Story #1
My cousin Jonathan is the biggest fan Micheal Jackson's I know. He owns every album, knows every word to every song and yes, during he's teenage years, he walked around with a single white glove on his right hand. I've often wondered why he loved the King of Pop so much. So on the occasion of Michael Jackson's sudden passing I gave him a call.
Jonathan is an only child whose parents divorced when he was young. His father, my dad's brother Howard, fought a long and hard custody battle with his mother and when Jonathan was 14 he finally moved in with his dad. As a child of divorced parents I know the pain of having to choose which parent you want to live with. The feeling of betraying a parent who has given up everything for you is a hard one to shake. So right after the custody battle uncle Howard took Jonathan on a road trip to get his mind off of things. The sound track of that trip was Michael Jackson's "Dangerous."
"I've never told anyone this," Jonathan said, "But after that trip I started listening to his other music and when I heard "Scream" that shit spoke to me and everything I was going through." Jackson's music helped him put words to the complex feelings he was experiencing and that's what great art does.
The part of this story that's most fascinating to me is it's cross generational underpinnings. My uncle had purchased "Dangerous" for himself and had been a fan since the 70s. When he played it for his son little did he know that it would spark such an obsession but he knew it was a safe bet that Jonathan would like at least a song or two. And that's the real magic of the Michael Jackson phenomenon, his music, because it was so ubiquitous is a touchstone for us all.
Story #2
I shed a tear when I learned of Michael's death because upon hearing the news I was overwhelmed with countless memories that had his music as their soundtrack. When I was growing up, we would spend our Christmas holiday in Florida at my grandmother's house and a vinyl copy of "A Jackson 5 Christmas" was the soundtrack of those trips.
Well, after I graduated I was living with my mom and for a number of reason we weren't traveling "home," as my mom calls it, for the holidays. The first thing I did when I realized I would be spending Christmas away from "home" was to buy that album and playing it on Christmas morning made it feel like we were sitting in my grandmother's living room with the whole family.
