On February 11, I opened a biography of Whitney on the internet and discovered a coincidence: that day was the nineth anniversary of her death. I have always been moved by his interpretation of I Will Always Love You, the famous composition of Dolly Parton that I invariably relate to her personal situation in the field of drugs. In her beautiful sharps I see her weak, defenseless, as shown in Kevin Costner’s arms in that famous 1992 film, just 20 years before his death.
In the girl from New Jersey I always saw a beautiful, sweet woman, capable of upsetting, and as a result of the famous song my admiration intensified. So quite often I look for this waste of talent and its vocal conditions, and every time I shudder again. I find in Houston a powerful contradiction between his impetuous personality and a helplessness that gives in to a society altered by psychoactive drugs, elements that have killed many artists — Amy Winehouse and so many others.
Although of different origin, I find points of connection between the multifaceted Whitney and the defenseless little sparrow that lives in Édith Piaf, that little bird that flew from the Parisian street where it was born, on the asphalt, to the highest centers of the French capital and from the outside, who surrender to his beautiful and trembling voice. The two are associated to the extent that Piaf depends on a drug without which she feels powerless to go on stage, a situation that begins with the painkillers she requires as a result of an accident. Both touch my most sensitive fibers for their lives, for their vocal cords, for facing a dominant demon: in one case an alkaloid, in the other an opiate, which takes them away before reaching 50 years of age.
It causes pain, in Whitney, the undeniable decay of his voice when, shortly before dying, he tries to recover before the public with the famous song of The bodyguard. There is now hardly a memory of what it was in its heyday and the diva ends up drowning in her own retching. What a pain to know of this ending!
In these two outstanding artists we see a constant that extends to the privileged of the scene: they lose their sense of reality and fall into the pit where many of their companions in heaven have ended up, perhaps pushed by the pressure of their followers. Without ignoring, of course, the especially permeable nature of the protégés of the muses. Protected? What a paradox and what a drama experienced by the characters whose inner nature is so complex and elusive to understand what happens where no one can penetrate!
In the universe of those who feed us with their art, the creative Eros —life itself— in all its splendor and the destructive action of Thanatos —death itself— will continue to coexist. This seems to be the proper balance of a continuum rector of existence, which begins with the first fluttering of that and ends with the last breath of what we are.
Tris more. The establishment continues to boast of its cynicism. Where? There it is visible in every calculated act of what the Government does. Why repeat it.
* Sociologist from the National University.
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