Up: [[People]] Created: 2022-02-01 Updated: 2025-02-12 ![[Kris 4.webp|300]] SONGWRITER. SINGER. ACTOR United States — Born Brownsville Texas 1936-2024 (88 years) There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of places to find information about Kris. The touchstone for me is the [site created for Kris]( https://kriskristofferson.com/biography/) by one of his sons. Kris sure wouldn’t do it. He had so little use for technology that he referred to cellphones as ‘hand machines’. ## How I First Learned of Him I first learned of Kris through my Dad and my cousin Tommy when they quoted some lines from [Loving Her Was Easier](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCgnbRWVvU8). I remember scoffing at the time — I was a teenager — but I took it in, and soon after found his song [To Beat the Devil](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwuoFt0c1VM) which absolutely spoke to who I was as a teenager and beyond. It became my anthem, my call to action song. ## Since Then… Kris’s music has accompanied me through my life. I wrote about that in [[The Man Who Showed Me How to Beat the Devil]]. I went to a dozen of his concerts, never once making any attempt to meet him. I agree with the old proverb, *Never meet your heroes. They’re sure to disappoint.* ## Kris Kristofferson through the Lens of Instructions for Life Kris, more than anyone I know of, seamlessly lived the full cycle of Pay Attention, Be Amazed, Tell About It. I’m only putting little bits in this note. I will end up linking to the multiple notes I want to write for each area. ##### PAY ATTENTION Kris’s keen observation of a moment, and his ability to so beautifully, so poetically share that observation led me to develop a love for poetry that had initially been killed in school. Kris would spend hours searching for the exact right word. ##### BE AMAZED Kris has a song called [The Pilgrim: Chapter 33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMVUILVM0Xw) One of the many memorable lines is *He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction*, which he sometimes sang as ‘mostly fiction’. It was a song written for several of his musician friends, but Kris admitted it was mostly about himself. And there’s a lot of truth to the fascinating contradictions that were Kris. Whatever he did, he was all-in. The example of Kris’s life has immeasurably enriched my own. He has caused me to reflect deeply about what it is to live with integrity and heart. I am stronger, more able to state my beliefs and stand by them because of him. ##### TELL ABOUT IT For a long time, I saw Kris’s genius as the **baseline** for entry into creative activity of any kind. That was a showstopper for me. I’m glad that particular delusion is over! Kris studied William Blake when on a Rhodes scholarship at Oxford. This quotation from Blake was Kris’s touchstone, his purpose in life. He quoted it often, summarizing it as *Blake is telling you that you’ll be miserable if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do.* > [!Orbit] [[William Blake]] in [Letters](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:The_letters_of_William_Blake_(1906).djvu/167#:~:text=—%22If%20you%2C%20who%20are,confusion%20of%20face%20to%20eternity.) > If you, who are organized by Divine Providence for spiritual communion, refuse, and bury your talent in the earth, even though you should want natural bread, sorrow and desperation pursue you through life, and after death shame and confusion of face to eternity. I made a playlist of just the songs that Kris wrote and recorded himself, not the ones he wrote for other artists. My playlist runs for 10 hours and 42 minutes. Kris lived Blake’s dictum.