I’ve been asked to put up other posts from my previous blog where I acknowledged the passing of a notable person. I’ve found a couple of people most will know, plus one that you might not have known so well.
This whole tragic event being raked over in the press, the reprehensible actions of which are best described in this thoughtful article in the Guardian today, is so sad. I watched the coverage on the ABC last night where voxpops were taken from two men on the Perth concert being postponed, (before it was announced the whole tour had been postponed), one man said ‘People need to look at the bigger picture’ the other “The Rolling Stones owe their fans to reschedule”. Needless to say I shouted at the TV at the latter, the Rolling Stones actually owe you nothing in this situation, get over yourself. Losing someone close to you is hard, losing your partner is awful.
The salacious reports describing the ‘swanky’, ‘classy’ Manhattan apartment building have both really annoyed and upset me. Does that matter? But if she lived in a brownstone, Californian bungalow or motel room, it would still be described in the same way. Because of who Ms Scott was and who she was dating.
When do you stop being a girlfriend and become a partner? Mick Jagger and L’Wren Scott were together for thirteen years. Yet gleefully the papers reported on Bianca Jagger’s tweet sending her condolences, and are now busy door-stopping all and sundry to get a story. When there is no story other than a talented, successful business woman, who happened to be stunningly beautiful, who happened to be dating someone who’s been famous for nearly 50 years, has taken her own life. But let us not cover it simply, with decorum and gently, no, let us be ar$eholes and muck-rake instead.
Grief is an awful situation in itself, but I simply cannot imagine what the friends and family, including Mick Jagger are going through. Suicide is an awful, terrible, horrible situation, often leaving more questions than answers. But all the press are concerned about is getting a picture of Mick Jagger’s grief to splash all over their pages.
It has been a while since someone close to me passed away. But that hollow feeling never really goes, you just get used to living with it, as HRH Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother famously said about the death of her beloved husband. There are days when I look at my son and wish people I knew that had passed got a chance to meet him, but wishing doesn’t do anything except make me sad. However, I can be sad on my own terms, in my own house, but for the foreseeable future, Mick Jagger will have cameras pointing at him, pointing out his grief – and woe betide the first time he has a drink, dinner or anything with someone female the press don’t recognise, he’ll be usurping L’Wren Scott ad infinitum.
Instead of looking at her life, remembering the talent, drive and sheer bloody mindedness that took L’Wren Scott from an Mormon upbringing to being someone recognised by a single name; someone who’s designs have won recognition all over the world for their beauty and structure; people will just look at this coverage and think she was nothing but something pretty on someone’s arm. Ms Scott deserves more than that. Whatever the situation she found herself in that lead to her taking her own life, be gentle.
Any posts with the prefix, Revisited, are cross-posted from a now hidden personal blog.