Conor Oberst: Anxious And Exhausted…?

Holy moly: “Conor Oberst fell ill while on tour in Jacksonville, Florida and was briefly hospitalized due to laryngitis, anxiety, and exhaustion. In consultation with his doctors, the band has reluctantly agreed to cancel all scheduled live dates. Conor will be heading home to Omaha to recuperate. We wish him a speedy recovery.” Desaparecidos, Conor’s punk rock meets Mexico conglom, are the band in question. Though it is me who will pay the price given that he has cancelled his appearance at Webster Hall in early December.

It sounds bad doesn’t it? Did they really mean to tell the world all that anxiety and exhaustion guff? I mean, really, it sounds pretty ominous doesn’t it, also doesn’t it sound very druggy: this is, after all, a fragile fellow, I know people who know him who claim, he is thin, tired and weak, and, lest we forget, this is a part of his story: “He says he spent a few years not caring about consequences, drinking too much and taking whatever drugs anyone gave him. Then, on December 17th, 2000, he consumed a whole magnum of Jameson’s whiskey in Chicago. The next day, he went through alcohol withdrawal, and his heartbeat was like a hummingbird’s. He checked into a hospital for four days.“

Marriage seemed to save him from his self-destruction but there has always been something about Conor that seemed to be close to the edge. I was discussing Conor with his former girlfriend who claimed he was constantly distracted by the need to write. There is something physically ethereal about the man (I almost wrote kid) which makes you worry about his health.