And this brings me to Amy Winehouse, who this afternoon, tragically secured her place amongst the members of the macabre '27 Club'. A young woman noticed in her teens, with a raw unusual quality to her voice - a sound so distinctive amongst her peers, that set her apart, accelerated her ability to grab the heights of fame and elevated her to the sycophantic attentions of those who saw the opportunity to exploit what should have been nurtured and protected.
For many years I was intolerant of drug users and alcoholics. To an extent I still am, but ignorance by innocence is somewhat excusable, ignorance by dogmatic arrogant choice isn't and as I've experienced more and more of life and modern pressures, my intolerance to these people has softened. I will never accept that people have no choice when it comes to drink and drugs, unless they're physically forced. Nobody MAKES them carry on drinking to oblivion and nobody forces them to snort up powders or shoot toxic liquids into their veins. It is a choice, but the strength of character to walk away from this is sadly lacking in those people, like Amy, who are flung into a life of money and glamour when they're far too young and immature to handle it. Furthermore, having the discerning ability to see through the murky intentions of vulturous advisers who are set on exploiting young talent in the guise of a support network is nigh on impossible. Especially when the very trappings of success are promising a future where everything landing in your hands is considered a reward for talent. And those trappings, for Amy, enabled her sadly to lend those hands to her own fate.
So my reaction to her death is not one of surprise, but immense sadness and anger. Anger that the Press saw fit to make a mockery of her troubles, to document her struggling to perform, to deliberately set about catching her during some of the most undignified and despairing moments of her life. The 100m distance ban on all media near her or her friends came too late and in reality was a sneer though the viewfinder of the modern age zoom lens. My immense sadness at a unique young woman who was really given no chance to turn her life around without every step she took being scrutinised. Each visit to rehab dismissively mocked by the tabloids, a father who resorted to speaking to the press in an apparent desperation to 'reach out' to her.
Disbelief at people, who even after she's died, seem to think they have the qualification and authorisation to determine that her death was deserved. Because, obviously, they have such great experience of having associated with people like her, they are so well placed to quantify those statements. People who say 'life is what you make it'. These people clearly having absolutely no pressures in their lives, no disappointments, and sat on the pedestals of their self inflated egos.
I would challenge these people to confirm whether they have the same disgusting abusive attitude towards obese people. After all, eating beyond the body's calorific need is surely self abuse - but an illness that many people struggle with and need support and understanding to cope and live with, not taunts and sneers of disgust. Do they have the same attitude towards people in debt, who spend beyond their means because the lure of goods in shops are just too tempting? Or what about people who just can't keep up with the cost of life - are they failures in the eyes of those simply because life is too tough for a season in their lives?
I feel incredibly sorry for Amy and my heart reaches out to her family and friends. Those people close to her who have had to watch the woman they love and care for, slowly ebb her life away. A woman they could appreciate and love for her immense talent and for who she was to them and it is my hope and prayer that in her death, she is afforded a moderate amount of dignity and her family are allowed to grieve without the voyeuristic vultures of the media and public performing their own moral autopsy on her.
