Sotto Voce

I wanted to feel bad that Whitney Houston was dead. I re-listened to the songs. Not by choice but because I made the mistake of turning on the television/turning on the radio/going into a grocery store/listening while outside my house in the days immediately following her demise. Being dead has been amazing for her pop culture visibility. She hasn't been this big since '94.

Yep, there was no denying the level of talent. She could sure sing the crap out of songs well outside the genre and scope of things I would be interested in in any way. And there was that one time she heroically mouthed along to a pre-recorded version of the national anthem before that Super Bowl. Those things together makes the news of her death particularly... tragic?

I don't object to the overuse of words normally. "Literally" has literally lost its meaning and "awesome" has wounded the concept of awe in itself, probably mortally. But look, language evolves, it changes. We're all using all of it wrong by increasingly comprehensive degrees depending on how far back the standard is set. When I think of all the Shakespearean euphemisms for "penis" I either can't use or will never know, something that is probably a tear rolls from one of my eyes.

So yeah, dead pop stars aren't really all that "tragic." And yes, I know all the details about how she lost all her money and was ravaged by addiction and self-doubt and was married to the fourth lead from New Edition. All these are unfortunate things. But look, I missed this week's episode of "Modern Family" because I forgot to clear the backlog on my DVR. We've all got troubles.

But maybe being dead is more of a boon to a reputation than I'm giving it credit for. My DVR travesty is dismissible not because my Q rating is submeasurable but because I've thus far lived, rendering the incident not only transient but addressable. As upsetting as it is, it has proven to be survivable, and thus doomed to be lost in the vast and growing horizon of experience spreading out behind me.

So I guess the point is: be mindful of what you're doing in the moment because it will seem incredibly important to everyone if suddenly you die. Something that occurs to you in passing or you pick up in curiosity with every intent of quickly putting down again immediately becomes a defining aspect of your personality forever and ever. Or at least until the people who knew you also die. It will also help if one of them has a BDSM dungeon for posthumous discovery or something similar. You know, to take some of the heat off.

Drowning in a bathtub honked up on prescription drugs tends to leave an non-triumphal final impression. When I go, I'd prefer not to be thought of as "tragic." It doesn't seem likely though as mostly I prefer showers.