The Whitney I Knew (16 page)

Something else came from her performance: unity. Whitney, more than any person I've ever known, had the uncanny ability to bring people together. No matter your race, religion, or creed, she blurred whatever lines the culture tried to draw. When she sang at the Super Bowl, Whitney wasn't only a beautiful black woman. She
was
every woman—and every man for that matter. I wouldn't be surprised if people of every ethnicity watched that performance and felt a family connection to Whitney.

She smashed stereotypes and bridged a racial gap in our country like few who've gone before her. And she and Kevin Costner did the same in
The Bodyguard
, with the interracial romance portrayed between their characters. Color mattered little to the film's audience, and not at all in the film itself—33 million albums and $400 million in ticket sales made that crystal-clear. Whitney tended to “extinguish . . . boundaries,” as
Entertainment Weekly
's Sheldon Platt put it, again and again. And her performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” was proof once more that our differences should not overshadow our similarities and our common languages of love and music.

That was Whitney's “Star-Spangled” moment. She brought together each person within earshot and made him or her part of her family. That night, a nation stood as one.

When I became “Whitney Houston” . . . my life became the world's.
My privacy. My business. Who I was with . . . I just wanted to be normal.
Whitney, in her interview with Oprah

Whitney didn't have a trophy case; she had a trophy
room
. Where do you think all those Grammys and platinum records went? They made their way to her trophy room and they sat there, under the lights, never making a sound.

Whitney is no longer with us, but her prizes in this life remain behind. None of them went with her. Now, do they mean nothing during this lifetime? I think they do have some significance, but not more than a small percentage of life's whole. They hold only the value of
the moment, and when that moment passes, they sit beneath those glaring trophy case lights, idle. You pass them by every day, glancing momentarily toward their gleam, but what more is there? After the lights go down and you've taken off your work clothes and slipped into your comfy shoes, you go back to your house and sit in your favorite chair and fall asleep, just like the rest of the world.

But a tension does exist, if we're honest. The awards and accolades accumulate and the feeling of success wanes, but out there in the world, your craft, your talent, your voice remains. It remains on vinyl records and cassette tapes, CDs, and MP3s. At any given moment, anyone can play your song. They can hear your voice singing passionately over and over again. Some simply click on to the next song or album, while others may sit and cry at the memory of where they were when they first heard that music.

Whitney knew this tension better than anyone. Later in her career, she knew that the public viewed her with some disdain, and that she'd made some bad decisions. Yet she also knew that people still listened and that her voice still mattered. The question so many wanted to know was, “Why? Why did you lose yourself? Why did you disrespect your gift? Why?”

You can't take back your songs. You can't take back the performances. And you can't take back who you are to so many. You can only cope and try to stay aligned with that version of yourself you know—the you that you truly are.

‘Coping” was something Whitney did on her own. I knew she was coping when I didn't hear from her. The phone would stop ringing. The visits grew sparse. There was a sense of not being able to look one another in the eye—like when you broke your mother's vase as a child and you couldn't face her square and tell her.

When Maya Angelou was interviewed just before President Clinton's inauguration, Bryant Gumble asked if she would be able to control her emotions while reading the poem she'd written for the event. Of course she was concerned about her emotions. Why? Because of what she wanted to accomplish with the words—the high hopes that lay within the lines.

‘I want us to look at each other,” she said. “So often we find some place right up above the eyebrow line and we don't look into each other's eyes, as if we are afraid of that. . . . We will only be able to really trust each other if we can find trust in each other's eyes.”

Whitney and I never lost trust between us, but there were times when our eyes didn't meet, to use Maya's metaphor. I do think, however, that Whitney struggled at some point to look the public in the eye. Not out of shame necessarily, but out of weariness. She tired of defending herself. She yearned for normalcy. And as Bobbi Kristina grew older, she yearned for it even more. So much so that she thought of giving up all that she had accomplished in order to be with Bobbi Kris and enjoy the everyday stuff of motherhood.

