Musings 01: The Man

It is not enough, when looking at the man who is Freddie Mercury, to dismiss him simply as a singer, or song writer or, as so many do, a bi- or homosexual.

Whereas it is true that he is all of these, it is also far more true that he is a person with all the likes & dislikes, fears, hatreds and loves of any other human.

What we find in Freddie when looking at his quotes, his interviews and his music is a man torn between a desire and lust for fame and glory and an intensely private individual who tried to keep his personal life entirely separate from his professional one. To a large extent he succeeded in this and was able to be a private individual for much of his professional life: so much so that we actually know very little about this man outside his public appearances, gossip and occasional betrayal by friends.

Should a man in the public eye, such as Freddie, be allowed to have a private life? Should he be 'permitted'

not to be the idolised hero of so many people? Of course!

Why do 'fans' and others deny him this right, the basic right of any professional, manual worker, or unemployed person anywhere else? Just because he had a gift and shared it with the world should make people greatful for what he gave, not make them want to hound and dig into his privacy. At then end of his life, Freddie was a prisoner in his own home: made so by the same press who had attacked him or ignored him throughout his musical career, eagerly waiting for that moment of scandal when they could blast across the universe not that a great musical genius had died, but that he had died from AIDS. Not that a man had died, but that this object, this thing, had died.

Freddie lived as he had to: a dichotomy of existence, forced to be hidden through necessity, yet forced into the limelight by desire. The 'excesses' of his life can be forgiven due to this: it is impossible to live in so diametrically opposite a way and not need some break from it all, somewhere he could be himself and not give a fuck about anything else. The tales of wild parties and