Only yesterday I read about the suicide of Ian MacDonald (it's already more than a month ago), a music critic who wrote Revolution in the Head, an encyclopedic book with small essays on every song the Beatles ever released.

In the obituaries it was implied that he killed himself as he had been deeply depressed over the state of the world in the past two or three years. And I immediately thought, what? Why should anybody finish his life for such an almost philosophical reason especially if he is already 54 years old? That must be a false excuse brought forward by the family, the truth must be somewhere else, somewhere in his private life, in his relations to others. I read about him on several websites but only one weblogger (and music critic) had the same idea as me. Ian Penman wrote a wordy stream-of-consciousness entry in his Pill Box where he made clear that MacDonald's problem probably wasn't the current state of the world but his own loneliness stemming from his glorification of the past and incapability to link to today's cultural and musical scene which definitely is not per se less valid than that of his beloved 60s. That's old fart thinking in the most narrow-minded way. MacDonald had locked himself up from the world in his cottage on the English countryside. And there is no way you can survive on this planet as a complete hermit without love.

When I reread MacDonald's entry on Across the Universe I was surprised by the harshness of his verdict. This is one of my favourite Beatles songs, the last song I ever wept to, almost ten years ago (it was more of a catalysator, a love story had just ended). MacDonald calls it a wailing, baby-like evocation-singsong (retranslated from German). I can only feel pity for this erudite critic who knew much more about music than me but whose knowledge apparently hampered his appreciation of beauty.

The long essay on Nick Drake he published just before his death is another indication that there was something wrong with this man. He knew Nick Drake personally and interprets him in a school-book fashion I admire and detest at the same time. In hindsight the article is like his own requiem but the analysis is extremely aloof and there is not one word about himself feeling the same alienation to the world as Drake. What struck me the most was the interpretation of the moon as "the magnetic pull of attachment to materiality" in Nick Drake's lyrics. That seems so plain wrong to me. My favourite Drake song Road from Pink Moon didn't get mentioned of course and the lines I will never forget refute his thesis:

I think it is absolutely futile to try to categorize Drake's lyrics as MacDonald did. They are not rational. They are universal.