But looking someone in the eyes is a two-way affair. The public didn't look Whitney straight in the eyes either. Instead, they stared at the persona the media pitched on television and in the tabloids.

Is there a scenario where Whitney was totally set up by the media? Think about it. The very people who made her into a household name were the same people who made her into a doping diva. Those people didn't know anything about her. Even months after her death, I've seen the tabloids still working salacious headlines and conspiracy theories. There's really no way to justify what appears in the news now. And the more I think about the level of scrutiny
Whitney endured, the harder it is for me to comprehend how she survived it all for so long.

Everyone remembers the “crack is wack” interview with Diane Sawyer in 2002. We watch moments like that and immediately make up our minds: “Whitney's nothing but a junkie diva who's blowing her talent on the rock ‘n' roll lifestyle.” Do we ever stop and think that maybe Whitney was trying to get out of a situation? What better way to get the media and the masses off your back than to give them every reason to write you off?

After that infamous interview, Whitney fell off the map by some accounts. It's true that she didn't record another album for seven years.

She was in a dark place. And when I say dark, I mean, a place of anger. Because she realized, “Hey, y'all didn't love me. You said you loved me, but you didn't
really
love me. I'm not getting the invitations I used to get, or the respect I was afforded. What I'm getting now is the truth—that you didn't care in the first place.” Her anger came from realizing how disingenuous people were.

The truth, in this instance, did not set her free. When she was presented with that kind of public sentiment, it weakened her. It weakened her in the sense that she had trouble dealing with it. And so, rather than dropping off the deep end as the media claimed, Whitney retreated. She kept to herself a lot more.

She would still call me, and we'd catch up—but I always knew when she was feeling down, because she didn't talk as much. When she was happy, she talked nonstop. During this time of seeming inactivity, she was more still, trying to get away from the light of fame.

When Whitney resurfaced in 2009, people were saying she sounded tired. In truth, she
was
tired. She was still, in a sense, recovering from the breakup with Bobby and trying to live her life on her terms. In the state she was in, she had no business being in front of a camera, promoting her new album, hitting all the big talk shows. She wasn't in good voice either. When you're known for your vocal prowess, you don't go on national television to try and prove anything if you're physically not ready.

I know Whitney was angry with her situation, but her appearance on
Good Morning America
made me angry with
her
. She had no business being on that show. When your vocal cords are tired, you have to let them rest. It wasn't drugs or whatever story people were concocting.
She
was worn out. Her voice was worn out. She needed rest.

If you want to discover why her voice was worn out, try and sing her song list three times in one day.
That
will run your voice down. She was a vocal powerhouse to be able to sing the songs she did night after night. Everything revolved around her voice.

I don't take drugs, and yet there are times when my vocal cords are
done
. People give Celine Dion a hard time about how she babies her voice, and maybe she takes it a bit too far, but you don't see her doing a lot of interviews when she's on tour, and that's intentional. The less talking, the better. The adoring public knows Celine for her vocals, not her dance routines. It was the same with Whitney. And when that's the case, you simply have to preserve your voice, for even whispering can injure it.

This is where Whitney got into trouble. She loved having a good time. She loved talking. I'd say, “Whitney, you need to stop talking and get some rest.”

“Okay I will, but . . .” And on and on she'd go. She was unruly in a good way—which is the Whitney we loved—but at some point I'd end up saying, “Girl, go to bed. Get some sleep.” Yet she didn't want to do that; she wanted to hang out.

When you don't sing for a long time and then you begin to sing regularly again—really singing like the professional that Whitney was—your voice is going to get sore just like any other muscle would. It's no different than working out at the gym. If you haven't regularly ridden a bike for a few years and you walk into a spin class, you're barely going to be able to walk the next day. Whitney hadn't been singing regularly, and therefore she wasn't ready to perform.

But I guess the bigger point is that she didn't really
need
to get out in public and do interviews at all. In my thinking, why give the media a bone? You're not ready, and you're not obligated to do any of it.