Out of Exile: A Eulogy

The 27 Club

“Someone who Must Not Be Contradicted said that a man must be a success by the time he’s thirty, or never.”

“To have reached thirty,” said Reginald, “is to have failed in life.”

Reginald, the easy-going hero of some of Saki’s best short stories, probably uttered those words like I imagine he did all others- with a shrug of detachment and just enough cynicism to come across as worldly without sounding unwise.

Words that could have come out of the mouths of any of my first musical heroes-  Layne Staley,  Andrew Wood, Kurt Cobain. Not to mention pioneering artist Jean-Michel Basquiat who approached life with such lightness of being, deftness of touch, that he deserves a whole musical genre unto himself. 

But those words would not have felt nearly as natural coming from Chris Cornell- not even during or after his hard-drinking, dragon-puffing heyday. Cornell was the boy-done-good and lately, the Grand Old Man, of the grunge music scene. Even when talking about his own history of depression and addiction, he managed to sound clinical, analytical. Like he was more observer than sufferer, merely passing through.  

Chris Cornell nods sagely in Cameron Crowe's Singles (1992)

2016 saw the world hesitantly bid goodbye to many musical legends, not least Messrs David Bowie and The Artist Formerly Known As Prince. Bigger influences though they were on my artistic and cultural sensibilities (I outgrew grunge before I came of voting age), none of those bereavements affected me the way finding out Chris Cornell -husband, father, and still as relevant as he was studly as any 52 year old could be- committed suicide by hanging himself. 

I have no right to speculate about what demons a man of Cornell's shining legacy might have been battling to want out of his mortal coil. As Saki's Reginald put it, "The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened. It's only the middle aged who are really conscious of their limitations- that is why one should be so patient with them." 

I have no doubt however that those demons were terrifying, soul-crushing. In a different life, they may have conspired to inspire another Black Hole Sun or Say Hello 2 Heaven. In this one, we can only wait, patiently, for Chris to bless us from above with another sunshower.