Eddie Guerrero died on Sunday and I got pretty upset about it. I wasn't openly sobbing or anything, although I did shed a tear or two. I was depressed at work and Tuesday morning, when I came home, I couldn't bring myself to watch the Raw episode dedicated to him. It's 1:30 am, Wednesday morning and I still haven't watched it. I'm not ready.
Why is that? I've never met Eddie Guerrero. I've seen him in person once, but that was from about 50 yards away and he was busy kicking the crap out of Chris Jericho. I've never spoken with him, but I have seen him cut a lot of wrestling promos over the years. He's never heard any of my opinions, though.
Yesterday, I was thinking about it all. Why do we feel such a closeness with celebrities? We don't really know these guys behind closed doors, although in a lot of cases, after they're gone their friends say all kinds of kind words about them. In Eddie's case (hell, I even refer to him by his first name, like he's my boy), no one has yet to say a bad word about him. Not even the Honky Tonk Man, and that guy has dirt on everyone and isn't afraid to let the world know about it.
We can't really hang out with them, because celebrities tend to be busy people. Even if you bump into them at a club or bar or something, chances are you won't get to have an involved conversation with them. They've got beer to drink, people to flirt with, lawsuits to fight...basically, they've got shit to do and if even if they weren't busy, they just don't know you. These are people who tend to be private with their personal lives and with good reason. The National Enquirer's mission is NOT to show the world that Brad Pitt's heart is filled with cuddly puppies and butterflies.
It just baffled me that I was so upset over the death of a person I'd never even had a conversation with. Logically, this just doesn't make sense to me. I mean, I know who he was and what he did and things like that, but...he wasn't a family member. He wasn't a friend. If I walked past him on the street, he wouldn't know who I was from you. I remember when Kurt Cobain died and my peers (well, white folks my age) were killing themselves because he was dead. It just didn't make sense to me why they'd do that. He wouldn't do it for them. All he was was a person who made music and spoke in a voice that those kids could understand and relate to when no one else could or would. Well, maybe that's it. Maybe he made them feel like they weren't alone in the world and when he was gone, suddenly they were alone again. With his death, they didn't have that person who understood what they felt inside or what they were going through. Not that Eddie and I have the same experiences or he knows what I'm going through, but to me, as a wrestling fan, he gave me inspiration and excitement and humor and drama and his heart and his soul.
Professional artists or athletes give you parts of their inner being when they create or perform. I read someone saying that when it's done right, wrestling is an artform. Eddie Guerrero was one of the best artists the world has ever known. Watching him in the ring drew emotions out of me. When he's do something underhanded and get away with it, he'd give this mischevious grin and it made me give the same grin, like we shared an inside joke that no one else knew about. When he "quit" WCW on Nitro, I felt some of his anger when he cut his promo, because we both knew he was capable of more than he was allowed to do. Even when he was bad, he was hard to hate and when he was good, we loved him even more. Through his actions in the ring, we caught some of his true personality and we felt a connection to him. The more we saw him, the closer to him we felt. Now that he's gone, our lives feel that much more empty.
And since we won't get to see him perform anymore, that's why we feel that we've lost a friend. I guess.
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