Monday, November 15, 2004
Of course no comments.
Confused, rambling, will probably be subject to extensive revision or deletion.
Grief is about what you lose: you are sorry for what you don’t have anymore. The person who dies is fine, they don’t know that they’re no longer around; the sadness exists in those who knew the deceased, those who will do the missing. Losing someone who is important to you is horrific; you get over it, in that you can function and still have happiness in your life, but you have to adjust to a new world. We can’t respond adequately to other people’s tragedies. It is impossible to empathise with all the bereaved, all the time. If we could absorb the significance and importance of every death we heard about in the news then we would be unable to function. Ten Dead in rail crash. What?! The memories of ten people have been obliterated; the hopes and concerns of each have vanished forever. All leave behind people who will be devastated by their loss. So we can’t deal with it; recognising the humanity behind each news story is too much to bear. We say we’re sorry, we pretend to ourselves that we feel sad about it and get on with other things. And this isn’t callous; it’s the only way that anything gets done. We can’t feel each other’s pain, and what a relief that is. Imagine if we could: it would be incapacitating. You know where this is going, don’t you? All roads lead to Dirt McGirt.
The reaction in my house to the news of O.D.B.’s death got me thinking. There was an initial surprise (“No fucking way!”), then not-so-much-of-a-shock-actually, followed by a succession of O.D.B. stories that we laughed our way through. No glum faces, no fake sincerity or hypocritical concern for those he left behind; just an excuse to celebrate the crazy fool. If you think about it for even a second, then of course it’s sad. There will be people close to the man born Russell Jones who will today be facing a seemingly unending darkness. But it’s not my tragedy. It’s not going to affect me in any way. His rap on the Neptunes album was quite good, but you know, I wasn’t holding out for a world-shattering solo-project. The only justified emotion is a hope that those in his wake will fare better: a concern for those still alive. All this is by way of saying that our reaction to the death of famous people is interesting. If someone is old and not working anymore then why do we pretend to be affected? They’re not going to entertain us with any new work. If they’re young, then we miss the entertainments foregone, not the individual. In some way grief is a privilege, and unless we have a personal relationship with the deceased we have no right to mawkishness or to sympathy for our loss.
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Confused, rambling, will probably be subject to extensive revision or deletion.
Grief is about what you lose: you are sorry for what you don’t have anymore. The person who dies is fine, they don’t know that they’re no longer around; the sadness exists in those who knew the deceased, those who will do the missing. Losing someone who is important to you is horrific; you get over it, in that you can function and still have happiness in your life, but you have to adjust to a new world. We can’t respond adequately to other people’s tragedies. It is impossible to empathise with all the bereaved, all the time. If we could absorb the significance and importance of every death we heard about in the news then we would be unable to function. Ten Dead in rail crash. What?! The memories of ten people have been obliterated; the hopes and concerns of each have vanished forever. All leave behind people who will be devastated by their loss. So we can’t deal with it; recognising the humanity behind each news story is too much to bear. We say we’re sorry, we pretend to ourselves that we feel sad about it and get on with other things. And this isn’t callous; it’s the only way that anything gets done. We can’t feel each other’s pain, and what a relief that is. Imagine if we could: it would be incapacitating. You know where this is going, don’t you? All roads lead to Dirt McGirt.
The reaction in my house to the news of O.D.B.’s death got me thinking. There was an initial surprise (“No fucking way!”), then not-so-much-of-a-shock-actually, followed by a succession of O.D.B. stories that we laughed our way through. No glum faces, no fake sincerity or hypocritical concern for those he left behind; just an excuse to celebrate the crazy fool. If you think about it for even a second, then of course it’s sad. There will be people close to the man born Russell Jones who will today be facing a seemingly unending darkness. But it’s not my tragedy. It’s not going to affect me in any way. His rap on the Neptunes album was quite good, but you know, I wasn’t holding out for a world-shattering solo-project. The only justified emotion is a hope that those in his wake will fare better: a concern for those still alive. All this is by way of saying that our reaction to the death of famous people is interesting. If someone is old and not working anymore then why do we pretend to be affected? They’re not going to entertain us with any new work. If they’re young, then we miss the entertainments foregone, not the individual. In some way grief is a privilege, and unless we have a personal relationship with the deceased we have no right to mawkishness or to sympathy for our loss.
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