IdeaTree

After all the media hype, is there anything left to be said about Michael Jackson’s life? I think so. In fact, hidden within the hype itself is insight not so much about Mr. Jackson as about ourselves.

The traditions of spirituality are all at base about becoming utterly empty and ordinary in favor of something extraordinary. Great art hints at the extraordinary, and we assume that that makes the artist also extraordinary in some way. But for the artist himself, if he is a true artist, it is instead an experience similar in feeling to that of being in the face of a powerful storm at sea, with all the strange bliss of being inconsequential in the face of a mysterious force.

Notice how hard it is to put those two things together when imagining an actual life: ordinary and inspired. The word that combines these two is not in our vocabulary.

I am amazed at Michael Jackson’s music and dancing. A genius of performance, he had an uncanny ability to channel a stage presence – aggressive, sexual, commanding – vastly removed from who he was as a person. As he said himself, “fame and fortune, they’re all illusion”. It’s chillingly wonderful to see the extent of how far the distance can be between the personality of the artist and the personality of his art, how deep that illusion can be. Amazing. The dichotomy made Michael Jackson all the more mesmerizing, the shy person backstage talking in a whispy girl’s voice who seconds later commands thousands to listen, and listen intently. He was transformed in service of the storm. I think of the Rumi poem that speaks of being an empty pipe, a flute for the breath of the universe; or of Mozart saying that he didn’t compose symphonies, he just dictated them whole from what he heard in the ether.

Despite his commanding presence on stage, today his shy persona talking continually of love is what was most remembered by millions worldwide. His girlish softness was far more powerful than anyone would have predicted. Maybe Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jesus, and Lao Tsu were right about the power of the yielding and the meek over the strong.

The world wasn’t quite ready for what Jackson had to say and found itself stretched too far to take it in completely. His naive message, born out of his own loneliness and isolation, was love: love beyond boundaries, beyond distrust. He was androgenous, post-sexual, with an innocence that is yet to be grasped. “Where there is love, I’ll be there…togetherness is all I’m after.” We were too jaded to take him at face value.

Art feeds both the soul and the ego. Becoming addicted to music has the same effect as becoming addicted to heroin: your personal development stops, your maturity stuck at the age at which you became addicted. Everyone wants to be an artist and get paid for it in money or attention, and once that taste is there, it persists for a tremendously long time. The strength of that reluctance shows itself all the time even with people of modest talent. Music stores are filled with aging wannabe rock stars who’ve been playing bars for years. So can you imagine a Michael Jackson going from that identity to being a “nobody” (though apparently a part of him wanted to)? Yet, despite his being trapped by our collective addiction to being or worshiping “somebodies”, his greater intent – that everyone just love each other – still communicated itself.

For those willing to set themselves aside in service of something that transcends all boundaries, there is an opening into a less complicated world. Everyone senses that possibility. We all want to hear a certain something that’s never quite captured in musical notes. The price is simple, but radical: the performer, whether speaker, musician, actor or dancer, must be set to the side. When that happens the performer becomes an observer, watching just like everyone else, and we all feel it. If we’re lucky we benefit from the transformation that happens, having our personalities rebooted, giving us a vacation from ourselves for just a little while. Don’t be surprised if you feel little emotion. This is not about milking the moment for emotion, despite appearances to the contrary. James Brown, a mentor of MJ, understood that. He spoke of the calm center that’s got to be inside no matter how fast or intense the outside.

This setting aside is rare. But we saw it in Michael Jackson. You may say he was the center of attention, he never set himself aside. But you would be wrong. His shy, retiring self was completely gone, left backstage, and we all felt the power of that transformation.

We also saw a rare example today in MJ’s Los Angeles memorial service as one after the other extremely talented artist set themselves aside, giving one after the other self-effacing performance in service of something greater: love.

In death, Michael finally, inadvertently communicated to a billion people what he was trying to say all along.

© 2009 by Ron Newman, All Rights Reserved