Amy

I was at a party on Saturday night when someone announced to us all, almost half laughing, that Amy Winehouse had died.

And what I kind of picked up on that made me sad was that not only were some of my friends that were there not at all sad about it, but people were chiming in with "Well, she deserved it eventually taking all those drugs" and "She did have it coming". They were almost acting the same as with Osama Bin Laden's death - as if it was completley socially acceptable to be happy about what had happened to Amy Winehouse. So it was almost comforting when I got home to the internet and saw that not everyone - not even close - was acting like this.

At the start of the year in my Media Studies class, we were shown two photos of Amy Winehouse. One was of her climbing out of a cab, barely dressed and clearly wasted, which was from a red-top newspaper. The other was from her official website, and it was this:



Words like "fresh faced" and "young" and "graceful" were written on the board. The point was that different parts of a person can be used to represent them differently. And then the teacher asked us which one we thought was the "real" Amy Winehouse, and I think that the answer is that it is both and it is neither.

The people I've come across seem to be in one of two groups about Amy Winehouse's death. There are the ones who class her as a low-life and an addict and an equivalent to a mass murdering terrorist, then there are those that, maybe regardless of whether or not they appreciate her music, understand that this is a huge loss, and a very sad way to die. (I know that we're unsure at this point the exact causes of Winehouse's death, but I'm refering to the drugs).

I wasn't really a huge fan but when I heard about Amy Winehouse, I was eleven years old and my dad played her cover of "Valerie" to me in the car, and I thought that her voice was brilliant. Then I watched some Youtube videos of her singing. And there are a few things that make Amy Winehouse iconic - there is the beehive hairstyle, the red lipstick, and the drunkenness there seemed to be behind all of her live performances. But I think at the time I thought that the slight slur when she was talking and the way Winehouse staggered around the stage was sort of romantic - quite sad, but glamorous too.

Since then I have grown up some, I've had my own experiences with drinking (though let's highlight, never constantly or to the extent that I can empathise with an alcoholic, just more than when I was eleven) and also found out that most of my childhood I was shielded from the fact that a member of my family is an alcoholic and has been in and out of rehab, restbite care and various hospitals my entire life.

Amy Winehouse was twenty-seven and that's the same age as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain all were when they passed away. Artists take drugs because they're a part of the glamour, because they spur creativity, because they're desparate and because they're sad and lonely. But I also want to think about how many people go through this all the time, who instead of a terrifying throng of people are scared to face their job, their bills, their empty bed. This is something that can affect a businesswoman or a rockstar or someone sleeping in a shop doorway with an aching back.

I don't know if us telling ourselves people with an addiction to alcohol or drugs "have it coming" is a way to tell ourselves that the whatever it is the way we cope with things is right, because it probably is, but it's unimaginable to understand a drug addiction, and I don't think I can try to. And maybe I'm wrong and it's just a part of living so completley on the brink, that although Winehouse and Hendrix, the rest who are known as something called the "27 Club", and also Vincent Van Gogh and addicts who can't put up with themselves, and all of the other rockstars and the like who've died young, aren't ready to have to grow old or face up to whatever's coming next.

But whether or not Amy Winehouse's death was an eventuality, someone has lost their daughter, many, it seems, have lost a close friend, and the world has lost a beautiful singer. Amy Winehouse has achieved a lot - she had an excellent voice, she collaborated with and was admired by so many artists, I'm sure she has a very loyal fanbase that loved her and the world is lucky we still have her music left behind.
RIP <3

On "Choosing To Die"

I watched a documentary yesterday called Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die. If you haven't heard of him, Terry Pratchett is a British fantasy writer: he wrote something called the Discworlds series, but the first of his work I read was a collaboration novel he wrote with Neil Gaiman called "Good Omens".

In 2007, Pratchett was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. And he's still in the early stages of Alzheimer's, but there were little things - he said that he almost always immedietly forgets people's names. He can no longer type, and instead dictates to his assistant when he writes, because Terry Pratchett feels he has to finish the book he's in the middle of writing. As a writer, I can't get my head around how frustrating this must be. Following this, he presented a documentary which aired a few nights ago, on BBC1, about euthanasia and assisted suicide.

The documentary focused on Dignitas, a clinic in Swizerland which helps those with terminal illnesses to die. The film followed a man named Peter Smedley, with motor neurone disease, who travelled to Swizerland with his wife to die in this odd little blue house. It was right in the middle of an industrial estate, because it was the only place it was allowed to be. Amongst all the tall buildings and cars, at the back of the house, was a small zen garden. It was a place of comfort - there were comfortable chairs, a bed, large bowls of chocolate and over fifty different kinds of tea.

The documentary followed both Peter Smedley's choice to die at Dignitas and his death itself, and after first watching him and his wife talking about it in the most impossibly straightforward and businesslike way, I was shocked by how quickly the transfer seemed to be between then and the man's death. Peter drank the mixture that would kill him quickly, then ate some of the chocolates his wife had picked out of the bowl from him after requesting that he didn't want the praline ones. His wife kept very sincere and unemotive, holding his hand as he first struggled to breathe then slipped into sleep, and I think she may just have been one of the bravest women I've ever seen.

Peter Smedley's death was calm and peaceful and just seemed so right - at least for him, then, in that situation. I agree with the idea of Dignitas and what it does for people. The process was thorough in ensuring the person asking to die was in right mind, knew exactly how the process would work and was completley sure.

But what struck me was the fact that the program said something like 21% of the people who die at Dignitas don't have any terminal illness at all. I can't decide how I feel about that, because I don't know if someone vunerable and depressed and scared should have the option to slip away so easily, depite how thorough the doctors at the Dignitas clinic are with ensuring the patient is of sound mind. There is a difference between someone who is scared and wanting an easier suicide, and a terminally ill cancer patient relieving themselves of pain.

Maybe, however, it's up to us. I have a lot of arguments in my head about what I think about suicide - whether it's selfish towards the people who love them, or whether ending our life is a basic human right. I have no idea why but at the back of a notebook I used to use when I was about eleven, I've written "You don't know another person until you've walked a mile in their shoes" and I'm fairly sure it's one of those things my mother used to tell me but it's true.

It would cause far too much controversy to compare mental and physical pain and struggle, whether either one is worse, but they are completley different things. And whilst it's kinder to consider the people around us and who suicide will affect, when being in the world is so much of a struggle, whether that means a strain on the body or the soul, the choice to end it or to stay can only be down to one person. I think that Dignitas dealt with this in a way that was almost beautiful, and although I'm sad about Peter Smedley and I will be sad about Terry Pratchett, and I even spent a few minutes after the documentary quietly weeping in the kitchen, it comforts me knowing that if I ever become terminally ill and am in a lot of pain, depending on the situation ethics, there is a little blue house in the middle of Europe, in the snow, that managed to deal with this is the kindest and most moral and graceful way I think possible.