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Hi LP - OK so you are not a wind-up merchant but a sensitive soul.

I have experienced death of people I love and care about. I would not joke about personal bereavment or friends bereavement. However death is a human function. If the only thing you know about a persons demise is thru the media or hearsay and you know nothing about the person concerned who are you upsetting if the circumstances lend themselves to some Gallow humour

Why should I be weeping and wailing for someone I have no inkling of. I am not trivialising death but it is hypocritial to mourn someone who until she died I did not even know she existed.

Can you hear the sound of eggshells being crushed as I walk away.

Now there's a response that I could have written and dang well wish I had, Paula. Excellent points, including the way you made them. I have yet to review LP's [another music-industry term, by the way, Lowly] posts to see just what the level of sensitivity is in other matters. I can't keep track of everyone's proclivities.

The closest I would've come, had I answered his last query, would've been that yes, he was correct regarding the order and priority of my concerns with the fates of Lana/Leonard. For me to consider not having had Leonard in the world for all the years that have followed his and Spector's "collaboration" [loose application of the term] would have brought numerous tears for me, even at that time looking back, much less could I have seen The Future [another pun, this one unintended ~ until I backspaced and capitalized ~ ha! ~ another one, both as a form of punctuation and as in "taking advantage of the situation"]. There will, indeed, be numerous tears from me when he leaves. I haven't, nor will I, shed any for Lana ~ as Paula has already pointed out.

I would like to say "If," but am forced to say "When" Leonard leaves this plane, I certainly hope to see no light of it made here. However, such will be made in some sectors elsewhere, most assuredly. When I leave this plane, I can already anticipate a few puns, i.e. "Well, she finally talked herself into the ground," or a non-pun, "At last, some peace and quiet around here." Actually, maybe the second one is a bit of a pun, too. Many more that will follow, I have NO doubt ~ I only hope no one gets that opportunity for a number of years.

Everybody has a life story. Even Phil Spector. It looks bad for him, but he is innocent until proven guilty.
His first interview in 25 years shortly before his arrest:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jh ... spec01.xml

(registration to Telegraph is required, it's free)

There is also a link to Salon.com 'Brilliant Careers' series, which also has an article on LC (which everybody knows, I assume).

p.s. not that I have a particular problem with dark humor, but I like to know about people.

Have you two justified your pun enough already! We maybe didn't know this lady but someone did, and I still say "in my opinion" bad taste.

Thanks for the link, Kush.....I'll go there and read it, as I also like to know about people's lives, and will in the end read about Lana's as well, more than has been included so far here. Yes, Phil has not been proven guilty yet, though he has certainly jeopardized people's first reactions and assumptions to news such as this, with his years of flaunting of firearms.

I intended to reply re Phil Spector, but Kush got in first with the website link. Please read his post. The article to which he refers was published in "The Scotsman" on Wednesday, February 5th. And yes, it was billed as "his first interview for 25 years".
The interviewer is Mick Brown. The extended interview is titled "Spector and the Devils". It appeared as the "Cover Story" in the Scotsman S2 supplement on Wednesday. Please read it, if you can.
Andrew.

Kush and Andrew ~

Well, that took awhile [not being a fast reader], but it was worth it. A rather very sad portrait of a driven, tortured man. As I read, I could see a defense building. We'll see how it goes.

Of course, I had to question where the writer's head is at, with his posed question, "But couldn't that be love?" in response to, "When she [Spector's wife] toured with the Ronettes, she recalled, he would call each night and tell her to leave the receiver on her pillow so he could hear the sound of her breathing until morning." Uh. No.
And, "Perhaps it was obsession." in response to, "He [Spector] bought her [his wife] a sports car and a custom-made mannequin of himself to ride in the front seat beside her." Uh. Yeah.

I also had to question that Spector had already "lost interest" prior to and during his making of Death of a Ladies Man. ".....and with Leonard Cohen, albums that were events simply by virtue of Spector's presence at the controls. But he had lost interest." If that was an example of interest lost, how must it have been during his interested times?

