Don't Read My Diary When I'm Gone
On Secrets, Revelations, Banalities & Thieves
'August 24, 1977...One more time, on the plane. As usual, Lindsey is his usual asshole self. I am slowly coming to the conclusion that Lindsey and I are at an end. So sad to see good love go bad....Seattle. Worried about Christine. Wishing some spiritual guidance would come from somewhere. Where are the crystal visions when I need them?'
Stevie Nicks has always been a devout journal keeper. In a 1997 Harpers Bazaar interview she brings out a stack of recently recovered velvet covered journals she wrote during the Tusk tour and tells the interviewer “Tragedy and drugs make incredible writing. Would you like to see them?”. Some of the pages are tearstained and adorned with little doodles and drawings of stars, birds and flowers.
In this NY Times article she explains her methodology backstage to the Haim sisters:
“Do you guys keep a journal?” Nicks asked.
Este replied that she kept notes on her phone. Nicks asked Lori to bring down her most recent red-leather journal, with its pages edged in gold, which she keeps beside her bed and writes in nightly. So began a lesson in journaling:
On the right-hand side of the page you write what happened that day, and on the left-hand side you write poems, so when you have an evening where you’re like, “I’m gonna light all the candles and I’m gonna put the fire on, and I’m gonna go sit at the piano and write,” you can dip into your diaries and instantly find a poem and begin. “You want your journals written by hand in a book, because someday, if you have daughters — I don’t have daughters, but I have fairy goddaughters, thousands of them — all of these books are gonna go to them, and they’re gonna sit around just like we are now, and they’re gonna read them out loud, and they’re going to be able to know what my life was.” Then, pointedly, to Este: “And they’re not gonna find it in your phone.”
I too, was a dedicated diary keeper from the age of 11, finding the loveliest floral fabric or wrapping paper that I could to cover them, like we all used to do back then with all of our schoolbooks, filling these notebooks with my most secret thoughts and the fancy big words I wanted to learn and ticket stubs and photo booth pictures and candy wrappers, keeping them hidden away in what I thought were hard to find places.
One night, aged 18 or 19, asleep in bed beside my boyfriend, in a big house filled with my sleeping family and other people we lived with, some stranger/s broke in via my unlocked second storey balcony door and stole my collection of diaries, my tatty tangled box of old and un-valuable jewellery, my mother’s iron and a few other random bits and pieces, and then left via the front door.
According to the police, the fact that the thieves just honed in on pretty and interesting items rather than the expensive musical, computer and studio equipment that was there, indicated they were junkies who were either too stoned to notice the valuable stuff or were just looking for entertainment. Whatever their reasons were, I have not kept a diary since and continue to feel very creeped out at the knowledge that someone rummaged through my room as I slept and left with my most intimate teenage thoughts - and may even still have them.
I did later find one remaining diary, written when I was twelve years old, that I then hid away again and only recently read through (after which I tossed in the trash). I was slightly shocked to find it recounting stories of ‘dirty old men’, ‘Damien, the muso with the fucked up sax’ trying to pash me at a party full of 16 year old acting students that I remember thinking I was very glamorous for being invited to, and auditioning for a ballet competition where we had to ‘…carry ourselves nicely all day and sit correctly. Shit!’ I also discovered ‘my favourite pop artists’ were Kim Wilde (who I kept a scrapbook of, and, amazingly, who my daughter
has just collaborated with!), Cold Chisel and Cat Stevens.I didn’t write my diaries to be read by anyone else, although I do remember feeling self conscious about who to address my diary entries to; Dear Diary or just a generic Hi, me again… So, dear Thief, if you still have my diaries, please destroy them.
Taylor Swift is also a noted diarist; she included curated excerpts drawn from years and years of her diary entries in the ‘Lover’ album artwork package and performed live readings, that ranged from revealing she was concerned that she wasn’t ‘bad’ enough at thirteen to the surreal moment aged nineteen when Kanye West humiliated her as she won a VMA.
Eric Erlandson, who was in Hole with Courtney, rescued Kurt Cobain’s 23 notebooks that were left lying around unsecured in Cobain’s estate and kept them safe during the time when Courtney was using and surrounded by people on drugs.
When he was alive, Kurt kept his journals in the open and encouraged people to flick through them. One entry states ‘Don’t read my diary when I’m gone…. OK I’m going to work now, when you wake up this morning, please ready my diary. Look through my things and figure me out’.
Kurt Cobain’s Journals were sold for 2 million dollars and published in 2002, excerpts curated by Courtney Love’s then boyfriend, music exec Jim Barber.
As a glimpse inside Kurt’s mind and the beginnings of Nirvana they are undoubtedly fascinating, I do especially love and relate hard to his lists of band related tasks and plans.
In 2018 Kurt and Courtney’s daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, spoke to The Independent about her father’s diaries becoming public.
