George Michael, Celebrity Deaths & Conspiracy Theories

My earliest memory of a celebrity death is that of Diana, Princess of Wales, and many people are aware that her death has been surrounded by conspiracy theories. It wasn’t until the death of Michael Jackson though, that I started my own probing.

I was a fan of Michael Jackson from a young age – at around the age of seven or eight he was an inspiration to me because he had been of around my age when his music career started to take off; I remember eagerly awaiting his latest chart hit to play on the radio, me poised on the (play and) record buttons on my cassette player so I could record a copy. When his death struck in 2009 I had a slight interest in numerology and I spent some time playing around with his name and other key words surrounding his death to try and find some meaning in all what was happening.

“Numerology is any belief in the divine, mystical relationship between a number and one or more coinciding events.” – Wikipedia

With the use of basic numerology I was trying to convince myself that there was meaning in all of it; it seemed like there was – like his death wasn’t quite so random – but my concluding verdict was only that the number 5 was highly prevalent; I couldn’t work out anything more beyond this: (He was in Jackson 5, he had 50 ‘This is it’ final tours planned just prior to his death, and he died at the age of 50.) “At the time of death, Jackson had been administered propofol, lorazepam, and midazolam…” and died of acute intoxication thereof.

michael_jackson

And now we have 2016; a surreal year where is seems that a more than usual number of big name celebrities have died. Not all of them have any personal meaning to me; there was David Bowie, Prince, Rick Parfitt, and now George Michael.

David Bowie wasn’t really on my radar although now when I hear his songs play I know “that’s David Bowie” whereas before then they slipped my consciousness by. Bowie’s death seems to lack suspiciousness (conspiracy theoriness) here since he died of liver cancer at the age of 69, but it was just two days after the release of his album Blackstar, and this sparks a little intrigue for me which I will dwell on in a moment.

blackstar

Prince, again wasn’t really on my radar; I’d never actively listened to his music or really knew who he was compared to Michael Jackson, but when he died I looked more closely and thought it strange how his death was similar to Michael Jackson’s in that it was drug-related; it seems all to easy for celebrities to get their hands on (and then get hooked on) either prescription drugs, or illegal ones. My belief regarding drugs is that it doesn’t matter which type you take if you’re going to take them routinely (or certainly in excess) because they do harm to the body in one way or another, even if they alleviate a problem. “Prince died of an accidental overdose of fentanyl at the age of 57.” Sometimes it can be the first time of taking a drug that will have a disastrous effect.

prince

Then, on December 24th we lost Rick Parfitt of Status Quo. While his death wasn’t suspicious, he had experienced a life, as many rock stars do, of drugs: “Following a heart attack, Parfitt had a quadruple heart bypass in 1997, when he was told by doctors that he could die ‘at any time’ unless he changed his lifestyle of drugs, smoking and heavy drinking.” The only further point of interest regarding Status Quo is that they realeased an album called ‘Under the Influence’ on which is a track called ‘Blessed are the Meek’ which opens with “a story about a woman and a man / in a garden living free / the only danger was a stranger by a tree / selling apples by the score.”

And then, the day after his death, on December 25th, George Michael was announced dead. I’d heard a few of his songs in the charts as I was passing through my teens and 20s but there is one song of his that comes first to my mind which I’ll reveal in a moment as it sparks further intrigue for me.

Parfitt’s death was announced on the radio along with the mention of Status Quo’s 1985 Live Aid performance and I had looked it up on Youtbe. I’d come across a playlist for that Live Aid event when George Michael’s death was announced, and ‘curiously’ he was there in the list of performers too. Things started to pull together in my mind as I watched Elton John perform ‘Rocket Man’ just prior to George Michael joining him on stage. George sang ‘Don’t let the Sun go down’ but it is his later song, ‘Star People’ which immediately comes to my mind.

The song Rocket Man reminds me of Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’ track, but Bowie, known as Ziggy Stardust, also released other songs of a ‘space theme’ including Space Oddity, and Starman.

