This week, I am surprised at how Michael Jackson's death has touched my life. After all, I thought about him almost never in the past few years. I haven't thought about his music in a very long time, and really had no opinion about him as a person. How can that be, you might ask? Surely, his eccentricities, his over-the-top plastic surgery, his criminal trials all would have made an impression about him in my mind. Maybe I did have an opinion about it at the time...perhaps I scoffed, judged, wondered what parents were thinking letting their children stay the night with him unattended. But it had honestly been a very, very long time since I had listened to his music and marveled at his talent and was certainly entertained by him. Thriller was my favorite music video - it scared me and left me in awe. I watched it over and over and over with my big brother and my dad, confused. Was it a movie? A musical? How did it really end? Was his girlfriend still in danger? How do all the monsters dance like that?
The next thing I remember, MJ was all over the news, and not in a good way. What happened to his skin? Why did he fashion his estate after Peter Pan? What did he do with all those children? What was he thinking dangling his child over the ledge? Why does he talk that way? Does he even live in the same world that I do? Questions, questions, questions. Oh, and somewhere in there was a distant compassion - poor Michael. He cannot catch a break with the media. But just like with any source of gossip, there was a distance between me, these thoughts, and the actual human being who was the subject.
But now I do think about these things, and I am ashamed and sorrowful. What is wrong with this society that we find other people's misery fascinating? I'm remembering an interview where he tried to use the argument as to why the media should respect his personal privacy - I believe he actually said that it "hurts his feelings" or "hurts his heart." And how was Michael Jackson - a man so cool that he could get away with wearing black, high-water pants with white socks and loafers - so raw and honest about his feelings in a way that nobody else ever has been and still be celebrated as the King of Pop?
In retrospect, what is wrong with a person who chooses to celebrate the children of this world so unabashedly? Who isn't afraid to be so brutally honest about the pain in his own childhood? And really, what is there to judge about someone who tries to live his life vicariously through other children, especially when we are all very much aware that he had no childhood himself? And if it weren't for our jaded nature, wouldn't it be marvelous to have a person go to such amazing lengths to give our children Neverland? That's only okay in fiction, I guess (it was something to envy when Robin Williams did it in Peter Pan...that's all I gotta say). But that is only because here in the real world, we have seen innocent children lured in by evil individuals and damaged for life, or worse.
As for me, I choose to believe the best about him because I believe that is the same courtesy that he gave to others. After all, isn't it more likely that the parents of those children saw an opportunity for money and actually exploited Michael? You and I may never know for sure.
So now I know why the passing of this transcendent figure has touched me so. In part, yes it is because in the past week, I have been reliving the music that I neglected for so long and wish that I had appreciated it more when he was here to give more. But also, I grieve for the loss of my own innocence. I could not put aside my own discomfort at his weird, eccentric style to actually appreciate the contribution that he was making to the world - and not just through his music - and the cross that he bore because of it. I want to say that these attributes made him free, but I do not believe he was free. I pray that he is now.
