Thang Nguyen 555

You can be with thousands in the stadium, or billions on the Web, yet still feel lonely. Or sit next to strangers on Trans-Continental flights yet still feel lonely. You can be the King of Pop yet still feel lonely (except to laugh with Brooke Shields, fellow child actor). Chidlikeness is a seedbed of creativity, says Michael Jackson; and he went at length to prove his point.

Mine was a lonely one, hence my creative impulse cannot be de-coupled from loneliness. Writing and reading are lone endeavors. I read so I won’t be alone. Francois Sagan once wrote “Bonjour tristesse”, a clever read of coming of age in late 50’s. (Sadness becomes your friend when you are the odd one out).

America and I spent the late 70’s in isolation and utter loneliness: both of us ran away from defeat with our tails tugged between our legs. No one seemed to understand us. Hence Rambo, to rant and rave. We re- habbed and relearned to feel confident again with ” the shinning City on the hill” in Augustinian hope. We crunched the numbers and hyped up our nuclear stockpile. We elected actors to “sell” our national agenda, very much like we do now with Reality TV president in our fake news Era.

We re-dressed and rehearsed our script then found ourselves deep in Trillion-dollars debt with no creative accounting to pay back the Saudi and Chinese. So we feel lonely and isolated with big NATO and UN bills..

Countries we defeated are now better off. Country we gave up on is standing still. So we forgave in the hope that we might be forgiven ( bail out). 2000 and 2008 saw magicians at the helm, tweaking and fixing the system. Then came the great match made in Heaven; the “sharing” economy thanks to smart phones and distributed internet protocol. Voila, from the stadium crowd cheering to web crowd-sourcing. Just stay home. We will deliver. The cause and the cure. The childhood and the creativity.

Michael Jackson was put to rest at Forest Lawn in a $25,000 gold- plated casket. His neighbors are all famous Stars with stars on the Hollywood sidewalk. He died a lonely death surrounded by lonely stars. The crowd doesn’t make for happiness nor does it lessen childhood contempt. Care for the children. Kind words to the lonely. This world keeps missing the mark. Always too little too late. Only the lonely knows.