I remember vividly the first time I heard Daniel Johnston’s music, the sort of things that stick to some meandering neural pathway and never let go. I spent many painful and defeated nights with these albums alone in my bedroom, thinking poor you poor you. But it wasn’t a commiseration, not the sort of depressive competition you can often feel among others in pain, that one-upping of woes spiraling in a writhing feedback loop. This art took that pain and demanded it devour itself. Johnston was fighting real demons head-on with the audacity of some valiant exorcist, shining more brightly with each passing moment. These records healed listeners, and I mean like really healed, not just by validation and pity, but by some unexplained force of light. Daniel, you brought the world love and life and hope, and taught those willing to learn that art is not the sum of the sights or the sounds, not the notes or colors or anything sensed or perceived, but the feeling, the meaning, and the message delivered by those things, those pieces of the creator and the receiver, crafting imagined symphonies larger than life itself, all in the mind(s). It’s almost ridiculous how the years of fighting this darkness, the devil itself, end in this way, this stupid moment of death. I never thought I’d mourn the loss of someone I’d never met, but I guess that’s the thing about art; it’s one way to really know someone. We really know you, Daniel. Thank you for everything. Sleep well.

It made sense to record these songs only as single takes in voice memo, some in the living room and some outside.