On Neil Kulkarni, and loss in the age of parasocial media

The best writers can reach into your brain and retune it. They can make you think in a different way.

You’ll read better words than these about him from people who knew him better. But even the end of a borderline parasocial relationship can hit hard. It was about 7.20 this morning when, following my routine hour-long pad around the house finding things to pick up and put away in the name of ‘order’, I sat down with a cup of coffee, opened my (least) favourite social media app and… Neil Kulkarni had died.

Sometimes when I hear other people describing their reactions to sudden and shocking news, I can be glibly superior to myself. ‘Well, I’d find a better way of expressing myself under such circumstances”, I snort derisively to no-one in particular, at what I involuntarily take to be platitudes. What an arse. But then it happens to you, and more viscerally and painfully to people closer than you, and you remember that sometimes there… really aren’t the words. Sometimes there isn’t a ‘right thing to say’. Sometimes, just occasionally, even words don’t really matter that much.

But when they do, they do. With the bit between his teeth, Neil Kulkarni blistered. No-one could come close to the withering contempt that he held for our tolerance of as much mediocrity as he did, a fire that burns within when you know that people are wasting their time and money on empty cultural calories when they could be spending it on something far more nutritious instead. It often wasn’t big, it sometimes wasn’t clever, and it never, ever mattered. Except it did, and it still does.

I still remember that first letter which got him a job with the Melody Maker a little over three decades ago. I still remember him tearing holes out of Britpop because there was so much better elsewhere being pushed out of the limelight to make way for landfill. I still remember his guide to becoming a record reviewer, an article sufficiently fused with insight to be valuable to any form of writing across the board. I still think “Stop dithering” a lot, more than a decade after I first read it.

The angriest polemicists can turn out to be the very best of people. Of course, attacking those sacred cows is a valuable exercise in itself, but to do while promoting new and otherwise largely unheard music borders upon being a public service. And for all the rage, so often well-deserved and always spoken with brutal honesty, he remained an affectionate presence on social media, as likely to lovingly post yet another picture of his (admittedly adorable) kitten as he was to rail against injustice or inequality.

Whenever Neil did criticise, he also brought recommendations to the table. He promoted, lifted those who might otherwise have been invisible onto his shoulders; not because he’d been tempted by the offer of a Judy Tzuke tour jacket (if you know, you know), but because he wanted the music that inspired him—and this was a broad palette—to be heard by others too. A critic without recommendations might be considered little more than a cynic. Neil may have been many things, but he wasn’t a cynic.

Critics matter. Criticism matters. It’s a craft. An honest society should be able to look itself in the eye and absorb it. But it often doesn’t feel as though we can any more. The music press hasn't quite fully disintegrated yet, but much of its lustre has been stripped away by PR in recent years. And where it’s occurred, that defenestration has been savage. It's as difficult as ever to make money from writing. Most of the evidence indicates that it's all but impossible in music journalism any more.

And then there’s Chart Music, a podcast like literally no other, a remarkable achievement, the success of which should serve as an inspiration to others. Stretching conversation on a random episode of Top of the Pops out over seven hours should never have worked. But it did and it still does, and that’s down to the knowledge and engaging nature of those who appear on it.

If they’re laying into a band that you like, you may find yourself cringing at the articulate skewering of their faults. But you don’t have to agree with everything they say. That’s really not the point. Sometimes you just need to feel this pent up—and ultimately futile—rage, no matter who it’s aimed at, and no small part of the reason for this is that you know that it’s fuelled by a very deep and profound love for music in an overarching and all-consuming way.

Human relationships are different, these days. We get to know people that we never even meet. We engage in relationships with people unencumbered by having to spend actual time with them. But sudden loss is sudden loss. The cognitive dissonance of having heard someone talking, in perfect health, everything completely as normal, only to hear of their death just a few days later, is like being soaked with a bucket of freezing water. The shock is real, and everybody feels as helpless as everybody else. Even in middle-age, there’s something childlike about it all. We’re all looking for a grown up to explain it to us, and to reassure us that everything’s going to be okay. 

Words may not matter in that blindsiding moment of shock, but they do matter. The very best writers can reach into our brains and re-wire them. They can make us think differently about things that we may only have vaguely thought about, or on subjects about which we’ve been lazy in the past. They can offer a trail to discover new ways of thinking and the language that we don’t already possess to understand and make sense of it. They find words for the feelings that we can’t quite articulate. For some of us who nominally share the same space, they’re the inspiration to keep going.

While I’m about it, thanks also to Al, David, Simon, Taylor and Sarah. I’m so desperately sorry for your loss. I don’t know whether any of you will see this—I’d presume not, but what do I know?—but I often think, when I read the tributes paid to people after they die, that we should probably let them know how much pleasure they bring us while they’re still with us. So I’ll take this moment to thank you all for expanding my musical library and my understanding of pop music and for, yeah, making me laugh until I’m fit to burst over some long-forgotten childhood insult, or a lavish description of some pop star or other’s ludicrous outfit.

Go well, Neil, and thanks for making me laugh so many times, and for challenging me to think long and hard about the ways in which I see the world. Critics matter. Criticism matters.

Neil was a father to two daughters, and a fundraiser has been set up to ensure that his dependents are financially looked after. Please donate if you can.