As I sit here with one song repeating on the generic digital music player I want to address my grief.
I am in a peculiar situation. I have always felt it a little pathetic when you see people shedding real tears over the deaths of people they had never met- I mean when a celebrity has died, someone I have been a genuine fan of, I will feel sad and have a moment of regret over their loss- but to actually shed tears when you never met the person, didn’t have an idea who they really were or what their true beliefs were… that’s ridiculous, right?
I still think that.
But today I have joined the ranks of the ridiculous and pathetic as I find myself shedding very real tears at the death of Beastie Boy Adam Yauch. And here’s where it gets worse… because my go-to music when I am grieving has ALWAYS been Licensed to Ill because that takes me to a time when life was pretty much as ok as it could be… and as you can imagine that is offering precious little support today no matter how many times I hear it.
So instead, I am sharing with you all like you are my therapy group or something… maybe you are, I’ve never really thought too much about it to be honest with you.
But I am hurting. In a bad way.
See I spoke recently about how there is always one member of a partnership we like more than the other and MCA was very much my Beastie boyfriend. I was in my early teens when the album arose and impressionable me created an entire impression of who he was based purely on the lines he spoke in the tracks I heard. And thus I built my ideal boyfriend out of lyric scraps…
I did say ridiculous and pathetic, didn’t I?
But anyway… imagine that your first love has died; the grief that would instil regardless whether you have seen them since or not and that is pretty much what I am feeling right now.
I was out when the news broke; hidden in the depths of the nearby town as yet seemingly untouched by the internet, so I went to a comedy show (review to follow once my emotions are processed) had a thoroughly good time, then hit the internet on my return to find the news awaiting me. And like many others I am sure, I was fully aware he was ill. In fact, I read only a couple of weeks ago that his condition was terminal. But these guys are indestructible, right? Terminal means nothing if you are immortal.
I will stop now, mostly because I have nothing new to say and am pretty much rehashing old thoughts just for the sake of writing something…
Although that is pretty much what the grieving process amounts to, isn’t it? Expressing every though, every feeling in an attempt to shed them all from our inner soul.
Either way, I need to take a few moments with the bassline reverberating through my head just to shake out the clouds.
To close, my favourite Beastie song, which has been repeating since 4pm and it’s almost 9.30 now! Doubt I’ll ever listen to it again without tearing up!
There is a beautiful tribute to Yauch on the Beasties' website
And this, from Eggsy of Goldie Lookin Chain paying tribute on the Radio 5Live Breakfast Show this morning:
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