some admired (but none-too-active recently) musician dies = "i'm just numb right now..."

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"so, so numb. everything is just black, black."

color me heartless, but stuff like this a bit melodramatic?

what happens when someone you actually know dies?

my visceral reaction is = this sort of thing belittles the language of grief and by extension grief itself.

i know, i know, oops et al. reject my concept of the "economy of emotional expression."

― amateur!!st, Monday, 15 November 2004 19:26 (twenty-one years ago)

sorry, i have my reputation as a fun-hating crank to keep up and all.

― amateur!!st, Monday, 15 November 2004 19:27 (twenty-one years ago)

geeze am, just ask her out already!

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 15 November 2004 19:30 (twenty-one years ago)

huh? i already have dude! that's so two weeks ago!

― amateur!!st, Monday, 15 November 2004 19:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

― dave225 (Dave225), Monday, 15 November 2004 19:32 (twenty-one years ago)

sorry, i didn't know you liked her too.

― amateur!!st, Monday, 15 November 2004 19:32 (twenty-one years ago)

wait, so what'd she say?

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 15 November 2004 19:33 (twenty-one years ago)

we went out dude. twice.

― amateur!!st, Monday, 15 November 2004 19:34 (twenty-one years ago)

AND

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 15 November 2004 19:34 (twenty-one years ago)

"so, so numb."

― RJG (RJG), Monday, 15 November 2004 19:34 (twenty-one years ago)

if i feel like posting something about my personal life, i'll do so.

― amateur!!st, Monday, 15 November 2004 19:35 (twenty-one years ago)

And if people feel like grieving publicly for someone in the public eye, they'll do so too.

― ailsa (ailsa), Monday, 15 November 2004 19:37 (twenty-one years ago)

sorry am.

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 15 November 2004 19:37 (twenty-one years ago)

I guess when someone famous dies I think either "oh that's sad" if I liked them or nothing if I didn't really know who they were.

― jel -- (jel), Monday, 15 November 2004 19:38 (twenty-one years ago)

And if people feel like grieving publicly for someone in the public eye, they'll do so too.

-- ailsa (ailsa_watson7...), November 15th, 2004.

is this something like the "it's a free country, you can't tell me what to do" argument? because i don't recall telling anyone they couldn't do anything.

― amateur!!st, Monday, 15 November 2004 19:38 (twenty-one years ago)

look some people are genuinely upset about ODB, okay? Dude would've been 36 today.

― hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 15 November 2004 19:39 (twenty-one years ago)

this wasn't inspired by ODB at all!

― amateur!!st, Monday, 15 November 2004 19:40 (twenty-one years ago)

rapper is right up there with convenient store clerk on the list of deadly jobs.

― Emilymv (Emilymv), Monday, 15 November 2004 19:41 (twenty-one years ago)

anyway this has less to do with the legitimacy or non-legitimacy of grief but the forms that people use to express it!!

― amateur!!st, Monday, 15 November 2004 19:42 (twenty-one years ago)

this is gonna be like the great amateurist/chuck eddy debate of 2003 i know it.

― amateur!!st, Monday, 15 November 2004 19:44 (twenty-one years ago)

and by "great" i mean "turgid and frustrating for all"!

― amateur!!st, Monday, 15 November 2004 19:45 (twenty-one years ago)

grief sucks

― LSTD (answer) (sexyDancer), Monday, 15 November 2004 19:46 (twenty-one years ago)

Amateur!!st, you said it was up to you if you wanted to post about what's going on in your life. So I said it's up to people if they want to post about their feeling about someone who may have meant something to them. I'm paraphrasing a bit, and I was being a wee bit snarky, but basically, people may be genuinely feeling something about ODB, John Peel, Yasser Arafat, Christopher Reeve, whatever public figure has snuffed it recently. And just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it's wrong.

Unless they don't mean it (I know I've been pulled up elsewhere for suggesting that the public weeping and wailing and outpourings of "media-sanctioned" grief for Ken Bigley, Princess Diana, John Peel, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman etc may be far outweighing the real heartfelt feelings of individuals whose lives were touched by those people). That's a bit twattish. But supposing that these things don't matter to some people isn't much better.
(xpost)

― ailsa (ailsa), Monday, 15 November 2004 19:46 (twenty-one years ago)

*looks over both shoulders. sees no eddy. hears no eddy. yet*

― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Monday, 15 November 2004 19:49 (twenty-one years ago)

I just saw the thread on ILM that made you start this thread (the John Balance one, yes?), and I don't see what point you are making. What difference does "(none-too-active recently)" have to do with it for a start?

