RIP @jennr473 fan of @joshgroban

I've had 3 Grobie friends die prematurely: Lizzzie, Imazdi4ever (Donna) and now Jennr473.
I've been thinking about this. Why is this happening?

First, what sort of people become serious fans? These are not casual fans who buy an album and listen to it a few times. These are people who make a serious effort to get to lots of concerts, get every album, join a fan club, hang out with other fans, hang out by stage doors to get momentary glimpses of Josh and get his autograph.  These are people who hang out sufficiently often that Josh actually recognizes them when he sees them, or even tweets about them dying.

I have to think that these are people like me, people who are unhappy enough in their lives that somehow the idea of a celebrity is an escape -- somehow this bigger than life person can brighten the otherwise dismal life.

A person who has great stress in life will suffer adverse health consequences.  Medical studies are increasingly showing this.

Also, particularly with cancer, I believe cancer causes depression, as a symptom.  I've been through chemo twice and in remission twice.  I definitely feel that when I have cancer there is a subliminal drag on my psyche and my energy. I'm not depressed because I know I have cancer. I'm depressed before I know I have cancer, because at some level my body knows that something is horribly wrong.

Josh, himself, has described his work as "super depresso." I think particularly of his early songs "To Where You Are" and "For Always," which are directed at people who have lost a loved one.  But also there have been many songs about failed relationships "Now or Never," "Higher Window," "Happy in my Heartache," "Broken Vow," "Falling Slowly," etc.

These songs appeal to people with broken lives.

Those people either have or are going to have health problems.

Not a very pretty picture -- but, I fear, premature death awaits many of us hard core fans.

I'm frustrated, because I'm travelling with this ancient desk book running windows 7 and blogspot doesn't work well with this computer. I'm not going to be able to edit this unless I get to another computer.  if you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll know that I normally keep editing after posting.

fans mourn @joshgroban by attacking each other

So it happened again. I tweeted this.

You'll note I changed back to my original avi, my pet parrot, rather than the eagle with the pink cap.


I got a response.

She said

I said:

Here's the link to the instagram photo that we're talking about

https://www.instagram.com/p/BlBnKQTl8QI/?taken-by=bendybombshell

You'll note that at first I was confused and thought she was talking about the conversation I had the previous day with Daisy

Here's my blog about that

http://straightarrow372.blogspot.com/2018/07/rip-roaring-discussion-re-joshgroban.html

It just didn't occur to me that she could object to my sending a beautiful, artistic photo of scantily clad people.  Josh is no prude -- unlike some of his fans.  He would love that photo.

Apparently, fans are obsessed with the idea that if they could control what was tweeted to Josh they could have prevented him from leaving twitter.   They express this by attacking other fans.

In fact, historically, ever since Josh became famous, he has had a horror of fans attacking each other over social media posts directed at him.  He's talked about that repeatedly.  I included a screen shot of one of his comments in my immediately previous blog.

What was even worse was that if he defended a fan who was being attacked, then fans would attack him for getting involved.

I'm reminded of the five stages of grief:

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

Obviously, these fans are in the Anger and Bargaining stages, where they feel like somehow they could control whether he leaves by controlling what is tweeted to him -- not really understanding what was bothering him in the first place.

I withheld a political tweet just before he left, because I was worried that politics was what was upsetting him.  Of course, I don't know that. I'm just speculating.

rip roaring discussion re @joshgroban -- Ahh, it's been a while

NB: My interlocutor apologized and requested that her name be removed from the blog -- so I've edited it out.

It's been a while since I've been in one of these types of discussion.  I used to get into them all the time.  Screen shots follow

First, what she said:

Then what I said. Ugh. Sequence is lost here, but there never can be perfect sequencing in twitter discussions, because sometimes one party tweets in response to one tweet while the other person is composing a second tweet -- so the response ends up not being in sequence.

Links I referred to above, which you can't follow in screen shots.

https://creativesomething.net/post/55508909341/the-link-between-depression-and-creativity-and
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/whats-the-link-between-creativity-and-depression_us_592f3441e4b00afe556b0aac
http://straightarrow372.blogspot.com/2014/05/bipolar-boy-band-tweets.html
https://www.facebook.com/152218818163790/posts/583451145040553/
https://peterhollens.com/mad-world-depression/

This is reminding me of how people used to attack Lizzie, when she had thoughtful conversations with Josh on twitter. He always defended Lizzie. He always hated when fans attacked other fans for not being sheeples. He never wanted people to just fawn over him. He valued discussion.

He pleaded with fans over and over not to attack each other and to let him defend himself. It drove him crazy watching fans hurt each other.

I totally don't get [deleted]'s complaint at all. Why would I have to have had coffee with Josh to know that he said he was leaving twitter at the advice of his shrink? Why would I have had to have coffee with Josh to know about his many comments on twitter and in interviews about his many dark moments?  Why would I have to be in his family to respond to a tweet in which he himself raised mental health issues?

