Bo-Bo Hopes Michael Jackson is Resting in Peace

I'm not a big Michael Jackson fan--I only bought Thriller album because I was tired of turning on the radio and catching Vincent Price talking about the mortals who can't resist the evil of the thriller at the tail end of the song--but the oldies station in Boston is spinning tributes all weekend and I seem to have no desire to turn off my radio. Which is odd given that I really can't overstate how much I hate high tenors as a general rule (just one of the many reasons I don't feel people like Justin Timberlake and--good god--Robin Thicke). But I'm enjoying the odd Jackson song I know and appreciating the vast catalog I've never heard and oh my god the radio just launched into "We Are the World" and holy man alive does that take me back.

But back to the business at hand. If it's not the music fascinating me what is it? It's not the spectacle, either, though the media--even NPR--is certainly not glossing over the weirdness of Jackson's life. I don't pretend to understand anything about this man who knew an isolation that rivaled Elvis's famous bunkering up, and really, if you consider the way the pedophilia scandal compounded Jackson's reclusive ways, the King of Pop was probably more alone than the King of Rock ever was, so what then?

When the world is calling in to talk shows and eulogizing Jackson around choking sobs; when we learn that the call to the ambulance was delayed because the people around him were trying to handle the crisis; when Jackson himself seems to be choked up during the spoken section at the end of "Will You Still Care"* that reads like bad middle-school poetry,** the human in me tries to understand the human in him, the guy beneath the controversies, the eccentricities, the bone-crushing insecurity we saw played out in the transformation of a sweet face the child in me crushed on into something so hideous that it's impossible, I think, to underestimate just how much Jackson loathed himself.

As an ordinary American inundated with a media culture that seems to--when it takes notice of the arts at all--lionize the myth of the artist instead of the art itself, it's easy to start believing that the bumpy, potholed creative road transforms into a freshly-paved, bucolic byway once the world gives you the nod. But that's just not the case. The creative road shakes its travelers by design--smooth sailing makes for boring art, after all--and for some unfortunate few (Jackson among them) the road detours onto a little-used, muddy dirt road where they just sink.

The next time I find myself shouldered with a flat tire and I'm watching in the rearview for signs of the truck Triple-A sent out to rescue me, I'll take a look at myself and remember that everyone--even the crowned prince of Neverland--has to start with that man in the mirror.

* AKA the Free Willy song

** In our darkest hour
in my deepest despair
will you still care?
will you be there? (etc. )