― ailsa (ailsa), Monday, 15 November 2004 20:13 (twenty-one years ago)

I cried when Joe Strummer died, and also, strangely, when Freddie Mercury did it as well and they played Bohemian Rhapsody on the Chart Show. Maybe it was something written on one of the computer pop-ups that made me cry then.

I was quite excited when Princess Diana died. Mostly because I went to bed just after the unplanned news bulletin announced she had only received a broken leg. It was strange then to see the special editions of the newspapers in the morning. My excitement lasted until the Old Firm game that evening, or perhaps the next, was cancelled.

"Everything is just black, black" is certainly a melodramatic thing to say. I can't imagine saying it after the death of a famous person. I have said similarly melodramatic things in more preposterous circumstances however.

I also think that "this sort of thing belittles the language of grief and by extension grief itself" is a melodramatic thing to say. Newspaper columnists are always saying this kind of thing, semi-seriously I hope. But grief can't really be belittled, I don't think, nor even its language. Grief will be all right.

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Monday, 15 November 2004 20:14 (twenty-one years ago)

am., of course it's melodramatic, but in addition to mourning for the loss of the person, people are also mourning their own aging, another step forward, another hero gone. They are mourning an end of an era, that is, an end of THEIR era.

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 15 November 2004 20:29 (twenty-one years ago)

sometimes I think the staff of certain music magazines sits around all day, every day, ashen-faced, stammering, "I just don't know what to say....fuck, man...Cobain."

― Riot Gear! (Gear!), Monday, 15 November 2004 20:29 (twenty-one years ago)

Ha ha.

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 15 November 2004 20:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Also I think people look at celebrities lives as a kind of a story, not always like a real person, but like an ongoing tale that they can follow and sometimes identify with. Their death is the end of that story. I have a similar theory about big trials like the Scott Peterson trial, that people think of them as important not because they are special or unique or even important cases, but that they think of them as a story, as entertainment basically, that unfolds in real-life time.

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 15 November 2004 20:39 (twenty-one years ago)

I remember feeling instensely shocked by the loss of certain musicians (Joe Strummer struck as a particularly sad....he certainly seemed like a genuinely great guy, regardless of his status as Punk Rock deity), but I didn't cry (never met the man). I'm very put off by the "graveside groupie" phenom. If Jaz Coleman shuffled off this mortal coil tomorrow, I'd certainly be depressed and saddened by the loss, but I don't know if I'd necessarily cry.

Speaking of all this, John Balance from Coil just died, I gather.

:::tears up::::

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 15 November 2004 20:46 (twenty-one years ago)

Joe Strummer struck as a particularly sad....he certainly seemed like a genuinely great guy,

What the fuck is wrong with me? Joe Strummer struck ME as a particularly sad LOSS...

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 15 November 2004 20:47 (twenty-one years ago)

Sometimes I cry when I watch films, and all the people are just pretending to be alive.

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Monday, 15 November 2004 20:48 (twenty-one years ago)

"I have a similar theory about big trials like the Scott Peterson trial, that people think of them as important not because they are special or unique or even important cases, but that they think of them as a story, as entertainment basically, that unfolds in real-life time."
oh, i think this is commonly accepted fact. there's a scott peterson trial every day - leading cause of death for pregnant women, anyone?

― John (jdahlem), Monday, 15 November 2004 20:58 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, I didn't say it was an innovative theory or anything. Just a theory.

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 15 November 2004 21:01 (twenty-one years ago)

my favorite Beetle Baily comic strip was the one where sarge held up a picture of Curt Cobain and said to Beetle: "Your favorite rock star died, boo hoo hoo." I think he was trying to prove that he could empathize with Beetle, but it just ended up being mean. (and hilarious!)

― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 15 November 2004 21:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Amateurist, phone Boris Johnson. Offer your considerable writing skills to The Spectator.

