What can I say. “Reality Just Is”. I’m frequently now finding myself in love with dead people. I didn’t want this. I have no preference for dead people. I do have a tendency to love indiscriminately people who are good and nice and talented, but I refrain from fawning over them so it mostly works out OK.
But increasingly I find myself just loving someone who, it turns out, happens to be, um, “dead”… It isn’t like I search this out. It isn’t like I have “a thing” for dead people… It is just the nature of Cyber Space. Folks live on in Cyber Space long after their corporeal existence has ended. Thus my issue / problem.
My best example (but not at all an isolated case…) is Amy Winehouse. This is the song that first captured me long before discovering she was dead:
And then others… Immagine my surprise / shock at finding out that, not only was there no hope as she was a “Sweet Young Thing” and I was a “Creepy Old Fart”, but the real deal killer was that she was already dead and buried. Against my will, I was pushed into necromancy… At least at a fantasy level… But “thought Crimes” being increasingly in vogue, well…
Just Saying… Amy isn’t the only “Dead Romance” I’ve run into… So as “Thought Crimes” go: Am I guilty of “Necromancy In The Nth Degree” as I was “Suddenly Enamored” of someone I did not know was in fact already dead?
We live in interesting times… But since “Dead People” can sue for violation of their “Image, likeness, and copyright”, can they also sue for “He lusted after me” even though I was a rotting corpse at the time… Inquiring Minds want to know… As otherwise I might be up on charges for things I thought about “Various Persons” over the years…
As example products, I present Amy Winehouse”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Winehouse
Amy Jade Winehouse (14 September 1983 – 23 July 2011) was an English singer and songwriter known for her deep, expressive contralto vocals and her eclectic mix of musical genres, including soul, rhythm and blues and jazz.
So note the 2011 date of expiration.. I only discovered and came to love Amy a few years ago, Maybe 2020 or even 2019…
There are more. A Lot More. But what does a person do when they find out a “Heart Throb” was dead before they even knew they had ever lived? I think this will be a growing problem “going forward”..
Musings from the Chiefio 
Cut it out you old perve, droolin over pretty little songsmith 20 year dead things.
Yer cracked me up.
She died of alcohol poisoning, E.M.
Is it wrong to raise a glass to her?
I would like to nominate Hedy Lamarr. She had a part in designing a spread spectrum technology during WWII. I assume she really did have a part in it and this isn’t just some “woke” fabrication.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr
c.f. “Pictures of Lily” by The Who
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictures_of_Lily
@Jim2:
In fact, Hedy Lamar was a very smart woman who was really interested in technology and did, in fact, invent spread spectrum technology. It was not implemented during W.W.II, but she did in fact get a patent for the idea. Initially it was to prevent jamming of torpedo communications:
https://jwa.org/thisweek/aug/11/1942/actress-hedy-lamarr-patents-basis-for-wifi
but turns out the “Boys” were not willing (or able?) to employ the idea.
Another of those necromancy issues….
I experienced this, or something very like it, rather early in life. In the 1950s, when I was a wee sprog, and into the 60s, the BBC used frequently to play recordings of Kathleen Ferrier. She had a warm and gorgeous contralto voice, and, apparently, a personality to match. She sang everything from folk and popular songs to classical favourites, and her passionate recording of “What is life?” from Gluck’s ‘Orfeo ed Eurydice’, still reduces me to a helpless, weeping jelly whenever I hear it. (*)
It was only years later that I learned that she had died tragically early, in her early 40s, of cancer – when I was 2-y-o, which explains why I heard so much of her as a little ‘un. There are some of her recordings on YT if anyone’s interested.
(*) – ‘Orpheus’ Lament’ for his bride, killed on their wedding day by a snake bite as she ran from the unwanted embraces of a drunken wedding guest, is perfectly, heartrendingly appropriate for the situation – first verse (which Kathleen recorded in its English translation):
“What Is life to me without thee?
What Is left If thou art dead?
