Who Wants to Live Forever? | It is Better to Burn Out then to Fade Away... | Born to be Kings... | There's No Time For Us... | It's Alive! | The Divine Spark
Immortality is a fickle thing - to some who do not deserve it, it is granted wholesale, yet to others who do deserve it, it is fleeting or non-existent.
Achilles, in the Illiad of Homer, makes the following pronouncement:
My mother Thetis tells me that there are two ways in which I may meet my end [telos]. If I stay here and fight, I shall lose my safe homecoming [nostos] but I will have a glory [kleos] that is unwilting [aphthiton]: whereas if I go home my glory [kleos] will die, but it will be a long time before the outcome [telos] of death shall take me. (Iliad 9. 410-416:)
This is a statement that echoes throughout history and literature: people giving up security and long life for fame and glory. Yet how much of this is reality and how much is simply fleetingly ephemeral? It is merely by an accident that Achilles comes down to us these thousands of years later. The works of Homer survived where many such items did not. How many heroes, just as glorious as Achilles, Odysseus and the rest are gone, unremembered in unmarked graves? Even in the works of Classical Writers, does the average reader remember the name of Philoctetes without whom the Trojan War would never have ended?
How many accidents of this type have there been? If Henry V had fallen at Agincourt, would he ever have been remembered beyond a number? How many soldiers, promised glory, have marched to oblivion, unremembered, unremarked, and unknown.
Even in modern times, we give fleeting immortality to so many. Who now can list the Olympic medal winners, or Oscar winners, or even MTV's best singer of 1998? These so-called heroes of sport or 'best in the world' are now nothing more than ciphers in a moldering book or trapped for eternity on a piece of film.
How then is immortality gained? Many who have given us great deeds in Medicine or Science or the Arts are forgotten. Who now can say who discovered penicillin (and we are not talking about Alexander Fleming - it was used at least 500 years earlier by Arab horsemen), or who invented the telephone (not Bell - it was invented by Antonio Meucci)? Why did these people receive fame? Why did Edison receive fame for the record player (Berliner) when it was not his invention: his phonograph, although it paved the way, was impractical? Who can say? Perhaps it is simply a matter of 'being in the right place at the right time', or having the better agent, or history teacher at least.
One thing that comes to the fore again and again is that people who do achieve immortality do so by dying. In this paradox is truth. How many bushrangers were there in Australia? How many gangsters in Chicago?
How many 'crazed' dictators attempted to conquer the world? How many actors and musicians have there been?
Yet we remember Ned Kelly, Al Capone, Hitler, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix and Freddie Mercury. All died young (or died while still in the role they built for themselves). As Achilles says, it is a short life, a life that is taken before time, which guarantees the fame that leads to immortality. If these people had grown old and died in their beds, would they be remembered as they are now? If Jimi or Elvis had continued recording and performing, would they have faded away as times and tastes change? How many actors and musicians continue past their 'best before' date and fade into guest appearances, celebrity squares and talk show 'special guests'. They keep on performing to an ageing crowd of fans and are so far out of touch that they become remembered as fools.
We remember James Dean and Marily Monroe because they died. Many would not know their works nor have ever seen their films, but know of them through their deaths. Were they great actors? Would they have gone on to be super stars? Or would they have faded into the 'B' movie morass.
Would Hendrix have survived the 60's-70's era that suited his music so well? Would Elvis have survived into the 80's? Their corps of fans would say 'Yes' unequivocally, but the reality would probably have been far different. Elvis' records still sell, but what future would he have had with the growing dominance of the Music Video and the desire to see young bodies being greater then the desire to hear music.
So why did Freddie survive? Why does his music still dominate generations? Why did Freddie achieve immortality in his short life, brought tragically to an end? Like Achilles, or Oedipus, or any classic Greek tragic hero, Freddie's death was a tragedy in its truest sense. In Freddie we see the hero who sees his end, yet can do nothing, for whatever reason, to halt the slide that will lead to his death. Remember, that a tragedy is not a person being killed while young, nor is it thousands of people dying. Those events are certainly tragic, but lack the necessary application of fate that makes them a tragedy. Freddie knew what would happen yet kept going on his path to self-destruction, and, like the classic hero, when it did happen; he did not bemoan his fate but accepted it and enabled others to grow from his death.
