If you scan this picture of Whitney Houston you can see that only a smudge of a person occupies those fluffy designer furs. Yes, drugs have left her skeletal and recessed into her white costume, and a lengthy absence from the stage gives her expression during last week’s performance in Turin a frightened and confused patina. But to anyone familiar with drug abuse or drug abusers it’s her absence of soul, her brittle zombiness, that defines the photo.
In 2001, when she failed to appear at the second of Michael Jackson’s 30th anniversary celebrations, her record label was forced to issue a formal statement denying that Houston was dead. That was true — corporeally.
Drugs are harder on divas nowadays. Gone is the soft fuzzy jangle of mixing uppers (or downers) with alcohol — a chemistry Judy Garland perfected and managed to control — and appear human in spite of — until she couldn’t anymore. Heroin is deadly and yet its pin-eyed minion still maintain a kind of floaty gravity about them. Picture Janis Joplin lugging around her bottle of Southern Comfort. But speed gnaws, strips and drains. Whitney Houston has become a neon-lit testimonial for the arrid, black hole suck of crack, coke and meth — drugs that leave human shells. Spook-eyed, helter-skeltered — crooked-wigged — shells.
Recently PBS’s Frontline examined our country’s raging meth epidemic and explained that only 22% of the addicted will ever break free. Immediately following Whitney’s performance in Italy last week there was yet another announcement that she’d be entering a rehab clinic. But these public notices from Whitney’s damage control camp come and go like sales at Nordstrom. In the end there’s always one more to arrive. Bigger than the previous.
Witnessing Houston’s descent has a sadistic creepiness about it. True, it’s nothing new within the annals of showbiz. But shouldn’t there at least be some sort of demented glamour to the whole affair? But, again, speed isn’t a romantic drug. It bleeds colors — shrivels brains, as in Houston’s dazed, Crack Ho appearance on husband Bobby Brown’s VH1 reality show Being Bobby Brown. A show that represents the nadir’s nadir of broadcast humiliation and degradation. The small fragments of the freak fest that I caught last year convinced me that, like Ms. Houston, we’re all living in The Last Days.
While writing this I visited various Whitney fan sites. Many members were crying and beating there chests over Houston’s latest tragedy — that performance in Turin. But there were many fans who blamed the “cold weather” for her undeniably drug-fueled performance. In trying to defend the diva’s frightening appearance and vocal degeneration they remained, like Ms. Houston, so deep in denial that eventually their forum messages began appearing in Chinese.
Some sites featured archived videos (see below) or live clips for download — ghostly fragments from Houston’s heyday. I spent nearly an hour listening and watching — but mostly listening. I felt like crying. Not since Sarah Vaughan have we had such a magically beguiling vox in our midst. Houston demonstrated that the human animal does possess some sort of angelic quality. Sure, many of Houston’s song choices and production styles were schmaltzy — but who cared? The rounded clarity and spot-on purity of her voice was Olympian. A gift from some other dimension.
Of course Houston possessed other gifts, too. The doe-like eyes, ledge-like cheekbones, svelte-chic model’s body. Though her hair, and subsequently her wigs were a problem — but that was a minor deficiency.
And beards, too — now those were major problems.
I’ve my own formula for understanding Houston’s debacle. An idea that formed back in Honolulu, during the late 80s, at the Blaisdell Center, when my friend Orlando happened to catch Houston, before her performance, making out backstage with another woman.
Houston’s alleged lesbianism (or bisexuality, if you will) was always her Achilles’ heel — the hub of her psychological quandry. Her inability to allow such a human side of herself a place within her galaxy-sized persona is at the heart of her torment. Of course, that’s just my silly opinion. But consider poor, silly Bobby Brown. He has the dual role of shoring up Whitney’s public heterosexuality and becoming a scapegoat for her drug addiction. Two black holes sucking each other’s suck.
Houston, like Michael Jackson exists in that rarefied, near-debauched world that only Roman emperors and presidents have been privy to. It’s a world where common rules, common laws don’t apply. In Bill Clinton’s memoir, when explaining why he did what he did with Monica Lewinsky, he simply wrote: “Because I could get away with it.”
Consider Whitney’s 2000 drug fiasco in Hawaii. After airport security discovered a half-ounce of weed in her purse, Houston abandoned her pocketbook at the gate and gingerly boarded a plane and flew back to LA. Later, the judge overseeing the case decided that drug rehab was something that Ms. Houston really didn’t need. Uh huh.
That sort of “exempt nether world” is ultimately an undoing place because as confining as rules and orders are, they also act as safeguards for the insatiable, compulsive side of human nature — that force within each of us that isn’t angelic, that needs rules and proscriptions lest we run wild in the streets, wigs a-flying, and implode on some binge or other – right before our very eyes. Ala Ms. Houston.
I’ll let one of the Whitney fan site member’s have the closing word here. She says it best — and asks The Final Question:
Hi to evryone, my name is Daniele and I’m from Torino, I was there yesterday night and I cried all the time, Whitney’s voice was in terrible condition, it was the worst performance of her since 2003 Divas concert. I recorded evry part of it with my cam so you can trust me when I say that it’s a tragic thing to accept but she was in a complete mess, she cried at one point and I felt so bad for her that I started crying more and more…I hope it was for a laryngitis but I don’t think so, she was high…i love whitney, but she has to rehab again.
Is it time to lose faith?
Being Whitney Houston from FourFour.
Whitney and Bobby from D Listed.
Action on Addiction website.
It’s been sad watching Whitney’s descent from being such a beautiful woman and one of the greatest singers of our times to this scary shell of a human. I don’t know, it just feels so tragic to think that she might not come back. I miss the thrill I used to get from hearing her sing.
