“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players….” Shakespeare in “As You Like it”.
If life is but a play, or to be post-modern, a movie, in which we all are nothing but actors and actresses, then Whitney Houston gave me the soundtrack to my movie. Like a maestro, she was able to match the highs and the lows with her amazing octaves and seemed to mirror the emotions I was going through. Whitney once said that when she listened to Aretha Franklin, she could clearly feel her emotional delivery and that she could feel it coming from deep within. She (Whitney) wanted to emulate that and did she!
My love affair with Whitney started probably in 1985-86. Like the rest of the world, I listened to her croon on her first album “Whitney Houston”. Even now I can hear her sultry voice “…So I’m saving all my love, Yes I’m saving all my love , Yes I’m saving all my love for you…”…I can hear Tom Scott on the sax. It was a heady time. I was head over heels in love and knew what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Like Whitney, I felt the sky was the limit.
Then came 1987. In August of that year, I headed out to Germany to study – all alone. I was 21. I left behind a girl I was crazy about, my parents, my siblings, friends….In my suitcase were several cassettes. One was the newly released album “Whitney”. Even as I heard her sing “You’re still my man”, it matched the words I had heard during a last conversation. I cannot recount how listening to those songs in my room in Radebeul, Germany reminded me of what I had left behind and as always, Whitney manged to draw out that emotion in song, in the timbre of her voice, in her lyrics.
The years went by. She dropped “I’m your Baby Tonight”. It brings memories of Moritzbastei in good old Leipzig, rain in October, the chill in the air but so was love…I thought. It was a time of deep loss and regrets and what-ifs. And the soundtrack she provided was perfect.
Even as she got married, I also got involved in a relationship that would change the trajectory of my life. Even then, she always provided the soundtrack. Even as things spiraled down for me, I could always count on her. In times of deep thought, I’ll pop in a Whitney CD, turn down the light, relax in the armchair and just float on her voice. Her voice was that love that I couldn’t lose. It was always there. Be it on “the Bodyguard” soundtrack or on “Waiting to Exhale” – reassuring, sultry, sorrowful, powerful, emotional.
Slowly, the songs stopped coming. I missed them at first but then I could always turn to her old tunes. Then were the stories and misadventures. I could feel the love for her slipping. Soon, I stopped caring and she became just another girl. However, I knew deep in there was something, something for her. Anytime I heard anything positive about her life, I perked up.
Then she died.
I cannot describe the sorrow I felt. I never knew her and she probably didn’t even know I existed but I was devastated. If our lives are just movies, then the music we love is the soundtrack to our lives. Whitney matched my movie in ways only she could. I felt like I had lost a part of me. I also felt sad because she couldn’t deal with this ordeal called life. She provided a lot of joy to a lot of people but couldn’t take care of herself. Life, like they say, is a bitch and she succumbed to it. I felt sad for the choices she may have made that destroyed her. I empathized because this thing called life scares me too.
Last week was her funeral. The service was powerful. In life, she gave me hours of her beautiful voice. With her death, she helped me put my finger on why I don’t have faith. True, I lack faith and have always wondered why. OK, let me explain. As I watched the service, I was struck by the words of Pastor Marvin Winans. He preached about the importance of prioritizing things in out lives. Then he said not to worry because God says “I got you!” That got me thinking about my lack of faith. I know God watches out for me but being human, my weaknesses and the uncertainty of life sometimes make his power seem insufficient. No matter how great God is, I am human and can totally mess it up. It is this fear that prevents me from having faith. It is not lack of faith in God, but fear of my own foolishness. If anything illustrates my point, it was Whitney’s life. By all accounts, she always spoke of her love of God. In spite of all that, her demons go the better of her. No amount of God’s grace could save her from herself.
So she is gone. Gone with her voice, her grace, her beauty. Like Shakespeare said, “The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.’ For me, the joy she brought me is going to live forever, because that is what I want to remember. Everything else pales in comparison.
Miss Whitney, even now you may be singing “Greatest Love of All” to adoring fans in another realm. Lucky them. Don’t forget to Rest in peace!