And Farah... a very strange day. Two icons of childhood erased.

Michael is the more compelling, of course. He meant so many things to so many people... and then twisted it with his behavior. I remember thinking back when I was kid, watching him on MTV, that this was the evidence that the color barrier was breaking. He was one of the first black musicians that I remember it being "okay" to like publicly... growing up in the hickville as I did...

I don't know if he meant all that much to me, but it's still strange seeing an icon crumble so suddenly. Not that it was entirely unexpected, but I think we all expected him to be the ever-creepier grandfather of pop for at least another decade or so.

I think he's happier now, wherever he is. It sounds almost like he just gave up - they've been talking about his return tour, and the stresses it was putting on him. There was no way in hell he'd be able to get back up in front of an audience after what had happened. But it was obvious he was desperate for money, and there was very little else he could do.

Can you imagine his nightmares? Especially, if after all of it, he was actually innocent? Or, what was more likely, thought he was innocent? It was pretty obvious near the end there that he was significantly divorced from reality.

But it's sad. He was a prince once, and his song lifted millions of people to their feet to dance. I think in another day and age, when one could actually hide their private selves and still have a public life, we would be more forgiving.

There is, of course, a larger question to the artist in the wake of his passing... that of the strange waltz betwix creativity and insanity. One could say, in part, that it was his sensitivity that gave him his talent, and it was his sensitivity that lent him to be so vulnerable to being twisted by his environment.

Not that he's blameless for his choices - we never are. At every point, one has to decide whether to become an adult or remain a child. It was pretty obvious that he had chosen the latter. But was it a choice that he made to remain open to his talent?

It's a difficult question. What did it take to grow his soul in the life he made for himself? What did it take to make it sing? The truth, or what we suspect is the truth, is pretty damn dark. What happens when a Lost Boy can't leave Neverland, and grows older and older... never able to regain the childhood torn from him. Desperate, he surrounds himself with the only people who understand him, children... but he is a man among children... and there is sadly only one conclusion we can come to...

Unless he was truly an angel, crucified and tortured as he claimed. If we accept that as true, the story twists and turns our ugliness upon ourselves. I think that if he was an angel, he wasn't a wise one by any means... unless, like they claim of Jesus, it was a conscious sacrifice.

I don't have an opinion, honestly. I hold both possibilities in my head and wonder at what it is to be human and have two ghosts of a crumbled icon fighting it out for their piece of my memory.

It's not the first time I've had to come to accept such cognitive dissonance. In high school, I had a teacher who, while he had some opinions I highly disagreed with, had an extremely inspirational class that had a profoundly positive effect on me. I later heard a persistent rumor that he had almost lost his job for getting "involved" with a student.

But holding such contradictions in equal regard and to have a respect for your own uncertainty, your own limitations, is precisely what Michael couldn't do - because it's one of the defining marks of adulthood.

The world, of course, demanded it of him. And it twisted his desperately childlike mind with mistrust... and, though I don't know his history very well, abuse.

But what is more creative than a child? What sings more sweetly? Shrieks and screams more loudly? It's what we demanded of him, denied him, and tortured him to death for.

Of course we're sad. He was living our dreams and when he became twisted, in some way we had to grow up and abandon him or be twisted ourselves. And so we're left with this strange emptiness... like when you receive a message that a long lost love has suddenly died. What the hell happened?

What the hell did we do wrong? What could we have done different? How could we have done anything different?

How the hell could he have ended up like that?

And hell, if we reach for the sun like that, is that what's gonna happen to us?