Perilous Isolation: The Very L.A. Death of Michael Jackson
However one feels about the passing of Michael Jackson - international superstar, childhood hero, or childhood thief - here's what I can't help believing: His death would not have occurred, not in the same way (taking speeding taxis into account) had he lived in Manhattan.
What happened to Michael Jackson could only happen in Los Angeles - a city where elegant, moneyed suburbia, and its favorite accessory and most insidious symptom - the elaborately gated community - isolate its residents. Eventually, it was his isolation that ruined his life, that attracted those who could further isolate him, that killed him.
Holmby Hills, Brentwood, Bel Air, Beverly Hills, and the Palisades Riviera are star-studded hillsides where residents live as cloistered as Buddhist monks in a Himalayan retreat. But Buddhist monks have each other. And stars have...personal anesthesiologists, personal trainers, personal masseuses, personal stylists - all paid companions. Have you noticed almost all of Jackson's "close friends" were on the payroll?
That is why, if I were truly a personal friend (i.e. not the hair stylist or celebrity "lifeologist"), I would tell my best friend/movie star to leave Los Angeles and the siren call of "20,000 square feet with 360 degree views" immediately. Abandon year-round sunny climes and go where winter is slushy and summer is one long, sweat drip: New York City.
My boyfriend and I have an ongoing argument. He grew up in Manhattan, just a couple of blocks from Madison Square Garden, but loves Los Angeles. He loves the weather, the right on red -- and the personal space. He hates New York with its $2,400 Yankee tickets and hedgefund managers who once knew better than to buy on "his" side of town. On the other hand, I grew up on the East Side (the wrong side) of Hollywood, but lived for many years in that estate on top of the hill; I have issues with too much space. Recently, I moved from my lush, beautiful neighborhood so chock-full of stars homes that one of the few vehicles I'd see on its wide, empty roads (there are no sidewalks) were white Starline "Mini-Buses" bursting with tourists looking for movie stars. Mine was a secluded compound situated over three acres. It also had a gate. And a long driveway. At night, the setting was pitch black and quiet. I felt frightened whenever I put my children to bed. If I screamed, who would hear? Certainly not a neighbor. When had I last seen one? Maybe the coyotes.
Twice my younger son had allergic reactions that warranted emergency responses; the paramedics were delayed - they'd had trouble finding my home. The outside world, pushed away by affluence, couldn't help us. My son's life, in this world behind gates, was in jeopardy.
We all ended up sleeping in the same room for months.
Where there is a congested metropolis, there are neighbors - people who aren't paid companions living in close quarters. With people comes eyes and ears. Your neighbors can hear you, can see you. Can complain to the super about you. Can and will call the cops on you.
How about this? If you're one of the wealthy few, like Jackson, a doorman will keep an eye on you, and your packages, and your visitors.
It's true that too much access can be dangerous. John Lennon was shot outside his home, the Dakota (Rebecca Schaeffer met the same terrible end in Los Angeles.) But there's the general feeling when one sees a celebrity on the street in New York, he or she is attempting to live life in a normal way, and that decision should be respected. In Soho, where I lived for six months when I was writing my latest novel, "Queen Takes King", I often spotted celebrities. John Turturro reading the paper at a sidewalk café. Woody Allen, back in the day, scurrying along the street, hands deep in his pockets. Famke Jannsen walking her Boston Terrier. Uma Thurman, Julianne Moore or Liv Tyler at a neighborhood park with their children. Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker dining a deux. Spike Lee sauntering, alone and recognized, yet comfortable, through a crowd of people.
I've lived in Los Angeles all of my life - I have never seen a celebrity walking a dog, or reading a newspaper. Never. Michael Jackson couldn't have hidden his face (and his children's faces) behind germ masks in Manhattan. He would have been called out in a second. I can't help but think he'd have been a happier, healthier guy if only he'd been able to walk to the bodega.
Little Michael Jackson was the first boy I ever loved. My three sisters and I argued almost every afternoon over which Jackson we'd marry. I picked Michael and stuck with him through thick and thin, although I thought Marlon could be a contender, and Jermaine was the most handsome of the five boys. The album was ABC and the four of us danced in our shared bedroom as innocently as he sang. Albums were a big deal in our house - we weren't the kids whose parents peeled off twenties for their children to buy records on Aron's on Highland or Tower Records on Sunset. The Levangie Family record "collection" only held the nearest and dearest - The Beatles, and we played each album into oblivion. The vinyl was warped, the records scratched. There wasn't a cover that wasn't mangled. The Jackson Five ABC, though, remained pristine. "ABC", "La La I Love You", the magnificent "The Love You Save" were played over and over on our pink and white record plastic player - and pity my seven-year-old self if I was ever careless dropping the needle.
