by Syl Mortilla
THE FIRST BOOK OF
MICHAEL
Syl Mortilla
First published 2015
The First Book of Michael
By Syl Mortilla
Published by Syl Mortilla at Smashwords
Copyright © Syl Mortilla 2015
The right of Syl Mortilla to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Samar Habib
Photo by Harrison Funk ©2014 - All Rights Reserved.
Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon and star.
CONFUCIUS
CONTENTS
Author’s Note
Preface
Foreword
Introduction: Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.
Chapter One: All progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Chapter Two: Even a man who is pure of heart.
Chapter Three: Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.
Chapter Four: For the lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb.
Chapter Five: I, while living, have conquered the universe.
Chapter Six: His joyful vision is like an inner, immeasurable sorrow.
Chapter Seven: Proof that God has not yet given up on human beings.
Chapter Eight: The moon lives in the lining of your skin.
Afterword
Acknowledgements
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The name ‘Syl Mortilla’ is an alias. The reasons for my employing a pseudonym are threefold: one is to protect my security; another is to grant me the liberty – perhaps paradoxically – to be myself; whilst the third – the one I consider most important – is because the name is an anagram of my mother’s maiden name and my father’s surname. My parents separated when I was a young boy; around the time that I discovered Michael.
The sobriquet ‘Syl Mortilla’, therefore, is primarily a statement of unity, one empowered by the magic of Michael’s ability to heal.
Such was Michael’s universal reach, it follows that a whole spectrum of personalities admire him. Ergo, the Michael Jackson fan community is comprised of many factions consisting of like-minded people who have interpreted Michael in their own particular way. Perhaps the one thing that the many different groups can agree on, however, is the importance of his aspirational message of promoting understanding and peace.
I do not profess to be any kind of oracle on the life and soul of Michael. I understand that the opinions and theories I proffer in this book will not be appreciated by everyone; indeed, I’m keen to ignite debate. For far too long, the artistry of Michael has been constantly devalued by the vacuity of laziness and salacity.
The ethical compass of humanity has become maniacally awry; its map of morality in tatters. The world is devoid of a unifying totem. I want this book to be important. This book is my heart. My sole hopes for this book are that it contributes as a counterbalance to the perpetual undermining of a culturally crucial figure, whose career was motivated and galvanised by historically unprecedented efforts of philanthropy and humanitarianism; and that at its conclusion, the reader is left in no doubt with regards the magnitude of respect and love that I possess for Michael.
For Michael.
PREFACE
He knew her intimately for nearly thirty years. During this time, she was his confidante, his protector, and his advisor. She rubbed cream into the piebald patchwork that was his back and shoulders: a torso that no-one else got to view, unless she had applied concealing make-up beforehand. He was very insecure about his vitiligo. He was very insecure about his overall physique. During times of stress, he would often fast to feel better about himself – often miss meals, try to concentrate instead on making his work as perfect as possible. Fasting and exhaustion landed him in hospital on numerous occasions. Stress exacerbates the effects of vitiligo. She tried to ensure he was fed.
His face was pocked with acne scars. He believed his nostrils were vast, his chin not clearly defined – that it seemed to get swallowed up by his neck. He was self-conscious about his smile. But he liked his eyes. He would ask her to accentuate them. He had his eyebrows tattooed on. And his lipstick. It saved a lot of time. And meant that when she wasn’t around, they remained there – indelible swooshes of self-esteem reassuring him from the mirror. A lifetime in the public eye had taken its toll. The camera was his nemesis. He would wear a surgical mask, or hide behind strategically straggled curls and a fedora – unless she had primed his confidence first. She did this by combining her artistic skill with a unique, nuanced knowledge of the intricacies of his face, as well as an inimitable understanding of how he liked to look – though she also knew that he was capricious in these matters. Such is the nature of insecurity. He was changeable in his choice of hairstyle – sometimes preferring more curls or body in his hair, which gave him a sense of having his face covered, like when he wore the mask. She created and fixed his wigs for him. For nearly thirty years.
Still. Since they had known each other for nearly a third of a century, she would have usually intuited his mood before he had even sat down in the chair. The chair in which they talked. The chair in which they cried together; laughed together. The chair in which they would put the world to rights. For nearly thirty years. Some are jealous of the intimacy they shared. After all, their relationship was both as open and as close as any can be. She knew and understood his secrets, his intentions, his vices, his desires.
He trusted her. Implicitly. She prepared him for his final corporeal resting place. His deathbed.
He was Michael Jackson. And she was Karen Faye.
FOREWORD
Syl Mortilla was a Twitter presence that appeared on my timeline, intriguing me to tap on the bold typeface, and see what this mysterious blog had to say. After Michael Jackson died, I often hesitated to read or listen to what others opined about the iconic entertainer, who over the years became more like a brother to me. Most of what so-called insiders had to share was judgmentally unrecognisable, profit-driven journalistic nonsense, about the man I grew to know. Most often I decide not to waste my time reading “disclosures" inspired by a paycheck or notoriety.
