Remember this video of Michael Jackson ‘Black or white’? He was dancing with the whole wide world, people from every single country and everyone was nice and friendly… At the end of the video people faces were transforming into each other with a very clever technique as if the entire human population was one. Michael Jackson wanted to make us believe this, ‘We are the world’, ‘Heal the world’, but I’m not sure he really believed it himself, his personal world had become too weird for this at the end of his life.
But I don’t want to remember him that way, I want to remember him as this hyper talented little boy who could not only sing, but was already at the top of his game at 11 years old, this young man who could not only dance but could moondance, this eternal adolescent who had absorbed all the moves, all the rhythms, sliding, turning, spinning, whirling so well that nobody could beat it or has even beat it since. I want to remember him young, menacing and thrilling the world charts with his hardcore dancing. The way he made you feel at that time is part of your life forever, and he changed the rules for the pop world because he was its king for a long time.
I want to remember him very young, before all the physical alterations, before the grotesquely freakish world he had created, the ‘I want you back’ time, a song that could you make you happy in 5 minutes of complete effervescence and exuberant energy with a terrific piano intro, some chords, and this little voice sobbing and lamenting with so much power. I can picture him, like in a black and white photo, and all the potentials were still there at that time.
But it feels conflicting to remember him even then because we know what terrible pain was behind this perfect professionalism, what terrible paternal authority was directing the flawless show. Anyway I look at it, my memory of Michael cannot escape trouble and torment.
At a time when his family is sucking every penny of what is left of his renewed fame (his mother is going to publish a book, ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’, and to make a record deal for 273 unreleased Michael Jackson songs), fans have been denied the access of his mausoleum at Forest lawn to commemorate the anniversary of his death. Michael Jackson’s life was disturbed and his afterlife forever uneasy, this is a large price he had to pay to have been the greatest dancer who has ever existed.