The First Book of Michael

by Syl Mortilla

  And this time he died.

  The AEG Live trial was an attempt by Katherine Jackson and Michael’s children to uncover the truth as to why and how this happened. It saw Michael's elderly mother having to once again defend her family from an onslaught of unwarranted abuse. She is a stoic woman. Not only is this a woman who has given birth ten times, she is also someone who has managed to cope with the grief of losing two of these children. It’s easy to see where Michael got his gentle leadership attributes and ‘rhinoceros skin’ from (though I personally prefer the analogy of that other pachyderm, the elephant – I imagine Katherine leading her herd, as they hold each other’s tails, yet independently making their own way through life - reconvening on occasion to rejoice or mourn).

  But the AEG trial was the first time the eighty-three year old had been in court every day as a plaintiff. The previous occasion in which Katherine had attended court every day was in 2005, as a supporter of her son the defendant: throughout which, she remained composed and gracious in her stolid knowledge of the truth. Yet the salacious details Katherine had to endure through the AEG trial put even the 2005 accusations in the shade. The pornographic details describing her son’s physical and mental demise towards death evoked painfully evident tears, both for justice and remorse. Her recounting the moment she learned Michael had died was nothing short of harrowing, “everything went dark, and I just heard screaming.”

  It was those people with pitiful hearts that believed greed - rather than the anguish and agony of a family who have lost a son and a father - was the motivating factor behind Katherine’s mission for justice. Why is it that the Jackson family aren’t afforded the same basic level of humanity as others? Why are other families - families that haven’t donated sometimes self-sabotaging amounts of money to charity - entitled to the idea of their grief and right to compensation being genuine, whilst the Jacksons aren’t? “Never for money, always for love” was a lived philosophy that inspired Michael’s often profligate philanthropy, and helped to steep him deep in financial difficulties. Well, that and the way his money was siphoned off by thieves.

  Katherine regaled many intimate details to the AEG court - of which, she was the veritable queen - including such anecdotes as the sleeping arrangements of the poverty-stricken Jackson 5: a triple bunk bed – Jackie on his own in one, with the other four brothers sharing the other two. (Perhaps Jackie smelled a bit.)

  ***

  The heady days of the confidence of Katherine Jackson’s attorney, Brian Panish, and his self-assured arguments for the prosecution seem an age ago. The general fan consensus at the time was of watertight faith in the plaintiff’s case; a seeming inevitability that justice would prevail. Karen Faye was the last person standing from Michael’s employed inner circle, and there she was taking a stand for the Jackson family in an attempt to get justice for them. The expectation to win was almost palpable; it being practically inconceivable that the Jackson family could lose the trial. The facts, after all, were starkly evident.

  However, upon AEG being backed into a corner by the terrible truth, they became a dangerous animal. Although wounded, the company possessed a great deal of power within the media; a power they were not afraid to wield. Thus commenced the first of several smear campaigns, the first one promulgated by AEG-affiliated UK tabloid newspaper, The Mirror. The timing of the rehash of twenty-year old allegations was deemed ‘suspicious’ by Michael’s 2005 attorney, Tom Mesereau. AEG stooges had to up the ante in their Public Relations war, hence the front-page tabloid frenzy. Oblivious as usual to fact-checking, and with the requisite attempt at maximum reputation assassination, the truth was that the tapes forming the foundation of this slandering had been discredited ten years ago: to the extent that they were dismissed as useless and baseless by investigators involved in the farcical 2005 trial.

  Michael’s nephew Taj Jackson filed a claim to the Press Complaints Commission pointing out, point by point, the errors in the story. When the Estate got wind of being beaten to the punch, they, in turn, filed their own complaint to the PCC. As the official point of reference for ‘all things Michael Jackson’, the Estate’s complaint superceded Taj’s and was treated as the ‘primary’ complaint. The result being the sabotage of Taj’s initial complaint as - later evidenced on the PCC’s public complaints logging system - the Estate neglected to respond to the PCC’s follow-up emails.

