What I find myself thinking most while watching those retrospect things on MJ’s life is how shitty it was. Such a sad story. There was very little happiness in his life it seems, maybe that’s just for dramatic effect, but there is no argument that he had major issues and battled depression throughout his life. Biggest star in the world and wish you had a different life. Ironic. Money and fame are nothing compared to health and happiness.

I was thinking about it like this. If Otis Redding hadn’t been killed in that plane crash, he probably would have put out some songs that I would like less than “cigarettes and coffee” or “another day” and other Oat classics. And I bet I might like him a little less than I do. Kind of like how I love “Human Nature” but get the chills when I see Mike with a surgical mask on.

GG, that was a fine eulogy. This shit fucks with my head.

When I was practically too young to talk, I wanted to be Michael Jackson. My pops has some old home movie of me, barely out of diapers, singing every word to Rockin’ Robin (a hit for Mike in 1972). By first grade, I devoured footage of the Jackson 5 and mimicked Baby Michael as he shimmied and shook across the floor (mimicking in his own mind, I imagine, the young James Brown). It was the first time I realized that even a child could move the world.

Later, in 1983, no television program was as widely anticipated or as universally viewed in my neighborhood as the “Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, and Forever” show, which included more or less all of my heroes on stage at once. And it was an amazing program…but, that night, it was Mike who set the globe on fire. Who can forget that first Moonwalk? A whole generation of B-Boys knows exactly what I mean.

I never owned a shiny red jacket covered in zippers (no one I knew could afford that shit, c’mon now), but Michael Jackson is the only star whose biography I obsessively read as a child. It was one of those slim little books, with its black-and-white photos on nearly-newsprint-quality paper, pressed by the Scholastic Company and sold during the regular student book drives California schools used to hold. I remember it had some statistic about the sales of Thriller, something about stacking every copy sold on top of one another and building a ladder to the Moon. As far as I was concerned, this fanciful fact suited Michael just fine–he was, without a doubt, a star of intergalactic proportions.

As a musician, a songwriter, and a performer, Michael Jackson will continue to be an inspiration to us all. To paraphrase Hippocrates, life is short but art is long, and The King of Pop left us with some of the best music ever made. We’ll keep on listening, Your Majesty, and I hope you find that second childhood you always longed for, somewhere up there in the stars.

R.I.P.

“There’ll be no darkness tonight
Lady, our love will shine
Just put your trust in my heart
Meet me in Paradise…”

Michael Jackson, “The Lady In My Life”