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i was never particularly interested in her music, but that says something about my preferences only and nothing about her abilities.
she became archetypical tabloid fodder. i don't understood how that happens unless there is a public relations machinery involved---so from a marketing viewpoint, one chooses (or one's machinery or one's label and it's machinery) to make you into a signifier, map you into some cliche narrative of the tortured artist, the fuck up who allows people who aren't amy winehouse to console themselves for not being gifted and famous by pointing at her and her signifier problems---see what happens? isn't it tragic? but at the same time, it's not tragic---it's inevitable because that's the cliche narrative and cliche narratives are all the tabloid press is made of. literature of consolation. the signifiers of the famous provide people who aren't a someone to feel superior to.
i don't understand the thinking on the part of publicity specialists that would enable them to sell out the client who's fame pays their bills so utterly and completely. i know the adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity. but this seems to have gone well beyond that.
i don't understand what relations might obtain between the actually existing human being beneath the brand and the brand, particularly in a situation like this where the function of the brand changed from selling records by way of cliche narratives to eating itself.
it is unfortunate that she has died so young. i wonder what played into it. i wonder the role played by the squalor that was constructed around her for brand advancement purposes in this outcome. i doubt that anyone in tabloid space will look into that too hard.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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