Michael Jackson

[chimerachi]

Now here is the most liberal moment I have had in months....yesterday I'm in Starbucks, doing my handicrafts when a transgendered person comes in to announce that Michael Jackson had died and I immediately started to cry. CRY. I called Tim who confirmed the news and I was totally dysfunctional for the rest of the day. Tim's life is pop music so he helped me decompress and sort out my startling reaction to MJ's death and I am really so happy that he was there for me. Of course, being away from my friends and family has made me feel a little off balance anyway but this was a serious loss regardless. I grew up roller skating to all of the songs from "off the wall" and for years "don't stop till you get enough" was my ringtone. Maybe it's because he was from Gary, maybe it's the working class midwestern roots I just don't know. Maybe it was the CONSTANT exposure to him when I was in high school but I just feel like he was a part of my life. I lived for a few years in an artist community sequestered away from the rest of the world---it was a great time. I learned a lot about being an artist but one thing that I learned is that being white is something that we are all trying to escape. There is nothing creative, nothing interesting and nothing fun about being white. Everyone I lived with was working as an artist (it was a condition to living there) and I lived with actors, writers, a fairly well known painter and performers of all varieties so we all had fairly different mediums and the chip that we had on our shoulders because of our waspy (or waspy-ish) upbringing was palpable. I think that when MJ became (in effect) white, it was truly awful for him. Of course there was his familial issues as well. So in effect, MJ was pretty punk rock. An outsider.

I have always been sad about the death of radio...as much as I love my ipod...I miss the shared experience. I like cable, I like access to media but I do miss top ten. I miss knowing radio stations. (can you say WMMS?) MJ's death feels like the first of a long list of goodbye's to my childhood. My long, extended adolescence.