Improvisations on Reality

While I have always known that Michael Jackson’s life off the stage was tumultuous, finding out that he died was definitely jarring.

It’s been a year now. The Jackson family had dealt with this in their own way; they buried their brother, son and bandmate, and mourn today on the anniversary of his death.

I will say it openly, and I am sure people will agree: Michael’s musical talent is one in a million. He really did spearhead the inspirations behind pop today; he earned his title of King of Pop without question. He can sing, he can compose, he can move, he can relate to his audience – and so many people get caught up in the energy and excitement that they forget one part of his identity, a part that went on to shape him in many ways: Michael Jackson was an abuse victim, whose entrance into the show-business world was not of his own choice.

Don’t get me wrong: I am confident that he would’ve made it into the show-biz world on his own – when he was ready for it. I’ve seen the interviews, where he detailed what his father did to him when he was little, and I know that those tears were not faked. I saw the headlines along with everyone else, and while everyone was talking about “wacko Jacko” with his menagerie of exotic animals – and how I hate that nickname, NY Post – I was thinking bout what sort of a hell this man’s private life must have been, because to me, he looked like someone who never recovered from earlier wounds. He looked haunted, and the many things that he did do were to call attention to that fact.

The abuse of the Jackson children was corroborated on more than one occasion, by the Jackson children themselves. They dealt with it in their own way, supported each other the best they could, but Michael clearly carried the ghosts. Decades after the beatings, years of living on his own, and he couldn’t help the tears when Oprah asked him about it. That is the mark of the severity of the abuse – years later, it is enough to make him regress almost immediately.

That is why I sometimes say that MJ’s way of thinking, emotional responses, etc. were frozen at his boyhood. The meteoric rise to fame with the Jackson 5 did not help his mental state; he never got to socialize with his peers, have a normal experience in school, have (for the lack of better words) a normal upbringing. The early fame, coupled with what is undoubtedly post-abuse PTSD, had its own effects. I can think of no child who will not come away unaffected from hordes of screaming fans, and from an abusive parent, worse if the two coincide.

Despite that, his talent – the reason that he had risen so far was because of raw, genuine gift – was cultivated in a short hurry.

Still, he did not come away without lessons. When he had his children, he took every possible step he could think of to keep them away from the paparazzi. The masks, keeping them home to keep them away from the cameras – he knew very well what the media could do, what fame could do to his children, so he kept them out of the public eye until they were old enough to choose it for themselves.

He gave us all the inspiration he could muster, and we still see elements of his high-power moves today, and likely we will for some time. He tried to pull the world together, but was falling apart in his own right.

Regardless of accusations, portrayals, he remains an incredibly talented, and incredibly haunted individual in memory, as he was in life.