Everyone on the planet, certainly over the age of, say, twenty knows who Michael Jackson is. I think it’s impossible not to know who he is. Or was. It’s been about a week since his passing, and his life has been heavy on my mind since the news broke last Thursday.
I was on my way out with some lady friends for drinks and nibbles to a neighbourhood resto we frequently visit. One of my foxes said her daughter had called from Miami to say Michael Jackson had suffered a heart attack and was in a coma. Heart attack? Coma?! Whaaat? I immediately picked up my cell phone and dialed my husband, at home with the children. I asked him to confirm – he turned on CNN right away, and told me Wolf Blitzer was commentating… and within a minute, it was confirmed that the man was dead. Dead. I felt a bit shocked, frankly. I could never actually picture him growing old, but I wasn’t expecting him to die so suddenly. Not like that.
We walked on to our destination, wondering what the hell had happened… by the time we got to the restaurant, you could tell that the staff, and indeed the diners were all atwitter about this fast-breaking news. We chatted about him a little bit, and then an out-of-nowhere summer hailstorm diverted our attention… and we made merry and caught up on our lives, just as we’d planned. We had a lovely time out together.
By the time I got home, the Facebook outpourings were plentiful. By morning, there seemed to be nothing but send-off sentiments and love offerings… and the haters were starting to find their voices too. I intentionally refrained from watching TV for the day. I knew exactly what would be on the tube: all the footage from that amazing life of his. Both the good and the scandalously bad. I’ve seen it all. I wasn’t ready to see it all in constant news reel, with his death notice lingering in type above the images. I wasn’t ready yet.
All week, I’ve been feeling very nostalgic about him. I never was a hardcore fan – at least, not in that rabid European kind of way. No concerts for me. No screaming for him, fainting with hysteria. I was just your average liker of the man. My sister and I had a few posters of him up in our room, around the time Off The Wall and Thriller came out. We knew the words to almost every song he sang. Practically everyone did then. We even bought the album Paul McCartney released with their duet Say, Say, Say on it. It made us love Paul McCartney more.
The first few time we saw the moonwalk was fantastic. I mean, really fantastic. Even adults were giddy about it. Everyone was truly amazed… but kids, as we were then, were slightly less amazed. Give a nimble little kid some time to practice (and little kids have nothing BUT time to do useless stuff), and he or she could have it down in a couple of weeks. We practiced his moves like disciples. Some were better at it than others – we critiqued each other on the playground or in our bedrooms as we perfected it. “You have to sliiide more… you’re too choppy. Don’t forget to move your neck in and out too, that’s key…” I was good at it. My mother used to make my sister and I do it for company, and at parties, but I wasn’t humiliated as one might think – the grown-ups were always wide-eyed and praising – what’s not to like about that? After about six months, it seemed like everyone could do it. Challenge over.
To me, it was an amazing time. Grown men and children alike bought leather (and leather-like) jackets to emulate him. The likes of Corey Feldman took their adoration to the extreme. I remember just about everything Michael Jackson did became an “event.” The Pepsi commercial debut. The Thriller debut. Entire department stores full of people would cram themselves into the electronics section just to watch the Thriller video whenever it came on the wall of TVs in the place. At home, we were glued to our television sets, shoulder to shoulder on the couch, waiting for him to dazzle us. And he never, ever failed. It terrified me in the most delicious way, watching that video. I mean, it was scary!! I’d never seen anything like it – a mini movie… and it was a long one.
Again, we practiced the Thriller routine with our posses anywhere we could. I still know it by heart. These are the things of which a childhood is made. Mine was a good one. MJ’s impressive body of work is a thread holding pieces together, much more strongly than I would have expected.
By the time I was in high school, it wasn’t considered terribly cool to enjoy him so much. And then scandals began to break… it seemed too unbelievable. My stance on such matters has waffled from time to time, but the fact is this: I wasn’t there, so I cannot say for sure. The man was acquitted. And that’s all I have to say about that.
