I sensed it when I walked home tonight -- why June Carter's death, in light of what she did for her husband, should not be overlooked whatsoever, even though a nation will mourn terribly when her widower dies. I lost it when I got to the keyboard this evening, but I'm going to struggle to recapture it.
June Carter was a strong woman, an artist in her own right, who saved one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Not by denying or trying to obscure what he'd been, what he'd done, but by placing it in context.
It's hard to write about the love between Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, in the same way it's hard to write about John and Yoko -- or Paul and Linda for that matter -- because there's so much that happened between them that was important that we just don't have the right to know, because it was too personal.
But if anybody expects to love, then it's something we all need to know as soon as possible.
What's known is this: Johnny was a man who felt deeply about his God, who felt his presence, and who felt the chance of that God's salvation in the people who were downtrodden, who'd figured God's love had forsaken them. This was not the same God who judged others for their frailties; this was the God whom everyone would like to believe in. This was a God who understood when Johnny couldn't take anymore of what he'd seen in this life, and had to escape through drugs -- most notably amphetamines, as if it matters.
This was the God that measured humanity's existence through pain and empathy. It's the God we don't hear about much these days, because it's been replaced with the sexier God of judgement, hatred, exclusionary tactics and various forms of dismemberment.
If there is a God, which I doubt, that sure ain't the one Johnny Cash followed. But it's the one we most like to believe in.
When you get to the point where you have to escape this human existence by whatever means necessary -- and this is true from Jimi down to Kurt -- you need an ally. Johnny Cash could have had his ally anywhere he looked. People were willing to love him because of his popularity, because of his celebrity. And there's a great chance he could have escaped down that path and gone too far, in which case we might have lost one of the great talents of the 20th Century.
Enter June, who should not be looked upon as a woman who "stood by her man," nor as the woman who "saved her man from himself." She was a strong, committed artist in her own right -- as devout a person as "God" could want -- who also found the worth in Johnny as a troubled, but deeply empathetic and real person.
A modern Christian conservative would have dismissed Johnny at his lowest with crude dispassion and judgement. June did not. She fell in love with the "big bear," and she might have saved him.
Johnny, right up until his present career, could not deny the darkness in his life, in the lives of others he'd seen. That's why he recorded his most popular recordings in prisons. That's why he recorded a Danzig song. Danzig's as anti-God (in the fundamentalist Christian sense) a musician as you could get. But it's not out of God-hatred that Danzig wrote "Thirteen" -- it's because of the disappointment our version of God has encouraged.
Johnny tapped into that disappointment. June stood by him, as resolutely as she stood by him in her last known public appearance: Johnny's video for his cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt." June is looking down on Johnny from a staircase. She's viewing him with a great sense of impending loss -- she know's it's about to end, and she can't do anything about it except love him unconditionally. Johnny's impending sense of loss is so great that June can do little else than look upon him with an unconditional love: We both know that something is ending soon, that our bodies are failing us where our love never would, and at this moment when you're feeling such immense pain, such stark realization, I can only sympathize and draw you towards whatever meaningful conclusion I can possibly give you. Your life is slipping away but I'll be as much as a support to you as I can be, no matter what it takes.
Nobody counted on June dying first. We all saw the frailty of Johnny, yet never imagined his support system could die away. That's how much we took June for granted. That might be how much we take the person we love most for granted.
So stop doing it, because Johnny and June never did.
It's hard to write about how much of a loss June Carter is -- certainly in many country circles, strictly speaking in regards to her own person as opposed to her association with Johnny, she's a minor figure. Johnny will loom over her forever in that regard -- and when he dies it's likely an entire nation will be mourning.
But she might have saved his life. She stood by her convictions, admittedly Christian, without ever once supposing that someone would be less worthy of Christian grace because of their natural inclinations. She saved a guy we might've lost too early. A guy who drank and cussed because that was the only way he could get his shit across -- who told it like it was. You don't have to deny reality to be a religious person. You can have faith and still know when shit's fucked up.
June fell in love with Johnny because of who he was. Johnny recognized something deep in June that he couldn't deny -- something that would let him be himself, because the reflection he saw in June's being still showed him as a good, well-meaning, deeply loved and loving person. That is all anyone who has ever loved anyone should expect their legacy to last.
So when half of a great love story dies, we should all be made aware of it and respect the love that existed between them. And as sad as I'll be when Johnny Cash, a man of great empathy, passes on, that's as sad as I am now, now that the person he depended upon won't be available to him on this earth anymore.
Everyone's love should be so great. For those who have it, I envy and respect you. For those who don't have it, I hope you will soon -- or at least that soon you will recognize it.
This was a great love story that shouldn't go unnoticed, and June is a person whose passing should not be ignored. Especially when she worked in an idiom that at one time thrived on cheatin' and drinkin' songs; and could do both with the full confidence that there was a way out of both.
We'll miss you, June -- not as much as your husband will miss you, but, like I said, great love stories shouldn't go unnoticed. We get so few of them these days.
Love, Us.
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I always confused Robert Stack with Robert Conrad.
He was probably more like Leslie Nielsen -- they were both TV actors who tended to land parts that were deeply serious people. Stack then followed Nielsen's path into comedy via several roles where he parodied his badass self, primarily in television commercials.
Your Hall Monitor of Death says... nothing, really.
