But the article that convinced me to take up the subject again? This one, which links to this one.

He dubbed himself the King of Pop, which was a pretty daring act. Previously in our culture, the King of Jazz was Paul Whiteman and the King of Swing Benny Goodman and the King of Rock and Roll was Elvis Presley, all white men. This, in a way, radically redefined the black performer’s relation to music, made Jackson an auteur. In this way, Jackson may have paved the way for Obama in the sense of black man as auteur and self-mythmaker.

From Jackson the Mythmaker to Jackson the Kingmaker? In his own area of expertise, and to a proportionate degree, of course.

You were the Baddest of the Bad. We miss you already.

It is to that other one, to Borges, that things happen. I walk through Buenos Aires and I pause, one could say mechanically, to gaze at a vestibule’s arch and its inner door; of Borges I receive news in the mail and I see his name in a list of professors or some biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typefaces, etymologies, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; the other shares these preferences, but in a vain kind of way that turns them into attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to claim that our relationship is hostile; I live, I let myself live so that Borges may write his literature, and this literature justifies me. It poses no great difficulty for me to admit that he has put together some decent passages, yet these passages cannot save me, perhaps because whatsoever is good does not belong to anyone, not even to the other, but to language and tradition. In any case, I am destined to lose all that I am, definitively, and only fleeting moments of myself will be able to live on in the other. Little by little, I continue ceding to him everything, even though I am aware of his perverse tendency to falsify and magnify.

Spinoza understood that all things strive to persevere being; the stone wishes to be eternally a stone and the tiger a tiger. I will endure in Borges, not in myself (if it is that I am someone), but I recognise myself less in his books than in those of many others, or in the well-worn strum of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him by moving on from the mythologies of the slums to games with time and infinity, but those games are now Borges’ and I will have to conceive of other things. In this way, my life is a running away and I lose everything and everything is turned over to oblivion, or to the other.

I do not know which of us is writing this piece.

(This may be the purist in me flaring up, but I would translate the last sentence more literally: I do not know which of the two writes this page.)

One can almost hear Jackson’s voice reading those words, and substituting the old librarian’s name with his own.

The first is a preposterous straw man. Unfulfilled promise? Every LP was a masterpiece, transcending musical genres. The second is thinly-veiled ad hominem: it doesn’t matter what he ended up looking like. He wasn’t a model, he was a singer and songwriter, and an exceptional one at that: one of the greatest in the history of popular music. The same is true for the charges of pedophilia, which by the way I don’t believe. The third is just condescending: he was so sweet! So precocious! Yeah? And “Smooth Criminal” is one of the greatest pieces of music of all time. So is Billie Jean.

On the subject of Jackson’s death, the alt-music world has produced nothing short of the sound of crickets. (Actually that’s not entirely true. An Aquarium Drunkard posted a succinct tribute after which I styled my own.) You can understand the motive: a snobbish indie music blog is well within their rights to watch this one from the sidelines. But we all know what “indie” is short for and there was no more fiercely independent a musician in the world than Michael Jackson. Oh, and, by the way? The music snobs all own a copy of Thriller. On vinyl.

Bloggers have thankfully used the P-word pretty sparingly, although the D-word is beginning to rear her ugly head. Who gives a damn if the man used painkillers? And is an injection really that much more horrifying than a pill? If I haven’t already established his psychological pain then I’ll hang it up as a writer. And it’s common knowledge that he was preparing for a comeback tour. Will you be able to dance like that without some pretty nasty pain at age 50? Would you now?

But most of all — for your mostly loving and reflective tributes — thank you.

Here — in the opening gambit to “Scream” where he commits this error — Jackson seems to be talking to a perceived tabloid system or paparazzi system. Even if no such system exists, no one can blame him: the brutality of fame and all that it imples drove him to prescription drugs, depression, anxiety, and a textbook Peter Pan Complex.  Keep listening:

Tired of you tellin’ the story your way
It’s causin’ confusion
You think it’s okay
You keep changin’ the rules
While I keep playin’ the game

So there is no system.  There is, however, a tabloid industry and paparazzi industry, which — while neither just or unjust — wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t big money to be had. It’s a bitter pill for us to take, but it’s a fact nevertheless: both are nourished by our People Magazine/TMZ habit, our noxious Google Image searches and the innumerable nude celebrity blogs. And I do mean “our.” Yours and mine. In an unwritten, unspoken, almost spontaneous order, Patrick and I try to do our small part, limiting our posts to clips, free downloads, new artists, new releases, the occasional bit straight off the wire. In short, we do our best to underscore the music and leave the artists the hell alone.  But we certainly aren’t part of the solution.  Will I twitter Perez Hilton to tell him I’ve calculated his proportionate culpability in the King of Pop’s death?  Of course not.  Will I ever write E! Entertainment’s sponsors and tell them how much I disapprove?  Never.

With such collusions don’t it make you wanna scream?
Your bash abusin’ victimize within the scheme
You try to cope with every lie they scrutinize
Oh brother please have mercy ’cause I just can’t take it

Jackson handled us with kid gloves on this track. Maybe he didn’t know any better. Or maybe he did.

I have to admit that I’m actually having a hard time with this news, not in the “I don’t know how my life is going to go on” kind of way but in the “I never really knew Michael Jackson as the King of Pop” kind of way. I grew up in the 80′s and when I say “grew up in the 80′s” I mean that I took my first steps, ate my first solid food and learned how not to crap my pants. Of course during the 80′s I listened to the music that my parents listened to, namely Frankly Valli and the Four Season, the Bee Gees and the Fifth Dimension. I do remember that my dad did have the Thriller vinyl but I don’t remember ever hearing him spin it. So by the time that I really started to understand music, who musicians were and being able to recognize a song and associate it to a particular musician Jackson was already turning in the circus act that we all, unfortunately, started to know him as.

This strange interim period of his life that I grew up in has put me feeling a little bit in an emotional limbo today. On the one hand, now that I’m an adult and a music lover, I definitely recognize Jackson’s influence on music and would bet that if you stopped every person you met on the street that each one of them would name a Jackson song as, at the very least, a guilty pleasure if not a favorite track outright. But on the other hand his later life (the one I am most familiar with) was comprised of nothing but trials, accusations and rumors. While fellow blogger Fred grew up with this imprinted on his mind as to what Michael Jackson was and meant to music, I, unfortunately, only remember this.

Now that I have written this out I think I know where I stand. I do feel saddened by his passing because of his lasting influence but mostly, as selfish as it may sound, I am more saddened for myself for having not been able to experience this optimal era in the history of music more fully. I just wish that I would have been old enough to recognize his glory days and hope that his lasting memory with the younger generation will be that of an amazing musician and entertainer instead of the lower point of his last days.

Rest in peace, brother.