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Chelsea Hotel #3,
An Alternate Elevator
Tending to have Leonard Cohen songs echoing through my mind in the fall, I was thinking of Chelsea Hotel #1 while taking the train back from a conference in Boston and decided to stay overnight in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. Janis Joplin’s heroin use, never having been truly understood for her, caused her to die from an overdose after a period of attempted sobriety. It seems there was a disappointment in the relationship with the man with whom she was engaged to after not knowing him long. She had her sights on a picture of settling down. I stayed overnight in the Chelsea neighborhood while taking the train from a conference in Boston. Hanging in the area made “Chelsea Hotel # 2” a prominent tune in my mind. The song is the impression of Janis’ death on Leonard Cohen. They met in the elevator of the Chelsea Hotel and got involved….
“A Rolling Stone article reported Janis’ take of their meeting as not having really liked Leonard Cohen but she wanted to get to know him. She had the experience that he gave her “nothing”, which also “happened” with Jim Morrison. Thinking of this, along with the lyrics of “Little Girl Blue”, makes me wonder about her experience and her dark moods. What is the “nothing” and does it relate to what occurred in the hopes of the picture she had of the man she was to make a new life with? I think Janis Joplin was a person whose childhood world was entirely emotionally isolated and desired the connection with a parent who does not “give” any feedback on an experientially relevant emotional level. Maybe this was worsened with neglect or childhood experiences of abuse of some sort. Perhaps, her romantic encounters resulted in an emptiness of returning to a childhood void. This would not only occur from the encounters themselves but also from the injurious experiences echoing the darkness of her childhood .
What if, instead of Leonard Cohen, I had gotten to meet Janis Joplin in the Chelsea Hotel? I would have sat there in that elevator a long while and felt around the “you don’t know what it’s like” experience. This would be instead of saying to “sit there and count your fingers”. I think that the wanting of “somethings” would subside in time. Eventually, she could stop counting her fingers and have learned about life and a new connection around the depths of how she feels, of which I would also take in a lot of that experience. Maybe, Kozmic Blues would have a different ending as well as Janis’ life, if someone could have “been there” with an attuned holding-on of the connection of sisters in her darkness. We’d have sat there together for a long time… the elevator would get dark, too. Eventually, she would decide that she had learned about her life and maybe could have a coffee here and there on a Chelsea morning and without extreme cycles of being thrown into a cut-off and darkness. Besides, Chelsea mornings are pretty darn good. At least, Joni Mitchell thought so. Janis had every right to gain the ability of enjoying those mornings, too.
[ Added Note: “Little Girl Blue” was written by Lorenz Hart for the 1935 Broadway Show, Jumbo ]
REFERENCES:
Atwood, G.E. (2012). The Abyss of Madness. Routeledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
Stolorow, R.D. (2011). World, Affectivity, Trauma: Heidegger and Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis. New York, NY: Routeledge.
Runtagh, Jordan, “How Leonard Cohen Met Janis Joplin”. Rolling Stone.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/how-leonard-cohen-met-janis-joplin-inside-legendary-chelsea-hotel-encounter-121067/
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Chelsea Hotel # 2 (Leonard Cohen)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWZo7UmCbBc
Little Girl Blue (Janis Joplin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKnTjYu4c44&list=RDnKnTjYu4c44&start_radio=1
Kozmic Blues (Janis Joplin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuoE95Dme8k&list=RDvuoE95Dme8k&start_radio=1
Chelsea Morning (Joni Mitchell)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWDyA4S-geg&list=RDnWDyA4S-geg&start_radio=1
Published by Donna Wolfskehl DiStefano
I am sharing essays that I hope to be relevant to living life and/or understanding the world. My writing perspective stems from in-depth readings of and working in my psychotherapy practice with Intersubjective Systems Theory. This is a contemporary psychoanalytic theory that utilizes aspects of the phenomenological branch of philosophy as we as other contemporary psychoanalytic theories to understand different types of sources of otherwise difficult to explain problems of depression, anxiety as well as other types of confusion, particularly existential anxiety. I also have had an interest in religion, other types of artistic expression as well as social issues that I will write about here from my perspective that sees many and all things as inter-connected. My primary approach to psychotherapy is called Intersubjectivity which looks experientially and practically at experiences and how they shape the world you live in, as well as how the patient’s world and the therapist’s world interacts in their relationship. This means that we look at getting a deep understanding of feelings and the impact of relationships and other significant, often very painful, experiences. I consider myself as a fellow traveler that has in-depth knowledge about aspects of complex experiences and how to work with and guide someone through this very personal struggle.