Death of an Icon

I was walking on the west side highway when I found out Michael Jackson died. My friend from London texted me. I felt nothing. I went home, I turned on the TV, I still felt nothing. Some strange numbness took over me. Michael Jackson had been dead for awhile in my mind. He was a weirdo. His face was freaky, he dangled babies off balconies. I was unaffected.

Two weeks later, after being inundated by the media with coverage of his life, and while watching his funeral, I began sobbing uncontrollably. I have continued to be obsessed and extremely affected by his death for the last month. As many others in the world, I experienced a profound sense of sadness when looking back at his life. Despite his eccentricities, his unbelievable talent surpassed any other performer in my lifetime. He was magnetic but also extremely tragic in his isolation and loneliness.

My friend Tracey once said some famous people could very well be crazy because of the amount of energy that is being directed at them. I think this is very true in the case of Michael Jackson. His star was simply brighter that the rest of ours; the energy force he created was so powerful that eventually he combusted.

I have tried to figure out what is it that has made me grieve over his death, or rather, what he represented. Like many people my age, Thriller was my first album, and my entire childhood seems to play in my memory with his songs as the background tracks. He embodied the eighties and what it meant to dream. I remember watching Billie Jean on MTV and imagining what my own video would look like one day (who didn't want to be a rock star at six?) I suppose in some weird way, his death reminds us all of how old we are getting and how fast it all goes by.

On a lighter note, I did have the unbelievable opportunity to dance on stage with him at the 1987 BAD concert in LA. (I need to find that video asap).

I don't want to be one of those weird bloggers that says "RIP MJ" but for what it's worth I hope he is happy in neverland.