Killing Inspiration (To Sing About the Grief)

Kilmer, Isbell, Inklings, &tc.

Dear Friends,

Happy “Liberation” Day! The day that President Trump has appointed to liberating our pocketbooks of extra cash. That’ll show all those other nations “ripping us off” by selling us cheap things we like. I don’t have any comment, other than to quote what I wrote in my January predictions:

On the economics side, Trump has made good picks and bad picks and we shall have to wait and see. He can have deregulation and an economic boom, or he can have tariffs and the opposite. We know which one he really loves. Can his advisors keep him from ham-fisting it? Stay tuned.

The answer appears to be, “No, his advisors cannot.”

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I was saddened to hear about the passing of actor Val Kilmer at age 65. He long battled with a form of throat cancer that resulted in a permanent tracheotomy—he breathed and spoke through a hole in his throat. If you were wondering why he didn’t have a “speaking” role in Top Gun Maverick, that would be why.

I was stunned at the New York Times headline: “Film Star Who Played Batman and Jim Morrison Dies at 65.” Of all the roles to highlight from Val Kilmer’s career, Batman Forever and The Doors are the last ones I would choose. Kilmer hated filming Batman. And Jim Morrison? He played the role well, but there was nothing at all enjoyable watching him act like the psychotic, probably demon-possessed lunatic lead singer of The Doors. Honestly, if there is a person who watched that film more than once, I would be surprised and give them the skeptical eye that perhaps they, too, have psychopathic tendencies.

I suspect people deep-down think it is somewhat disrespectful to highlight an actor’s first role as one of their best; it seems to imply that they didn’t go on to have a successful career. But there is no escaping the fact that in Kilmer’s case, “Iceman” was simply iconic and there’s no getting around it. It was a fabulously classy touch for Tom Cruise to insist on this scene in Top Gun Maverick—what a sweet send off.

And has the obituary writer for the New York Times ever heard of a film called Tombstone? Kilmer’s Doc Holliday was nothing less than Shakespearean brilliance; it was his “Hamlet.” I remember originally thinking that his weird accent in that film was Kilmer just being a not-that-great actor who couldn’t keep his diction straight, until I learned that actually he’d hired a PhD linguistic expert to help him develop an authentic 19th century mid-Atlantic accent. The result was astonishingly great. A performance for the ages.

Late in his career, Kilmer developed a one-man stage play that he took on the road; he dressed up and acted as Mark Twain. Here’s a wonderful clip. He’s pretty convincing!

The 2021 documentary, “VAL,” is worth poignant and worth watching. It is amazing that his son narrates the film—he sounds exactly like his dad. I learned that Kilmer’s mother was a devout “Christian Scientist,” a homespun American folk-religion founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1895. It’s pagan with “Christiany” trappings, of course, claiming that the material world is illusory and illness and so forth are no big deal because we’re all just spiritual beings trapped in our bodies. Kilmer dabbled with it his whole life—he clearly loved his mother—and certainly seemed to embrace it more fully near the end.

There’s an unforgettable moment near the end of that documentary. Kilmer is sitting in the passenger seat of a car, and there’s a radio preacher passionately proclaiming the gospel. Kilmer, with a twinkle in his eye, looks at the camera and says in his hoarse whisper, “It’s a very good lesson for me to study, about victory over the grave.”

I hope he earnestly studied something other than Mary Baker Eddy. RIP

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Let’s stay with the arts for a moment. Acclaimed singer-songwriter Jason Isbell released an album this month (Hey, someone else did too!), “Foxes in the Snow.” It is his first solo album since his breakout record “Southeastern.” It’s just Isbell and his acoustic guitar, slinging eleven new songs, and that’s when he’s at his best, in my opinion.

I have incredibly mixed feelings about the record. Isbell just ended a ten-year marriage to musician and violinist Amanda Shires. The relationship was very much in the public eye—lavish layouts with photoshoots in the New York Times, as I recall; he, a hard-scrabble high-school dropout former-raging alcoholic Alabama kid from the trailer park, she, a beautiful flower everyone thought was crazy for marrying him. The two of them produced a documentary film about their lives during COVID, and it seemed pretty clear despite what they said that their marriage was strained. Scenes of him treating her like a complete [$#*!] in the recording studio, with her leaving and staying in a hotel rather than going home. There was a good amount of toxicity, and it seemed weird at the time that they’d be putting this all out there for the world to see.

Well, he filed for divorce, and it was finalized on the 4th of March. On the 5th of March Isbell released “Foxes in the Snow.” Literally the day after he ended his marriage, he releases eleven woe-is-me, sorry, sad-sack/rage songs about his lost love. It seems awfully performative and mercenary. As Bono once sardonically sang, “Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief / all kill their inspiration and sing about the grief.” I know there’s more to it that this, but it looks for all the world like Jason Isbell blew up his marriage so that he could sing about it.

The documentary showed me that Jason Isbell is a self-absorbed, arrogant you-know-what. “Foxes in the Snow” does nothing to dispel that impression.

In other news, his songs blew me away.