SEARCHING by INXS.Story by Martina Medica.

Wantirna South, November 1997

I am drowning in a sadness that nobody understands. I am told that it’s not real, this sadness. It’s not normal. It’s weird, obsessive, wrong. You didn’t even know him, they say. Just get over it, there are more important things.

I try to hide it, but at 17 I’m not very good at that.

I search for connection in newspaper and magazine articles, in obituaries and opinion pieces. I spend too much money at newsagencies. I am hungry for somebody, anybody, who understands, who feels it the way I do. See, I’ll think when I find them, the ones who get “it”. Who get me. Other people feel it too, I’ll say, to the ones who don’t.

But it’s not enough. The articles are too clinical. I don’t want facts and figures, I know all those. I am starving for emotion, for communal sadness, for connection. I trawl through primitive, embryonic websites, and I find them.

No, not them. Us. I visit chat rooms, leave tributes on “leave a tribute” pages; read dozens — hundreds, thousands — of words written about him by us. Other people, real people, like me. There are people like me. The way I feel isn’t wrong, or weird, or not real. It’s real; these feelings are real.

I’m real, and I’m not alone.

I seek out the messages and tributes and articles that are the most tragic and poignant, the ones where the writer’s heart is left bleeding on the page, the ones that wrench the sobs from my gut through my throat. Look, look at how these people feel! I feel that too, you know. I feel the same as you.

But why do I, why do we feel so sad for a man we never met, never knew, never even saw in real life? Why do I feel like I can’t move past this, like it’s taking up all the space in my head and my body and my heart leaving no room for school, or exams, or family, or anything at all other than him and his life and his music and his passing? Can anybody explain it, please? No? You don’t understand it either? That’s OK, we can not understand it together. We can feel it together.

I watch the funeral on my own, in bed, after recording it. I don’t want to watch it in real time with others around me, the people who don’t understand, who tell me I’m being silly. On the screen I see those who knew him. Sombre, weeping, beautiful, tailored, manicured. How do they look so together when I am such a mess? I hear the songs and the words and see the people and I cry with them and with hundreds — thousands — of others.

After, I find the online communities again. Others who watched it. How did you feel? How did it make you feel? Did you hear that song? I couldn’t listen to it, I had to leave the room. Me, too. Did you see Kylie was there? She looked so sad. She looked beautiful. Imagine knowing him like that.

His poor baby. He’ll never see her grow up. Did you know Nick Cave is her godfather? Oh, I didn’t know they were so close. He sang beautifully. I cried so much. I’m glad they didn’t screen that on TV, it would’ve been too hard. Really? I wanted to see it. It must have been terribly sad to be there.

I go on like this for weeks, months maybe. I can’t remember what drags me out of that stage, but I know it’s gradual, and never really complete.

Sydney, 2002

A few years later, I make a pilgrimage to Sydney. I stay at the hotel where he died. I try to go up the fire escape stairs to reach the floor he was staying on. Morbid, yes. But I need to. I need to see it. I need to feel it again, feel that connection with him and the tragedy of how his life ended. Instead, I get stuck in the stairwell with all the doors locked, and have to call the lobby to get them to let me out. I make excuses about being in a hurry and the elevator being too far, and wonder if they believe me.

I wonder if they’ve ever had other people try to do the same thing.

I catch the ferry to the bay where some of his ashes were released; I visit the cemetery where there is a memorial headstone for him. It’s a bus trip and a long walk along a very busy, gum-tree-lined, footpath-less road to get there. I wonder if I’m going to get run over. I listen to his songs the whole way there, settling on one in particular as I get closer. I watched him sing it at the ARIAs on TV a year earlier. I watched it again just two nights before he died. I put it on repeat, listening to it again and again and again. It feels right, it’s the right song for this moment.

I get there and I think I’m the only person in the entire cemetery. I wonder whether I’ll be raped or killed there.

I take one earbud out so I can hear if anybody’s trying to sneak up on me.

I pull up at a patch of ground in front of the headstone, and just stare. His image, his words. I wait for the tears to come, but they don’t. I panic. It’s been too long, it’s gone. But then there’s the song, that chorus. And the tears come, and flood through me, and there’s sadness, yes, but also relief. Relief that I’m still drowning, that it’s still there, that deep well, those feelings, that pain and that love.

I wonder, through my tears, how many others have visited this place.

I picture them coming, and going. Crying, smiling, reflecting.

Listening to his songs. Singing them quietly. Singing them loud.

I am searching, I sing softly, as I look at his face.
I am not alone.
I am searching.
Please, give me some

Michael Hutchence 22.1.60 – 22.11.97

Stereo Story #815