Been meaning to tell you all that an Aaliyah Bio-Pic is in the works and Canadian songstress Keisha Chante (Google is your friend)is slated to play the starring role. I don't know how I feel about it though. I mean I was firmly in the in the Aaliyah camp for many years pre-2001 and I knew as much about her and appreciated every moment I got to watch her those years and bought, watched and followed everything that had anything to do with her so anything almost a decade after the fact might be harmful to her memory to a lot of people in my opinion and I for one don't wish to take part in any remembrance of her as anything more or less than the way she chose to project herself to the world in the brief time she shared her life with us. I don't want somebody else's interpretation of her life even if it's being built primarily from notes and stories fleshed out from her friends and family. She told her own story every day she lived and it should probably stay that way.
Even when Ray came out, I was fine with that as Ray Charles had creative control as to what his story on the big screen entailed. It was as much his framing as it was the director's on-screen adaptation and probably more so and that's the difference. Unfortunately Aaliyah can't be extended that kind of luxury now and so I see this in relative poor taste.
Anyway, it's strange to see Aaliyah in my mind's eye as a woman firm in her adulthood as 30. Not that it's a picture I couldn't conjure, as her maturity and poise was always that of someone well beyond her D.O.B., it's just different. I always saw her, and admittedly still do see her, as someone older than me even though I guess now I'd be the older man in a sense seeing how I've seen two additional years than she had when she left us. It's best, and if I chose my words wiser I guess I would say 'easier', not to think on 'what if' scenarios that do little to fill the gap curiosity leaves as to what shape the genre would be in right now if she were celebrating her 30th birthday here in the physical form with us. Instead I'll raise my glass later tonight to her memory and the ample ones she did actually leave and not the one as interpreted by other people.
Rest in peace.
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