A busy news day, ending with the deaths of the beautiful Farrah Fawcett and the talented Michael Jackson. All good things come to their end, and one hopes the end is but a temporary change in physiology leading to new life somewhere, somehow.
Mr. Jackson managed to squander quite a bit, but some of the music he left us with is sure compensation, and he will be missed, in part because we felt there was much more for him to give musically. Sadness now. He was mocked, and will be dismissed by some, unable to find anything good at all. "I never liked his music or him," will go the refrain from less talented people with harder, possibly darker hearts, and as though that personal injunction carries any weight at all when so many more have been blessed.
In these parts, Mark Knopfler is our musician we respect the most and consistently turn to when contemplating who we might listen to if limited to but one person. But Michael Jackson was the person we often identified with, for he, like us, always seemed strangely out of place and off sync with the people around him. We wish there was more of him in the music, and not just glimpses and illusions and masks of something deeper. Now he is gone.
Our favorites written by him: "Give In to Me", "Who Is It", "Will You Be There" on his Dangerous album, "Dirty Diana", "Smooth Criminal" and "Leave Me Alone" off of Bad, and "Billy Jean" from Thriller.
We also like "Human Nature" from Thriller and "Man in the Mirror" from Bad, but those were not his own words. For us, it's his voice combined with the mystery of his own ramblings and writings that intrigue and keep us listening in the dark.
Tonight when we lay down our head, we will wonder where he has gone, and if the spirit truly lives on beyond sentimental remembrance. When we listen we see another lonely soul that matches our own.
That matches my own.
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