來源：mjjcn.com
作者：Nicole Reis 翻譯者不詳
在過去的幾周裏，就在媒體上充斥著自以為是的人從他們的嘴裏大聲地噴出毫無事實根據的猛烈的抗議和誹謗的怨恨時，Michael Jackson在面對虛假指控被判完全無罪後發表了他的第一個公眾聲明。這只是一個短小的聲明，也很簡單。而它正顯示了那些電視機裏說話的腦袋甚至連做夢都不會擁有的一種品性。
人與人是不同的。
確實是這樣，因為Michael Jackson屬於一群人，真實的一群人。
發布於：2005年6月26日，周日
人與人是不同的。
確實是這樣，因為Michael Jackson屬於一群人，真實的一群人。
發布於：2005年6月26日，周日
要是沒有上帝、沒有我的孩子們、沒有我的家人和你們，我的歌迷們的話，我不能支撐下來。你們的愛、支持和忠誠，讓一切皆有可能。 當我真正需要你們的時候，你們在旁支持。我永遠不會忘記你們。你們常在的愛意支持著我，擦亁了我的眼淚，帶著我穿越苦難。 我會永遠珍惜你們的虔誠和支持。你們激勵著我。
愛你們的，
Michael Jackson
來源：MJJSource
愛你們的，
Michael Jackson
來源：MJJSource
Message From Michael Jackson
Statement of Michael Jackson: A Message For My Fans
Sunday, 26 June 2005
Without God, my children, my family and you, my fans, I could not have made it through. Your love, support and loyalty made it all possible.
You were there when I really needed you. I will never forget you. Your ever-present love held me, dried my tears, and carried me through.
I will treasure your devotion and support forever. You are my inspiration.
Love,
Michael Jackson
Sunday, 26 June 2005
Without God, my children, my family and you, my fans, I could not have made it through. Your love, support and loyalty made it all possible.
You were there when I really needed you. I will never forget you. Your ever-present love held me, dried my tears, and carried me through.
I will treasure your devotion and support forever. You are my inspiration.
Love,
Michael Jackson
Source: MJFC / MJJ Source
最重要的是，這個聲明說明瞭一件事。Michael Jackson，雖然在過去一年半中承受了太多的痛苦與太多的傷害，雖然他的心已經被毀得無法修復，他還是他。經歷了這麼多，Michael Jackson在本質上，還是他自己。
他的資訊展示了他對一小群人的深深的謝意，只是對他們的感謝。毫無其他意義。他沒有對人們以前說的或者正在說的事做出回應，他沒有談到人們對他的批評，他沒有吹牛說‘我早就告訴過你會這樣’，他沒有聚焦到他自己身上。他只是簡單地對那些以前支持他並且將會一直支持他的人們展示了他最偉大的高尚情懷，他對這些人展示了他偉大的愛，他再一次在自己意識到以前向別人展示了他無比的忘我之心。
再一次，Michael Jackson展示了他表達的天賦，在幾句話中流露出這麼多的意義，和這麼多真相。他用他的心說話，就像他以前常做的那樣。
如果Michael Jackson的資訊還有一些其他的含義的話，那就是說明瞭他是最鐘情的人，也許他的靈魂中失去了一點希望，也許他眼中的光顯得有些黯淡，但他還能保住他的清白。Michael Jackson不是一個懷恨在心的人，他還能在這個世界上發現驚奇，他還能找到歡笑和光，和對人類的希望，他始終保持著他一貫的樂觀。
他是多麼令人驚嘆啊。
這只是因為一個簡單而如此有力的事實，Michael Jackson是一個充滿愛與仁慈的人，充滿著慷慨與同情，Michael Jackson是只充滿著“善”的人。
雖然他的心被傷害，他的信任被無情的背叛，他始終給我們機會，他的關懷依舊，他還是把自己奉獻給大家。
這正是從他那簡短但意義深遠的話語中反映出的證據啊。
他繼續的能力使他只看到這個世界好的一方面，雖然他經歷了那麼多痛苦，但這些痛苦正是對Michael Jackson令人驚嘆的人格顯著的證明。他還是看到人們好的一方面，很難相信，但是卻是事實。他不得不抑制自己的本能來確保他自己的安全，使人們遠離他，但是他幫助他人的本性會再度的占據他，犧牲他自己的安寧。但是他們不能帶走他同情的心，這是他們永遠做不到的，不論他們多少次的擊碎它。
