Heath Ledger Dead at 28

I try to avoid posting celebrity news but I feel compelled to note the death of Heath Ledger, if only to consider for a moment why the news of his untimely end actually upset me.

I found out yesterday when a friend was dropping off a diorama of a murder scene for me. "I thought for sure you would have heard by now," he said. And my immediate reaction was, how could I not know? Followed by, how could this happen? Followed by, why do I care?

In this epoch of appearance over substance, awareness has trumped knowledge. For instance, I am aware of Heath Ledger the actor, and Heath Ledger the photographed dad trotting around Brooklyn with child and ex-fiance Michelle Williams (she was the interesting one on Dawson's Creek). Maybe I've come to rely so heavily on visual recognition as a mediator of information that seeing is the new believing. Hence the more I see a person in photographs or film or magazines, the greater my sense of personal connection.

A perfect example is the current American Democratic leadership race. It's two forerunners have been reduced to their visual signifiers: black man versus white woman. An actual knowledge of their different platforms (and when it comes to energy and health care, the candidates do indeed have fundamentally different approaches) has become moot because we feel like we already know what differentiates the candidates because we can see it.

Uh, this is sort of getting heavy for what was supposed to be a brief celeb obit. I guess I just wanted to point out that: one, the news bummed me out and two, it's a complicated sense of loss that highlights that strange nature of our current obsession with familiar faces.

As for the gossip: Naomi Watts, who dated Heath for 16 months five years ago, has cancelled all promo for her movie at Sundance in order to grieve. Michelle Williams and their two-year old Matilda are flying home from Europe.

It appears Heath mixed Ambien sleeping pills with anti-depressants. What is not yet clear is whether or not the death was accidental.

Oh, and Heath was found dead by his housekeeper in his undecorated apartment that rented for $23,000 a month.