by Syl Mortilla
Children are oblivious to such superficiality. It is no wonder Michael chose to be around them. Yet, with the befriending of children came a different sadness. The vast majority of these friendships were doomed from the outset to be fleeting. The lyrics detailing the tragedy of the protagonist of the song ‘Puff The Magic Dragon’ remind me a great deal of Michael – a figure of legend entrapped eternally in a world where friends come and go, as their finite time in the kingdom of childhood comes to an end:
“Dragons live forever but not so little boys / Painted wings and giant strings make way for other toys… / Without his lifelong friend, Puff could not be brave / So Puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave.”
Michael wanted us all to live in his place, one where the platonic companionship of children is an intrinsically acceptable norm. And as Steven Spielberg said, “I wish we could all spend some time in his world.”
***
Love is so easily plundered by cynics. There are even certain parts of the USA, where one may openly carry a firearm, yet are denied the option of purchasing a sex toy without possessing a medical prescription – it is the pathologisation and legislation of the simple and most natural act of making love, whilst the promotion of indifference to potential grievous violence continues unchecked. Yet, love is the very reason why, in spite all of humanity’s suffering, it persists. Love reigns over pain.
Michael strived to convey a message of anti-violence. He was the Martin Luther King of his generation. He utilised his prominent position on the public pedestal to try and educate against the use of violence, including during acts of protest. After 1993, Michael was placed in, what – for most people – would have been an impossible professional and personal position to return from. Michael responded to this attempted character assassination of him by releasing a song pleading with the people of the Earth to awaken to the damage being done to their planet – a song in which the accompanying short film shows the detonation of an apocalyptic bomb as a little girl runs for her bicycle. These are the wrongdoings that Michael wanted to address – by ensuring that all children were given the ironclad right to a childhood free from abuse, and thus in time ending the cycle. It is the next step in the civilisation of humankind, and history will hold Michael aloft as an evolutionary visionary.
Michael’s stance on the wisdom of children is often lazily dismissed. Perhaps because people find it too vague to understand. In truth, however, it is very specific and very simple. By ‘being like the children’, Michael was suggesting we learn from their innate obliviousness to traits such as race, class or gender: that traits trained into people as they become older, embittered and prejudiced, are non-existent in children. Children simply request that their innate love for everything is reciprocated. Michael’s message was that, regardless of any oppression we might meet, having the wisdom to approach problems with the flexibility of thought of a child is the key to overcoming it.
This is how Michael was like the children. His physicality embodied the differing traits, whilst his philosophy merely asked that the boundless love he possessed for all the people of the planet be reflected back upon him. And he wanted that for everyone. Michael looked at people and saw them as children, and loved them as their mothers did. As he wrote, “Children show me in their playful smiles the divine in everyone. This simple goodness shines straight from their hearts and only asks to be loved.”
Michael was the natural antidote to a world that cynically exploits nostalgia and youth.
***
What with his having been the most famous man on the planet, the ripples of Michael’s crash-landing on Earth over fifty-five years ago continue to ruffle the leaves and pique the libido of tabloid media editors worldwide, and will long persist in doing so. Just as a murder of media crows circled our martyred Michael whilst he lay on his deathbed in hospital, so they continue to do so now - perched like vultures around their tabloid junkyard, perpetually alert to the possibility of picking at any scraps thrown from a carcass being ravaged by shameless opportunists. To whom, it has suddenly dawned upon, that work opportunities have dried up, and financing the upbringing of their own children - who have become accustomed to a particular standard of living - is going to prove expensive. Now that Michael is dead, these parasites feel no guilt in cashing in on their friendship with him, regardless of whatever nefarious means they are forced to employ. In the process, they put Michael's children through hell.
All of us.
These perennial reappearances to the forefront of the public eye returned once again in the 2014 historical allegations of anal rape. These accusations took us to a hitherto unmentioned level of bestiality, beyond the allegations of mutual masturbation and plying of alcohol to minors. The ante was upped because those previous ‘lesser’ accusations were discredited in a court of law. The maids quoted by tabloids in an attempt to lend credence to the stories had already been dismissed off-hand by the 2005 jury as “liars”. The loaded terminology of ‘anal rape’ was specifically chosen to leave an indelible smear on the psyche of those that heard it. Similarly, as a riposte to the debacle that was the 2003 Living With Michael Jackson documentary, Michael distributed his own version of the interviews entitled Take 2. Michael had wisely recorded himself being recorded by Martin Bashir and his team. In Take 2, Bashir’s unethical techniques of sycophancy and bullying, combined with clever editing, were exposed. However, in a world of press ‘exclusives’, the damage had already been done.
