Carry On, Michael Jackson

I heard at work. First, one of our barista’s boyfriend called to break the news. Then, I received a few phone calls from customers, random people, who must have thought that being holed up in a store meant we hadn’t heard the news. One customer asked us to broadcast the news over the load speakers. Think about that for a minute. For all of his troubles, Michael Jackson touched a lot of people’s lives in a profound way.

I grew up with Michael Jackson. My siblings and I used to argue, back in the day, over who was the baddest: Michael Jackson or Prince? Truth be told, we always ended up giving it up to Prince; but we always went back to Michael. Moms would get mad at us, scared we were gonna wear the carpet down from trying to do the Moonwalk in the living room, or blow the stereo speakers from cranking “Thriller” too loudly, or give her a headache from cranking “Beat It” too loudly.

And even before then, my parents had all of the Jackson 5 45s. I used to sit in my room when I first discovered the pleasure of music, with my little orange box record player and rock the hell out of “ABC,” “Rockin’ Robin,” “I Want You Back.”

Later in life, when I started DJing, I always made sure to have a Jackson 5 cut in the mix. It had become necessary, never cliche.

Let us not forget The Wiz. I grew up loving the Wizard of Oz, and seeing The Wiz in the theaters just blew my little mind. The story took on a whole new level of awesome once I saw it with brown folks playing all the roles.

This is how I’m going to remember Michael Jackson: The joy, the pleasure, the family. Yes, Michael had his demons. We all do. That his demons were obviously exacerbated by fame, pressure, race and gender in the face of enormous fame, and many more things that I (and you?) might not ever understand will surely be lost on a lot of folks (MSM, I’m looking at you). I’m not trying to say that he was beyond criticism. I am saying that right now, I want to honor Michael Jackson for all of the joy that he has brought me and mine. And for all that other stuff, well, I just don’t know. I didn’t know before he passed away and I’m not going to pretend like I know now.

I just hope that Michael Jackson is now resting in peace.