I NEVER saw Amy the way some people did, as junkie fuckup tabloid fodder. To me she was wonderful. Glimpses of her dark side saddened and worried me, but I did not mistake the ugly pictures for her.
It is possible to edifyingly consume artwork without respecting its maker, as though we believe the artist herself is not to thank for her own work. Many seemed to perceive Amy as an obnoxious, unworthy vessel for her Talent. I made that mistake myself at first: I liked her, but I didn't respect her. Fans can be cruel like that.
I came to properly appreciate her, though. How could I not, when Back to Black so uncannily resembled a gift granted me from Adonai above? You see, I was collecting tapes of the Supremes and the Shangri-Las back when the other little girls were on Tiffany and Debbie Gibson. Hearing that girl group sound from the quaveringly brassy vocal chords of a London Jewgirl with tattoos and rapper collaborators and British writing skills was almost more than I could bear. Amy was like a chimerical joint invention of my inner child and outer adult. (She even threw in some Specials covers to appease my inner teenager.)
I came to properly appreciate her, though. How could I not, when Back to Black so uncannily resembled a gift granted me from Adonai above? You see, I was collecting tapes of the Supremes and the Shangri-Las back when the other little girls were on Tiffany and Debbie Gibson. Hearing that girl group sound from the quaveringly brassy vocal chords of a London Jewgirl with tattoos and rapper collaborators and British writing skills was almost more than I could bear. Amy was like a chimerical joint invention of my inner child and outer adult. (She even threw in some Specials covers to appease my inner teenager.)
IT'S FUNNY how much you can care for someone as a fan. I needn't try to explain the collision of internet mourning and the peculiar nature of loss when you are mere fan to the dearly departed, because Jay Smooth already did here.
I did cry. In the bathtub and on the floor of the Oakland Marriott. You only spend a bright summer Saturday in a hotel in the downtown of your own city (inhabiting the floor even) if you are recovering from a herniated disc and using your mom's stay at said hotel as an opportunity to abscond from your home for a change of scenery, so of course that was my reason. But the setting was fortuitously Amyish.
I completed the first inevitable cycle from "Back to Black" to "Tears Dry On Their Own" feeling sheepish, struck by how perfectly Amy had provided a soundtrack for mourning her. Her work made it too easy for me. And that's the gift I think we undervalue.
We can cluck about drugs and fame, but there was a more essential, if ridiculably "tortured," artistic quality to Amy. Tearing your heart open and pouring the contents into music can be healing, but it also costs something. We took Amy's end product, whatever it cost, lapped it right up. At best we listened to what she sang and really heard her. (And I suspect being heard was the compensation she sought, not money or fame.) At worst we violated her privacy and made sordid junk food meals of her pain.
That thing we got from Amy--that elusive, potent magic--she put it there. Herein lies the demanding quintessential skill of an artist. Perhaps we cannot directly see or hear the result of the exercise of such skill. But we do experience it some way, and are drawn to that quality. Crying on the floor was a poignant meme for me because Amy made it so. She did the alchemical drudgery. I got to enjoy the pain-turned-beauty.
If you really have a heart and it really breaks, some faux-angsty song like Beyonce's "Irreplaceable" won't do shit for you. "Back to Black" or "Wake Up Alone" might. That is the difference.
Someone once said to me (when I was in fact dressed for Halloween as Amy) that he could be no fan of hers, since he only listens to 'real Soul.'
I completed the first inevitable cycle from "Back to Black" to "Tears Dry On Their Own" feeling sheepish, struck by how perfectly Amy had provided a soundtrack for mourning her. Her work made it too easy for me. And that's the gift I think we undervalue.
We can cluck about drugs and fame, but there was a more essential, if ridiculably "tortured," artistic quality to Amy. Tearing your heart open and pouring the contents into music can be healing, but it also costs something. We took Amy's end product, whatever it cost, lapped it right up. At best we listened to what she sang and really heard her. (And I suspect being heard was the compensation she sought, not money or fame.) At worst we violated her privacy and made sordid junk food meals of her pain.
That thing we got from Amy--that elusive, potent magic--she put it there. Herein lies the demanding quintessential skill of an artist. Perhaps we cannot directly see or hear the result of the exercise of such skill. But we do experience it some way, and are drawn to that quality. Crying on the floor was a poignant meme for me because Amy made it so. She did the alchemical drudgery. I got to enjoy the pain-turned-beauty.
If you really have a heart and it really breaks, some faux-angsty song like Beyonce's "Irreplaceable" won't do shit for you. "Back to Black" or "Wake Up Alone" might. That is the difference.
Someone once said to me (when I was in fact dressed for Halloween as Amy) that he could be no fan of hers, since he only listens to 'real Soul.'
I say real Soul really comes from the soul. Amy's damn sure did.
1 comment :
Thank you for saying what was so hard to say and what I read nowhere else in the days after Amy W.'s death. As always, you are fresher and realer than anything else out there.
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