  In a barely-mustered effort to appear neutral, the tabloids then afforded a small article to Prince Jackson’s damning eyewitness testimony of AEG’s negligence in the care of his father; one that included a mention of his cousin’s testimony, incorporating what would normally be the earth-shattering comment that he believed Michael had been murdered. The front pages of that summer’s tabloids were a sickening reminder of visits to newsagents in the dark days of 1993, when the slander had been an almost daily occurrence. But Michael’s fight to prove his innocence is now too ingrained in the global psyche. He commands too much respect. The rehashed allegations were nothing more than the tactical final death throes of a desperate company, panicking in the process of losing everything to the truth.

  Except, of course, they didn’t.

  In the opening of the AEG case, the defence threatened “we're going to show some ugly stuff.” Katherine’s lawyer, Mr. Panish asked her, “And how does it make you feel to hear that they’re going to tell everyone that your son is a bad person?” To which she replied, “Makes me feel real bad, because I know my son was a very good person. He loved everybody. He gave to charity. He’s in the Guinness book of records for giving the most to charity of all the pop stars. I’m so nervous. I’m sorry.”

  Panish also asked, “And why is it that you’re here to testify today?” Katherine replied, “Because I want to know what really happened to my son, and that’s why I’m here.”

  There was a theory that Michael had been dead for hours before Conrad Murray called the paramedics, which is why he was apparently making such a feeble show of performing CPR. This theory arose  from  the revelation that Michael’s skin was cold to the touch when the paramedics arrived, and that his open eyes had had time to dry out.

  The AEG trial concluded with the decision that Conrad Murray had been hired by the company as a competent doctor – with him now seeking to retrieve his licence to practice medicine. Whilst also being completely free to cash in on his crime. This is a man who - as part of his defence for killing Michael - spontaneously sprang into the song ‘The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot’. During an interview on live TV. From jail. In April.

  Conrad Murray killed a man who trusted him. A man, who, before being corrupted by ultimately corroborated paranoia, was trusting to a fault.

  Murray was sentenced to the statutory maximum of four years imprisonment for involuntary manslaughter, but only served two of these due to a U.S. Supreme Court decision on state prison conditions.

  Five fans were subsequently awarded compensation of one euro each in damages from Conrad Murray, as a result of their emotional distress at Michael’s death. And although this token payment may seem offensive, the fact that these fans took it as far as they did, and won, is hugely totemic.

  However - to utilise Jermaine Jackson’s succinct and poetic description - Conrad Murray was merely “the finger to a bigger hand”. The production, release and promotion of the video diary of a dying man entitled This Is It - in its very essence and existence - lays bare the identities of the more authoritative criminals.

  A majority of the jury agreed that AEG Live escaped prosecution on a mere technicality.

  Michael Jackson fans have been forced to become activists for justice in the same way Nelson Mandela’s supporters had to – a comparison which in no way belittles Nelson Mandela’s battle. As Martin Luther King Jr, that other black luminary, once commanded, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Indeed, many of Michael’s videos are imbued with an undercurrent of activism. Even Michael himself said, “My fans are activists, they will
fight you to defend me.”

  What inspires and consoles me is witnessing the hard work undertaken by so many people in their effort to try and cease this dilution of Michael’s life work. And to think how proud of them Michael would be. He would have known that due to the loyalty of his fans, his legacy was in safe hands; in spite of what I’m sure he knew was in store.

  MJ’s Legacy / heal the world miracle project in Uganda / michael's dream foundation, he left a most concrete and real legacy of goodwill behind him, as evidenced by the Liberia Everland Children’s Home project. Haiti. It is projects like these that make me most proud to be a fan of Michael’s. Changing the world for the better, one disadvantaged soul at a time.

