I’m driving through Kansas right now, listening to “Man in the Mirror” and typing on my laptop. (Well, my boyfriend is driving, and I’m typing on my laptop, otherwise that would be quite dangerous.) I’ve been dying to write about the death of Michael Jackson these past few days, and now, finally, is my first chance. I know I’m late to the party, and maybe people are reading-about-MJ’ed out, but I was visiting the boyfriend’s family, and apparently “can I be excused from the table early to go write on my blog and properly mourn Michael” doesn’t really fly out here, so I myself still need to vent. But gee whiz, isn’t everyone feeling so much right now? I know I am. Is that embarrassing? Maybe. I mean, can a person, a singer and dancer, really mean this much? (I think that his death feels different for many reasons though, which this NYTIMES article does a good job of describing. He truly was the last great superstar in the vein of Elvis or the Beatles.)
On Thursday afternoon, I was heading out of the house with my boyfriend to watch his two little sisters play golf. (IN KANSAS.) Before we left the house, I checked my email and the NYTIMES website, because I’m a nerd and do that constantly. The main story on the Times website was that MJ had been rushed to the hospital, and that he was possibly in cardiac arrest. But it was a hazy story, and thus was on one of their newsbreaking blogs, not even an official article. Call me stupid, but when I read that I didn’t react in a normal way. MJ has been so crazy these past years (decades? More on that later….) that I just figured he was having some health problems (um, yes, cardiac arrest is usually quite the health problem) and that he would be fine. How could he not be fine? (I follow celebrity news to a pretty unhealthy degree, so I knew MJ had all those concerts coming up in London.) He’d be fine. Still, when I got in the Jeep with le boyfriend, I mentioned what I’d read. Weird, I’d said. And then I forgot about it.
Two hours later, I was standing in sweltering 98 Kansas heat (IN KANSAS MIGHT I ADD), drinking some lemonade out of a Styrofoam cup and watching a gaggle of kids compete in a putting contest, when I heard the man behind me say to some other parents, “Did you hear Michael Jackson died about an hour ago?” I almost screamed. I think that if I hadn’t at least known that he was ill that day, I probably WOULD have screamed. I was standing alone at that point, and became confused as to whether or not it was proper etiquette if I turned around and demanded to see that man’s blackberry at once. Everyone was soon talking about it, in this very parental calm Kansian way. I felt strange. I was in disbelief, and incredibly sad. I wanted to leave the family event and be alone.
I’ve always been a huge Michael Jackson fan. Who isn’t? (Well, probably my college roommate, who I talked to last night. She said, “Care, I mean, I know everyone’s freaking out about it, but he was a huge freak, right? Is it wrong that it makes me uncomfortable to see him on TV?”)
It’s like, where do you begin? The mind explodes. I think my first memories of MJ are of my babysitters listening to him, A LOT. I was probably four or five, and I remember thinking that some music was “bad” music, and thus cool. It was the stuff my parents didn’t listen to. It was the stuff that the babysitter’s always put on really loud in the car or at home, and would sing along to, and laugh with their friends if they were around, and they all seemed just really cool and old and grown-up and awesome to me, and like, uh, I want to be like that. “Dirty Diana” would be the quintessential bad-ass babysitter song. Some sort of acid wash jean and “Dirty Diana” situation. UH.
I have clear memories of digging the song MJ did for Free Willy (laugh all you want, the video is BAD ASS) and I remember when HIStory was released. My bf Mari had a copy, or her brother or parents did, and we listened to it a lot. Especially that gem “You Are Not Alone.” It’s horribly cheesy, but that song used to comfort me, or do whatever cheesy pop songs do to nine-year-old kids. Then there was Scream. I just saw that video in VH1 last night, and I still think it’s bad-ass. I never got sick of those little noises he made, the MJ screams and shrieks which, yes, were strange, but in the most awesome-est of ways, and seeing him dance with his sister was very cool to me. And yes, it was confusing that she was black and he was white, but neither of them seemed to care. I also recall digging the Weird Al video “Eat It” and watching in my grandmother’s den in Chicopee, circa 1992. (Still a great song to work-out to. “Beat It” that is. Not “Eat It.”)
In high school, I started listening to a lot of Jackson 5. I freely admit that this was brought on by my obsession with the movie Now and Then. (Still one of the best movies ever made for young teenage girls EVER. Uh, Devon Sawa you slay me…) I was a freshman at boarding school, and this girl across the hall, Brittany, had the Now and Then soundtrack, and she let me borrow it all the time. “I Want You Back” was my all-time fav. I would listen to it before we were forced to do our homework at night.
The next year Brittany and I were roommates. Though I think we occasionally did homework, we spent most of the time playing with our hair, planning our outfits for the next day, and listening to one of these three songs: “The World’s Greatest” by R. Kelly (yeah ….) and some horrid piece of crap by Fat Joe. But our clear favorite was “You Rock My World” by Michael Jackson. That song was off of Invincible, which was supposed to be MJ’s comeback, and clearly wasn’t. I don’t know of one other track of that album. But he certainly kept and made two new fans with at least that song. Brit and I could not get enough of that beat in the beginning. (Yes, I know I sound lame, but it’s the truth: the beat could not have been gotten any more than the get we got from it.) ”You rock my world” came on in bar last summer when we were together, and the event was probably the highlight of the past two years of my life. I can’t remember now if we requested it because it’s our jam, or if it just came on magically (not too many other people enjoy this tune as much as we do. You don’t really hear it a lot while out.) Pictures of us doing our best MJ dance moves whilst slightly intoxicated prove this. When he died, Brit texted me about the song.
But college is when I really began to listen to the older stuff of his that so many people already knew and loved. Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough is one of my favorite songs of all time, period. In college, I legitimately listened to it every night before I went out, usually when applying my eye-liner with my roommate, or whenever I need a pick-me-up. It’s an instantaneous energy booster. It has a place on every “happy” or “upbeat” mix I’ve ever made. And everytime I hear it, I believe that I am sporting feathered hair, a wide-leg silk pantsuit, and dancing in some club in Los Angeles with Steve McQueen in the non-creepiest Boogie Nights way possible. (I just informed my boyfriend about this, and he said that there is no way one can say that want to be part of Boogie Nights without sounding like a huge creep. Whatever, I saw that movie like a million years ago. IT HAD GREAT FASHION. He stinks.) Anyhow, there was this one frat in college that never played new rap music or, like, Fergie, at their parties, but they had DSTYGE play at probably every shindig they threw. Sometimes dancing by myself, or with my roommate, in a gross basement to MJ was the highlight of the weekend. Sad but true. And I loved it.
But I guess my favorite MJ song, and probably a lot of other people’s too, is “Man in the Mirror.” I finkling love that tune. Maybe five years ago now (yikes) I drove with my friend Emma from Maryland to South Carolina to visit previously-mentioned Brittany. This was before the ubiquity of iPods, and for music in el coche we didn’t have much: mostly scratched mixes, with, like, bad Eve rap songs on it. But we did have a new CD. I had just bought “Michael Jackson’s Number Ones.” I think we listened to the CD four or five times on that one drive, and we probably listened to “Man in The Mirror” twenty times. I mean, the opening snaps….and when you sing along, it’s like, um, YOUR song and YOU’RE GONNA MAKE A CHANGE. Michael really brings you into that chorus in the most excellent of ways. CAUSE THEY GOT NOWHERE TO GO THAT’S WHY I WANTJUTOKNOW It’s pretty damn spectacular. I made my boyfriend’s little sisters listen to it with me these past two days and they’re now hooked as well, complete with finger snap alongs. I’VE BEEN A VICTIM OF A SELFISH KIND OF LOVE….Shit’s mad empowering, and timeless.
Then there’s his fashion, of course. As someone always obsessed with sequins, and currently into tight black pants and shoulder pads, MJ is a true icon: I love his look. The red coat in the “Beat It” video??
Balenciaga only wishes he could design something like that. (Okay, that made no sense, I know, because Balenciaga is dead, but you know what I mean. More like, some ano Eastern European model on the pages of VOGUE only WISHES she could wear some of that 80’s shit that’s in right now, the way Michael can. Uh, could….)
Just look at him here:
I plan on rocking a sequined military coat this summer, and possibly some sparkly socks. Def. getting an MJ t-shirt on the street.
But back to the music. I love Pop music, always have, always will. And there is no music like his. He combined so many genres, but really I think it’s the energy and originality he had as a performer. So many of his songs mean so much to me. It’s….it’s strange to type that, and feel that, and know that SO MANY other people feel exactly the same way. I suppose there are those few artists that truly bring people together in that sense.
I am an internal optimist. (Well, I also worry a lot, and am sort of dark too, but optimism usually wins out.) It’s not like I wasn’t, nor am not now, aware of how f-ed up Michael Jackson became as he aged. I read this article when it came out in Vanity Fair in 2005, and recall being totally horrified. But I believe in the comeback. And I believe that this was a man who loved to make music, and was born to make music, and in the end just wanted to share that with others. I think it’s hard to comprehend how or why people fall apart the way the do. Obviously childhood has a lot to do with how he turned out, as it does with all people. But to live in the public eye that long, to have that much money so young, to have that much adoration, to have whatever it was inside him that was clearly so tortured and needy? And I do question the line between how sick he really was, and how sick he became from not only the incredible amount of pressure, but the incredible, incredible amount of scrutiny and judgement. Yes, it’s disturbing what he did to himself physically. But as an article I was reading yesterday pointed out, was he not just a man with an already extreme life, who thus took something already prevalent in our culture (a sick obsession with youth and perfection) to the extreme? Can anyone not say that we aren’t a country obsessed with eternal youth, and the escape of reality? Obviously this man did not feel like he could age and retain his identity, or his connection with fans. And his skin pigment is another story. I don’t get it, and always wished he would have explained it better. Was it a medical condition? A preference? What happened? Should it matter so much?
And I wonder about genius. My boyfriend was just saying to me that last night, while I was on the phone with a friend, he was watching a special on MJ on ABC with his family, and Diane Sawyer was interviewing Michael seven or eight years ago. He was being asked about his famous performance at Motown’s 25th anniversary event. Michael spoke how he still found many flaws in his work that night, and about how he was never satisfied with what he did: he always found something that could need improvement, and always wanted to reach something more. There was always something lacking. (And I do think it’s important to realize that though MJ was clearly inherently gifted, he also beyond hard-working and driven. What he achieved and gave to so many didn’t happen on accident.) But clearly his perfectionism took it’s toll. It seems that often people like him are never happy, because they can not find peace in what they have accomplished, nor can they accept that as an artist their quest for something more will never stop. That’s sad for them, but for the rest of us, it does produce incredible results. So I wonder why there has to be so much questioning about people who are able to produce the kind of art that MJ could. He’s a freak. He’s a weirdo etc etc. Maybe he is. But what normal people can dance like that? Or sing like that? Or make people want to dance and sing like that? I mean, really, where did that come from? It’s other-wordly. To have that, and to share it, should be enough, shouldn’t it? But as a culture, we want more and more, and we want to judge, and we like to see people fail in this sick way, and we’re never satisfied. Ever, it seems. What is the price? The outpouring people are showing now, the genuine emotion, and forgiveness and love…it does seem to come a little too late. I know it’s much more complicated then this, and that the man was really sick in the head in many ways. (I mean, his kid’s name is Blanket….and he dangled it over a balcony. Plus, his parents? I mean, YIKES. You’ve been warned KATE AND JON.) But, inherently, I just believe MJ was a good person, and a musical genius, who got lost along the way. Regardless, I am just happy to have had so many experiences with his music. It will be with us forever. I feel grateful for what he gave to the world.
And that’s the end of my delayed MJ rambling….
UH.
