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Michael Jackson Agonistes: An American Pop'era In Three Acts
"...human beings are still human beings and not piano keys, which, though played upon with their own hands by the laws of nature themselves, are in danger of being played so much that outside the calendar it will be impossible to want anything."
Fyodor Dostoevsky,
Notes From Underground
Act I: I Want You Back
Thursday, 25 June 2009, is the day everyone will live outside of the calendar, because that's the day when time stopped and hovered over U.C.L.A Medical Center in Westwood, Ca.
That was the day our King Of Pop -- Michael Joseph Jackson -- died from cardiac arrest (a.k.a., a broken heart), at 2:26pm, Pacific Standard Time.
One-hundred-sixty-eight hours later into the twenty millionth rotation of a never ending news cycle -- and to paraphrase a line from Joan Didion's Slouching To Bethlehem -- my center is not holding. A week later, and I am scared to turn on my TV, and not only because of BET's dismal attempt at a Michael Jackson tribute during their annual awards show which aired the Sunday after his death. Despite the powerful and moving words from Janet Jackson -- Michael's beloved baby sister -- and despite the best efforts of Ne-Yo, The OJays, Don Cornelius, Maxwell, New Edition, Tevin Campbell, Guy, Tyrese, Trey Songz, Monica, Keisha Cole, Jay Z, MC Lyte (the announcer), and Jamie Foxx as the host, the network (which some have caustically derided as Bamboozled Entertainment Television, a nod to Spike Lee's 2000 satirical masterpiece on the state of African American TV) simply dropped the ball. And yeah, I've heard the apologia: they only had three days to prepare, a minefield of combustible backstage politics, blah, blah, blah.
Please.
This was Michael Jackson.
There are no excuses.
Even Sean "Diddy" Combs -- a man constantly vilified in the press as an unrepentant attention whore, but who presented himself as a study of class, taste, and dignity in the front row audience Sunday night -- seemed mildly befuddled by the uneven presentation. However, BET cannot be singled out, because all of the networks have been condescendingly mocking in their assessment of Michael Jackson, that Wacko-Jacko-weirdo-cosmetic-surgery-junkie-what's-wrong-with-sharing-your-bed-pedophile. I mean, that's the media's King Of Pop construct, right? Even thought he was never convicted of the crime, and even though the kid from the first trial -- Evan "Jordy" Chandler -- has reportedly admitted almost two decades later, that Michael never touched him, and his stepfather wanted to fleece Michael out of millions.
Oh, did we mention that Michael Jackson has the biggest selling album of all time? That he was the greatest entertainer in the 20th Century? Naaaaah... just look at him! He's the Joseph-John Merrick of Gary, Ind! The Elephant Man! He's a freak!
I'm scared to turn on my TV right now, because I don't have a life jacket to buoy me against the raging flash-flood of soundbites, clips, and endless b-roll of Michael Jackson's oceanic talent. An oceanic talent which drowned in the undertow of our Tsunami-like exaltation.
You hear that?
It's the explosion of grief, a lachrymal carpet bomb detonated by the wails of men, women, and children all over the world. There was a report on London's contactmusic.com website , that 12 people in Europe have committed suicide. Said Gary Taylor, the president and owner of the MJJcommunity.com: I know there has been an increase (in deaths), I now believe the figure is 12. It is a serious situation that these people are going through but Michael Jackson would never want this. He would want them to live. They (fans) can't accept it, they feel in some sort of different reality. I'm stunned that he's dead. One minute he is coming here for concerts and the next he is gone... there will be a huge depression in the fan community when that happens.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson also weighed in: There is great pain but great cause to celebrate Michael's life. It made Michael happy saying "We Are The World". Don't self-destruct. We fall down sometimes, we get back up. That's the right thing to do. In Michael's name let's live together as brothers and sisters and not die apart as fools.
That other sound in your ears, are the pinging, digital chirps of Blackberry's, Palm Pre's, and iPhones, confirming the delivery and receipt of texts, emails, pics, video, and file attachments; a cluster-pluck of Michael Jackson's TM, which some have erroneously configured into his life.
PING!:
Did he have a will?
CHIRP!:
Girrrl?! You know he was on that stuff! It was an overdose. He just didn't wanna live no more.
PING!:
I told you them kids weren't his!
CHIRP!:
Is Katherine okay?
PING!:
I bet he cut Joe out completely!
