Thoughts on Annie Lennox

"I think it's terrible. They didn't tell me it was going to be like this when I was little. Life is the most brutal experience."
- Annie Lennox, in Annie Lennox by Lucy O'Brien

I really need to preface my thoughts here by explaining my Saturday. I'd been feeling the need for some down-time during the week, and wanted to lighten up. So I planned an uncluttered Saturday with two items on the agenda - return some library books and go to the beach. I got into the library and saw they were having a withdrawn books sale. There was a time when I would have gone slightly mad at such a sale - but I retained my sensibilities reasonably well this time. One book that I did buy was Annie Lennox, a biography by Lucy O'Brien. And eight other books. Total cost $3.00.

I figured Annie Lennox would be a light read and later on I opened it up for a first look. I kept reading until I'd finished the whole thing. It's not a brilliant book, and sometimes O'Brien repeats herself in different chapters which is a bit tedious. Fortunately it isn't a voyeuristic or vicarious book, and at times is sparse on insight. Yet I couldn't put it down. One part of the book that is very interesting is the chapter discussing fans and their obsession. One of their fans, named Danny, meets the Eurythmics and is obviously obsessed to the point of unreality. As well as thinking he has a special intimate understanding of the duo that no-one else has, he also lays all his Eurythmics collectibles for them to see. Annie Lennox is horrified. O'Brien writes:

"There's a good couple of lines where the fan says, "This is your life", and Annie says, "No, the music is our life". The fan doesn't register this, which is not surprising. The stockpiling of records, cassettes and books gives the fan a concrete identity and purpose. Following a distant idol, however, is a recipe for insecurity and dissatisfaction and a peculiar sort of 'I love them more than Thou' competitiveness."

It reminds me of a John Lennon documentary I saw in which a dishevelled fan turns up in his garden one day. John and Yoko bring him inside and give him breakfast. The fan seriously believes that Lennon wrote a certain song specifically for him, even though they have never met or had any prior contact. Lennon says, "They're just songs", with an expression that is a mixture of incredulity and concern.

As I was reading Annie Lennox I thought about the fact the everyone has a unique deposit. Everyone brings a gift or talent into the world - and one way or another it finds an outlet. I recall my old pastor telling me that he had noticed a particular gift I had before I was a Christian. I used it differently then but he recognised it as an innate attribute. He saw the true image, something I found remarkable as I didn't see it myself in those days.

So I read the book not as a fan looking for validation by association, but as a woman seeing both the giftedness and human flaws of another woman. And I was taken with the way in which Lennox' talent and creativity were motivating her, and how she found the idolatry distasteful. The book goes into a bit more detail on her attitude to the trappings of fame. It also gives some account of her spiritual searching, including her phase of exploring Hare Krishna. Although she married a Krishna monk (who she divorced after a few months), she never became a devotee, but explains what initially drew her to Krishna consciousness meetings:

"The thing that struck me, even though I was very much "I don't know about this, it's all a bit strange", I felt refreshed to be around people who weren't motivating their lives around purely material gain. I drove away from that place feeling just a little refreshed. I was very tired and unhappy in my personal life, and a bit confused about how to figure out my life away from the Eurythmics."

How easy it is to judge by appearances - some-one appears to have it all, to be a star, to want for nothing. Yet they may be feeling lonely, depressed, insecure and dissatisfied. I could see myself reflected back and remembered my own spiritual smorgasbord (not Krishna though) as I tried to find something that completed me, gave me identity and had a higher purpose of some kind.

I think I couldn't put this book down because it was actually not a book about some ethereal or surreal super human being, but about a gifted and very human woman who has found life doesn't play fair (Sweet Dreams) and sought something that would make sense of the world. I found Lennox' comments on Live Aid interesting (she didn't perform in it):

"Live Aid made me question the solutions in the Third World. The issues are really immense: corruption in government, climate, agriculture and so on. Some of those issues crop up when we look at what's happening to the ecosystem. Once I got involved in charity benefits, the letters arrived in their hundreds, and I asked myself what I could do without seeming like Joan of Arc. Shouldn't we be more anarchic, rather than turning into these mealy-mouthed, pompous, self-congratulatory, 'We Are the World' type diplomats. I think we should be more dangerous, take more risks..."

Later, after I had finshed reading Annie Lennox, I saw that some of Live8 was on tv and watched her performance. I wouldn't say it was anarchic, and neither would I call it self-congratulatory. I watched her perform Why with only her own piano playing as accompaniment while the huge screen behind her showed footage of people from Africa. It was one of the most moving things I've ever seen.

It's hard to describe why all of this, the book and the performance, left me so challenged. I know that I related to the part about her work with Shelter, an organisation that assists the homeless. I think maybe I was challenged because I somehow grasped that the powerful are weak, the talented will find an expression, and those who reach their hard earned pinnacle find the view is not what they thought it would be. Perhaps because I saw a woman who tries to use her gift for others and who at the same time has found life unpredictable and brutal. And as it is for so many people, and myself for a long time too, I saw the image that is yet to be restored. I think the world is full of Annie Lennoxs.

It's easy to see some-one two dimensionally, and to treat them as less than made in God's image. I think I'll write more on that soon.