I wrote this article the day after Michael Jackson died. I lost my blog articles on my last server so I am getting this one back up for posterity’s sake!
I have been thinking and thinking over the last day and this is just so important for me to say after all of my thoughts and before they started to level off.
I have been thinking about the things that I feel are important in life and how I have seen how devastatingly painful the mistakes that are irreversible can be on a Family. And how those things, once done, can follow you around and paint your life and obscure anything of significant good or beauty you have done in your life and even in the lives of others.
I write the previous paragraph to let it be known how much I think about the damage that Michael Jackson may have done in the lives of the children and families of the children that he allegedly molested and emotionally devastated. If the allegations were true, you cannot overstate their importance.
I state these things first so that any thing positive I say about Michael Jackson will be tempered, as it should be.
The effect that Michael Jackson has had on my life, my children’s lives and my siblings, even my parent’s cannot be explained. I am incredibly hurt that he did not live long enough to redeem the damage that was done to those Children or his career. I had such high, idealistic hopes.
I felt about him like he was an extension of my Family in the sense that I wanted the best for him and his career. He was a Black (African-American) young man who was making major improvements in the lives of all Blacks and opening doors for all minorities.
And when he made missteps in his career and personal life, I always wanted to be on his side and prayed anything that hurt others weren’t true and anything that I thought was “silly” ( hyperbaric chamber, purchase of elephant man bones ) I simply thought folks should just “mind their own business”. Being protective again I guess.
I am a musician and composer…a person whose entire life and gifts are musical in most ways; how I dealt with and wooed girlfriends, how I bonded and related with my Children, how I have held hope of a greater existence and future for myself and friends and family surrounding me. That is how significant and important music is to me and why Michael Jackson and his death are so important and significant to me.
I grew up and was shaped in the mid to late 60’s and 70’s and 80’s and was influenced by music emotionally in ways beyond my comprehension. When the Jackson 5 became significant was when I even became significant to myself…just starting to become aware of the world outside of my Parents and Siblings and it was dominated by the J5 and Michael Jackson.
Gifts and entertainment choices were driven by a need to see these guys and to see them do well. Lyrics in their music, instrumentation and dance moves made me feel like doing something important in my life. These things made my goals and dreams formulate in my head and made them seem attainable.
I can remember each release of each album and what I was doing and what I did because of the current release by my favorite band “The Jackson 5”. Even when it seemed no one else was nearly as swept away by that particular album or song as I was.
Really important to me is not only what Michael Jackson has done in his lifetime, but how it affected me, what I was doing at that time and how I related to others because of it based on his music, dancing and compositions.
Now I choose to be guarded about letting my kids have an overnight stay with anyone else, even family, because of the things that were alleged of Michael (this is truly a sad distrust that his actions have created.)
I cling to the hope that he was truly too childlike to actually have done the things of which he was accused and also at the same time hope that he was just not emotionally savvy enough to understand that the things he did would be misconstrued because he didn’t know how it appeared to the rest of the world. That he was truly a man trapped in a child’s body making mistakes that take on a completely different appearance and significance coming from an adult.
I hope that we all see what we pushed him into with such a high profile entertainment career at such a young age and we contributed to his Peter Pan like development because we needed him to produce the entertainment that made us happy. We surrounded him with “Yes” men and women. People who warped his reality into one that made him feel he was doing things right. But after the glimmer and glammer and dance moves and singing and so forth lost it’s shine and appeal we looked at him as “strange” and not as eccentric while gifted and phenomenal and mesmerizing.
I am truly hurt that he didn’t get the chance to re-establish himself in the hearts and minds of all. I am hurt that he didn’t get a chance to somehow bring to light that the allegations were wrong and brought on by people who were trying to take advantage of his celebrity, kindness and naiveté. The naiveté which we all assumed that someone who was so successful and seemingly shrewd could not actually possess. But of course I may be completely wrong, but I don’t think we will ever know…maybe. But he is still like a brother to me ( in my small mind) because I have hoped and prayed as I still continue to, that like a Hollywood movie where the lead character is convincingly and adeptly setup to look guilty, that this will be the case with Michael and his career and personal life.
I hope that, now that he has gone, we can learn the right lessons from his mistakes and learn all that we can from his creative genius and musicality to make things in this world a good bit better than it is.
I am truly sorry for the hurt that his actions may have caused others when it came to his personal life, but I am so hurt by the fact that this important figure in my life, though a far cry behind my Mother, Father, Sister, Brothers, Wife and Children, has passed from us. The joy that he brought to me and obviously to others…I hope that it can redeem him and heal any hurt enough to mend hearts, minds and souls.
