KURT COBAIN, ERNEST HEMINGWAY AND A FEW SUICIDE NOTES
“Hey you, out there in the cold Getting lonely, getting old
Can you feel me?
Hey you, standing in the aisles
With itchy feet and fading smiles
Can you feel me?
Hey you, dont help them to bury the light
Dont give in without a fight…”
--“Hey You” by Pink Floyd
“Do you have suicidal tendencies?”
I was asked that question quite a few times, some jokingly, some seriously, while I was still actively writing for local comics. Some people noticed that I loved writing stories about suicide or about desperate people committing suicide. “No,” I would always answer, “I don’t have any.” It’s just that suicide as a topic always has a strange attraction to me. I love lonely, lone wolf characters. Unfortunately, suicide as an act also has strange attraction to a lot of people. World Health Organization(WHO) says that one person commits sucide every forty seconds. Count to forty, please. You’re finished? There, another person just died by suicide. Bless his soul. WHO also says that suicide rates all over the world have dramatically increased in the last few years.
In Japan, where suicide is considered an honorable act, 30, 000 Japanese kill themselves every year. In South Korea, every time a celebrity kills himself/herself, the suicide rates rise. It seems that suicide, like yawning, is contagious there. There was once a website there called Gathering Of Suicides which invites people to commit suicide with other people. “Please contact us if you want to die with us,” the site would tell its visitors. China has one of the highest suicide rates in the world- 685 a day. Suicide is now the primary cause of death among Chinese aged 20-35.
Men tend to kill themselves more than women. Western women have more suicidal tendencies than Asian women. Women in Western countries usually kill themselves by slashing their wrists or by swallowing pills while in Asia, women there end their lives by hanging, drinking poisons or by setting themselves on fire. These statistics show that when they decide to kill themselves, Asian women are more determined than their counterparts in Western countries. Doctors say that it is always easy to save people who try to kill themselves by slashing their wrists or overdosing with pills than those who hang or set themselves on fire.
Almost three years ago, a man ended his life by hanging himself in our neighbor's tall steel fence. I remember looking out my room's window and seeing his dead body being brought down. He lived in the neighborhood, was sickly and had family problems. No, the place didn't become haunted.
Famous people whom I admire who committed sucide include Ernest Hemingway (a legendary writer, Nobel Peace Prize and Pulitzer Prize winner for The Old Man And The Sea) who shot himself with a shotgun while suffering from severe paranoia; he kept saying that he got depressed after losing the ability to write and Kurt Cobain, a famous rocker, Nirvana's main man who also shot himself with a shotgun. "I haven't felt the excitement of listening to music and creating it for too many years now," Kurt, a very good lyricist, wrote in his suicide note.
--“Hey You” by Pink Floyd
“Do you have suicidal tendencies?”
I was asked that question quite a few times, some jokingly, some seriously, while I was still actively writing for local comics. Some people noticed that I loved writing stories about suicide or about desperate people committing suicide. “No,” I would always answer, “I don’t have any.” It’s just that suicide as a topic always has a strange attraction to me. I love lonely, lone wolf characters. Unfortunately, suicide as an act also has strange attraction to a lot of people. World Health Organization(WHO) says that one person commits sucide every forty seconds. Count to forty, please. You’re finished? There, another person just died by suicide. Bless his soul. WHO also says that suicide rates all over the world have dramatically increased in the last few years.
In Japan, where suicide is considered an honorable act, 30, 000 Japanese kill themselves every year. In South Korea, every time a celebrity kills himself/herself, the suicide rates rise. It seems that suicide, like yawning, is contagious there. There was once a website there called Gathering Of Suicides which invites people to commit suicide with other people. “Please contact us if you want to die with us,” the site would tell its visitors. China has one of the highest suicide rates in the world- 685 a day. Suicide is now the primary cause of death among Chinese aged 20-35.
Men tend to kill themselves more than women. Western women have more suicidal tendencies than Asian women. Women in Western countries usually kill themselves by slashing their wrists or by swallowing pills while in Asia, women there end their lives by hanging, drinking poisons or by setting themselves on fire. These statistics show that when they decide to kill themselves, Asian women are more determined than their counterparts in Western countries. Doctors say that it is always easy to save people who try to kill themselves by slashing their wrists or overdosing with pills than those who hang or set themselves on fire.
Almost three years ago, a man ended his life by hanging himself in our neighbor's tall steel fence. I remember looking out my room's window and seeing his dead body being brought down. He lived in the neighborhood, was sickly and had family problems. No, the place didn't become haunted.
Famous people whom I admire who committed sucide include Ernest Hemingway (a legendary writer, Nobel Peace Prize and Pulitzer Prize winner for The Old Man And The Sea) who shot himself with a shotgun while suffering from severe paranoia; he kept saying that he got depressed after losing the ability to write and Kurt Cobain, a famous rocker, Nirvana's main man who also shot himself with a shotgun. "I haven't felt the excitement of listening to music and creating it for too many years now," Kurt, a very good lyricist, wrote in his suicide note.
Fortunately, not a lot of people commit suicide here in the Philippines. But then, Filipinos are the only people I know who laugh and make jokes about their miseries. It would take a lot before you could convince a Filipino to slash his own neck.
Shattered is one of the works I am really, really proud of as a comics writer. It’s a horror series and it came out in Shocker Komiks. Stories are about crazy people and the weird and evil reasons why they went nuts. Typically, the lead character/s in every story would commit suicide at the end of the story. It ran for more than three years and it had, I think, four illustrators which included Rolan Guina, Sonny Anthony, Ron-Ron Amatos and one more whose name escapes my memory at the moment. Rolan Guina was its original illustrator and he was perfect for the series. Rolan handled it for more than two years and after he left, my appetite for the series soon vanished. I was talking to my editor one time and suddenly, I expressed the wish to finish the series and he relented. I went home that day, sat in front of my computer and finished its last story, a terrible one, in less than thirty minutes.
You can read that story below and as usual, it ended in a suicide.
Suicide is a terrible thing to do, probably the stupidest thing a man can do. If you know someone who’s thinking of killing himself, do your best to stop him. Suicide is wrong, suicide is stupid, it should never be an option, bear that in mind.
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