  Michael’s commercial resurgence in popularity this time is that it is an artificial one manufactured by the Estate: one focussed on profit rather than the protection and promotion of Michael’s art and humanity. It is a false bastardisation worth fighting against. And as Michael demonstrated, even pacifists can become soldiers when their principles and loves are pushed too far.

  Perhaps my defence of Michael is my expression of grief. All I know is - as the years go by, overcast as they are by clouds of continued injustice - the pain remains the same.

  CHAPTER SIX

  At the apex of the topmost division there stands sometimes only a single man. His joyful vision is like an inner, immeasurable sorrow. Those who are closest to him do not understand him and in their indignation, call him deranged: a phoney or a candidate for the madhouse

  KANDINSKY

  Michael understood that there is magic in nostalgia; that nostalgia is emotional time-travel; that magic becomes manifest through the mind and its perceptions. And as much as Michael enjoyed entertaining with stage magic (who can forget the introduction to the 1993 Superbowl half-time performance – Michael Jackson… somehow in three places at once!), as he expressed in his song ‘Mind Is The Magic’, the reality is that, “Your own thoughts play the game / In the magical wonders they do / The mind in the magic is you”. That is, order and normality is illusory. Michael’s very dance was all about the boundaries between reality and illusion – seeming to walk both forwards and backwards at the same time.

  And it was this kind of magic - real magic - that Michael wrote about in his book, Dancing The Dream, within which he describes magic as being how the thrill that a toddler experiences when watching a tadpole wriggle in mud, is akin to an adult’s encounter with the majesty of a whale crashing in the ocean.

  As children, we were all alchemists. We combined our ingredients of mud, grass and leaves, and with the mix we made cake. Sometimes I sit down in crowded areas and imagine what the world is like from the perspective of a child - ponder how frightened and vulnerable children must sometimes feel when confronted with the bustle of a busy street, as they're surrounded by strangers two or three times their own size, whilst also marvelling at the courage it entails to engage with this alien world, regardless. It is a courage generated by the same miraculous naivety that makes a child oblivious to their muddied clothes, in spite of their maddened mother - because dirty linen simply pales in pathetic comparison when compared to the majesty of a mud pie.

  This was the magic that inspired Michael. When the mystery of the gravity-defying ‘Smooth Criminal’ lean was made public by the press, Michael responded by wondering why anyone would want to reveal the mechanics that undermined the sense of magic. His desires to prolong childhood and chase dreams were borne of the same principle. Revered movie director John Ford famously said, “If it’s a choice between the truth and the legend, print the legend.” A sentiment Michael very much agreed with. After all, it was Diana Ross that discovered the Jackson 5 - right?

  Real magic is an encounter with the unfathomable. It transports you back to childhood, when your naiveties expose a vacuum of knowledge concerning how things work. And it was with this kind of heart, this “quality of wonder” – as author Howard Bloom described it, when reflecting upon Michael’s life – with which Michael reigned over Neverland. An environment conjured by a musical magician, with its sole raison d’etre of encouraging children to simply enjoy, as Michael called it, “the playfulness of life”.

  Though the pure enchantment of Neverland also blindsided its unsolicited adult visitors into rediscovering their inner child, too. It was a place where adults could leap over their egos, and emancipate themselves of the constraints of self-consciousness that is the curse of adulthood.

  Michael entertained many, many sick and dying children at Neverland, but one child that he became particularly close to and formed a famous friendship with, was Ryan White. Ryan lived with HIV/AIDS for seven years after being diagnosed aged just eleven years old. Ryan and Michael’s relationship was instrumental in evolving people’s understanding of the disease and helping to diminish the prejudices associated with it.

  Another specific child that Michael helped, was the focus of a 2014 fan campaign that flooded Twitter in an attempt to create awareness of Michael’s humanitarian efforts. It was the example of Bela Farkas, a four-year-old Hungarian boy who Michael funded the liver transplant for, and hence saved the life of. The reason for the re-emergence of this story was down to the fact that Farkas had recently become a father himself.

