Everybody dies at some point, and whereas less or more tragic circumstances including a too early age will have their impact on how someone is remembered in the days thereafter, only a rare few will have the timeliness of their words and acts remain in living memory and eventually in history.
Politicians are remembered for their momentum in speeches, scientists for their life long researched inventions but what makes true musical artists different is that they do what they do not in search of memory lane but just as an explosive result of skilled expression, wherein fame becomes a kind of a catch 22 by-product.
For as long as we - mere mortals - mirror ourselves in what have become to be referred to as civilizations we have composed and listened to songs and it's striking that the earliest of compositions (Seikilos Epitaph from 200 BC) already dictated we should seek to shine in a too short a life.
Humans apparently need to group trends into decades in order to contextualize the rise and fall of how we dress and what we listen to which somehow says something about where we thought we were going to at the time.
Music has evolved tremendously and along with it the e-enablement of talent and/or perceived popularity. I therefore welcome the reflection world wide media bring these days on the lives of artists that made their mark over various decades with a high degree of immunity towards silly snowballing trends like the cold-war, the millenium-bug, facebook and the present value crises.
At some point I will force my post-generation Z children to listen to one or the other Prince song or allow them to touch one of the many vinyl records dad spend his pocket money on and use the pretext to introduce a carpe diem concept for them to remember to think freely in world that is slowly maturing into admitting it is without a set direction ... and that's okay.
Let's go crazy, shall we ? The world is in need for living poets.
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