peacenlovealways said:

Obviously, but I don't even get crying over a celebrity. Famous people just haven't made that kind of impact on me.

I think grief on this level is a bit... um... much. But while I haven't felt too bowled over by MJ's passing, I can understand why some folk would be sad... cry... lose sleep.

We're talking about a person whose entire life we've seen unfold. We've been privy to his highest and lowest moments, and many of us have had him "with us" (through his music) in our own highest and lowest moments. There's a certain level of familiarity, even sympathy, if not true intimacy, that can develop in one's relationship to a person with that sort of thing. And the loss of it can simply hurt some people more than it hurts the rest of us.
[Edited 6/27/09 20:09pm]

Lammastide said:

Well said as always. Perhaps it's my loss that the potential for any sort of connection with artists through their music in that way is just not there.

sextonseven said:

Dude, your artistic appreciation dazzles me. It doesn't seem that you're losing anything.

But humor me... Why do you go to so many concerts? Or listen to artists' interviews? Or go (initially, anyway) to online fansites like the org for certain artists? Why not just listen to those artists' studio releases and nothing else?

Lammastide said:

It's true I love music and go to a lot of concerts. The best way for me to explain it is that when I invest in an album and truly like it, I feel a kind of loyalty, almost a responsibility to follow up with attending a show to get the complete picture. Without the corresponding live show, the experience feels unfinished to me and maybe that's the underlying drive behind many things in my life in that I hate leaving things incomplete. They have to be followed through to their end for me to have peace of mind. So connecting on a deep personal level with an artist is not so much my goal as much as fulfilling a selfish sense of achievement.

BSK3478 said:

I remember when Kurt Cobain killed himself, and Kurt Loder was on MTV saying, 'A lot of you veiwers have been contacting us, saying that you are sad and you feel like killing yourself. Don't do it."

I thought that was one of the stupidest things I'd heard - not Kurt Loder saying 'don't do it', but that someone would want to kill themselves just because a someone (whom they most likely didn't personally know) died.

poor people....

sextonseven said:

Well at least you're honest.

I guess what I was fishing for is the notion we connect not just with artists' works, but often with the personality in those works. And I still don't think you're exempt!!

You talk about a particular affinity for female artists, for example. It can't only be about their song craft, because guys produce work that is just as visionary. I suspect you find some unspoken rapport with the female presence in or behind the music. That presence maybe has come to feel like home to you... and wouldn't you lament its sudden, permanent absence?

I think that sort of rapport, familiarity and loss can also happen with an individual personality, like MJ's... especially when we've witnessed his milestones and he's been a constant part of ours. Some fans do take things way too far, though.
[Edited 6/27/09 23:04pm]

sextonseven said:

Lammastide, you get this. Thanks for articulating it. I am SHOCKED by the effect this death has on me. I have been crying a lot, losing sleep, and generally quite upset and not knowing what to do with my emotions and I have NEVER had this kind of response to any celebrity death in my life. I didn't even consider myself a Michael Jackson fan!

All I can say is that I feel like a part of me was suddenly carved out, like carved out of my body. It has to do with my connections to his music and videos as a kid,...and later, taking dance classes, learning his dance routines and literally embodying his art. All I can say is that I grew up around Michael Jackson so that he became a deep part of my being, my growth. I feel like he's interwoven into the fabric of my life, and it's a part of what makes me, me. When I was young, music was my world. I was obsessed with the Thriller video, and somehow my identity attached myself to these things. It feels like the death of my childhood -- the good parts anyway, for he was a route to inspiration. The shocking part is that all of this had become unconscious.

Everytime I see footage now of him from the Thriller era, I start crying. Those images represented LIFE to me and the contradiction with the current reality is very painful to bear.

Lammastide said:

I would go even further to say that these idols actually become us. It's more than projecting ourselves onto them, but they get projected into us. That's why I feel like this death is a part of myself dying. And I'm trying to not be melodramatic when I say this, it's just how I feel. Maybe you have to be in a child state to feel so formed by it.

Lammastide said:

There have indeed been times when I thought upon first hearing a particular song that God himself was speaking to me and being a heterosexual male, I find it easier to lose myself, to surrender completely to a piece of music if the voice in it is one coming from a woman. That experience is often fleeting which could account to why my appetite for music is so voracious. I'm always looking for that song, that album, even that artist that can move me in that very rare way and I have found songs and albums that have done that, but artists on a consistent basis? Even my most favorite artists in the world have released a fair amount of music I don't like and perhaps because they fail in that respect, I don't allow that personal connection with them that others do. I've never really thought this deeply about it.

