I'll be the first to admit that I stopped paying attention to Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston as these amazing voices and world renown talents and took to judging the circus that surrounded their lives. I wrote them off as "has beens" and moved on to the next wave of voices and talents who have TRIED to imitate these greats in their primes. Here are TWO headliners: WE ALL FALL. The "prime" of our lives is NOT our entire lives. WE ALL HAVE CHOICE and FREE WILL. The habits, good and bad, we choose are of our choice. We know Bobby owned a bad boy persona but that's not to say he forced Whitney to snort coke or smoke weed. Allow me to refer to Bobby's "My Prerogative" when we consider choice to do things that either help or harm us.
I woke up this morning, with a heaviness...a hurt...a continued disbelief of Whitney's passing. The disbelief wasn't of the fact that she in fact died, though I was saddened and shocked by that news. The disbelief is in the fact that we IMMEDIATELY look for places to blame, vilify those people and deify the person we've lost.
Compassion.
Compassion is what I'm speaking of, I think. Compassion for the person fighting addiction...for the person fighting to love an addict...for the children left behind...for the loved one grieving. Whitney Houston is deeply burned into the soundtrack of my life. My high school song was "One Moment in Time". "The Bodyguard" soundtrack gave me the Whitney I fell in love with (prior to that I preferred Sade to Whitney and use to argue with folks about why I like her voice more...lol). She was good in "Waiting to Exhale" but that damn "Shoop" song...that was my cut! And THAT is how you sing our national anthem!! I love Whitney. I forgot to love the human...flaws and all. We tend to embrace "the star", but like all stars, they flash burned hot and bright for a moment in time. Love the human, not the star. I must remember that. We all must.
My ramblings...
0 comments:
Post a Comment