I think some fans grew up in families where discussions of any type were not welcome.  People were just supposed to brown nose those in power all the time.  I supposed that must be the dynamic in abusive families. If you aren't always saying nice positive things to the abusive daddy-o, he's going to beat you up.

Josh didn't grow up in that sort of family and neither did I. Well, half and half. My mom loved vigorous discussion and debate.  My dad hated them.  He didn't want them occurring in his presence.  My mom and I had to wait until he wasn't around.

Also, I think some fans still feel that mental illness, such as depression, is shameful and not to be discussed in public with strangers.  I don't feel that way.  As a matter of fact, I think that attitude is dead wrong.  We need to talk about mental health.  We can't help each other if we don't.  We need to recognize that mental illness is common.

I've been composing another blog about my feelings about Josh leaving twitter.  I thought that was going to be my next blog -- but this intervened.

I used to have endless discussions with Lizzie (late great tweep) about this business of geniuses necessarily being crazy -- and we don't want to fix them.  We need them to be crazy if we want them to keep creating works of genius.   She was a psychologist.  She wanted all mental illness fixed. I don't think that's desirable, myself.  I want Josh to be able to keep performing and composing.  If he gets to be perfectly well balanced, I doubt that he'll be able to continue to do that.

****

But the sad thing here is that he did used to sometimes jump in and discuss with us -- and now he won't. Alas.

Symphony by @joshgroban

So if we bought a ticket to the concert, then we got a link to listen to “Symphony,” a song that’s dropping Friday, apparently.  How many times have I listened to it now? Twenty? Forty?  Not sure.

i’ve been following Josh fairly closely since 2010, about 8 years.  I read all his tweets.  I listen to a lot of his TV interviews.  I’ve just noticed that there are a lot of Instagram posts as well.  I’ve been to a fair number of concerts.  I went to Comet twice — first Broadway play i ever saw twice.  I’ve listened to some of the gossip as well.

I feel like I know this guy. I don’t really, of course.  I’ve shaken his hand. He might even recognize me dimly if he saw me again, because we’ve met a few times. But I’ve never had a real conversation with him. I’m not even sure any more that I would like him if he were my friend. Still, I feel like I know him.

One thing I know about him is that he’s really good at expressing emotions in singing.  He’s said, and I believe him, that he’s not nearly so good at expressing emotions when speaking. So I listen to this very heartfelt, emotional song, which was probably inspired by something out of his life — and it feels very much like the person who I think I know: a passionate person, who hasn’t had a lot of relationship success — and part of that is due to his very demanding career and passionate devotion to that.

I am the daughter of a great man, as well. I know that you don’t get to be a great man by spending lots of time with family and friends just to hang out.  You get to be a great man by focusing on what you want to be great at and shutting a lot of other stuff out.

You really hear that in this song.  You hear it a lot from celebs that they think the primary obstacle between them and relationship is that they’re married to their careers.

I was also raised by a mentally ill mother who used me as a little psychiatrist to listen to her problems  — not that she was ever willing to listen to mine.  Somehow I learned the idea that the way you express love is by listening to someone else’s drama — and swirling in it with them.

So I listen to all this emotion about a relationship that must ultimately have failed, because he seems not to be in one now — and I feel like I need to go out and rescue him — swirl in drama with him.  

That’s impossible of course.  He’s got too many fans who all would like to rescue him.  And he’s had bad experiences trying to deal with some of those fans.  There’s no way I’ll ever get anywhere near him emotionally — except by listening to him pour his heart into his music.

But still there’s this sense of intimacy, listening to his private thoughts.  And he feels familiar, like an old friend, talking to me — a high drama friend, maybe a bit like my mom.

But, ultimately, I’m still alone in my house.

I decided to do some graphics for Josh's Birthday.  They're a bit hard to read, but I like them, because if you look at them full size they have an interesting 3D effect.  You have to click on them to see that.

Lucia's concert

I'm embedding this FB post here, so that I can share it with people who are not on FB

Open Letter to @greysonchance

Dear Greyson

I bought your EP from amazon.  I really like it.  I think "Fear" is the most beautiful song. 

Part of the chorus of "Fear" includes the "f" word. I hate the "F" word. 

Now I have a brain worm with the "f" word in my brain.

AAAUUUGGGHHHH!!!

I know you're a teen. I know you want to be rebellious and cool. I know you want to feel like you don't have to abide by grownup rules.  I know.

But you hooked me when you were little and cute, and I'm still curious and I'm still listening -- and yes I'm an old fuddy-duddy.  And probably you would prefer to have young, beautiful fans.

BUT could you create a sanitized version of this song?

PLEEEEEASE?

Yours,

Arrow