PERHAPS I AM WHACKO…. LISA HOGBEN

Perhaps I am weird because I have been incredibly touched by the death and mourning of the man known as the ‘King of Pop’.

Its probably not very cool, but hey, I am not very cool. I stayed up all night last night to watch his entire memorial service. After being at lots of memorial services I can say that I thought this one was a pretty good one. I got a sense of this person, someone I always felt inexplicably close to. Maybe because my birthday is the 27th August and his was the 29th.

Simple and stupid I know, but I always felt a connection…

Sure in my younger days I tried to do the athletic toe standing feats (pardon the pun), the moon walk (really badly because you can’t actually moon walk in a pair of politically correct hiking boots) and well the crotch grabbing, but I think I failed at that one badly- I kept missing!

‘Billie Jean’ was a part of my youth and well, every wedding I have attended since it was first released and the tune ‘Beat It’ was one of the inspirations for the choreography of my greatly acclaimed ‘sharpy dance’ when I was fifteen.

I grew up with him.

I have seen my face change as his did as well. Perhaps not from youth to parody of youth, but in another less spectacular way, sadder in one sense… I have had no cosmetic surgery to change my nose but that is only because I was not as stellar a talent as Jackson so I could never afford the surgery.

Its not because I also have not longed to change myself, to metamorphose from this person I was born as, its just simply because I, like most of the people on the planet, are just not brave enough to risk everything for their dreams.

Besides, who could know that to become an eccentric, androgynous, non-coloured, unconditionally loving human being who could buy and sell some of the richest people in the world would be the recipe to be ostracized eternally as a child abuser?

Now before this sounds like some fan site triviality, I would like to draw attention to what the ‘King of Pop’ actually did.

My Aboriginal friend Raymond said it today. (Its NAIDOC week here in Australia.)

‘That fella he changed things. The King of Pop, yep he made it possible for a fella to believe that one day a black man could become President of the United States.’

And guess what?

A black man is the President of the United States.

Onya Michael, your job is done….

LISA HOGBEN