R.I.P. Jason Molina
“On March 16, 2013, he died from complications related to prolonged alcohol abuse”
Jason Molina was the songwriter behind Songs: Ohia, and Magnolia Electric Co., releasing dozens of singles, EPs, and albums over the last decade and a half, including many collaborations with other critically acclaimed musicians. On March 16, 2013, he died from complications related to prolonged alcohol abuse.
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Don't like half of who I been
But I kept my promises to all of them
– Jason Molina, “No Moon On The Water”
There were nights I sat on the front porch in the dark and listened to The Lioness. I drank whiskey and brooded. I thought I got it. I was twenty-four years old. It would be years before I actually understood what Jason Molina had chronicled on that strange and sad album – a gigantic love being lost before his eyes, the impotence and reckoning, the fire of passion and aftermath – and years before I felt for the first time an honest kinship with that voice in the dark. But even back when I was partially going through the motions, I recognized a voice that seemed to proclaim, “Here is darkness, but here also am I.”
Molina's songs could be ironically uplifting, an articulation of hope in the face of its opposite. He ran through familiar themes of love and loss, but set them in a landscape dangerous with woeful signs. His language could be that of plain old country blues, or it could be laden with portentous symbols. He often sang of better days, of change, but for me the best songs were black and lost. Molina shaped the darkness into something I could actually see, then let the image speak for itself.
The moments I found most harrowing and appealing were those that offered no solace, in fact admitted that sometimes things do not work out. Loss can become a life. But I believe in the hope of words, no matter how bleak their form. Silence is the real killer. That voice I recognized but did not fully comprehend on those brooding front-porch nights was my own. A lonely sound from nowhere. The only sound. It sang doom, but lord did it sing.
That voice died a couple days ago. His body quit him because he was an alcoholic. He was an alcoholic and it killed him. I had no clue at all he was sick until he dropped out of sight suddenly a few years ago. I waited and worried: Molina never goes quiet. Then, just as suddenly, a message came from the silence about rehab and hospitals, and seclusion on a farm, and patience. Then more silence. I worried, and small things in me failed.
I worked over my favorite parts of his extensive catalog many times, but they started to pale. I needed him to say something new. More than that, I needed to know he could still say something new, that he was not numb. Coincidentally, during these last few years my life came unhinged and swung precariously. My drinking became a thing to be reckoned with. I lost the taste for things I once loved, like making music. I lost some friends and loves. And now Jason Molina is dead. I am afraid.
His was not simply a voice in despair; it was a voice that lay claim to despair. To me the songs were not cries for help but calls of self, and hearing them deepened my own shape. At twenty-four I romanticized pain, and I do it some now too. But when I learned that Molina was in recovery, I wished for him to get better. Some of us need voices in the dark with us, but we also need those voices in the light calling back. I needed him on the other side, if even for a moment, telling me about a different kind of hope. I held my breath for us both. Now I breathe out.
I need to get sober, but I do not want to. I need to be better, to live better, to find a way to not always feel alone, but I do not know if I can. I want Molina to sing again, but he is silent. Here is darkness, but here also am I. And I have the hope of words.
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