Jazzanine

Oh, Michael. What a sad way to go. When I heard the news I was shocked, but not surprised. There’s something about your untimely passing that I understand. Over the past month, as I reported on your upcoming series of 50 shows in London next month, I told people around me: “Michael will never perform a single date of that engagement.” It was evident to me that you were not well. If you weren’t physically ill, I thought, you were ill inside. You wouldn’t withstand the pressure, the expectations of the madding crowd. I knew it wasn’t to be, but I never imagined your death. I simply thought that the Michael Jackson who speaks in a whisper and wears surgical masks and told the world that the most loving thing you could do was to share a bed with a child – the Michael Jackson who had crooned a tender “Ben” to a rat -- I knew that that Michael Jackson was being consumed in the conflagration of the world’s desire, a desire to both love you and see you utterly destroyed. There would be nothi...