Amy Winehouse, 1983-2011

Head over to Ernest Hardy's blog for his excellent take on the troubled singer. Anything I could possibly say would only pale in comparison.

"We’ve so romanticized the tortured artist, been complicit in turning her/him into a blueprint pose and commodity, that we’ve forgotten there is sometimes painful truth at the root of the cliché: There are artists whose muse and round-the-clock demons really are one and the same. We, the herd of consumers, cheer the bad behavior, eat up the self-destructive actions, nod theatrically (so everyone around us can see) that we identify with the pain, maaaan. But we grow impatient when the artist who’s genuinely fucked up doesn’t act like a mercenary CEO, keeping just inside the lines of marketable debauchery and edible despair. We laugh and mock, made uneasy when it turns out shit is real. My writing this isn’t an attempt to excuse or glorify bad behavior or the selfishness of an artist showing up (over and over) too wasted to perform. It’s not meant to “enable.” It is an attempt, however, to recognize a broader context of issues (addiction; depression; creativity; the places where they meet) that are deserving of thoughtfulness and some measure of compassion..."