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Was there a "celebrity" death that deeply affected you?


Skinko

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I have a buddy that's taking the Chester Bennington thing pretty hard, which is what inspired this thread. Personally, I felt nothing about him personally, but there have been famous people who I connected with or understood on a completely different level that when they died, I legitimately felt a sense of loss. You'll often hear people who are now in their late 30s say they felt that way about Kurt Cobain, because they felt as though he was a voice for them when they felt voiceless.

 

To give a personal example, I was incredibly sad when George Carlin passed away. My admiration for him went beyond thinking he was a funny comic. He influenced my way of thinking on a real level. I based a lot of my life philosophy on what I learned from him. So when he passed away, it kinda felt like a father figure dying.

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Leonard Cohen.

Not that it was so much grief, as his age was quite something for a still-touring musician, but I knew things would be different, and I'm still not sure if I'm ready for it.

 

I cried for Philip Seymour Hoffman though.

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Guest Zintar

Hmmmm. Good question. I'd assume many would laugh it off. A death of someone you do not know affecting you. Kinda silly? Death is death, the great equalizer. Going with the op, an artist (of any given medium) can have a great effect / influence on people(s). Their deaths can bum one/many out. For me, not so much "deeply" affecting me, but bumming me out for a few days.

 

For me, Frank Zappa. He was/ still is my favorite musician, since grade school. When Mary from Stereolab died, hit by a car on her bike, that bummed me out. Don Van Vilet, aka Captain Beefheart. Bummer. MCA. Zoogz Rift, a friend and musical cohort. I could think of many others, like Zoogz, friends, in music and other arts.

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When I was a teenager I was really annoyed that Bill Hicks wasn't still alive but that doesn't count.

 

Ray Bradbury should've been allowed to live forever.

 

Bernie will hurt.

 

Bill was one of the greats! I saw him perform a couple of times. I still play his albums/cds and vids. He is missed.

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I guess the closest for me is Layne Staley but I was like ten years old when he died and he'd been out of the public eye for several years already. I didn't even really know about Alice in Chains then.

 

I just think back on it now and it really destroys me to know the talent that was lost at such a young age to something so preventable. Senseless waste.

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I think just Robin Williams, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, David Bowie, and Prince. Prince hit very hard because I grew up with his music and his passing fell on my birthday. Maybe Steve Irwin. Other than that, I don't feel much other than the standard condolences or shock from celebrity deaths.

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Nope and it bothers me that people grieve over celebrities they didn't know personally.

 

This.  One of the problems with selling entertainment is that it involves selling the performer's personality, to the point that a lot of people feel like the know the entertainer when they don't actually - they know the vague image that's given them and that they modify to meet their expectations.

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wifey cried crocodile tears when mj and prince died. it doesn't bother me though, when a celebrity dies. unless i feel like we're missing out on whatever gifts their talent could have brought us, then maybe a bit. in that regard, heath ledger's death felt like we were robbed of some good shit, but i don't think i ever really got upset about it.

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No one to leave an eternal ache or anything like that but a few who are remembered for whatever reason. C. Martin Croker hurt like a bitch. Finding out that Stefan Karl Stefansson [Robbie Rotten] has stage 4 at this point was a shock and I'm kind of surprised by how sad the news made me feel. Alex Toth went the way I would like to go - with a pen in hand. Leonard Nimoy was a sad. So was Alan Rickman and Prince [although he was a shy tiny weirdo in person]. And even at my age, I still think Mr. Rogers should have lived forever.

 

There are others and there will be more.

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Nope, yeah there's some celebritys that I was like dam can't believe they are gone I grew up listening or watching them but not to he point that I am deeply affected by it. I think the only time I did get emotional and was shocked was when Eddie Guerrero WWE  (not sure if that counts as a celebrity) died, the old WWE was super big for me and when I saw that I couldn't help but to feel the feels

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I would say, more about creators than celebrities for me, and more about their work than their deaths. 