I think I lost interest in him because of how strange he was starting to look. He’d had a few nose jobs in the past, sure – and they seemed so unnecessary on his perfectly cute face of old… I just couldn’t look at him anymore. Something was really, really wrong with him. I didn’t buy his albums after Thriller, but only because they didn’t thrill me. Every time he would be back in the news about his chimpanzee, or the bones he bought, or the weird sleep-chamber or whatever, I was surprised at how much he’d altered his face again. And again. I’d think, “Man he can’t look any worse than that, surely…” and then a year or so would go by, and he’d be in the news again because he got married or had kids, and my eyes would nearly fall out of my head, confounded about his yet-again new face. His poor nose. His chin. His lips. Eyebrows. “Oy! What the fuck? Okay, he CANNOT do any more…” And then he would. It was really shocking to see. Not to mention sad. Sad for that poor, clearly tortured man.
But every now and then he would come out with a new video that would just kill me. All that cool morphing done on all those faces in the Black or White video was the first I’d ever seen back then. Very cool. Remember the Time had all kinds of celebrity faces, and another really wicked dance routine in an Egyptian-style setting. Awesome. The Way You Make Me Feel was wonderfully plucky. The duet with his sister Janet called Scream was great for me the first time I saw it. Angry Jacksons. I smirked a bit while watching it, but only because I got to see TWO of them doing all kinds of wonderful dance moves, at the same time. I fucking loved it. Around the time of Bad, I was amazed by his “persona” but nearly as amazed by the dude doing the moonwalk on roller skates. Ho! I nearly broke my neck about a hundred times trying to pull that one off.
The one video that stand out in my mind was for Smooth Criminal. The first time I saw it, I totally lost my shit. Totally. It’s another long video, and MJ is again trying unsuccessfully to look like a tough guy (I mean, c’mon) but about two-thirds the way through the video, he does this most amazing thing… this lean. I remember the very first time my sister and I watched it, like blip forever etched in my mind. It lasted about four seconds. We traded quick glances, her eyes were as round as mine must have been.
“D-did you see that?” she said.
“Holy shit.” I whispered.
“Did you SEE THAT?!”
“Holy shit!!”
We watched the video over and over again. And over again. And over again. And then we practiced, nearly killing ourselves, smashing our faces into the carpet, grabbing handfuls of each others shirts from behind, trying to keep each other from falling and cracking our heads open on the tiled coffee table. Trying to do the impossible. IMPOSSIBLE!! But here’s the thing: even if there were camera tricks (which doesn’t seem probable, since I saw him do the trick on live TV specials a few times) and even if there were magnets in his shoes (which seems more probable, if you consider science and gravity at all – and I believe he had a patent on the mechanics for the trick) one would still have to have a crazy amount of muscle and body control in order to do it. It was an amazing thing to watch. It remains one of my all-time favorite videos.
Of all the dancers in the world, the man became, bar none, the best at his craft. He was outrageously good, and miles ahead of everyone else as an innovator. A pioneer. Much like Bob Fosse was to anything Broadway, there’s no question what a Jackson move is. Timberlake and Shitney would have no act worth watching if it weren’t for Michael Jackson. No matter how you try, you can never ignore the unmistakable baseline of Billy Jean when is starts playing… it’s quintessentially Michael. I still have his danceable disco tunes like Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough and Rock With You on my party play-lists. Complete gems, they are. Everybody knows them – it’s like the cue to start dancing, everywhere in the world. You kinda can’t help yourself. The man was an icon.
That’s the Michael I will always remember – the one of my childhood. Now that he’s dead, it feels like the end of something in me, strangely. Thanks to the magic of YouTube, I’ve been sharing some of these amazing videos with my now five-year-old son over the past couple of years. Since he’s been in the media again so much lately, and the footage is constant, I can see it rubbing off on him. Earlier this week, out of the corner of my eye, I caught him trying to do the moonwalk. My heart felt pinched and a few tears actually welled up in my eyes… it was soooo rad, this scene before me. I felt like a little kid again, showing him how to do it. “You have to sliiide more, my darliing…” It is clear to me now MJ will never be forgotten.
This man, his music and his moves, helped make my life fun. Really fun! In return, the craparazzi and fickle media seemed to make his life a living hell, but I suppose that’s celebrity for you. Now that he’s gone, I hope he’s found peace at last. (Sniff.)
NOTE: Janet Jackson better not think of kicking off anytime soon… I can hear the creak in my bones already, conjuring up the Rhythm Nation days. I’ll have to stretch for a bit first.
G.G.
