The King Is Dead

Everyone except Japanese World War 2 soldiers still fighting on some God forsaken Pacific island knows that Michael Jackson is dead.

I was in the pub Thursday night when one of the lads got a text saying he had had a heart attack. Immediately people looked at me, being the owner of two tickets for his much-anticipated comeback shows in London next month. I rang my brother who confirmed something was happening. Then the pub put on Sky News, and the headline read “TMZ.com reporting Michael Jackson is dead”. It is not hyperbole to say I was stunned.

I was a life-long fan, and was really looking forward to the gig. When I bought the tickets the standard response from people was “he’s never going to play those shows” and I vehemently defended him, as I always have. The truth is, however, that I put off buying my flights because part of me wondered if he actually could. Still, I don’t think anyone expected the reason he wouldn’t be playing the shows was because he was no longer among us.

Strangely, a lot of my friends and family have remarked that when they first heard the news the first thing they thought of was me. On the night it happened I was pretty shocked, but its only now really setting in that Michael Jackson is no longer alive. Those dreams of a proper comeback, with bazzilion-selling album sales and universal respect again are gone. As are my chances to see him perform live. The thing I was really looking forward to, really excited about was that moment when the lights would have gone down in the o2 arena and the crowd would have known he was about to take the stage. That would have been great.

There’s no point in going on and on about what or who he was, enough people are doing that. Suffice to say that the size of the reaction to his death should tell you everything. He made great music that people loved. He was not famous for being famous, or for being on a reality show. He was famous because he was a master of his craft. He did things that the vast majority of people who ever lived on this planet could not do. As a result, his shock death ground Google almost to a halt, and gave Yahoo! their most clicked news story in history. The world took notice.

Sadly, along side the tributes and whatnot comes the inevitable 21st century disease of the cynical backlash. Obviously there are the jokes. Almost immediately following his death people were wondering “where are the jokes”. Not really gonna dwell on this one, but over at Culch.ie, Lottie has written a fantastic post about Jackson, which touches on this subject.

The other reaction is the “I DONT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT MICHAEL JACKSON” comments. I mean, if you don’t care why say anything at all? Why feel the need to go out of your way to tell us you don’t care about something? I don’t care about the development of shampoo, but I don’t feel the need to tell everyone.

Anyways, the King of Popular Music is dead. But, like Alan Watts constantly said, and Robert Pirsig poignantly noted in the afterword of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence with regards his murdered son, people don’t really ‘die’. They’re not ‘gone’ as there is too much left of them behind to say they are no longer here. Jacko left us with great, great music.

Oh, and lest we forget, years ago Jacko showed the world how to make a movie about turning into cars, robots and spaceships.