ben, the two of us need look no more

mj , originally uploaded by dardana.

…spontaneously burst its way into my head early this afternoon.

well, not totally spontaneously. there was one of those ridiculous countdown-type shows on (in the BACKGROUND, ok?), about “sexual scandals” and of course, their montage of images would not be complete without a few unfortunate shots of poor, broken down mj. we have all seen this kind of thing a thousand times, but today i lingered on it for a few seconds.

i heard my head singing this line (y’know, the one in that title up there), and weirdly (and pretty irrelevantly) enough, it was the version that appears at the end of the pearl jam song “rats”, that my thoughts led to.
yes, brains are strange like that.

i thought about how unusual but nice it was that a rock band thought to reference a very different artist in such a blatant manner– this album (VS., on the song “rats”, if you care) came out around the time of “the scandal”; a live version i have includes eddie mumbling afterwards…”michael jackson was innocent…”
as an adolescent, i had always (unrelated to my blind worship of mr. vedder) felt that this was a very sweet gesture, considering how certain most everyone seemed about his guilt. i feel similarly for the mj-episode for south park (as it’s clear that the creators feel similarly as i and those like-minded).

all these thoughts in about five seconds, the way that thoughts do.

i am compelled to turn and ask edgar, in what seemed like an untimely fashion (at the time), “edgar, do you believe that michael jackson was guilty?” we have shared hundreds(?) of hours of mj-related existence (the recurring, week-long loops of “off the wall”s extended version for a week straight, including quincy jones interviews comes to mind), but i realize we’ve never really discussed it.

so we do, relatively seriously, for a few minutes, coming to the consensus (a rare feat) that neither of us have ever really believed it. i make mention of how i find it weird that people speak of his guilt as though it were certain fact (though of course no one can say for certain that it’s not), macauly culkin (ha), and we acknowledge how “messed-up” does not equal “child molestor”. our voices carry a certain weight of sympathy for this tragic figure who was about to become even more so in the next couple of hours.

what can one say about such things? everything is a cliche, everything sounds trite, but i really loved him, you know? the way that people love strangers and fellow human beings, and of course that much rarer love for people who create beautiful, joyful things. it blows my mind that there was ever a time where a single artist could change the entire world the way he did, and i feel sad for knowing it will probably never happen again. but this is not a new thing.

i think about seeing my family in albania for the first time on videotape, in what was a 3rd world country thousands of miles away, dancing to the same music as we did (it BLEW my mind, as they didn’t speak english- i was nine, ok?). i think about the days when my limited 2-year-old vocabulary included the name of an omnipresent popstar, and my baby legs tried to mimic his moves in a little circle of baby kicks.

i even see him as a missing link between this world and the one that i shared with certain people, traditions, and things that haven’t been alive for years. i think about how something similar probably happened to you. and i find this rather comforting.

how ridiculously self-indulgent people become in these scenarios. the man has young children, for fuck’s sake. but i’m sorry, i’m a sucker for good music and a sad story (see: my mournful visit to graceland). my heart has ached for this man for the past 15 years. his isolation was of such a profound magnitude that it terrifies me, having not another soul on earth who could relate to his situation. it really makes me feel nauseous.
but i will now put a stop to this pathetic platitude parade* (really, i’m ashamed of myself), as such talk will be invading your tvs all week.

oddly enough, the other notable conversation i shared with my roommate today (just before the other) was about my unwieldy sense of empathy. i was tearing up watching the (un-mj-related) news for at least the 2nd time this week, and we fell into a jokey kind of battle over my (jokingly) perceived sense of moral superiority in being so upset by events unrelated to my life.

he was the one who called me a few hours later to deliver the sad news. i could hear it in his voice, but he admitted that no other similar incident had really affected him before. within 20 minutes (ie. exiting the cafe where i had been sitting) i was inundated with signs, songs blaring from cars and endless overheard conversations on the subject. so strange, when this collective sadness settles. i can’t stop thinking about how much i hope this poor guy knew how many people still love him so fiercely.