... at my funeral...
...at my funeral
Okay, so no one can ever accuse me of not thinking enough.
I just watched an episode (or 5) of Instant Star, catching up on the season. General plot, for those who don't know: Girl wins contest, girl becomes famous pop-rock star, girl learns the ropes of the media business and tries to keep her image intact while dealing with producers, backstabbing friends and paparazzi. Typical teenage drama, eh?
Anyways, the last couple episode's centered around Patsy, a friend of the main character (Jude). Patsy is your typical hardass, wrong-side-of-the-tracks teen. She drinks too much, she hangs out with the seedy characters, she has no moral compass. She's also an incredibly individualistic song writer and singer. She got suckered into making an album at the same place Jude works, G-Major Records. But they won't let her be herself. They want her to spit out a single, and now, so they take one of her songs and butcher it. Turn it into a cookie-cutter piece of crap that anyone could turn out. The whole thing blows up, Patsy gets pissed, there's a huge fight, Pasty drives off, smashed, ends up driving her car head-long into a median.
The record company turned her death into a money making scheme. They hold a service for her at G-Major, a place Pasty hated. They took her song, the one they butchered, and put it on a single to be sold there. They turned her memorial service into a fucking record release.
Jude and some of Patsy friends look at this and call shenanigans. They break in, they steal her ashes from G-Major, and they take her to a beach that Patsy loved, they meet up with all Patsy's real friends, the ones who weren't invited to G-Majors memorial, and they have a real wake. They dump her ashes out into the ocean, because there was no way a little urn could hold "her huge personality".
So, incredibly long story short; you assholes had better be there for me when I die. I highly doubt that I'm going to have to worry about anyone using my death as a publicity stunt, but you get the idea...
I don't want a cookie cutter funeral, I don't want everyone walking around wearing black, crying. I want stories, I want jokes, I want music, I want a beach, or a forest, or a mountain, anything but a funeral home. I don't want a fucking car procession down Main Street to bury my ass in some hole in the ground. Toss my ashes over a cliff, let me go. Somebody go skydiving with my remains and let them fly. I made my decision, I want to be cremated.
I don't know who I'm going to marry, or if I'll even make it that long. I don't know who's going to be around making my decisions when I die, but if this doesn't get put in legal writing somewhere, I want to know that people know what I want. Tasha, I want you there making sure shit goes right. You know me, you know what I would want, and I know you'd fight tooth and fucking nail to make my last send off a good one.
It makes you think, doesn't it? The whole death thing. It is literally the Ultimate. The ultimate everything. It's the end, it's the beginning, it's the ultimate knowledge, but it's completely unknowable. It's everything, it's nothing. Your whole life leads up to that moment. Everything you do brings you to that one last point. Your death is your last chance to leave your mark on the world. After that, you're done. I don't care what you believe in- heaven, hell, reincarnation, 7 virgins to every man, whatever. No matter what happens next, you can never come back to this. Even if you get a second chance somewhere else, you never get another shot at right now.
It's just too fucking final. And to think, for the past... semester, more than that even. Ever since... senior year. I've been absolutely kicking myself in the ass, trying to figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. Where I'm going. But I keep forgetting that where I'm going is no where near as important as where I am. There's always more time to fix where you're going, and when that time runs out... well what the hell do you care? I only get to do right now once. Just once. No do-overs, no extensions, no maybe-next-times. Just now. I've wasted a whole year and a half obsessing over what to do next. Do you know how many minutes that is? Neither do it. But it's a lot. Minutes I'm never going to get back. I guess I should just be glad that I've been a procrastinator my whole life, so I've only been affected for a few years. It's a damn good thing I'm not one of those Plan-Aheaders. ^_^.
So, at my funeral. Fuck the homes, fuck the services, fuck the tears, the black, the procession of cars. Fuck that dude who has no idea who I am, talking some shit about ashes and dust. Fuck all that. Give me a bonfire, some music, the people I love, and my ashes floating off on some breeze over the sea. Dudes, just let me go.
You know what the funniest thing of that last episode of Instant Star was? At the end, Jude is singing for everyone the last song that Patsy ever wrote. The way Patsy meant it. Just a guitar and a voice. As they panned the group, they showed Jude's dad, sitting there on the beach, hanging his head, just listening. And I thought, 'he must be proud'. How many people ever do something as meaningful as what his daughter just did? Anyone should be proud to of raised a daughter that well. And as I'm nodding my head in approval of the great ending for this episode... the beach, the people, the music fades away. You get a few seconds of black screen, then ::boom:: Credits. And in the background? Same song. Jude singing. But completely ruined. They put a band behind it, they took out the acoustic guitar, they added in all this extra crap with reverb and whatever. They turned it into the exact thing that Patsy had been rebelling against. Jude made this great speech about how that airbrushed, polished sound wasn't Patsy... Then they turn around and take her most meaningful song... and ruin it.
Obviously, it's not Jude's fault, because, hello, she isn't real. Neither is Patsy. But did the producers and writers completely miss that?? How do you overlook something like that?? And I know I'm taking this way too seriously, it's just a show. But, damnit, it's the principle of the thing.
