It's a shame some of these conversations will die off and be forgotten in a serial thread. They really do deserve their own threads.
I think you both have good points.
Soldiers do die and nearly everyone takes it for granted (whether or not they support the conflict). Celebrities also die and people make a big thing about it. In the case of Prince and Bowie, maybe the world is a poorer place without them, but a lot of celebrities don't deserve the adulation, imo.
I remember when Princess Diana died and everyone made such a tremendous fuss I was very nearly physically sick with disgust.
I'm dreading the Queen of England dying. We'll be wading knee-deep in tears.
#imarepublican
My world is indifferent to the deaths of Prince and David Bowie. But my world is going to be a very sad place when Will Millar and Robert Silverberg die.
As for the Queen, the anti-monarchists here in Canada are eagerly anticipating getting rid of the Royal Family and don't expect a lot of resistance, since pretty much nobody here is eager for Charles to be monarch (and appear on our currency). It's going to be weird hearing "God Save the King" and having his portrait everywhere.
But there are still plenty of people here who have some sort of affection for the Royal Family, at least the Queen. Even my dad was a little sad when the Queen Mum died.
Celebrity worship is something I hate very much, so I can understand this.
In the end these are two completely different situations:
A) Someone who you do not know at all signed up for a dangerous job, during which many people die. This person dies.
B) Someone who writes music you listen to every day, who's personality you know and understand and can relate to, dies, in a line of work that is not dangerous.
Of course B) is going to evoke a much stronger emotional response than A)!
I still cannot understand why there was such a fuss made when Celine Dion's husband died. She herself put on a display of grief that was rather nauseating to watch (while she may have been sincere and I've no reason to doubt her sincerity, it was still ridiculous).
It might be frustrating as a soldier to see such reactions, but people make genuine emotional connections with music and with musicians, even if a lot of those musicians put on an act/a mask when they're performing.
Even if I don't really think I know an author well at all, I will still react emotionally if someone who's works I read on a regular basis passes away. When Iain M. Banks passed away, it affected me emotionally, because I had a strong connection to his work, and because the author was directly responsible for affecting me as a person - his writings and his ideas changed me as a person. There was an emotional connection to the author and his work there, whether I really knew who the author really was or not, and when he passed, I was sad as a result, and I wanted to mourn his death.
That's true for me as well, although I have mourned different authors. On my old Dune forum, we had a custom of observing both Frank Herbert's birthday and the anniversary of his death. Those of us in Robert Silverberg's Yahoo! group had a scare last year when Silverberg had a heart attack. He's over 80 now, and although he no longer writes books, he still connects with his fans and other writers. I've met and spoken with him twice, back in the '80s, and it's been a privilege to be able to converse with him online.
Same thing with Will Millar. I'm not sure if any other Canadians here are old enough to remember when he was the lead musician for the Irish Rovers (from the 1960s to some time in the 1990s). He was my first real celebrity crush when I was very young, and I've remained a fan all these decades. I've met and spoken with him, and we exchanged emails last year. He's retired from performing, and is now a not-too-bad artist. I've got a print of one of his paintings, but I still think my grandmother's paintings are better.
This might be also anecdotal, but whenever I see an American soldier around civilian Americans, there are always people walking up to him and thanking him/her for his/her service. A uniformed soldier will be invited to cut ahead in line, given a better seat on a plane, etc. Americans, from what I've seen, treat their soldiers with a lot of respect. I realize that this is anecdotal, but this is what I see.
Here in Canada that doesn't happen. I mean, it does to a small extent, but not nearly on the same scale. To compare, I would say that we respect our soldiers, while Americans worship theirs. Just what I've seen here and there anecdotally.
There is one day of the year when Canadians bring out their respect for our soldiers, and that's Remembrance Day. For some people it's like a pilgrimage to go to Parliament Hill that day. I can't, so I do it via TV. I've never gone to the local service, but I always watch the Ottawa service.
But still, nobody worships them. Respect, yes. And when someone like that jerk Franck Gervais, who is not and never was a soldier, puts on a uniform and pretends to be one so he can bask in the attention given him by a CBC reporter who doesn't know any better, people get very angry. He was busted even before the live broadcast was over, and ended up in jail.
I'll never get good at music
also school's still going terrible
Do you know more today than you did yesterday? Even if it's just a little bit? If so, you're not failing.
