Michael as Memory

I recently released Kiss the Sky, a novel about a black rock musician. Then I did an event with an actual black rock musician who read my book and said that the part about Michael Jackson was so eerie. I had forgotten all about it. But I found it... Written years ago... And yes, eerie.

Tell me what you think about MJ and your memories... I am getting creeped out watching all the old footage, especially the ones of Diana calling Michael "sexy" while they are are both wearing those dark spangly shirts...

I wish he'd been happy. I find it hard to believe he was.

Peace,
F

Excerpt, Kiss the Sky, Atria Books, 2009 -- Written from the P.O.V. of the main character.

Drifted into a drowse and thought about the way music was my whole life.

My great grandfather sold Billie Holiday reefers, back when she was a bad little girl and he was a dirty old man. A withered up little yellow man. Always looking at the girls of school-age. A sailor, in and out of port. In town just long enough every time to get great-grandma pregnant. And wasn't it just like me to love Billie, all of her, even her vices.

Then there was my first musical love, Michael Jackson. I was six, and to my child's eyes he seemed just enough older to know a lot of things I wanted to learn. He was pure music, shimmering, shimmying, shaking, grooving, moving, liquid hipbones and fluid bell-bottomed pantlegs, denim, slouchy caps, a sexy choirboy backed up by his older brothers; plus television, dancing lions and tin-men, a too-old Diana as Dorothy. But wait, that last part was later.

Still, the Michael and The Wiz were always linked in my mind. When I was six, my Daddy and I went to see The Wiz, way before the movie with Michael and Diana, before the nose jobs and the skin lighteners and the hair straighteners and out-of-court settlements. Strange third-person memory: I see myself and my father walk towards the exit, along a half-lit aisle, with the play unfolding (bright reds and golds) behind us.

But: Michael. His was the music of longing, in a man-child's voice that a little girl could understand before she truly knew desire. I liked Michael the same time Daddy liked to play the Isley Brothers. I didn't understand the Isley's lyrics (thank God), but their guitar licks and keyboards made it hard for me not to dance; their whispers tickled my ears.

Older still: When my girl scout troop had a party I brought Stevie Wonder and my friend Ronnice brought Michael Jackson's Off the Wall, which was everything you needed to know about the difference between uncool and cool. Stevie was uplifting and parent-approved; the teenaged Michael was your best friend's older brother, a boy who you had a crush on so bad you thought you might melt every time you saw him. Ronnice was in fifth grade and I was in third, which might have been part of my problem, but not all of it. She was what my mother called "fast" -- loose with the boys, hard and unforgiving with the girls.

I loved Michael, don't get me wrong. How could I not? He was my first. But I mounted a defense of Stevie, which all the girls took as a weak-assed move.

When I was in eighth grade, Ronnice had an abortion. Like most of my fast girlfriends, she loved house music, the kind you heard in the clubs she'd sneak into. She was underaged but built like a brick shithouse and nobody checked her I.D. When she got into LL Cool J, I was loving Prince.

Later I worked my way through alternative rock, romantic R&B, gay disco, Public Enemy, Madonna and Grace Jones. Music ecstatic and anthemic, smoke drifting through laser lights, tranny boys in platform heels and lip liner, parties on the subway platform, lots of drugs but not down my throat or up my nose, the music simply lifting me, carrying me like the wind under the cape of a superhero or a pigeon caught in an updraft from a subway grate.

The music, just the music, used to be enough for me. Everything else came later.

I wanted to get back to those days again.

Follow Farai Chideya on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@faraichideya

Comments

[dinglebe]

Don't care.

[Classof89]

"The music, just the music, used to be enough for me. Everything else came later."

My sentiments exactly.

Great post.

[Winning09]

Steve Wonder is SOOOO much better than Michael Jackson.

[3fingerbrown]

Totally agree. In the long run, Stevie will be seen as the more important artist.

And as far as "cool" is concerned, I guess it depends on what one considers cooler: the activism of the '70s or the narcissism of the '80s; Stevie looking into our culture, or Michael looking into his mirror. To me, it's the pinnacle of cool that Stevie had a huge hit record with "Superstition," the most uncompromisingly anti-religion top-40 song of all time. And in "Living for the City," an incredibly cool pop-epic, the N word is tossed off in a way that perfectly conveys the casual disdain of racism.

Parent-approved? I guess some adults were too busy grooving to that fat, juicy beat to listen to the lyrics. But my pastor banned "Superstition" from our school dances, and the implications of "For the City" made my parents profoundly uncomfortable. How cool is that?

[SJBrown]

Michael Jackson was born about two and half weeks after I was. I remember him as part of the Jackson Five. I loved the Jackson Five. They looked like the boys we knew, they danced liked us, and they seemed accessible. I'd save my money and buy their 45s. I learned how to win radio call in competitions just to get tickets to their concerts.

But I don't remember ever considering Michael Jackson as sexy. I always associated him with the music I loved as a little girl. He just didn't seem to mature like the rest of us.

I have been catching up on his music and videos and all the stories of his personal struggles that I dismissed with eye rolls at the time.

It's interesting to see the reaction to his sudden death and hear the memories a younger generation. I would have never predicted there would be this kind of outpouring.

[boycottrightwingthings]

Michael Jackson at his best was sooo sexy, and charismatic. I used to want to marry him when I grew up (LOL) being 5 years younger than he is. He was sooo cute in Off The Wall and Thriller and even in the mid to late 90's when he was married to Lisa Marie Presley. Look at those years he was dating, married to, and when they still saw each other after their divorce, he looked so happy and on top of the world with Lisa Marie. I believe that he found a measure of love and acceptance and soulmate type love with her that his self destructive ways kept him from keeping once he attained it, and the loss of that love and further humiliation of the trial that he was acquitted in, left him heartbroken, burned out and disillusioned. He couldn't stay alive for himself, so of course he couldn't stay alive for Lisa or his children, either.

[caligyrl74]

OMG Farai, I couldn't have expressed how I felt about Michael better. I was saying to someone the other day that, even though I didn't actually know him, Michael was literally my first love! As a teen I described my childhood love for him as 'obsession,' but as a 35 year old woman I know that it was pure puppy love. I loved Michael, always will. It saddens me that his life became so tragic and I spent so many years ignoring his music and legacy...but I can assure you I will NEVER forget again.