(MUSICIANS) JOPLIN JANIS Autograph Letter Signed twice X Jan

Sale 2674 - Lot 23

Price Realized: $ 3,250

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000

FIGHTING ANXIETY AND UNCERTAINTY: "I GOT SOME GRASS & TRIED TO GET LOADED" (MUSICIANS.) JOPLIN, JANIS. Autograph Letter Signed, twice "X, Janis" and after postscript "XXX, J," to Peter De Blanc, thanking for the roses, reporting that she has begun seeing a therapist and is taking anti-anxiety medication, explaining that she has developed a neurotic fear of relapsing into drug addiction which had been causing the anxiety, stating that learning about his having "gotten loaded" prompted her to try to do the same but anxiety prevented her, and desperately hoping for him to write or call. 7 pages, 8vo, written on rectos of separate sheets; horizontal fold. With the original envelope, addressed in holograph, with small ink heart shape drawn on flap. [Port Arthur], 11 November [1965]

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". . . [T]hey have me on Librium now & it's really helped emmensely [sic].
". . . The tranquilizers have really helped & just talking to that guy who's my 'counselor' now has, too. And so, because of my new insight, I'm beginning to see that maybe I owe you a slight apology. . . .
"You know that I've been fairly adamant about my determination not to get fucked up again. Well, it seems now to have developed into a rather neurotic tenor. I never relax anymore. I never just talk to people. I never have fun--hell, I won't have fun. I seem to be really mortally afraid that things won't go right somehow & I'll end up back in that hellish jungle that I'm obsessed with. I'm constantly watchful & wary & really damn afraid. I'm . . . doing well in school because it's mortally important to me! But, god, this isn't right!
"The reason I went to that counselor is because I had suddenly realized that I was building my stability & progress on sheer terror . . . ! . . . I keep talking about 'one step back' being the end of me & everything.
". . . [W]ow, baby, I'm really desperately, dis-proportionately afraid! And, from my new slightly objective vantage point, induced by Librium & a few days easy breathing, I think I was maybe a little dis-proportionately afraid of you, too. . . .
". . . [W]hat prompted me to this decision was this--you hadn't been writing, which to me means you're brooding or messed-up somehow, & then when I called, you were really out of it, unable to help me when I needed it, & you had gone out & gotten loaded. . . . I got some grass & tried to get loaded myself this weekend but couldn't. And I guess maybe I'm too hasty in assuming that LSD is more serious than grass, but to me it is. . . .
"So hell, what is this? An apology? Not exactly--an effort to explain my newly-discovered neuroses, I guess. . . .
". . . I'm really doing well in school. . . . Making 'A's in 3, maybe 4, of my 5 classes.
"Write to me, Peter; I don't know what's going on anymore."
Janis Joplin (1943-1970), whose blues-belting voice assaulted the psychedelic scene of the late 1960s, hid a tumultuous inner life, whose revelation in this letter helps explain how she became the symbol of power and passion that she remains today. Before her rise as the lead of Brother & the Holding Company in the summer of 1966, Joplin had taken a break from her life in San Francisco, leaving behind a lover there: Peter De Blanc. De Blanc supported Joplin's determination to sober up by moving to her home town of Port Arthur, TX, where she attended school and wrote to her lover. Their plan to marry was broken off when she learned that De Blanc was expecting a child with another woman, after which she returned to her former life in California and where, five years later, she died from a heroin overdose.