There are downsides, too: to this day, trips to the mall can feel tantamount to a personal attack, and I’ve never understood the concept of a single tear. There are upsides, like rich friendships and deep insights. It’s a term used by some millennials as a chic way to say they’re codependent, but it is, in actuality, an experience increasingly defined in clinical settings-namely, a person so highly attuned to the emotions of others that they feel them in their own body. It wasn’t until my late 20s that it occurred to me that I might not simply be garden-variety anxious or “artistic,” but an empath.
RELATED: And the greatest Céline Dion song ever is… Unlike most teens, however, my go-to was Water from the Moon, the fifth single off Dion’s second English-language studio album-and I was eight.
Like most teens, before bed I would turn on my parents’ boombox and ruminate on my crush’s utter indifference to my existence. My parents were careful to choose their moments when playing musicals, lest their operatic quality turn me and my brother into tiny, puddly messes. Some canonical proof: in video footage of my third birthday, my demeanour can best be described as “deeply concerned” while the other kids excitedly await my cake reveal. But the older I get, and the more people I meet, I feel it’s safe to say that some of us are just born porous. It seems egotistical to lay claim to a uniquely sensitive disposition when empathy is, at least in theory, a factory setting for humanity. MORE: The best (and wackiest) photos of Céline Dion, Canada’s beloved pop queen I’m biased, but I’d say we’ve never needed her more. With a just-announced documentary in the pipeline, a recently released (unauthorized) biopic called Aline dividing critics the world over and an anthemic gum commercial celebrating our reintroduction to high-contact society, perhaps Céline heard our clarion call for emotional release. A good cry, or a primal scream, would be nice, perhaps delivered in unison, middle fingers raised to the plague. Her delivery is the reason I’m still enamoured with Céline Dion in 2021: she unselfconsciously expressed the outsized things I felt internally, and at the same relative amplitude.Īs a species, we’ve been through a lot these past, well, years, and undoubtedly we have plenty to get off our chests-ideally face to face. Track one-on the album and for me-was The Power of Love, the vocal crescendo of which sounds like a human woman instantaneously shapeshifting into a shredded electric guitar. At that point, she hadn’t even married René.ĭion has achieved a reciprocal empathy with fans around the world (Marc Piasecki/Getty Images) I was just shy of seven, and the Charlemagne, Que., native was still unaware that her supernatural mezzo-soprano would spawn a 40-year career, 27 studio albums, two Vegas residencies, an abundance of critical eye-rolling and endless Saturday Night Live impressions. I have a vivid memory of when Céline Dion entered my life-and not just because of the aggressively yellow branding of the Cambridge, Ont.-area Hy & Zel’s checkout where my mom impulse-bought The Colour of My Love. READ: Céline Dion, and why it’s all working out for her now Harmeet is gifted, but I know from a lifetime of experience who is really responsible for this. It is February 2020, the previous few months have been an uncharacteristically harrowing interpersonal time I very much hope to purge from my muscle memory, and I don’t know it yet, but lockdown (the first one) is less than a month away.ĭuring the opening notes of Because You Loved Me-“a jam,” per my new RMT-a stubborn knot near my right trapezius unglues, and I sob quietly for the next 50 minutes. The context isn’t an uncommonly successful date, but my first massage in a long while. When I hear this, I am face-down, shirtless and instantly ecstatic. “You can say no, but do you mind if I turn on my Céline Dion playlist?” 28, 2020 (Nina Westervelt/The New York Times/Redux Pictures)
Dion during her performance at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, Feb.
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