kid on the Block

At an initiation-level, I thought of using this write-up to relate what could seemingly be the most outrageous twosome of all times, considering the fact that they simply cannot be seen together. Justin Bieber could disagree with me while his historical counterpart would abstain from comment, but that was precisely when I checked out one such ‘childhood’ album of his and figured what I figured loud and clear: The king was a king when he was no king at all.

A ‘performing monkey’ could be a better way to put it, for he danced to tunes adding songs to them; tunes that weren’t his, melodies he was to completely avoid throughout the span of his life and a form of music he would take to completely revolutionize in the course of his time, to an end product that lacked what he was most known for when he sang those lines he hardly realized. I had a fit of joy when I heard the fourteen year old render ‘Rockin’ Robin’ at the top of his voice, Chuck Berry should have been around then, you know, and Michael apparently had five such before his adult debut and sixth studio album the world knows as ‘Thriller’ (1982). The boy would definitely have not known the magnitude of vocals he seemed to be doing, but that didn’t really stop him from doing them good. Kind of those days when one goes by a pleasure of mind than to-do lists or the weight of a wallet.

I don’t care, I don’t want to know what went wrong, I don’t really need a look-in on how it came to be so, I could just walk it off, be the critic and size him up to be a wasted act that went with the flow, except that his heat had it turn to gold. I could go ahead and label the best of his years as not being his, but of a brainwashed world set to return the favour with complete compliance; with surrender. Everyone would find some tears to let out on his ‘Will you be there?’ or a ‘Childhood’, the statistics overwhelming. Everyone cried to him, cried to whatever he had to say, and it was just a matter of time (of which I know nothing about) before the effect handled the cause. And that was when the world knew for sure that their greatest star was completely theirs.

‘In our small way’ did something to me, ‘The girl is mine’ (additional thanks to a certain Paul McCartney) helped crack a jig and keep it going. I don’t think I’m one to be sopped up by a ‘Human Nature’ or a ‘Heal the world’, but seriously, this monkey knew his wares pretty well, or perhaps he was made to. Just like how they made the clothes he wore, stitched some flesh under those and pushed a mind in to work as they willed it to. And then the mind just worked.

This could be considered as a tribute coming in late by about a year and a quarter and I can’t be blamed for the same. He just found me, you know, only ‘just’ and I’m just crazy, not blind. I guess it’s entirely like how she said, this girl I know: the world needed him to die to get to appreciate how good he actually was, and maybe he went exactly when he had to go. A couple of years could have meant oblivion, and he could have hit the ‘God’ button with something more premature.

In the end he’s just what he is. A cob of gold with diamond-sleeves and a painted heart that once was.