(Note: this entry appears on all the Tim Girton blogs)
It’s taken me this long to blog about the death of Michael Jackson because I wanted to gather my thoughts before I went off half-cocked and unbalanced.
From the top, I was a fan of his music. I grew up with it. While a lot of kids wanted to be Michael, I worried less about the singing and performing and more about the hair. There was an imaginary race in which the little kid with the big voice was trying to grow his afro larger than mine. Who won? That didn’t really matter, but it was the beginning of the Jackson Effect on my youth.
At the time when he wanted to break away from his family and establish his own identity, the natural rebellion was building in me. Neither of us were as dramatic as some, but we wanted to be individuals. There were stumbling blocks. After the love song to the rat (”Ben”) there wasn’t much success for Mike. My own bits of individuality caved to peer and family pressure and I conformed to the idea that the black kid couldn’t be the smart kid.
In my late teens and Michael’s twenties, “Off the Wall” and “Thriller” caught the public’s attention in a huge way. That’s where we diverged. I was still the shy kid still afraid to express myself because it wasn’t cool. I remained a fan of the music, but I started to gravitate toward Prince as the icon that would be the individual that I couldn’t bring myself to be.
Michael was still there, though. I respected the fact that he broke MTV’s barrier against black music, with Prince closely following. As I started exploring me, Michael was going into hyperbole, purchasing Neverland Ranch and buying a zoo to fill it. The plastic surgeries got to the point of self parody which showed me there was a limit to self indulgence.
I started on the journey that I continue on now. Back in the day, I had friends that argued that Michael was better than Prince or that Prince dominated Michael, but I wonder what would have happened if Michael’s idea of a Prince duet had actually come to fruition. That was the genesis of the song “Bad” but Prince balked.
Having said all that, I am not blind to the dark side. The stories continue to come out about Michael’s foibles, financial issues and the even darker charges of pedophilia. There seemed to be no one there to check him or even check on him. His will has surfaced in which father Joe Jackson gets absolutely nothing because of the child abuse he subjected Michael to.
My spirit misses the art and wonders if someone could have stopped some of the bad parts of his life, particularly if the father wouldn’t. I have been blessed to have embarked on a earthly and spiritual journey that will keep me from moving on any dark thoughts and actions like that.
I wish Michael well on his next journey. Perhaps that life will be better than this.
Fare well and I’ll see you when I get there.
