Remembering Sinéad

1966-2023

Dear Sinéad,

You never knew me, but we spent some quality time together back in the day.  I still can recall with great clarity my intensity of emotion listening to your first album.  I was lying in my bunk bed in my dorm room at Purdue in 1988, listening on headphones (probably to a cassette borrowed from roommate JZ).  Lying there in the dark listening to "Mandinka", "I want your (hands on me)", "Just like U Said it Would B", and (especially) "Troy"was intense.  Discovering this new sound you had brought me.  Singing straight from some incredible, inner strength.  You delivered me a musical knock-out punch.

I loved some of your work after that too and I enjoyed it when I caught a performance on television, but, honestly, I kind of lost track of you through the years.  Not one to confuse the artist for the art, I tend not to follow the personal lives of artists I like.  But, now, I kinda wish I had with you.  I didn't know we were so close in age (you were only three years older than I when you died).  I didn't know Peter Gabriel broke your heart (embarrassingly, I am only now grokking this one posthumously, what a song and what a performance at 53 years old).  I didn't know you had pulled a Cat Stevens and converted to Islam.  I didn't know your son had committed suicide.  And now the internet speculates that you probably did the same.   This last point was struck me surprisingly hard.  How can that same person who spoke to me through her music with such passion and strength have decided to end it?  Maybe it will turn out not to be true but of course plenty of people do make that final choice so you've got me thinking about that now, too.

And so, I leave you with your own duet and the words of Peter Gabriel:

-A Fan