An Enigmatic and Elusive Existentialist called Ian Curtis

Ian Curtis, the singer of the influential British band Joy Division, died exactly forty years ago today.

It is 40 years to the day since Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis died by suicide at the age of just 23. The singer released two albums with the band in 1979’s Unknown Pleasures and 1980’s Closer with their music going on to have a huge influence. Still. Despite their short career, Joy Division have exerted a wide-reaching influence.

Control

I wasn’t even born back then, in 1980. Not for 7 years. I got to know Joy Division in 2007. Anton Corbijn’s movie Control had something to do with, I guess. But because of that movie, I started listening to Factory Records, Joy Division, Happy Mondays, Sectio 25, to Tony Wilson’s legacy. I immersed myself in the post-punk, new wave, and electro of 80' and 90’s Manchester. And beyond.

But there was one band that had a sort of sacred status. Joy Division. The group consisted of vocalist Ian Curtis, guitarist/keyboardist Bernard Sumner, bassist Peter Hook, and drummer Stephen Morris.

Curtis, for me, is still one of those enigmatic vocalists. Curtis suffered from epilepsy. Sometimes he had to be carried off the stage. Often the fans did not know whether he was dancing or having a seizure. Just as often he was away from the world.

Joy Division’s success is an unlikely one. The live performances are a disaster. Unlike on the studio recordings, the band sounds loud and aggressive on stage. Curtis intently lowered his voice while singing. ‘To the center of the city where all roads meet, waiting for you’. Ian Curtis moves as if he is in a delirium. Despite this, fame is growing, and an American tour is planned. But Curtis can’t handle the pressure, performing exacerbates his epileptical seizures and depressions. Just before leaving for the United States, the singer hangs himself in the kitchen of his working-class home.

Curtis’s suicide makes the band even more mythical and gave the group instant cult status. They regrouped under the name New Order.

Isolation

The lyrics of Curtis often remind of the philosophy of Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. If Soren Kierkegaard would have been a singer, his name was Ian Curtis.

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I quiet to enjoy their music. Angst. Isolation. Words like ‘Mother I tried please believe me,/ I’m doing the best that I can./ I’m ashamed of the things I’ve been put through,/ I’m ashamed of the person I am.’ leave little to the imagination.

In his book, Kierkegaard analyzes the concept of fear, angst, but also guilt and sin. He discusses these topics through biblical texts. They are full of paradoxes. These paradoxes stimulate him to think further. Can you be innocent and yet sinful, like Adam? How do we deal with desire? What if Adam had a sinful thought about the apple?

If you don’t look, the abyss is not there. Kierkegaard stared into the abyss. Like Nietzsche. Like Curtis. They looked for and searched the confrontation with themselves. Because you can not be ignorant. Real ignorance is not seeing, not feeling, not experiencing possibilities. Being aware of a possibility makes you already an accomplice of your sinful-soon-to-be act. Kierkegaard often felt desperate, clumsy, and guilty. Perhaps, just as Ian Curtis did.

The work of Ian Curtis is a loud cry from the heart, full of doubt, guilt, and fear. We still can not quite grasp the things he sang, and evermore the things he did. His lyrics and the music Joy Division made were desolate which was all about loneliness, alienation, desperation.

Now

Ian Curtis and Joy Division were children of their time. The dark and gloomy years of crisis in the ’80s. We all know the imagery. In the ’80s, an incarnation took place. The revolutionary energy of punk evolved to the dark romantics of new wave. Joy Division colored the crisis years around 1980 dark. Its music reflected the equally drab and desolate post-industrial landscape in Northern England, where unemployment, poverty, and infernal boredom were rife.

We can learn something from Curtis and Joy Division. And Kierkegaard. Especially in these corona-days. Isolation. Angst. Not-knowing, being ignorant. Anno 2020, in full coronacrisis, Joy Division and Curtis’s words can help us overcome loneliness, just because they are about loneliness.

Sometimes, it isn’t a bad thing to be confronted with ourselves. It can help you make your fears something to discuss, without shame. There is no need for that.