Layne Staley

“The spiritual nausea and haughtiness of every human being who has suffered deeply – how deeply one can suffer almost determines the order of rank – his shuddering certainty, which permeates and colors him through and through, that by virtue of his suffering he knows more than the cleverest and wisest could possibly know, and that he knows his way and has once been at home in many distant, terrifying worlds of which “you know nothing” – this spiritual and silent haughtiness, this pride of the elect of cognition, of the “initiated,” of the almost sacrificed, finds all kinds of disguise necessary to protect itself against contact with officious and pitying hands, and against everything that is not a peer in suffering. Suffering makes us noble; it separates”(Contra Wagner, 679).

While I probably could think of a better example of one who suffers and takes on disguise, Layne Staley is my go to guy when I think of how great art can come out of depression. He did not don the cheerful facade that Nietzsche goes on to explain after the provided passage but instead fell into addiction. He is one of those folk that I am upset to see gone for that simply selfish reason that I am confident that had he lived he could have produced a whole lot more that I would have enjoyed. You know... Heath Ledger or the Crocodile Hunter... except better. Staley's last performance with the Alice in Chains was for a 1996 episode of MTV's Unplugged. He stopped working with the band when the depression and addiction got to be too much. At the time of his death, which was due an overdose from a speedball, Staley apparently weighed just 86 pounds and was 6' 1''. Addiction and depression can be pretty awful things but there is no denying that out of it comes some fantastic art.