tvz

"There was a point when I thought, 'Man, I could do this,'" he recalls. "But it takes blowing everything off. Family. Money. Security. Everything. Poof."

interview with his son JT: The way that Townes pursued music, and the way that he kind of instilled in me to pursue it, was to almost abandon all and if you didn't leave your spot with just a guitar and your ambition to be a blues player, then you really didn't have it in you to be preaching as such.

blog post responding to tvz film: What are we more-cautious, more-sensible people to make of these talented, self-destructive artists? How to respect the real-life-practicality we all need to survive while maintaining the openness and receptivity -- and the imaginative/emotional engagement -- that an involvement with the arts requires? Is it possible to keep your head while losing it?
Townes Van Zandt didn't even try. Once he walked off the cliff he just kept right on falling.

well that is exactly how it works, falling off a cliff.

I find the blog post mostly intelligent but then as always am taken aback when the author speaks as "the rest of us" over against "the artists" (and "the crazy" too): I think that Townes and his music represent the Thing Itself, that "It" or "the divine" or whatever it is that artists go in search of and that the rest of us hope they'll come back able to pass along to us.
so his expressions from this point of view grate on me - but perhaps could be used to consider this (?) normal approach to life and this view of the artist as rather categorically different from the rest (the most) of 'us.'