Scott Timberg

This past weekend I was shocked and saddened to learn that Scott Timberg had died, Tuesday December 10, by his own hand.

Timberg was among the more robust bloggers featured on the ArtsJournal frontpage. There were three I made it a point to never miss. Of the three, only Timberg was always worth reading — Scott Timberg batted 1.000.

I did not realize until that announcement just how deeply I valued Timberg’s work on the beat. I tend to cast a jaundiced eye over 95% of what AJ links to — “So this is ‘The Culture’ then, is it?” AJ’s focus of concern whipsaws from covering beleaguered heritage art scenes to playing catch-up with the passionate young progressives. Out of everyone who contributed to AJ, Timberg was the only writer who seemed truly aware, from harrowing personal experience, that the AJ raison d'être — equanimity of coverage between Youngs and Olds making the scene — was now a dust-binned relic from an antiquated past.

Everything Timberg wrote acknowledged this reality and placed itself in considered opposition to it. The artists he interacted with were people invested in the historical long-view, whose perspective he passionately engaged with. His interviews are never less than revelatory, whether it’s Rhiannon Giddens explicating the banjo’s subversion of colonial presumption, Billy Bragg on Skiffle’s world-changing power, Patti Smith on the literary pretensions of the New York punks, or Richard Thompson acknowledging the inescapability of Robbie Burns — among so many others.

Suicides occur for reasons that are not always — and perhaps can never be — reducable to mere words. Still, I find myself wishing he and his family had escaped Los Angeles. Or that he’d meditated further on what Giddens was saying about the banjo’s spiritual impact. We may not (yet) be captive slaves, but we are all well and truly indentured. It behooves us to reach for the nearest “banjo” we can find, to issue the subtle “fuck you” to the Powers intent on our complete acquiescence — to keep singing, despite it all.

Links:

• Scott Timberg LARB Archives; tributes
• The GoFundMe for Timberg’s surviving family.
• If Culture Crash is a book you are up for, please do as Timberg requested and order it from your independent book store.

Let us be kind.