Heroes Act/Hope You Don't Get Famous
My son took his first dance steps the other day. A dip and clap, a bent-kneed baby shuffle, copying his dad. I don’t remember the song, but you can guess what we like: his middle name is Coltrane, a girl's would have been Holiday. It’s not all gloom and jazz, but there might be a day he asks why so much of what I love reads like a list of the sad and the dead: Amy, Billie, Etta,; Carson, Sylvia, Emily; Donny, Marvin, John. We could have a conversation about death and genius and illness. Or, we could talk about luck and fate; the danger in realizing your dreams, the consequence of deferring them. Amy Winehouse drank herself to death at 27. Our birthdays are two days apart; I dressed as her for Halloween the October I was 26. I'd thought the resemblance was passing, in retrospect, the photos are arresting. After she died, I made one of the Sharpied-on tattoos permanent. In an old interview, Amy shrugs at fame, “I don’t think I could handle it,” she says, this early prophetess ...