Why we grieve artists

Just a little over a year ago, I wrote about the LKY, recording what he had meant to me, in life rather than in his death. He did have a great impact as I was attracted to come to the more progressive country that is Singapore as a student in the 80's. 

Then, in quick succession, Bowie and Frey died. They weren't statesmen who provided the education nor infrastructure for my development but yet I felt the vacuum they left behind. Today, yet another genius of a musician passed. These artists provided the soundtrack to my youth in the 80's.

There were the usual tributes but this one from Vox.com by Caroline Framke really hit the mark. I decided the extract it below for posterity.

"Any time a revered person dies, the established stages of grief seem to launch into hyperdrive. The second the news drops, final and cutting to the quick, the ripples start to spread. Soon enough, the grief feels magnified, becoming an ever-complicated web of shifting memory, gutted despair, muddled controversy over their worth, stark regret. Maybe there will even be some joy.

But as the deceased begins to settle into the past tense, a couple of questions remain: Why did this person matter so much? How hard are we allowed to grieve, if we're just one among so many?

Juliette @ElusiveJ Tweet

Thinking about how we mourn artists we've never met. We don't cry because we knew them, we cry because they helped us know ourselves.

And that's it. That's it, completely.

Great artists give voice to both the huge emotions that threaten to consume you and the fuzzy ones lying in wait in your periphery, indistinct but just as urgent. Great artists reach into their own hearts, brains, and guts to wrench out what's most vital and hold it out for you to grasp. Then you can decide what — if anything — it means for you.

Even if multiple people posted about the same song, their reason for doing so varied wildly. My friends and celebrities alike talked about how Bowie and Prince expanded their horizons and made them feel less alone. They talked about how they created thrilling, limitless universes they could visit on demand, within the comfort of their headphones. They talked about how much they meant to them — how much they helped them get to know themselves.

Grieving en masse might intensify the initial reaction, but every single response to a public figure's death is an individual one. We all experience art from our own singular place. That's true whether you're hearing the joyful, soaring chorus of Prince's "I Would Die 4 U" or the fierce zip of Bowie's "Rebel Rebel" for the first time. It's true whether you're feeling an ecstatic jolt at Michael Jackson's "Thriller," clutching your face to keep from smiling too hard at Robin Williams's performance in The Birdcage, giving in to the chills inspired by Heath Ledger's smile in 10 Things I Hate About You, or closing your eyes and letting the smoke of Amy Winehouse's voice curl around you and squeeze, just a little too hard.

Or maybe you don't quite recognize any of these experiences. After all, they're mine. In these moments, I learned a little bit more about myself thanks to people I never met and never knew beyond the art they presented to the world. But I'm still grateful they passed through my solar system, even if their orbits were worlds away — and so, I suspect, are you."

Thank you, Prince, for Purple Rain, for When Doves Cry, for Little Red Corvette, for Cream, for 1999, for I Would Die 4 U, for Darling Nikki, for Raspberry Beret, for Sign O' The Times, for Nothing Compares 2 U and heart achingly prophetic Sometimes It Snows In April. This April day, the music died.