A very complex history that he's had to deal with, and that he's created, indavertently and otherwise, for himself. I can certainly understand why he'd be a troubled man. It appears his demons may have finally won out. The slate has not been wiped clean, after all.

He's done some very courageous things in the recording industry, no doubt, and definitely made a difference. I thank him for "To Know Him Is To Love Him," which I listened to from the first time it played on the radio, and still causes a bittersweet clenching in my solar plexus; Unchained Melody; all the John Lennon, George Harrison; and Beatles songs, with which he involved himself; and likely countless other songs by others.

Finally, when he says, "Really, I'm not even sure what I want to do. I just know that what I do is better than what anybody else does," I can only say, "Not better than Leanne Ungar or Sharon Robinson."

~ Elizabeth

Dear Paula,

I had a dear friend who was accosted on her way to work early one morning, raped, stabbed seventeen times and her body dumped over a railroad embankment. That will make you "sensitive."

I don't expect people to have the same depth of feeling as the victim's family and friends. But I am now beginning to suspect that "human kindess" is an oxymoron.

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."


We've come along way from John Donne's "any man's death diminishes me" to "Why should I be weeping and wailing for someone I have no inkling of."


LP

Hi LP - I can understand why you feel so strongly in view of your friends horrific death. I too have a friend who was raped at knifepoint she was 7 months pregnant. Another friend was murdered. I can really really understand the pain - but your personalilty differs from mine and we deal with things differently. I am not a weeper and wailer by nature.

My friend who was raped survived her life has been totally affected but she has been helped also by her friends seeing the "funny" side - even thought there isn't one. No one joked about either of these instances people were only supportive because it affected them.

Death is the end product of life it comes to us all. We just have to hope it is not unpleasant when it happens.

I am sorry but I can't find much emotion for someone I neither knew nor cared about. You can hear of something horrific and feel desperately sad for what has happened but it doesn't not affect you personally. Your emotions are raw because you knew a victim personally and could put a face and persona to the name printed in a paper. I would have only seen a name. With the best will in the world we cannot grieve for everything that happens to others that is bad otherwise we will spend our lives in perpetual grief.

Your last sentence, Paula, was the thought that had initially occurred to me in response to LP ~ regarding the enormous magnitude of the world's issues, both personally and worldwide, and how death plays out in it. To be grievously impacted personally would leave us simply a huge, bared, raw nerve ending.....fully dysfunctional. When disasters occur and I read/hear about the individuals' lives, I feel deep down as I read and imagine what their last moment's and thoughts were like and what those of their families and other loved ones must be in their absence. It's part of how I personally process these things. I do it for awhile and then I go on. I cannot hold on to the moments of grief I feel, as I imagine these scenarios. Humour ultimately returns. I still have very little information regarding Lana at this point.

LP, I am very sorry to hear about your friend's very tragic death. I also can understand the large-holed screen of pain through which our humour is being filtered. It sounds as though this is very recent for you, and if not, it still carries much active pain. Horrific was the word that came to me, as well, when I read your accounting ~ and horrifying images came to me. Your friend's death is closer to me, because I "know" someone who knew her and who has told "me" [via Paula] about her death. We meant no disrespect to the value of your friend's life in our comments regarding Spector's act. Nor did we mean that Lana's death had no value. My pun was and remains directed at Spector.

The quote you've chosen is an excellent one. If literally applied, however, there would literally be nothing of me left. I'd have been pieced-out long ago. We've also come a ways from John Donne's time. We have our own filters for a reason and that is to screen for purposes of survival. Humour is only one of them.

I feel that Paula's response to you is well-considered and kind. I hope that you will take it in the manner it is intended. Any gaps I've left in my response to you, I hope you will fill in with her words, with which I agree. I am not "a weeper and a wailer" by nature, either, though my guess is that I am probably more inclined to express myself through a tear or two than Paula. I am sensitive [which is not to say that Paula's not], or so I've been told throughout my [entire] life. Still, there are parts of me that can be otherwise. I consider these parts to be part of my own, survival mechanism.

Putting a face, a personae, and personal emotion to a name make all the difference.

