Musings about Michael

I remember the first time I saw Michael Jackson perform. He was about 12 and on television - I honestly don't remember what he was singing with his brothers - and I was smitten. He was such a cute boy with a great voice, I remember thinking.

I started collecting MJ photos and asking for his music ...

Well, I stopped the photos by the time I was 14 - real boyfriends were a lot more, well, real. But I continued to be a fan of his music.

I never saw him in concert, but I purchased the albums and 45s. I was a devotee.

I remember the last time I saw him perform. I loved the Thriller video. As a rule, I don't like music videos - music is an auditory and emotional experience for me, the visuals mess with that. But Thriller was something else, something special.

While I have continued to like his music - and I believe he was a transformative figure in the music industry and in our time - long before he stopped regularly performing, long before his strange relationships and legal troubles became attached as a definition of him, he was dead to me. So I find myself oddly detached from the response of the rest of the world.

We are all seekers in this life, searching for answers about who we are becoming, why we are here, what we destined to do, accomplish. Sometimes this is the hardest thing we do and it is easy to get lost, to stumble ... It happens to us all.

I think Michael struggled with this for most of his adulthood, perhaps more than most of us and his struggle impacted his work and his behavior, which made it worse. Through he struggle he became troubled, instead of gaining small measures of clarity and wisdom. And when his confusion began to transform his work and his very being, the Michael I was smitten with, followed and greatly appreciated died. And I mourned him then.

What I have now is shock over the death of someone so young - and the impact of that on my own feelings of mortality - and my prayers that the man I mourned years ago and the man that died last week can both now find peace and rest.