InsaneJournal

Current location:	[proxy posted by joy.]
Current mood:	sad

shut fast your painted eyes
When I was a kid, my elementary school had a tiny supply store in a spare closet next to the gymnasium. It was stocked with pop-point pencils and shaped erasers and those little plastic fruits full of flavored sugar, and it was open for a little bit in the morning and afternoon. There would be an afternoon run made by one lucky member of the classroom, to purchase delights from the fantastic smorgasbord.

Once, in third grade, when I was allowed to go up by myself, I spent fifty cents (an outrageous sum) for a simple file folder with a handsome rock star on it. It was a daring thing to do, really, because he was black. I grew up in a tiny town in the mountains of Kentucky. There were no black kids in my class. There were, in fact, only four or five black kids in the whole of my school. Even then, there was music they listened to and music we listened to, that line had not blurred yet. But it was about to, and the man who did it was the one smiling coyly out from my file folder, dancing in the videos that showed on our brand-new cablebox MTV. Michael Jackson. I think the folder cover had an image from thriller, but on the inside he had on a white suit. He looked so cool, lording over my spelling worksheets and math quizzes. At school talent shows there was lip synching to "we are the world" and "beat it." Every boy in my class wanted a studded red leather asymmetrical zip jacket. None of us could manage to moonwalk even a little bit, though we tried every recess on the parking-lot asphalt.

But I grew older, and his life grew sadder. By the time I got to Epcot to see Captain EO it was already a relic of the Michael that had been, the simple storyline a candy-coated version of the same things he had done in the music industry. He summoned dark, sad creatures out of their husks, he dressed them in rainbows, he taught them to dance.

And he could dance. He could always dance.

People might think that his crazy life will be his legacy, and will overtake that fact. But I know where his legacy is, and it is right here.

These kids are all too young to remember Michael Jackson the way I do, and the same goes for most of their fans. By the time they noticed him, he was already an eccentric star, neck-deep in scandal and tabloid covers. But watch them dance, and listen to them sing. They know Michael Jackson just like I did. And in them, and those after them, that is where he will endure. In motion, in music, in memory.