― Bumfluff, Monday, 15 November 2004 21:33 (twenty-one years ago)

I remember when Kurt Cobain died, the ultra-righty, ever-sensitive New York Post ran a cartoon (wtf?) of Kurt playing guitar in Hell, surrounded by pitchfork-wielding devils (their point being, I suppose, that Kurt committed suicide -- thus he sinned). I don't even like Nirvana that much, and that pissed me off.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 15 November 2004 21:36 (twenty-one years ago)

I've never understood the mass hysteria that goes on when a public figure dies. I mean it's sad and all, but unless you knew them personally, I don't see how you could be devastated by it. Maybe there is something to the psychology of famdom that I just don't get, but public figures who aren't personally known to me cannot produce the same level of grief and havoc that a person who is known to me dying (as happened recently actually). I remember being absolutely mystified, for example, at the mass hysteria at the death of John Lennon. It just seems that people invest too much in their objects of fandom, making them "symbols" for a generation, investing huge meaning to them when in fact they are just *people* and if they were musicians they didn't cure cancer or create world peace or anything. I just don't get it.

― Orbit (Orbit), Monday, 15 November 2004 21:42 (twenty-one years ago)

the mass hysteria at the death of John Lennon

Yeah, that one was quite over the top, it seemed. I don't mean to denigrate the memory of Lennon, but the shots of people bursting into uncontrollable tears infront of the Dakota seemed like a bit much.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 15 November 2004 21:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, man, I've GOT to see that Beetle Bailey strip! And Cobain WOULD be Beetle's favorite rock star, wouldn't he?

Maybe a strip this week will show Lt. Flap in mourning for ODB.

― briania (briania), Monday, 15 November 2004 21:49 (twenty-one years ago)

xpost-

Point of information: Assuming this thread is about John Balance, I would hardly describe Coil as "none too active", having just released a three CD/one DVD boxset documenting their experiments with the Russian A.N.S. synthesizer which has just appeared in the shops this week. Coil was slated to perform in London just a few days ago in a disused subway terminal. They were not chart toppers, but they were hardly "none too active". And while I'm responding: personally, I was looking forward to a planned event in Rome in May; in a joint concert curated by some friends, Coil were going to perform an hour long tribute to Pasolini and my band (Matmos) was going to perform an hour long tribute to Giacinto Scelsi at the Palazzo di Congressi. Now that won't happen, and I won't see John again. I can understand wanting people to not get carried away, but I don't think it's wrong to vent a certain amount of frustration and, yes, grief, at a loss which is both personal and, from my obviously biased point of view, "a loss to music" (concerts that now won't happen, records that now won't be made, songs that now won't be written). I agree that the repetition compulsion to mourn Saint Cobain has become tedious, pious, and kneejerk. But this thing is called "I love music", right? Well, some of us do love certain aesthetic objects to the point that we might want to mourn the death of their creators, whether we know those people or not. You are certainly free to not be so emotionally invested, but it seems a bit callow to gripe that others are.

― Drew Daniel, Monday, 15 November 2004 21:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Actually, we're on I Love Everything. Your mistake weakens your entire argument.

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 15 November 2004 22:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Just kidding.

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 15 November 2004 22:03 (twenty-one years ago)

color me heartless, but stuff like this a bit melodramatic?

Color me heartless, too. Kill all pop stars. See if I care.

― Kenan (kenan), Monday, 15 November 2004 22:03 (twenty-one years ago)

But I don't really think this thread is about Coil, since I haven't really seen many demonstrative proclamations of grief anywhere on ILX (or anywhere else) re: dude from Coil being dead.

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 15 November 2004 22:04 (twenty-one years ago)

"A great strangeness has passed, and now the world feels like a somehow more normal place. ::SOB::"

― Kenan (kenan), Monday, 15 November 2004 22:05 (twenty-one years ago)

(I meant that half-sincerely, BTW.)

― Kenan (kenan), Monday, 15 November 2004 22:06 (twenty-one years ago)

But I don't really think this thread is about Coil, since I haven't really seen many demonstrative proclamations of grief anywhere on ILX (or anywhere else) re: dude from Coil being dead.

n/a, this is why I thought the thread had been started: http://ilx.p3r.net/thread.php?msgid=5251921

― ailsa (ailsa), Monday, 15 November 2004 22:09 (twenty-one years ago)

xpost

The words "I'm just numb" in reaction to the announcement of a death appear directly in the thread on I Love Music about Geff Rushton/John Balance.

