Janis Joplin
November 23rd, 2009
This is an American celebration. That it was short lived, like a July 4th fireworks, is meaningless. It was a cosmic explosion. A transcendental experience.
More than any Springsteen concoction, Joplin was born in the US of A. Port Arthur, Texas to be exact, daughter of a Texaco man, child of Thomas Jefferson High and Christ Church.
Out of this red, white and blue soil came a weird outsider, socially unpopular, ugly to most, strange to all. An American misfit. A Keroac. A Dylan. A creature destined to live and die a long and predictable life, the wife of an oil man, about as famous as a tumbleweed.
But out of the pain of rejection, the loneliness of the outcast, came a wild and unruly art that, in the land of the free, raged across the landscape from the oil patch to Pacific Heights to the Village and the Filmore and to every bedroom of every American teen worshipping Joplin’s wail as an anthem of fire and rebellion.
Of freedom, American style.
We are an exceptional land of outcasts turned heroes. Of Amelia’s and Oprah’s and Oaklies and Joplin’s. The ones who start off on the wrong foot, who are the forgotten, the taunted, the nobodies, the geeks and losers who take on math and music and business and turn it all into 100 years of Fords that also rage across the landscape, recessions, depressions, whatever.
The children of America do not stop. The business of America will not stop. In our darkest hour, maybe now, perhaps years from now, a girl from Fargo will sit home on prom night and obsolete the Internet. And re-light the torch of free enterprise. She will follow in glorious footsteps.
Joplin failed at Jefferson High. Joplin was a time release capsule.
Joplin died at 27.
Joplin never died.
Joplin is an American love story.
Mark Stevens
CEO
Image courtesy: 1.
Tags: american, american style, art, celebration, ceo, Janis Joplin, land of the free, loneliness, love story, mark stevens, misfit, msco, outsider, rejection, springsteen, texaco, texas, Unconventional Thinking, unpopular, usa