Chester Bennington. Screaming in the dark
This news seemed to rip out of the usual chain of events, like a rusty link. And falling to the cold, damp floor, you feel the fetid breath of death. Wrong, unnecessary. It should not be. What kind of life is it then, if the world famous musician, idol of millions, actor, father of six children leaves it voluntarily, breaking the hearts of all people who love him?
“No, no, please, no! - I repeated, hammering letters into the search engine of my pocket smartphone. "Not you!" But the query entered several times always gave the same answer: "Yesterday, July 20, 2017, rock musician Chester Charles Bennington was found dead in his apartment."
From the coming tears, the picture began to blur. I sat down on the bench, covered my face with my palms. Now there is no hurry. This news seemed to rip out of the usual chain of events, like a rusty link. And falling to the cold, damp floor, you feel the fetid breath of death. Wrong, unnecessary. It should not be. What kind of life is it then, if the world famous musician, idol of millions, actor, father of six children leaves it voluntarily, breaking the hearts of all people who love him?
This was the first reaction to the death of a childhood idol. Emotional, irrational.
The pain from this loss will remain with us forever, but today enough time has passed to soberly understand the situation and systematically and definitely answer the question: "Why?"
Little angel who went through hell
Our innate mental properties and talents develop until the end of the transitional age. During the same period, we also receive our psychological trauma. Therefore, we will begin our search precisely from the childhood of Chester. So back to the distant eighties, Phoenix, Arizona.
The most important aspect for a child's development is a sense of security and safety. Feeling safe in the family, feeling protected from parents, especially from mother, the child is able to develop as much as possible in the properties inherent in him.
Boys with optic cutaneous ligaments of vectors most of all need protection and special assistance in development. Such children are simply not able to survive on their own, they are more likely than others to be attacked by their peers, and often become victims of violence.
The life of any visual person is feelings, a wide range of emotions: from heartbreaking fear to all-encompassing love. Not receiving sufficient protection from their parents, not developing their sensual properties and therefore not integrating into society on an equal basis with other children, visual boys are not able to get rid of fear on their own, just like that. Without proper development, they live their lives in fear. This means that they attract suffering. The world around us always reacts to how we behave, how we live, how we manifest ourselves in it.
That was little Chester. A puny little boy who loves Depeche Mode music and dreams of becoming a star someday.
Like a tiny angel descending from heaven. But shackled by fear, it won't take off. In an interview, Chester admitted that at the age of seven he was sexually abused by an older friend. This nightmare continued until the age of 13. He was afraid to confess, believing that he would not be believed or considered gay, and endured this for six years.
In another interview, Chester talked about being constantly beaten by peers at school.
As soon as he turned 11, his parents divorced. Every child is going through a difficult divorce of parents, especially a visual one. Constant bullying, family experiences, violence, fear of revealing this horror - this is a lot even for an adult, what can I say about a little boy. Fear, burning all the insides, pain that will never let go.
In 2001, Linkin Park released the single Crawling. Pain was soaked in every line. It was impossible not to believe Chester, it was impossible not to love.
Loneliness in the void
Chester's childhood was filled with suffering. However, the loss of a sense of security and safety in itself is not a cause of suicide. It serves as a base for even more severe conditions, delayed in time.
As mentioned above, Chester admitted in an interview that he was often beaten and humiliated by his classmates. He himself said about this: "I was thrashed like a rag doll at school because I was skinny and did not look like the others."
Unfortunately, this is the lot of those children who are different from others. Name, appearance, character. Especially often the victims of bullying are visual children who have lost their sense of security and safety. They "smell" of fear and literally attract the aggression of the childish "primitive flock", which always needs a common sacrifice to remove collective enmity.
As the owner of the sound vector, he had additional reasons to be misunderstood by his surroundings. Sound people often find themselves in the position of a black sheep, an outcast. Having no common desires with all other people, carriers of the sound vector are most difficult to find a common language with others.
How to talk to a person if you do not share his desires, you don’t know why he does all these attempts, body movements? The desires of the sound engineer are so abstract and far from the realities and values of the physical world that in most cases they are incomprehensible even to him. He is not interested in cars, money, status, it is only important to understand what is all this for? What is the meaning of these things? What is the meaning of life itself?
Faced with aggression emanating from the outside world, already concentrated within themselves, the sound people completely become isolated. The entire external world begins to seem like a source of suffering, as well as his own body, inside which his consciousness, the only real "I", is locked.
