iamfauxpas.com

i know this probably seems like the most obvious and, to many, the least necessary of topics but after seeing the replay of the memorial this afternoon, i can’t help but share some feelings on it. maybe its the sleep deprivation (i don’t think it is) but i’m torn up, feeling pretty emotional. heart-broken. not really because of michael jackson, but because as i was watching it, this memorial – like the best ones always do – became about so much more than just one surreal pop star. got me thinking about some of the people i’ve lost, about how people lose loved ones every day, about the simple tragedy of death. we live, we die, people remember, then people forget. when someone’s life is celebrated in such a personal, poignant way (hard to believe that it was even possible for them to get the tone right, given the circumstances) – well you basically can’t help but think about people you’ve lost, what it means to remember and be remembered.

anyway. in its way, even if it was just an illusion, this memorial made michael jackson real. even if it wasn’t true – god knows, he was no normal man, the jacksons are no normal family, this most public of deaths and its memorial are surely as far from normal as the world may have ever seen – the memorial made it seem so. made him seem real. his brothers in mourning could have been any brothers. look past the gloves, the sunglasses, the accoutrements of lifetimes of weirdness – they could have been my brothers. your brothers. very real. the speeches, all of them, humanised him in a way that didn’t (doesn’t) seem possible.

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yes, it may have seemed very odd to the outside. but we made it fun, and we made it real.

but also it struck me that what was being mourned, perhaps simply by me, was more the idea of michael jackson – the innocent gifted child. this is something a lot of people have written about, this sense that he’d been dying for decades – he’s been “gone” for so long that the memorial seems years, decades overdue. no wonder it feels like such tremendous closure.

no wonder my immediate feelings, when i heard about his death, were some mixture of disbelief and relief. disbelief because: well, michael jackson was never a real person. how can a fictional character, a construct, die? jackson dying seemed about as real as saying that mickey mouse had died. and relief because, well, i couldn’t help but feel that he had been gone for a long time. to me he was a cherished icon grown more and more unrecognisable. it was a relief to be able to start memorialising him, revising the idea of him.

so… real or not. seems i’m not sure myself.

anyway, if you’re here at my blog, you are no doubt at least as cynical & heartless as generally i am – hey, probably more – and probably looking for just another sarcastic or biting angle on it. well lucky for you the chaser is on tonight and no doubt they’ll cover the tasteless, cynical angle. good for them. but my advice for the cynics is to ignore the media circus. and – if you’re feeling up to it – try and engage with some of the memorial, if you haven’t yet. try to avoid the clips in the news outlets, head to youtube and catch the speeches and performances in full. try and engage, and see what it makes you feel – you might find this memorial wasn’t necessarily about michael jackson at all. maybe it was about your neighbour, your grandma, your friend, or your dog. all of the above.

here’s a couple to get you started. and honestly, if you aren’t moved by jermaine jackson’s performance of “smile”, you honestly do not have a heart. grief, love, memory. its not just about michael jackson: