Never Can Say "Goodbye"

This is the start of my "OH MY GOD, I CAN'T EVEN BELIEVE IT" blogging about the second biggest thing to shape my life.

Mr. Michael Joseph Jackson, born August 29, 1958.

I was born October 12, 1968, and am the typical product of my generation . . . except when it comes to music.

Music.

Weirdly, I can't sing. Or dance. Just ask my husband. But music is in me, some way, some how.

Michael, as well as many others, speak to me.

When I was a little kid, I remember being given a Beatles record and hounding my birth mother (yeesh - I must have been about 5?) to play it. Play it again. Play it again and again and again.

To this day, I prefer the Beatles over the Rolling Stones - not because the Rolling Stones are in any way inferior. Blame it on "early influence of a 5 year old" lol. In my mind I "grew up" with the Beatles.

Songs resonate in my soul. They just do.

I remember being a little kid (roughly 8 or 9) and putting the 8-track tape into our (me and my next-oldest sister's/youngest brother's - we had to share that shit back then) 8-track player and hitting the 20 acres we lived on, as it pertained to the various machinery and wilderness we played on. Next to the "Old Barn" was a mobile home we played around and near it was various "in-different-states-of-disrepair" vehicles that we loved - especially the one old ice cream truck.

To this day I hear Chicago, and think back about then.

That whole musical era flashes me back to my "life on the farm" - "Comanche the Brave Horse", "Stand By Your Man", "The Gambler", "Wichita Lineman" Kenny Loggins (because he performed here once, when I was a kid).

Music. It's in me, it's formed me and I love it more than I love a lot of things. The surroundings I hear a song in sculpt my memory of that song and cement that moment.

Case in point: The sound-track of me being "un-adopted" is Lionel Richie's "Can't Slow Down". :shudder: It's the tape my adoptive parents had playing as they drove me from SLO to Santa Barbara (on Christmas Eve and without warning . . . HELLO!) to hand me over to my biological mother.

The Mike loves Lionel Richie and plays his songs all the time. I get that. He loves Lionel with a heart that is pure for the music. Lionel is a musical icon to him. Just not to me.

He has musical icons I can't begin to understand - KISS. George Straight. Janie Frickie (sp?) the list will always go one because he always finds new talent to appreciate - Chris Cornell makes the same sense to him that Manhattan Transfer makes to me.

I'll take "black coffee in bed" and he'd rather "rock & roll all night" but we will always agree that "you and I must make a pact".

Michael Jackson has, and will always, transcend. Me and the Mike just can NOT believe he's gone and no way will we ever say "goodbye" to him.

Don't know what my next post will be, except it will be more memories of Mr. MJJ.