Table Talk

“Why do we mourn celebrities?” I ask Toby over our last mouthfuls of dinner.

“Why do we glorify them?” He so aptly responds.

This question, prompted by the sudden death of Peaches Geldof, baffles me.

Image by Cvrcak1 via Flickr

Rewind to 22nd January 2008. My best friend Emma phones me up whilst I’m getting ready for school. “Oh my god. My mum’s just told me that Heath Ledger’s dead.” We’re both heart-broken. After adoring him on-screen from our early years of adolescence, we spent hours gazing into his eyes, imagining what it’d be like to kiss him (be it Patrick Verona from Ten Things I Hate About You, William from A Knight’s Tale, or even The Joker… he was sexy okay.) I even made a selotaped shrine in my school diary: photo’s, a quote, the date of his birth and death. I probably wore black for a week and a little more eyeliner.

And when I think of his passing, I still feel sort of sad. I’m sad we didn’t get to see all the other brilliant films he might have made, or see him grow up. We are the public, we watch them change, get fat, grow old and wrinkly, and we pass silent judgement. It’s what society does. But we’re also people, we are compassionate, and we like to put ourselves in other peoples shoes, and share in their joys and triumphs, as well as their darker moments.

Image by Amaandassr via Flickr

I thought about writing a letter to his daughter, Matilda, then only three years old, and consoling her. I thought about telling her about how that now I was older I still missed my own Dad, and that you never really forgot some of the small details - that I still remembered little chunks that me and my Dad shared together. The way he dried my hair. The day he found my blanket in the road on his way home & picked it up because it sort of looked like mine, just in case. How he knitted the holes up for me in a clunky way in the wrong shade of orange. I felt like writing down the advice that my Aunt had given me as a child, telling Matilda that even though it was painful, losing my father would make me an emotionally strong and compassionate human being in the long run. It wouldn’t be better, it would be different, but it would be okay.

Why do we glorify them? We spend a lot of time consuming things that they do: films, music, sports, TV shows. Sometimes we spend more time concentrating on them, than we do on actual real human beings in our immediate surroundings. How many times have I sat beside Toby watching a film, and analysed every inch of Joaquin Phoenix’s face blown up 10ft tall on a cinema screen?  I’ve listened to Paolo Nutini on repeat, headphones plugged in, blocking out all other sounds completely, listening only to his voice soothe my woes or cheer up my day. I’m not saying it’s bad either; I love music and art, TV shows and films, and I admire the people who we create them, but we invest so much in them. So much so, that sometimes we forget that we don’t really know these people at all. We think we do, but we don’t really, not at all.

I guess we mourn celebrities because we glorify them. That’s the simple answer. I guess it’s not really that simple at all. The heartbroken sixteen year old in me still wants to have a little cry for Heath Ledger. And maybe that’s alright. Then there’s another more adult voice in my head that says, “You didn’t know him.”