“I don’t look through his journals. It feels too intimate. I am really regretful that my mom put those out there. I know it was her way of trying to contribute his personal thoughts and I know that people really want to know that.”
I can’t imagine being dead and having people know my intimate thoughts. What an invasion of privacy, I don’t think it is merited especially since in his art he decided not to put out that thinking. It is a different thing to get to know him through his art, a deliberate public extension of himself.
As an artist you sign an unspoken contract putting your art into the custody of everybody else.That’s the deal with being an artist. I really enjoy his art but I find it is a lot harder to connect to his private journals.
It feels like an invasion of privacy to me. And I don’t know if he would have wanted people reading all those personal, deep, dark thoughts.”
In 2007, Motley Crue bassist Nikki Six released his ‘brutally honest, utterly riveting, and shockingly moving’ The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star that blew minds with some of its outrageous and disturbing revelations. Hopefully it served as a determent to anyone considering injecting heroin in their penis, or anywhere else.
Excerpts from the 1968 diary of Jimi Hendrix are far more wholesome but offer a revealing little glimpse into life as an outsider freak/rockstar. He talks about recording a Joni Mitchell concert in Ottawa - she has recalled being very focussed on his presence and partly directing her songs to him.
March 19
Arrived in Ottawa. - Beautiful hotel...Strange people...Beautiful dinner Talked with Joni Mitchell on the phone...I think I'll record her tonight with my excellent tape recorder (knock on wood) Hmm...can't find any wood...everything's plastic. Beautiful view. Marvelous sound on first show. Good on 2nd. Good recording. Went down to the little club to see Joni - fantastic girl with heaven words. We all go to party - O.K. Millions of girls - listen to tapes and smoked back at hotel.
March 20
We left Ottawa City today - I kissed Joni goodbye, slept in the car awhile - stopped at a highway diner - I mean a _Real_ one.. like in the movies. Mitch and I discuss our plans for movie. Slight disagreement here and there but it will be soon straighten out. Nothing happened in Rochester tonight. Went to a very bad bad bad tasting restaurant. Thugs follow us. They probably was scared. Couldn't figure us out. Me with my Indian hat and Mexican moustach, Mitch with his fairy tale jacket and Noel with his leopard band hat and glasses and hair and accent....G'nite all.
The beautifully recorded concert audio was lost for 50 years but eventually recovered and released in 2022. The diary entry gives it a haunting new dimension.
Jimi Hendrix played guitar on 1965 deep cut ‘My Diary’ by Rosa Lee Brooks, a song that is credited to Arthur Lee, but she insists was written by her and Jimi, with whom she shared a fleeting romance, after meeting at a Ike and Tina Turner show (I love this detail). According to dereksdaily45.blogspopt.com, Rosa Lee Brooks has kept on singing, but this seems to be her only release.
Jane Birkin was a prolific diarist, with each entry written to her stuffed soft toy ‘Munkey’. In Munkey Diaries, published 2020, this 1973 domestic entry is a strong contender for reasons why diary keeping is in the public interest, no matter how banal it may seem at the time:
August 14, Tuesday, teatime
L’événement de l’année! (The event of the year!) Serge has a bath!! The first for three months (his last one was May 13th!!) I can’t say he had it willingly or without resistance, but he had it. Serge was the most immaculate person that I’ve ever met. He used to wash himself by little bits at a time, discreetly, in the bidet. He didn’t sweat and I never noticed the slightest odour. When I asked him how he managed it he said, “I’m a pure spirit.”
Our stories are evidence that we existed, in all our weird glory and gore, and diaries are the pure spirit of our stories, written without being finessed into a better or more palatable cocktail for public consumption; sharper, funnier, or less confused or messy or boring or damning.
Time can render the smallest of details magnificent. Details are colour and clues and signs and lessons and reassurances and warnings - its in the minutiae of everyday life where we recognise ourselves, find reflection, perspective and paths to connection.
Though I can no longer bring myself to journal, I have other ways of documenting stories and details I want to preserve, for myself and perhaps for others. Like here, in Loose Connections.
Tell me everything. I want to know. The diaries you’ve read, the journals you keep, why you keep them, what they’ve shown you … what’s in your little black book?
Did you know that Kafka instructed his friend Max Brod to destroy all of his diaries and unpublished works after he died. Brod denied Kafka's wishes and published The Trial, Amerika and The Castle. . Brod also published Kafka's diaries after he died. Kafka burned over 90% of his work when he was alive because he hated it. I've always felt it was so sad that his wishes weren't respected.
This is so timely Lo! I had just made a decision to burn my latest crop of journals (I've written in one every day since I first did The Artist Way morning pages in the early 90s) Sometimes I keep a handful but it feels like every time a big move is coming, I just dump a bunch or fire up the grill and watch them burn. I think part of the reason I don't want them read is my daughter. (Sorry Stevie!) I so enjoyed reading this and it actually strengthens my resolve to let them go (well maybe I'll keep a few random ones of this batch)