{"id":40711,"date":"2011-09-06T09:36:48","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T13:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=40711"},"modified":"2022-10-17T08:40:49","modified_gmt":"2022-10-17T12:40:49","slug":"happy-birthday-freddie-mercury-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=40711","title":{"rendered":"Happy Belated Birthday, Freddie Mercury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Freddie Mercury held onto nothing. Whatever he had was meant to be ours, too.  And so his entire life was a process of giving-away.  He didn&#8217;t give it to us in dribs and drabs, he did not moderate how much to reveal, how much to save for himself.  He flung it at us with open hands.  It was the only thing to do.  It <em>is<\/em> the only thing to do if you are an artist, but very few understand it at the level that Freddie Mercury understood it.  Nothing he owned (his genius, his talent, his voice) was his, and his alone.  It was ours too.  He did not resent that we felt ownership in him.  He did not hold himself back purposefully in order to tease us, or disappoint us on purpose, reminding us that he was in charge.  We did not need reminders. We always knew he was in charge.  <\/p>\n<p>If you are born with a gift, then the only thing to do is to devote your entire life to <i>giving it away<\/i>.  <\/p>\n<p>Freddie did.<\/p>\n<p>Nobody else like him, before or since.  <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"510\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eQsM6u0a038\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Freddie Mercury held onto nothing. Whatever he had was meant to be ours, too. And so his entire life was a process of giving-away. He didn&#8217;t give it to us in dribs and drabs, he did not moderate how much &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=40711\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17,39],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40711"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40711"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182592,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40711\/revisions\/182592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}