Busted Halo
Feature: Entertainment & Lifestyle
December 31st, 2009

Faithful Departed — Jim Carroll

(1949 - 2009)

by Mirlande Jeanlouis
It is customary at the end of each year to look back and remember important figures who have died over the previous twelve months. But, instead of offering a laundry list of well-known deceased people's accomplishments, for Busted Halo's Faithful Departed feature we asked our writers to reflect on the spiritual impact that people—or institutions, buildings etc.—that passed away in 2009 had upon them. While most of our subjects had no explicit religious
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
And let perpetual light shine upon them,
May the souls of the faithful departed,
Through the mercy of God, rest in peace, Amen.
connections, their ability to touch souls—testified to in this year's reflections—is beyond doubt. From an esteemed author and a member of America's royal family to a punk rock poet and a TV sidekick, these reflections demonstrate how powerfully alive the sense of the sacred can be in the most unexpected people and places.

jimcarroll-inside

It is impossible to create and not expose yourself. In fiction, music or memoir, there is the beating heart of the writer’s own life experiences between every line. Fear of exposing themselves in the way that is necessary for others to connect keeps some writers from ever being publishing, or taking their talent to the next level. Jim Carroll did not have that fear. He was a creative force who exposed himself in words, music and even basketball.

To the uninitiated, Jim Carroll was a punk rock icon, singer, writer, spoken word artist and poet who inserted Catholic imagery whenever he could. “Catholic Boy”was his first song to be released, in 1980. It is a raucous story of survival, swirling in phrases like “extreme unction” and “Garden of Gethsemane.” It depicts the tremendous polarities of his early life quite beautifully. Carroll spent his teenage years being a star basketball player for a top Catholic high school in New York, and a life-decimating addict at the same time. One extreme had to win out.

Hope in the desolation

In his two memoirs, The Basketball Diaries and Forced Entries, Carroll lays bare the results of the “extreme life.” In the pages of his journals from ages 13 to 23, Carroll depicts himself as a young disaster who chooses drugs over his talent for basketball or even a normal teenage life. Also, there is a Bret Easton Ellis quality to the prose that makes you wonder if there is hope in the desolation.

Listen to “Catholic Boy”

When I read the books there was hope; Carroll was alive and still writing somewhere in New York’s Lower East Side. In the New York Times, his close friend Patti Smith had described meeting him: “I met him in 1970, and already he was pretty much universally recognized as the best poet of his generation. The work was sophisticated and elegant. He had beauty.”

In 2009, he died at the age of 60 writing at his desk. The teenage disaster of a Catholic boy had lived to late middle age and with words surrounding him. He more than exposed himself in his art and survived to continue doing so. His eclectic combination of talents is an inspiration to artists who feel the ideas and interests that make up their lives won’t make sense to other people. Individuality is its own gift.

Rest in peace, Jim.

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The Author : Mirlande Jeanlouis
Mirlande Jeanlouis is a freelance writer and the project coordinator for "Busted Borders" BustedHalo.com's immigration video blog. She is a native New Yorker and a recent graduate of Barnard College.
See more articles by Mirlande Jeanlouis (7).
1 comment about “Faithful Departed — Jim Carroll”
Catherine -- January 7th, 2010 at 12:51 am

I am overjoyed to read this here.He had beauty, indeed. RIP, Catholic Boy.

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