I’m not talking about King Sulumits Retsambew here. Yes, I’m talking about Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, who died on Thurday, June 25, 2009 after a severe cardiac arrest. I was never a big fan of his, but the human side of his famous, bizzare and tragic life always had a special place in my heart. I’ve known him from my early childhood, from the songs I learned by listening to my elder sister and brother CD collections. My favorite is “Ben”. Somehow I felt that Ben is the friend he never had in his childhood — or maybe in his entire life.
He was a controversial figure in many ways, you might love him or you might hate him. He was a musical genious, a great entertainer. He made a greatest recordings and videos of all time, he entertained pople with his soft voice and great music. In a cover story about Jackson and Thriller, TIME described Jackson as “a one-man rescue team for the music business. A songwriter who sets the beat for a decade. A dancer with the fanciest feet on the street. A singer who cuts across all boundaries of taste and style and color too.”
Fortune and fame, he had them all, yet deep in his heart he was always a lonely man with a lost childhood. In brief: an unhappy person. He tried to win acceptance from others and looked for happiness through many ways: changing his looks, strange behaviour with a constant problem — physically, psychologically — and try to create the childhood world on his Neverland. Deep inside, he was “Peter Pan” — the-don’t-want-to-grow-up-boy. In fact, he was never been ” a boy” in his life.
He also tried to find console and peace of mind from a religion. If the rumours were right, it was said he had become a muslim when he risided in Dubai — a hiatus from his ‘everyday life’. The news was never really confirmed, yet we can read between the lines when his brother Jermaine Jackson conveyed in the last part of his annnouncement of Michael death:
May Allah be with you, Michael, always.
Now the King of Pop is dead. Long Live The King. His works, his legacy will always stay in the heart of people who had known him — by name or personally — and hope the ups and downs of his life will remain well written for the generation to come. Let’s remember him fairly as a human being, with all his good and bad deeds, with all his strengths and weaknesses. I hope he will find the peace of mind he yearned and never had in his life.
Post Scripts:
Now the King of Pop is dead. But Long Live the King Sulumits Retsambew. A long journey is still ahead of us.