I am sure most people in the world have heard the news. I was shocked as much as everyone else was. A HUGE pop icon passed away yesterday at only 50 years old. HMMM.

How do I feel about it I ask myself?  Here is what I have done for the last few years. Sometimes MJ is brought up in conversation. I usually say

“I remember this dynamic, talented kid singing and dancing. I remember great pop songs on radio and TV along with his brothers. What the $%@* happened!”

During the 80’s of course he rose to stellar heights of fame popularity and sales that only a select few have experienced. While I liked some of those songs I quickly grew very tired of them. They were everywhere and I go so sick of hearing them that I didn’t WANT to hear them anymore. Same with his videos. The capper for me was the Thriller video. I remember the first time seeing it. Being a classic monster fan I was liking the werewolf thing. Then he started singing to the girl. OK, I thought this IS a music video so I guess we have to get to the song, but then! Corpses come out of the ground and (obviously dancers with make up and wardrobe…their bodies looked way too healthy to be corpses) and begin a typical dance number. I mean typical by MJ standards.

“What the hell is this?”  I said. They ruined a pretty good video. I thought it was stupid. Even Vincent Price narrating the track didn’t do it for me. Dancing , jiving corpses just weren’t funny. They weren’t entertaining and even though the idea was different it grew stale so quickly that I just had to roll my eyes. I haven’t seen it in years. Wonder how it would seem today?

After that of course it was a slow, well documented descent for MJ. The freakish looks, the reclusiveness. It reminds me a LOT of another icon who also turned eccentric and reclusive. Elvis Presley. MJ wanted so much to be the “King of Pop” that he even married Presley’s daughter and bought the songs of the Beatles! Elvis ended up dying in a bathroom. He had been popping so many pills for so long that his body had had enough. It finally closed up shop. That was a shocker too. I remember it well. Now Michael Jackson’s body has closed up shop too. It has been rumored that he was addicted to painkillers for years. Who knows how many other pills etc he might have also been consuming. I feel bad for him. Whatever his life was he felt the need to not be himself. Look at how he disfigured his face and body. He was so skinny I doubt if he ate much. I have seen pics where his incredibly unhealthy face looked almost like a mask you buy for Halloween. I think he may have been a person who drove himself to success so much that he lost touch with staying around to enjoy it. He might not have felt comfortable in his own skin. Sad.

Granted he was very talented. He sang, danced and wrote hit songs. He was charismatic. He was the modern day Elvis, Beatles or Sinatra. He had many gifts, admirers, and bank accounts. Yet………here we are reading today about his death. At only 50 years old!

So here is how I “get” Michael Jackson. I will still listen to those great Jackson 5 songs, and maybe less to those 80’s songs. I am using his example to show myself that no matter who we are, we all need to take the time to spend with ourselves. Time exercising, breathing, stretching and physically improving ourselves. Keeping our mind body connection alive. I choose to remember that dynamic, young very talented kid that broke upon the scene back in 1969, and the energetic dance moves from those 80’s days. All the while though I will keep it in the back of my  mind that he must have been an unhappy guy. He didn’t just start becoming unhappy in his later years. It must have lingered since childhood. Somewhere in the back of his mind. In his unconsciousness. Sometimes he might have been aware of it. Maybe he used drugs to dull it. Who knows? All I know is that he is dead at 50 years old and sadly there didn’t seem to be anything he could do to control it. Today I am going to go out to my garage, listen to the J5 and maybe even 80’s MJ and do a hard workout. 45 minutes of mind body connection, sweating, panting, lifting, pushing, squatting exercise. I know I will feel better for it.

PS – Good luck to whoever it is that eventually becomes the next Elvis, Beatles or MJ. It seems to be a pretty tough road.

Best,

Robert