Sill’s biography is strewn with tragedy: family deaths, drug addiction, horrible accidents, poverty, maybe prostitution. She died in 1979, age 34, of a drug overdose. But in her turbulent life she managed to be in communion with beauty, and to create from all life’s sorrows and trouble these artifacts of exultation. Sad stories are built into our family histories, into history itself. Afterall, history is the story of human beings and all the sad things we do to one another. So thank you, Judee Sill, wherever you are, for managing to do the work of creation despite all your suffering.

Here’s to all the artists of the world who are able to create so much to love, somehow, while they’re blazing through all the turbulence in the atmosphere of human history.