Eulogy for a Friend

Daniel Johnston smiled into his own personal hell so many times his friends and family had all lost count by the mid-nineties, long before his personal myth outgrew his aspirations. He never just threw his last dime in the wishing well—he launched himself straight in with a chirpy greeting to the abyss below, immersing himself in whatever caught his fancy. The Beatles. Jack Kirby. King Kong. Captain America. The undertaker’s daughter, his muse. Kathy. Me.

The last two hung around, successfully navigating from crushes to genuine friendships. Even Daniel seemed mystified when he’d explain me to people later. “At first I wanted her to be my girlfriend but now we’re really good friends.”

I chalked up my skill at navigating Daniel’s childlike crushing to my ability to hold my own on a topic dear to Daniel’s heart. Comic books. I originally used a cassette recorder to keep him at a distance, asking him questions for my college radio show. This evolved into a video camera, and I have all that footage, not yet turned into a project. Eventually, I got my first job at Marvel and Daniel was ever-after my proudest friend, delighted at my success. So delighted, I had to get Caller ID and turn off my landline ringer at night. At this stage in his life, he’d forget he’d already called. He’d forget what he’d said and say it all over again. His meds were still being tweaked, his diagnosis evolving. He was genuinely embarrassed when he later saw some of the video footage I took of him during this era.

“It’s okay, Danny,” he told his video self at the screening a few years back in LA. His video self had been worried about Satan and the upcoming year 2000. “2000 came and went and the world didn’t end.”


The sold-out crowd giggled. Daniel had himself an audience, and he kept narrating along with the video. I’m pretty sure he wanted to talk over it so no one could hear his past paranoia. He was lucid that night, really lucid. When he was engaged and something novel was occurring, he’d manage the crowd like an expert. Otherwise, he just went through the motions, like the last times I saw him perform on-stage. He had an adoring global audience. Fans who loved him, flaws and all. He was the rock star he’d always wanted to be. But the playing seemed so arduous. He wasn’t having fun, though the fans raptly drank up every missed chord, every word he’d sing. At the end, he treated performing the way most people treat their jobs, and he’d only come to life after escaping the fans backstage, running outside to smoke while he tried to lure me back to his room to eat pizza and watch old movies, until his brother would come over to intervene. Talking about Jack Kirby stopped working years ago.

Daniel’s meds probably were never quite right. He was always a step ahead of them, evolving just when they’d catch up. But under it all, he was still funny, if you could just come up with your own personal cocktail of humor, art, music, and forthrightness. Treat him as a normal person rather than a patient or a rock star, and sometimes he’d come sharply into focus, and be his old self, cracking jokes and talking about movies and memories.

Over the years, I’d see Daniel at home in West Virginia before his family moved to the Houston area, in Austin, or on the road when he’d be in New York or Los Angeles. The details are all interesting, but there’s a lot more than a Facebook post in that. I’m instead here to say that the life of Daniel Johnston was both profound tragedy and miraculous success. The peppy imp who used to pass out tapes to anyone who'd take them still peeked out occasionally, though for years, he’d moved with medication-induced slowness.

Daniel asked me to come see him so many times over the last few years, but I'd never made the time. I’ve regretted that recently, regretted not getting back to shoot video of him watching his old videos and commenting on them, like Mystery Science Theater, the Daniel Edition.

I meant to go see him in Texas. I wanted to take a video camera and get one last interview, but his condition had been deteriorating and I let my job distract me, and now Daniel is dead. If I’m honest, he was in bad shape the last time I saw him. He’d space out longer than usual. His short-term memory was shot. But he’d been in bad shape for years—I’d expected to get the news I got last week for a long time.

Even so, the news of Daniel’s death caught me completely by surprise. He’d always bounced back, so many times. His ups and downs had been a constant in my life for 33 years. He’d survived countless illnesses, a plane crash, his worst impulses. But not this time. Daniel Johnston is gone, the artist grew old but not old enough. But he left us the most incredible body of work, both music and drawings, some of it throwaway stuff he just scribbled out and some of it brilliant, the work of a complex and flawed genius.

If I had my own way, you’d be here with me today, Danny. With all of us. But your career was a triumph, your unlikely musical and artistic genius recognized by millions. You didn’t know your dreams were absurdly impossible, and so you followed them. We’re all the richer for you not having known any better.

I’m proud of your success, the same way you were proud of mine.