curated: now 2016 has taken Carrie Fisher

I think the end of that article hits closer to the mark than its title does.

It’s not that there are “No More Heroes.” It’s that a generation of heroes is passing. And while it’s right to grieve for all that we’ve lost this year, it’s also true that other generations step up.

My daughter is fifteen, and was very sad about Fisher’s passing. But the deaths of Bowie, Prince, Cohen, Michael, etc barely fazed her. She didn’t live through the decades when those icons did their best and most important work. Those weren’t HER cultural heroes; they’re the heroes of her parents’ old-fogey generation, who, as usual, are obsessed with talking about themselves. When she was ready to listen, THEY weren’t the ones who were speaking. HER heroes are alive and well — some of them culturally prominent, some of them under the radar, and some of them just beginning to find their voices, with the potential to be the heroes the future will need: Beyonce. Solange. J. Cole. Frank Ocean. Kendrick. Troye Sivan. Maggie Stiefvater. Rainbow Rowell. Tyler Oakley. Hari Nef. Amandla Stenberg. Rowan Blanchard. (I could add many others, established and emerging: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Marjorie Liu, Junot Diaz, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Lena Dunham, Roxane Gay, G. Willow Wilson, Donald Glover, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Cheryl Strayed, Gail Simone, and on and on.)

There are still, and hopefully will always be, artists and writers and thinkers whose voices inspire and challenge us to make a better world. They won’t always be the same voices, and perhaps fewer will attain the broadcast power provided by the old media structures. But they’ll be there, for us and those who come after. We just have to seek them out and support them and help them flourish, even as we mourn our dead. That doesn’t make this year hurt any less, but it’s a perspective that, to me anyway, leaves space for hope.

Maybe it helps to keep in mind not just that we lost them, but that we were fortunate to HAVE them to begin with. They’re gone, but their contributions remain. And honestly, at least for some of them, it might be the case that death clarifies our appreciation of their career even if their best work was already decades past; we’re grateful for what they’ve already given us, rather than specifically needing *more* from them at the current moment.

And — again — let’s not let our grief blind us to new heroes. They’re out there if we’re paying attention. And they probably need us as much as we need them.

Actually, my mind would be blown if half of those you mentioned were taken by 2016.

Well, maybe not Lena Dunham. She’s been less than palatable to me lately; but, hey, she’s entitled to show who she is…and we’re entitled to believe what we were shown … whether she thinks we should or not.

Anyhow, if Queen Bey or Solange were taken, there would be another 2016 gut punch for me.