I know that this is probably going to sound a bit weird and maudlin, but you know I've been thinking about a lot lately?

River Phoenix.

I was 15 when River Phoenix died, and I was all into the Tiger Beat stuff, with the posters on my wall, and the squealing, Ohmigod, he is so cute," and other embarassing stuff like that. But River was different. River wasn't just good-looking, he was talented, and he was serious. He wasn't Hollywood. He seemed so solemn and thoughtful and serious, like he cared about more than superficial showbiz stuff, like he wanted to do things with his life that mattered.

And then he died. Of a drug overdose. When I heard that, I couldn't believe it. For days and weeks afterward, I kept waiting for a news flash to come on saying that it wasn't true, or for me to wake up from a dream into the real world where River Phoenix was still alive and still beautiful and still talented. I couldn't get my mind around the idea that he was dead. Of a drug overdose. At 23.

And I don't know why it matters. I mean, it's ten years later and I'm still feeling sad over the death of somebody I never knew. That's not rational at all. But I know, from conversations with other people, that I'm not the only person who feels that way about his death.

When I think about River now, I feel angry. I feel angry that he was so beautiful and talented and had so much growing to do, and he could have been so brilliant, but he let himself become a junkie and die a stupid death. I feel angry that people knew, must have known, people who loved him and cared for him and said wonderful things about him after he died, and they let that shit happen. And I think how much bullshit the Hollywood publicity machine was because up to the day he died, they would have had us believe that he was this sensitive, clean-cut, wholesome guy, when it reality he was killing himself with heroin and cocaine.

I don't know. I guess with all the celebrities that get iconized after their deaths, it's because they represented something universal. I think that River represented... I don't know, a lack of superficiality? A sense that apart from the materialism and consumerism and the whole teen idol, there were things that really mattered, and causes to speak out about and a social responsibility and just more and more important things to life and the world. He was, honestly, my first encounter with that kind of perspective on life. And then he died. And I was like, Damn, was it a lie?

Yeah. Thinking about it makes me feel like crying.