Poetic Departure Lounge
The ancient Athenians, who liked them some high irony, were in the habit of ascribing apocryphal but apposite deaths to their notables. The playwright Aeschylus was reputed to have been killed by a tortoise, dropped from a great height by an eagle, who had mistaken his bald head for a rock to smash its prey against. This was considered a compliment to the revered writer’s intellect. The later playwright Euripides, whose iconoclastic treatments of classical myths earned him the disapprobation of conservatives, was said to have been torn apart by a pack of royal hounds.
Today’s deceased worthies exit without the aid of such editorial intervention by fanciful biographers. However, you can’t get much closer, in terms of a poetically resonant departures, than the legendary record executive Ahmet Ertegun, who died this week at the age of 83, after sustaining brain injuries from a fall backstage at a Stones gig.