CHIRP!:
They found him with bruises and needle-marks, my dude. Come on, now?! You know what this is! They knew the value of that catalog would jump through the roof, if he was-
A beggars banquet on a gluttony of gossip. An instantaneous appropriation through the airwaves of MJ's music, abracadabra, iconography, secrets, and brand to be bought and sold. But what can't be purchased, is his soul. I believe Michael wished his ghost to Providence a long time ago for safe-keeping, long before the first trial, because he had seen how the carrion-eaters got down while he was still in grade school.
I think a prescient Michael Jackson -- the original Benjamin Button -- heard the flap of vulture wings when he was just a ten-year-old charmer channeling James Brown and Jackie Wilson, gliding and soaring and singing in that audition with his brothers in Berry Gordy's mansion on Boston Street on Detroit's West Side. Or maybe it was on the Ed Sullivan Show, where a sunflower-Afro and bellbottom-jean-wearing Michael led The Jackson 5 through the paces of I Want You Back. Or maybe it Michael Jackson stamping his Nijinsky onto Thriller -- Michael's American Schereazade -- where he retrofitted the 'epaulement, releve' and grand plie' into the Moonwalk's reverse ballet, on Motown 25.
Whenever and wherever the maturation of Michael's business acuity, he knew this music bidness was not his friend. This business was a means to an end, and that end was to entertain us. To make us happy. But we are not happy, because this is truly fini in the three-act modern opera (or Pop'era, if you will) known as Michael Jackson Agonistes.
Logging onto You Tube -- that HD'd, 4G time machine where the future of the past can be viewed in the present -- I realize I can't deal with this finality, because I can't stop crying as I watch the video for Rock With You. In 1979, I was a 21- year-old clerk employed by the U.S. Post Office on 33rd and 8th Avenue in New York City. On Saturday nights, I was dancing the night away at Club Pegasus on 2nd Avenue and 64th Street, with my first love, Cynthia. Cynthia pushed me to seek out a gig with Soul Magazine -- edited thirty years ago by J. Randy Taraborrelli, the same guy who later wrote an unauthorized MJ bio titled Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness -- which published my first stories. Cynthia and I always waited for Rock With You to get our groove on, and when Michael sang, Out on the floor/there's nobody there/but us..., that's exactly what it felt like. You Tube is my portal: Jimmy Carter was in office. Florida, J.J., Michael, Thelma, Keith, Willona, and Penny moved out of the projects on final episode of Good Times. Fish and chips from Seafood Haven on 136th Street in Harlem. Subways without $20 metro-cards. Communication by phones you couldn't put in your pocket and mail delivered without the speed of e and without lol's. Crack was still the kinder-chanting sing-song thing you avoided on the sidewalk -- in order not to break your Momma's back -- and not an extended enchanted evening of white-rocked witchcraft inculcated by a dangerously ambitious Bad Lieutenant Colonel and teenage obeah men carrying divination rods that resembled AR-15's.
The video for Rock With You haunts me with memories and the desire to see that permutation of Michael Jackson once again. You know: Negroid Mike, the one with the subtle nose job and a splash of Luster-fied baby hair adorning his forehead like a Ethiopian crown. Rock With You projected a happy Michael Jackson onto the silver screens of our subconscious. A playful Boyish Man draped in a sequined, two-piece Osh-Kosh set -- with matching booties -- who mirrored a bioluminescent glitter child desperately trying to hold on to a rapidly evaporating innocence. Using his effortless choreography to transform fog, lasers, and halogen into his own sacristy, Michael Jackson allowed us into his sanctuary where the profanities of the material world could not touch him. Or U.S.
However, the noise from the rotary blades of that battalion of L.A. news-copters on Thursday, 25 June 2009, at 2:26pm, chopped the summer air and our glimmers of hope into quixotic slivers, as we realized our impossible dream was not going to come true.
Our King Of Pop was never going to wake up.
(Next, Act II: Mask In The Mirror)
(To read all three acts of Michael Jackson Agonistes, along with a four-part mini-documentary of Spike Lee's Michael Jackson Birthday Celebration in Brooklyn, NY's Prospect Park, click on this link.)
Follow Barry Michael Cooper on Twitter: www.twitter.com/BarryMichaelC
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Michael's music was woven through the fabric of the past 40 years of my life. I will miss him but at least he is at peace.
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@JerseyGirl4Obama: Mine too, Jg4O. What a beautiful sentiment. Thank you for posting.
The "Rock With You" video was made one year AFTER the song's release. When the single was released Michael still had the big disco-afro. His original Jheri-curl was part of the makeover for The Jacksons' TRIUMPH album the following year. Check out this live clip of the Jacksons in a 1981 concert and take note of how Michael looks from the waist up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wFMaJrTpVg&NR=1
Now, compare it to "Rock With You".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wFMaJrTpVg&NR=1
I think the "Rock With You" video was shot during a break in tour rehearsal using a costume and lasers intended for the tour. That tour was the first appearance of 80's Michael and his performing style has moved away from the old tightly synchronized (Motown) moves to the more stagey WIZ-influenced style of THRILLER and beyond.
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@superlive: oooookay, not sure of the point you are trying to make here. Here are the facts: "Rock With You" was released on 3 November 1979, and it was the second single from "Off The Wall". Next month--10 August--will be the 30th Anniversary of the release of "Off The Wall". Much of "OTW" was recorded during the 1979 "Destiny" tour for the Jacksons, which began in Bremen, Germany on 22 January 1979, and ended in L.A. on 18 December 1979. I know this because I interviewed one of the bodyguards for Michael from the Destiny tour--which many people refer to as the "Off The Wall" tour after the success of the album, but there was never a tour for "Off The Wall"--which will be included in "Act II" of Michael Jackson Agonistes. As far as Michael's change in appearance, I was making a particular point: I know what he looked like during the Destiny Tour, the cover of the "Off The Wall" album, and the video "Rock With You". But I do thank you for your feedback. I do appreciate it.
Since you mentioned the DESTINY TOUR, the people who attended the European, African, and US shows until June 09, 1979 in DC got this set list:
"Dancing Machine"
"Things I Do For You"
"Ben"
"Keep On Dancing"
Jackson 5 Medley: "I Want You Back" / "ABC" / "The Love You Save"
"I'll Be There"
"Enjoy Yourself"
"Destiny"
"Show You the Way to Go"
"All Night Dancin'"
"Blame It On The Boogie"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dzoo882aHoI&feature=related
When the tour resumed in Autumn (10/02/79) those people got the OFF THE WALL set:
"Dancing Machine"
"Things I Do For You"
"Off the Wall"
"Ben"
Jackson 5 Medley: "I Want You Back" / "ABC" / "The Love You Save"
"I'll Be There"
"Rock With You"
"Enjoy Yourself"
"Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough"
"Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO821DPNJZ4
Your essay really touched me: it is the first thing I have read that seems to really capture the bittersweet sadness and tragedy of the whole thing, while still sounding true to Michael's true beauty and gifts. He was so tortured by life, but managed to make so much goodness despite all that. It is a model for us all in our lesser travails, to follow his example and try to make the pain sing.
Thany you for writing it.
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@JKalos: Thank you for your beautiful words JK. I really appreciate it.
You expressed one aspect of my (and my family's) reaction to all of the Michael coverage. The disbelief of what has been impossible to really comprehend. I wasn't supposed to outlive MJ -- not while we were both in our 50s. The shock at how cruel and crass the circling media vultures could be -- someone actually gleefully stating how "great" dropping dead at 50 is -- and avalanche of unsubstantiated, unadulterated speculation from persons who never knew Michael and should have known better. Even a blogger on this site suggesting the Jacksons aren't grieving right, not mourning the same way he mourned his dead wife. The embarassment at the sloppy "tribute" filled with its lackluster, profanity-laden performances salvaged by Janet's briefest cameo. The running emails to and from friends in which one word serves as theme: unbelievable. The feeling of loss, akin to losing a family member.
You've captured it all and we thank you. I look forward to the other Acts.
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@jade7243: Thank you so much for your kind words. I appreciate it.
"my center is not holding."
You're not paraphrasing Didion, you're paraphrasing William Butler Yeats. Didion took the title for "Slouching Towards Bethleham" from Yeats' poem "The Second Coming," (which contains the lines: "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"). The poem also includes the line: "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;"
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@BringthePaine: Obviously, you have been slumbering
in "twenty centuries of stony sleep"
if you don't know that I know
where Didion's title and direction
came from. So thank you for your
post, and I am glad my writing was
powerful enough to stir you from
those twenty centuries of stony sleep.
I was quoting from Didion, and not Yeats,
but now you may return to counting
those docile beasts who hurdle over your puzzled head
as your ears fill with their somnolent bleats
And I just quoted Barry Michael Cooper. Thanks for your feedback...
Love your response. And, of course, your article.
This is a brilliant piece of writing. Thank you for wordsmithing. And I loved New Jack City.
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@zagyzebra: Thank you for your kind words, I appreciate it!
