"You're the rebel!"
I never had a rebellious phase. Never pierced anything. Never partied in high school or college. Never even had a curfew. Still don't have tattoos.
This woman I barely knew but who just heard an explanation of my families' dynamic for the past three generation could see what I couldn't--that I was the rebel. I work hard to challenge expectations. I push the envelope. I tread a dense and yellow undergrowth to find my own way to paradise. Maybe the best rebel is simply the misfit being true to himself.
* * *
Amy Winehouse was born five years before me in north London (as her accent betrays) into an apparently somewhat troubled Jewish family. She grew up listening to jazz. She wore her hair and makeup like it was 1965 on cocaine. She sang with every ounce of her being and wrote music like it was the only thing that could preserve her in this life.
I'm about to turn 28, which will make me older than she was when she died of alcohol poisoning in 2011. I remember sitting in a rocking chair in my parents' living room reading a book, the title of which I've forgotten, when I heard the TV in the kitchen announce that she had died. I jumped up to go see and my mother called to me to make sure I'd heard. I stood there is troubled disbelief.
We only said good-bye with words.
It was about five years before that I was initially transfixed by the comfort of her unfamiliarity. As I often did before school, I was sitting in the kitchen watching music videos on VH1. I stood up, put my backpack on, and walked over to switch off the TV on my way out the door when the percussion and the deep mystery of her voice literally stopped me in place, like something I'd never heard before and like everything I'd ever heard before at the same time.
I still know nothing about rehab. Many people saw attempts at rebellion in her addictions--with men, with booze, with drugs. They saw her as the girl who should have gone to rehab, and made snide comments with a lack of surprise at her lonely end. But I don't think these demons were her rebellion. Her rebellion was reaching deep within herself and pulling out her soul through her dreams and her voice to suspend beauty in world that was always so dark and distant. Her rebellion was what hope she held on to when she could and put into the ears and minds of people who would never know the depths of her trouble and fear. Her rebellion was singing silver melodies into a world that demanded more of her than she could possibly give and survive. She made beauty out of pain--wielding a sword of authenticity against the powers of fame and façade.
I still haven't listened to Sarah Vaughan or Donny Hathaway ("Marvin Gaye's like Marvin Gaye, but Donny Hathaway...I dunno...he just had something in him. He couldn't contain himself.") or any of her other influences or idols. I didn't make her a project or an entry point into an unfamiliar genre. But I do think of her when I think of gin. And sniff me out like I was Tanqueray.
You know I'm no good.
It wasn't her life that imaged my life or her experiences that mirrored my experiences. It was her soul that spoke to my soul and called me to take up the rebel's cause.
* * *
We're rebels when we refuse to surrender to despair--and for me, that temptation smells the sweetest. We're rebels when stand up to cynicism with a fleeting glimpse of authentic sentiment. We're rebels when we whisper hope instead of shouting the status quo. We're rebels when we set aside the expectations of those we love the most to do what we know in our bones and feel in our flesh we were made to do.
Here is a place for Amys. Here is a place for swords and shields, for violence and stiff jaws.
Here is a place for the rebel.
I never had a rebellious phase. Never pierced anything. Never partied in high school or college. Never even had a curfew. Still don't have tattoos.
This woman I barely knew but who just heard an explanation of my families' dynamic for the past three generation could see what I couldn't--that I was the rebel. I work hard to challenge expectations. I push the envelope. I tread a dense and yellow undergrowth to find my own way to paradise. Maybe the best rebel is simply the misfit being true to himself.
* * *
Amy Winehouse was born five years before me in north London (as her accent betrays) into an apparently somewhat troubled Jewish family. She grew up listening to jazz. She wore her hair and makeup like it was 1965 on cocaine. She sang with every ounce of her being and wrote music like it was the only thing that could preserve her in this life.
I'm about to turn 28, which will make me older than she was when she died of alcohol poisoning in 2011. I remember sitting in a rocking chair in my parents' living room reading a book, the title of which I've forgotten, when I heard the TV in the kitchen announce that she had died. I jumped up to go see and my mother called to me to make sure I'd heard. I stood there is troubled disbelief.
We only said good-bye with words.
It was about five years before that I was initially transfixed by the comfort of her unfamiliarity. As I often did before school, I was sitting in the kitchen watching music videos on VH1. I stood up, put my backpack on, and walked over to switch off the TV on my way out the door when the percussion and the deep mystery of her voice literally stopped me in place, like something I'd never heard before and like everything I'd ever heard before at the same time.
I still know nothing about rehab. Many people saw attempts at rebellion in her addictions--with men, with booze, with drugs. They saw her as the girl who should have gone to rehab, and made snide comments with a lack of surprise at her lonely end. But I don't think these demons were her rebellion. Her rebellion was reaching deep within herself and pulling out her soul through her dreams and her voice to suspend beauty in world that was always so dark and distant. Her rebellion was what hope she held on to when she could and put into the ears and minds of people who would never know the depths of her trouble and fear. Her rebellion was singing silver melodies into a world that demanded more of her than she could possibly give and survive. She made beauty out of pain--wielding a sword of authenticity against the powers of fame and façade.
I still haven't listened to Sarah Vaughan or Donny Hathaway ("Marvin Gaye's like Marvin Gaye, but Donny Hathaway...I dunno...he just had something in him. He couldn't contain himself.") or any of her other influences or idols. I didn't make her a project or an entry point into an unfamiliar genre. But I do think of her when I think of gin. And sniff me out like I was Tanqueray.
You know I'm no good.
It wasn't her life that imaged my life or her experiences that mirrored my experiences. It was her soul that spoke to my soul and called me to take up the rebel's cause.
* * *
We're rebels when we refuse to surrender to despair--and for me, that temptation smells the sweetest. We're rebels when stand up to cynicism with a fleeting glimpse of authentic sentiment. We're rebels when we whisper hope instead of shouting the status quo. We're rebels when we set aside the expectations of those we love the most to do what we know in our bones and feel in our flesh we were made to do.
Here is a place for Amys. Here is a place for swords and shields, for violence and stiff jaws.
Here is a place for the rebel.