You were like a god or devil of music, an angel or demon of dance. Your music was everywhere. When you moonwalked, the laws of physics didn’t seem to apply to you.
You were a black man in a white man’s body.
You were masculine and feminine.
You were hypersexual, yet asexual.
You were a man-child.
Like a tragic hero, you came from a dark past, and then you rose too high and shone, and then you fell too low and decayed.
We heard the news that you died, and then we understood …
You were human, a person. You were one of us.