Valentine's Day was quickly winding to a close. It was almost 9pm and we had just returned from a quick dinner. We parked in our building's underground parking and headed to the elevator entrance. Right by the door was a familiar sight: one of the building's many security guards sitting on a plastic white chair, leaning against a small rickety table, flipping through a newspaper, his phone resting nonchalantly by his left hand.
As we approached both him and our entrance, strains of a song could be heard coming from his phone, growing louder and louder with each step. I could see him moving absentmindedly to the music, bobbing his head, his shoulders bouncing, back and forth.
Eventually, I could make out the lyrics of the song, accompanied by a tune I could point out in my sleep,
, a tune I belted into every hair brush I ever owned:
"... It's the light of day that shows me how
And when the night faaaaalls, loneliness caaaaaalls
OOOOOO,
I wanna dance with somebody
I wanna feel the
HEAT
with somebody
Yeah I wanna dance with somebody
With somebody who loves me"
I smiled at the security guard, who looked up, nodded at us and
continued swaying to the music, flipping through his newspaper's pages.
His smile wasn't sad; he was enjoying the music, enjoying his evening, relaxed and entertained. Exactly how I felt every time I heard Houston's less sappy songs.
It was the perfect reminder to me that it was ok to care about the passing of a woman who provided the soundtrack to my younger years. It was alright to have shed a few tears for a
celebrity who essentially threw her life away, despite the horrors going on around the world. It was ok to tweet about her passing, and remain silent on the horrors going on in Syria, where my grandparents, my aunt, my cousins all live.
The National's opinion columnist Ali Khaled said it very articulately today:
"People are free to grieve for whomever they choose...There should not be some sort of fixed exchange rate that values one life over another."
I discovered music through Madonna and Whitney Houston. There was no one bigger at the time, and I had not yet developed the teenage angst that would drive me towards Alanis Morisette and Nirvana and The Fugees and Pearl Jam and Matchbox 20 and Tracy Chapman. There was only Whitney and Madonna for me.
Soon, I'm going to get to see Madonna in concert, if I manage to buy the hot tickets once they go on sale.
But Whitney Houston? Sadly, I'll never get to see her live. I'll just have to settle for hearing her songs in the most unexpected of places - blaring from the chipped cell phone of my building's security guard.