Towards the end of the Bashir documentary, when asked why the welfare of children meant so much to him, choking back heartfelt tears, Michael responded with the words, “I’m just very sensitive to their pain.” Given a platform to speak at Oxford University, Michael used the occasion to propose a Children’s Bill of Rights, with one of these being “the right to be loved without having to earn it”. Michael promoted these beliefs until his dying breath, as evidenced in the gut-wrenching recording that Conrad Murray made of Michael as he groaned in anaesthetised oblivion, where he is heard talking about his dreams of building a children’s hospital. Indeed, the last performance Michael ever made was of ‘Earth Song’ – in a rehearsal the day before he died – meaning that some of his final utterances on stage were, “What about children dying? / Can’t you hear them cry?”
To promote a universal freedom of opportunity for children to fulfil their potential is surely a faultless philosophy, with perhaps the only drawback being its vulnerability to abuse by the laziness of cynicism. Cynicism such as the absurdity contained with the racism charges against Michael – one of the United College Negro College Funds all-time largest contributors. Michael made his reasons for supporting the cause very clear during a speech in 1988 after collecting his honorary doctorate degree of Humane Letters from Fisk University in New York City,
“There is nothing more important than ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to an education. To want to learn, to have the capacity learn but not to be able to is a tragedy.”
When conspired against and confronted with the most expensive attempted character assassination in history, remained dignified, before defending himself by utilising his art: a slice of art that attempted to elicit action for change. The HIStory project was an uncharacteristically angry sting from Michael. Yet as cathartic as the work must have been for him - like a normally peaceable bee stinging out of terror - it also commenced the process of ripping out his heart. The eventual trial of 2005 tore it out completely.
And his death orphaned us all.
Human nature is self-sabotaging. And of all the dichotomies involving Michael, perhaps the most poignant is how a man that strived so tirelessly through his creativity to make the world a better place, became the man the world strived so hard to destroy. But Michael was appealing to a consciousness beyond the current human state.
***
Whilst unconscious under the effects of Propofol (the anaesthetic Michael turned to after becoming a chronic insomniac – a side-effect of Demerol
abuse), no dreaming occurs. It is a tragic irony that Michael - a man synonymous with the power of dreams – in an effort to be physically capable of performing on stage, became the only human being to have ever gone sixty days without actually dreaming.
However, it’s too easy to focus on the tragic aspects of Michael’s existence. Besides, however much Michael’s life became a quagmire, it was ultimately about spreading joy.
Michael divulged that hide-and-seek was one of his favourite games to play. He references it in his poem, Are You Listening?
“In infinite expressions I come and go / Playing hide-and-seek / In the twinkling of an eye / But immortality's my game.”
The mention of immortality is an important one. Michael’s fuel for his success was a faith in its resultant fame being able to influence society’s perspective on the role of children in humanity’s progression. Michael’s unwavering message was that each and every baby born is a clean slate: that peace on earth begins with birth; that each new life is a chance for humanity to achieve charitable greatness. In spite of the surfeit of record-smashing, culture-shaping career accolades Michael acquired, his only wish was to be remembered as an advocate for the children of the world. In the very month of his death, he said,
“That’s what I’ll be remembered for – not for what I did on stage, but for what I did for the children.”
And in the same way Michael strived to defend the rights of children and promulgate the idea of the global resourcing of their innate genius, he felt that children were there to redeem him also,
“I want to be buried right where there are children. I want them next to me. I would feel safer that way. I want them next to me. I need their spirit protecting me.”
Had the This Is It endeavour proved successful, Michael would have earned over a billion dollars from ticket sales and merchandising. This figure in itself proves the tenacity of his legacy; how that even the most cynical can mature beyond their bitterness; and that eventually, everyone turns full circle - and in doing so - retrieves their fig leaf.
Perhaps the explanation for Michael’s innate advocacy of childhood can be found through the fact that he grew up singing songs with lyrics such lyrics as, “With a child’s heart / Nothing can ever get you down / With a child’s heart / You’ve got no reason to frown”, whilst simultaneously being abused behind the scenes. Perhaps it was a congenitally bestowed divine mission. To a large extent, the reason is irrelevant. What matters, is that his ethos of honouring the innocence of childhood continues to be promoted.
Both for Michael’s sake, and our own.
CHAPTER EIGHT
As if you were on fire from within. The moon lives in the lining of your skin.
PABLO NERUDA
I once ran alone into the deserted streets of a small coastal town in the south of England, whereupon I tore off my shirt, fell to my knees, and wailed incoherently with primeval, ecstatic joy. Because a woman had just released fourteen white doves: one to represent each of Michael’s acquittals in his 2005 trial for child molestation.
And, admittedly, that sounds like somewhat melodramatic behaviour. But it was an instinctive response. Such was Michael’s touch.
I never met Michael. The closest I came to realising that oft-recurring dream was when I desperately clung onto the back of a car he’d just got in. Attached by mere fingertips, I bounced along behind the vehicle, with all the joy and manic apprehension of paraphernalia attached to the rear of a wedding car.
