I lost my youth when Michael Jackson died and his passing became a heartwrending circus of events that piled up to equal the realization that almost everything I had bet on while frolicking through those fragile years , couldn’t withstand the heat , borne from the changing times.
Things were already shifting towards the direction that we have now found ourselves. An icon, a musical genius, the wizard of movements and the King of Pop who made fans all around the world bow with tears and gratitude — was reduced to a shell of a fallen star with a polluted past. And the uncanny ability to generate sordid headlines that eventually killed any hope of him reclaiming the throne he worked so fucking hard to earn.
I am one of those people who can’t decipher how to process a legacy that I had a hand in creating. Did he or didn’t he? How could he have died in such a graceless manner? Who was Michael Jackson and why couldn’t the demons permit him to die in greatness and live on in my memory — secured in the knowledge that I worshipped the anointed.
Whitney Houston aged me beyond compare. She reduced me to the rocking chair and stole my right to Dance with Somebody Who Loves Me. Before her sudden and tragic demise, I was in denial — despite all the signs that warned of the dangers ahead. The horrific Reality TV show that featured her and the ones she loved — thrashed about like items for sale that desperately needed to be bought without dignity.
I will never forgive Bravo for setting the standard that VH1 has eloquently perfected when it comes to whoring Black women against themselves — against each other — for the eyes of Black women who watch and shamelessly jeer and encourage — without a hint of disgust.
There is no doubt that Whitney never recovered from the humiliation of giving the public the very worst that she could muster. Drugs and more drugs, sporadic mood swings, a mother’s plea for her daughter’s life, the hopelessness that can’t be thwarted after too many years basking in the spotlight of a voice — that will never be matched and the beauty that lit up my bedroom.
Each time Whitney spun around my Walkman as I punished the room with my very best rendition of all her greatest hits — was a heavenly misplaced adulation that has converted to a magnificent grace — I will always cherish.
I thought Whitney was flawless. My mother bought that album believing the same and was more than happy to supply a role model who was famous and pure. But, it was all a lie. She wasn’t even close to being the person I erected in my mind. She was a bloody mess and she died that way.
Getting older is hard to do when you are older.
The news wasn’t unexpected. Carrie Fisher, better known as Princess Leia, died after suffering a heart attack on a plane flying her back home. The details have been revised to “cardiac arrest” — but does it even matter?
Star Wars was the first movie that demonstrated my need to be transported to a realm that my impressionable mind could welcome without prejudice. I didn’t even understand how it was possible. How could I be sitting in my seat — and yet be lifted to heights unknown by the music, the images, the stars peppering the galaxy, that beep to the beating of my heart and the characters that call me — friend.
Princess Leia wasn’t my favorite. I actually had an unhealthy attraction to Han Solo and that was only because he fell for the Princess — who refused to allow his advances to destabilize the mission to fuck up The Death Star and hamper the The Dark Side of the Force.
