July 21, 2017

Weep Not for Roads Untravelled.

I miss him.

How can I miss someone that I have never met? It's weird. Funny, even. Yet that is how I am feeling.

 But, he has gone. and there was nothing that could have been done.

This hurts more than when David Bowie left us. More than Alan Rickman. More than John Hurt. More than Carrie Fisher.

I saw him perform 18 days ago? 2 weeks and 4 days. He was at my hometown of Greenwich, performing on the fourth tour to make it as far as the o2. My third time of ever seeing them perform. Spirits high that it wouldn't be the last. And now it is. It really, really is the end.

I have this one really clear memory, not a memory with coherent action but just a collection of images and sensations of a first memory. My mum's old bedroom, purple and blue walls, double bed that reached side to side and this big stereo. Somehow it fit in the room, this big old stereo that still had a place to put in tapes, speakers that made the base hit you in the right in the gut and the chorus of Crawling filling the whole house. The "crawling sofa" song, as four-year-old me had called it. Unknowing of how Linkin Park, and Chester Bennington would go on to shape me as a person.

I don't remember a time before where I did not know the lyrics to the song. To any and all Linkin Park songs.

Linkin Park were my first concert. January 2008. I was just 9-years-old. I remember this big white sheet had been put across the stage, their silhouettes coming through as the building rise music kept building tension- BAM- the sheet fell and the big bellowing of guitar, drums and bass kicked ass. It was fucking AMAZING!

When the 7-8-9 year olds in my classes were learning High School Musical lyrics I was singing Linkin Park lyrics. When I felt soul-crushing loneliness as a teen, I would find solace in his words. Tracing the Linkin Park logo over and over and over again on my Maths books, tracing it on the back of my GCSE Art books.

When I need to be angry, he was with me. When I was happy, he was with me. When I was melancholy, he was with me. Never in person, but in spirit. In the power of his lyrics, the power of his voice. And now- that is all we are left with. His soul encapture in words that so many others are unable to find. He was our voice.

Chester Bennington, a vocalist that has help define a generation of music. He touched thousand of hearts, minds and souls with the lyrics co-written with band member Mike Shinoda.

Rest in Peace, sweet, sweet Chester. For another light has been lost. And we have noticed. And the world is already that bit darker.

Good Goodbye.

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