Everyone Has An Emotional Connection to Michael Jackson

June 25, 2009 was a sad day.  My nostalgia of a childhood, long since changed into adulthood for all its mess and confusion, was filled with the brilliant and misunderstood Michael Jackson.  My Mother played the “Thriller” cassette tape in the car while driving the Los Angeles freeway, me rocking to and fro in my car seat, and singing along.  I wore out that cassette tape with incessant listens.  The love of music started early with me, and the one that it started with, was Michael Jackson.

In our living room, in the condo in Thousand Oaks, I learned how to walk and learned how to dance, seemingly simultaneously.  I listened to “We Are The World:  USA To Africa” and “Off The Wall,” played on vinyl, through an amp powerful enough to power a metal band, and two six foot tall speakers.  I danced with the clumsiness one could imagine of a toddler, desperate to moonwalk.  Scotty, my friend since the early days of Gymboree, would come over and we would dance and laugh like the children we were.  The first full sentence of the English language that I put together on my own, was the exuberant, “I SAW MICHAEL JACKSON ON TELEVISION!!!”

One of my Mom’s biggest regrets to this day was not getting tickets for us during the “Thriller” tour.   In all fairness, I probably would have remembered very little, but my subconscious would have been undoubtedly shaped.  The last show he played in my adult hometown of New York City, was on September 10, 2001 at Madison Square Garden.  I didn’t go.  There is no doubt that it was the most cathartic dance-party imaginable; a night before the world we know changed irrevocably.

The passing of an icon in the age of now is something of uncharted territory.  The “now” we know is one of twitter feeds, facebook accounts, and the ability to refresh CNN.com on the browser of our PDAs.  Tabloids announced the passing before legitimate news agencies and UCLA Medical Center issued their release.  We received text messages of shock and awe from our friends.  This was not the case in December 1980, when John Lennon was assassinated.   Mourners flocked to Central Park and held vigil outside the Dakota where he lived and died….and stayed out all night.  Together.  Present in what that meant to them; not tweeting or putting some sort of Jackson mention as their facebook status.  Losing an icon was a collectively shared experience, conveyed by word of mouth, newspaper, Walter Cronkite and being present at such a gathering. 

While I do not mean to compare the death of a pop icon to the death of an American President, but if one is of a certain age, you can bet one remembers where they were when they found out President Kennedy was killed.  Are we going to remember what our friend from elementary school whom we barely remember, but whose friendship we didn’t have the heart to deny on an internet networking site, said about Michael Jackson on the day he died?  Call me crazy, but the experience is different now that we carry around ten thousand songs in our pockets and can send email from a bathroom stall, provided we have cell reception.  Oh, and Jeff Goldblum is alive and well, and living in Los Angeles.

The media, whether we felt it warranted or not, surrounding Michael Jackson’s life since the early days of Motown, was a circus.  I am sure the circus will continue, at least for awhile, posthumously.  He was one whose talent shaped pop music.  That is not up for debate.  He is one who was, debated-ly, misunderstood.  Judge and think what you will about the person he was, or evolved to be, whose scandals, whose mistakes, whose triumphs made headlines.

Going out on the night after his death was an emotional experience.  DJ’s tributes were simultaneously held throughout the country and possibly the world.  There was at least one moment in which all time zones, all dancefloors, and many, many fans were dancing to his music at the same time.

The place where I went dancing had the Thriller video on the screens. Three rows of people in the front knew the dance and the rest of us mimicked as best we could, raised our drinks, or enthusiastically sang along. This is truly a part of pop culture history; last night was gave me chills.

I did not know him, so I truly can’t say exactly how I, or anyone else, should feel about his personal life.  I do get goosebumps, though, when I think of the sentiment behind a song that he, along with two other gifted songwriters penned:  “a willow deeply scarred/somebody’s broken heart/and a washed-out dream/they follow the pattern of the wind, ya’ see, cause they got no place to be/that’s why I’m starting with me”

King of Pop, may you rest in peace.  Thank you for the music that has shaped my life.