"Although it is not in the nature of flowers to leave monuments, the music of Nick Drake is the hippie vision made permanent . . . Listening to music so beautiful you are shamed by the ugliness of the world."
-Arthur Lubow, in the liner notes to fruit tree, the collected works of Nick Drake.

For proof just listen to Fly, Cello Song and Black Eyed Dog,which is also slightly harrowing. Reading the rest of the notes which serve as a biography of Drake, I kind of wonder if he was on the autistic spectrum?
Speaking of which, a few weeks ago I was reading Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake, a brilliant off the wall book which I think might have got left behind in the wake of 9/11, and I wondered the same about Vonnegut. That in turn reminded me of a Peter Gzowski interview I had heard years ago on CBC with an autistic woman who had written an autobiography. Some quick googling came up with the name Donna Williams, who wrote Nobody Nowhere and Somebody Somewhere. I read the first and found it, well, beautiful and more than slightly harrowing. And in fact she now keeps a blog.