What is wrong with 2016

Is it just me or is there something going on? Every time I dare to brave the news (which is fairly frequently) I seem to be greeted with the news that yet another icon has died. So far this year I feel as if I have lost a good 30% of my own personal icons. Rickman, Bowie, Corbett, Wood and now Prince, it feels like everyone is checking out of planet earth.

But to be truthful, it isn't just celebrities that seem to be dropping like flies, it's in my day to day life as well, in January alone I ended up at 4 different funerals, some not unexpected, but some were too young, and heard of a further 3 connected with friends. It has me unnerved to say the least. I dread hearing news I know I can't deal with, but with this pattern I am half expecting it.

Which raises the question, what has gone wrong this year? Is it the backlash of weird weather culling the weak? Some astrological pattern as some papers have dared to report? Or even the rapture (check revelations). Or is it simply we are more in contact with the world and thus obtain the news with in an obscene amount of time from expiration. And yes I do mean it like that. Much as I like to be in tune with the world, some of the speed of reporting deaths of a celebrity feel to me like complete intrusion. We are almost notified the moment the poor person passes their last breath.

In some cases this is so sudden and unexpected that those around them don't even have the time needed to collect their own thoughts before half the world's media is camped outside their respective residents and demanding a sound bite. Hardly the most respectful way to conduct the report, or even notify what in many cases seems to be news of emotional influence.

While what seems to be happening this year is a major blow to the arts world, the way the media is choosing to document it feels like it is cheapening the whole situation. Whether you knew a person or not, their influence on a person can not be measured on mass. A song, program, play even film can hold quantifying memories to an in divulge, and to just throw out the news dead, without substance or quality reporting is to disregard any emotional investment. Now I am not saying we the paying public have rights on the private lives on anyone in the media eye, in fact far from it, but we have the responsibility and right to pay homage to the loss of talent without it becoming a media sandstorm of who has the best tag line. At the moment I raise my hat to the family of Prince, who have embraced the mourning fans and allowed them to share the grief of loss, whilst still managing a private cremation. Yet others haven't been so lucky and instead are overwhelmed by the news and media circus that seems to accompany it.

Like I said I follow the news as avidly as the next person, but having been touched by grief myself this year, I can't help but feel sick at the treatment the press are giving, to get the headline. 2016 seems to be a bad year for loss, and for that we can do little other than pay our respects regardless of who it is. Let's not also make it a year of greed, remember one persons headline, is another's grief and despair