ILM and ILE are more than a little linked, surely . . . .

― Drew Daniel, Monday, 15 November 2004 22:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, well, color me wrong about the Coil thing then, sorry.

And the ILE/ILM thing was just me being a pedantic jerk.

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 15 November 2004 22:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, it *was* my mistake. Resume normal programming . . .

I must also confess being mystified by the huge Princess Diana memorials in the Castro when she died. Emotional display always looks weird if you don't share it, I suppose.

― Drew Daniel, Monday, 15 November 2004 22:29 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't even know who Coil are!

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 15 November 2004 22:29 (twenty-one years ago)

I mean, is. Are. Is. There.

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 15 November 2004 22:30 (twenty-one years ago)

WAS

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 15 November 2004 22:31 (twenty-one years ago)

were.

― Kenan (kenan), Monday, 15 November 2004 22:32 (twenty-one years ago)

NOT WAS.

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 15 November 2004 22:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Not was.

(XPOST!!)

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 15 November 2004 22:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Alex, I thought you loved Nirvana?

― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 15 November 2004 22:33 (twenty-one years ago)

people who "don't understand" other people's grief should just shut up

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 15 November 2004 22:36 (twenty-one years ago)

people who won't shut up should just shut up and then the shut-up people should shut up

― Orbit (Orbit), Monday, 15 November 2004 22:43 (twenty-one years ago)

people should stop dying

― LSTD (answer) (sexyDancer), Monday, 15 November 2004 22:52 (twenty-one years ago)

Agreed. All the melodrama is just yankin' ama's crank. The barely living artists of today should be more considerate.

― donut bitch (donut), Monday, 15 November 2004 23:10 (twenty-one years ago)

I figured this thread was started about ODB.

Somewhere right now Ol' Dirty and John Balance are cramped in a gleaming elevator...destination unknown. What could they be discussing?

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 15 November 2004 23:55 (twenty-one years ago)

"Yo, Jhonny, let's drink up, for tomorrow we may... oh yea... fuckin 'a dawg!"

― donut bitch (donut), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 00:05 (twenty-one years ago)

Thread: starts out combatatively

Me: Well, this could be better timed.

Thread: continues without exploding utterly, for some reason

Me: Though, you know, it's not a bad point. We don't meet these people, the stuff we feel about them is mostly stuff we project onto them, there's no good reason to feel especially upset when a stranger dies just because they're famous.

Thread: Kurt Cobain

Me: OH NO YOU DIDN'T!

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 01:07 (twenty-one years ago)

Hahahaha

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 01:11 (twenty-one years ago)

It's true though that most people, however cynical, have someone whose death hits them hard, and they turn into "No, you shut the fuck up about them, you understand?". It's not always obvious, so maybe you're like that about Jaz, Alex, and you don't know it yet. Or maybe about Avril Lavigne, and you really don't know it.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 01:33 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah w/ musicians the relationship is a bit more than mere projection

umm, i dont get what amst is getting at because what seems to be bothering him is what he deems to be an insincerity or pomposity of expression, and duh, i mean who wouldn't that bother, it's annoying, but PROVIDED you dont give a fuck AND who are you to question anyway right? but yeah obviously people having breakdowns and shit are just pathetic.

― John (jdahlem), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 01:39 (twenty-one years ago)

Sometimes grief seems to be out of proportion to the relationship people had with the deceased, but to claim it is somehow insinsere is fairly patronising. The people grieving over Diana weren't pretending to be upset - they were genuinely upset. Now, why that is the case could be very complicated, and I think the media has a lot to answer for for feeding the hysteria, but nonetheless, it was what people felt, and we are not in a position to say that what they felt was someohow wrong, or a lie.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 01:45 (twenty-one years ago)

well the people on the thread who were "numbed" by Balance's death either knew him or had spent a good 20 years of being immersed in his music so it certainly makes sense.

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 01:47 (twenty-one years ago)

I spent 20 years immersed in Joe Strummer's music and it would never occur to me to have a breakdown upon the news of his death. It is a loss, but how is it that people have such *emotional* ties to people they don't even know? It's like fetishization-emotionally attaching intensely to objects, photographs, sounds. Shouldn't that kind of attachment be reserved for people who are actually in one's life?

