I generally could care less about the famous people in the United States. Most of them are just fame seeking idiots with no direction, and suddenly they get famous and walk around talking about saving the environment and adopting African children because their public representative tells them to. But this one... this one brought me to tears.
I was somewhere between the age of 9 and 12 when I first heard Whitney sing on the radio and I distinctly remember stopping in my tracks and listening and wishing I could sing like her. And I remember searching for her name and she was the first record I ever bought with my own money. I remember playing "I Want To Dance With Somebody" over and over again in my room and singing along with it and wishing that I had the ability to put those beautiful extensions in my hair. She was something else, something I'd never seen. In a rock and roll world that was dominated by men and Cindy Lauper types, this lady was truly something that my classically trained young self could appreciate and relate to: she knew how to sing.
And in the years of her "start" on the scene, she had hit after hit and she sang about loving yourself and sang about being beautiful and strong. I sang all of her songs there in my room to my imaginary audience and I believed every word she sang. Her music inspired a young girl like me, her music set her apart from the Madonnas who were putting headlights on their tits and teaching girls like me to sell their body to make their way. Whitney was a true woman, something to aspire to, and when time passed and she married that idiot Bobby Brown and rumors of drug use started to hit the scene, it was a moment for the girls like me to truly hurt for her, to truly believe she had lost her way, and we had nothing to say except for she fell victim to something else -- influences and powers that were beyond her. She had started out so strong, but so innocent, and... years later, as a woman who has seen her own World Of Shit, all I can say is... I understand. I hate it, I hated it then and I hate it now, but I understand.
I was driving home tonight from visiting my parents. I was listening to the radio and suddenly Whitney's "One Moment In Time" came on, a song that they rarely play on the radio these days, but it is by far my favorite Whitney tune. I was driving down the road, singing along with her at the top of my lungs, and just as the end of the song came and I finished it off with a slight tear in my eye, the DJ came on and said, "That was Whitney Houston, she died today at the age of 48." The first thought that crossed my mind was drug overdose and my heart just sank because, even as the report at this moment is that cause of death is unknown, that's such a stupidly common end to all of the famous people in this world and... a death that I was surely hoping someone like Whitney would be able to overcome and avoid.
I don't know what else to say about it. I know in the days and weeks to come, her death and the more dark moments of her life will be all over the news and... I'm sad about that. I'm not sure famous people ever really know the lives they're touching or how they're touching them or why. I'm not even sure why people like us take the time to attach a certain amount of love and adoration to them, but we do. And for me, she was one of the select few that I would give a certain amount of adoration to. Because I have done that, because I know her dirt is going to be all over the media soon, I will say two things: I will always remember the inspiration she was to me at a very young age, and... we all have our faults, we all have our struggles, we all have our addictions, and we all reap what we sow in the end. Let those without bull shit in their lives cast the first stone.
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