Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston comprised the soundtrack of my childhood, and even though in my playground it was never cool to love them, we did. Strangely, I was in my little pink bedroom visiting my parents when I heard that MJ died. The news was shocking and horrible, but MJ had long since become a maudlin, otherworldly creature whose weirdness alienated him from the rest of the world.
But it wasn't hard to relate to Whitney. She was that beautiful, demure girl next door with the absurdly glorious voice and the weakness for problematic men. She was bedeviled by bouts of self-destructive behavior, bad husbands, failure, humiliation, redemption, transcendence. Who among us hasn't lived some part of that struggle - give or take a view tokes on the crack pipe? I was always rooting for her.
This morning, I'm really feeling it. I shed a few tears. I feel a strange sensation of wanting to DO SOMETHING. As someone said last night, I want to form a flash mob of everyone who sang "Greatest Love of All" in grade school. Yeah. I want to karaoke Whitney all night long. I want to take it back to fifth grade - crimped hair, pink hightop Reeboks and acid washed jeans, cuffed and cinched tight. I wanna dance with somebody.
