Here's How We Know Our Feelings Are Real

I was in a monastery in Syria when I heard that Michael Jackson had died. "What a shame!" I thought. "What a sad life!" And then I went back to looking at icons. (The kind of icons that feature a Madonna and child -- I mean, a real Madonna and child, a Madonna-looking-good-at-1,500, not just at 50, and a child that wasn't "rescued" from the other side of the world.)

When I switched on the news at the hotel that night, I discovered that we were in the midst of a cataclysm. I can't swear that the besuited males on the Middle Eastern channels, sounding angry in Arabic, were debating the finer points of "Thriller" and "Billie Jean", but if they were distracted by fripperies like the Iranian election and settlements on the West Bank, nobody else was. The world was in mourning. They were twittering their (badly spelled) grief straight into CNN, straight into my hotel bedroom -- grief for a psychopathically arrested, self-hating, self-mutilating pop star they'd never met and were never likely to.

And so the freak show rolled on, culminating in an all-singing, all-swaying, all-weeping extravaganza in which his children, finally not swathed in blankets (even the one called Blanket) were encouraged to parade their grief. One of them (one who shares the name of someone nearly as famous as her father, but without the work, the talent, or the pop) was even pushed on to a stage to speak. Kind of. "I just want to say that I love him so much," she squeaked before breaking down. "Speak up!" hissed her aunt.

Which, of course, is the trouble. Nobody ever expected the Wacko memorial to be a triumph of dignity, taste or accurate historical record -- or indeed of the children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard model of child-rearing -- but poor little Paris, bereft of the only father she has ever known (and therefore, heart-breakingly, describes as "the best") speaks for us all. We no longer trust the contents of our heads and the contents of our hearts. It's only when they're vomited out into the public arena -- the blogosphere, the twittersphere, or "best", as Paris would say, the eternal Neverland of telly -- that they become real. It's only then that they count.

Luckily, Paris reached a worldwide audience about the same size as the population of India, so she'll know, in the tough years ahead, when more information leaks out about her deeply peculiar father, that her feelings were really real. Poor Shelley Sawers, whose Facebook entry was hastily removed after people rushed to congratulate her husband on his appointment as head of MI6, must now be wondering if he ever wore those Speedos. Did he meet that actress from Footballers' Wives? Did they have a lovely holiday? Not anguish in quite the same league as Paris's, perhaps, but who are we to assess another's grief?

Sorry, what a silly question. We're all reviewers now, all critics in the grand opera of How We Feel, an opera in which we're both participants and spectators. As Paris did, so do we all, splurging our heartbreak over lovers lost, scarpered or (let's be honest) just rather disappointing. "You should twitter" said someone to me the other day. To say, what? I'm a bit tired? I did my job? Isn't that what lovers (lost, scarpered or disappointing) are meant to be for?

If Princess Diana's death marked the official launch of the Age of Hysteria, Michael Jackson's surely marks its heyday. It's an age in which every issue in our lives is basted in a marinade of emotions so thick and lurid that we skim the facts, skip the argument and go straight for the sobs and the screams. MPs' expenses? Sack the bastards! Immigration and social housing? Send 'em back! Release of criminals with the surname Biggs? Throw away the key! Forget the brain. We don't need the brain. We're all heart now. Hearts panting wildly on stained, sticky sleeves.

This morning, one of my closest friends told me she has cancer. She was, she said, chastised by the consultant for being too calm. She didn't attempt a defence. She didn't want to attempt a defence. The word she could have used is "private". Quaint, old-fashioned, precious private. And please God, please Paris, please Shelley, please Wacko, not yet obsolete.

Comments

[ericajeanine]

Paris wasn't pushed to speak, it was unplanned. Her family was there to support her choice to express her feelings about her fathe, not force her to make to express them. I think it is cruel to mock her feelings that her Dad was "the best" father. She deserves to remember her father in a loving way. Just because the outside world may not have understood Michael Jackson, doesn't give anyone the right to discount if he was a good father, since we were not on the inside to see his relationship with his children and I think it will be very cruel and sad if his kid's memories of him end up tainted by all the BS that was written about him.

[ejconner]

I have to agree with the first comment -- mocking a child who's mourning her father is uncalled for. Was the memorial a spectacle? Sure. I didn't watch it, but I didn't need to. Obviously a MJ tribute was going to be over the top. Would anyone expect otherwise?

That doesn't change the fact three kids lost the only parent they had, and their grief is as real as that of so-called "normal" people, however they express it. She felt moved to speak in front of her father's casket. Wow, cut her some slack. She's what, 12? Just because her father was famous doesn't mean she should be objectified by armchair analysts and subjected to public ridicule for expressing her feelings.

I personally don't live in an Age of Hysteria, but then again I don't watch cable news networks. And yes, there is a segment of the navel-gazing population that needs to broadcast their feelings 24-7, but I wouldn't say it's a majority of people, and I certainly wouldn't fault a child for publicly mourning her very public father.

But hey -- working that hot MJ angle certainly worked here, didn't it? I took the time to comment. And that's the whole point of writing a blog, isn't it? To express personal opinions and make pithy commentary to keep comments and page views up? And to think I thought irony was dead....