In all seriousness, and respect for the loss of your friend's life,
Elizabeth

Dear Paula and Lizzytysh,

Thanks for your posts. It has been several years since my friend's death. And time does soften the pain. But there is a residual effect that stays with you. And it comes out at the most unlikely times. (And I would be lying if I said that on hearing about Lana's death I lost my appetite and couldn't eat my dinner that evening). But there is this thing that happens...a kind of sympathetic shudder, a frisson of the soul. And you put yourself in the place of the family and friends. And sometimes you over-react.

I thought about Paula's statement about personality differences. I think there is truth in that. But I also think it has a lot to do with your world-view. For instance, Jurica said that life was cheap. I may be reading him wrong, but I really think he's saying that life is meaningless. And if life is meaningless than death is meaningless too. And if you hold to that world-view, I can understand why a joke about someone's death would seem to be funny.

Anyway, I'm sure you know the old proverb: "A soft answer turneth away wrath." This is really true. When I read your latest posts, my anger melted away. So, thanks again.


In any future posts, I will try to do my part: "less heat and more light."

Sincerely,

LP

Hi LP. It is possible Jurica did mean to say "cheap". I think in some countries where the population is large and the people do what they have to do to survive sometimes life does appear to be cheap.

I don't know what country you are from but an example of life being "cheap" there was a picture in a paper over here a few months back. It was a new born baby girl in China lying dead in a gutter with the umbilical cord still attached and people just going about their business around her as if she was a piece of rubbish. It made me cry and that is very rare for me to do.

She didn't die at birth she was murdered because of that country's policy on population issues.

Dear LP,

I know the residual effect you speak of and it's there with me also ~ "residual" even prior to my own losses. I also often put myself in the place of those involved and surrounding a person's death.....and doing so has sometimes brought tears that many would not understand. Even with myself, I've questioned "Where is this coming from?" Upon being told of a heinous death, my internal world remains dampened, beyond when others have resumed normal conversation. I remain quiet, as the details and the thoughts surrounding it all [victim/family/loved ones] play out in my head. I often feel, "How can you hear this and then go on with your other business and conversation so soon?" And jokes aren't even being made. So, I do understand what you're talking about.

Amongst other personal connections with violent, untimely deaths, I and my paramour at the time did the literal clean-up [after the bulk of the body was removed] after the shotgun suicide of a friend. This nears 30 years ago. These memories will never go away and surface every time I hear of a shotgun death. Your relating your reaction to the pun and subsequent discussion triggering [not intended as a pun, LP ~ just the appropriate term] thoughts of your friend put your reaction in a very different perspective.

However, I do know that part of the "purpose" of our family and loved ones is that they value and appreciate us while we are alive, and will grieve us when we're gone. The rest of the world "doesn't" and won't. Your willingness to react as you have speaks deeply to the love and memory of your friend.

Perhaps Jurica did mean what he said, literally. However, I took it to be a deeply-saddened commentary on the world's conditions and situation today, and how life is obviously viewed in many places. I didn't take it to be his own personal view. I also don't think life is cheap, but could easily make that comment sarcastically to make a point. I've never seen the photograph that Paula is talking about, but there could be no better, no more graphic depiction of what Jurica [heartbreakingly] refers to.

Fortunately or unfortunately, jokes about death in general [including applied to a particular one] can be/are funny. It's often our greatest fear, as we live. I heard somewhere that speaking in front of a crowd rates higher for some. I question that poll. However, one of the roles of humour is to lighten, normalize, lessen, cope, address many things, like the steam-releaser on a pressure cooker. I easily see it as serving those functions. You don't have to see life as meaningless [quite the contrary] to see a joke relating to death as funny. In terms of the joke I made, Lana was incidental, which is not to say that her life was....however, my thoughts were focused on Leonard and Spector, and how this maniacal fool could have taken Leonard's life. That was very disturbing for me, as Leonard is one of my "loved ones."

When all's said and done, LP, I still hold to there being nothing wrong with a strong answer. You had your reasons and now we know them. Thank you for sharing what is behind it all for you. You went the distance. You were willing to do so, and you did it in a serious way. I respect that. I'm also glad to hear that your anger has melted away.

~ Elizabeth