All these celebrities are ‘stars’, some celebrities have their stars on the “Hollywood Walk of Fame”, 5-pointed ones, David Bowie had his album ‘Blackstar’ with a five-pointed star on the cover (the single of the same name is laced with ‘stuff’, and he also had the single ‘Starman’. George Michael died on Christmas Day, the day when the Star of Bethlehem is out in force since it signalled the birth of Jesus. “David” and “Michael” are also prominent in religious stories/teachings, Jesus was the King of the Jews and Michael Jackson the King of “Pop”, aka Popular Music, ie, that which is followed by the masses. Further to this, Jesus, Mary and Joseph were visited by the three wise men who brought those curious gifts; frankincense of which a “2008 study reported that [its] smoke was a psychoactive drug that relieves depression and anxiety” albeit in mice, and myrrh, which has “been recommended as an analgesic”

“A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, or psychotropic is a chemical substance that changes brain function and results in alterations in perception, mood, or consciousness.” and “An analgesic or painkiller is any member of the group of drugs used to achieve analgesia, relief from pain. Analgesic drugs act in various ways on the peripheral and central nervous systems.” Wikipedia. More on Analgesic in a moment.

It’s not just the death of music stars, or royalty (“Diana”), or political figures, that rouse my curiosity, but movie stars too. Bruce Lee is a case in point; he died at only 32 way back in 1973 and he was famous for his acting and his martial arts; he can only be described as being at the height of physical fitness (and mental fitness too; Wikipedia labels him as a philosopher and in video clips of discussions with him he comes across as very intelligent) but here again I have come across mention of prescription drugs linked to his death, but also something to do with water (there is a clip of him talking about the importance of water) and some claims that he was an alien being from the centre of the earth accessible from Antarctica (which will be mentioned briefly in a moment!). On the day that he died he complained of a headache, and was given an analgesic (painkiller), Equagesic, which contained both aspirin and the tranquilizer meprobamate, he had an allergic reaction to the Equagesic which caused “Cerebral edema or cerebral oedema” which is an excess accumulation of fluid in the brain. Representatives of Prince said Prince suffered from dehydration (a lack of water) at the time of his death and had had influenza for several weeks.

A link, which perhaps links water and these so-called stars together, is when we consider frozen water and the structures that can be formed (just look up Masaru Emoto for more on this [Wikipedia link below]). It has been found that water from polluted sources and then frozen produces, well, an un-pretty splodge, but when taken from a clean natural spring, or if it is ‘holy’ water, and frozen, or frozen water from Antarctica, the crystalline shapes are ordered, and geometric, forming intricate star shapes, though six-pointed stars it seems, not five.

water_crystals

I can’t write this topic without mentioning the Illuminati, since they are invariably mentioned when conspiracy theories are bounded about. Wikipedia labels them as a society whose “goals were to oppose superstition, obscurantism, religious influence over public life and abuses of state power. ‘The order of the day,’ they wrote … “is to … control them [the people] without dominating them” which is exactly what pop music and pop culture do. In the circles of conspiracy theorists who talk about the Illuminati, this hidden “group” are a dark lot, hell-bent on world domination, and are all about controlling the masses and killing celebrities (when they don’t comply with their requests/agenda). While we are lured this way and that by celebrities and the lifestyles they portray (that of material wealth and fame etc.) I think we (us lesser mortals) do this among ourselves, it’s just scaled up to the n-th degree when it comes from those that are seemingly above us. Perhaps, for good or bad, there is some group or force overseeing things and guiding us onto a path, onto an ultimate end and these ‘little’ curiosities and intrigues that show up along side the deaths of celebrities are the evidence of this.

After producing my first draft of all of the above, I went out for a ride on my bike. I had thoughts of the five-pointed stars as I popped into a shop to buy some milk. As I often do, I glanced at the dates on the milk cartons to ensure I got one with the longest date and there was two options; December 31st or January 5th. I chose the latter but by the time I arrived at the till the label had managed to slip off and the cashier had to call out to her assistant to retrieve it; I was amused by this strange occurrence of plonking a bare milk carton on the counter, and then continued on my way. Pondering further about five-pointed stars and this further 5’d-ness, a truck passed me with ‘Pentagon’ emblazoned on the back – I couldn’t make this stuff up!

I’ll end with this live performance by George Michael, I think it’s pretty good: