Miles from Trane

differentmindset:

Message of the day….

Whitney’s joy

(Ed’s note: I wrote this on Sunday and sat on it for a few days.)

The memories began in the back seat for me. That’s where I came to know Whitney Houston, as an unassuming kid riding in the back seats of my parents’ cars.

There were a few guarantees when I rode with my parents at a young age. My brothers and I were back-seat bound and you were likely to hear one of a few artists – Anita Baker, Frankie Beverly, Luther Vandross, Sade, Earth Wind & Fire or Whitney Houston. Each had their own distinctive, mature flair. I grew to love them all. But at the time, only Whitney of that group intrigued me.

In life, you come across people who light up rooms with their smiles. You could be down, see that particular face and it would drag you from that dark place that confined you, all because of a magnetic smile.

At her apex, Whitney Houston’s voice smiled. I could hear her smiling through the speakers in the back seat of a car at 10 years old, and, in turn, nearly any time a heard her sing it brought me a peaceable joy. While so many other great and powerful singers made their livings off of notes coated in struggle, Whitney’s brought you peace. This made her sound distinctive, peerless even.

Whitney, the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, cousin of Dionne Warwick and goddaughter of Aretha Franklin, wasn’t a pop vocalist that you had to see. You had to hear her. You wanted to hear her. Hearing her made you emote bliss. Dressed in a baggy red, white and blue jumpsuit, she gave us arguably the best rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” ever just 10 days after the start of the Gulf War in 1991.

Whitney’s gone now, dead at 48. We don’t yet know how or why she died on Saturday afternoon in a Southern California hotel room. But we do know that her majestic voice stopped smiling with regularity long ago for a myriad of reasons. Oh, it did so on occasion, as was the case on Thursday night when she gave a pre-Grammy party a snippet of her brilliance with a final rendition of “Yes, Jesus Loves Me,” a gospel hymn she often featured.

We never quite saw nor heard Houston return near her pinnacle, though. When she released I Look To You in 2009, it debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 Chart. Long gone, though, was the range and ability that wowed Clive Davis when he signed her to Arista at the tender age of 19. In its place you could hear the despair she’d long avoided as well as hints of wiser woman, one worn from her countless trials that played out in public.

Many blamed her lost vocal ability on her vices — alcohol and drugs — which came with her tumultuous, 15-year marriage to faded R&B star Bobby Brown, whom she divorced in 2007. She even famously once told an interviewer that Brown was “her drug.”

Whether he drug her down, or they each other, most people wished, hoped and prayed that she would get her act together, so that she might be at peace with herself and so that the world might have a chance to again marvel at the joy her voice once offered so many.

This never happened (She was in rehab as recently as last year). That, and Houston leaving behind her mother and an 18-year-old distraught daughter, is what’s so tragic about her untimely death.

The wonders of technology have made it so that we can hear her voice at its angelic peak with a click or two of a mouse. It instantly takes me back to my parents’ back seats. Still, it’s tough knowing that she’s no longer capable of ever producing the moments many of us hold so dear, those familiar chords that once elicited so much joy.

His sullen mood proved that something was amiss. On a bad day he’d bounce about a room with ease. This day had to be the worst. #shortdss

Her unrelenting nature was her downfall. It pushed away those who came close. She knew this. But she knew only one way. #shortdss

You find yourself in a mirror, then, one day, you’re in dark clothes, glancing at your likeness in a casket & you’re angry w/ God.#shortdss

They were so chill that they may well have been alone in the packed store. The cart-ride crash on isle 5 brought them to reality. #shortdss

He replied: “I’ve seen the bowels of a hell that you’ll never know and you want me to wear that stench to appease you? Fuck you.”#shortdss

His munificence led them to a Paris cafe, a foriegn place that felt like home. She beamed with joy and anticipation. He awoke. #shortdss

She was on 116. He was at 224. She saw its demerits. He knew its utility. He weighed on her. She didn’t get it, couldn’t take it. #shortdss

Hope springs eternal, but only after justified tears soil the earth. So he wept. #shortstory