Losin’ It…
Well, I thought that I was done, and the ridiculous, irrational phase I had regressed into since the “sudden and unexpected death” of Michael Jackson was over. I could exhale now. Live again. Move on. But, no.
I was sitting in the darkened theatre, early enough this one time to watch the previews, and without warning, from the dark stillness, playing low at first, came the unmistakable reverberating bass notes from the intro to “Billie Jean.” The sound slowly came up, and then from somewhere in outer space he appeared in the center of the darkened screen, exploding and spinning into life, and in a split second, he just as suddenly and mysteriously put a brake on his spin, freezing into the now famous pose: his legs crossed, his feet in parallel, his long arms extended upwards in a “V,” his hat low on his brow.
And then like a wave from nowhere, the tears came from a deep deep place, my hand went to my mouth to muffle the noise I was surely going to make; I shook my head “no” slowly back and forth. How could he be dead? It just could not be. These responses have been embarrassing, to say the least. I was, yes, fully aware of how foolish I looked, as I observed myself from that distant place, from the wings, where I’d been watching me all summer. I mean, “What the hell is wrong with you?” I’d been asking myself. This was not helpful. My primitive self was in charge now.
There are surely many logical reasons why I was truly losin’ it this time, but none that can really explain the depth of sorrow I had been experiencing the last almost four months. I had been thinking about him constantly, reading about him, processing the information, listening to the news commentary, listening to his critics, listening to his family – learning all kinds of things I never knew-looking at all of the pictures, black, white, normal, bizarre and otherwise, and listening to his music for the very first time. It was a sudden, uninvited, insane need to understand and to connect the dots. Why, I do not know. Because I absolutely never paid any attention to him before; never gave him a second thought – not a positive or gracious thought at any rate. I never cared. I was one of those mothers who “encouraged” her children not to buy or listen to, (to my knowledge), his music or his videos, and just dismissed him. Oh, yes. I dismissed him a long time ago as an artist, as a singer, as a songwriter, as a dancer, as a performer, as a human being and as a real person. How stupid was that?
Now, like an old woman having an affair with a young lover, I secretly started collecting his CDs, DVDs, MTV performances, listening and watching on the sly, and getting to know him for the very first time, studying his every move. I was on alert. It seems to me that his life is like a tragic Shakespearian character. Lord, have mercy! And I confess I’m obsessed. I just pray that I am not po-ssessed.
When he first died, before this Thing took hold of me, my close friend, grieving appropriately for him, in her chronic-merciful-gracious and loving manner said, “How sad. You know I really think that he was innocent.” I was silenced by her comment, and, feeling the Heavy Hand of God on me, I was very careful in choosing my words of commentary…i.e.: I “bit my tongue.” But I ended up patronizing her, rationalizing that she thinks most people are victimized and innocent, and I made some comment towards the contrary, as gently as I could, citing some of my acquired information on particular psychological disorders and consequential behavior, and finishing with the, “we are all sinners and have weaknesses, but God loves all of us” postulate. She listened patiently, quietly, sighed, and said, “You know, Donald Trump says he is innocent.” I knew to shut up, and changed the subject.
The following week I had an appointment with two people, a married couple, who I have worked closely with over the past several years. I love them, but in their radical conservatism, I have learned to reserve my energy, and keep my opinions to myself; to sit still and listen and nod at the appropriate time. They are strong, verbal and opinionated. ( I know the type well). When I got to their home, they were both in grief - over him; Crying; Carrying on. “We failed him,” she wailed. “We failed him as Christians; As the Church. I think he was a prophet,” and she talked on and on about what “the Spirit had been showing her about Michael.” When she managed to take a breath, her husband punctuated her ranting with short barks and minimal phrases of agreement until she started in again. I sat silently, looking from one to the other. Well, I was stunned. Driving off, I asked the fun question, “Lord, what is going on?” And yet another journey began.
It was a few days later as I was crossing the kitchen, that the thought, “What if he was innocent?” attacked me and stopped me in my menial task. I did not have time for this. But, as I stood there, I considered that question. Then the years of mockery, newscasts, tabloids, weirdness, trauma, broken relationships, derision, judgment, began to play before me in slow motion. Like a photo montage, pictures large and small came at me from every direction: Pictures of his handsome face, the original ‘fro, then the beautiful dark curly hair, cappuccino skin, dark eyes, beautiful mouth, perfect teeth, the Pepsi Cola commercial disaster, the pictures of his face deformed by too many surgeon’s knives, creamy darkness slowly fading then gone altogether, hair straightened, chin clefted, lips lifted at the corners, and reddened, cheekbones protruding, appearance deformed, and the nose…goodness!….going from a handsome young black man to a person who my youngest son, after we looked at a magazine together, said, “He was a good-lookin’ woman too.” Androgyny. So strange. But the “What if?” lingered, nagged, disturbed and convicted. So, I began to ask people: my massage therapist, both of them, my friend Cindi, and my other friends-many others, my prayer partners, and my partners in crime…and yes, they were all feelin’ it. Oh, the implication of that epiphany! Oh the dark heart of us all…
I turned on the news and began to track it all. Every day; Every channel; First thing I checked on in the morning, when I came home from work or wherever, last thing I checked on at night. All the stories being told over and over again: the scandalous tales from Never Land; The plastic surgeries; the physical abuse when he was a child; the emotional abuse. I read all the magazines put out about him, and read their stories both present and past: The severe arrested development; The crippling shyness; the isolation, the weird pets and animals in his personal menagerie, the jealousy of his siblings, the jealousy of his business savvy as he observed and absorbed the production activity around him from childhood on, and the demands of his father as he became the cash cow of the family; The innocence and naïveté about girls; women. The visual onslaught of his brothers’ sexual escapades with the “Dirty Dianas” who hung around backstage when he was still a child, and still thought a pillow fight in the Green Room was more fun than anything else… the threat and the loaded gun sent to him along with a note to kill himself by a crazed fan, who inspired the legendary “Billie Jean.” No life outside of his rehearsals after school – no buddies, no pals or basketball practice, no debate team, no school band, no drama club or choir. Just demanding rehearsals and trips back and forth between the Hall and his home, and fame, fame and more fame resultant from his raw self-taught talent – confined, refined, marketed into money-making miracles for so many many many.
So I watched and listened and sighed. I bought The Rolling Stone Magazine that reviewed all of the articles and interviews with him and about him from the past. I read every word, more than once, and looked at every picture studying his eyes and his smile. How sad. I bought another publication and did the same all over again; then his music CDs and then the DVDs of his music videos, greatest hits and "The Dangerous Tour." I was captivated. I marveled at his dance. His body, his legs that were so fluid and elastic, flexible and strong all at the same time. His over-sized hands flung into the air like birds set in flight. His over-sized feet supporting his every move, always shod in the black loafers. As God made Michael Phelps’ body for swimming, Michael Jackson was made for this dance that exploded out of him. He seemed to be without bones or any physical hindrance as he gathered energy from that other place, abandoned himself, and released his being. I studied him in performance. He gave and gave and gave when I thought for sure that he would collapse from exhaustion and depletion – all his energy spent. He poured it out over and over and over, spilling it out in raw sexuality, and gentle, innocent tenderness and compassion all at the same time. The power of it all, the freedom, the trust, the deep loneliness and yearning; The cry. The despair...
I missed the moment. I missed the moment he was in history: Alive, spinning, singing, whooping and leaping. How could he jump that high? I had missed it. My children didn’t. They knew. They snuck off to their friends’ homes and watched “Thriller.” “I was terrified,” confessed one of my sons, now thirty-four, “and had terrible nightmares, and couldn’t tell you because I saw it at Ivan’s house.” He was visiting me from out of town, and we were driving around town together listening to the greatest hits CD. “But it was so brilliant when you look back on it, and we all wanted to learn the dance.” His baby son was strapped in his car seat in the back, waving his arms and feet and squealing. We were listening to “Beat It.” I reached for the volume control, thinking it was too loud for the baby. “No,” my son said, “we rock out to MJ all the time. He loves him.” I drove on in silence listening to Michael Jackson sing, my son sing along with him, and my grandson shrieking and laughing in the back.
After they left to go home, as I drove each day with the accompaniment of his songs, I finally had the courage to play the CD in dance class-select pieces that is. (They're a picky lot). By that time, I had done a lot of “active listening,” allowing my own inner voice to connect to and listen to his inner voice and soul cry. I took the CD home and played it full volume on my stereo system. “Earth Song” was towards the end of the CD, and it took a while before I listened to it for the first time. The writer of an article in Rolling Stone Magazine had referred to it as “sentimental glop,” and in comparing its gospel genre to his earlier songs had judged it as insignificant and invalid, citing it as evidence of Jackson having lost it all. Since I had no expectations, my ear was different. I was perched to hear redemptive themes in his work, listening for the hints of what was in his heart’s center; of what was his truth, his anguish. Perched to hear what God was up to this time. So, when the choir backed him up with the repetitive, “What about us?” above his guttural cries, challenging our apathy, I was caught up in the Spirit, and pierced in that deep central place.
