I’ve just watched the first five minutes of ‘Avatar: The Way Of Water’, and to be honest I can really see what all the fuss is about. I’m sure that out there somewhere is a 26 year old critic who has only ever seen three other films, altogether, but was ready immediately to declare this particular offering a life affirming masterpiece of our times. And they would have been right, it is life affirming. It must be, because after just five minutes it made me truly joyous that I was still alive and able to stop watching it. It made me realise that life really is too short to bother watching films like this. I mean, it’s still on, still playing, so I can hear it and if I look up occasionally I can also see it but what I won’t ever have to do unless I want to, is watch it. And I don’t want to watch it in full because it will make me die a little bit inside, and that will feel like somehow like I’m deliberately insulting people who have had to go through so much more in life.
To his credit James Cameron is still alive and clearly proud of his recent cinematic output, but please don’t tell me that an entire generation of movie goers will forever remember him for ‘Avatar: The Way Of Water’, as that would be a shame given that he has also made some genuinely outstanding films. But herein lies the rub – more often than not you don’t get to be the one who decides what you are remembered for. Churchill got lucky, per se, when World War II broke out as it handily allowed him to find his moment in history to shine, thus sending his manifold dodgier episodes to a backburner, where they will very likely stay forever. Tony Blair on the other hand did some quite interesting things but will never be forgiven for Iraq, whether he likes it or not. I must say I would have more time for the latter if he didn’t still waft around the world being paid millions for offering some quite whiffy advice. I would have more time for the latter if he cared as much about his legacy as he does about making money; which is a luxury I doubt I’ll ever get to experience.
I suppose a legacy is anything you want it to be, but I doubt Sinead O’Connor would have expected quite the outpouring of grief she received when she died before her time this week. For someone who had kept a pretty low profile for so long even I was surprised to see her on the front page to quite the degree she was afforded. Perhaps she deserved it or perhaps the great minds of the media simply decided that allowing us to give her a full-fat mourning would be a nice distraction from global melting, financial turmoil and political incontinence. Whatever the reasons, poor Sinead has been splashed about an awful lot and suddenly every musician and countless other celebrity types on the planet remembers that they knew her ever so well and thought very highly of her indeed. The news was awash with tributes from all directions, most of which used lots of flowery words to say things that meant very little, as if the death of anyone famous automatically becomes some form of speed-bidding to get to the most formulaic and least worthy cliché of a tribute out onto the internet before the next event renders it obsolete.
When I think of Sinead O’Conner it is not as an expert but as a distantly engaged onlooker with just enough more than a passing interest. I neither loved not disliked her. I knew she had had an unhappy life for the most part, though I wasn’t there to ever truly know so pinch your salt as you please. I had no idea she had been married and divorced four times (divorced twice in a year, no less) or that she had four children. I faintly recollected that she dated Peter Gabriel but had not a clue that her 17 year old son had committed suicide last year. And I only had flashes of knowledge with regards to her music career but, and this is the point, I bet they are exactly the same flashes that everyone else has. She may have released ten studio albums but I wonder how many people could name them all. She may have collaborated with some heavy hitters, but I doubt the tracks such collaboration generated will be talked about twenty years from now.
No, what everyone remembers Sinead O’Connor for now, and always will do from now on, more than the crushing sense of sadness and isolation and the questionable tattoos and her late conversion to Islam is that Prince song and that photo of the Pope. It surely must have itched her, even just a tiny bit, that she achieved global fame and some form of fortune for one video recorded for a cover of someone else’s song. She surely must have spent the rest of her career far keener than the keenest of mustard to write a song of her own that would topple ‘Nothing Compare 2 U’ in the affections of all and sundry, but that song never came. And then just when she had an awful lot going for her on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond she decided to rip up a photo of John Paul II on Saturday Night Live. It was a superb bit of protest and entirely appropriate, but it didn’t go down too well with some (chiefly Catholics in denial) and it sort of cut off the blood flow around her career; not enough to end it but certainly enough to make it look very drained and in need of a sit down and a nice cup of tea. If anything, it was even more of a defining moment than that Prince song, and it proved to be, unfortunately, defining in the worst kind of way because like it or not O’Conner never recovered.
Perhaps Sinead O’Connor always had it planned this way. Perhaps she knew that in death she would be vindicated for her choices and her defiance and her refusal to follow the party line. She obviously had friends in high places but her passing left more of a silhouette of enigma and passion and truculence than a technicolour figure of a fully formed musical genius. I hope she has found some peace in death, because she always struck me as someone who could have done with a bit of peace. And I should make sure my words are not taken for brazen flippancy: she wasn’t strictly my cup of tea but I never held her in the same bracket of derision as, interestingly enough, Bono. But, with as much shame as you’d prefer to ascribe it, she will always be remembered by almost everyone for that Prince song and tearing up that photo, quite a long time ago. And that is regrettable but, and mind you, I’d much rather be remembered for two good things than for making something as artificial and insipid as ‘Avatar: The Way Of Water’ (which, tragically, would still be on now, quite some time later, if I hadn’t decided it wasn’t even worthy as background noise and shifted to cricket instead). And the more I think about Sinead O’Conner the more I’m starting to like her, which surprises me a bit. Sometimes you don’t miss something until it’s too late, which is surely better than not missing it at all.
G B Burton. 29.07.2023
On stupidity......and other causes for concern. 