Great artists are allowed their eccentricities.
Without a doubt Michael Jackson was a stellar example of talent and worthy of icon mania. His visuals in music videos, an art form perfected at the height of his career, may be played for a thousand years. I can picture the “Thiller” video being played in space in 3009 AD or on a solar colony near Saturn.
The visual arts in video are sort of like the Greek statues of their day and they stayed around and were imitated and found a place in many a villa in the Roman Empire for centuries after their creation. Man, in his spirit, in his soul, recognizes artistic high watermarks on the common civilization brand. Michael was without a doubt one of those high watermarks of the present western and worldwide culture.
The human race turns on a dime and forgives the eccentricities of great artists. His eccentricities were many to say the least.
I was never fully evolved to accept Michael as the “It” of his generation. My generation was a little bit before in the fifties. I burned out on Rock and Roll in the late fifties as a child of five. I sort of yawned when the Beatles came along and ignored them until I discovered them as Muzak in an elevator in the late seventies. Etc.
Nobody, not even myself, could ignore the energy and creativity and breath of life that MJ’s talent exhibited.
I am somewhat taken aback by the power of the media or music or concerts to transmit that something and indiscernible quality of life of this age, these many short ages overlapping, of rock, pop, punk, metal and so on and so forth. The quality of this age I am not certain of. Only history will tell.
Of men and or women who makes hundreds of millions of dollars and can live in a luxurious bubble world and believe anything they want to and do anything they want to – one thing is certain – they can only believe or do anything for a short time and then there is - Death.
As for Michael, I find it ironic that his last days of life ended in La La Land, Los Angeles, known for its eccentricities and a place with the movie and music industry, a place not totally fixed in everyday reality. His preparations for the “next tour” seemed to be an appropriate, if untimely, place to exit life.
Michael Jackson, The King of Pop, has left the building.
I have to wonder if in the days and weeks and months to follow how many new urban legends and sightings, like that of Elvis, of the elusive, eccentric and talented Mr. Jackson will be created and transmitted by word of mouth and media to accent his recent passing.
RIP