Someone actually asked me my reaction to the death of Michael Jackson. I don’t know why I’m even taking this on, but hey, I’m a musician, I never learned the fine art of avoiding lost causes. (I named one of my rock bands “Saint Jude” for chrissake).
Thriller
I’ve read a lot about Michael Jackson lately. It seems to me people can’t help but fall into one of two camps, the camp that looks at Michael Jackson in terms of his art, and the camp that looks at Michael Jackson the man. It seems that how deeply they are entrenched in their camp determines the degree to which a person can overlook the opposite facet of the man’s existence. If you’re dug into Michael Jackson the Man, it becomes very hard to see Michael Jackson the Artist. If you’re dug deeply into Michael Jackson the Artist, it can be hard to see the man.
And in that way, Michael Jackson really must be the King of Pop.
I’ve always had this deep and abiding ambivalence towards musical artists. (Maybe that’s because I aspire to be a musical artist and I have a deep and abiding ambivalence towards myself?) People tell me Paul Westerberg is a dick (he did fire Bob Stinson for being a drunk and doing too many drugs). Right now I’m listening to Oasis, tell me it’s not hard to see those guys strictly through the prism of their art.
It really is the essence of popular music that its creators are human, they exist and in fact subsist on frailties. If they’re doing their job well, those frailties and that humanity not only fuels their work, but it infuses it. The indians say that when you hunt and kill a deer you eat the tip of the deer’s heart so that his strength is passed on to you. Well, for an artist, frailty and weakness are your strength, they’re your heart; and goddamned if true, aspiring artists don’t spend every waking moment trying to create a work that the world can eat the heart out of.
And as consumers of this art, we do it willingly.
In the case of Michael Jackson, more people ate the heart out of his work than any other artists in history (No, I DO NOT count the fucking travesty known as The Eagles Greatest Hits, bleck!).
So, is it any wonder that there’s so much ambivalence about Michael Jackson? Millions of people consumed his frailties, weaknesses, and humanity. Now, many of these same people are adults and they refuse to see him as anything other than a pedophile. I wonder about this inability to separate artist from man, to see that one’s consumption and worship and fandom becomes part of the essence of the man we deride today.
None of this serves as an attempt to deny the wrongs of the man. Some people see only the man, some only the artist. Whichever camp your trench is in is your gig and I don’t begrudge you that. I don’t blame anyone for keeping their head down. When we’re talking about these kinds of things – art and molestation – it’s not easy to stick your head up.
So, back to the question at hand: my reaction to the death of Michael Jackson. Very well, my reaction to the death of Michael Jackson is as follows:
May each of us create a body of work capable of overshadowing all the times we’ve been a punchline.
