Steven J. Bernstein was grunge-era Seattle’s favorite lit­er­ary rebel, a skin-and-bones mis­fit with Coke-bottle eye­glasses whose raw and jaggedly hilar­i­ous poems were recorded by Sub-Pop, win­ning atten­tion even as his bipo­lar dis­or­der led him to take his own life in 1991. He was 41, but as this detailed biog­ra­phy reveals, he’d lived with hard-core inten­sity, whether as an ado­les­cent mental-institution res­i­dent, a New York street musi­cian, a self-medicating heroin user, or a teenage run­away on Ken Kesey’s magic bus.

I Am Secretly An Impor­tant Man, a hard-edged but com­pas­sion­ate doc­u­men­tary about the life and death of song­writer, poet and per­for­mance artist, takes its title from a line in Bernstein’s most famous poem, “Come Out Tonight.’’

His angry, sur­pris­ingly fresh, lyri­cal writ­ings are about sen­si­tive souls, drifters and drug addicts; peo­ple alien­ated by a soci­ety that refuses to under­stand them. He peeled back the ugli­ness and the dark­ness of life on the fringe to expose ten­der and not so ten­der human feel­ing. His unique rhythms, filled with humor and pain, were espe­cially excit­ing when read in his own gravely voice. Peo­ple packed into the­aters, bars and cafes to hear him read and sing. Unfor­tu­nately much of Jesse’s work has not yet found the audi­ence it deserves out­side of the Pacific North­west. Fol­low­ing is the the­atri­cal trailer.

Being in the minor­ity was a way of life for Bernstein. Known as the god­fa­ther of grunge, he didn’t live to hear the term and undoubt­edly would have dis­dained it. He not only liked the naked ele­gance of the music, he helped shape it, open­ing for the bands (Nir­vana, Big Black, Soundgar­den, U-Men, the Crows) who went on to the big time, and work­ing the crowd into a ecsta­tic heat. He liked to cause a stir. When in the mood, he added to his leg­end. When not, he com­plained about it.“All the sto­ries about me are true,” he said.

In the fol­low­ing video, Bernstein reads his story ‘Face’ as we are guided through the illus­tra­tions by Tri­an­gle Slash. This is one of the best things I have ever heard and watch. Please allow the nar­ra­tor to make you suf­fer through the whole video.