Aretha Franklin was on television tonight singing the song everyone knew she would sing when they hear she was singing on television. Franklin has sung Respect for over forty years. Diva years might be slightly longer, I'm not sure, but in that time here's what happened: she stopped singing it. While it's true she was on television tonight singing Respect, it wasn't her singing it. It wasn't even the song. They've both become painful representations of what both her and the song used to be. Human memories degrade over time, science confirms this, so when we watch Franklin on television in a live event, it sounds just like it did forty years ago. Even she hasn't changed, still belting out the high notes, and still larger than life. I watched closely though, and she doesn't have the range like she used to have, her face has aged considerably, and there's not much life in it anymore. In her defense, we all age, but this is different than aging, this is wear out. She's worn out from singing it so much, because it's her very definition. If she doesn't sing it, people will assume something is wrong. This is because the song has become bigger than her. This is not Aretha Franklin singing Respect, this is people standing and dancing to a song they remember from decades ago that still has not vanished. Their memories have faded, so it's easy to hear the song and still think it's just as good as it was all that time ago. It's not though, and Franklin probably knows that, which is why when she has to come out of the dressing room and perform that song, it's lacklustre. People cheer and applaud, but it's lost something. It's only a shell of what it used to be. Imagine if the Colosseum came crashing down, or they had to remove it because a new superhighway or wind farm was going in there. People would complain about desecrating a sacred site, and removing history forever, so in order to broker a deal, the builders agree, at great cost to the public, to build a new Colosseum in a different spot, away from the tourist centers. It would be just like the old Colosseum in every way, in every specification, and even built using methods the Romans would have used, so no one can tell the difference. No one would visit it, because it would be real. Even if the builders said it was a joke and they moved the real Colosseum to a different location, it still wouldn't be the same. Sure it's the Colosseum, but somethings not right, things aren't like they ought to be. If the Colosseum were torn down though, what would we actually be losing? A piece of humanity's past to which it can't connect anymore? Does anyone really experience anything when they visit the ruins? It's not even a building anymore, it's a standing abandoned building that's come to represent our society's collective interest in history. It doesn't do anything, and is only a shell of itself. Even historians can't agree what it was
used for. Don't believe me? Take a tour of it, or read a book. Everyone who's spent anytime there has heard so many stories about it, they can't confirm or deny any of the claims factually. With Franklin it's a bit different, because gradually we've seen her slide into this position, we've heard the song moving in this direction. It doesn't matter the song was better thirty years ago, or she sung it with spit and teeth, what matters is it's still around, even though we don't know what to do with it. If we could isolate her 1967 performance, and compare it to the performance tonight, I bet the crowd gives a different reaction, confusion perhaps, as in "Why is she still singing this song, and why are we eating it up?" It's not a good song, and not too many people listen to Motown anymore, yet the song continues to be popular every time she sings it. She even had other number one hits: Chain of Fools, Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing. A quick scan of Wikipedia shows she's had twenty number-one singles, won twenty-one Grammys, holds a Presidential Medal of Freedom, was the first female artist inducted into the Rock and Roll HOF, was the first black woman to appear on the cover of Time, holds a key to the city of Memphis, and just this month, Rolling Stone named her the greatest singer of all time--not female singer, singer period. So many accolades, and yet, still sings the same song. So what happens if the song disappears? She can still sing, just never sing the song again. Would we really miss it? or would we just miss the nostalgia it brings back for some of us? She doesn't sing it now like she used to, so doesn't that mean she's really not singing it anymore? And Americana somehow survives. This is what saddens me most about the people I meet, the people I have contact with: they all seem to be so afraid of letting go of their own past. There is always a lover who has hurt us but we still love them, even though an acknowledgment of those feelings is so painful. There is always something we've said to someone they can't forgive us for, or something said to us we can't forgive. I say we because I'm guilty, we're all guilty. We're emotional pack rats. Every situation, every conversation with people is held somewhere in our cortex and resurfaces later when we want to call attention to it. "There's Jane. I like her, but there was this one time she did this and that to me, and it really offended me." Everyone struggles to forget the girl we loved before, especially when things aren't looking up for us. Time heals because our memories fade. We can't remember the relationship as clearly as we could before, and things didn't seem like they were working out for the best. But right after it's over, we stop for a time of reflection and self-loathing. We feel pity for ourselves that everything we've known, doesn't get to come with us anymore. I have an ex-friend who practically kills herself everyday because her boyfriend of two years broke up with her, and she doesn't have direction now. She ruined her friendship with me, and a perfect romance in blossom because she was too overcome with guilty and self ruin. She feels compelled to her feelings of her memories. She's loyal to her memories because that's all she has. It's almost like we're afraid to feel things, like if we have an emotional reaction to something, we're unhealthy. Actually, emotional reactions are the healthy things to do. If you are a functioning human, the loss of a boyfriend is supposed to make you sad, it's supposed to make you cry. It's okay to feel like crap for a month, but to continually revisit those memories, and torture yourself with images from your past is cruel, and hurts your future. Respect is dead, you have to accept it, and move on. Let a new song, that's better than Respect enter your life for a little, allow yourself that freedom to latch on and lose control because of it.
