Daniel Johnston
Is and Always Was

Captain America and the Beatles. Casper the friendly ghost and the girls. And then God... and then the devil...

All very simple, if the simple existed. But since it doesn't, there's also the other side of the matter, namely the flower pot that always falls on your head.

The head, however, doesn't really need any pot to be a problem. “I'm just a psychopath trying to write a song,” you say somewhere in this album. Ok, all clear...

So, if the “gift” happens to people like Paul and John, all is well. But if it happens to someone like Daniel Johnston, it might be that grace limps a little.

But grace doesn't mind the unsteady proceeding at all. She told me so herself some time ago.

….

If you wear poetic glasses, naivety is a pink apostrophe, then it doesn't matter if in nature pink doesn't exist. It would be nice to ask Picasso where the devil he found his, blue's fine, but pink?

The fact is that the naive are beings incapable of living, and this thing isn't explained by the glasses but by the wall they inevitably end up hitting.

That wall has good reasons that we, reasonably, understand well. But if we meet a naive person, we are on their side. It's a promise made to ourselves and as such, no Christ can change it. It's just the way it is.

...

Daniel Johnston, if he arrives, arrives immediately. The crux of the matter slammed in your face without any filter. If you have something to say, just say it.

And if the voice comes from the abyss, let it wear the seven-league boots. From the dirt to the sky, there's a long way to go.

...

Songs in their natural state that spring as if by enchantment thanks to a benevolent force that instantly bypasses the knots of expression.

Then that crazy light, a bit of madness, sure, but also the light bulb that lights up when Donald Duck gets an idea.

And it doesn't matter if the sounds are so shaky and the voice so insecure, as there's that angelic/off-key vibration all “piercings of tenderness” and flutteriness.

...

Whether they are early homemade works or much more produced later ones doesn't matter. The songs will always be naked, smiling skeletons inside an instinctive X-ray of the soul.

With a special grace, that of error, which here is mistaken a lot, but never by professionals.

…

Ah, Danny...

If music is time, you took time and smashed it into a thousand pieces, and the gears and cogs scattered on the floor were yesterday's songs.

Amidst those fragments, the flickering of some fragile senseless melody, all the more beautiful the more unexpected it is. The eternal is an old prankster who always appears where you least expect it.

...

If music is time, time then put those gears and cogs back in place, mending here and there.

Then yes, maybe the producers diluted a little, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

With “Is and Always Was”, for instance, emerges a mix between a glass of fresh water and a bluish cocktail. Something perfect for the angelic/off-key vibration.

And that minimum level of extravagance ensures the release of the light gas of an almost perfect pop paradigm. So much so, I seem to see our Daniel...

There he is in front of the mirror wearing the nice suit, the one that usually makes us grimace in photos. But he seems comfortable, if not even happy.

The fact is that suit comes straight from Abbey Road's tailor shop and has been waiting all his life to wear it. All that's left is to pair it with some accessory from Syd's bat cave and blow a little stardust...

And then, of course, all the Johnstonian knowledge: the melancholic abyss and joy made of nothing, the bitter medicine and the sugar to swallow it. With some moments of classicism that maybe not even Bacharach.

And so, raindrops keep falling on me...

Yes, raindrops keep falling on me...

Trallallà...