Michael and I were young, innocent and ambitious when we first met. Our lives intersected - destined in space and time – on a photo shoot in Culver City, California. That day turned into us sharing some of the most magical and tragic times of our lives. Unbeknownst to me, at that first meeting, was just how many spirits all over the world Michael would touch in so many deep and meaningful ways.
I have responded to many questions since 2009, hoping to spread truth to those people Michael cared so dearly about - his beloved fans. So much that has been written is contrary to what I learned about Michael over the twenty-seven years we shared together.
When I clicked on Syl's blog, I actually cried when reading his insights. It brought me so much joy to find someone who heard Michael's message so clearly, and could articulate it with the depth that Michael intended.
I am always touched by Syl's insights. Syl's writing opened up my own understanding of Michael's life - from a point of view other than my own - that rang true. Syl Mortilla's writing is the blood pulsing from Michael's heart to all of his fans. The First Book of Michael is a beautiful and honest contribution to the lega
cy of Michael Jackson, from a person who comprehends the messages Michael created, and left us to discover for all time.
I know everyone who has been touched by Michael will enjoy this book, and those that didn't understand Michael, will find clarity in Syl's writing.
Michael's life spoke, and Syl Mortilla was listening.
Karen Faye
December 2014
INTRODUCTION
Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.
SAMUEL BECKETT
I can’t remember the first time I tried to emulate Michael’s dancing. It was possibly when I was seven – when, along with my siblings and some friends of ours, I tried to recreate the ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ short film. Naturally, being the eldest sibling, I assumed the role of Michael, and the girl I fancied from down our street got chosen (at random, obviously) to play the role of the object of Michael's desire - the model Tatiana Thumbtzen (one of those beautiful ironies of existence that inclines me to believe in a parallel universe, is that these days, the real Tatiana follows me. Albeit, on Twitter - but I maintain it counts).
The ensuing years of my Michael-dancing self-education are a chronicle of excruciating memories involving mirrors, hairbrushes, failed crotch grabs, broken ornaments, and concerned expressions etched on the faces of my parents upon unfortunate bedroom interruptions. All with the added hindrance of my having been a rather overweight teenager.
However, the weight soon dropped off. Some teenagers play football; some swim; some play tennis. A rare few of us try to learn to dance like Michael. I became an addict. And I swear I encountered more spiritual experiences dancing to Michael’s music than I had ever done in a thousand visits to church. The escapism. The losing oneself. Those special, special occasions, when - with hindsight after the rapture - it felt as if I had been doing nothing less than channelling the man himself.
Another - more orthodox - teenage hobby is learning to play an instrument. And there are certainly similarities between that past-time path and my own preferred weapon of choice. With a guitar, for example, one can entertain most people after having mastered a few basic chords. Yet as all musicians know, the devil is in the detail: in the intricacies of an instrument. Rudimentary choreography such as the “Too high to get over, too low to get under” routine from ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’’, or the ‘one-hand-in-your-pocket-whilst-the-other-hand-clicks-its-fingers-in-the-air-exactly-one-hundred-and-eighty-degrees-from-your-simultaneously-swinging-heel’ move (you know, that one) are seen as impressive by people not in the know. But for true authenticity, those of us fully initiated understand that it's as much in the face as it is the limbs: in the frightened, imploring eyes; the caught-by-surprise raised eyebrows and pout; and that apparently enraging part of the floor to be unflinchingly stared at – making you angry, perhaps, with its insisting you bite your bottom lip whilst your pelvis thrusts at a rate of ten-to-the-dozen (or 4/4, at least).
I competed with myself as to how many spins I could accomplish in one attempt - though, not just any old revolutions, mind. Spins in which you stop in perfect time, with a closed fist at the end of an arm outstretched in the chosen direction. Or a pointed finger, into which, as Michael instructs in the ‘Jam’ video, you “Put all your energy… and – fire!”
Whilst on the subject of hands - one mustn’t neglect to mention the spontaneous fluttering of the index and middle fingers – a subconscious keeping of time with some silent, esoteric rhythm. Though the less said about this, the better. Especially when queried by schoolmates in classroom scenarios.
Incidentally, I am a firm advocate of the teaching of dance in schools. I believe dance should be incorporated within any pedagogical curriculum, and granted the same gravitas as literacy or mathematics. The practice of educating the limbs with rhythm is effortlessly absorbed by the soul, whereupon it is processed, before being expressed through the intellect. Just look at Michael. He evolved from the James Brown mimic into an innately, uniquely talented singer, songwriter, lyricist and poet. The vocal staccato rhythms he preferred - harnessed so spectacularly by Off The Wall and Thriller collaborator, Rod Temperton - were a direct extension of his predilection for dance. And has any human ever danced more than Michael did?
Of course - we all dance, all the time. We dance to the music of the spheres - to the frivolity or ferocity of the capricious winds; we dance in the enforced shuffle of our autumnal years, or the spritely spring in a step that announces our being newly in love; we dance in the everyday walk to the shop to buy milk and bread.
