When you think about music

I've been thinking about music a lot lately. It's not particularly unusual for me, but I don't talk about music much because I'm pretty turned off by the way some people get judgmental and shitty when they find out that you actually sort of like Justin Timberlake or that ohmigod you've got an autographed photo of Billy Ocean on your wall or whatever.

I got into a reflective mood today while Best Friend and I were having a couple of beers and making up dirty lyrics to "Heal the World" (there was a line about lubricant followed by the phrase "let the healing begin"). After about twenty minutes, our meteoric careers as lyricists came to an end and we decided to just watch Michael Jackson videos on YouTube.

The day he died, I posted a video of "Will You Be There" and made some comment that, looking back, was kind of silly because honestly, I love that song and have since I was nine. Objectively speaking, I don't think it's his best work by a long shot, but it's a nice song and devoid of the crotch-grabbing that freaked me out fifteen years ago. The things you love as a kid often stay with you forever and it seems that this song qualifies.

As I remarked to Best Friend, that particular video makes me kind of sad and needles me with a hint of grief for him, partly for the song, but mostly for the imagery. In the last minute or so, the video cuts to a clip of a fan at a performance who had managed to scramble onstage and rush to Michael, not to attack him or rip at his costume, but to throw her arms around him and kiss him on the cheek. And instead of pushing her away and waiting for security to haul her off before resuming the concert, Michael hugged her back.

This stuck with me. We all think of musicians in terms of who we like, love, hate or don't care about, but we just mean music. When someone says "I love Peter Frampton, " they don't mean that they'd like to kiss Frampton on the cheek, they just mean that they wore out their vinyl copy of Frampton Comes Alive when it first came out. When people say "I love Michael Jackson," they mean it both ways. However, Frampton was just a good musician and Michael Jackson was a supernova, a complex cultural phenomenon that I'm sure I'll tell my kids about. I love the Beatles. But I don't love John Lennon.

When Jackson signed autographs, he would often write things like "I love you with all my heart" and I think that in a lot of ways, he meant it. I don't know if he was a happy person, but I think it's not unreasonable to conclude that regardless of his failings, he was a man who loved fiercely. A fan did something that could be construed as alarming and he reacted by giving her the same love back.

I chewed on it and I think that the fan represents a lot of us. When we jumped into his space, he could have turned away, could have shut us out, but he kept telling us how much he loved us.

Anyway, I don't like jumping on celebrity grief trains without a damn good reason, but I would be lying if I said I didn't miss Michael Jackson on some level.