Half-Masked

What a strange, unfortunate man. I’ve never seen anyone so uncomfortable in their bones, so desperate to find and be something resembling how he saw himself. Did he really want to be white? Is that why he became obsessed with plastic surgery to the extent that he did? Is it ever that simple? I’ll never know. I’ll never know if he really did abuse those kids. But the more I look at him, the more apparent it is that perhaps no one could have reached out to him. His visage has been called “alien”, and I think that slur says more than it means to.  This is someone, or something who only really existed on-stage, for which he was cruelly conditioned.

It’s one thing to want gender-re-assignment. There is no surgical procedure that could have given Michael Jackson the state of existence he wanted. We heard his music, but we could never have fully heard or answered his cry for help. I think he knew this early on, and to carry that across half a century is not a pleasant thought. There was a howling emptiness there, broadcast in a pitch invisible to us. If we’re deaf to that, is it any wonder he tried to find other ways to get that message out?

And yet, this weirdo is beloved. He never really spoke the same language as his fans, but he knew a more universal language: Dance. Music. He knew what struck the match beneath a lot of people. His fans are a wide and reaching squadron, that stood in his corner through every second of his highly-monitored, turbulent life. These are people so reached by his performance, they were content with the knowledge that he may have done terrible things to minors. Can any of us say that we will ever be as talented, as influential or as loved world-wide as Michael Jackson, even at his ugliest? His death is a cause for sadness, but not as much as his life.

Everyone’s favourite song by him seems to be “Billie Jean”, by the general response I’ve seen. Special nods go out to “Thriller”, and his time in the Jackson 5. The song I most vividly recall is “Stranger in Moscow”. I don’t think any example of his work so closely acknowledges what it means to be isolated in a packed stadium. The world is viewed through a bleak lens, when stage lights are your only substitute for the sun.

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~A.H.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 12:38 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.