Excerpt from the research paper I'm working on currently

The song, “She’s Lost Control,” off Joy Division’s 1979 album Unknown Pleasures, gives us an eerie portrait of Ian Curtis' rapid downward spiral. The chorus goes as follows,

She said I've lost control again.
And she screamed out kicking on her side
And said I've lost control again.
And seized up on the floor, I thought she'd die.
She said I've lost control.
She's lost control again.

Ian uses the first person pronoun “I”, but also projects himself onto a mysterious “she”. In this song we see not only a relationship losing control, but a body losing control, as Ian describes this woman, a shadow of himself, in the throes of an epilepsy attack, And she screamed out kicking on her side/And said I've lost control again./And seized up on the floor, I thought she'd die./She said I’ve lost control. It is this loss of control that truly defines the music of Joy Division, and the 1980’s goth-rock movement in general. In live videos, Ian can be seen jerking around frantically, his eyes wide in a sort of prophetic stupor. He moves as if there is something inside him trying to escape, something dark and tremendously destructive—something that could destroy him if not released. And ultimately, it was this darkness that ate him alive, as he grew sullen and increasingly disillusioned, culminating on that infamous spring morning, when his body was found by his wife, Deborah. He was just twenty-three years old.

Art allows us to indulge our dark, irrational fantasies without harming ourselves or others. Many musicians cite music as a self-administered form of therapy, which allows them to express and articulate their innermost demons. Ian Curtis’ short life is an enduring allegory of the philosopher and artist: driven to the edge of mortality by the horrors they refuse to look away from. Art has been described as an expression of human ecstasy, but it is just as much a flirtation with darkness and a portrait of destruction. Ian’s suicide became a cautionary tale to the numerous goth rock bands that cropped up in the early eighties: darkness is a deadly muse.