The Beatles were out of our reach. They were older, more sophisticated. Paul, George, John and Ringo would not be knocking on my door, a spray of fresh daisies in hand, asking to marry me. They had already discovered meditation, psychedelics and Yoko. And the boys in my neighborhood didn't look like the Fab Four - they looked like, well, the Jacksons.
Besides, Michael was close to my age. In my feverish imagination, I thought it possible he had chosen not to have a girlfriend; that he was waiting for me, the chubby, brown-haired girl who understood him. I didn't think about the fact that he'd never even had a childhood, much less puppy love. (Though it was Donny Osmond who sang of Puppy Love, his voice strained for the high notes Michael Jackson attained effortlessly. The Osmonds were the soul-free brothers. Though they seemed nice and certainly had paid their dental bills, we couldn't even pretend to want to marry them. We wouldn't waste our allowances on their music.)
Smash cut to my 40s - after two divorces, two children, a full family life and career - and the shiny age of downloading. I rediscovered my childhood "boyfriend". Michael sang to me from my iTouch, reaching out across years, disappointments, triumphs, and other loves found and lost. He reached out while I cried. He made me dance in the mornings with my children as I'd done with my sisters; he made me happy.
I blame him - and give him credit for helping me fall in love again, with the sportswriter from Manhattan, thanks to the frank encouragement of "Maybe Tomorrow" and a slow dance that still, a year and a half later, lingers, shimmering and sweet in my mind.
My children love young Michael Jackson's music - they don't know of this other, post-Thriller Michael. My little one looked at his picture in the paper the day after he died and insisted that the "white girl" on the front page couldn't be Michael Jackson.
He was, I told him, another version of that boy he knows; little Michael Jackson had still been in him, somewhere.
As much as it pains me to say this: Michael Jackson, whoever he was, whoever he became, never had a chance in my city.
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The "Olsen twins" live mostly in Manhattan........and they're just as peculiar in NY as they are in Los Angeles, with their bodyguards, hangers-on and nightclubbing. Remember when they made a big deal out of enrolling in NY University? Less than a semester later, both twins dumped the "scholastic" life in favor of even MORE nightclubbing and craziness!
I love Los Angeles. And Gigi, it's not all "manicured lawns" and tourists staring at your house, unless you live in Beverly Hills or Bel Air. You should live in a really cool neighborhood like Silverlake or Palms---------nobody will bother you there! Even in Burbank, you can see lots of coyotes in the early morning hours. You can be as "REAL" in Los Angeles as you supposedly can be in NY.
I was constrained by space in my previous post and was leaning toward criticisms of L.A. However, it does have some redeeming virtues. I lived in Silverlake.....Maltman Avenue, Lucile, Marcia Drive and finally Hamilton Way on the first lap of going up into the hills. LA has many pluses. For one thing you can become anonymous by moving to another area and starting anew. with a whole different set of firiends. Also, it's a constantly evolving type of place that even if you live there for 10 years there are areas and places you become aware of that you never knew existed. It's an exciting type of discovery, different, but exciting. You just have to keep motivated and don't procrastinate. Reject the tempataion to become lazy with the sun beating down and zapping your energy....otherwise you'll opt to sit by the pool ...instead of polishing up that book proposal sitting on your desk. I admit that I had to make several trips to New York before I realized that I loved LA and couldn't wait to get "home."
I am intrigued by your article and this is way too small a space to write all I want to about LA and its perilous isolation. I am a native New Yorker who moved to LA after high school. It was culture shock.... so quiet compared to the clamor of honking taxi cabs and throngs of in-step human traffic making it down 34th Street...no outside stimulation... a certain thread of sameness with manicured lawns and swimming pools; no props to hold you up or hug you; perpetual sunshine and thirsty palm trees with heavy beards...pink and turquoise flocked Christmas trees. In essence, living in LA requires a strong sense of pupose due to a lack of a nucleus and sense of "community." I compare the perilous isolation to being stuck in quicksand.... immobility...topped out by a zapped energy level. I believe our beloved Michael J got caught up in this quicksand and the shady people he surrounded himself with did not try to pull him up. These are my thoughts. Wish I could write more.
Loneliness and isolation has one residency, and that's in the heart. NYC, or any city for that matter cannot heal that.
The old hippie saying comes to mind, put to good use in The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai:
"Wherever you go, there you are". Michael Jackson likely would have had a different but equally
weird time in New York. His demons were inner, not outer, and would have manifest anywhere.
