mj epilogue

I just finished listening to "Unity: The Latin Tribute to Michael Jackson".
It's brimming with joy!
A bit much with the percussion to my western ear, but...
So joyous. Michael touched that in us...tapping the need we have to lose our minds in communal celebration...infectious marriages of rhythm and melody and lyric in songs of joy or longing...did anyone ever do that better?
Of course, in retrospect (and fullish possession of the truth), it's easy to see his life as driven by demons almost none of us might comprehend. A child abuse survivor, revisiting his horrors on other innocents. How early in his life must he have been aware that one day there might be a reckoning...and how relentlessly did that knowledge drive him to keep creating music of hope and love...insinuating himself into all our lives, trying to buffer himself against the hatred that might one day be his only reward?
"Beware the overachievers". If that isn't a truism, it should be.
But oh how we wanted that joy, michael! You delivered. You gave, we took, then turned it back out into the world in so many ways...the bursting enthusiasm of the performers on the album i just heard...convicts doing the Thriller dance in a prison yard, and...
Once, i was on a moving crew, waiting for an abominably slow elevator. One of us, probably me, started singing the bass line to "I Want You Back". Someone picked up the guitar line, then someone the vocal, until all five of us were singing and smiling. Our little group was black, and brown, and white...and none of that mattered, because that moment belonged to us all.
There is an inevitable amount of back-turning, of course. This past year, i taught myself a ukulele version of "The Way You Make Me Feel". I improved the lyrics. It was perfectly silly and joyous. And now, i can't imagine i'll ever play it again. At what point does the bad someone did, erase all the good?
Do i forgive him?
Gulp.
Bloody underwear.
Yes.
I must, for he is one of us. He is all of us.
I don't imagine that he's resting in peace. I don't imagine he's anything but dead.
We failed him. And he failed others in turn.
Even though my mj cds are gone, i don't think i'll ever erase the joy of his music in my heart.