Freddie is, in all classic senses, a hero. He fought against the world and the strictures of his culture to achieve his goal: a goal he never lost sight of no matter what the temptation, trial or tribulation placed before him. He strode the Earth far beyond the reach of mere mortals and held the World in the palm of his hand. When performing, he dominated all those who saw and heard him, changing each of them, changing everyone who came into contact with him. He was worshipped and adored by millions across the globe, and millions more knew of him. Then, at the height of his glory, the fate that is reserved for heroes came upon him and he died. Yet lives still: an immortal.
Freddie's life, to his own admission, was one of extremes. He lived for the moment and lived each moment to the fullest extent possible. On stage he presented a character who was larger then life, one who took into his soul the music of Queen and spread it to the waiting audience and even the world.
We are drawn into him by the power and passion of his voice and held by him in the total passion and belief that he has in his music and the presentation of that belief to us. In his words and in his music he soars heavenward and takes us on the journey so that even now, years later, we still feel his presence among us as we listen to him or watch the far too few videos released about his music and his performances.
Freddie's is a gift of music which he gives to us: each note and each progression seems to bypass the ears, bypass the brain and sit squarely on the soul. The shivers that pass through the spine even with his video presence in the latest tour eclipse all that has gone before in the concert and all that will come after: that is his presence, and that is his gift.
And as with all romantic heroes - for Freddie is a romantic in his words, in his life and in his music - he was destined to burn himself out long before he should. In Freddie we can see also the Romantic hero of Blake or Coleridge, of Byron or the Brontë sisters. Like Emily Brontë's Heathcliffe he places all his passion into his music and in doing so, draws from his soul, from his sense of self. Without anyone to replace that passion, he is doomed to die. Each song gives more of himself and, while he is able to give, he goes on giving, even when his body is so wracked with pain that he can barely move, he still gives until his final gift to us is his very life.
And that gift, that gift of the romantic hero, is the gift that we return to
him by remembering him, by enabling him to live in our hearts, our minds and
our souls, by our tears when we see the documentaries of him, or read the books
about him. This is the gift of Immortality that we bestow upon Freddie - the
Immortality of remembrance, for in our hearts and minds we make him live: possible
only because he gave his soul to each of us to treasure and be uplifted through
his music and his life.
"...believe that no-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away - until the clock has he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment,.... The span of someone's life, ..., is only the core of their actual existence." (Terry Pratchett, "Reaper Man", Corgi 1994)
In much the same way, the parent gains immortality through the child, and generations that carry on the family, carry on the memory and imprint of the ancestor, again creating an immortality. When the person is one who has given a gift of themselves to thousands or millions of people, the ripples of that life become encompassing and the person gains the status of semi-divinity, or hero. In this way, ancient cultures from the earliest Babylonian and Sumerian writings, through all other cultures to our modern days a heroic, 'demigod' status is granted to beings whose exploits in whatever field have gained them wide-spread immortality. The early kings became heroes as the stories of their lives and deeds spread to others. As time passed, these heroes achieved semi-divine and ultimately, in some instances, divine status.
It is our experiences with a person and ultimately our memories of them that give them life and, ultimately, immortality. It is how we react to them and to their works that create the hero, or villain that they ultimately become. In life we remember the ups and downs, but rarely the middle way - the day to day humdrum existence that is the majority of existence. When we watch a film, we don't want to know every little thing that a person does: despite the time it would take, it is boring. We know that our heroes get sick, eat food, stub their toe and so on but we don't need, or want, to know that as this will destroy the image of the hero that we build up and, in that destruction, we feel betrayed and lose something of ourselves.
The danger of putting anyone or anything on a pedestal is that they often cannot live up to our expectations. We all remember our first 'crush' whereby we ignore their failings and problems until the bubble bursts and we see them as they truly are. We place these heroes that we create above us, making them semi-divine and hence making them beyond our reach. To find that they have human failings or foibles can create a backlash whereby love and adoration can turn to hate and derision. We see this often in relationship breakups where, when the love goes, the small things that have always been there but which have been glossed over or ignored because of the love, all of a sudden become grating and lead to a hatred. Nothing has changed except our view point.
When this hero is beyond the personal space and is hero to millions, the fall can be harder, just as the worship is higher. We find that fans will attack, sometimes brutally, any who don't follow their beliefs or ideas about the person they worship. They feel the need to defend them, no matter what they do, and will defend viciously. Then, if the self-same fan is disappointed, they will turn on the object of their idolatry with the same level - or increased level of hatred and disdain.
This is the price of immortality, this is the price of hero worship. In all this, the object of the worship remains distant, not knowing about the adulation, caring for the fans, perhaps, but not knowing them as individuals.
