good at sketching and painting, producing electronic music with sampling, and of course his forays into expression of unique experience by using the written word — I can’t shake a feeling that this video should have a million views or stay exactly where it is, as an obscure token; a cautionary tale, more or less.

Though I think it is more. A good cautionary tale. Not some moralistic reportage from people who would never even venture into the forest let alone consider taking the potion to send them down the rabbit hole. For years I’d taken for granted that Jesse would come out ok. Didn’t William S. Burroughs take heroin for like thirty fucking years? Jesse often gave the impression of being a drug expert. Constantly balancing his high with variety.

But I think the core of his addiction came from youthful ingestion of Adderall. Realizing drugs could expand or compress time and intensity. On Adderall (or other speeds) he could get snipey and mean and he knew it. I’ve been using the phrase I think a lot here — but truly this was a theory that came from Jesse himself. He told it to me one day in a bar; sort of apologizing and also not apologizing for the intensity of his demeanor. How he knew that Adderall often did this to him. And this (now I really mean I think) is part or parcel of his fascination with youth and youthful production. The strange intensity of his youthful feelings (aka feelings about youth).

Later in the video he has a line, “almost 29 gettin bout time to wrap this up.” Upon first seeing the video; this was the presented ideation that baffled me most. Firstly, as the already older person. Secondly, I’d always wanted to get older. My favorite books by my favorite authors are written in their 50s. In some ways I feel like I’m just trying to hold onto as much of my health and sanity until I’m there, with all that knowledge — and enough energy. Which isn’t to say that I’m completely unsympathetic to “it’s better to burn out than fade away”. Thinking on it in that sense — it’s nearly logical. I have no way of proving I’ll be better, later. Obviously, I’d prefer to be the best now (or have more than 50 bucks in my bank account).

I’ll expand: I’m sympathetic to the idea that a compressed life is more fascinating. Clearly lots of people who live to be quite old have never really chosen much of anything. For all its bodily compulsions, the most important component of addiction is choice. While discussing general health and well-being, many gloss over the fact that drugs do a thing that you want. “Generally” expand your conscious to its own activities.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my own alcohol addiction and I get the sense that, sometimes, I like making problems for myself just to see how I’ll respond. This is part of how I learn things about myself. Despite its giant failures; substance addiction is a pretty fascinating problem. It’s completely internal. It’s nothing like these addicted workaholics where all of their goals are external. I want this — blank — so I’ll jump the necessary hurdles to get it. But doing this type of thing you never really learn anything about yourself. To put it bluntly, perhaps you might even say I’m being terribly pessimistic and stupid, but; this is why all politics will return to similar problems of misunderstanding. The problems are externalized. There is little to no self reflection on the state of their own position in the “machine”.

So when Jesse, in his video, starts talking about external problems I take him at his word that they are serious enough to become a strain on his internal life; but I don’t suspect they would be an ultimate reason for suicide. That is; money. The most fiendish of all external problems. Though I’m sure financial pressure didn’t help his state of mind.

I don’t know if you, reader, has ever watched The Bridge or done much digging into suicides; but quite a few choices are made concerning debts and money and for the few who survive to tell the tale — almost immediately upon taking the leap the jumpers realize this was a mistake and these financial problems were not so real or devastating. Jesse expresses, later in the video, that he has an unexpected baby on the way, with, simultaneously, a 1000 dollar a week drug habit. (I doubt it was that much continuously but in this ‘going hard’ week in particular the spending, once he realized how much it was, surprised him.)

I don’t think I’m here to guess why Jesse died. That, in itself, would feel reductive. Part of what I’m doing is to give background for the video. Part, to properly eulogize my friend. I’d like to get access to his papers. I’d like to try and edit together the drug experience book he was always trying to revise and perfect. Medicine Cabinet Dreams.

But for the moment maybe I will again just watch the video. A lament, a rap, an autobiography — a confession, a confessional product; a performance for our new century. An archived droplet of desire. An expertise wasted on itself.

Isn’t that what creativity should do? In the face of its abundance — it’s those who can waste it on the moment: fucking let it all go. Isn’t that true creativity? Acknowledging the fleeting character — the unimportance of its validity.

I think Jesse knew this and it’s part of why we record things. To stay connected to those moments but also never really knowing which ones are worth anything. Which is part of the sucky and meaningful essence of seeing art or expression after someone’s conscious exits from the swirl of existence. The value gets a boost by knowing that another “piece” isn’t coming.

Like; would I think this video is good if Jesse hadn’t died? I really have no clue. I don’t think I could know — because in the back of my brain I’d be subtly waiting for his production of the next thing cause that’s what creatives do. It’s fascinating to hear the struggles laid out in his own words — but will I ever get the complete picture? He has podcasts I still haven’t listened to, other uploaded videos which I’m almost afraid to sift through in case, by effect, they make him more banal. (Something he was clearly trying to head off in his own ways.) Not that I’m really scared of this — it would simply become work. Like for that of a biography, but there’s no way I could accomplish this more efficiently than what Jesse recorded himself in those 17 minutes.

I have the instinct that the video is fascinating in its own mode. Anyway, there it is, get what you want out of it.