I can also lay claim to being the recipient of the gift of pizza and blankets from Michael, which he had sent to us whilst we waited outside a concert arena in sub-zero temperatures. It was acts of caring such as this delivery that became the reason why a teenage boy from the north of England covered his bedroom window with the words: MJ IS INNOCENT.
As well, having been a regular front-row concert attendee, I’m convinced I did once lock eyes with him: in Dublin, where it had still been daylight when the show started. I was certainly doing my bit to be noticed, anyway. To the extent where I imagine Michael might have been thinking, “Well, that’s one I’m definitely staying away from.” I also once caught the hat when it was thrown out during ‘Billie Jean’. Before losing my grip in the ensuing ruckus.
It’s easy to judge those of us that did things like that. But the euphoric frenzy the man inspired - the piquing of anticipation - was like nothing else. Michael’s presence had a unique property: it osmotically transformed the atmosphere in a room - a change sensed by fan and non-fan alike (at least - you used to be a non-fan.) That very particular sense of butterflies in the stomach being simultaneously shared by thousands of people; with everyone feeling the experience as a reciprocated love for each other. It was inimitable.
Besides, Michael actively courted this fan reaction, even going so far as to endanger his own life in order to ignite such delirium, by standing on top of cars surrounded by thousands of baying fans.
Michael’s long-time tour drummer, Jonathan ‘Sugarfoot’ Moffett, recalled,
“CNN said that over one billion people mourned Michael from all the remote areas of the world, as well as all the known areas. What other human being can draw that much sympathy and that much hurt from their loss. Michael had something special, a radiance, and when you were in his presence the whole room changed… Michael had the highest level of energy I think without being from another world. His gift and his humanity of spirit were just so powerful and great and deep. He was a different human being from most of us; from all of us. He did affect everybody that came around him, from leaders of the world to normal folk… Every single person that’s been around him said they felt something, that I remember seeing or talking to… And that’s why people cry. People absolutely cry. I would sit on stage and watch them pass bodies… You would see them lift bodies, arms dangling and legs, heads swinging, and there was like an ocean of people with their arms up passing bodies to the front, to the gate… One by one, people were passing them forward; sometimes a multitude of bodies moving across the crowd being passed to the rescue people… Some people were just totally gone, unconscious… just from being in that stadium with Michael… It was just the most powerful thing to see, and that’s just from that one man in the centre of the stage… He knew he was gifted with something special, a purpose; uniting the world and uniting people.”
One of the many tragedies of Michael’s death is the knowledge that we can never experience that feeling again. The last time I experienced it was at the O2 press conference that announced the This Is It venture. Though then, of course, the feeling was just one ingredient in a strange potion that also contained triumph and niggling concern.
***
How does one explain the magnetism of Michael? How so many are so heartbroken and mournful at the death of someone they never met - to the same extent of sadness that accompanies losing a close family member?
There are many reasons: Michael was an engine of pure prolificity in providing the world with quality, unique, timeless rhythms and melodies divined with purpose of healing the world; he was the plausible, flesh-and-blood superhero; he was a surrogate parent; he filled the vacuum of self for so many people confused by the tragedy of loss; he was the Unknown Soldier, with millions of identities willed onto him by the bereft.
The world talks about Michael Jackson as an unbreakable enigma. But he wasn’t. Not to us. Not to those of us that walked through hell with him, its raging fires starkly illuminating the man’s vulnerabilities and faults – for anyone that cared to see. What he gave us in return is this: he gave us musical flags to plant as life milestones - points of reference galvanized by the soul orgasm of zeitgeist; he was our support system; he was an indicator for our identities - our very souls; he was our moral paradigm, a totem for our tried-and-tested, stoic-and-steadfast belief in the power of the truth - in the indefatigable advocating of it when confronted by egregious, audacious and unrelenting slander.
Indeed, reading the salacious descriptions of Michael
quoted by tabloids and their anonymous sources is akin to listening to someone detail the character of a mutual friend, a person you have known for decades, but who they have only recently become acquainted with. You know this old friend inside-out – their flaws, their tribulations, their virtues – and are therefore gobsmacked by the inaccuracy of this other person’s depiction of them.
As Michael sang, “Your cameras can’t control / The minds of those who know / That you’ll even sell your soul / Just to get your story sold.”
The fable of Beauty and the Beast tells the tale of how decency is perennially ostracised by the cynicism of a society obsessed with superficiality. How scapegoating, promoted by the insecurity of bullies fearful of deviants, manifests in the Beast as his becoming more and more isolated. The love story in the fable demonstrates how two people find solace in each other after this rejection from society. This is the same as between Michael and his fans. Michael would not give up because he had the love from his fans. And we would not, and will not, give up because we had his.
With the increasing brutality Michael endured, the more we were drawn to him. The poor black boy born as a single permutation of the infinity of fate into - to borrow Janet’s phrase - “a world sick with racism”, who went on to defy the odds by escaping poverty and using his sacrifice of self to influence and help transform the world into a better place.