He’s Daniel Johnston,
And He Was Gonna Be Famous



He burst from the busboy’s closet near the kitchen, maneuvered his way through the crowd as though he were late, and stepped behind the microphone on the tiny stage. Then he began playing, so nervous he looked like he was about to cry. He was thin and waifish, in his early twenties, and strummed his small guitar awkwardly. It was out of tune, which made it sound like a cracked ukulele. His voice cracked too as he sang that first wistful melody:
When I was out in San Marcos, a year ago today / They probably would have put me in a home.
Hmmm, I thought, strangely garbled syntax, a hint of being damaged.
The wildest summer, that I ever knew / I had a flat tire down memory lane.
Now that was a great line. By the time he got to the chorus, I was hooked:
I live my broken dreams.
He jumped into the second song, which was about Casper the Friendly Ghost and seemed to be an allegory about Jesus, or maybe it was just about the cartoon. “This is a joke,” a woman in front of me said to her friend. “Right?”