I’ve followed Caitlin Doughty’s Ask A Mortician series for a while, but this was different. Caitlin on camera is always kind and gentle, talking about the serious subject of death. This is an angry Caitlin, and rightly so.
This caught me up quick – “There is dignity, grace, and humanity, in changing your mind.”
She’s right of course, I’ve been so angry about people refusing to see the facts, not wearing masks, being idiots, demanding an haircut or whatever, when maybe what I should be is less pissed and more focused on education.
“Everybody has experienced the defeat of their lives. Nobody has a life that worked out the way they wanted it to work out. We all begin as the hero of our own dramas, in centre stage, and inevitably life moves us out of centre stage, defeats the hero, overturns the plot and the strategy and we’re left on the sidelines, wondering why we no longer have a part, or want a part, in the whole damn thing. So everybody’s experienced this. When it’s presented to us sweetly, the feeling goes from heart to heart and we feel less isolated and we feel part of the great human chain, which is really involved with the recognition of defeat.”
— Leonard Cohen on why people enjoy listening to melancholy songs. From a BBC radio interview in 2007
“What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be,
darling citizen.”
Inspired by the sight of Bowie’s producer/engineer Tony Visconti embracing one of Bowie’s backing vocalists by the Berlin Wall, the song tells the story of two lovers, one from East and one from West Berlin. Bowie’s performance of “Heroes” on June 6, 1987 at the German Reichstag in West Berlin was considered a catalyst to the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall.[4][5][6] Following Bowie’s death in January 2016, the German government thanked Bowie for “helping to bring down the Wall”, adding “you are now among Heroes”.[7]
