I will always love you1/8/2024 ![]() The sheer fact that Whitney had put in the work to become great indicated that she was probably not a normal, happy person. But I wasn’t shocked, not for a moment–not at the fact she’d married a sleazy, abusive D-lister, or that she’d developed a problem with drugs. Later-along with everyone else-I watched Houston’s life begin to unravel, a phenomenon that was unavoidably clear by the time of her 2005 participation on the reality show Being Bobby Brown, notable for its vulgarity even by the, uh, “standards” of the genre. (To this day, I can recall the look I gave myself when I realized my own voice stunk.) Becoming great or even good, I realized, must take some doing. I knew this as soon as I tried to hit the same notes, crooning into a hairbrush in my parents’ bathroom while standing on the rim of the bathtub so I could see myself in the mirror. Whitney had labored intensely to work her talent up to that high point. Close your eyes and recall the first time you heard “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.” Remember how it sounded, like a case study in sprezzatura? How that voice was so strong and exuberant it blasted out a sense of possibility like a Care Bear Stare? I will always love her for it.īut chances are, Houston helped to shape your consciousness too. She did all this for me by the time I was the age of 6, all via pop songs on terrestrial radio. She was my first realization that, by making art, I too could project myself through time and space, albeit on a far more modest scale. She was my first: my first taste of art and my first sense that simply by listening to a song I could be in the presence of something. For me, Whitney Houston’s life and work is a sort of Rosetta Stone by which I can decode all my most closely held views. Call it “The Houston Question.”Īll right, maybe I’m just speaking of myself. Still, pretty much everything you need to know about the generation of women born between 19 can be explained by the fact that the person who helped introduce us to the concepts of personal dignity and self acceptance through “The Greatest Love of All” died of drug addiction in a bathtub. Here’s the interesting thing: A very similar thing did happen to American women-only there’s been no outcry, no collective gasp, and I don’t understand why. Nearly every man you know would be instantly bereft, as if he’d suddenly realized his childhood contained a hideous lie. If, tomorrow, he went on CNN-or just recorded a video and posted it to YouTube-denouncing democracy, capitalism and New Jersey, pledging his allegiance to Kim Jong-un, and saying, “Later, losers.” What if The Boss just peaced out to Pyongyang? What would happen? A whole generation of American men would lose their shit, that’s what. KIND= This is an adverbial of manner, so it should be “kindly”, but in colloquial English (especially AmE) it is very common to use an adjective instead of an adverb:ĪBOVE ALL THIS= More important that this.Imagine if Bruce Springsteen defected to North Korea. ![]() A bittersweet memory is a memory that makes us feel happy (sweet) because it brings back good feelings, but at the same time makes us sad (bitter) because when I remember you and your love, I miss you so much.ĬRY= Weep, shed tears (water drops) through your eyes. We can also use it in a figurative sense, like here. If I should stay, I would only be in your way = but I won’t stay, I’m leaving.ĮVERY STEP OF THE WAY= All the time, in every moment of my life ("the way" = "my life").īITTERSWEET= Something “bitter” is sour, acid, like a lemon, and something “sweet” is like honey or sugar, so something “bittersweet” has a mixture of both things, like the well-known Chinese sauce for pork. If you should love me, I would marry you = If you loved me, I would marry you. “Should” is making the condition less probable: Here, we are using “if-should + would” instead of “if-past + would” with the same result. If you should see my sister, tell her I’m looking for her (I don’t think you’ll see her, but maybe you will) If you see my sister, tell her I’m looking for her (maybe you will see her) We can use SHOULD in type 1 to make the condition less probable: Type 2: if-past + would = If you loved me, I would marry you (but you don’t, or it’s very improbable) Type 1: if-present + will = If you love me, I will marry you (you probably love me) IF I SHOULD STAY= This is a conditional sentence mixing types 1 and 2: “If I should stay, I would only be in your way”.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |