inreaction

“I’ve been a victim of
A selfish kinda love”

- Michael Jackson

whether i’ve wanted to or not, i’ve found myself thinking about michael jackson quite a bit lately. perhaps it is because he died in my backyard and the helicopters rattling the frames of windows we can’t open have made for an apt, if pained, metaphor for life’s ultimate flimsiness, but that seems a bit heavy handed.

before i switched to the self-torturing method of waking up to a vibrating cell-phone, my wake up playlist consisted of only one song, “thriller.” as a result, i hate the song. but it’s haunting, slow-boiling volume made it a credible alarm clock, and i would drag myself out of bed to turn off the maniacal laughter that rounds out the track. my favorite michael jackson song used to be “smooth criminal,” until a relative asked me to stop playing it because it reminded him/her of a prior sexual assault. i didn’t give that conversation any sort of critical interpretation – i didn’t say to myself, “wow, his music really affects people.” to do so might have been to undermine the “pop” tag his songs are labeled with.

pop music is essentially an upside down heart rate monitor. it generally travels along the surface, evoking feelings but not so much sentiments – you can dance to it, you can yell along with it, you can kelly clarkson with it. but occasionally, it dips farther into the consciousness of the listener. these dips define the good from the great in pop music. they are, perhaps, why people pass out at michael jackson concerts. michael’s dips run deep, punctuated with vocal irregularities, crotch-grabs, and razor sharp, within the beat dancing.

in “man in the mirror,” there is a pause at 2:51 that has always appealed to me. it’s the third or fourth time he’s sung the chorus already (if you like his choruses, you’re lucky because he usually sings them at least five times per song), but after saying “if you want to make the world a better place you have to look in the mirror and make a,” there is a loud silence followed by a euphoric, choral, exclaimed “CHANGE.” i don’t know that much about jackson’s music, but i’m usually more interested in the man behind it (thus my lack of extensive beatles’ musical knoweledge but fairly developed understanding of another icon, john lennon), and when you read about michael you get a sense that these screams and yells and vocal hiccups are not purely performative. there is a shining sort of honesty that lines his pseudo-feminine voice, and it only adds to what i find to be perhaps one of the most interesting figures of our american, cultural history.

to watch interviews with jackson is to feel confusion, repulsion, and compassion all at once. the very idea of jackson is confusing – a man whose face is as constructed as mickey rourke’s, whose skin color gradually faded from a rich chocolate to ipod headphone white is hardly easy to digest. there is a sense that, like the work of many artists, you are supposed to feel a repulsion, and by doing so, are forced to consider just why you feel repulsed (the extreme example, perhaps, is marilyn manson – his perversions are meant to force the consumer of his image to inspect the nature and cause of their repulsions). but watching his primetime live interviews with diane sawyer in 1995 (arguably among sawyer’s worst work: bumbling, apologetic, performatively harsh and ultimately lacking any journalistic integrity) elicits a sort of compassion that is most frustrating in nature. when she asks him if he has chosen to lighten his skin, you want to wring his neck for giving answers such as “it’s what nature wants, i love nature,” you want to tell diane that he has vitiligo, that his responses are cryptic because they are avoiding admitting physical imperfection because doing so would only ratify the abusive diatribes his father lambasted him with. you want to tell him to stop saying that he constructed his face because he is an “artist,” that “putting two eyes or a big red dot” on his face won’t hide him from public introspection, that the shock value won’t turn them away but only keep them hooked.

i don’t know whether the world truly lost something breathtaking with michael, and i’d feel a bit foolish saying he had much more to give (though the world certainly would have taken much more from him). he was frail, and the sum of his broken pieces was no longer less than his total self, the cracks were too wide. but for the observer, his death is cause for reflection. who was this man, and how did he work? do we forgive a man for his supposed sins for the popular culture blessings he bestowes upon the world? does death soften our view of those that some of us might have called wicked just years ago? does the man with the dui return from reckless, selfish mistake to father, brother, son, husband? does the criminal become man again in death? why is death so transformative? why is it hard to hate the dead?

maybe the ultimate test of one’s evilness is if it’s possible to hate you when you’re dead. hitler? evil. saddam hussein? probably evil. michael? not evil enough.

Michael Jackson, “Man in the Mirror”

Gotta make a change
For once in my life
It’s gonna feel real good
Gonna make a difference
Gonna make it right

As I turned up the collar on
A favorite winter coat
This wind is blowin’ my mind
I see the kids in the street
With not enough to eat
Who am I to be blind
Pretending not to see their needs

A summer’s disregard
A broken bottle top
And a one man’s soul
They follow each other
On the wind ya’ know
‘Cause they got nowhere to go
That’s why I want you to know

I’m starting with the man in the mirror
I’m asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change

I’ve been a victim of
A selfish kinda love
It’s time that I realize
There are some with no home
Not a nickel to loan
Could it be really pretending that they’re not alone

A willow deeply scarred
Somebody’s broken heart
And a washed out dream
(Washed out dream)
They follow the pattern of the wind ya’ see
‘Cause they got no place to be
That’s why I’m starting with me

I’m starting with the man in the mirror
I’m asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change

everytime i start writing a story my life falls apart.