  ***

  When I was a little boy, I used to imagine that, living in the attic, was one specimen of every animal that existed on Earth. And on weekday mornings, I would venture up to the attic to choose and retrieve one of these animals to accompany me to school for the day. Typically, I opted for either a tiger, a chimpanzee or an elephant. When I got home, I would return the animal to its menagerie of imaginary friends. Said attic was in my childhood home – the place where I spent the most formative fifteen years of my life. To this day, my sleeping dreams – regardless of the context – are most often played out within the walls of that house.

  Michael bought Neverland in 1988, aged thirty years old. He would inhabit it for fifteen years. During which time, it would serve as both his utopia and refuge. It was a place nothing short of outrageous in its pure expression of self and freedom. Truly, Neverland was Michael’s soul made manifest. After the 2005 trial, Michael was advised by his legal team that a return to his spiritual home would be foolhardy; a legal team distinctly aware of the ruthlessness of arch-nemesis Tom Sneddon - a man with an insatiable and apparently psychotic vendetta.

  Each concert of the Bad tour of 1988-89 ended with the words, “Make that change.” In 1989, Michael released the ‘Leave Me Alone’ video, in which he exorcised himself of the materialistic attitude that encapsulated the 1980s (much to his artistic detriment, according to the music critics). Following on from the phenomenon that was the Bad project – in particular, ‘Man In The Mirror’ – Michael attempted to focus his life and career more specifically on humanitarian efforts.

  The last time Michael performed every song live on tour was during the first leg of the Bad tour. The first leg was essentially a solo interpretation of the The Jacksons’ Victory tour of 1985. The fluidity of the Victory tour dancing – though not as refined as later shows - elicits the same genius and expression of effort that the penultimate phase before the sculptors of the sphinx must have experienced before they decided to stop chiselling. It’s all there. But the subsequent tour without the ‘shackles’ of his brothers is where Michael, inevitably, came into his own. There is a precision, a perfection.

  Yet, the first leg is often overlooked due to its bootlegged ubiquity, with fans during the eighties and nineties craving shows from the second leg, what with footage from it being so elusive. This scarcity of footage is a paradox, as the window between the first leg and the second leg appears to be when Michael realised that there was a much bigger job to be done than merely entertaining people. He appreciated his potency, influence and responsibilities. It was a watershed. ‘Man In The Mirror’ closed the shows, and ‘Another Part Of Me’ (a lyrical precursor to ‘Jam’ from the subsequent Dangerous album) was incorporated into the set,
with Michael changing the adlib from the record, “This is our doom” to “This is my plan.”

  After kicking off the first leg of the world tour in Japan, Michael returned there for the second leg, with his new-found message.

  Subsequent to the commercial successes of the eighties and nineties, Michael would persist in insisting that “The best is yet to come”. A statement ridiculed by many – yet, who is to say that Michael was referencing his art? It seems far more plausible - considering his eternally untouchable artistic successes; his donning of the mantle of most famous person on the planet, and his voluntary assumption of using this status as a conduit for goodwill - that Michael was alluding to his humanitarian work. As he said, “In the 1990’s, I will promise you the best work I’ve ever done. Always help the children, love them.”

  Neverland became a custom-made physical construct of this mentality. Michael’s exploitation of the rampant capitalism that defined the eighties made the development of Neverland a fiscal possibility – but once this had been accomplished, Michael transformed his home into something of substance and importance. He elevated Neverland into “a place called Hallowed Ground” – Michael wrote ‘Speechless’ whilst watching children play there.

  Neverland was an oasis of solace and innocence. Like the protagonist in Salvador Dali’s painting Female Figure with Head of Flowers, Neverland shone as a beacon of beauty in an otherwise-arid landscape bedevilled by searching, solitude, regret and servitude: both metaphorically-speaking, and physically. The racketeering attempt of 2005 struck at the very core of his philosophy; his mission; his heart. It tore off the petals and trampled them into the oblivion of the surrounding dust.