Sinéad O’Connor is dead. I’d be lying if I said she was particularly important to me, individually. A lot of people are saying that, and they will continue to do so. She deserves to be grieved.
As a little, stupid, gay boy, I remember when she ripped up the picture of the Pope. I didn’t really understand why that was such a big deal to so many people (why would I give a shit about the Pope?), but I remember knowing it was. I remember noticing that someone said something and did something and mattered, even when the world said she didn’t.
Sinéad O’Connor was not particularly important to me, individually or personally. Her music was not specifically moving to me, despite my later career and geographical location making Prince, the composer of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” oddly, particularly important to me. Her music didn’t affect me the way I think it did others.
She wasn’t deeply, personally important to me. She behaved the way I wanted to behave. But she wasn’t my muse. She wasn’t the soundtrack to my life. She didn’t change me.
She was aspirational.
The world is horribly broken. It was horribly broken in 1992, but no one listened to her when she said so. They hadn’t listened to her the previous year or the one previous to that. They didn’t listen, but the world was still broken. It continues to break.
My life has been driven by the idea that things get progressively better. It’s how I have operated my career, my personal life, and my worldview. That has always been a lie, and she knew it.
Sinéad O’Connor was not personally, deeply, precisely important to me. I wish people would listen to shaved-headed women with perspectives, though. She was right. I guess it’s up to us to decide if John Paul II was more important than those children. Or her. Or me.
I am grieving her. And she might be more important to me than I want to let on.