The requiste Michael Jackson post

He died and I wasn't moved. I'm not really a fan. I've never been a fan. I think the clearest memory I have of him is fast forwarding through his music video in the beginning of Free Willy.

I'm not saying I haven't heard his music or danced to ABC or Thriller or that I didn't really dig Alien Ant Farm's cover of Smooth Criminal back in the day (I have memories of driving in either Ajay or Dylan's car with that blaring). But his music never meant much to me. My parents, being older, did not bring share any music from the 80s. We listened to vinyls of The Beatles, Loving Spoonful, Steely Dan and Harry Nilsson, and other 60s and 70s greats. So, Michael Jackson's death, though seen worldwide as tragic, doesn't mean much to me, but it did get me thinking.


Who in the celebrity world* would I become very upset over their death?


As I start writing this, I can't picture one person who I would actively cry over or publicly mourn for. Its not like crying is something that is very difficult or unusual thing for me to do, but I really have to think.

I did tear up when I found out about Pinter dying. It was Christmas. I was in New York. I was sad already. Even though his heyday was years before his death, his Nobel Prize Speech was proof enough he still had much in him. I cried when Ann Richards died. I thought she was perfect. When John Paul II died, I was torn up because he meant more to me then than even I knew. But these people weren't celebrities, or rather, weren't celebrities in the common use of the term.


Much of the pain we feel from losing someone, whether we were close to them or not, comes from the inherent what-if possibilities that sprinkle through life. If I had asked him out on a date when we still lived in the same city. If I were to have called her that afternoon. If we had been friends until we grow old.

With the people directly in your life, you miss there every day presence, the quick phone calls you would make in between errands, the giggles and grins that dot your life, those horrible fights that lead to more honesty, those sturdy bastions of advice. You miss the possibility of the continuing existence of your relationship. But with celebrity, all you have with that person is their body of work. And the beautiful thing about many of the modern celebrities of today, is that there work is ever present.

Two months after Heath Ledger died, my best friend and I sat down and watched 10 Things I Hate About You, an old high school favorite. And guess what? It was just like we remembered it. Death or no death, Heath Ledger gave the same performance and will give the same performance for eternity. Elliot Smith songs sound the same, perhaps more poignant, after his death. I can look at a Degas painting, and though, not as readily accessible, connect with him beyond his earthly tomb. They are already entombed in their pieces before they are dead. Persistently immortalized in their art.

But re-reading the list above of people who I did cry over their deaths implies that it doesn't really mean much if you know someone well or not, they can still impact your life. Those people meant something to me, and that's why I cried.

So if Michael Jackson meant something to you, mourn like mourners do.

And perhaps my lack of woe, and (dare I say) compassion says much more about me than the rest of the world.



*celebrity world vaguely being defined as musicians and actors