The Death Of Genius

On Saturday afternoon, the world was still trying to comprehend the tragic events in Norway from the previous day, when we learned about the death on British singer Amy Winehouse. In a word we were "gutted". While none of us could have predicted the tragic events that occurred in Norway, many of us knew/thought/hoped against, the day that would come when someone would tell us that Amy Winehouse had died.

Her death is a gigantic loss to those of us who loved her music and a bigger loss to her friends and family. That she was a gifted musician and singer no one can dispute, and yet despite her talent and fame she still battled a massive addiction, and what's worse it happened in plain view and was writ large across the tabloids. I know that every addict has to come to the decision on their own to end their dependence and get the help that they need and really want to do it, yet when it comes to celebrities it seems that we as a society and our media make it easy for them to continue on their path of destruction. Any one looking at the tabloids will see the cycle well, we build someone up to the point of exaltation, only to revel in their downfall, once they recover, the story of their redemption is once again splashed across the pages of all the papers. And when they die, the media reaches a crescendo, with an outpouring of love and respect for the very person that they dogged for weeks, months, years. We suck the life out of their death until there is nothing left.

Russell Brand wrote a lovely letter about Winehouse. I think that he is right, we can not romanticize her death as part of the "Forever 27" club. Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Janis Joplin were all incredibly gifted artists, but they were also people with families that did not get to see them grow older and in the case of Cobain, a father, who never saw his daughter grow up. So instead of delineating each relapse and trip to rehab with glee and snarky comments, we should look at addiction as a real illness and not as an audition for the next season of "Celebrity Rehab".