Michael Jackson

The bassline of "Bad" comes on, and the first thing I think of is Weird Al. To me, this says that he is as deeply ingrained into American culture as the Beatles. As strongly as I associate him with the 80s, I always thought we'd watch him grow into a quirky old man. His life story reminds me that despite monotheistic traditions dominating the plant, all of us are still happy to sacrifice live humans to the gods of art.

And Ah! The Art! The Music! The Dance! He is the fulfillment of the promise of soul, the destroyer of rock's unshakable cool. Who among us has not seen (or been) a denim-and-mullet-wearing, cheap-beer-sipping, white-as-mayonnaise rocker grabbing his crotch, pointing and screaming, "Yee-hee?" I love him in spite of myself. He makes me dance every time, and I can't help it.

When I play a Fatboy Slim song at a party, my wife comes to dance with me. When I play one of his songs at a party, all the women come to dance with me. Then the hetero men follow, striking a pose and proclaiming to anyone who will listen, "I'm not gay!" (I know you're thinking, "Where are all the actual gay men, then?" They, of course, had been dancing with me ever since I played "Grace Kelly.")

When he dances, though, I can't watch anything else. Nobody dances like he does: even imitators look like imitators. He looks like he had moves in utero. His body manifests music like tornadoes manifest wind. He baffled me to watch: angular but loose, often too fast for me to count the spins. In non-posed photos he always looked so shy, hidden behind hair and glasses and masks, but on stage he opened, expressed, connected. I never saw him live, but on video he seems to enlighten the crowd: not just capturing the attention but radiating the love of his fans in the way that only a masterful live performer can.

Like a lot of us, I am revisiting his music tonight. He sounds insecure, flawed and embarrassingly hopeful to me. I confess I am not that sad right now. I think he was quite an unhappy man, and probably quite a lonely one. I also think he'd made the art he was supposed to make. The music alone is a lifetime's worth of art. Really, though, I'm not that sad, because he lives on: we dance, and we will keep dancing. Therefore, in the end, I say what I say whenever I get the chance to meet a musician whose music has touched me: Thank you. That was an awesome performance.