KRIS KRISTOFFERSON 1936-2024

emembering the inimitable poet, activist, and artist

- He was a songwriting legend who met the world with grit and grace. By Rosanne Cash

I dreamed about him. I got up at 5 a.m. to go downstairs and have a private cry. There was a Kris-shaped mantra running through my head, right in the center of the deep sadness: “Do better. Be bigger. Speak truth. Don’t let the bastards get you down. Write about it.” The space he left is filled with more than grief. It has a sense of urgency. Time is a thief.

I’ve never known anyone as authentically themselves as Kris. His very thoughts had an armament of courage. His time in the military and the discipline he cultivated there, coupled with his native kindness and deep sensitivity, made for an unusual kind of poet. He kept a wide-open heart yet took shit from no one. No one. Didn’t matter if you were a big star, or the entire press corps, or a good friend: Shit would not be taken, but he gave it back with a sense of moral authority and lack of insult that was both humbling and educational. It refreshed the spirit to be put in one’s place by Kris.

He didn’t do small talk. He knew how to protect his art and energy. His wife, Lisa, told me that he wouldn’t do a meet-and-greet after a show, even if it was an old friend. He knew how to prioritize.

He was preternaturally curious. He seemed always to be pushing at the edges of any situation to find the underbelly of wisdom and poetry. He looked for the truth of a person, a situation, a moment, a question, an action. More often than not, he found it, and offered it back to the rest of us, transformed into sublime jewels of rhymes and melodies and ideas that pushed far past convention.

He was spiritually rigorous. He carried his wounds with dignity. I cannot imagine anyone less self- pitying or more noble than Kris.