Erik Darling
NEW RELEASE!
Darling's story is one of finding a reason for living,
through the creative experience, but as well, through
therapeutic processes ofself-examination that kept him
from suicide. “Had I found a religion,a politic, a salvation
ofsorts, a group ofpeople I could have meditated with,
marched with, blown things up with… I might have felt
more secure.” His is a battlefield account of seeking to
find authenticity, an authentic sense of himself to rely on,
through the singing of traditional folk music. The
complexities of such a struggle is of use to any reader
who, in their own life, is seeking to find his or her own
way of being, without putting on a persona.
“Erik and I schlepped halfway around the world together for a couple of years when we were both twenty two, singing, laughing, analyzing everything and everyone in sight.... I can't wait to read this book.”
— Alan Arkin, Actor
“Erik was the first white person who I thought of as a guitar gunslinger. . . Erik never dressed like a folk singer — that is, like a “bean picker,” as Woody Guthrie did, or Pete Seeger. He looked more like a beat poet or an actor. Listen to the song “Train Tine.” This is not folk music, this is a French movie, or a beat poem, set to music. I only recently realized how much this track influenced me to try new guitar approaches and philosophical layers.
— Don McClean, Singer/Songwriter
I know of no better first hand account of the onset of a panic disorder in the psychiatric literature than the account written in this book. What we can all learn is how to use such adversity and grow from it.
— Robert S.Spitzer, M.D., Psychiatrist
