Celebrity Tragedy & Blackmetal Nonfiction

Wow. What a week.

Bernie Mac passed away in a Chicago hospital from complications due to pneumonia; Isaac Hayes was found dead in his home; and, Morgan Freeman is still in the hospital after a near-fatal traffic accident. My best friend's teenage son, in a somber conversation with his father about these three African American trailblazers, observed, "Someone really should go check on James Earle Jones."

Of course, the response to these events is whirlwind at best for about a day after they happen, then it's back to all-Miley-all-the-time (with a dash of Jonas Brothers for the teenage girls, cougars, and pedophile queens) It seems, according to the media, that celebrity tragedy only exists as justification for our trivial lives, once it gets analyzed and talked to death, with sound bytes, video clips, and lingering, dramatic shots of photographs from these people's lives, placed behind the narration to obviously make the viewer feel the opposite of what is being said about the celebrity.

In the middle of all this, I have unabashedly entered into a full-on obsession with the tragic events surrounding the Norwegian black metal band, Mayhem. According to Wikipedia, the band has existed in one form or another from 1984 until present day, and, almost from the start, the band gained notoriety from the grisly decisions and actions of its band members, the most controversial surrounding the suicide by shotgun of the first lead singer, Per Yngve Ohlin (aka Dead) in 1991. Apparently, the guitarist, Øystein Aarseth (aka Euronymous), found him and, instead of notifying authorities, ran to the nearest drug store, bought a disposable camera, returned to the scene, rearranged the body for a more aesthetic scene, and proceeded to take many pictures. One of these pictures was stolen by someone close to the band and used for the cover of a 1995 bootleg Mayhem recording called Dawn of the Blackhearts (VERY grisly image. Please open at your own discretion!)

It's unfathomable to me, sometimes, how events that define and end other people's lives become simple elements of passing time in the lives of others. I have the program StumbleUpon installed on my browser, and as a reward for finishing work, I will allow myself one, two, maybe three stumbles. I became entrenched in the Mayhem lore from a site that listed the ten sickest blackmetal album covers, and I am no better a person for the knowledge I have acquired today.