Love leads to loss. There is no escaping it. The more
closely you hold someone, something, the more pain is felt once it departs. We are
instinctual in our love for family, mothers, fathers, brothers, children. But as
individuals we create new connections with those beyond our reach - the artists.
We grow with them and they in turn form part of who we become.
Imprinting their words, voices, feelings into us and injecting part of their
soul into our own. Often this adds weight to how we view the world, ourselves
and each other. But it is a weight we are happy to carry. There is meaning and
beauty in the depths of the darkness they share.
And vicariously we jump and kick and scream and fight with
them, through them, because our lives dictate we cannot fight, we cannot
scream. The art allows you to become more of yourself. Your dna is engrained
with it and so it turns to a devotion of sorts but one that gives just as much
as it takes. And when they are departed it feels as though part of you
has also, they are an old friend only you knew, who understood you more than
anyone. And the hurt remains as music, as a voice. And you are left with the
question of how to turn that back into the beauty of how it all began.
Maybe I’m being overly dramatic - and all today I’ve felt the
need to lessen the importance of all this. They are just songs, and singers of
songs. But I can’t play the songs today. I can’t listen to the music yet and
hear a voice that meant so much, that won’t sound ever again. Tomorrow I’ll
try, I’ll dig out a selection of records and link them one by one as a
screaming tribute. But for now, today, there's silence.