大部分失去清白的人是因為這個玩世不恭的世界；他們被我們殘忍的社會鎮壓了。Michael Jackson就是這樣的一個，同時也是唯一的例外。無論這個世界多猛烈地打擊他，使他失去他的清白，使他變得像他們一樣疲倦與惡毒，無論這個世界多麼殘忍地對待他。他還是沒變，沒有失去他清澈的感知，他們還是不能使他屈服，使他遵守他們的定律，他還是和以前一樣，像孩子一樣。
他的資訊展示了他對一小群人的深深的謝意，只是對他們的感謝。毫無其他意義。他沒有對人們以前說的或者正在說的事做出回應，他沒有談到人們對他的批評，他沒有吹牛說‘我早就告訴過你會這樣’，他沒有聚焦到他自己身上。他只是簡單地對那些以前支持他並且將會一直支持他的人們展示了他最偉大的高尚情懷，他對這些人展示了他偉大的愛，他再一次在自己意識到以前向別人展示了他無比的忘我之心。
再一次，Michael Jackson展示了他表達的天賦，在幾句話中流露出這麼多的意義，和這麼多真相。他用他的心說話，就像他以前常做的那樣。
如果Michael Jackson的資訊還有一些其他的含義的話，那就是說明瞭他是最鐘情的人，也許他的靈魂中失去了一點希望，也許他眼中的光顯得有些黯淡，但他還能保住他的清白。Michael Jackson不是一個懷恨在心的人，他還能在這個世界上發現驚奇，他還能找到歡笑和光，和對人類的希望，他始終保持著他一貫的樂觀。
他是多麼令人驚嘆啊。
這只是因為一個簡單而如此有力的事實，Michael Jackson是一個充滿愛與仁慈的人，充滿著慷慨與同情，Michael Jackson是只充滿著“善”的人。
雖然他的心被傷害，他的信任被無情的背叛，他始終給我們機會，他的關懷依舊，他還是把自己奉獻給大家。
這正是從他那簡短但意義深遠的話語中反映出的證據啊。
他繼續的能力使他只看到這個世界好的一方面，雖然他經歷了那麼多痛苦，但這些痛苦正是對Michael Jackson令人驚嘆的人格顯著的證明。他還是看到人們好的一方面，很難相信，但是卻是事實。他不得不抑制自己的本能來確保他自己的安全，使人們遠離他，但是他幫助他人的本性會再度的占據他，犧牲他自己的安寧。但是他們不能帶走他同情的心，這是他們永遠做不到的，不論他們多少次的擊碎它。
大部分失去清白的人是因為這個玩世不恭的世界；他們被我們殘忍的社會鎮壓了。Michael Jackson就是這樣的一個，同時也是唯一的例外。無論這個世界多猛烈地打擊他，使他失去他的清白，使他變得像他們一樣疲倦與惡毒，無論這個世界多麼殘忍地對待他。他還是沒變，沒有失去他清澈的感知，他們還是不能使他屈服，使他遵守他們的定律，他還是和以前一樣，像孩子一樣。
這就是他的力量，使他對抗這一切的不平等，當這個世界壓在他身上時，試圖要毀滅他時，他的力量支持著他，他的力量來自他的善良，這樣的力量只能是來自他的善良和上帝，他支援的住，他很堅強，甚至是他害怕的時候。
這是因為他是一個如此好的人；Michael Jackson是這個世界上純粹的最偉大的‘善’。
我感謝上帝把這樣一個令人驚嘆的人類帶到我們的生活中；我感謝上帝給了我們一件禮物——Michael Jackson。
Nicole Reis 的另一篇文章
Michael Jackson A beautiful soul
By: Nicole Reis
“He is a composite of the image that nature desires for every individual to attain…”
- Bob Jones (Vice President of MJJ Production’s) on Michael Jackson
Let the stage be set. The crowd is loud, and uncontrolled. Anything goes in an atmosphere like this. With each passing moment, the patience of those in attendance is waning heavily, and they begin to stomp thunderously with anticipation, gripping the edge of their seats, starring intently at the slim figure upon the small stage. The young man passes back and forth, speaking softly into the microphone. He understands the excitement building up in those watching, and he lets it sit there, a moment longer, just to the point of near frenzy. And then he begins, an effortless dance, and a rhythmic voice. Four and a half minutes, and a lifetime of memories.
