Daniel knew something the rest of the world didn't. Standing behind the counter at McDonald's in Austin, Texas, he'd look every customer in the eye and say the same thing: "Hi, how are you? I'm Daniel Johnston, and I'm gonna be famous." Then he'd press a cassette tape into their hands. The cover was a crude drawing he'd made himself. The songs inside were recorded on a $59 boombox in his parents' basement back in West Virginia. Most people probably threw those tapes in the trash. But some didn't. Daniel had been making music since he was a teenager, filling notebook after notebook with drawings and song lyrics while his four siblings followed normal paths. His parents, Bill and Mabel, watched their youngest son retreat into fantasy worlds they couldn't understand. They worried about his obsessions, his difficulty fitting in, his constant talk of superheroes and cartoon characters. They didn't know he was already showing signs of the mental illness that would shape his entire life. After dropping out of college, Daniel drifted. He made albums with titles like "Songs of Pain" and "More Songs of Pain." The names weren't metaphors. He poured real anguish into every note, singing in a high, wavering voice about loneliness and unrequited love and the terrifying presence he called Satan. His recordings sounded like nothing else on earth. Technically primitive. Emotionally devastating. Completely sincere. Then in 1983, everything changed. Daniel joined a traveling carnival, worked a corn dog stand, and somehow ended up broke in Austin with armloads of those homemade tapes. That's when he did something nobody expected. He made himself famous through pure determination. Every pretty girl on Guadalupe Street got a tape. Every musician who looked important got a tape. Every single person who walked into that McDonald's got the same enthusiastic greeting and the same handmade gift. Daniel believed absolutely in his own destiny. And that belief was contagious. Local musicians started listening to those basement recordings. What they heard changed everything. Here was a song called "True Love Will Find You in the End" that sounded like it was recorded in a tin can but felt like it came straight from heaven. Here were melodies so simple a child could hum them, paired with lyrics that cut right to the bone. Bands started covering his songs. Daniel began performing live, his knees literally knocking together from nerves as he took the stage. In 1985, MTV came to film Austin's music scene. Daniel wasn't originally scheduled to appear, but he charmed the crew with his earnest enthusiasm. Standing before the camera, he announced: "My name is Daniel Johnston, and this is the name of my tape. It's Hi, How Are You, and I was having a nervous breakdown when I recorded it." The album "Hi, How Are You" became an underground sensation. Its cover featured a frog-like creature Daniel called Jeremiah the Innocent. That simple drawing would become one of the most recognizable images in music history. Daniel won Songwriter of the Year at the Austin Music Awards. Major record labels came calling. His future looked limitless. Then the darkness arrived. Daniel had always struggled, but success amplified everything. He began having delusions about Satan pursuing him. After taking LSD at a concert, he attacked his friend and manager with a lead pipe. He was hospitalized for the first time, but it wouldn't be the last. The diagnosis was bipolar disorder with schizophrenia. For the rest of his life, Daniel would cycle between periods of stability and episodes of terrifying delusion. He heard voices. He broke into homes. He attacked people he loved. The medications that controlled his symptoms caused dramatic weight gain, transforming the impossibly skinny young man who'd arrived in Austin into someone his old friends barely recognized. But he never stopped creating. His parents moved to a small town outside Houston, and Daniel came with them. He spent the next three decades in that house, drawing his characters, recording his songs, emerging occasionally for performances that fans traveled across the world to witness. Meanwhile, the world was catching up to his genius. In 1992, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain appeared at the MTV Video Music Awards wearing a T-shirt with Daniel's Jeremiah the Innocent illustration. Cobain called him one of the greatest songwriters alive. Suddenly, millions of people wanted to know who this mysterious artist was. A tribute album followed, featuring covers by Tom Waits, Beck, R.E.M., and the Flaming Lips. More than 150 artists would eventually record versions of Daniel's songs. His artwork was displayed at the Whitney Museum. His story became an acclaimed documentary that premiered at Sundance. Daniel never quite understood his fame. He lived simply, drawing his comic book characters assembly-line style, selling each one for cigarette and soda money. He performed when his health allowed, backed by musicians who considered it an honor to share his stage. Austin declared his birthday "Hi, How Are You Day," an annual celebration of mental health awareness. The mural he painted on Guadalupe Street became a permanent landmark, preserved even as everything around it changed. On September 10, 2019, Daniel was released from the hospital after treatment for kidney problems. His brother said he seemed happy that evening, maybe even peaceful. The next morning, he was found dead at his home. He was 58 years old. The tributes poured in from around the world. Musicians wrote about how his unfiltered honesty had given them permission to be vulnerable. Fans shared stories of meeting the gentle, awkward man who'd handed them cassettes and asked only that they listen. His family said something that captures what made Daniel special: "Daniel triumphed over his illness through his prolific output of art and songs." That word matters. Triumphed. Daniel Johnston didn't live a tragic life. He lived a remarkable one. He faced challenges that would have silenced most people and somehow kept singing. He believed in his own genius when nobody else did. And he was right. He proved that art doesn't require polish or technical skill or industry connections. It requires only honesty and the courage to share what lives inside you. His most beloved song contains a simple promise: "True love will find you in the end." Daniel spent his whole life searching for that love, in romance, in music, in the faces of strangers who stopped to take his tapes. What he may not have realized was that he'd already found it. The love was in the music itself, in the connection between his broken heart and the millions of broken hearts that recognized themselves in his songs. He walked into that McDonald's with nothing but homemade cassettes and an impossible dream. He walked out a legend. #DanielJohnston #TrueLove #MentalHealthAwareness #AustinMusic #NeverGiveUp ~Forgotten Stories