Grand King Michael (1958-2009)

Been too devastated to say anything about this huge loss to all of us. I was following the news on Thursday night up until 11.49 pm when PHCN did its bit and I went to bed praying that of all the conflicting reports, the one about MJ being in coma would turn out to be the truth the next morning, but it didn’t. And the import of it all has been numbing and draining to contemplate.

There is has only ever been one King of Pop, and for many, king of music itself. That king was in music for at least 40 years and was king of his genre for at least 30 years. He is was King Michael Joseph Jackson. He lived his life out in the open. From age five, this king could no longer live like the person next door. He was forced to become an adult even before he understood what being a toddler meant to him. But we never really sought to understand the implication of all that to him. Hence his latter life was more about the man than the music. But still no one could dim the star with mega sparks. Not where there were billions sleeping, eating, thinking, drinking and even dying MJ.

I have never really been a devotee of King Michael, but, like most people around the world, including your father, your grandfather and your children I have always been a follower of the true king of pop music. How could I not when he has been a phenomenon, a course in the study of the subject called GENIUS. I remember once being a panelist in a teenage hood discourse in which our subject matter led to us wanting to know who the most popular person in the world at the time was. I remember one of us advancing the theory that the three best known or most famous people/phenomenona were: Football(call it soccer or football, somehow everybody seems to know it); God (whther you are an atheist or deist or whatever else, everybody seems to have heard about Him at one time or the other, although worshipping him is another subject altogether); and Michael Jackson(your 2-year-old daughter born in 2007 for instance know about him already, just like your father and your do), in no particular order. Years later, I remembered that theory as I watched the Jackson behemoth in concert, and from then onwards I accepted that childhood theory as a semblance of the truth if not a fact in itself. That is the measure of MJ.

King Michael loved life and nature and truly celebrated it. He thrilled us all because he was forever desirous of sharing his life with the world, although the world did not know exactly how to relate with him. He believed we human could heal the world, of its myriad of disease, literally and figuratively. And for him, that had to start with our appreciation of true human nature. He was not bad, although the media made him seem terrible. Truth is, we could not just explain his enigma in black or white, perhaps that was why he needed to teach us some history and that is why even though he lived for us all and we enjoyed it all, we cannot but feel he has gone too soon. Rest in peace King Wacko Jacko. You are not alone, even in death,although sometimes we may have made you feel like a stranger in the moscow cold while you were here with us. We all love you. You have left a huge vacuum in the world. Thanks for ever being here.