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Monday, February 24, 2025
'Killing Me Softly,' Roberta Flack killed
Should we blame old age for taking celebrities away?
If one is DOA on a hospital gurney, one has been killed by something. Humans don't just die but are killed: murdered by suicide, knocked out by microbes, undermined by malnutrition from gluten in the guise of old age (that stripped their intestinal lining for years, giving them grey hair and malnourishment), and many deficiencies of vital micronutrients, the 65 or more trace minerals needed for life as Dr. Joel Wallach goes on about at criticalhealthnews.com). Though listed as natural causes, what's natural about dying too soon? Humans are meant to live to 120, and that number seems to be growing in the normal fluctuation of the average human lifespan.
Roberta Cleopatra Flack, 88, is most famous for her fabulous song "Killing Me Softly." In this case, the killer was His Song. The song is so powerful that Lauryn Hill of the Fugees revived it and slayed a whole new generation with it.
Magic Mountain rollercoaster theme park west of Los Angeles (sixflags.com)
When I was a child, my mother took me to Magic Mountain, and we rode the tram over everyone. Down in the square Roberta Flack was singing this song (or a cover band was covering it). It seized me, a boy who could not possibly understand what the song was even about. But I did understand the feeling if not the entire context. And I could hear the words, and I wanted to run to it, to be mesmerized.
I tugged at my mom's hand to stop the tram and take me there. But there was no doing, no choice but to be carried away to the tram's destination even as the song carried me away. All I wanted to see was who was making these magic sounds and how. Music always affected me much more than it seemed to affect others. Finally, the tram came to its conclusion with the song, and I desperately ran back to the square in search of the stage and the singer. But there was no finding where that had been. I asked my mom for help: Who was it? Where is it? Where do singers sing? She didn't know. No one knew. No one else seems to have taken notice that the most beautiful song in the world had just been sung. An angelic ET lands on Earth, and no one takes any special notice. Who knew she had been alive all this time up until today?
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