Farewell, Lost Boy

Soon The Baltimore Chronicles will return to its regularly scheduled programming--me, writing about my life in dribs and drabs of mundane revelation. I am not deluded. This blog is a vanity project more than anything else and only went through a brief period of being interesting when i was unemployed, but hasn't had the benefit of a mission since i started working again.

until now. and if my readership stats are anything to go by, i see that this point of interest is mine alone. very well then, one more (at least) indulgent post about Michael Jackson it is.

when i was about 14 years old, after the intense pre-pubescent crush i'd had on Michael Jackson had waned, i fell in love with someone else. I read J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan and felt true wonderment. I underlined and reunderlined the effortlessly true prose. Something hidden had been revealed. i was still young enough to hope for magic wherever i could find it, and this book transported the ever grounded, bookish me to some place that didn't exist anywhere, and was all the more real for it. Peter reminded me of every spritely boy i'd ever daydreamed about. i was always one to pine for boys with winged feet, who were also deeply broken, insightful, and sad. Like Wendy, i wanted to dole out my medicine and make them all better. i loved that wildness in them, but wanted them to want to stand still, just for a second, just for me.

but when perpetual movement is your lifeforce, when it is the thing that transports you, being still is tantamount to death. when you are doing exactly what you should be doing, what you were born to do, you cannot help but be beautiful and beyond everything.

when i look at Michael's body in motion, it is clear that he was doing what he was supposed to do, and it was a privilege to watch him and to feel transported by it. i loved the yearning sadness i could always hear in his voice (even on fast songs), but when coupled with his dancing, well, let's just say i understand why it made some people cry.

Michael, i will miss you so much. I got to know you through your experience of the music. You were the music. It was you. Farewell, Lost Boy and Wild Thing. I hope you are finally where you know someone loves you best of all.