The evening is late, the magic created in that one performance is behind, and it is quiet now. No audience, no stage… no energy. The lights are low, and what remains there is only that same young man. The one who had, only hours early created such unparalleled excitement, is now strangely silent. He appears, if possibly, even more slight of frame now, fragile, almost weak. He is sitting, alone. His thoughts now elsewhere. Not towards the stage, or to those who had earlier shouted his name with such utter devotion. Nor towards the deafening applause he had received, or to the recognition of all those other stars who had seen him that night. No, the young man was thinking not of what great heights he had achieved, but of how he could have been better. He is angry with himself, upset that, for him, he was anything but perfect. He is not so much disappointed in that he could perhaps have been better for himself, but more so disappointed in that he did not give the audience all he had thought they deserved. And that is the nature of this young man. Not to be perfect for himself, but always to be perfect for others.
The young man was Michael Joseph Jackson. He was 25 years old when he performed on Motown 25, and since then, he has come to be recognized by many as perhaps the greatest performing artist of any place in time. And he is that. His talents are unmatched, and it does not seem likely that there will ever be another person of his capability. He is a singing and dancing genius, and a musical visionary. Creatively and emotionally brilliant. For his talent alone, the man is to be admired.
Let us move forward, or perhaps backward would be more appropriate. To 15 years earlier, the start of a professional career in show business, which would succeed in, and surpass all and any expectations. Michael Jackson was nine years old at the time, going on ten, and, even at such an age, none had ever seen such a dynamic performance artist. He was unique, and it was plain to see. He already stood out, even amongst those consummate professionals of the stage and show. And it was a strange dynamic. Here you had a boy, a child who, when he appeared on the stage, was anything but that. He had all the grace and maturity of a seasoned adult, and an already developed sense of expression for emotion. In every other way, Michael was still a kid.
Time warp. Let’s move forward. Back to 1983, Michael, age 25. He no longer simply stands out among his peers, but rather, seems to have reached new heights of gifted that are forever unattainable to anyone and everyone. This is the time when the world stands up, and cheers loudly in admiration of Michael Jackson. He is our phenomenon, as we then said, our wisp of quicksilver.
And he sits there, after all of the adoration, alone, crying to him self. He is hurt. To him, he could have been better. In every other way, he is still a child.
Michael’s need for perfectionism is connected in so many ways to who he is as a person. And that need for perfection seems often to lead to the very root of so many of Michael’s fears, and to so much of the pain that he has suffered throughout his life. It is from a lack of what he has always found most essential.
Michael has been subjected to an absence of love his entire life, and it hurts to see that. Because he is perhaps the one person who gives love, unrequited love, to everyone. And people don’t show Michael love. They never really have, from the time of his childhood. So how is he to ever know that he is deserving of unconditional love, when it has, throughout his life, been consistently denied him?
Michael’s nephew, T.J. once said of him in response to a question regarding Michael’s perfectionism, “Yes, because he was recording one of our songs. And he was apologizing: ‘Sorry, I wish I could do it better.’ It was, to us, perfect. To us, it was beyond perfect.
Michael Jackson seems to feel that he is somehow undeserving of the worlds love. And he is desperately afraid that what love he does receive will somehow always be taken away from him. He is afraid that people will stop loving him. Michael once wrote in a letter to his fans, “I love all of you so, so much. I’m very lonely without you, you are my life always, please love me always.”
It is because that is the message he has been given throughout his life. And so he tries, with relentless punishment to himself, to earn that love. He endures hurt in hopes that he may receive love, in hopes that he may be deserving of love. And as he once sang in an autobiographical song, “he cries because there is a lack of love.”
And therein lies the contrast. He is onstage, the consummate performer, going forward, never breaking his expression of apparent satisfaction with his effort. It is after the show, alone, by himself, that he is in every other way, still a child.
It is an interesting parallel, between Michael Jackson as a boy, and Michael Jackson as a man. He seems, in every way, never to have changed. “He’s the oldest man I know, and he’s the youngest kid I know.” That’s how Quincy Jones simply described Michael, and it, really, ciphers down to just that. On that stage, even when Michael was less than perfect, he continued on, always the professional. Later, when all the glitz and glamour were gone, he cried to himself, as though he were a child who felt as though he had done something wrong. That is the nature of Michael Jackson. When Michael must deliver, when he must present, he is in every way, wholly mature, a complete adult. For all the rest of his time, Michael is a child. He is pure of heart, pure of soul. He is pure of nature, a true innocent, perhaps the only one of his kind. Michael Jackson is unique in that he has retained all the best qualities attributed to both childhood and adulthood, and none of the more unattractive aspects of either. He represents, on every level, the absolute best of humanity.