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Wow. Beautiful writing. Thank you for this.
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@Jamie: Jamie, thank you so much for your kind words and you are welcome. You made my day.
Thank you for a beautiful written piece. There are far too few. And you are right the world outside of the U.S. is putting us to shame. We don't deserve to call him ours. By the way Michael marked the one of the most poignant moment in my life as a young girl and that was the stirrings of love and desire with "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough" and "Rock With You". He was my first love and will always hold a special place in my heart. May he rest in peace despite others attempts to tear him down even in death.
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@ eridees: Thank you Eridees, and the passing of Michael Jackson marks the passing of an American epoch, and folks can continue to hurl stones at him, but the great thing is, now he can't feel them anymore. He wasn't perfect, and I will delve into that in Acts II and III, but like John (Joseph) Merrick said in the Elephant Man: :I am Not an animal..." Thanks again.
Were all his accusers discredited or just the one? After being falsely accused and settling with the blackmailer (if that's in fact what happened) why didn't Jackson stop these sleep overs if he was concerned about public perception and false accusations? Makes no sense. The dissonance is flagrant. In addition, this man's marriages seemed to serve two very odd purposes, one was to parade himself around as being heterosexual and the other was to "have" kids. There was no indication of any real intimacy with any women throughout his life. He wasn't into women, that's pretty clear. So now we are supposed to believe that the man lived a life completely devoid of any sexuality or sexual contact whatsoever. His life is none of my business, and should never have been any of the media's business either, but YOU put it all out there and now we're drawing our own conclusion. You try to back pedal and defend MJ after having dragged his reputation through the mud for 20 years. Nice.
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@ Furby: Thank you for your feedback. I appreciate it.
Sorry Mr Cooper, I vented and you were very gracious about it. A bit touchy on the subject having been a victim of sexual abuse and having had to keep it a secret to avoid hurting my family. I have pretty raw feelings about that stuff and have a pretty good perp radar as a result of it.
very handsomely presented, but it's difficult to appreciate your beef with the media. Michael was a trainwreck of epic proportion (or chose to present himself as such) *and* a hugely popular pop entertainer/media figure. it shouldn't surprise that many are looking for the moral to this tale of excess.
looking forward to more.`
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@Uncle Kudzu: I appreciate your feedback and thanks for the kind words, U.K.
ah! a thoughtful writer *and* a gentleman! thank you, kind sir, for taking the time to respond to those of us following your Three Acts.
Wao, long overdue, this is an excellent and beautiful piece!! waiting patiently for the next act. will file this away.
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@nkadzi: Thank you for your kind words. I appreciate it.
wow, very well written...can't wait for next act
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@stormynite03: Thank you so much stormy, and Acts II and III will be posted by late tomorrow/early Wednesday, GOD Willing. Thanks again.
Thank you Barry, for the memories..Last week, I was struck hard by the fact that Facebook friends in Morocco were genuinely mourning and eulogizing Michael in the way that he deserved. It is sad to think that the rest of the world "got" Michael and his genius better than we did in America..
Michael was pure light, love, and brilliance. I believe the media, and a bitter "establishment' tried to destroy Michael, surely they broke his heart. However, he would have achieved phenomenal success in his new series of concerts, and maybe then, would have gotten the justice he deserved. Even now, seeing the outpouring for this wonderful man and his legacy, from all over the world, is a kind of sweet revenge. I only hope his beautiful soul is feeling this love...
Americans have a tendency to tear down anyone or anything that is remotely different than they are. People who do not appreciate Michael Jackson and the gifts he gave us will never change. They look at him and judge his exterior looks and not his heart and soul. He had demons like we all do but his were magnified because of who he was and the genius we was. May he rest in peace he will be missed.
mikala : Americans? America is a huge landmass of Canda, Us, central america, and south america, so please be specific.
I dont think MJ is being torn down. His too many surgeries, weird behaviour, molestation accusations have to be reported on, along with his genius in what he has givne us musically.
When Roman Polanski dies his films will be mentioned as will the fact that he drugged & raped that teenage girl.
When Woody Allen dies, his film work will be reported as well as the fact the he took nude pictures of, & then married, & then had kid with his adopted daughter.
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@mikala: Thank you for your feedback, and I agree, may Michael Jackson--the King Of Pop--rest in peace. Thank you.
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@marysandra: Wow MarySandra, thank you so much, I believed Michael knew a whole bunch of folks loved him, but he couldn't get past the haters. GOD Rest his soul. Thanks again.
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