Legends never die, they just fade away.
Hearing about celebrity deaths gives us as a people time to sit and reflect upon life, even if briefly for a minute. With each passing of a great actor, artist, musician, or other big influence in our life, we slowly realize that the world is moving ahead. Our time will be coming soon. We have to face it, or just keep collectively morning our losses.
I can't recall the first celebrity death that I remember having an impact on me. I vaguely recall George Burns passing away, and always saw the image of a man smoking a cigar. Never understood why so many people reacted the way they did upon hearing the news. I didn't have the wisdom or experience to see the impact on the greater whole.
The first big death where the person influenced me a lot was George Carlin. Someone I listened to, laughed to, and influenced a lot of how I should view the world. That one struck home a bit.
I never really had a role model growing up. No big celeb to look up to. You could say the occupation was very transient. There is the person for a few months and then on to the next. No one really staying around long enough to make an impact outside of the time when they did.
I guess I always looked at death from a distance, even when it was up close to me. People cried and got emotional, but I never really did. I always thought I was just freezing up inside, but now I want to think it was me slowly realizing the big picture about life - that death is inevitable. It comes for us all, and we should do what we can to make an impact on the living while we still have the chance.
Moby. I'm taking a quote I heard from Moby about music. The summary of it is that music is really nothing but the air vibrating in a specific rhythm that is pleasing to your ear. Slow vibrations in the air. I took that and went a little more with it when I was talking about death with someone. Think of life, our existence, in that sense of a slow vibration hanging in the air around us. We sound so loud and big when we are right there next to each other. Then death happens, and that vibration gets a little less strong, and a little less strong with each passing day. For some, they made a lot of noise when they were alive, and they will be echoing through time for quite a while. For some, not so much. Slowly the vibrations fade away without us really knowing it.
We don't know about what happens to people on the other side of the globe. We don't know the details of their life unless the vibrations they make in the air travel around to for us to hear it. Yet we keep on living. We keep moving forward.
I want to be able to make enough noise to send vibrations around the world. But then I realize that even if I succeed at that, then slowly over enough time, it will all fade away.
It isn't a bad thing. It just means that life is moving forward and finding new ways to keep moving onward. I enjoy it. So I'll let the musical vibrations of those who have passed recently continue to play on in my head and through my stereo speaker. This is how I honor those who have spent their life trying to make others see the world just a little differently.
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