Heal the World

Sitting here catching up on the news, it is nothing but impossible to avoid the Michael Jackson memorial updates and images. This one made me take a second glance.

No one will ever truly know what happens in the life and psyche of a child that takes him from this image to the one that left this earth a few days ago. Just barely on the fringest of recognition are the same eyes but in both his childhood and adult pictures, they seem to portray some kind of sadness.

I'm the first one to be a cynic and believe the rumors, but what if it wasn't true? What if he never glanced at a child sideways during all these years? You have to admit that eccentricies aside, he seemed like someone who wanted to use his celebrity to make a difference in the world. Given the money, fame, and worship he received from generations after generations and contries across the world, he seemed to maintain a truly generous spirit that wanted to Heal the World but couldn't seem to find the means to heal himself in any small way. What an existence.

I have to wonder how anyone is ever allowed to grow up when they live in the constant spotlight and it shines on what they were years ago, where they started, how they sounded, how they looked... If there was constant footage and pictures of me as a child growing up performing, I may never put that behind me and become an adult. Is that what happens when you get old? You just forget what it's like to be a child and have fun? Seems like it. Seems like the people who we say are "big kids" still remember what it is to be just that...a kid, but those are also the "adults" that piss off all the other adults.

Death is strange. Yeah, it happens all the time but some people are just assumed to always be there. The mess of life that he lived aside, the world, and by world, I mean the entire world, lost a great talent.

***edit - after my 12 hour shift and my morning plant watering, I crawled into bed and got stuck on you tube videos of Michael Jackson. I didn't realize how much his music brings me back to what I heard during my entire childhood and in that how he was such a strong musical memory in my mother's childhood too. How many people had that influence across generations? My mother wans't very forward about a lot of things when I was a kid, but I remember thinking it was kind of cool that I liked to listen to someone that my mom listened to when she was my age too. It was a big deal in my house seeing that I grew up with the strong desire to be surrounded by music but able to indulge in that because of my parent's overzelous Chrisitan outlook on "secular" music. The few and far between included oldies and of the likes groups like the Jackson 5. Maybe because it came from my mom's era, maybe because it was a kid's group, but that was one of the exceptions. I'm sitting here listening to Man in the Mirror just shaking my head and remembering being able to recognize those images of Michael Jackson's ever changing face from when I was still in the single digit age group and all through my high school years. He was an icon that appealed to every one, every age, every race, and his sound was unmistakable. Somethings are just engrained in your memory, instantly recognizable like the first few beats of Billy Jean or Thriller. It is just baffling to think that after 40+ years of influence, someone, something could be gone. No one is invicible. Really, you just don't get out of this alive no matter who you are.

Seems far too soon, what a shame...