Shouldn't Have Been It

Back in June I was really sad. Now I am so pissed off you cannot even imagine. And being pissed off is not a sentiment usually associated with death, is it? November went off with a watery bang (oxymoron there) which is just as well as both September and October were extraordinarily dry and bright in my neck of the woods. The September-to-February stretch is my favourite half of the year as I’ve said many times but in truth... I cannot wait for this disgusting year to go away for ever, taking disappointment, emotional upheaval and sadness with it. If only it could also take the memories... if only!

No Words

Today I flipped my diary open to next week. Sunday 12 reads: ‘MJ concert at the O2! 6.30 pm!’. Well, I may as well put a line through that as Michael has thrown the ultimate spanner in the works there.

But there is something that I should add about it because I really think it worth mentioning. At some point this week I came across a news snippet that showed Martin Bashir, the journalist who filmed the Living with Michael Jackson documentary, looking sorry for himself and proclaiming that he never thought anything criminal had happened at Neverland and that Michael's lifestyle was just a bit unorthodox. See for yourself here.

And so let me get this straight Mr Bashir: first, in 2003, you said that it was your duty to uncover ‘what was really going on at Neverland’, and so powerful was your documentary that it led to the criminal case against Jacko. Fine, no problem with that, good investigative journalism, right? Now that the guy has crossed over to where the venom constantly vomited by thousands cannot reach him anymore, now you tell us that he was misunderstood and that you never thought anything wrong ever took place? Which is which? Was Jacko a pedophile or was he a gentle, misunderstood soul? Which reality are you going to choose? Which was, in fact, real?

Prostitutes display a greater level of professional integrity than Bashir. I am disgusted.

And Miracles Get Undone Too

When I went to bed last night having just heard that, apparently, Michael Jackson had been taken to hospital with a cardiac arrest, I did not think much of it. I thought I would yawn my way to the Mac today and would not even find a remaining line about it. This morning, it was a different story.

I spoke of his music in passing here on a couple of occasions. Once to say that music chooses you and not the other way round, and a few more times in relation to the tickets to the London O2 shows. Only a couple of weeks ago I hailed to a miracle: my date had been moved to March and then maybe I would be able to go then, because as sure as hell I couldn't go in two weeks. I needn't worry now and I feel incredibly sad, but not in that familiar way that death instills in people. No, I feel a sadness that is deeply interlinked with my own personal life and my own personal memories.

Thriller (followed by Bad) was the first album I ever bought. We were practising the Moonwalk at seven. We filled Jacko scrapbooks at ten. We discovered music because of Billie Jean. We put up school performances to his remixes. As recently as last week, I was jiving to myself with The Jackson 5 in the background. You cannot decide what music will become significant in your life; music happens to you.

To know that the purveyor of my most treasured musical memories, memories intertwined with family and friends and pets, is no longer feels unsettling, as if I opened the paper and read that Barbie had died. Now the news are awash with tributes from every dog and its uncle, the same people that loved making fun of his weirdness (easily done) and who adored the spectacle of his slow-motioned fall only a few years back. This too feels unsettling and confirms that it's better to share one's life in the company of wild animals than certain people and that anonymity is highly favourable to celebrity and success.

Besides my own significance attached to my own life, he leaves a monumental legacy to black music, to pop music and to the MTV generation. He was a magnificent choreographer and dancer, one of the most significant black icons of all times, the first to bring black and white audiences together, the top innovator in the field of music videos, the first to utilise computer generated imagery and sound in them and the first one too to blend the tradition of black soul music with the up-and-coming popularity of white funk pop music. At no point over the past thirty years have I ever heard any act that made me question whether Jacko was still the King of Pop, not even in passing. This is because innovation and originality are as important as quality sound.

But he also seemed a troubled man and hard as it is to think of death as the bringer of peace, maybe that's how it has finally worked out for him.

Miracles Happen

I am sure you’ve all heard that Jacko has moved some of the first few dates at the O2 to some other time. My tickets fall within one of those dates, to be precise one which has been moved to March next year. If this isn’t a miracle, I don’t know what is. I was clinging to those tickets tooth and nail, praying that some windfall would come from somewhere so to be able to go in July and now I’ve been given over half a year grace period, by which stage I am absolutely certain I will have some sort of job and the funds to blow on The Jacko Trip. Thank you God, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. And enjoy this fabulous video, also starring Iman, Eddie Murphy and Magic Johnson. I know I said it before but this too is Jacko at his best.

Who Is It?

Who knows whether I will be able to make it to the Jacko concert in July. I sure as hell have tickets but unless I manage to fly there and back by spreading my arms, I am unlikely to be able to afford to travel and stay over. Still, stranger things have happened to less worthy people; a miracle may always rescue me. Meanwhile, I wallowed in nostalgia with this song. This is Jacko at his best, squillions spent on videos et al.

Memory Definitely Full

When I stopped at Waitrose yesterday the Mail caught my eye. It was giving away Paul McCartney's Memory Almost Full. I had been thinking about getting some new music as of late, and £ 1.50 beat even the cheapest of iTunes downloads. So I paid for the CD and threw away (in the recycling box...) the wad of paper. I played the CD this morning on the way to work and had a musical epiphany. I think I had not listened to anything by Paul in many years. Strangely, I never equated Paul with the Beatles or with Hey Jude (who does not know that song I wonder?) but with My Brave Face. This was the most catchy single to come out of Flowers In The Dirt, Paul's album from 1989. Even typing that date makes me feel removed from reality, as much as 1066 or 1776 does. Was I really around in 1989? That is just short of twenty years ago! I was around alright; I used to spend lengthy afternoons in the company of a friend, playing Flowers In The Dirt ad nauseam, until the tape crinkled into papery crackles only to return to intelligible music just before the end of side A. We loved My Brave Face; it was our soundtrack to secondary school, when we used to study music and play the flute, when we used to call strangers in France in order to practise our French and when we had only just started to buy Marie Claire which, at barely £ 1.50 a copy, seemed wildly expensive and incredibly sophisticated.

This morning, playing Paul made me feel like a child again, even though these songs are new, and made me wonder whether anyone would release this sort of music if it were not by Paul McCartney (and I say this in the kindest of ways, mind you). They say that once you hit 40, life starts speeding up exponentially. I cannot even imagine it. I cannot imagine time whirring past me any faster than it already does. I feel like my hard-drive is definitely full, with not an Mb of space for the smallest of experiences, the shortest of books, the tiniest of disappointments. I don't know what is wrong with me but usually, when I think of my past, I always think of regret. I do not have anything to regret in the standard sense. What I mourn is the passing of time itself, this feeling of memory getting full, even though we can all always save an extra file somewhere. There is always a way to deconstruct the memory and to defragment it, to re-arrange its contents, to compress and zip and shuffle them around so that, magically, a sliver of space appears out of nowhere, a little space that will hold another surprise, another disappointment, another death, another joy. I cannot imagine what being 60 or 80 or older must be like. Perhaps we all get an upgrade when we hit 40 so that we can save more without this sense of hopelessness, without this feeling of saving stuff we really do not need to save. Maybe that's what happens with age and wisdom; we only save the important things and direct the pointless ones to the trashcan. At the moment, it certainly feels like I am saving a lot fit for the trash but perhaps that is what it is like to be young.