"Oh my god," a coworker yelled from down the hall. "Michael Jackson died."
Really? Michael Jackson? I thought. Huh ... Weird. Huh.
Since hearing the news I've been keeping tabs on people's responses. I expected jokes and I've seen a couple, but mostly people have been respectful and sad. A couple of DJs at KRQ, the local top-40 station, referred to him without irony as the pop musician of the century.
Me, I wasn't as overwhelmed by sentiment. What I felt, mainly, was discomfitted. And not quite able to articulate why.
But listening to Michael Jackson songs in the car, it struck me how intertwined music is with our own lives. I heard Vincent Price's cackle, and I didn't just think, Oh, that's "Thriller." I thought, I'm 13 years old, watching MTV at my grandparents' house. I heard the opening strains of "Man in the Mirror" and they transported me back to the cafeteria at Indiana University, where I carried my tray to the dinner table as his voice came through the PA.
I wasn't his biggest fan. Some of his songs I liked a lot. Others I didn't. If I were to compile a list of musicians I felt a real connection with, he wouldn't be on it.
Still, the whole thing feels weird. He was here, and now he isn't, and something is missing.
2 comments:
Yeah, I'm kind of weirdly detached, too...his music was big in my young adult years, but I knew even then that he was an odd sort. (If men had a way to prove their virginity, "Billie Jean" would have never been written.) They're saying now he was anorexic, a prescription drug addict, an alcoholic, and that it was no surprise he died this young. The creepy thing is, it's better in a way that he did, before he became an old, scary Michael Jackson.
Well, not good for *him* exactly, but better for his image. It occurred to me, after musing about how he'd died so young, that I couldn't imagine him at 80.
And death reverses aging. Sometime between hearing he'd died and listening to the third Michael Jackson song played in tribute, I think I'd already replaced my mental image of his 50-year-old self with his Thriller-era self, before he'd replaced his entire body with android parts.
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