Post by Dan the G-Man on Feb 15, 2010 23:01:56 GMT -5
I am not there
So yesterday i attended the funeral of a sweet little boy called Pablo Thraikill Castelaz. He was six years old.
How can one make sense of such a thing?
I'm not sure it's possible to do so.
Last Thursday, on June 25th 2009, I woke up to an email from my former press officer in the Uk, informing me that journalist Steven Wells had died from cancer aged 49 a few days previous.
Steven Wells was a journalist whom I'd first met when he interviewed Garbage for the N.M.E sometime in the mid nineties. I respected him enormously as a writer. He was opinionated in the extreme,hilariously funny and was never afraid to cut his own path as a music critic,often publicly at odds with his own paper's taste-making obsessions. Never afraid to stand alone in support of music that he cared for, he was a true renegade and I admired him for his guts,his convictions and his general depth of character.
I was genuinely saddened to learn of his death last Thursday. Journalists like Steven Wells are as rare as alexandrite and the music world is a lesser place without him.
Later on in the day I heard the news of Farrah Fawcetts death from rectal cancer. I was a huge fan of Charlie's Angels growing up. Somehow learning of her death felt as though a little something, pure and lovely ,died in me. The fact that she had also fought a particularly public and traumatic war with this insideous disease was not lost on me and I hope her death was dignified and graceful as she deserved it to be.
A few hours later the news began to spread like wildfire that Michael Jackson, King of Pop had died at the age of fifty from cardiac arrest. It felt unsettling and frightening- the way it always does when a public figure of extraordinary fame passes into the afterlife.
Think Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain or Lady Di etc etc.......
And yet somehow I couldn't quite muster up the same kind of hysterical grief that was overtaking the media and as a result the entire world.
I felt like death in some sense had already claimed Michael Jackson years ago.
For a long time I felt like he was a dead man walking the earth. Hounded and wounded and pained..... shrunk and receded, afraid of life itself.
Nevertheless his death affected me and I was freaked out by the fact that I had heard of three deaths since waking up that morning.
Just as I got into bed that night, relieved that such a sorrowful day had come to an end, I read the news that Pablo was dying.
Of all the deaths I had learned of that day, they were nothing compared to the tragedy of a six year old losing his life.
There is no sense to be made of it.
None at all.
We just have to accept that life is fleeting.
Life is fragile.
Life is precious.
It can be random and senseless
Turtles can live over a hundred years.
Rose blooms can last a day.
Mums can live until they are 72
Husbands can die when they are 40.
And children can die while they are still children.
They remain as they were when they were born.
Innocent and lovely as angels.
Rest In Peace sweet Pablo.
x
Close your eyes
Have no fear
The monsters gone
And he's on the run.........
Beautiful beautiful beautiful darling boy.
So yesterday i attended the funeral of a sweet little boy called Pablo Thraikill Castelaz. He was six years old.
How can one make sense of such a thing?
I'm not sure it's possible to do so.
Last Thursday, on June 25th 2009, I woke up to an email from my former press officer in the Uk, informing me that journalist Steven Wells had died from cancer aged 49 a few days previous.
Steven Wells was a journalist whom I'd first met when he interviewed Garbage for the N.M.E sometime in the mid nineties. I respected him enormously as a writer. He was opinionated in the extreme,hilariously funny and was never afraid to cut his own path as a music critic,often publicly at odds with his own paper's taste-making obsessions. Never afraid to stand alone in support of music that he cared for, he was a true renegade and I admired him for his guts,his convictions and his general depth of character.
I was genuinely saddened to learn of his death last Thursday. Journalists like Steven Wells are as rare as alexandrite and the music world is a lesser place without him.
Later on in the day I heard the news of Farrah Fawcetts death from rectal cancer. I was a huge fan of Charlie's Angels growing up. Somehow learning of her death felt as though a little something, pure and lovely ,died in me. The fact that she had also fought a particularly public and traumatic war with this insideous disease was not lost on me and I hope her death was dignified and graceful as she deserved it to be.
A few hours later the news began to spread like wildfire that Michael Jackson, King of Pop had died at the age of fifty from cardiac arrest. It felt unsettling and frightening- the way it always does when a public figure of extraordinary fame passes into the afterlife.
Think Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain or Lady Di etc etc.......
And yet somehow I couldn't quite muster up the same kind of hysterical grief that was overtaking the media and as a result the entire world.
I felt like death in some sense had already claimed Michael Jackson years ago.
For a long time I felt like he was a dead man walking the earth. Hounded and wounded and pained..... shrunk and receded, afraid of life itself.
Nevertheless his death affected me and I was freaked out by the fact that I had heard of three deaths since waking up that morning.
Just as I got into bed that night, relieved that such a sorrowful day had come to an end, I read the news that Pablo was dying.
Of all the deaths I had learned of that day, they were nothing compared to the tragedy of a six year old losing his life.
There is no sense to be made of it.
None at all.
We just have to accept that life is fleeting.
Life is fragile.
Life is precious.
It can be random and senseless
Turtles can live over a hundred years.
Rose blooms can last a day.
Mums can live until they are 72
Husbands can die when they are 40.
And children can die while they are still children.
They remain as they were when they were born.
Innocent and lovely as angels.
Rest In Peace sweet Pablo.
x
Close your eyes
Have no fear
The monsters gone
And he's on the run.........
Beautiful beautiful beautiful darling boy.