Fighting the Feeling

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Sep 8, 2018 · 6 min read
Photo: Mac Miller by Christaan Felber for Vulture

in my 21 years, i’ve formed a weird relationship with death. i‘ve thought about death my fair share, but that’s about where it all stays, in my head. i’ve always been removed from that form of catastrophe. like watching a tornado from a long ways away — not at the center of destruction and chaos, but close enough to get a sense of its presence and power. i’ve lost a few people here and there but they were always distant and never nuclear. i’ve been narrowly escaping the brunt of the impact that comes from losing someone close to you. i’m blessed to say that holds true to this day.

with that in mind, i can’t really believe mac miller is dead. i’m listening to ‘Faces’ right now, and the lyrics have gained an eerie coldness through this new lens of loss. i don’t know what i feel. it’s like a ball of emotions, some intense, some mild, but all real. i feel a sort of withdrawn sense of grief. i am searching myself, trying to check and double check that i’m not posturing just to feel something because i think i should. and i’ve come to the conclusion that i can’t fake a feeling, i’ve never been capable. i can’t get this shit off my mind, and i don’t quite know what to say about it. so i’ma say everything within reason, and try and make some sense of it.

i see what’s happening on twitter (re: Ariana) and the internet has been gross so i’ma just keep it at that. death is a terrible shade that has always plagued us, but i can’t help but be blown away at how uncaring death is. to take mac miller? i can’t help but ask why why why??? i know that mac was a powerful force for good because i am filled with not only my memories with mac’s music, but i think of all the other people that i came of age with that are going to experience this same confusing devastation equally if not more intensely than i am.

the weird thing about celebrity is that it can be the most selfish form of interaction on the part of the consumer. we idolize the artist, and consume their secrets in exchange for money. we nod our heads to raw anguish and confessions over cool instrumentals, and we use the art to soften the harshness of our own realities. in the process, we may even feel drawn closer to the artist, but no matter how close the music brings us, there is this impenetrable barrier between the artist and the fan. no matter how much that lyric, song, or album helped you, that artist could be alone and hurting still . moments like these really crystallize that feeling of guilt. every fan wishes they could change that, to somehow return the favor, bringing respite to the person that gave us comfort when we were alone and drowning. but an artist, just like us, is a person at the end of the day. they need friends not fans. they need people that are driven by a genuine concern for their well-being, and not the need to pay back some debt. whether mac had that or not, his death brings to life a torrent of questions for anyone he had ever touched — which is a lot of people.

i realized that it’s harder to find people that aren’t going to be ravaged by mac’s passing. and for all those sorting through tragedy, i pray for your clarity and that you find healthy ways to compartmentalize your grief. i think about the fact that mac has been a white rapper all this time, and he never once made me think about it. the music always had a stunning amount of depth, and the bars were solid as hell. and the sonics! i’m blasting ‘Fight the Feeling’ in the dark like i did so many times after i first heard the record and no bullshit — this song is mesmerizing. but listening to songs like ‘Funeral’ and ‘Diablo’ from ‘Faces’ is chilling to say the least. all the information was there. he was rapping about everything he went through. he went from the young and bashful skater kid with hits about getting money like donald trump to the widely acclaimed rap connoisseur with an eclectic batch of great, self-reflective albums under his belt. he was only 26 years old. so fucking young. and still he was, as detailed in several of his lyrics, dealing with the buyer’s remorse of a sanity-melting, isolating, and dangerous life of hyper-celebrity and wealth — a life that he worked so hard to achieve.

i feel ashamed to now realize that mac miller has an awesome legacy. i guess the independent variable is that when someone is alive, you see their life and accomplishments as a perpetual beginning or middle. what i’m painfully coming to realize is that any moment could be the last touches on a legacy. nobody would have expected in 2011 when he dropped Blue Slide Park that he would be dead in less than 7 years. he literally just (yesterday) had a new profile posted on Vulture and was on the brink of a tour. no one knew this would be his last tweet, album, or interview. but they were, and it was.

when someone is alive and trudging through life alongside us, we see both their existence and ours as open-ended and infinite. now, that seems painfully optimistic. it sounds so cliché and overstated, but any day could truly be somebody’s last. of course, we always remain hopeful that those we love have time left on their clock, but hope is never enough, and our focus on that ever-shifting end goal of success, riches, fame or whatever other fantastical aspiration we can dream up assumes that we have been granted the time to realize those dreams. meanwhile we manage to ignore the present despite it being all we have and can ever hope to have.

mac’s death probably is reminding us all of our mortality, and it makes me think about the tragedy of a life that is fame and celebrity and the auctioning of personal turmoil on vinyl that so many of our beloved artists and creators are damned to live until they quit their passion or it kills them. we’ve been losing so many rappers, and it hurts to witness how we consume art but treat creators as expendable. there are pure souls behind the curtains making the cogs turn, and it’s all being commodified, sold, and once again demanded. it’s so impersonal — a tragic descriptor for this thing called music that is supposed to be intimate. losing someone like mac miller — who helped remind us that art still holds the potential for good — is incalculably hard.

i distantly remember watching him and his parents on some tv show and i feel sick that they’ve been dealt these cards of reality. he had so much potential as an artist, and as a human being. just through his music, you could see his growth so clearly in every project and effort that he unleashed on the world. it’s dawning on me that the full arc of his development will remain unrealized.

everything i have seen about mac from the people who were close to him to the people who had only interacted with him in passing is overwhelmingly positive. usually this pattern of canonization is off-putting and disingenuous, but in this case, it only seems appropriate. mac is being remembered for how he carried himself on this earth, nothing more and nothing less. the outpouring of positive and moving anecdotes and memories speaks to how he moved in love during his time here, even outside of the artistry. for that, i will have a permanent respect for mac.

mac never stopped giving us a look into his own journey, and because of that we were able to navigate each of ours with more confidence, and less pain. that is an example of an artist and a human being that we can all look toward for guidance when need be. we should make sure that Malcolm McCormick’s name and impact will ring loudly and relentlessly into the future.


rest in power and peace, Mac Miller.

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Written by

@oluosa

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