Who The Hell is Janis Joplin???

"On stage I make love to
twenty five thousand people;
and then I go home alone."


Last Saturday I went out with the girls. Meaning Ivy, Bex, and me to a place call "The Shame". Great place, not full but not empty, and great happy-hour 4 bucks whiskey sours... man, I was so happy! At one point, somehow, two guys ended up at our table. I guess it kind of was our fault. You see, one of them was reaaaaally cute. So, we are all talking, meanwhile I'm doing the not-so-difficult-or-at-all math in my head. So 2 guys, 3 girls... someone is going to end up as the third wheel... Fuck! and I thought that, of course, it'll be me. Well, I don't know if I should say I was wrong or not so... I'll skip that.

We all talked a lot, it was great, we had found some very cool compatible people to hang out and we had an awesome time together simply talking about anything and drinking. So, we decided to go have something to eat, and by we I mean the girls, it was around 5am or so, and we were soooo hungry. So the guys said that, of course, they will go too. We ended up in Denny's and ordered food... yada yada yada. We were talking about something when suddenly one of the guys looked at me and said:

"You remind me of Janis Joplin"

And all I could think was: "Who the hell is Janis Joplin?", but of course, I simply said "Who? Should I be insulted?". And there it all started. So here I am, days later looking up Janis Joplin on the internet. I'm going to do a basic copy/paste thing here, my people, and simply get her biography from About.com.

Here goes:



Born: January 19, 1943 - Port Arthur, Texas
Died: October 4, 1970 - Hollywood, California (heroin overdose)



Janis Lyn Joplin grew up in Port Arthur, Texas listening to the blues. In high school, she started singing them, first at coffee houses throughout Texas, and eventually in southern California and, on the opposite coast, around New York's Greenwich Village. She returned to Texas to give college a try, and became heavily involved with drugs and alcohol. She was an excellent student, but continued to be drawn to the musician's life.


Joplin had become friends with Chet Helms in Austin in the early '60s. By 1966, Helms was in San Francisco promoting groups like Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead. Helms convinced Joplin to move to San Francisco and hook up with a band he was managing, Big Brother and the Holding Company. After appearing at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, the group rocketed to national prominence, and Joplin was established as a major musical star.


The band's 1968 Cheap Thrills went to #1, after which Joplin left the band and put together a backup band called Kozmic Blues Band, performing at Woodstock and releasing an album -- I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! -- in 1969. The reception was lukewarm, and Joplin replaced the group with what became known as Full Tilt Boogie Band. Their album, Pearl, was Joplin's most successful. Ironically, it was released after her death from an overdose of alcohol and pure heroin, in 1970.



Joplin was the first bona fide female rock star, breaking the "girl singer" mold that existed in pop and folk music. She was smart and funny. Her lifestyle, her outfits and her vocal style were "over the top." She fused blues and rock in ways that were unique among both male and female singers. Although she recorded only a few albums and was not a prolific songwriter, Joplin's musical and personal style opened the door to a generation of female rock singers.


----- And here ends About.com

"I don't believe in gate-crashing. The people aren't up there when I'm sweating on a stage at a festival, breaking my ass. You can get the money [to buy a concert ticket], man. Sell your old lady, sell your dope. Look at me, man, I'm selling my heart."

So, after reading whatever I could find on Janis Joplin, I must say I do not feel insulted. I remember a time when I actually dressed kinda like that, and, although I don't get in what aspect do we look alike, I feel honored. She was a great singer, not because she had a great voice but because she sang with all of her heart.

“Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. You can fill your life up with ideas and still go home lonely. All you really have that really matters are feelings. That's what music is to me.”




I must say, it was sad that she died so young, and so lonely. Some guy in youtube commented on this video and said something that made got me very close to crying:

Janis had been almost clean for several months before she died, she was supposed to have a threesome with two friends that night and neither of them showed up so she felt abandoned and decided to do heroin "one more time." She in fact didn't overdose so much as the heroin was way more pure than usual and her dealer didn't realize it. Drugs didn't kill her, loneliness did.

Loneliness....

So I do get the artistic side, the weird girl vibe, the weird clothes, the hairdo, the glasses, the tattoo and all her bracelets... I get the way she must have felt every single time I hear her singing. I can feel her in each note and I can see the same gesture reflected on her pictures and interviews. That one gesture I do a lot and hadn't notice, or simply I guess just realized...



I don't know, maybe I'm just looking for something we have in common, because at the end of the day she's one of those GREAT women that have walked this earth. And somehow I feel I carry her inside of me. I don't dress weird anymore, or have the bunch of bracelets that used to drive my 11th grade school english teacher mad, but deep inside, where no one is looking I feel the urge to run every five seconds, the need to be free, to go away, anywhere, and just be, to drink myself to sleep, and smoke my weight in cigarettes, and make love to complete strangers, waking up wherever without it mattering, and god! writing poetry again! To FEEL!!! Inspired, desired, loved, drunk, high, whatever!!! Just... feel. Feel anything... anything but this damn pressure in my chest every time I breath, that closes more and more around my heart, viciously taking my feelings away one by one... all expect for one, the one I wish it would take away forever.... this damn sadness inside like a big gray cloud hanging above me, always going where I'm going, and it's always been there, that's the fucked up part! Always lurking inside, the difference is that now I can control it better.




I remember my step-mother used to call it my down's, cause it could happen anywhere, at anytime. I would just burst out crying, like my life depended on it, like I had just lost the love of my life... when two seconds ago I was laughing and happy. Some people would say I was bi-polar, but in truth it was always there. Waiting for me to feel something deeply so it could get out unexpectedly. Now, I can control it a bit more. I feel it, though, walking inside me like a caged beast. But I can't let it out, even if it's the only feeling I might have left, even if it's the only thing that inspires me ... that damn beast almost killed the last time it came out. Ruling my life, taking over, inspiring me to the point of alcoholism....

I remember people used to tell me I wrote like Julia de Burgos and Alfonsina Storni. Both great latin-american poets but...



Julia she collapsed on a sidewalk in the Spanish Harlem section of Manhattan, on July 1953, and later died of pneumonia at a hospital in Harlem at the age of 39. She had disappeared in June for a friends house, where she was staying, and no one knew who she was when she died. She died alone, an alcoholic, and depressed.



And Alfonsina, well... haunted by solitude and breast cancer, around 1:00 AM on Tuesday the 25th 1938, she left her room and headed towards the sea at La Perla beach in Mar del Plata, Argentina. Later that morning two workers found her body washed up on the beach. Although her biographers hold that she jumped into the water from a breakwater, popular legend is that she slowly walked out to sea until she drowned.



So at the end, I've been compared to three of the greatest artist of all times... All dead, all in a certain way killed themselves... all were alone, and hunted by the same demon that has hunted me my whole life. My only wish? That I can contain it better. That I can let it rot inside, even if it takes my heart with it.... but then, what's better? To let it out, and pour my heart in everything, putting pen to paper and drinking myself numb? Or losing my heart? What a great question!

And I know what Janis would say:

"If I hold back, I'm no good. I'm no good. I'd rather be good sometimes, than holding back all the time."