Miniver Cheevy

It seems I'm not alone in being surprised to find myself affected by his passing. The night before last, when the news was fresh, a friendly madman asked me for change and expressed his mourning. The following day, as I walked to work, I passed a dozen boxes offering me the San Francisco Chronicle with an enormous picture of Jackson on the front page: a concert photograph of him in motion, exuberant and gorgeous at the height of his powers, before everything we think of now when we hear his name.

Let's not kid ourselves about the crimes. But I think we can do that at the same time as we remember the uncanny brilliance he had for a time. Momus dug up an old essay of his naming well the paradoxes that so many saw in him.

He's black yet also white. He's adult yet also a child. He's male yet also female. He's gay yet also straight. He has children, yet he's also never fucked their mothers. He's wearing a mask, yet he's also showing his real self. He's walking yet also sliding. He's guilty yet also innocent. He's American yet also global. He's sexual yet also sexless. He's immensely rich yet also bankrupt. He's Judy Garland yet also Andy Warhol. He's real yet also synthetic. He's crazy yet also sane, human yet also robot, from the present yet also from the future. He declares his songs heavensent, and yet he also constructs them himself. He's the luckiest man in the world yet the unluckiest. His work is play. He's bad, yet also good. He's blessed yet also cursed. He's alive, but only in theory.

Seeing the picture of the Michael Jackson whom I had forgotten, I had a daydream yesterday morning.

Michael Jackson is nineteen years old, the night of Elvis' death. The King's shade comes to Michael in a dream. The world is going to need a King of Pop, Elvis tells him. He plays a single note on his guitar, and Jackson feels it for just the length of a single heartbeat: perfect poise in front of an audience of a hundred thousand, their voices raised with his in joy.

The shade of Robert Johnson is there too. I can tell you how it can be you says the Grandfather. My legend is true, and I can teach you the secret. But the legend is also right that there's a price. You will be mocked. You will go mad. You will hack at your own flesh. You will commit the worst crime you can imagine. But the moment which Elvis showed him is still singing in Michael Jackson's heart.

With that, he wakes. He rises, donning shoes, a coat, and gloves against the night air. He steps outside and walks down the street to the crossroads, where he shakes the Devil's hand. Though the flesh is unharmed, Jackson feels the flames as the glove he's wearing catches fire and burns away.