The veneration of Michael Jackson has started in his death -- and while this undeserved washing away of his public and private sins disgusts me, I'm not surprised by the celebration, either.
As we listen to the musical tributes of Michael The Performer, we are bound by honor and duty to also remember the man behind the music.
Michael Jackson was an abused child who suffered at the hands of his domineering father who only saw instant profit in his son instead of the future promise of a child.
The public record makes it clear Michael spent the rest of his adult life trying to re-live his lost childhood -- and that painful loss of innocent imagination brought him into lawyers offices and courtrooms as his inappropriate relationships with young boys was made public.
Michael Jackson knew how to sing and perform -- those talents were beaten into him early -- but he never knew who he was or who he really wanted to be, and we saw evidence of that in his need to physically change his nose, his skin color and, perhaps, even his gender.
When the broken and the tortured are unable to be repaired and set right, the moment is ripe for an ongoing and tortuous raping of the mind and spirit; and if you ever looked beyond the glitter and the fuzz of the Jackson facade, you saw someone who was irretrievably shattered into a hundred pieces.
When there is no way to reconstruct the man from a splintered childhood, we must all be cogently aware that yearnings and passions seep out from unexpected -- and often unwanted -- places, and that, in the end was Michael Jackson's curse and his pox on us all: He searched for happiness and never found it; he tried to create beautiful things to cover the ugly in his life, but ultimately failed in his untimely death.
As we celebrate Michael Jackson in his grave, we must also pity him in the life he tried to lead -- and we must always heed the warning of broken children trying to survive in an adult body and the trouble and viciousness that forever haunts and hunts them from crib to casket -- and into the ever after.
Michael Jackson was an abused child who suffered at the hands of his domineering father who only saw instant profit in his son instead of the future promise of a child.
The public record makes it clear Michael spent the rest of his adult life trying to re-live his lost childhood -- and that painful loss of innocent imagination brought him into lawyers offices and courtrooms as his inappropriate relationships with young boys was made public.
Michael Jackson knew how to sing and perform -- those talents were beaten into him early -- but he never knew who he was or who he really wanted to be, and we saw evidence of that in his need to physically change his nose, his skin color and, perhaps, even his gender.
When the broken and the tortured are unable to be repaired and set right, the moment is ripe for an ongoing and tortuous raping of the mind and spirit; and if you ever looked beyond the glitter and the fuzz of the Jackson facade, you saw someone who was irretrievably shattered into a hundred pieces.
When there is no way to reconstruct the man from a splintered childhood, we must all be cogently aware that yearnings and passions seep out from unexpected -- and often unwanted -- places, and that, in the end was Michael Jackson's curse and his pox on us all: He searched for happiness and never found it; he tried to create beautiful things to cover the ugly in his life, but ultimately failed in his untimely death.
As we celebrate Michael Jackson in his grave, we must also pity him in the life he tried to lead -- and we must always heed the warning of broken children trying to survive in an adult body and the trouble and viciousness that forever haunts and hunts them from crib to casket -- and into the ever after.
It is, indeed, pitiable. I think some serious therapy would have gone a long way early on - maybe in the 1970s or thereabouts.
I'm not sure if his inner circle would've ever allowed him to be in therapy. I think they wanted him as infantile and as incapacitated and co-dependent as possible for their own profit.