To simply just say that Michael Jackson is a good person is a sore injustice. There is an innate goodness to Michael. He is a superb human being, truly the best of all men. He exemplifies what is wonderful in this world, what is important. His love for all life, not simply his own, is genuine and unfaltering. Michael Jackson simply has a nature that is good. It is in his very being, in his very soul, to be good. And he is kind beyond himself. His entire life, he has directed all of his abilities towards helping people, children and adults alike, achieve a greater standard of living. He holds within him a universal love, one that he shares with all people, not simply any one individual. And he gives that love unconditionally. His greatest reward in knowing that he did so out of his heart. Michael Jackson is unselfish, and he cares. Truly cares. He is pure, in heart and in soul. He defines love. He is the very core of that emotion.
Bob Jones once said of Michael, “He is truly the nicest, and if there is anything such as being God-like, he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t believe in thinking bad thoughts. That’s why I am suspicious of most of them who come through here, because everybody has an agenda, and it’s either to get over or something, and we live in a society of that. The society we live in is ruthless, and it’s all the buck and nothing else, and that’s what America’s become. When I look at him I say, ‘It’s good that God chose you.’ That’s the way I look at it. It’s good that God chose you.”
Frank Dileo (Michael’s former manager) once said of him “He’s not afraid to look into the worst suffering and find the smallest part that’s positive and beautiful.” Seth Riggs (Michael’s voice coach) recalled of Michael when on tour “Every night the kids would come in on stretchers, so sick they could barely hold their heads up. Michael would kneel down at the stretchers and put his face right down beside theirs so that he could have his picture taken with them, and than give them a copy to remember the moment. I’m a sixty-year-old man, and I couldn’t take it. I’d be in the bathroom crying. But Michael could take it, and right before going on stage no less. The kids would perk right up in his presence. If it gave them a couple days’ more energy, to Michael that was worth it. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a prince of the world.”
For Michael, it is his greatest goal in life to help people. He wants only for them to know that they have been, and that they always will have been, loved by somebody. And he seems always to be on that endless quest for innocence in people, to awaken in them, that same purity that resides within his own heart and soul.
Riggs would again later recall, “He would always take time to see the sights (referring to Michael when he was on the road). I recall that when we were rehearsing at Liverpool, he stopped the rehearsal so that we could look at some beautiful clouds that had wafted in. That’s how Michael is. They closed down the Louvre in Paris for a whole day while Michael and the rest of us went through. In Rome, Franco Zeffirelli gave him a big party. All of the lovely crème de la crème were there, and suddenly Zeffirlli couldn’t find Michael. He looked all over and finally found Michael in a room with a bunch of kids in their pajamas, and they were all playing.” Riggs continued, “He’s the most natural, loving person I’ve ever known, a very good person, as corny as that sounds. He’ll see a picture of a baby, and if it’s a cute kid, he will go absolutely gaga over the picture. During the tour, on his nights off, he would go into a toy store and buy ten of this and ten of that and then stay up all night long putting batteries into the toys, making certain each and every one worked so that he could have them ready to give to kids back-stage the next day. As if he didn’t have enough to worry about.”
Looking at Michael, one can see that he is a person who is truly made entirely of love. That emotion is the core of his very soul. His nephew, T.J. said of Michael, “He’s fun. And a lot of love. So much love. The maximum amount of love a person can have. That’s him.” Trinity Williams, a U.S. Army sergeant, said of Michael, “ The one simple reason I am attracted to Michael is because he is Christ-like. The way he cares for people and the love he has for people can only be God-driven.” To create beauty and happiness for others, so selflessly, so unconditionally, that is the very essence of his heart, of his soul, that is the very essence of who Michael Jackson is as a person.
But most important perhaps in understanding the remarkable nature of Michael is that he retains a child’s imaginative ability to create, with the intellectual capacity of an intelligent adult to express that creativity. He is a walking paradox, an inexplicable phenomenon. All aspects of Michael Jackson’s life seem to clash with one another simply by way of Michael’s character.
But it is in the perplexity of Michael’s being that he elicits wonderment. He seems only to be adult-like when he needs to be, out of necessity. Those are times of assertion and expression. In everything else, Michael Jackson is child-like. He is as curious as a child, as creative, and as imaginative. He is as sensitive as a child, as frail, as vulnerable. He is as sweet, and as unconditionally loving as a child.
He is as brutally honest as a child. Michael once said in an interview from 1983, “If I talk, I say what’s on my mind, and it can seem strange to other peoples’ ears. I’m the kind of person who will tell it all, even though it’s a secret. And I know that things should be kept private.”
He is as painfully shy as a child. And he’s shyness has, in a way, become his nature. Michael is not shy in the normal context of that words definition. It is regularly a case of embarrassment. But for Michael Jackson, it is a case of fear. His shyness is paralyzing, debilitating. He once said, “My brothers say that everybody intimidates me. That’s not true, but I do avoid eye contact with a lot of people.” He continued, “I’d much rather talk on the phone, I’m much deeper in conversation on the phone than I am in person.”
