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Writer's pictureIsabelle Petitjean, MJMusicologie

Michael Jackson didn't die on 25 June...

Updated: Aug 27, 2021

Michael Jackson, 12 years following your voice #1

©Renée Paul, artist-painter, graphit drawing on Bristol board, 17''x 11'', 2011, private collection
©Renée Paul, With L.O.V.E.

Twelve years ago, like many of you, I woke up unaware that I was living the first day of the rest of my life. You know, the one they say that starts when you discover you only have one?


Hesitant, for once, to turn on the television, I decided to do so while my 4 little kids were having their breakfast. And I was witnessing a bad joke. A mistake. A bad publicity strategy. Michael Jackson died of a heart attack in his bed? But if he would have had a heart attack, it would have been on stage, not in bed! Ridiculous...

But no... My prickly, ruffled reaction of disbelief crumbled, second by second, wrinkled, crushed... It fell apart.... So it was true. It looked like...


Shocked, stunned, the sorrow rose in me like a glass of tears fills and overflows. I did everything I could to contain, to swallow, I had to drive two of my children to school. The radios were starting to play his hits. I opened the windows, streamed the streets with his voice, his music. I counted the hours since the nightly announcement of the irretrievable, tried to tell myself that his veins were still warm, that he was still "visible", that if we ever found a way to wake him up, right then and there, he wouldn't have missed much and would feel like he was getting up from a good night's sleep....


And the hours passed. And I counted them, in my mind, as if they were white stones that would separate us forever, him whom I had never hoped to see, out of spite, out of resignation. I measured more and more deeply the mistake of my life, as one slowly pushes a dagger in his chest.


I warned, by SMS, my friends, my family. Did you see the news? It is not possible? I can't stop crying! What's going to happen to us? But then .... WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE, RIGHT?

How many times have I heard this sentence afterwards. Like an egregore that was born in millions of hearts at the same time, that morning. We are all going to die. Yes, for me as for many, if anyone was able to not die, if anyone was able to do anything, even this, and had already proved it to me, it was him. Michael.


This thought, never formulated, was rooted in me since childhood and I had never noticed so acquired it was, deep, obvious, reptilian.

I don't know, today, if we are all going to die. But I do know, as I will continue to tell you in the coming days, that my primary thought was right.


Michael could not die. Michael would, in fact, never die. Not this June 25th, nor any other day this world would see...



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