I stopped in a bar last night to meet a friend who never showed. Down the way from me were two men, younger than I was, discussing Jason Molina, the singer-songwriter who died over the weekend, from organ failure resulting from years of alcoholism. One of the men kept shaking his head. He hadn’t known Molina’s music very well, he said, but thirty-nine was too young for anyone to die. The other man was made of sterner stuff. “Drunk,” he shrugged, and drank.

It seemed like a good idea. I ordered a vodka. I had felt sad about Molina all day. I liked the seam he worked, a borderland between Townes Van Zandt’s lyrical despair and the off-the-cuff, meticulously ramshackle rock and roll that Neil Young conjured up with Crazy Horse. I didn’t listen to Molina’s records very often, but three of them in particular—Songs: Ohia’s “Axxess & Ace,” Magnolia Electric Co.’s “Fading Trails,” and his solo album “Autumn Bird Songs”—had a way of surfacing from the Sargasso of iTunes, especially on winter weekend days. More often than not, they were headphone picks: a way to keep the world close at the same time I needed it to go away. I agreed with the first man. Thirty-nine was too young. I kept listening to their conversation, but they had moved on to talk about the Miami Heat’s winning streak. The sterner man was certain the Celtics would give the Heat fits. The time to talk about Molina had passed.

Suddenly, I was angry, and I held up a finger for another drink. The online tributes to Molina focussed on his talent for coming clean about just how weary he was, and how he was less and less able, over time, to find solace in the prospect of love or hope or even personal equilibrium. But he was often able to find solace in art. I once read a review that called his work “sepia-toned,” which made some sense as a synesthesia but none as an idea; his work never made me feel especially comfortable, which is how I knew it wasn’t nostalgic. “Autumn Bird Songs,” which he created to accompany the artwork of frequent collaborator William Schaff, is just Molina strumming and singing into a tape recorder. But it has an almost spectral power. It haunts. Take a song like “The Harvest Law,” which I’ll quote in full because quoting it in part is insulting:

Devil on your shadow’s wings

The whole world you’ve been balancing

And as our lot does fall

There is the law

There is the law

Paul’s pictures to the harvesters

My will to the world between

My will, I have gone along

The twelve fires were gathering

Cattle on their knees tonight

Remember it

Wolf eyes bleeding

On the holy thorns

Eleventh fire—the mountain laurel bends

Tenth fire—and how’s the boy

Ninth fire—all but one in place

Eighth fire—two’s across the door

Seventh fire—silence, then pass

Sixth fire—feather in the beacon

Fifth fire—I know I’m dust

Fourth fire—no time, no time

Third fire—comes the law

Second fire—willow and the pine

First fire—and the two worlds have crossed

The countdown to nonexistence is terrifying, and fully representative of Molina’s work. This is a campfire song, assuming that what’s on fire is all of us. His songs are filled with warnings about disconnection and disaffection that weren’t heeded, and in the end the messenger drowned in the air around him. In the bar, listening to the two guys talking about the Heat, part of me felt that the world should have taken better care of Molina. And yet, what was the alternative? A Jason Molina who was broadly embraced? That wouldn’t have been Molina at all. He occupied the margins because the center was abhorrent. He was able to be genuinely poetic because his broadcasts reached such a small number of people. Believe in the idea that almost no one understood him and that’s the most important thing to understand, or don’t. The case is closed.

My friend was late. I went to the jukebox. I couldn’t find any of Molina’s songs. On the way home through the slush I realized I didn’t have any of Molina’s music on my iPod, either. Instead, I listened to Vic Chesnutt’s “Guilty By Association,” a song sad enough for both of them.

Photograph by Jordi Vidal/Redferns/Getty