He claimed to be so lonely, even as a young star. How can someone with 8 brothers and sisters
be lonely unless he feels isolated inside? That is a tragedy. He was surrounded by love and
companionship but somehow could not feel it. Instead he surrounded himself with paid love
and companionship and we see where that got him.
i live in one of those elaborately gated socal communities. i know practically all my neighbors. we have each other over for bbq's, drinks or just to hang out for a little while. one could choose isolation here. or not.
Tying the author's work on Rescue Me into the above essay, I would note that the response time for BOTH FDNY and LAFD-- about five minutes -- blows away the response time in most SECLUDED areas.
As of 2005, a majority of fire departments nationwide couldn't even meet the SIX minute standard.
http://gothamist.com/2008/01/07/fdny_response_t_1.php
http://www.mysafela.org/accidents/38-accident-articles/172-medical-emergency-lafd-response-timeline
http://cms.firehouse.com/web/online/News/Report--Majority-of-Fire-Departments-Nationwide-Fail-to-Meet-Response-Time-Standards/46$38892
In particular, note the section on cardiac arrest, and the need for assistance -- not just response -- within 4-6 minutes.
http://publicsafety.com/article/article.jsp?id=2255&siteSection=5
This sounds like a circular argument. The very reason Michael Jackson most likely lived all those years in Neverland Ranch (Santa Barbara, by the way) was to have privacy. Do you really think he'd have that in NYC? With Page Six and gossip columnists? So your solution to his problems with the prying eyes of the media and the public is to immerse himself even more in the public eye by living and walking around New York?
I don't doubt that the environment Jackson created for himself contributed to his death, but I doubt he would have been any different living in New York versus Neverland. The only difference would be that instead of living in a secluded house with acres of land, he'd be living so high above in a penthouse that the neighbors who you say would save his life would look like ants. I just can't imagine Jackson would manage having morning coffee every day in New York and being left alone.
Interesting commentary. However, why must you and other writers tear down one artist to build up another. Donny Osmond did not strain to hit the notes in Puppy Love or any of the other songs he and his brothers recorded. Michael Jackson respected Donny and his talent. Michael respected Donny as a parson and as an artist and cheered him on throughout his varied and very successful career. I doubt Andrew Lloyd Webber would have hand-picked Donny to star in his musical "Joseph & the Technicolor Dreamcoat" if he had doubts about his vocal talent.
I have been a long-time fan of both Donny and Michael's. I can rejoice in their individual talents and success. Maybe you need to have a little bit more of an open mind or at the very least, learn how to listen to the long-held adage of 'if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all'.
The post's author is the birth-mother of Rescue Me -- my favorite show?
AMAZING TALENT!
"...nor does she anticipate winning anything in the near future" my eye.
Oh come on, come on.
Beautiful essay. Thank you. As a native Californian, and now proud New Yahker, it hit so many, er, chords.
My kids are now Michael Jackson fans after a July 4 road trip of all-MJ-all-the-time.
I am particularly happy that their favorite song is... Man In the Mirror.
Aren't we all?
Excellent post! I identified with your memories of singing and dancing to ABC and dreaming of marrying Michael Jackson. We are about the same age. I also agree with your take on the effects of isolation. Even though I grew up in a suburb where everyone stayed to themselves, I have always been suspicious of isolated areas. I live in a big metro area and lived in the city for many years. We moved to a suburb two years ago, but we moved to one that is an active, bustling small town. We ruled out a place that was cheaper and more spacious because it was in the "boonies" and that gave me the creeps. I want to be where someone can hear me scream. I would emphasize one thing, though. It is the combination of isolation and great wealth that seems to be the most destructive. A person has to have the means to have all of those "paid friends." Because they are paid, and paid well, they will never tell their employer "no." That was the tragedy of Michael Jackson.
Those feelings of isolation you describe are very real. Other kids ride their bikes to the neighbors and park them on the lawn so they can play with their friends. I have never seen a bike on my street, and, I hear they arrest people who walk on the street. Who ever thought up play dates must live in Los Angeles because you get driven everywhere to go on play dates. It is, as they say, like this altered reality.
I can't imagine how Michael Jackson lived in it as long as he did. The chaos and endless screaming with constant menace has to make a person want to retreat from the world. Yet he withstood it all. He left us an unimaginable legacy. The media will now turn on some other star and beat them to death too. They are hired guns, paid assassins; if you will. I have been in Africa where they have nothing. But they know who Michael Jackson was, the real man, not some monster created out of lies, deceit, and jealousy. When I was sick or scared my mother slept in my bed with me. They were some of the best times in my life, when I felt the safest in the world. I think that Michael Jackson was a very protective man, wanting to make the children who came into his life feel a little safer. An emotion, sadly, he never got to feel in his own life
This is a beautiful comment. I cry everytime I view his videos "Heal the World." and "Earth Song." He was light years before the world.
