People called him an alien. People called him strange. People called him wacko. People said he had the voice of a girl, the mind of a child and the inclinations of a paedophile. But not one of those people has been able to take away from what he was - a performer in the truest sense of the word.
The tearful tributes are over, the conspiracy theories are alive, and the legend is dead. The world is still coming to grips with the fact - Michael Jackson is no more. He won't auction off his memorabilia, he won't indulge in a tug-of-war over the Beatles catalogue, he won't have any more plastic surgery and he won't dangle babies out of hotel windows.
It's hard to explain what one feels about Michael Jackson. To a generation that was in school during his 'Dangerous' days, he's not the stringy man accused several times of paedophilia. He's the guy with the huge grin, the weird hoot and the indescribable dance moves. From the moonwalk (which everyone learnt with varying degrees of success) to the forty-five degree tilt (which everyone tried with more-or-less uniform degrees of failure), there was something about them that was ungimmicky. Even the Robot was less ridiculous when he did it. Perhaps his dance moves overshadowed his music. Perhaps his personality overshadowed his performances. And perhaps his success overshadowed his talent.
For too long, the media had focused on his skin turning white (does something so obvious require quite so much analysis?!) and his nose disappearing. And now that the man is gone, some newspaper editorials continue to revel in sarcastic swipes at his eccentricities. What does it say about a performer when he hasn't brought out a studio album in twelve years, and tickets to fifty concerts sell out in less than twelve minutes?
The double life Michael Jackson led, what people love about him and what people despise about him, probably have the same root - he was an enigma. Was he black or was he white? Was he a philanthropist or a publicity-seeker? Did he care about the world or live in his own universe? Was Diana Ross his type, or was Macaulay Culkin his type? Was he a singer first or a dancer first? Was he a raging freak or a caring father?
This absolute refusal to be categorised translated into his wide repertoire of songs. It's hard to imagine the guy who screamed, "You know, I'm bad! I'm bad! Come on! I'm really, really bad!" also crooned, "You are not alone, for I am here with you, though we're far apart, you're always in my heart..." The guy who did the 'Thriller' dance kneeled down and drew mud back and forth in 'Earth'. The man who came across as a neurotic basket case while speaking to Martin Bashir, was your regular guy while talking to Oprah. He could make you stare in bewilderment, and wonder what this creature was, or he could rouse your empathy by telling you about the things he overcame to become a star.
A mourner at his memorial service said, "Michael Jackson was often imitated, but never duplicated."
Never have so many people wanted to be someone, and made fun of that someone simultaneously. Never have so many people struggled to place someone each of them could relate to. You could ask the Presidents of the most powerful countries in the world who Michael Jackson was, and they'd know just as well as the guy digging up a drain down your road. The screeches and yelps that could bring a 100,000-strong audience to their feet would melt into the runny-honey voice that could soothe one person lying in bed, to sleep.
We've been lucky to watch some of the greatest names in every field build their careers - we're a generation that has seen A R Rahman, Pete Sampras, Michael Schumacher and a host of other masters of their art walk into their arenas as anonymous debutants and conquer the crowds. But of all the geniuses we've seen, Michael Jackson escapes definition the most...despite arguably being the one most people know of. It would be a cliche to say perhaps that's why he was so intangible, so unbound by convention. The things other people did to him, the things he did to himself, what other people were to him and what he was to other people, made less of a comprehensive whole than a comprehensive collection of parts. And at least one of those parts reached out to at least one of the people followed his career.
Now that he's gone, the people whose lives he's touched in any manner will hope he will be remembered for the depth of his lyrics, the versatility of his voice, the flexibility of his body, the enormity of his journey from the ghetto to the consciousness of everyone on earth and the uniqueness of being Everyman.
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