What Is Ilfe; Ilfe wlthout thee?
What Is Ilfe wlthout my love?
What Is Ilfe If thou art dead?”
Now, having mentioned it, I have to go and get reduced to a helpless, weeping jelly. ‘Scuse me …
Look at it this way.
A man marries a woman expecting her not to change, but she always does.
But dead people are frozen in time. They never change from their screen image. They do not embarrass themselves with stupid stunts (and if they did while alive, no one remembers that, just the good things). So it is not at all unusual to love a dead person. They are frozen in time and will not change regardless of the times or how we change,
Steve C, exactly right on Kathleen Ferrier, ‘our Kaff’. Somewhere on YT there’s a recording (sound only) of her playing piano for a number of party pieces. Magic.
Love is timeless.*
Don’t sweat it, you weren’t going to run away to Mexico with her…
*in some senses, for some values of “love”
@John Van K.:
I don’t drool… just whimper quietly ;-)
They Live.
Elvis tours the Interstate in a huge pink Caddie convertible.
Bob Marley and Frank Zappa still reach us.
Although Joe Strummer’s “We put the past onto Fuji,then we erase it totally.”is getting kinda dated.
Ran into the same thing,It might just be age,Blind Melon Had a song “Rain” I heard one day and thought it mighty fine,later I went searching,only to discover the voice was dead and the band long gone.
But looking back,My father felt that orchestral music was the finest aspiration of man, the best group activity of civilization,went to live shows just as long as he could,loved opera for the same reason.
Having survive 5 years of the worst man can organize for,he sought out all the beauty he could.
So ignore that life has lost another Amy,she left the world richer for her short stay and we must appreciate and enjoy.
To Life immortal.
The full circle sure has modern man terrified.
Shit,everything I did for fun as a youth is now illegal.
Life being a sexually transmitted terminal disease,why do so many fear the completion of these cycles?
The crux of the Dread Covid Theatre has been this weird assumption that everybody gets out alive…or some such idiocy.
@John Robertson – I don’t fear death, but I’m not looking forward to it.
I have always been “high on life.” It’s wonderful, even the sucky parts. When things are down, when you get kicked in the teeth, you have no money (been there!), when you have money (been there, too), when companions die, when partying and celebrating with companions, it’s all good.
You only get one E Ticket to ride here on Earth and then you’re done. If life throws you a curve, at least try to hit a single through the left field gap. But if not, well… you at least got to play the game. I try to enjoy every day of it.
If you go through life fearing death, well… that’s not living.
@H.R. – if everyone reading your comment knows what an E ticket ride is, we are a bunch of old farts!!! I use that expression a lot, and my kids and grandkids look at me like I am from Mars!
(shrug) I still mirror a dead Russian’s site. He died early 40s leaving wife and two young kids.
He had many interests, but the part I enjoyed most were his insights on the turmoils within the old Soviet Union and how these affected “regular people”. Nice photos of real Russian elementary schools and daily life.
Hint: Russians are much like us.
A wish? I wish some of the old Russian pros would document how they once bypassed censorship within the Soviet Union. Those are skills none of us can afford to lose.
@Taz ” I still mirror a dead Russian’s site. ”
A friend of mine is a Soviet era guy. He was head of a Soviet Psychiatric Center but decided to flee to the US in the early 80s. The problem? He was being told that he would support Soviet government efforts to characterize political dissidents as mentally ill. He was told he would have to help KGB officials in what amounted to psychological and pharmaceutical torture of those same dissidents. He refused and the only viable option (and I do mean “viable” in the sense of “staying alive”) was to leave the USSR. For the last 8 or 10 years he has said that he is seeing in the US the same sorts of things he saw in the USSR.
Looked up necromancy; it’s
So which of those are you doing? Bringing her back from the dead? ;-)
@Chris in C:
“Communicating with the dead” though only one way at the moment… her to me… seeing her “spirit” on the screen as her “vision” appears. Briefly brought back from the dead for an encore performance…