Song of the Day: I'm Alive. AND I've now blogged THREE TIMES today.

I'm not really a huge Jackson Browne fan, although I appreciate his musical talent and his hippie values. Plus, I've always said that I want the words "That Girl Could Sing" etched on my tombstone. But, other than that, I tend to think he's a little wussy. The other day, though, I was in my car and I heard this song and I thought "Huh. That's cool" and then when I got home I looked it up on YouTube, which is something that I do at least once a day with various songs that I hear, and I learned a little more about him and his life, in particular the fact that that his first wife killed herself.

I have limited experience with suicide, I had a friend who was bipolar who killed himself about 5 years ago. We were close once, and he had tried and failed a few times before, and we had talked about it and I said "please call me the next time you're at that place" but by the time he did it and succeeded we had grown apart so I probably wasn't the person he was thinking about at the time. But I haven't really had a close friend or family member who has killed themselves, and I just can't imagine what it must be like.

Jackson Browne's wife's name was Phyllis Major. She was a model and they were together for 5 years and had one son when she killed herself; their son was about 3 at the time and she killed herself 4 months after they got married. If you look around the internet, it's unclear if this song was actually written about her, especially since he wrote it almost 20 years after she died, so it's probably more likely that he wrote it about Darryl Hannah, but still, when you think about her suicide and listen to the lyrics, it's pretty striking.

So, anyway, I now have a new appreciation for this song and for Jackson Browne in particular, despite his wussiness.

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