Thursday, November 1, 2012

Dante's Life in a Later Artist


            I’m a longtime fan of Brian Wilson, the creative force behind ’60 surf band the Beach Boys. It is virtually undisputed that the man is a genius, having composed, produced and performed some of the greatest pop music ever made. The Album Pet Sounds, for which he wrote and produced all of the material, was recently crowned the best album of all times by The Times and the second greatest album by Rolling Stone. However, while Wilson is famous for his extraordinary music, he is equally known for his years of torment and reclusion caused by severe mental illness. After the disintegration of what was to be his masterwork, Smile, Wilson spent over twenty years debilitated by schizo-affective disorder and drug addiction, battling his demons that had been present since his childhood.  To look at him now, though you would never know it. I recently came across this article in “The Hollywood Interview” (a link is included below) that says Wilson’s life was “something out of Dante’s Inferno”. The article does a solid job of justifying this reference by describing the various temptations, tortures and demons faced by Wilson. However, it does not delve into how his life directly relates to the text.
           Wilson in 1967

  The first and most striking parallel is how both Dante and Wilson found themselves in a crisis in the middle of their lives, after already having attained success and admiration from the world around them. In 1300, Dante had distinguished himself as an excellent poet and delegate for the state. Yet he still found himself disillusioned and unsatisfied, and plunged into despair. Wilson’s experience was the same. By 1967, he had attained financial success and mass critical acclaim. He had three number one hits to his name; His latest one, “Good Vibrations”, had made a major splash in the music industry. Yet he felt lost and confused. He had demons stemming from his childhood, when his father had constantly abused him, and his fame made them more and more difficult to deal with. When Smile collapsed he became reclusive, drug-addicted and paranoid. You could say he went through his own inferno, being tempted by sinners of many kinds, some of whom were the members of the band and his family, who didn’t understand mental illness and continued to harass him to produce more material. They also took advantage of him, manipulating him into signing contracts that were ruinous to his estate. Other sinners encountered were the hangers-on who bummed money of Brian and kept him dependant on narcotics. Deepest in Wilson’s  inferno, however, is his psychiatrist, Eugene Landy. Landy had been hired to rehabilitate Brian, but instead used his power to brainwash him and use him as his personal puppet. In addition to keeping Brian under constant surveillance, extorting millions of dollars from his estate and feeding him a dangerously high dosage of illegal psychiatric drugs, Landy had himself instated as Brian’s sole beneficiary in his will. This is much like Nicholas III, who perverted his power as pope. Instead of using his divine powers to connect the people with God, Nicholas abused his office to seek material advantage for himself and his family.
           
  Like Dante, Brian came out of his inferno stronger and happier than he had been before. After separating with Landy in the early ‘90s, Brian got himself proper care and began making groundbreaking music again. In 2004, he even finished Smile, the project whose intricacy and ambition had lead to his collapse. The album won universal acclaim and a Grammy award; it basically represented his “light at the top of the hill” or Holy Grail. This goes to prove that Dante’s reach does not limit itself to popular culture and literature. There are people in real life going through their own Divine Comedy, trekking through infernos and searching for answers. This makes Dante’s work not only a master commentary on literature and mythology, but also a fine summation of the human experience.

Source: Carlin, Peter. Catch a Wave: The rise, fall and redemption of Brian Wilson. Reed Publishing, 2006.

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