Remember the time

He is god. God picked him and imbued him with His essence and sent him on earth to live among ordinary mortals. This great man was born to a father who beat him, terrorized him, teased him about his looks, and gave him nightmares about kidnap by turning up in his room with a scary mask in the dead of the night. The father also hung him upside down and beat him repeatedly. The boy would feel nauseous with fear and start to regurgitate just at the sight of his father entering his room. He wasn’t allowed to play like the other kids. He was forced to work for hours at end and he would cry alone. He would cry silently even when the other people, the outside world clamoured for him.

He suffered because he had a talent. No. talent is too small a word. He suffered because he was blessed with a divine power.

He was five when he started singing and showcasing his talent. He sang ‘baby baby baby’ and the world listened enthralled at this prodigy.

He grew up and was destined to suffer for all his internal demons. But when he danced, he created a tumult in everyone’s hearts. He made kids of maybe every nationality break dance and moon walk in their rooms in front of their mirrors. He made women gasp and men envious of his dancer’s body which was sexy to say the least. Many can ‘pop and lock’ but when you watched him, you knew he was inimitable, untouchable. It seemed like god resided in his every move. It was god when he isolated parts of his body, as if they didn’t belong there, but yet all of his body was in perfect harmony with his mind and the music to which his body flowed easily like water.

He was too perfect. He delivered hit after hit, each different from the last. His videos were other- worldly, born in the mind of someone alarmingly creative and shrewd. Through his songs and videos he talked of women stalkers, old love, the occult, criminal gangs, racism and world peace in the same catchy, feet tapping, mind boggling vein, enough to drive both young and old into a frenzied love for him.

Along came the time when he began to change, for all the raging conflicts so common to all creative geniuses. The conflicts in him burst forth in the form of chimps for pets and body dysmorphic disorder, forcing him to make the plastic surgeon his constant companion. He could never look into the mirror without being disgusted by his face, thanks to his father calling him ugly repeatedly when he was growing up. He would cover his face and quail at the sight of his own face. He changed from being a handsome young man to something gruesome in the following years. People associated his name with the height of weirdness. They mocked him, ridiculed him. They reviled him when he was discovered to be a pedophile.

He took it all. He continued giving us music. There is no way divine talent can be curbed. He continued his music, his charity, his amusement park and all that he stood for.

People reviled him to no end. He was the butt of all jokes about weirdness. They stopped thinking of all his genius, his works of amazing creativity. His stage presence, his entertaining capabilities were all forgotten. All they saw was a bleached man with a face falling to pieces and a reputation that no miracle could revive.

But all he wanted from life probably was to be loved. But the world abused him just like his father had. It was nobody’s business how he wanted to look or live. And yet, voyeuristic mortals that we all are, we wanted the dirty details to satisfy our curiosity.

He could take it no more. God had sent him to uplift the world’s knowledge of what can be pure, unadulterated talent. But we chose to look at his other side. And so, he was taken back because even god was saddened by our treatment of him.
When he died, the world has truly realized what a symbol of greatness it had truly lost.

Love you MJ.

MJ forever. Our grief only deepens as the days pass. Hope you are in a much better place. We will always remember the time you were here and enriched our lives.