After directing the ‘Jam’ video - in which Michael and basketball legend Michael Jordan demonstrate their dominance in their chosen entertainment fields - David Kellogg mused,
"My takeaway was that I never saw basketball the same way since. Basketball players are just dancers running around in a choreographed and improvised routine with a prop, doing spectacular acrobatics before a large audience of pumped up fans."
'Pumped-up fans' who are also playing their part in the communal dance.
Though – admittedly - perceiving our every movement as part of a dance was perhaps easier for a man who interpreted the ambient sounds of a dripping tap, a sweeping brush and a struck match as a coalesced rhythm - as Michael so ingeniously exploited in his ‘You Rock My World’ short film.
You can’t think about dancing as you do it, though. Like Michael said, “Thinking is the biggest mistake a dancer could make. You have to feel.” You go with the flow. Exquisite dancing is executed in a vacant state of ‘not-thinking’. With Michael’s seeming direct link to something otherworldly, he knew instinctively how a routine should happen. ‘Smooth Criminal’, for example, where you simultaneously raise both arms and one knee one way, then mirror the move towards the other side. Well - it occurs to you - of course: it’s meant to do that.
Yet, it’s only once you have managed to absorb the routine that you appreciate the other genius advice Michael offered on dancing: that you unthinkingly allow the music to ordain you with the knowledge of how to move your limbs. You improvise around a framework; a routine.
One instance of this routine and improvisation working in tandem is in the ‘Bad’ short film. Michael has embodied the choreography to the extent that he can slip in and out of it at will, whilst remaining cohesive with the supporting dancers. This is what Michael Jackson fans that dance do - they improvise around a routine that Michael had divined.
As the man himself mused in 2001,
“I pretty much just get in a room and I start to dance… I don't create the dance, the dance creates itself, really. You know, I'll do something and I'll look back... I'll look back on tape and I'll go, "Wow," I didn't realise I had done that. It came out of the drums… Dancing is about interpretation. You become.... You become the accompaniment of the music. So when you become the bass of ‘Billie Jean’, I couldn't help but do the step that I was doing when the song first starts, because that's what it told me to do.”
I suppose, then, that flawless dancing is perhaps less a product of ‘not-thinking’ and more one of ‘faultless thinking’ – a connection with a supremacy that streams thought silently through the body as pure action, with no middle-man to muddy the message.
Or, as the physician and writer Havelock Ellis stated, “To dance is to imitate the gods.”
Michael reached levels of rapture in his dance that are reminiscent of Sufi Dervish dancing - his precision presenting us with a contemporary version of Hindu Mudras. The phenomenon of reaching transcendence through dance is well-documented. Spectators across history have borne witness to a performer’s spontaneous transformation, whereupon the dancer would no longer appear to be merely human. And upon these occasions, the watchers would instinctively revere, appreciate and accept the experience for what it was - a glimpse of God.
In 2002, Michael said,
"…the same new miracle intervals and biological rhythms that sound out the architecture of my DNA also governs the movement of the stars. Th
e same music governs the rhythm of the seasons; the pulse of our heartbeats; the migration of birds; the ebb and flow of ocean tides; the cycles of growth; evolution and dissolution. It’s music; it’s rhythm. And my goal in life is to give to the world what I was lucky to receive: the ecstasy of divine union through my music and my dance... It’s what I’m here for.”
Following the Brits ‘96 performance of ‘Earth Song’, fellow philanthropist Sir Bob Geldof introduced Michael to the stage, so that he could receive what Geldof described as the “one-off - like the man himself” Artist of a Generation award (albeit, “…what generation?” Geldof enquired, “…at least three have been listening to him already”). Geldof welcomed Michael using these words,
"...the most famous person on the planet, God help him… When Michael Jackson sings it is with the voice of angels. And when his feet move, you can see God dancing..."
Forum threads abound regarding the debate as to whether Michael was a better dancer or singer. It’s a tough one. Michael could vocally emote like very few people to have ever existed, and his technical singing abilities - the whole gamut of them - were second to none. But for me, the magic is in the dance. As he promoted the Bad tour, Michael’s then-manager, Frank Dileo, said that there were others who could sing as well as Michael, but no-one alive that could rival him for dance. And I’m inclined to agree. Michael himself, as he grew older, relied more and more on his moves rather than his voice. He felt most secure dancing. Which makes sense - I mean, how many iconic dance moves and routines can one man immortalise? It’s an embarrassment of riches. He was truly extraordinary.
Naturally, Michael had his influences. He threw the various geniuses James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Gene Kelly, Bob Fosse, Charlie Chaplin, Marcel Marceau, Fred Astaire and Sammy Davis Junior into an alchemy pot (imagine that party), and came up with – well, you know: that molten-metal angel-alien we witnessed morphing across stages, with a dance that entranced human beings all over the globe.