Mark Linkous’s “Heart of Darkness”
by Rohan Press
Very often, in the world of indie music, I consider the work of an admired artist with whom I am as-yet unfamiliar as something deeply mysterious, steeped in its own history and mythology, lit up darkly by the glimmer of its “cult status” or critical acclaim. I dive deeply into those mythologies, read obsessively the requisite Wikipedia pages, and these stories often profoundly imprint themselves upon me—but it’s common that I never actually get around to listening to the music to which it all ultimately refers. I’m left somewhat disquietly with a tragic story without a protagonist, the allure of a form without definite content—whose content becomes nothing other than the imaginative projection of the form. Such was the case with a band like Wilco: I knew the whole story of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’s turmoil, the firing of Jay Bennet, the band’s being dropped by Reprise and re-signed by Reprise imprint Nonesuch, the uncanny 9/11 premonitions, far before I actually heard the album, and when I did listen to it, I was at first disappointed: for how can anything live up to a story you’ve mythologized and dwelt in the shadow of for so long? In such cases, the music has to overcome its own backstory, which takes patience and dedication (through which yes, eventually, the brilliance of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot did open up to me).
There is only one artist that I know of for whom the mystique of the story perfectly aligns with the mystique of the music, whose music glimmers with the same dark halo as does the tragedy by which it is framed. There is only one artist whose music, however many times I listen to it, however much I am familiar with it, still feels like partaking of an occult secret. That artist is Mark Linkous, a native of extreme western, rural Virginia, who recorded four albums under the name Sparklehorse. I had known Mark’s story for years before hearing his music; and really, I’ve seemed to have known it for as long as I can remember, for it’s a story that’s hard to forget. While on tour with Radiohead in 1996, Mark overdosed on a combination of antidepressants, Valium, and alcohol. Paralyzed and alone in his hotel room, his legs were pinned under him for over fourteen hours, and it took him months to recover the ability to properly walk. But the tragedy’s so-called “Heart of Darkness” is really this: when the paramedics tried to straighten out Mark’s legs, the build up of fluids and chemicals there rebounded straight to his heart; Mark suffered a heart attack and was pronounced, as it were, “clinically dead” for three minutes, before he was resuscitated. Mark died; but he was given a second chance, a chance to pay homage to the small moments of surreal beauty that would go on to be such a muse for him. When Mark finally passed, it was by his own hand: he shot himself in the heart in Knoxville, TN in March of 2010.
But Mark’s music endures and, especially after his 1996 paralysis, it would go on to carry the trace of something deeply fragile and precious, subtle yet revelatory. Like no other artist I know, Sparklehorse’s material is lit up by this ever-mysterious halo, haunted by the shadow of death, both behind and in front of him. Listening to albums like It’s a Wonderful Life (2001) is to be lost in dreamy washes of ominous, yet wistful sound, in a sea of static and glimmering melody; in many ways, it’s one of the most “ambient” albums I’ve ever heard. That album’s “Sea of Teeth,” with its spare, hesitant guitar line and its subtle piano embellishments, was the very first Sparklehorse song that really hooked me, especially in the odd poetry of its lyrics: “Can you taste the crush / of a sunset’s dying blush? […] But seas forever boil / Trees will turn to soil / Stars will always hang / In summer’s bleeding fangs…” These kinds of curious, often morbid images stand out, but they have become something other than strictly morbid: they’ve become, somehow, little miracles in their own right. In all his music, Mark’s voice is either whispered or filtered through a vocal processor that leaves it eroded and scratchy, and even the most clarion moments feel like mere reprieves from the volatile, Sparklehorse ocean, filled with warped field recordings, radio static, and lo-fi haze. You get the feeling that Mark’s back in that 1996 London hospital room, looking at himself from above: “I’m so sorry / my spirit’s rarely in my body…,” he croons on “Hundreds of Sparrows.” In general, though, Mark’s writing wide-eyed and innocent, as if he’s astonished that he’s there to witness any of this in the first place. Songs like “Sunshine” witness this feeling of lightness that’s on the verge of already passing you by, like a curled-up piece of paper left too long in the sun: “There will come a time / Gigantic waves will crush the junk that I’ve saved / When the moon explodes or floats away / I’ll lose the souvenirs I’ve saved / La, la, la.” With that last refrain, Mark manages to sound somehow utterly carefree, unmoored, afloat from the tethers of the world which have nonetheless scarred him so painfully.
But for all that Mark is nearly drifting away, he’s also always teetering on the threshold of implosion. Nowhere is this clearer than on Mark’s second and best album, 1998’s Good Morning Spider. That album takes introspection to the point of self-destruction, moving, even in its very first two songs, from the bitter punk-rock of “Pigs” to the reticent, mournful “Painbirds.” A few weeks ago, I came down with some of the worst back pain of my life, to the point where I was keeling over and wincing with every few steps. “Painbirds” was the songs that got me through; it transformed that suffering into transcendence. “Oh yeah,” Mark sings bewitchingly in its chorus, “here come the painbirds…” For that is Mark’s very musical project: finding some sort of surreal peace in and through profound suffering, whether physical or existential (he was well versed in both). One song on the album, “Come On In,” revises an old children’s prayer, “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep,” by eerily cutting out references to God: “I pray my soul to keep / If I die before I wake / I pray my soul to take.” All that’s left is that solitary soul, taking itself into the fold and solace of death. It’s always been shocking to me that music as reticent and difficult as this was released on Capitol Records, with whom Mark was signed throughout his career.