It is the sound people who most often become drug addicts. Changing the physical state of the brain with the help of various drugs, the sound engineer gets the illusion of expansion of consciousness, abstracts from the outside world, pain, suffering and goes even more inside himself. And excessive concentration on oneself is suffering and a dead end for a sound person. Only he doesn't realize it.
Chester started using drugs at school. And by the age of seventeen he turned into an inveterate drug addict. All life is like one endless concentration of pain and suffering. The only happiness in life is music. The only pain reliever is drugs.
In part, Chester managed to quit drugs, realize all his desires, except for one, the most powerful. He became a famous musician, actor, owner of a network of tattoo parlors. He was loved by millions of people. He was the father of six children and the husband of a beautiful girl. But even with his strongest cry, he could not drown out his inner suffering. Sound desires are dominant and need to be filled in the first place. The music eased his pain. But is this enough for a person with such potential in the sound vector? And soon Chester returned to drugs …
In his last interviews, Chester said: “This place, this box between the ears, is a dysfunctional area. I shouldn't be out there alone. No one can go there. It is unbearable. It is dangerous for me to be there alone. When I lock myself in, my whole life goes downhill. It's like there is another Chester sitting there, dragging me to the bottom."
“I was burnt out because inside I felt like, 'Fuck this world.' Not like, “I need a break,” but rather, “Go to hell! Everything and everything! And I don't want to do anything else, nothing makes me happy! I even once told my doctor: "I don't want to feel anything!"
Chester very accurately captured the main thing for the sound engineer - immersion in his own thoughts, leading to separation from the outside world, to self-isolation is destructive for him. Conversely, by focusing on the world around him, on other people, the sound engineer is able to overcome even the darkest states.
In most cases, the decision to commit suicide is made by the person with the sound vector. Zvukovik never strives for death in the literal sense of the word, explains Yuri Burlan at the training "System-vector psychology". At the heart of this act is always only one desire - to end suffering. When the body is perceived as the only attachment to the external world, which brings only suffering, the sound engineer can no longer tolerate this pain and makes the only, it seems to him, the right decision - to leave this life.
The light of an extinguished star
It can take a very long time to write about your favorite musician. Parse his songs, remember concerts and interviews. But the article is not about that at all. It is about the death of a musician whose influence on a whole generation of people is difficult to overestimate.
We have listened to his songs since childhood. We were not ashamed to cry under them, we were not ashamed. Chester taught us to feel other people. In each song he seemed to say: "No matter how painful it may be, there is always someone who is even worse." A man with a huge heart. He lived a hard life, suffered a lot and, despite this, gave people and the world his love in every song, at every concert.
“He was one of those vocalists with a rare gift, when every word he sang sounds very sincere. He writes something for a reason to sing … Everything that comes from him sounds deeply, he puts meaning in every word, in every semitone, in every syllable,”Metallic drummer Lars Ulrich said about Chester after his death. Many echoed him. Musicians, actors, TV presenters. And ordinary people, his listeners. Those for whom he sang. Nobody remained indifferent. For several days people in all corners of the world carried flowers and candles to the buildings of American embassies, gathered in the streets, sang his songs and were silent, united by the pain of loss, did not hold back tears and sincere words. This is what happens when great people leave.
Chester's life and songs taught us a lot. We listened and recognized ourselves in them: our questions, our doubts, our thoughts, our feelings, but he always said: there is someone who is even worse, who is even more afraid, even more painful, someone who is even more lonely. His lyrics, his music, his bright open smile gave us hope and made us look not only deep into ourselves, but also at other people, at the world around us. A world full of suffering and light, loneliness and love, questions and answers.
His death should teach him even more: wherever we are, no matter how we feel, there is always a person next to us who needs our help, our understanding. In every person there can be a small, downtrodden child, barely holding on to life. Behind every wall, a person can sit breathlessly alone.
Today, the greatest threat to man is he himself. Ignorance of oneself, the properties of the human psyche, leads to disaster. Sometimes irreparable. Such as happened on July 20, 2017.
You won't be able to hide anymore. Behind closed doors. Behind a high wall. Behind the laptop screen. Behind the headphones. Behind the avatar. For indifference. And say: "It doesn't concern me." It's time to act. It's time to feel each other, be aware of each other. Find a part of each person in yourself. With his inner light and his demons. And find yourself in it.
Chester Bennington's star has gone out, but its light will burn for years to come. Rest in peace, Chester.