Okay, so no one can ever accuse me of not thinking enough.
I just watched an episode (or 5) of Instant Star, catching up on the season. General plot, for those who don't know: Girl wins contest, girl becomes famous pop-rock star, girl learns the ropes of the media business and tries to keep her image intact while dealing with producers, backstabbing friends and paparazzi. Typical teenage drama, eh?
Anyways, the last couple episode's centered around Patsy, a friend of the main character (Jude). Patsy is your typical hardass, wrong-side-of-the-tracks teen. She drinks too much, she hangs out with the seedy characters, she has no moral compass. She's also an incredibly individualistic song writer and singer. She got suckered into making an album at the same place Jude works, G-Major Records. But they won't let her be herself. They want her to spit out a single, and now, so they take one of her songs and butcher it. Turn it into a cookie-cutter piece of crap that anyone could turn out. The whole thing blows up, Patsy gets pissed, there's a huge fight, Pasty drives off, smashed, ends up driving her car head-long into a median.
The record company turned her death into a money making scheme. They hold a service for her at G-Major, a place Pasty hated. They took her song, the one they butchered, and put it on a single to be sold there. They turned her memorial service into a fucking record release.
Jude and some of Patsy friends look at this and call shenanigans. They break in, they steal her ashes from G-Major, and they take her to a beach that Patsy loved, they meet up with all Patsy's real friends, the ones who weren't invited to G-Majors memorial, and they have a real wake. They dump her ashes out into the ocean, because there was no way a little urn could hold "her huge personality".
So, incredibly long story short; you assholes had better be there for me when I die. I highly doubt that I'm going to have to worry about anyone using my death as a publicity stunt, but you get the idea...
I don't want a cookie cutter funeral, I don't want everyone walking around wearing black, crying. I want stories, I want jokes, I want music, I want a beach, or a forest, or a mountain, anything but a funeral home. I don't want a fucking car procession down Main Street to bury my ass in some hole in the ground. Toss my ashes over a cliff, let me go. Somebody go skydiving with my remains and let them fly. I made my decision, I want to be cremated.
I don't know who I'm going to marry, or if I'll even make it that long. I don't know who's going to be around making my decisions when I die, but if this doesn't get put in legal writing somewhere, I want to know that people know what I want. Tasha, I want you there making sure shit goes right. You know me, you know what I would want, and I know you'd fight tooth and fucking nail to make my last send off a good one.
It makes you think, doesn't it? The whole death thing. It is literally the Ultimate. The ultimate everything. It's the end, it's the beginning, it's the ultimate knowledge, but it's completely unknowable. It's everything, it's nothing. Your whole life leads up to that moment. Everything you do brings you to that one last point. Your death is your last chance to leave your mark on the world. After that, you're done. I don't care what you believe in- heaven, hell, reincarnation, 7 virgins to every man, whatever. No matter what happens next, you can never come back to this. Even if you get a second chance somewhere else, you never get another shot at right now.
It's just too fucking final. And to think, for the past... semester, more than that even. Ever since... senior year. I've been absolutely kicking myself in the ass, trying to figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. Where I'm going. But I keep forgetting that where I'm going is no where near as important as where I am. There's always more time to fix where you're going, and when that time runs out... well what the hell do you care? I only get to do right now once. Just once. No do-overs, no extensions, no maybe-next-times. Just now. I've wasted a whole year and a half obsessing over what to do next. Do you know how many minutes that is? Neither do it. But it's a lot. Minutes I'm never going to get back. I guess I should just be glad that I've been a procrastinator my whole life, so I've only been affected for a few years. It's a damn good thing I'm not one of those Plan-Aheaders. ^_^.
So, at my funeral. Fuck the homes, fuck the services, fuck the tears, the black, the procession of cars. Fuck that dude who has no idea who I am, talking some shit about ashes and dust. Fuck all that. Give me a bonfire, some music, the people I love, and my ashes floating off on some breeze over the sea. Dudes, just let me go.
You know what the funniest thing of that last episode of Instant Star was? At the end, Jude is singing for everyone the last song that Patsy ever wrote. The way Patsy meant it. Just a guitar and a voice. As they panned the group, they showed Jude's dad, sitting there on the beach, hanging his head, just listening. And I thought, 'he must be proud'. How many people ever do something as meaningful as what his daughter just did? Anyone should be proud to of raised a daughter that well. And as I'm nodding my head in approval of the great ending for this episode... the beach, the people, the music fades away. You get a few seconds of black screen, then ::boom:: Credits. And in the background? Same song. Jude singing. But completely ruined. They put a band behind it, they took out the acoustic guitar, they added in all this extra crap with reverb and whatever. They turned it into the exact thing that Patsy had been rebelling against. Jude made this great speech about how that airbrushed, polished sound wasn't Patsy... Then they turn around and take her most meaningful song... and ruin it.
Obviously, it's not Jude's fault, because, hello, she isn't real. Neither is Patsy. But did the producers and writers completely miss that?? How do you overlook something like that?? And I know I'm taking this way too seriously, it's just a show. But, damnit, it's the principle of the thing.