Heath Ledger lived in NY. Didn't help him a bit.
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Ah! I was expecting this comment. I had edited the following:
Okay, I know: I have to address Heath Ledger, whose death came as huge shock, it seems, to everyone, including those who were closest to him. But his death, I feel, is different than Michael’s, a different sort of celebrity pathology, if you will. Ledger didn’t have a sickness cultivated by isolation. His tragic death seemed to be one of timing and circumstance and bad choices that anyone who’s been overworked and sleep-deprived for a long period of time could make. One thing remains certain: unlike with Jackson, there was no personal anesthesiologist or IV in sight.
MJ was too big even for NYC. He would not be able to go to the bodega. Spke Lee? Woody Allen? Sure. MJ? No Way. He was bigger than Elvis and John Lennon. Sadly he did not have the personal strength to survive living in the bubble. It is why I have so much sympathy for anyone living in The White House. Just think of the sacrifice the Obamas are making living in their gilded cage. It's beginning to look like MJ was more like Elvis and Belushi, drugged superstars surrounded by enablers trapped inside a bubble. The real issue needs to be show business' tolerance of rampant, powerful drug abuse.
It seems to me, you just made the same argument that what "killed: Heath Ledger is kith and kin to what "killed" Michael Jackson. It reads to me like celebrity and more importantly money (or the appearance thereof) is at least in part at the root cause.
Heath Ledger had access to a similarly dangerous concoction of prescription medicines, anti-depressants and the like. He had a cadre of friends who, 'though close, were not close enough to stop him from taking more and more.
And to address the idea of being less isolated in NYC, the gated communities are vertical not horizontal, with high tech security systems and uniformed doormen and concierge stations to keep the riff-raff and common folk at bay. Many is the celebrity who comes to New York where they can pretend to be anonymous among millions, who will -- with the studied perfection of blase New Yorkers -- and surreptiously gawk at the movie star in their midst.
The death would have been different but not by much.
Heath Ledger has also not been in the spotlight since he was 9 or 10 and had only reached phenomenal fame after Brokeback Mountain. That's when I remember seeing him on every tabloid. However, the same scenerio happened in that he complained of not being able to sleep and panic attacks, etc. and turned to medical professionals to help and he just didn't make it as long as Michael Jackson did. Heath also did not have to endure the same media criticism as Michael Jackson and criticism is not a strong enough word. Had he lived another 20+ years, no one knows what would have happened to him.
I think NY and LA are extreme cases each at one end of the spectrum. Either extreme, whether it is total isolation or too much big city noise/pressure can have negative effects on people. A place that has both characteristics to a moderate level probably will be better for people to live in.
No one in the highest stratosphere of the entertainment industry would or could possibly live in Manhattan. It's not the center of the entertainment industry, nor will it ever be.
1) Agents, lawyers, producers are all in LA. Quincy Jones is a quintessential Angeleno, as was Berry Gordy and Diana Ross.
2) MJ was a man of excess, and there's no space whatsoever in NYC that could fit his animals, gold plated chairs and marble columns.
3) Having lived in both cities, LA is controlled chaos, whereas NYC is uncontrolled. MJ needed his isolation because he was the most famous man in the world for a good 15-20 years. Untouchable dieties can't live in a freakin' apartment building and go to Duane Reade.
Ummm. Diana Ross lived in Los Angeles at the beginning of her solo career until the end of her first marriage (1971-1976). She left Los Angeles for Manhattan for many of these reasons.
She has spent the balance of her time on the East Coast. Coming to Los Angeles, was spurred by projects and business.
Now several of her children are living in Los Angeles and she has divided her time between New York and Los Angeles. She also lived/lives part of the time in Europe as her second marriage was rooted in London.
Berry loves Los Angeles and has never left since he moved there from Detroit.
Diana has been bi-coastal for most of the last 10 years. I would gather primarily because most of her children have established their careers there.
In LA, you are what you drive.
Maybe you are who drives you.
In New York, it's all about who's got drive.
I would never suggest MJ could walk into a Duane Reade. Live in Palazzo Chupi, maybe. But celebrities can and do blend in here. Much less of a star-f#$@-er culture.
P.S. Madonna's buying in NYC:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04142009/news/regionalnews/madonna_manor_164380.htm
a thoughtful column.
but for some reason, i don't think michael jackson would have ever once walked to the bodega. i understand the isolation of great celebrity; however, michael appeared not to be the most happiest of fellows and no city in the world could have released those demons, problems or issues. he grew up with them, and he took them whereever he went.
he might have been isolated behind big gates in L.A., but the isolation in his soul far outweighed whatever climate he chose to live. and no city can cure that.
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