It’s easy to be superstitious. It provides us with the comfortable closure that we often look for. It’s easy to ascribe grandiose significance to numbers and dates that would otherwise only be notches in the general randomness of the universe’s being. In chemistry, they call that natural sense of randomness; Entropy. And Entropy makes hard sense. Our least favourite subject, giving us another dose of hard fact, what are the odds, right?
Before I descend into the natural randomness that we are all destined to exist in, let me be human and tell you why I am writing this. I’m writing this because I am irritated, and mildly angry. I’m angry because of people using the term, “27” rampantly. Yes, it is a term, sadly. It has become so much more than another number. Why? Because a bunch of famous people died at that age. And this building list of co-incidences over the last half century has spurred all of the world’s out-of-work shamans and tragic comics into full steam.
The magazines are slamming out countdowns featuring the 27 greatest 27ers. Independent “research labs” are coming out with astonishing findings such as “more musicians tend to die at 27 than at any other age,” and bathroom poets are weaving sad tales of tortured artists, burnt down spirits and engulfed lives. All at the tragic young age of 27. A wonderfully run industry with the most random premise. The number 27. Randomness has a way of making inroads, even if we don’t want it to.
And then, there are those affected. The families, friends, pets, loved ones and people who felt the human interaction they now greatly miss. The unfortunate loss of a wonderful, beautiful someone who went too soon.
There is nothing for them to hold on to but memories, guilt, love and love lost. “How did my bright young boy go from being a great film student to a lifeless body lost to alcohol? I raised him. Where did I go wrong? If it was anyone’s job to get this right, it was mine…and I failed. So now, here he is. Or sadly enough was. Where now? To my own spaces of recovery or the cruel jaws of paparazzi questionnaires? A few headlines less if he’d gone a year later, at 28? A missed place in the proposed “27 club” museum if he’d left a year earlier? Less the martyrdom deserved, and more the art appreciated if he had lived instead for another two decades and left behind a family of three? Well done son, you were always late for dinner, but you timed yourself for immortality. Well done.”
Let me be obvious here, and say NO, that’s not how they think. For them, the life was a little more than a tabloid statistic tailored for the joy of rock’n’roll’s wannabe poets. Can we respect that? Apparently not, so let’s try it another way.
My girlfriend’s childhood friend died at the wrong end of his uncle’s rifle. His finger got stuck in the muzzle. He tried to pull it out but it was stuck too hard. Eventually, he slammed the butt down in the hope of freeing his finger and ended up shooting himself right through the head. And so a mother lost a son. At the age of 14, he went. “The almost impending tragedy was a song long sung by those eyes, that inexplicable there-yet-somewhere-beyond glance that added a medieval soldier’s detachment to his expression,” no one wrote bull-shit like that. And thank god for it. The family was allowed to deal with it, in their own way. We common folk have it easy like that. In our toughest times, we have the privilege of being surrounded only by the herd we love and trust to take us through. We may not make it, but they’re still there. And the vultures aren’t always in sight.
We take so much from the famous. Atleast in death can we give back? Let their loved ones have the privacy they need to grieve? Let us remember that to the millions across the world, Amy Winehouse was a personality. A super-woman voice and a super-wattage wreck, but to Mitch and Janis she was Amy. The baby girl they lost.
They baby girl they saw slipping away. She was a person. We know her to be human, they know her humanity. We sing along in gleeful retrospect to “Amy, Amy, Amy” but their daughter’s name three times uttered has a very different ring to them. Let us understand that, and try and put ourselves in their tragic shoes. We will have to put them on anyways, at some time or the other. Let us celebrate what she left behind, but let’s not make a crass industry out of the misfortune of her death. Amy Winehouse passed away, aged 27. So did Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and many others. Let’s discover our own humanity, and not dance on their lives with this horrible, trespassing number that is “27”. RIP.
Dhillan Mowli was an RJ/Content Manager for Worldspace Satellite Radio and an RJ/Music Manager for Radio Indigo 91.9 FM. He is now freelance consultant, offering a variety of creative services to ad agencies and media outfits. He is also a backpacker, passionate traveller and writes on women’s rights, gay rights, sexuality and pop culture among other things that matter to him. Snakes, rock-climbing, the outdoors and a good argument are only some of his loves. A good book excites him just as much as a good record.