True to the lo-fi tradition of the 90s out of which we emerged, most of Mark’s early music was recorded in his own Static King studio, in an old, repurposed farmhouse in extreme rural North Carolina. These isolated hamlets of Appalachia would always be a powerful touchstone for him, a haunted, yet serenely beautiful landscape, a landscape which echoes the foggy reveries of his music. Born into a family of coal miners, and having lived his whole life in western Virginia and North Carolina, it was inevitable that some country music influences would seep into Mark’s work, too, as is particularly evident on tracks like the brief, but jaw-droppingly gorgeous “Saturday” from Sparklehorse’s debut record, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot (1995). One of my favorite pieces of Sparklehorse memorabilia is a lone “music video” of Mark “performing,” as the description claims, the so-called “song” “North Carolina.” But this is not actually a Sparklehorse song, nor even a song of any kind. Instead, the “music video” is a short, experimental promotional film for the North Carolina board of tourism, featuring Mark wandering around secluded areas of the state, wearing his trademark horse’s head costume—an aesthetic staple for him, originally coming out of a reference to “Apple Bed’s” surreal, poignant lament: “I wish I had a horse’s head / a tiger’s heart / an apple bed.” He’s entirely silent: all we hear is the sound of mountain water; the crickets; the wind through the trees; and a formal narrator whose commentary careens into the absurd. It’s a reminder of what makes Mark’s music so special: its reverence, its quiet, its spiritualism, its attunement both to despair and to profound gratitude, and, most of all, the faintness of its nevertheless remaining faith. In the face of my own impending graduation from college, I have turned to Mark’s music more than anyone else’s, because of its keen awareness and appreciation of finitude, and its stubborn insistence to appreciate each new “Gold Day,” despite its insurmountable heaviness. Here, I’m quoting the name of one of Mark’s best songs, whose lyrics greet us, tearfully: “Good morning, my child / Stay with me a while / You not got any place to be / Won't you sit a spell with me / You've got diamonds for eyes / It's time for you to rise / And evaporate in the sun / Sometimes it can weigh a ton…” The sun is both our savior and our burden—and we squint at it, blearily.
In the “North Carolina” video, horse-headed Mark seems equally nonplussed. It’s clear that he’s deeply lonely, but he’s nonetheless out here in the world, a world of mystery and grace, and he resolves to endure it. Occasionally, he wanders to a stray instrument and plays a few notes, but mostly we just look at him: inscrutable, brooding, but also curiously grateful for his own uncanny being, for his queer solitude, for the sunlight grazing his blushing heart of darkness.
There is only one artist that I know of for whom the mystique of the story perfectly aligns with the mystique of the music, whose music glimmers with the same dark halo as does the tragedy by which it is framed. There is only one artist whose music, however many times I listen to it, however much I am familiar with it, still feels like partaking of an occult secret. That artist is Mark Linkous, a native of extreme western, rural Virginia, who recorded four albums under the name Sparklehorse. I had known Mark’s story for years before hearing his music; and really, I’ve seemed to have known it for as long as I can remember, for it’s a story that’s hard to forget. While on tour with Radiohead in 1996, Mark overdosed on a combination of antidepressants, Valium, and alcohol. Paralyzed and alone in his hotel room, his legs were pinned under him for over fourteen hours, and it took him months to recover the ability to properly walk. But the tragedy’s so-called “Heart of Darkness” is really this: when the paramedics tried to straighten out Mark’s legs, the build up of fluids and chemicals there rebounded straight to his heart; Mark suffered a heart attack and was pronounced, as it were, “clinically dead” for three minutes, before he was resuscitated. Mark died; but he was given a second chance, a chance to pay homage to the small moments of surreal beauty that would go on to be such a muse for him. When Mark finally passed, it was by his own hand: he shot himself in the heart in Knoxville, TN in March of 2010.