Freddie spoke to his fans through his music and it was his music that created in him his immortality as one of the greatest musicians and perhaps the greatest performer ever. Often called the 'King of Queen' he became an idol to many, and many who still worship him many years after his death. Every time his music plays, every time his voice is heard, every time someone sings one of his songs: he lives again and has achieved near-deity status among his many fans. In this he, like others, has passed beyond the stardom he once wanted, beyond the super stardom and ended up a legendary figure.
In ancient times, when heroes died they were placed as stars in the heavens, thereby gaining their 'stardom' and achieving their immortality. This word has, like so many others, been belittled over time and now anyone who is know, no matter how briefly, is called a 'star'. To truly achieve this status, there must be an immortality gained and that is gained only through memory and, in some ways, worship.
Freddie's so-called 'failings' have risen with him. Whereas often the revelations of personal life can be tedious or destructive, on the whole the revelations of Freddie's elevated him even higher among many people. Whereas some turned from him and others reviled him, he did what he did and made no apologies for it. In no way did it change what he produced and should never affect the result of what he did. The 'scandals' that surrounded Freddie were a part of his mystique, his 'other-worldliness': they did not serve to make him human, to bring down the hero-king, but rather added to this and made him more then he was. The Greeks envisaged their gods as being like mortals, but more extreme - more 'perfect' in both good and bad. Like the tales of these deities, the tales of Freddie's life hold a fascination for people and whether this fascination leads them to adore or hate him, to worship him or revile him is irrelevant: he achieves immortality through this.
Even as we now watch Queen again, the name of Freddie Mercury is never far from people's thoughts. Any singer who sings with them is compared to Freddie. Interviews with Brian or Roger always come back to Freddie. Advertisements of the tour seem to always slip Freddie in there. It is not that the band Queen is nothing without Freddie, it is that they are irrevocably linked in people's minds and hearts and memories and it is their grief and disbelief in the loss of this man that causes them to want to link today with yesterday.
Freddie, the body, is dead and committed to ashes, yet the spirit of Freddie, the spirit of Fire, burns ever brightly in the hearts and minds of any who he has touched: whether in person or through his music and each and every one of them is all the more special because of this.
Did Freddie desire this? Perhaps. He often laughed off his music as disposable and perhaps it is as is most music: it is not needed as such - we can live without it. But how much poorer, how much emptier it is without the music of Freddie and Queen. Great music is always memorable although memorable music is not always great. The difference is that great music touches us and lives on in our memories because of the emotions we have, the feelings we feel, not just because of a catchy tune or beat and the lyrics themselves are meaningless.
Sometimes we caught a glimpse of Freddie's private life and in that glimpse saw him as a human and loved him all the more for it. This does not cheapen Freddie, nor does it destroy him: it raises him because in him we can see some of ourselves and grow closer. We can link, through his mortality, to his immortality and that can be nothing but good.
Through Freddie and his music we can, for however brief a moment, become one of the princes of the universe, through our shared experiences, we can gain a measure of the immortality which we have granted Freddie, the King of Queen.
Time is a fickle thing. As it passes, realities become dreams, facts become memories, and people become legends. Freddie lived and died in a different time. A lot has happened in the intervening years, not least of which is a change in the way society (at least Western Society) operates. Technology now exists which was unheard of even then, music has become a thing of the masses (once more of the people, by the people, for the people) with the strangle hold of the big recording companies lessening and threatening to fall. Strange as it may seem, this dominance has only really lasted for thirty to forty years and guided the burgeoning mass music industry on to a time where now it must go forward. Freddie has ridden this wave of music across time: his legend has grown to encompass and create those whose forebears would once have reviled him for his 'pomposity' and his 'antics'. Yet we don't make legends of the peasant farmer, nor of the clones who abound. It is the great, the flamboyant, the eccentric, the heroes who become legends.
His was a genius of time and place as well as one of music and mayhem. His ability to read and to give what the people wanted, and to get them to respond to him was mystical in its compass. This still reaches across time and creates his legend: we hear him sing and instantly know the words, or the melody, or just feel it within and know that, somehow, everything is a little bit better.
Freddie's time, although far too short in many minds, was long enough to accomplish what he dreamed of doing. He became a star, and a star of stars and in that height of the heavens, he left and was placed with the other great heroes among the stars in the sky. The Freddie Mercury star shines among those of Hercules, of Orion the Hunter, of Castor and Polydeuces and among the planets of the gods. It is fitting that this immortality be gained and that he is placed among the greats of the past as, in his own way, he helped to change the world of music for all time and strode along this change like a titan sweeping all along with him.
