On Amy

This had an interesting genesis. Amy Winehouse had just died at the tragically young (and all too common) age of 27. I heard the news on a glorious summer's day at a reunion with college friends at a pub in Exeter. Thing is, I had never been a fan of hers...in fact I was privately inclined to look down on her and her music, a viewpoint I now regretted.

People suddenly clamouring of their admiration for the recently deceased is nothing new, of course, and perhaps there's something very cynical about the whole thing. But I felt I wanted to jot down a few thoughts on this particular occasion, since my change of heart was so abrupt it took me aback. Call it a psychological exercise of sorts.

ON AMY

So I ask myself:

Why the hell

Should I write this?

What am I doing?

I didn't know you

I didn't love you
I didn't like you
Never.

But life is strange
And death is cruelly kind
Suddenly we see the power and the beauty that it gives us
But we pay a heavy price.

I never liked you
I'd always laugh
As I watched you struggle through life
'All her own fault', I thought I knew it all.

But that afternoon
Something shocked me into silence and shame
And I saw you for what you were
A human woman, somebody's precious child.

Is it a good thing or not
That there's a relic behind this cynic
A relic of humanity
Always revealed too late?

But that's part of life's mystery
We're not meant to understand
Why we suddenly feel like crying
So all I can say now is:

Amy
I'm sorry.

(Dedicated to Amy Winehouse)

Thanks to: Brian May for Just One Life and KT Tunstall for Suddenly I See.