Long live the King

by RAF KATIGBAK

I remember exactly where I was when I heard that my grandmother died. I was 13 years old and I was sitting cross-legged in the damp basement of my West Island home playing video games with my little brother. When my mother opened the door, I half expected her to yell down at us to stop, and to impatiently tell us that dinner was ready. Instead, her voice was solemn and measured. “Boys, Inay just passed away.”

The moment immediately following that news is very clear in my mind. Not because of how strongly I reacted, but rather how I didn’t react. You’d think after news like that I’d be stricken with some kind of gut-wrenching sorrow, or that I’d be plunged into some deep questioning of faith or of my own mortality. But, nothing. Instead, when my mother closed the door and her words hung heavy in the air, my brother and I just looked at each other, then went back to playing video games.

Over the years, I’ve replayed that moment, scrubbing back and forth in slow motion like it was some kind of video evidence in one of those crappy cop dramas. Evidence that I was a fucking horrible person because I didn’t feel anything. I won’t forget that look my brother and I exchanged, it was one of those “we’re having an entire conversation with just a glance.”

How do you feel?
Okay, you?
Okay. Should we feel bad?
Maybe.
Is it bad that we don’t?
Maybe.
Well, I guess that’s it.
Guess so.

But even after we went back to playing, I felt weird. That moment haunted me for a while. Why didn’t I feel something? Sad or mad or anything? Am I a horrible person? Shouldn’t I feel just a bit fucked up?

The reality was that I hardly knew my grandmother. She lived on the other side of the planet and I can count on one hand how many times we actually met. I didn’t feel close to her and I can’t say that I really knew her. So how can you feel sad for someone you didn’t know? For someone who never really affected your life? Rather, I did feel sad about the idea of her and what she represented to my father and his siblings.

I felt sad in the same way I feel sad about the idea of Michael Jackson. I feel sad for my friends and for all the people he inspired. In some ways, Michael Jackson affected my life more deeply than my grandmother. His music inspired my siblings to memorize dance routines together, cracking up when one of us fucked up. MJ was the definition of cool. He was the total package that made me want to change my style to be like him, desperately begging my parents for one of those red jackets with the zippers all over it. I remember how proud I was when I finally “got” the moonwalk in my kitchen and showed it off to my sisters, who laughed when my socks would be hanging off my toes by the end.

But it’s weird when a celebrity dies. So many people feel that they know them. When Lady Di passed away in that horrible accident 12 years ago, I was working at HMV and I started selling a shit-ton of those Elton John “Candle in the Wind” memorial singles. I clearly remember thinking, “Why the hell is everyone so bent out of shape over this? Was she really that amazing?”

Michael Jackson is no Princess Diana. Possibly more than anyone, he was able to bridge the gap between countries and cultures, races and religions. Just check out how many MJ impersonators there are from all over the world on YouTube.

But while I followed his career from his early classic albums to his later mutation into a tragic victim of abuse and the media, the reality is that I didn’t fucking know Michael Jackson any more than I knew my grandmother. I don’t even think Michael Jackson knew Michael Jackson. So why would I feel sad that he has passed? His best work is still his best work and the stuff I will remember about him lives on.

RIFF-RAFF@SYMPATICO.CA