I hit the repeat button-several times. I turned it up as loud as I could without distorting it –and put my head down on the kitchen table, closing my eyes, allowing the sound and the power go through me. Uninvited, the beginning choreography of a dance came, and the next class I started experimenting with the movement. Saying nothing about the intent or content, I watched in the mirror as my dancers worked. No one commented or questioned. Like soldiers called to duty, they all stepped on board, feeling the message, the passion, entering in to the moment, helping to create the message with their bodies, honoring a co-creator they too had never known. It was a sacred moment. The thought occurred that we would be doing the moon walk a lot in the future…
So here I am back in the theater, watching the previews, all these memories surfacing. The loss of such a talent and a wounded colleague has become even more magnified; the unreality of his death; the wrongness of it all…
We buy advance tickets when we leave the theater… Weeks later four of us go and see “This is It.” The very next day two of us go again…The third time we saw it together, just before it closed, it was as if we had never seen it before, there was so much to absorb, to process, as he became the embodiment of the music, knowing each instrument, conducting each note and each rest and each nuance with his skinny frame, his gentle voice….preparing for the show of his life.
We left the theater weepy but empowered with new mantras:
“Let it simmer…”
“I’ll sense the sizzle behind me…”
“You might want more booty in the music…”
“The earth is trying so hard to compensate”… (for all the damage we have done to it)…”we
The following week I had an appointment with two people, a married couple, who I have worked closely with over the past several years. I love them, but in their radical conservatism, I have learned to reserve my energy, and keep my opinions to myself; to sit still and listen and nod at the appropriate time. They are strong, verbal and opinionated. ( I know the type well). When I got to their home, they were both in grief - over him; Crying; Carrying on. “We failed him,” she wailed. “We failed him as Christians; As the Church. I think he was a prophet,” and she talked on and on about what “the Spirit had been showing her about Michael.” When she managed to take a breath, her husband punctuated her ranting with short barks and minimal phrases of agreement until she started in again. I sat silently, looking from one to the other. Well, I was stunned. Driving off, I asked the fun question, “Lord, what is going on?” And yet another journey began.
It was a few days later as I was crossing the kitchen, that the thought, “What if he was innocent?” attacked me and stopped me in my menial task. I did not have time for this. But, as I stood there, I considered that question. Then the years of mockery, newscasts, tabloids, weirdness, trauma, broken relationships, derision, judgment, began to play before me in slow motion. Like a photo montage, pictures large and small came at me from every direction: Pictures of his handsome face, the original ‘fro, then the beautiful dark curly hair, cappuccino skin, dark eyes, beautiful mouth, perfect teeth, the Pepsi Cola commercial disaster, the pictures of his face deformed by too many surgeon’s knives, creamy darkness slowly fading then gone altogether, hair straightened, chin clefted, lips lifted at the corners, and reddened, cheekbones protruding, appearance deformed, and the nose…goodness!….going from a handsome young black man to a person who my youngest son, after we looked at a magazine together, said, “He was a good-lookin’ woman too.” Androgyny. So strange. But the “What if?” lingered, nagged, disturbed and convicted. So, I began to ask people: my massage therapist, both of them, my friend Cindi, and my other friends-many others, my prayer partners, and my partners in crime…and yes, they were all feelin’ it. Oh, the implication of that epiphany! Oh the dark heart of us all…
I turned on the news and began to track it all. Every day; Every channel; First thing I checked on in the morning, when I came home from work or wherever, last thing I checked on at night. All the stories being told over and over again: the scandalous tales from Never Land; The plastic surgeries; the physical abuse when he was a child; the emotional abuse. I read all the magazines put out about him, and read their stories both present and past: The severe arrested development; The crippling shyness; the isolation, the weird pets and animals in his personal menagerie, the jealousy of his siblings, the jealousy of his business savvy as he observed and absorbed the production activity around him from childhood on, and the demands of his father as he became the cash cow of the family; The innocence and naïveté about girls; women. The visual onslaught of his brothers’ sexual escapades with the “Dirty Dianas” who hung around backstage when he was still a child, and still thought a pillow fight in the Green Room was more fun than anything else… the threat and the loaded gun sent to him along with a note to kill himself by a crazed fan, who inspired the legendary “Billie Jean.” No life outside of his rehearsals after school – no buddies, no pals or basketball practice, no debate team, no school band, no drama club or choir. Just demanding rehearsals and trips back and forth between the Hall and his home, and fame, fame and more fame resultant from his raw self-taught talent – confined, refined, marketed into money-making miracles for so many many many.
So I watched and listened and sighed. I bought The Rolling Stone Magazine that reviewed all of the articles and interviews with him and about him from the past. I read every word, more than once, and looked at every picture studying his eyes and his smile. How sad. I bought another publication and did the same all over again; then his music CDs and then the DVDs of his music videos, greatest hits and "The Dangerous Tour." I was captivated. I marveled at his dance. His body, his legs that were so fluid and elastic, flexible and strong all at the same time. His over-sized hands flung into the air like birds set in flight. His over-sized feet supporting his every move, always shod in the black loafers. As God made Michael Phelps’ body for swimming, Michael Jackson was made for this dance that exploded out of him. He seemed to be without bones or any physical hindrance as he gathered energy from that other place, abandoned himself, and released his being. I studied him in performance. He gave and gave and gave when I thought for sure that he would collapse from exhaustion and depletion – all his energy spent. He poured it out over and over and over, spilling it out in raw sexuality, and gentle, innocent tenderness and compassion all at the same time. The power of it all, the freedom, the trust, the deep loneliness and yearning; The cry. The despair...
I missed the moment. I missed the moment he was in history: Alive, spinning, singing, whooping and leaping. How could he jump that high? I had missed it. My children didn’t. They knew. They snuck off to their friends’ homes and watched “Thriller.” “I was terrified,” confessed one of my sons, now thirty-four, “and had terrible nightmares, and couldn’t tell you because I saw it at Ivan’s house.” He was visiting me from out of town, and we were driving around town together listening to the greatest hits CD. “But it was so brilliant when you look back on it, and we all wanted to learn the dance.” His baby son was strapped in his car seat in the back, waving his arms and feet and squealing. We were listening to “Beat It.” I reached for the volume control, thinking it was too loud for the baby. “No,” my son said, “we rock out to MJ all the time. He loves him.” I drove on in silence listening to Michael Jackson sing, my son sing along with him, and my grandson shrieking and laughing in the back.
After they left to go home, as I drove each day with the accompaniment of his songs, I finally had the courage to play the CD in dance class-select pieces that is. (They're a picky lot). By that time, I had done a lot of “active listening,” allowing my own inner voice to connect to and listen to his inner voice and soul cry. I took the CD home and played it full volume on my stereo system. “Earth Song” was towards the end of the CD, and it took a while before I listened to it for the first time. The writer of an article in Rolling Stone Magazine had referred to it as “sentimental glop,” and in comparing its gospel genre to his earlier songs had judged it as insignificant and invalid, citing it as evidence of Jackson having lost it all. Since I had no expectations, my ear was different. I was perched to hear redemptive themes in his work, listening for the hints of what was in his heart’s center; of what was his truth, his anguish. Perched to hear what God was up to this time. So, when the choir backed him up with the repetitive, “What about us?” above his guttural cries, challenging our apathy, I was caught up in the Spirit, and pierced in that deep central place.
I hit the repeat button-several times. I turned it up as loud as I could without distorting it –and put my head down on the kitchen table, closing my eyes, allowing the sound and the power go through me. Uninvited, the beginning choreography of a dance came, and the next class I started experimenting with the movement. Saying nothing about the intent or content, I watched in the mirror as my dancers worked. No one commented or questioned. Like soldiers called to duty, they all stepped on board, feeling the message, the passion, entering in to the moment, helping to create the message with their bodies, honoring a co-creator they too had never known. It was a sacred moment. The thought occurred that we would be doing the moon walk a lot in the future…
So here I am back in the theater, watching the previews, all these memories surfacing. The loss of such a talent and a wounded colleague has become even more magnified; the unreality of his death; the wrongness of it all…
We buy advance tickets when we leave the theater… Weeks later four of us go and see “This is It.” The very next day two of us go again…The third time we saw it together, just before it closed, it was as if we had never seen it before, there was so much to absorb, to process, as he became the embodiment of the music, knowing each instrument, conducting each note and each rest and each nuance with his skinny frame, his gentle voice….preparing for the show of his life.
We left the theater weepy but empowered with new mantras:
“Let it simmer…”
“I’ll sense the sizzle behind me…”
“You might want more booty in the music…”
“The earth is trying so hard to compensate”… (for all the damage we have done to it)…”we
have only four years to get it right…”
“It’s about the love, the L-O-V-E… "
“It’s about the love, the L-O-V-E… "
Whether I have lost it or not, no longer matters…I just cannot get enough.
Copyright 2009 Marie Plauche’-Gustin
