Tuesday June 30th, 2009
Rarely does an artist have the beat of an entire generation, much less more than one. Last week we lost our beat, our rhythm, our voice. Michael Jackson was more than the most famous and accomplished musician in the history of our planet... he was the heart and soul of of many of our upbringings. He spoke to us, taught us to care about others, reminded us to “live our lives off the wall.”
As I write this, I am singing along to my i-tunes playlist of Michael. In years past, it would have been my CD, or my cassette tape, or even my vinyl... "P.Y.T." is blasting from my laptop's pathetic built-in speakers, but my voice makes up for it with a passion that only a M.J. jam could incite.
Michael Jackson was passion, in every extreme. The love and attention he put into each cord, each word he sung, each movement he turned into dance, into art, seemed expressions of his soul. And we, the fortunate who witnessed even fragments of his career, which spanned almost his entire life, would cry and rip our clothing (sometimes ridiculous looking clothing inspired by him as well) in response.
When I was a little kid I couldn't get to sleep without my “Best of the Jackson Five “ cassette playing. Often times I would have to get out of bed to flip it to side B before I stopped singing along and passed out. I, like many other youngsters, mimicked everything about Michael (till this day some of my best dance steps are based on his earlier years' smoothness). My Parents and their friends would force me to put on M.J. shows, were I did my best to moonwalk and grab my crotch in the most adorable way... Or adorable I'm told...
The news of Brother Michael's death was not as much a shock to me as an event that still seems to have been a mistake. My first thought was "he can't die, he figured out how to stay alive forever...” Maybe it was his childlike essence that always seemed to embraced the wonder and excitement of life. Or perhaps it is the invincible persona that he built over the decades, always coming back strong, despite his awkward and futile physical transformations, and family and legal troubles. Somehow, I like many other fans, tried to ignore the clown face and the sideshow, superimposing an image of his younger days over that of certain present realities.
Perhaps one of the problems has always been that we failed to hold Michael more accountable for some of his eccentricities and actions, because we enabled him, and even pushed him, into them. And then we judged. Was this wrong? Could we have even avoided it? For some people, in no small measure influenced by the way in which the mass media covered Jackson, his weirdness and alleged antics, overshadowed his accomplishments... or at least tarnished them.
It's hard to think about parallels to such a superstar. There is no real precedence, or any true heir to such an achieved fame, although another M.J. comes to mind. Michael Jordan was an international sports icon much like Muhammad Ali had been decades earlier, except without the socio-political content and to the tenth degree of fame. No athlete on Earth was better known at the apex of his career. And while Jordan became the “air” to Michael Jackson's global marketing icon status, he too had his problems. Though the media seemed less inclined to exploit all of his dirty laundry (perhaps because his public persona was far less controversial than Jackson's became), we did learn about the gambling addiction and the sweatshops that made his sneakers. Many forget, or if young enough, never experienced, all of the violence and killings over Jordan's sneakers in the early 1990's. Yet, despite his involvement (whether De facto or not) in what some would call institutionalized, economic slavery abroad, and in the enabling of the plague of Black on Black inner city violence over his “gear, ” the media, and we as a society, seem to have forgiven Michael Jordan far more easily than Michael Jackson, allowing him to continue building a business empire and be revered as the greatest of all time. One has to wonder what Jordan would have been like if he too had been a superstar before he had even hit puberty...
The man, some would call “Wacko Jacko,” a most disturbing and ugly nickname in the opinion of this writer, was possibly the most famous person this world has ever known. There is not a country you can visit in the world today where people do not know, and most likely revere him. And how could there be? In the West, he was an entertainer, who influenced every facet of our popular culture, from what we understood to be music videos and the soda we drank, to the clothes we wore and the acceptance of the first white/black friend we brought home to hang out. Most importantly in the U.S., Michael Jackson and his family made Black mainstream and slowly, more acceptable to the White majority.
To the rest of the world, he was simply a super hero! From helping raise tens of millions of dollars to fight hunger around the world, to the conscious minded lyrics he wrote in attempt to push the “haves” to leave greed aside and take up the human cause, he was loved and respected uniquely. For some of his fans, hearing him let them know that they were “not alone” in their plight, while for others, seeing and hearing him perform in person was to be touched by the divine.
On Saturday, I went to a Michael Jackson tribute dance party at a bar/club in Brooklyn, New York City. I had been eagerly awaiting his next tour, in hopes that it would come to Madison Square garden at some point, but now, DJ Spinna would be the closest I would ever come to my dream. The space was not huge and got busy and humid rather quickly. Thankfully, the DJ was truly gifted in his craft and as we sweat and flowed, and released to the greatest musical collection ever assembled it truly felt, as one friend put it, like “Church.” Rarely have I been so captivated, mesmerized, entranced by a DJ, as every single song invoked a different memory of my own life, and of Michael's...
It's hard to write in eulogy of such a controversial figure. I've noticed that some writers feel like they must examine all of the facets of the subjects life... Not this one. I write out of love for my childhood hero. I cannot hear a M.J. song without smiling, tapping my feet, and singing along, while remembering days of childhood free-spiritness, and love. Was he a weirdo? Yes he was. Did we help create his eccentricities? Absolutely. We couldn't help but love the man and his brilliance and in pushing him for more and more of it to the point that we invaded all of his personal life and space, we enabled his psychosis'... whatever they were. Still, I'll never believe that a man who dedicated his entire life to making the world a more fun, beautiful, and better place, especially for children, would ever do anything to harm them.
They say that with fame and fortune come all kinds of problems that “mortal” men and women cannot fathom. And perhaps, if any of us had been put in the same situation as Michael, we too would have found ourselves living the lives of the strange and barely accepted. Fifty years of brilliance is a short span, especially if most of that time is consumed with loneliness. But I like to believe that some are here, whether randomly or by universal design, to show the rest of us things we have never seen before. People like Michael Jackson make life more interesting.
If Michael Jackson was simply an entertainer, this moment in history would not be so intense. However, Michael was the true reflection of our culture... our world. He was beauty coupled with turmoil, and compassion with narcissism. He tried to make the world a better place for so many years, fighting for peace and those “without,” yet he could never seem to find a measure of it within himself. He transformed artistically and physically with our world on the grandest stage, which perhaps says a tremendous amount more about the rest of us than him. He truly was the “Man In Our Mirror.” Maybe he made some wrong choices in his life... Maybe it's our turn to start making things right....
That's why I'm starting with me...
DCW
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