Heroes die young. That is part of what makes them heroic. An old Hero is a foolish hero, living past glories and trying to capture what is gone. Their time is short, yet it is far fuller then the wasted years and hours of those who will not use what is given to them. .If anything, Freddie's continual giving of himself, his music, his soul, and his possessions to those who asked, or needed, or wanted showed a nobility beyond that of many others. In the last years of his life when he continued to give and work and create as much as he could, knowing he could never know the rewards of this work, is as selfless and act as laying down his life for another. For that is what he did. His last gasps of time were given to those who would listen to his music and hear his words which echo throughout time and will continue to echo forever. Wherever there is the stomp-stomp-clap of Brian's 'We Will Rock You', or the voices lifted in 'We are the Champions' or the air-guitar riff from 'Bohemian Rhapsody' there will be the ghost of Freddie shining through time.
Millions of people saw Queen perform live and those millions infected more and more with their love for this music and its players. His words are known by everyone as we now move into the second generation of Queen. Perhaps they are unaware of the band and its members, but the words and the unmistakable sound of Freddie's voice linger on.
Yet this is no longer the time of Freddie. His life finished in the past and we are left with memories of his strength and his ability to give without wanting to receive, we are left with dreams of what could have been and what was, we are left with patches of immortality on video - albeit far too few given to us - and on audio, and we are left with the Legend of Freddie Mercury, not a god, but certainly a messenger of the gods.
This line, uttered by Victor von Frankenstein in the 1931 film version speaks of a wondrous happening: of the creation of new life by a Man. In Mary Shelly's book, the creature was beautiful with well proportioned limbs, with beautiful facial features, long flowing black hair, white teeth and being well muscled - it was only the contrast with the dull eyes, the thin black lips and the shriveled nature of the features due to death that were horrifying in their contrast.
In Frankenstein's creation we have a tragedy: a being, brought to life in the triumph of science, only to fall victim to fear and eventual loathing. This creature eventually turned on its creator before fleeing to the pole and being frozen forever in time away from society: an immortal bound in a static tomb.
In Freddie's life we can see mirrored this creation, this 'monster', brought to life to achieve a dream, and yet a creature which turns on its creator.
In many way a tragic figure, Freddie created the persona required to survive on stage. He listened and watched and learnt from the greats who had gone before and who were performing at the same time. He took elements of his own personality: his eastern mystique, his love of flamboyance and art, his intense charisma and his instinctive understanding of what would and what wouldn't work and melded them into his own creature. The tragedy is that, as this was not the real him, it was doomed to either take over his life and eventually destroy him, or be cast aside and he would be left an empty shell whose dream had been lost.
The shy, private, introspective Freddie was a person longing for peace and love, yet lured by the tantalizing desire for fame and fortune. His alter-ego was the charismatic, flamboyant, effeminate, dramatic, all-encompassing king of the stage. This was the person who had it all: adoration, adulation, worship, fans who would do and give anything for a moment with him.
Ultimately, this was an empty success, yet one which was as addictive in its own way as any narcotic. Like many drugs of that ilk, it grew to dominate Freddie, taking him down the path of the creature, making him live the lifestyle of his creation as that was how he was perceived and how he was expected to live by those who adored the creation.
In bringing his stage self to life, in creating a creature, Freddie guaranteed immortality to himself but, to most people, it was this creation which gained the immortality and the real Freddie was nothing more then a man scattered to the winds and the waters. In the same way that Dr Frankenstein's creation is now known as 'Frankenstein', so too is the stage creation now known as Freddie.
What we know of Freddie as a man is what is given to us by those who know him and how much of that is the reality and how much is a front which was presented to them? This is something that can never be known. Even these friends and experts cannot ever agree. Many say he hated his mother (and point to lyrics to prove it), yet he visited here without fail on her Birthday each year, even apologising when he was too ill to do so. We find out more about his sexual life then we do about his private life; yet none of this from him (aside from the quotes that were well and truly in character for the stage persona but perhaps not from the reality) and again the question must be asked 'how much of his lifestyle was Freddie and how much was Mercury? Our interviews with Freddie are those whereby he is again performing. Later in life, Queen would meet when recording or performing: again not the real, private, person. Who knew who he really was? By the end of his life, perhaps even Freddie no longer knew.
It is easy to be submerged in a creation to the point where the reality blurs with the creation. In order to overcome shyness and introversion, it is often necessary to create a character, a being which can be hidden behind and to allow this to take the knocks and the adulation as the real self hides safely within. This would also explain why Freddie hated giving interviews. Certainly the official reason is that he was sick of the negative and often incorrect reports earlier on, yet watching and listening to the few interviews he did shows someone who is nervous and who doesn't want to be there as he has to create the monster without the lighting and makeup and costuming and this can never be as real or as convincing.
