Michael Jackson – One Year After. He’s still gone…

A year on, and I'm still not sure what to say.

Like the Princess whose firefly-bright light was squashed against concrete and steel in a Paris tunnel, it felt like a weird kind of robbery -and a surreal personal marker. Your childhood is officially dead. Let it go. You will never forget this day.

Amidst rainstorms and slick pavement, a pale-pink sky breathed a deep sigh; the world was wet but wasn't done weeping. He's gone. The man behind "Billie Jean", my original Thriller, had vanished; that boy-man who stood on tiptoe and slid across countless stages, whose light was so bright even his own skin couldn't stand it -the baby-dangler, the weirdo, the molester, That Freak. He left us.

I still don't know what to say, or think. It feels trite to say "he changed the world" -well, duh. The effect -of his life, and his death -feels weirdly more personal than that. The gentle revolutionary, the scarred Mad Hatter, the exhibitionist recluse -even now, he floats around my memory and haunts my imagination like few other figures do. Unlike the father of that dark-haired beauty he married back in the 90s, MJ had the unique power of bridging the seemingly-unconquerable racial divide that still echoes through America.

During his life, he was loved, revered, worshipped, then mistrusted, mocked, and hated -equally; there was no racial bias to public reaction. The outpouring of grief at his passing both moves and shocks me a year on, while the fetid hypocrisy of the rich-and-famous, and the vampiric actions of many of the Jackson family members, still infuriates. Labels are tiresome; name-checking feels false. That waterfall of lurrrvve ought to have come during the dark days of a life spent in cars, hotel rooms, studios, boardrooms; it seems tragically laughable that plaudits were instead handed out, in ever-dramatic style, with a golden casket glinting in the callous sterility of a cold stadium.  Please, I wanted to scream, leave him to dance forever across the wide-open, cartoon-strewn-alleyway-imagination of every kid who ever had a silver glove and bruises from too many failed Moonwalkings.

A beautiful bright spot came with the viewing of MJ's lovely, lively daughter rapping in a Youtube video. Charming, beguiling, sweet. Just another adorable, smart kid. Something about it was fortifying, the same way the bassline of "Billie Jean" is; there's a heartbeat there that's quiet, insistent, majestic and magical.  It beats in all of us.

It's Human Nature, baby.