For the record, I should admit I'm just discussing theory here. I've actually only felt a real sense of loss at Stanley Kubrick's death... and even then I'd not have dreamt of crying or losing sleep. But I think I understand what some folk might be feeling here.

heartbeatocean said:

In the loss, isn't it awesome what he leaves behind, though? What blessing, eh?!

sextonseven said:

Especially if she is good looking

Also maybe some of the extreme reaction (not suicide attempts) has to not only do with the loss of the childhood/youth idol but what it says about our own journey/mortality.

There's a lot,I think, we do as human beings that has to do with our own selves that we reflect on other people/events.

I think we’ll see that his death will be as weird as his life was. The farce is starting. The investigation into his untimely death. The huge debts and profligate spending. The concerts he did in the MIddle East for seven figures in cash each (no one semes to know where that money is). The alleged sexual molestation of several children. Botched plastic surgeries. I could go on.

More details are bound to be revealed. There’s going to be a huge money grab over the estate or what’s left of it that will take years to play out.

The weirdest part of this tragedy is the fetishing and extreme lionizing of Mr. Jackson. Some of the comments I’ve read on the blogs are downright loony. One would think that Mozart and Christ died on the same day. H.L. Mencken once said, “the common man is a fool”. Many out there are determined to prove him right.

We need comedians to step up and point out the hypocracy in this cult of personality adoration that seems to have gone out of control for this talented yet ultimately troubled man. Hate to say it, but this is a comedic gold mine.

japanrocks said:

The Christ comparison is a pretty standard reductio ad absurdum. It might be justified except that I don't see a similar level of veneration, save from a very sick few. There's nothing wrong with having a hero. The Mozart comparison is rather more intriguing. Why wouldn't/shouldn't Michael Jackson be put alongside Mozart? Comparative talents notwithstanding, has he meant any less to his fans than Mozart did to his? Has he been any less influential to his contemporaries or to the state of the popular music of his time?

Folk likely do overvalue certain people in their death, but we almost certainly undervalue them in their lives (or at least we miss the value of what they centrally present for attention to their "incidentals"). Moreover, we have a silly bias for aggrandizing or romanticizing people/places/things that existed remotely. So our own Michael Jackson was every bit as odd and troubled as he was a musical prodigy. Mozart of the 1700s, in all his genius, was also reportedly a slight, mousy-voiced, funny-looking, vain, wildly extravagant child prodigy with moderate to severe depression, perhaps a now diagnosable personality disorder, a propensity to engage in annoying mischief, work up debt and show a potty mouth. ...And?

If only perfect folk were remembered as heroes, we'd have no heroes.

Serious said:

I like artists that aren't attractive too!

7 people worldwide have now committed suicide over the death of MJ

Claire73 said:

If they are that mental, then the world is better off.

Claire73 said:

Fascinating, sad stuff.


I wonder what parts of the world they happened in. Not that Japan has a monopoly on this sort of thing, but suicides following the death of a celebrity have gotten big attention in that country (where, incidentally, Michael Jackson has maintained a particularly energetic following).

Two examples (from Wikipedia):

Hideto Matsumoto died on May 2, 1998. After a night out drinking, he was found hanged with a towel tied to a doorknob in his Tokyo apartment. Three fans died in copycat suicides, of the 50,000 people who attended his funeral in Tsukiji Hongan-ji, nearly 60 were hospitalized and about 200 received medical treatment in first aid tents.

Around 10 o'clock April 8, 1986, the 18-year-old Okada was found with a slashed wrist in her gas-filled Tokyo apartment, crouching in a closet and sobbing. Two hours later, (Yukiko) Okada jumped to her death from the seven-story Sun Music Agency building. The reason for the suicide is still unknown. Her untimely death resulted in many copycat suicides and the christening of the neologism "Yukko Syndrome" in reference to copycat suicides in Japan.
[Edited 6/28/09 13:44pm]

Claire73 said:

has any other popular culture idol had that effect? Elvis? Anyone?

ZombieKitten said:

You didn't read my post above yours!

According to one source I could find, about the same number of Japanese suicides were confirmed to be linked to Yukiko Okada's death in '86. But there was a surge of 31 suicides in the two weeks following, and most of those are thought to be linked.

http://members.jcom.home....ukiko.html
[Edited 6/28/09 16:50pm]

Lammastide said:

oh sorry, I misunder your post, I thought both those suicides were also Jackson related

Michael Jackson is looking down shaking his head. THIS is the thanks he gets!?

Claire73 said:

Either their lives were so empty or full of pain that MJ was the only joy in them or they were plain just not right in the head to begin with.
It's the only explanation I can think of.

vainandy said:

DUDE, you know I've been holding in my Dove Lady jokes, right??!

CalhounSq said:

CalhounSq said:

I'm seriously hoping she's going to make an appearance at the funeral. For all the craziness she stole my heart.


How could you NOT love: