Friday, June 26th, 2009
Michael Jackson
Moonwalker
This performance of Billie Jean, taped for an NBC special, was featured on a VHS about the making of the Thriller video. I can’t tell you how many times I watched it or how many hours were spent teaching myself the moonwalk, the spin, the kick, the pelvic thrusts. I would practice in my bedroom, imagining I was him, imagining that I could do what he could do.
I couldn’t of course. The whole point was that no one could. He sang and danced in ways that were foreign and exciting to me. His videos expanded my imagination and made me think of music in a whole new way. He was my first hero, my first idol. I bought black pleather pants and a glitter glove and a t-shirt that said “Beat It.” Yes, I was a bit of a nerd about it. But it was my first experience of being a fan. Of dreaming about something larger than myself and the immediate world around me. Of imagining what was out there and what I could be or become.
His decline – in popularity, in mental and physical health – did little to diminish my fascination and yes, even fondness of and for him. His obsession with surgically altering his appearance, his love/hate relationship with his incredible fame and even his eventual freakshow status – I empathized, I wished for him better handlers, better friends, a better life.
Then there were the things that were harder to reconcile – the charges of sexual abuse, the Jesus Juice, the admissions that he had slept in the same bed as the children he befriended. Though I clung, perhaps too long and with too much vigor, to the hope that these were lies created and designed to extort him of his wealth, the truth is that I don’t know if I’ll ever be certain of what the truth was. Maybe I don’t want to know.
But I didn’t know and love Michael Jackson the man. I knew and loved Michael Jackson the performer, the icon, the idea. A little boy with more talent in his soul than anyone I’ve ever met. A little boy who was beaten and abused and who nonetheless created music that was as joyous and full of hope and optimism as any I’ve ever heard. From “I Want You Back” to “Rock With You” to “P.Y.T.” to “The Way You Make Me Feel” to “Remember The Time,” MJ has provided a soulful soundtrack to my life that has influenced every idea I have about music and entertainment.
There has never been and will never be another Michael Jackson. His influence is everywhere and he did as much to create our modern pop culture as anyone else I can think of. With him dies a part of music history and a part of my own history. He was a genius and a freak, an inspiration and a broken man. The most famous person on the planet, he lived a life none of us will ever understand, know or experience and we all richer for the contributions he made to our world.
