There have been a number of comments pointing out that 27 years of age seems to be the precise age, that moment of perfect ripeness when truly gifted, truly\u00a0fucked up people burn out.\u00a0 Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, and Jimi Hendrix died at 27, and now Amy Winehouse joins that pantheon of addled and outrageous talent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I found her songs only after her career had peaked into decline, which is to say a couple years ago, and I remember wondering who was the cute girl in the videos, and where was the person singing, because hearing THAT voice coming out of THAT face just didn’t add up – she couldn’t possibly…\u00a0 But she was.\u00a0 And she was amazing.\u00a0 I still hum Rehab, which sounds a little incongruous coming out of my mouth too, but not because I sing it well.\u00a0 Mind you, we’re all singing Rehab a little right now.\u00a0 One of the best eulogies I’ve read was by Alexis Petridis in the Guardian (http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/music\/2011\/jul\/24\/amy-winehouse-a-losing-game<\/a>).\u00a0 He wrapped it up better than I could, noting that Amy Winehouse was famous because she had talent to burn, not because she burnt it.<\/p>\n At 27 years old, another very talented person was a first lieutenant in the US Army, having been drafted in 1958.\u00a0 John Shalikashvili was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when I worked as a civilian for the Department of Defense.\u00a0 I never met him either, but stories about the boss trickle all the way down – and those stories always reflected\u00a0a lot of respect for “General Shali.”<\/p>\n Even after leaving the service, he was a broad-minded strategic thinker.\u00a0 In 2007, he had an opinion piece\u00a0in the New York Times calling for a reversal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and ran anther one in the Washington Post 2 years ago.\u00a0 I’m sure I’m not the only one who sees bittersweet irony\u00a0in that the policy was reversed\u00a0the day before he died, at age 75.\u00a0 I hope someone told him, and thanked him for doing his part – for freedom, for lovingkindness, and for our county.\u00a0 He was one of the good guys.\u00a0 General Shalikashvili was briefly famous because he had talent as well, and he burned it quietly, well, and with honor.<\/p>\n So RIP to Amy Winehouse and John Shalikashvili, whom the headlines have brought together for the oddest of reasons.\u00a0 Maybe she’ll sing for him beyond the veil, while they wait in line for whatever’s next.\u00a0 Fair play to them both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Amy Winehouse was famous because she had talent to burn, not because she burnt it. General Shalikashvili was famous because he had talent as well, and burned it quietly, well, and with honor. RIP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14,21,43],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1607"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1611,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607\/revisions\/1611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}