― Orbit (Orbit), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 01:51 (twenty-one years ago)

breakdown? c'mon!

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 01:52 (twenty-one years ago)

I've seen people treat Cobain and Lennon like they were Jesus or something upon their deaths--yeah, breakdown imho

― Orbit (Orbit), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 02:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Like they were Jesus? Aren't Christians weirder? At least we know what Cobain and Lennon did. These people go nuts over some guy who, for all they know, is a fictional character! That's bonkers. You might as well put up pictures of Superman all over your house. Where a little necklace with an S on it.

― miccio (miccio), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 02:05 (twenty-one years ago)

wear a little.

― miccio (miccio), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 02:06 (twenty-one years ago)

oh yeah thats crazy. what we've seen on ilm threads is very different, i thought you were referring to those.

2xposts

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 02:06 (twenty-one years ago)

I was speaking in general, not about any particular thread (which I haven't read anyway)

― Orbit (Orbit), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 02:08 (twenty-one years ago)

Appropos of nothing, I'm just putting in an offer that if someone will post that Beetle Bailey cartoon, I'll wash your car and hire someone to suck your dick.

― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 02:09 (twenty-one years ago)

it's very likely that anyone who had a "breakdown" over kurt cobain or princess di or joe strummer wasn't entirely stable to start with. the "fetishization" (if that's what it is) is a symptom, not a cause.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 02:11 (twenty-one years ago)

Hahahha!
xpost

― Orbit (Orbit), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 02:14 (twenty-one years ago)

what's wrong with caring about something outside your immediate sphere of existence? who cares that george bush got re-elected, i don't even know him!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 03:32 (twenty-one years ago)

It was the same when Kennedy got shot, people put up with it for a couple of hours, and then it was all "God, you're all such drama queens! You didn't even know him!".

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 03:36 (twenty-one years ago)

it is OK to be emotionally attached to things that maybe, logically, you shouldn't neccessarily be! what a bunch of vulcans!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 03:37 (twenty-one years ago)

has anyone said otherwise??

― John (jdahlem), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 03:43 (twenty-one years ago)

someone was just about to!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 03:43 (twenty-one years ago)

actually i was reacting to orbit's post here:

(not to single you out or anything orbit! it just invoked a reaction)

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 03:44 (twenty-one years ago)

what's wrong with caring about something outside your immediate sphere of existence? who cares that george bush got re-elected, i don't even know him!

There's a difference between caring and having a visceral reaction (like sobbing uncontrollably). And the Bush re-election has the potential to directly fuck with your life, so you should be concerned.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 03:56 (twenty-one years ago)

Amateurist, phone Boris Johnson. Offer your considerable writing skills to The Spectator.

-- Bumfluff (yy...), November 15th, 2004.

if this was an insult, i didn't understand it.

― amateur!!st, Tuesday, 16 November 2004 04:45 (twenty-one years ago)

i was joking, alex! and who are you to judge the validity of somebody else's visceral reaction? emotions are complicated, as my fellow citizen avril lavigne once noted. as n/a pointed out, often a celeb death can trigger a reaction that has more to do with your life than lady diana's or joe strummer's or whatever. that's nothing to scowl at.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 05:30 (twenty-one years ago)

ihttp://www.cnnespanol.com/2004/americas/eeuu/01/27/joe.lieberman/story.lieberman.ap.jpg

everything's something to scowl at

― amateur!!st, Tuesday, 16 November 2004 05:39 (twenty-one years ago)

that somehow is a link to "CNN en Español"

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 05:42 (twenty-one years ago)

fuckin mexicans

― John (jdahlem), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 05:43 (twenty-one years ago)

I got choked up when Johnny Cash died. I suppose, becuse when June Carter Cash died, you just knew Johnny wasn't going to be able to hang in there. And his work, right up until the end, had been so incredible...
But, my boyfriend and I also cried watching an episode of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" where the family was two deaf parents with a blind/autistic son...and we had both wept through "Ladder 49" a few days previously...and i cried when Kerry conceded...so maybe the emotions have just been running so high in general that I'm vulnerable to media manipulation.
BTW, we're both really embarrased about the Extreme Makover incident.

― aimurchie, Tuesday, 16 November 2004 11:21 (twenty-one years ago)

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