Your candle burned out long before...

• Currently hearing: Elton John's 'Candle in the Wind'
• Biggest moment of the day: Getting a call from my sis from a MCR gig
• Biggest craving: Big, cold glass of Pepsi Max
• Number of bottles of Pepsi Max in flat: zero

Nostalgia is a funny thing. The funny part for me being how it can occur in connection with something you have no particular connection with. I'm feeling extremely nostalgic about Marilyn Monroe these days watching documentaries about her and reading the biography written about her by Donald Spoto. She was dead long before I was even a twinkle in my parents' eyes and yet I feel much like Elton John when he sings:

'And I would have liked to have known you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did'

My mother was never an admirer of Marilyn's so I didn't watch her films as a child or anything like that. One day I decided that I needed to know what the hype about her was. Several of my friends admire her greatly and all I really knew of her was that she might possibly have been assassinated by a Kennedy brother or have committed suicide. So basically I knew nothing. Now I feel I know more, but not nearly half of what this woman was. Some will describe her as a slightly dumb blond with huge knockers. I resent that... now. A year ago I would have agreed. Marilyn was in my opinion very complex and had a hard time finding her place in life. She was continuously casted as the stereotypical big busted blond, who the men would pine for and the women would wish they could resemble. She lacked self confidence, which often had a negative effect on her performances and made her allow others to belittle her in such an extend that she in some cases believed she deserved as little as she was receiving. In reality she was a woman with emotional issues and feelings of incompetence not only because of her inability to conceive, but also because she was always casted as what she described as 'nobodies'. Marilyn attempted to take her own life several times during her life and in 1958 she expressed her feelings towards life in this poem:

Help help
Help I feel life coming closer
When all I want to do is die

Marilyn Monroe was loved and adored by millions, but she had a hard time being taken seriously. Today she is without doubt a legend and loved by millions of people worldwide. Not just because she was a good, entertaining comedic actress of her time and a strong sex symbol, but to me also because she was human and she was open about her own humanity. We're suckers for tragedy, aren't we? Marilyn was 36 years old when she died, only 9 years older than I am now. When people die young it's as if we don't allow them to die, we linger over them and their memory until they become this legend we want them to become. Marilyn wanted to be remembered. She feared her measurements would be engraved on her tombstone and she would forever be remembered not for what she did and who she was, but for what she looked like. Luckily for Marilyn, her legend speaks of much more than the 37-23-36 she feared....

Goodbye Norma Jean, though I never knew you at all.