We see, in the rare glimpses of Freddie's private life, a man surrounded by calmness. His koi pond is a place for meditation, as are the peace and calmness of his beautiful gardens. He loved the beauty and tranquility of traditional Japan. He surrounded himself with beautiful objects. All of this show a person trying to be at peace with himself; a person who loves beauty and quietude: totally alien to the loud partying, drinking outrageous stage man.
Behind the high walls of his house was another world and perhaps it is there that he could be himself and be safe from the creature of his own creation, yet is it probably further back, to the streets of Zanzibar that we need to go to find the real Freddie before the dreams of being a star, of being an immortal first surfaced.
None of this is to say that Freddie did not accept his creation, nor that he wasn't happy with it, yet there must always be the understanding that the singer of songs is not necessarily the liver of life and that both existed in the one place at the one time and, eventually, they would fight for dominance. Like any great tragedy, the end was foretold as it is so often with those whose star shines too brightly and the creature becomes frozen in time, trapped like Frankenstein, like Merlin, in crystal of the past forever more an immortal.
Looking at a beautiful scene, a magnificent painting, eating a fantastic meal, or listening to a wonderful piece of music all have the same affect on the audience: that of bringing a sense of wholeness, of oneness and of contentment. In each it seems, for the barest moment perhaps, that we connect with the genius of the creator of the item and they allow us to share in their gift. For many that is a moment of inspiration, of enlightenment, of supreme happiness or indeed sadness.
It is often held that the extremes of emotion, the passionate emotions, are so close as to be the same. In a moment of sublime happiness we can inexplicably feel sad and, indeed, vice versa. Humans are emotional beings and our lives seem to be a search for that ultimate emotional state which some can find, some search hopelessly and some give up far too soon and spend their lives in a grey existence. Some seek to gain this state artificially through thrill-seeking or drugs in their various forms yet all of these are, ultimately, doomed to failure and the seeker has to seek more and more for less and less. Others find this in their religious fervour, in their creations, or in their loves.
This quest, to fulfill - for want of a better word - the soul, has been the end goal of humanity throughout history. The continual search for perfection, to hold and hoard beauty is the end goal of all civilizations. Unfortunately, most fail as they don't understand that the end goal is not perfection, but to be able to link to something wholly and completely. Whether or not that something is perfect, complete or even something that some other agrees with. Each being is individual, each has their own end desire, their own Eros: the divine love. In the Ovid myth of Cupid and Psyche we find the divine love, Eros (in his true Roman form of Cupid - not the baby cherub of later times but the hard, frightening, terrifying creature that the Greeks and Romans knew, and the later Romatics managed to find glimpses of). In this myth, the divine love, the total extreme passion, is the lover of Psyche, the soul. It is as Psyche seeking our Eros that we go through life and it is as Psyche that often our wish to have more and better, we lose what we have and can never find it again without extreme trial and tribulation.
Psyche, the maiden, was united briefly with the God Eros, the god who existed before the world, before life and before light. It is this link of Psyche to the spark of Eros within the creators that takes us to our own personal passion and holds us briefly in its embrace before we are once again cast forth, naked in that we are open, to the real world.
The creators of this divine spark, those infused with the essence of Eros, are those whom we idolise. In their productions, we find completeness and catch a glimpse of our unity. It was Freddie's glory and Freddie's tragedy that he provided this spark to so many. In his own way he gave of his inspiration, of his love, to those of his fans who heard him. As a giver of music it is the listening to him and the allowing of that voice and that timbre to enter the soul that brings the spark of Unity with the listener. Everything else was a vehicle to the delivery of the ultimate vocal expression: something he practised all his singing life and which can be seen easily in the vocal improvisations in his live concerts.
It is undoubted that Freddie was a musical genius and it his his stage presence, his movements, his lifestyle and his mystery that enhances the vocal Eros that links to us, flows into us, and creates within us the Unity of Psyche and the Divine. It is these instances, these times when the divine spark of Freddie flows into the listener that the true immortality of Freddie comes to the fore. The first time the music envelopes the soul, the state of Unity is reached and from then on, the memory of that is always with the listener and the knowledge is held every time the music plays. The singer sings and the listener is transported into a world of passion, of satiation, of knowing that oneness that is the ultimate goal and in their soul, in their Psyche, the spark of Freddie lives forever.
To Be Continued...