RIP Amy Winehouse

'They don't even know what it is to be a fan. Y'know? To truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much that it hurts.'

I know what it's like to care THAT MUCH about someone through their music or art or writing, that I find it really, really upsetting when people make cheap jokes about 'celebrities' dying because you know, to someone their music or book or film means everything.

I understand that some people don't feel like that, or understand that, but I know that there are people that do and I always feel so bad for them when this kind of thing happen, that I know the deep and genuine grief that they feel, the fact that they feel like a massive part of themselves has died. It's not about the fact that someone famous has died, it's about the fact that someone who you felt 'emotionally connected to' has died. Words and music and films can do that, they can reach across languages and races and ages and get to the heart of people. Why should those people be belittled for hurting, or told that they're 'missing the bigger picture'.

For the record, I care equally about the people who died in Norway, I'm not saying that one death is more important than the other, only that I understand why some people 'need to grieve' when their favourite singer/actor/writer dies. What I don't understand is the need that some people have to take the 'moral highround', and to imply that lives lost to addiction are not as valid as those lost to a bomb explosion, or terrorist attacks, or Earthquakes, or floods, or fires.

No-one asks to be a drug addict or an alchoholic, anymore than someone asks to be the victim of a natural (or otherwise) disaster.