One More for MJ

[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/07/10/jackson.thursday/art.jackson.2005.gi.jpg caption="Gotham Chopra was a long-time friend of Michael Jackson."]
Gotham Chopra
Intent.com

I thought long and hard about whether to go on CNN tonight and once again talk about my late friend Michael Jackson. Months ago when he died, I did a flurry of interviews, mostly on CNN and with Larry King and got a lot of positive feedback for some of the things I said about Michael. Viewers wrote to me in droves via email, facebook, and twitter; there were grateful that I had “humanized” him. It was natural to me to re-collect Michael more as a friend – I knew him from when I was just a kid on through my college years, my first few years out in the working world, getting married and becoming a father – rather than try to analyze the pendulum of his career from iconic rock-star to scandal plagued celebrity. I was close to him as he endured both phases and what was remarkable was that he stayed largely the same guy underneath, staggeringly intelligent and wildly irreverent, deeply spiritual but quintessentially cynical. Michael was cool, but he was also conflicted. He was forever a contradiction, a creative visionary that wanted to heal the world, but could barely keep his own life together.

Part of the reason I was ambivalent about going on TV tonight was because I’m not attending the memorial service/burial today in which he is finally being laid to rest. The reasons for that were various. To tick off a few: frankly because it’s really weird to me that he died 2.5 months ago and still had not been buried (in the Hindu tradition, the body must be disposed off within two days, and not that I am even very Hindu, but come on…); because I sensed the service would be more of the same – a circus of attention seekers and media – and I didn’t really want to be a part of it; and because, well, I don’t think I was really invited by his family or lawyers or post-death entourage, whoever is running the show. I’m not surprised, nor disappointed. I was good friends with Michael, not his parents nor many siblings, not his wonderful children, nor the many in his entourage who always seemed to be around, and appear just as plentiful and voracious in his death. On the former (the family), this has no doubt been a conflicted time for them as well. When I was with him the last few years, Michael intimated a deep respect for many of the members of his family, but he didn’t profess a real intimacy with them in recent times. He loved his brothers deeply but he didn’t ache to re-establish the famous fraternity the world once knew. Then again, what do I know?

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