It's tough to write an erudite obit/tribute to Michael Jackson, because I'm still shocked...however...I go on...
I've had this out in bars, cabs, on docks, on decks and more times than I ever wanted. I'm referring to the argument about Michael Jackson's body of work that I find untainted by his public relations and media management masochism.
Mike was great, remains great and always will.
No feelings are changed by his death, and the internet is boiling over with opinions, "Beat It" will be referencing the issue to death or the dead horse of an enduring legacy. In as simple terms as I can wring it out:
Michael Jackson was an incredible entertainer who became a lamentable, frightening and often miserable public figure.
His death is sad, but with his modern visage fading from the press, we'll be left with the music, which reflects the spectrum of human emotion better than anyone's. This is how I've been remembering him since the early 1990's.
Whatever demons were haunting him, I hope he's free from. Few artists convincingly display the sheer force of their gift. The otherworldly, intangible power that moves them to not only create, but transcend the medium. Michael wrote anthems for and from all the hearts of the planet at once.
I only wish that Michael himself could read the loving tributes that are cascading from around a world that he has seperated from and no doubt felt alien to.
Listening to these albums tonight, I don't hear a lil popstar with an afro and a billion dollar smile, I don't hear a spry twentysomething fully branded funky juggernaut moonwalking his way into every pantheon and stratosphere we have for entertainers, and I don't hear the besmirched skeleton of the circus of the last decade.
I hear the song and dance man, who wrote a tune called "Bad" that was the best thing I'd ever popped in my Fisher Price tapedeck. All it said on the tape was "Michael Jackson."
People who love music, LOVE Michael Jackson.
I was never afraid of him, only for him, and there's one less reason to be afraid.
Michael Jackson - Someone In The Dark
*Drawing by Eli Escobar (at age 8)
