Thrilled to Death

Thriller - Michael Jackson's life and death. After watching some of his videos without sound I am convinced that MJ's art came out of a re-enactment of his childhood as imaged through his mind. No wonder some of it seems creepy. Yet like so many, he made art of his inner torments.

I would rather he be surrounded by angels than demons - but perhaps like Elvis or Cobain, or Heath Ledger - the demons are what took him down. I'm sad, sad because children aren't protected, because sometimes they are used like objects in one manner or another. Sad because many of their lives are cut short, many don't have childhoods - only work, or war, or misery.

I don't know what he did - if accusations are true or if accusations are lies, time will play out the effects of his life. I'm only sad because no one protected him. Later, I think his friends tried to protect him, but he was flying away too far to touch anymore.

Maybe those who dance in his memory are doing their own dance to extinguish the demons, I don't know. Maybe they dance to say they understand. Maybe we all dance to the lies and the pain, dance to extinguish the pain. It doesn't work long term - but in the meantime, we dance.

Art in my head envisions a world of broadcasters with their mouths taped shut with surgical tape, taped for silence, and a coffin on a hill, awaiting its time to be lowered - and finally, for rest.