“Everything is art”, a young Daniel Johnston is heard saying on a cassette tape recorder with fellow art students at Kent State University in 1980. He often kept a cheap battery operated cassette player running, recording his relentless song-making and chronicling events and stages of his artistic progression. In an intriguing conversation between himself and David Thornberry, a life-long confidant and friend, Daniel and David explore the subject of “just what is art”?

Daniel was encouraged from the very youngest age in his pencil and paper endeavors. Seven years younger than the next oldest of his four siblings, drawing was both a tool to keep Daniel content and an avenue to explore the imaginings of childhood that older family members could not appreciate.

Daniel's aspirations to be a truly great artist somehow evaded family members' notice, who anticipated a “transition into the real world” as an adult by getting a “real job.” But Daniel's creative compulsion was already far beyond the point of no-return. He had been far too successful navigating his school years with incessant creative progression in notebooks or on the margins of school papers. He found increased acceptance and outlet for his energies in High School and was soon a revered resource for his art and music by teachers and peers.

This playground of perpetual creativity as a child met hard realities when Daniel encountered the “starving artist” syndromes in adult life. Nothing was more important to Daniel than his creative pursuits. To compound the dilemma and intensify his tragedies, Daniel was experiencing incrementally extreme manic depressive states.

As the manic incidents gained increasing concern from family members, Daniel disappeared for five months from San Marcus , Texas , believing in a then-unfounded paranoia that his family was about to have him institutionalized. He re-appeared in Austin , Texas in 1984 and settled down as an employee of McDonalds as a means to sustain himself while he pursued his passion.

He was known in the earliest days in Austin to promote himself by handing out hand-made cassette tape copies of his albums in their lo-fidelity glory with hand-drawn labels. But heads were none-the-less quickly turned and he was pulled into the creative circles with much local acclaim and then propelled into some national attention with several MTV appearances, and endorsed by musicians and celebrities far and wide.

For the mainstream music world, Daniel was an enigma. Why was he getting all this attention for such clearly “amateurish” performances and clumsy productions, sometimes only with a cassette recorder - and one that clearly needed new batteries.

Many articles, documentaries, and books have taken on this question with varying success at making converts out of the skeptics. For the most part, to those who could see the worth of Daniel's expression, it was instinctive and immediate. No analysis was required and no lo-quality production could hide what was to them rare musical and artistic genius.

The number of prominent musicians and artists with whom Daniel had already made an impression was significant. But many contend that Daniel's credibility took the greatest leap when Kurt Cobain received his MTV award in 1993 wearing Daniel's t-shirt.

Daniel admittedly cannot make good “life choices”, manage money well, or stick to a diet, and he has not navigated the business side of the music industry well. But that is not his genius. Instead, Daniel's ‘genius' might be described as the rare and often lost connection between the stark realities of life and honest, spontaneous expression. This was at a time when the younger generation seemed increasingly disillusioned with the spit and polish of the mainstream industry. There was a movement afoot to rethink what music was about and retrace our steps in search of something much more humanly fundamental and genuine.

What are we talking about? Maybe an example will help. How do you find words and melody to say “what a fooooool I was!” – Daniel did. It is a rare, naked honesty that makes Daniel a compelling oracle of feelings and thoughts that we struggle to feel completely, let alone communicate. Tortured by beauty and overwhelmed by a sense of loss and hope, Daniel always sang and drew about what he was experiencing.

“Everything is art” Daniel and his friend had much earlier philosophized. Daniel saw and felt a language of expression that condensed years of emotion, grief and love into an awkward line of a song. He puzzled over finding “art” in the terrifying realities of life and death – like coming upon a serious auto accident and seeing a profound portrayal of futility or folly instead of simply reacting with a repulsive turning of the head. In horror, fascination and wonder, Daniel's art tackles the silly and the outrageously serious. Life, love, death, evil, God and hell.

That early cassette tape recording mused about what it was that made a compelling piece of art great. Daniel explained on the cassette how he tried to understand, and concludes hilariously after looking at them under a magnifying glass, “they're just a bunch of lines! Anybody can make lines!”

What he appreciated and understood as art, and HOW one comes upon the skill to DO this with lines and sound cannot be easily put to words. Daniel could not dissect to understand it any better than any of us. It can only be seen and felt.

Today, Daniel lives at home with his aged parents (81 and 82) having been repeatedly rescued in life by them from events stemming from his illness. After years of trial and error, modern medications have produced stability and freedom from depression for Daniel for the last seven years. His creative output in recent years is increasing, and because of the benevolent involvement of dozens of individuals who have stepped in to help him, Daniel's future is promising.

Other more complete BIOGRAPHICAL outlines are available on the web sites www.hihowareyou.com or www.rejectedunknown.com , and in dozens of articles and in the book “ Hi How Are You – the definitive book of Daniel Johnston ”, available for purchase from this web site.

We encourage you to explore the world of Daniel through these tools, and experience what is widely becoming a experience of artistic exploration – hearing and appreciating the work of this humble, troubled, and gifted individual.