My head and and my heart always grow heavy at the news of artists I like being sick or dying young. Why does it matter that they are artists? It matters because as precious as the lives of all our loved-ones are, for a multitude of reasons we may not be as influential in their "health-lives" as the artists that I am referring to. When entertainers perform, people listen, and while we may not emulate everything that is being said, we nod along because we can relate to the words, the feelings, the circumstances. We can see ourselves in the lives of others, we all do it from time to time. So when people start dying suddenly, people we "just saw a week ago at the awards show looking good", then we should have no choice but to wonder how it happened, why it happened, and what about their situation is similar to ours? Do we see the connections, or do they not apply because their passing did not come with a beat and a remix?
Part of the reason that I named this blog "Health, Remixed" was because I know that some people need to hear the remixed version of all the health information that is out there. Same songs, different beats. I know that regardless of what I say, it may sound like I'm preaching. I hope not, because I'm not trying to. Maybe it's my accent, and if I sound like I am preaching, please let me know... it's all love. The death of someone who's music we love, that's a message that strikes a cord for a lot of people. The violent deaths of Tupac, Biggie and others made us revisit conflict resolution in our communities. Easy-E's HIV/AIDS infection had us talking about safe sex. Luther always had us talking about weight, but when he died after slipping into a coma related to his diabetes, we talked about that disease a bit more than we had...for a little while. The same applied to Gerald Levert and Big Pun, and here we are now talking about Heavy D and Erick Sermon, men in their early 40's suffering from the complications of being overweight and obese. Here's wishing the "E" in EPMD a swift and full recovery, and again, as I said on Twitter, thanks to him for sharing his story. We needed to hear it.
Sermon's story is the only one from this cohort being told by the man while he lives. The others never got to say too much about theirs, and I can imagine why. Health is so private that we often feel that sharing information about it may have people think differently of us. There comes a point where on-lookers don't have to say a word though, and the trained eye can see the problem from across the room. Truth be told, the on-looker doesn't really matter, because your health starts with you. You, as the on-looker in the mirror and the listener to your own heart and lungs, you know when it started getting harder to do what you used to do, and you need to know why. It might be your weight, it might be your joints, it might be your lungs, it could be something else, but whatever it is, you need to know.
I asked people to tell me what they would say to the Heavy Ds, the Luthers, the Big Puns, etc. as they gathered around the table next week for Thanksgiving. I asked because I want us to consider those moments not as times to preach or teach, but just to talk. To say, "I love you, and I want you here at Christmas, I want you here for New Years, I need you around at Easter, at my graduation in May, for my birthday, for my wedding, for the birth of my children, for my return from service (or wherever I have been)." Or, "I just need you here to talk to you, to laugh with you, to hear your voice, to watch you sleep, to recite this rhyme while we dance."
If something about what we are doing now has to change in order to increase the chances of all that happening, I think that the change is worth it. We may not be putting all this down in a studio over sixteen bars, but the tracks we produce in the studio that we call "home", they can be hits too. All we need to do is be brave enough to humbly step up to the mic while it's still on. Go ahead...step up.
Peace,
PV