 

Most recently I guess Romero.  His work provided a gigantic early spark in my brain, and then throughout my life, his work continued to do that for me.  It's not the same as having somebody in your life one minute and then have them just be gone.  But - I feel like there are people that I've learned from, but never met them.  And it almost feels like there's an edge of disappointment there, like a debt hanging in the air that can't be repaid or something.  Like I wonder if they really got to experience that knowledge in a real way that they were inspiring to people, or teaching people things. 

 

I mean, I never met him, but I still feel a very genuine and deep sense of gratitude for George Romero, his work, his writing, some of his core principles.

 

I've felt that way about a lot of writers and directors and artists.

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I actually was very sad when Steve Irwin died, even though I was never a big fan of his. I suppose it's because it seemed he was almost invincible, yet a mere stingray killed him.

 

I'll probably only be truly sad when J.K. Rowling dies.

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I feel like there are people that I've learned from, but never met them.  And it almost feels like there's an edge of disappointment there, like a debt hanging in the air that can't be repaid or something.

 

 

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lou reed.

and nick drake, even though it was way long ago, and it's probably dumb that i care, he was such a kind guy with a tortured soul and the circumstances surrounding everything that led to his death + reading about his encounter with francoise hardy screws with me still.

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"This, too, shall pass."

 

We have stood aside many a casket, and borne their gravity. Yet no death has ever deeply affected Us, and We suspect there is only one that even could. Not those who We knew intimately, and certainly not those that to Us were little more than intangible entities.

 

This is not to say that We felt nothing. Indeed, We held a great deal of sadness at the passing of Lemmy, Rickman, and Harrison. We had a significant sense of loss for Hedburg. 

 

But tragedy is the way of the world, and death is part of life- and not just any part, but its defining characteristic. Thousands of people die every hour. To linger on any one in particular seems, to Us, absurd.

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This ^

 

I don't give voice to my irritation, but i've never understood this....

 

For some, there is a value in the remembrance even if we didn't know the person or persons directly. The grieving is not just for the person gone but for whatever contributions they made and whatever connections the individual themselves feel, however small, to those contributions.

 

You don't necessarily have to know the person personally, just whatever they represented to you.

 

My examples would be Mr. Fred Rogers and Prince. I grew up watching Mr. Rogers pretty much everyday as a little kid because PBS was one of the few channels we got and even though I hadn't watched him in ages, I was still sad when he passed away because he represented the type of calming listening adult figure that I didn't have growing up except through the tv. Prince was a slim part of the 80's for me through occasional radio exposure but he was from Minnesota and, let's face it, Minnesota pretty much had him and Jesse 'the Governor' Ventura as it's biggest celebrities - now it just seems to have Jesse 'the crabby nursing home patient' Ventura.

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For some, there is a value in the remembrance even if we didn't know the person or persons directly. The grieving is not just for the person gone but for whatever contributions they made and whatever connections the individual themselves feel, however small, to those contributions.

 

You don't necessarily have to know the person personally, just whatever they represented to you.

 

My examples would be Mr. Fred Rogers and Prince. I grew up watching Mr. Rogers pretty much everyday as a little kid because PBS was one of the few channels we got and even though I hadn't watched him in ages, I was still sad when he passed away because he represented the type of calming listening adult figure that I didn't have growing up except through the tv. Prince was a slim part of the 80's for me through occasional radio exposure but he was from Minnesota and, let's face it, Minnesota pretty much had him and Jesse 'the Governor' Ventura as it's biggest celebrities - now it just seems to have Jesse 'the crabby nursing home patient' Ventura.

 

ok, I get the general reasoning, but the thing that made them who they were, the thing that brought them to your attention, that stuff still exists...the music, the show, the books, and whatever else....them being gone doesn't undo that.....you don't know these people, you're just tying their worth to their work....

 

idk, I guess we all need something to prop up what we've got going...who am I to judge

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