But Mark’s music endures and, especially after his 1996 paralysis, it would go on to carry the trace of something deeply fragile and precious, subtle yet revelatory. Like no other artist I know, Sparklehorse’s material is lit up by this ever-mysterious halo, haunted by the shadow of death, both behind and in front of him. Listening to albums like It’s a Wonderful Life (2001) is to be lost in dreamy washes of ominous, yet wistful sound, in a sea of static and glimmering melody; in many ways, it’s one of the most “ambient” albums I’ve ever heard. That album’s “Sea of Teeth,” with its spare, hesitant guitar line and its subtle piano embellishments, was the very first Sparklehorse song that really hooked me, especially in the odd poetry of its lyrics: “Can you taste the crush / of a sunset’s dying blush? […] But seas forever boil / Trees will turn to soil / Stars will always hang / In summer’s bleeding fangs…” These kinds of curious, often morbid images stand out, but they have become something other than strictly morbid: they’ve become, somehow, little miracles in their own right. In all his music, Mark’s voice is either whispered or filtered through a vocal processor that leaves it eroded and scratchy, and even the most clarion moments feel like mere reprieves from the volatile, Sparklehorse ocean, filled with warped field recordings, radio static, and lo-fi haze. You get the feeling that Mark’s back in that 1996 London hospital room, looking at himself from above: “I’m so sorry / my spirit’s rarely in my body…,” he croons on “Hundreds of Sparrows.” In general, though, Mark’s writing wide-eyed and innocent, as if he’s astonished that he’s there to witness any of this in the first place. Songs like “Sunshine” witness this feeling of lightness that’s on the verge of already passing you by, like a curled-up piece of paper left too long in the sun: “There will come a time / Gigantic waves will crush the junk that I’ve saved / When the moon explodes or floats away / I’ll lose the souvenirs I’ve saved / La, la, la.” With that last refrain, Mark manages to sound somehow utterly carefree, unmoored, afloat from the tethers of the world which have nonetheless scarred him so painfully.
But for all that Mark is nearly drifting away, he’s also always teetering on the threshold of implosion. Nowhere is this clearer than on Mark’s second and best album, 1998’s Good Morning Spider. That album takes introspection to the point of self-destruction, moving, even in its very first two songs, from the bitter punk-rock of “Pigs” to the reticent, mournful “Painbirds.” A few weeks ago, I came down with some of the worst back pain of my life, to the point where I was keeling over and wincing with every few steps. “Painbirds” was the songs that got me through; it transformed that suffering into transcendence. “Oh yeah,” Mark sings bewitchingly in its chorus, “here come the painbirds…” For that is Mark’s very musical project: finding some sort of surreal peace in and through profound suffering, whether physical or existential (he was well versed in both). One song on the album, “Come On In,” revises an old children’s prayer, “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep,” by eerily cutting out references to God: “I pray my soul to keep / If I die before I wake / I pray my soul to take.” All that’s left is that solitary soul, taking itself into the fold and solace of death. It’s always been shocking to me that music as reticent and difficult as this was released on Capitol Records, with whom Mark was signed throughout his career.
True to the lo-fi tradition of the 90s out of which we emerged, most of Mark’s early music was recorded in his own Static King studio, in an old, repurposed farmhouse in extreme rural North Carolina. These isolated hamlets of Appalachia would always be a powerful touchstone for him, a haunted, yet serenely beautiful landscape, a landscape which echoes the foggy reveries of his music. Born into a family of coal miners, and having lived his whole life in western Virginia and North Carolina, it was inevitable that some country music influences would seep into Mark’s work, too, as is particularly evident on tracks like the brief, but jaw-droppingly gorgeous “Saturday” from Sparklehorse’s debut record, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot (1995). One of my favorite pieces of Sparklehorse memorabilia is a lone “music video” of Mark “performing,” as the description claims, the so-called “song” “North Carolina.” But this is not actually a Sparklehorse song, nor even a song of any kind. Instead, the “music video” is a short, experimental promotional film for the North Carolina board of tourism, featuring Mark wandering around secluded areas of the state, wearing his trademark horse’s head costume—an aesthetic staple for him, originally coming out of a reference to “Apple Bed’s” surreal, poignant lament: “I wish I had a horse’s head / a tiger’s heart / an apple bed.” He’s entirely silent: all we hear is the sound of mountain water; the crickets; the wind through the trees; and a formal narrator whose commentary careens into the absurd. It’s a reminder of what makes Mark’s music so special: its reverence, its quiet, its spiritualism, its attunement both to despair and to profound gratitude, and, most of all, the faintness of its nevertheless remaining faith. In the face of my own impending graduation from college, I have turned to Mark’s music more than anyone else’s, because of its keen awareness and appreciation of finitude, and its stubborn insistence to appreciate each new “Gold Day,” despite its insurmountable heaviness. Here, I’m quoting the name of one of Mark’s best songs, whose lyrics greet us, tearfully: “Good morning, my child / Stay with me a while / You not got any place to be / Won't you sit a spell with me / You've got diamonds for eyes / It's time for you to rise / And evaporate in the sun / Sometimes it can weigh a ton…” The sun is both our savior and our burden—and we squint at it, blearily.
In the “North Carolina” video, horse-headed Mark seems equally nonplussed. It’s clear that he’s deeply lonely, but he’s nonetheless out here in the world, a world of mystery and grace, and he resolves to endure it. Occasionally, he wanders to a stray instrument and plays a few notes, but mostly we just look at him: inscrutable, brooding, but also curiously grateful for his own uncanny being, for his queer solitude, for the sunlight grazing his blushing heart of darkness.
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