The Weirdness of Loss That Isn't Really Loss but Kind of It Is

It’s still weird to me to process a popular singer’s death. It’s weird to feel loss for someone you’ve never met. It’s weird to have been moved so deeply by someone you’ve never met, only seen and heard through electronic mediums. It’s just…a weird thing to feel and process.

I was sad about Prince dying, and Tina Turner. But really, only a bit, y’know? I consider myself a huge Prince fan. A friend wanted to check in on me when he’d heard Prince had died. But I didn’t feel grief or loss. More like disappointed and frustrated. But losing Sinead O’Connor has just been kinda devastating.

I really feel a noticeable amount of grief and loss and mourning. And then I notice that’s what I’m feeling and I’m like, ‘Huh. That’s weird. I haven’t even listened to like half her catalog."

And then I go and listen to more of her music that I’ve always listened to. And it sounds closer and it hurts to move through. But I keep listening. And it kind of starts all over again. Then I put on something else.

Then Andy texts me a live performance of Fire on Babylon and I’m all like, “Goddamn. Goddamn, she was so good.” And it kind of starts all over again.

Like, there are some people who are just so visceral and authentic and you can tell music is part of their physical being when you watch them perform, and I see that in every one of her performances. Music is in their muscle memory, granted a gift that can’t be from this plane. There’s just something that shoots right through you when you listen to them.

And then you think of the times when you listened to them with someone else in your car or in their living room at 3am, drunk and stoned after the disco had closed for the night, and what a communal experience that was. That “I can’t wait to listen to this with you” moment was always something I looked forward to. At least, that’s what I think of.

Maybe that’s where a part of this sadness lives. Maybe it’s not letting go of the artist or the music that is making me grieve at all. Maybe it’s conjuring up another form of loss that I haven’t quite processed yet. The loss of being young and foolish and passionate? And always searching for connection, and then finally finding one, through music? Always through music. And Sinead O’Connor made really, really good music.

Huh. That’s weird.