by Rick Bretz
Artists express their tortured or exalted souls in a variety of ways. They can use music and voice or the written word on paper. Either way, if the message has a medium and receiving audience, the result can move the human spirit. Artists are always looking for an emotional or intellectual response. Sending sounds to an ear or words to the thought process can accomplish this, sometimes at the expense of the artists’ well-being. They are at once happy doing what they do best but seek more afterwards and find themselves wanting.
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Janis Joplin and Sylvia Plath |
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Janis Joplin |
Sylvia Plath |
| Born: January 19, 1943 Port Arthur, Texas | Born: October 27, 1932 Boston, Mass. |
| Died: October 4, 1970 Hollywood, Ca. | Died: February 11, 1963 England |
| Cause: Accidental Heroin overdose | Cause: Suicide by gas oven |
| Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 | First poet to receive Pulitzer Prize after death in 1982 |
| Known for distinctive voice | Known for intense imagery and alliteration |
| Lead singer for the group, “Big Brother and the Holding Company” | Poetry: The Colossus (1960); Ariel (1965); Crossing the Water (1971); Winter Trees (1972); The Collected Poems (1981) |
| Hits include: Piece of my Heart, Mercedes Benz, Me and Bobby McGee | Prose: The Bell Jar (1963) The Journals of Sylvia Plath (1982) The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000, edited by Karen V. Kukil) |
I could try to analyze and compare these talented women but the best window into a soul is through their own words.
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In the words of Janis Joplin |
In the words of Sylvia Plath |
| “Onstage, I make love to 25,000 people – then I go home alone.” | “If they substituted the word “Lust” for “Love” in the popular songs it would come nearer the truth.” |
| “‘I feel, you know, I hurt, please help.’ I’m saying words, man, and if I look at an audience and they ain’t understanding me, it’s just like getting kicked in the teeth.”
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“Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that – I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much – so very much to learn.” |
| On performing in concert, “…I dig it! I dig it so much, man!” | “Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously near to wanting nothing.”
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| “People, whether they know it or not, like their blues singers miserable. They like their blues singers to die afterwards.”
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The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.” |
| “It used to make me very unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn’t know what to do with it. But now I’ve learned how to make feeling work for me.” | How frail the human heart must be — a mirrored pool of thought.
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They were both lonely despite having many people around them. Janice Joplin tried to find the answer through drugs and alcohol and died of an overdose way before she should have left us. Radio stations play her songs today and her CDs sell well. Sylvia Plath used her depression to create works that are studied in school and university literature classes to this day. They both live on through words and music.
pastparallelpaths 