The Passing of an American Icon
I'm not a big Michael Jackson fan . . . not for many years, anyway. When I was young, I thought he and his music were very cool.
Then he got weird, even while his music got cooler and more original. His unexpected passing, at the VERY young age of 50 (a particularly tender age for me), while of little personal consequence to me, has made me think, especially as I listen to the praise and panning he is receiving in the media (both commercial and informal).
We devote entire college courses and volumes and volumes of literature to the discussion and study of Greek tragedy. We marvel at Shakespeare's gift for creating tragic characters, and exposing in his plays their flaws and downfalls. However, we don't need to look past 'The Man in the Mirror' to see a perfectly tragic example in our own generation. His was a tragic end to the tragic life of a great talent, who changed modern music with his unique gifts as much as the Beatles did. Do we admire Tchaikovsky's life? Ewww. Yet his art endures. MJ was my age. Mortality looms, and choices matter.
Then he got weird, even while his music got cooler and more original. His unexpected passing, at the VERY young age of 50 (a particularly tender age for me), while of little personal consequence to me, has made me think, especially as I listen to the praise and panning he is receiving in the media (both commercial and informal).We devote entire college courses and volumes and volumes of literature to the discussion and study of Greek tragedy. We marvel at Shakespeare's gift for creating tragic characters, and exposing in his plays their flaws and downfalls. However, we don't need to look past 'The Man in the Mirror' to see a perfectly tragic example in our own generation. His was a tragic end to the tragic life of a great talent, who changed modern music with his unique gifts as much as the Beatles did. Do we admire Tchaikovsky's life? Ewww. Yet his art endures. MJ was my age. Mortality looms, and choices matter.