I never knew much about Amy Winehouse. I liked her song Rehab because it was fun to sing, and yes, I did try to mimic her voice in a kind of caricatural way, because I like doing this when singers have a distinctive sound. (My favorites are Jon Bon Jovi, Brandon Flowers, and Cher.) And she was indeed unique. She had a style that was her own. She had problems. She was a rock chick. She was cool because she was different.
But I was surprised at how disturbed I was about her death. It was tragic, too soon, sad, shocking even though we half saw it coming, yes, all of that. So much talent, so much accomplished, so much thrown away because of an obsession that consumed her and stole everything she had worked hard for.
And still, not being a huge fan, why was I so disturbed by it?
I remember feeling the same about Heath Ledger when he died, also tragically and too soon. I liked his movies, I thought he was super good-looking, but again, he wasn’t a favorite actor of mine.
Obviously, all celebrities die. And most of us—I’m not including the super elite who don’t care about celebrities, who think they are stupid and that people who care about them are stupid—but most of us are touched in some way by their deaths. But what I can’t figure out is this: Why do celebrities’ deaths affect us so much?
Why should we care so much? We don’t know them, they don’t know us. We might not even like them if we met them, and vice versa. We have nothing to do with each other. We’re fascinated by them, for sure. Their lives, their lifestyles, what they’ve accomplished. I think in a way, celebrities remind us of what’s possible in life. What we could be, what we could do. A more successful version of ourselves. And we see our own failures magnified when a celebrity is caught with our same failings. Maybe all of this holds up a mirror to ourselves, making us see what’s inside of us more clearly. We’re able to see faults in others much more easily than we can see them in ourselves, after all. And we cheer celebrities on. We sympathize, empathize, and hope for the best for them. We feel like we know them, because their work and personality become part of our lives. We feel cheated by them if we find out they’re fake or phony.
There has to be some deep psychology going on here. Fan Psychology, or Celebrity Psychology, or something. And yet nothing about this has to do directly with why celebrities’ deaths affect us, whether or not we are actually a fan.
Put most simply, death is loss, and for me at least, when a celebrity dies, loss itself becomes somehow personified. It shows us that we’re human, and mortal, and if even the exaggerated versions of human beings we know as celebrities can die, then we have to remind ourselves that we will too.
Maybe the biggest aspect about Amy Winehouse’s death that affects me is its tragic element. She was young, talented, alive, and yet lost a battle with her personal demons. She had problems and addictions and wore all of them on her sleeve, and her struggles were in our faces, whether we sympathized or not. She didn’t hide anything, couldn’t hide it, really.
If celebrities’ lives are a magnified version of our own, then maybe celebrities’ deaths bring us to terms with our final destiny in a large and ugly way as well. Are we running in circles, or making a difference? Do we have eternity in our hearts every day, or do we live aimlessly and hopelessly? Do we dream the dreams God puts in our souls to set us on fire, or do we let the fire get snuffed out by life’s pointless trivia—worries about money, popularity, and what people think about us, selfish and loveless actions, jobs but not callings, partying but not joy? Questions we might not like to think about. But in the end, it’s not the date of birth or the date of passing that count. It’s all the space in between.
How will you be remembered?
Originally posted in DeerParkAve.com.
