Michael Jackson

The gloved one is gone, the one who bedazzled the world with his moves and touched the world with his music.

Michael Jackson was and is a pop culture icon, one so entrenched in our everyday language and existence that his death leaves a hole immediately felt by anyone who ever listened to that falsetto voice of his.

As a kid, I mimicked his dances, trying to get that moonwalk just right. I remember the night his video/mini-movie "Thriller"premiered. I ran into the bathroom as Michael Jackson's angelic face transformed into that of a monstrous werewolf to terrorize the beautiful Ola Ray. And I came back just in time as he did those smooth dance moves in zombie makeup.

I also remember when Michael Jackson electrified the world with his hit-making performance of "Billie Jean" on the 25th Anniversary of Motown, how he moonwalked across the stage in perfect motion, effortlessly.

Those moments I held dear as I saw his career decline, his later albums never reaching the success of Thriller. I cringed as his face became lighter and his nose narrower, the plastic surgery turning a handsome man into a human skeleton.

His behavior could not be explained. That massive amusement park home of his that he called Neverland and to which he brought children whom he was later accused of molesting. The now strange marriage he had to Lisa Marie Presley and the uncomfortable kiss they shared on MTV. The shot of him danging one of his sons out of a hotel balcony.

Michael Jackson was, no doubt, a disturbed man, a man twisted inside out by a dysfunctional childhood marked by early success and an abusive father. He never learned how to be an adult because he had never had a chance to be a child.

And throughout his life, he chased youth. He feared growing older.

It is something, though, that we all fear, our youth fading, the aches and pains of age creeping up on us. Many of us spend our lives keeping a little bit of that youth in plastic surgeries and injections of Botox or just sitting out in the sun to get that nice tan line.

We chase youth because we loved our innocence. We loved that time when things seemed simple, when the complexities of adulthood hadn't tarnished our rainbow-colored view of the world.

Michael Jackson touched us because we loved that he looked at the world with child-like wonder, that he believed love was so powerful that hate could not win.

Being grown up sometimes robs us of that belief. We become cynical, hardened by life's rough blows. But Michael Jackson had an optimism that good conquers evil, that one person could truly change the world if he cared enough.

And in many ways, Michael Jackson did change the world. He did change us. There was a purity in the pop confections that he made. Love was always the theme in his music, love of self, love of a woman, love of humanity. It was always there, for all to see.

So as disturbed as I was by the weirdness of Michael Jackson's behavior, I was always touched by his music, the songs that made you dance ("Don't Stop Until You Get Enough" and "Remember the Time") and the ones that made you think ("Man in the Mirror") .

It is hard, now in the immediacy of his death, to measure the impact Michael Jackson had on us. I just know there would be no Justin Timberlake, Usher or Chris Brown without him. There would be no New Edition, New Kids on The Block or InSync, without him. I know that pop music divided into two eras --- pre-Michael Jackson and post-Michael Jackson. The landscape of pop music changed when he came on the scene. The possibilities for what pop music was expanded under his tutelage.

Michael Jackson gave us entertainment performed with a perfectionist's excellence. He gave us his all on and off the stage, and in the end, we forgave him his eccentricities because his music was about love and we were in love with him.

Today, I am still wrapping my head around his death. He was too full of life to ever die. And really, as I listen to that voice of his, that beautifully sweet voice full of wonder, he is yet alive, telling me life ain't so bad at all. Let the madness of the music get to you.

I will, Michael, I will.