I haven’t watched the spectatcle, and I am not really a fan of this type of music (not that it’s bad), but about drugs….
I guess the pictures show clearly how bad drugs is, and how ugly people become using drugs. I’ve fortunately never touched any hard-drugs, and only had a taste or smell of most soft. But seeing this, I can’t imagine how one could ever start using such crap.
P.S. 1:30 AM isn’t at all early when in the Netherlands.
I wish her the best…my mother used to be a big fan a her…..
Indeed it wasn’t a good day for celebs attending the Olympics. Peter Gabriel rose out of the ground like something an italian goat herder once buried — and not sounding much better. Yoko made an appearance that was like the tips of skate blades down a blackboard. Pavoratti sounded wonderful but looked as if he’d just been groomed with black shoe polish and shellaced. Oh yes, and there was our own First Lady with pancake so yellowed and heavy I was certain she had been done up by an embalmer. Thank God for Sophia Loren who was absolutely stunning even at the impressive age of 70!
I was there when Whitney Houston made a big splash in music and we were all stunned by her amazing voice. These last few years seeing her lose all breaks my heart. She looks like she’s existing in a shell of what she used to be…I really do hope the best for her.
Poor, poor, poor Whitney. We wish! No one said cause your name is Whit-ney you had to be smart. When are drug addicts goin’ to learn to STOP trying to fool us. They’re usually so busy being consumed with their deamons that they forget that we’re are not also, possessed. And that’s for Whitney’s Winter Collection. Well. No one ever said because you’re a STAR you have immunity from BAD BAD BAD… oh so BAD taste. Unfortunately, no one ever told poor poor poor Whitney that Good Taste is NOT 4SALE… which basically means Whitney. You cannot BUY it..! Either you got it or you don’t. While we’re talking BAD taste. Will someone please call Mariah and give her the 411. News Flash Mariah. You’re tired….. ahhh humm!
i was and indeed totally SHELL SHOCKED about Whitney Houston’s appearance, so scary what drug’s and alchol especially drug’s can do totally collateral damage to a person’s well being, like the article about Whitney Houston!!! i still listen to her music before Whitney’s mishap at Hawaii, then down fall to the greatest voice and body too…
poor girl needs rehab, and a program, but she probably still got a ton of money, which will enable her to never hit bottom….poor thing is so sick….she’ll just wither away and die probably like so many other talented, rich and famous addicts of her caliber…people get clean usually when all their scorecards read “ZERO”….hers will take a long time to read “ZERO”, because she probably still gets amazing royalties on her CD’s, movies etc…etc….that’ll keep her in the crack for years to come, or unless her heart explodes first….sad sad sad waste….
Let us all pray for Whitney. We love you Whitney whether you’re with Bobby or whoever you choose to be with. We respect you for the gracious music you have given us. We respect you for being you and whatever you do. We all have made strides and made some mistakes. But you must know that you are loved and God loves you. May the blood of Jesus Christ wash all over your troubles away. In Jesus name - I say this prayer for you sister. db
It just breaks my heart to see what once was a beautiful, talented, classy lady with the golden voice that could sing like a lark, reduced to a shell of the diva she once was and I find myself getting upset with her for doing this to herself, her family, and for letting her fans down. But I realize that she didn’t intentionally do this to herself, but she has a problem and need the love, support and prayers from her family and from her fans. I pray that her family along with divine intervention will intervene and get her the help that she needs to overcome the devils grip and rise again to the shining star that she once was before it’s too late. Whitney, God still loves you and we need you back.
Pain can lead to addictions of all kinds
In sharing my unique opinion, I believe that what I saw of the Whitney of my adolescence is perhaps all about production and fantasy. . I have no clue her actual childhood and life outside of manufacture.
Some will say that “how could she do this” Well in the Whitney of adolesence….(How could Desert Storm Whitney be on drugs) It will never make sense.
What does make sense is the personal recognition that of all things I can do for Whitney, If I am going to place judgement, then I better also make a way to help, it nothing more than respecting that she is human, pray for her, wish her acceptance! (what ever that means to her)
How compassion…Even if they lie, Have compassion even if the make you cry….and when its time - leave in love and judge not for no part of you is perfect either.
SO PUT YOU SALT ON THE SHELF GO HEAD AND LOVE YOUSELF CAUSE EVERYTHING IS GONNA BE JUST FINE
- India Aire ” Video “
When I first heard whitney, I realized how beautiful the female voice can be. It showed me this world is worth being in and to simpily hear a voice like her’s made it ok to be here.
When I heard about the drug stuff I did not believe it! When I found it to have some truth, I thought ok she has to go along the route of her chosen life theme. And if I am to be happy when she’s good, I will stand by her when she falls. For to understand and experience life in it’s fullness one must complete the full circle. And when she pulls out of this she will be looked upon as a women of experience, strength and hope. The Goddess shows she can survive any and all things. But no one chooses to inbody and not complete the course. As harsh as life can be there is a wonder and beauty that comes with it. We learn through pain and celebrate with laughter. And so shall Whitney. I thank her for allowing me to be witness to such a heavnly voice, just a small taste of what is!
thank you Whitney
A fan who will ramain by your side untill your new beginning.
When I look at her I see the spirit within and I know she has already won! She is all that and more. with a voice that powerful there has to be a spirti just as powerful to use it. Do you really think she is doomed? to know creator and her creation one must travel as far from where you think she is, and when you arrive in this hell you create there creator is again smiling upon her child.
thank you for allowing me my say.
my heart is held up for Whitney I give all the love and strength I can to allow her to draw from to speed her travels back to the top where she rightfully belongs. A Goddess has but one place.
Larry Fuller
L