He is a child, in heart, in soul, in nature and in emotion. And in being so, it is both responsible for his genius, and responsible for his fragility.
The creative genius that Michael holds within him can be attributed to his ability to view the world through the eyes of innocence. And in seeing things as such, he is able to understand, more clearly then any adult, the relevance of emotion, the importance of love. And in comprehending such things so clearly and so easily, Michael is able to draw from the most seemingly simple things, the greatest inspiration. And with that inspiration, Michael creates such brilliant works of creative genius, so unimaginable to the rest of the world. Because Michael can see things, can understand things, on such a level of purity, based on true emotions, he is aware of wonders which lye within the universe, yet to be discovered. Those wondrous things unbeknown to us, but so brilliantly vibrant to Michael, he gives to us through his genius for song and dance. And it is a gift of priceless value, for no person, other then Michael can bring it into our limited view. When we are children, perhaps we can see such beauty within the universe, but we find it impossible to ever express ourselves, and as we grow older, we lose that creative ability. This is the uniqueness of Michael Jackson. Being as a child, Michael creates as a child, on a level of genius that escapes those other people of the arts.
And as a child, Michael is of course, immensely curious, of all things. Be it his reading great amounts of literature of both fiction and non-fiction, to starring intently at a painting for a long while, exploring its every possibility. That is the nature of Michael Jackson, in having such intense curiosity, as that of a child’s.
And he is as forgiving as a child. Brook Shields once said of Michael, “ It is very hard, when your family turns against you, and when anyone you befriend slaps you in the face. It would amaze you the way people hurt him. What amazes me even more is his ability to forgive. He acknowledges their frailty, and he allows it to eat away at him. Can you blame him for wanting to be surrounded by the innocence and purity of children? The light in their eyes is what he wants to keep alive in his own soul. In a way, Michael is not of this world.”
But being as a child is in nature, Michael is also paralyzed in much the same way a child is. And perhaps that is what allows so much hurt to enter into his life. Because as often as Michael is hurt by people, he does not allow himself to be blind to them. Michael, in a way, feels obligated to notice the troubles of other people, and he takes it upon himself to help them, no matter what the cost to him may be. People have continually brought pain into Michael’s life, due to his kindness, and it is only made worse by his willingness to always forgive. They continue to hurt Michael, over and over, because he continually allows people back in. And it is not necessarily something that Michael is even aware that he can control, because it is in his nature to be kind, and it is in his nature to forgive those who have abused him. Because of his refusal to ignore the problems of other people, Michael allows himself to be used, and to be hurt, over and over. He never really has just looked out for him. Sidney Lumet, director of the film The Wiz, once recalled that his teenage daughter asked Michael to sing. “O.K.,” Michael said, affably. “But cover your eyes.” “I think he was embarrassed by the closeness of the situation,” said Lumet, “but his desire not to be rude or hurt her led him to say yes.”
It seems, because Michael desires never to hurt anybody, he allows people to hurt him.
It becomes more so painful when one realizes the extent of Michael Jackson’s sensitivity. A child can be made easily to cry. It does not take any great effort to hurt a child emotionally, and often what pain they suffer will likely last for a long time, if not always. Michael Jackson indeed, as with his curiosity, has the sensitivity of a child. Emotionally, Michael is easily hurt. And the impact and the intensity with which Michael feels pain, with which he takes the abuse of another, is so incredibly immense that, some insult, some attack that most would take only in passing, will shack Michael to the core. As with a child, Michael is made easily to cry. Because of his extreme sensitivity, because of his heightened sense of emotion, he feels the impact of literally everything that hits him a hundred fold that which anyone else may take it. Being so painfully sensitive can make it difficult enough for Michael in having to simply deal with people, to even make contact with people, let alone having to cope with a world that is so purposely cruel towards him. And a cruel game that people play with Michael is this. The world seems almost to bait Michael, in making him think, that if he gives of himself so completely, then we may extend some kindness to him. But really, people have never had any such intention of showing Michael acceptance. It is so much more amusing for them to torture him, to continue to make him suffer.
And perhaps what makes this so sad is that, in his heart, Michael is an eternal optimist. He continues to hold out hope that one day, after all of his pain and suffering, the world will finally accept him for who he is.
When Michael was a child, he once said, “Whatever I sing, that’s what I really mean. Like, I’m singing a song. I don’t sing it if I don’t mean it.” The beautiful thing about Michael Jackson is, he means what he does; he is honest in everything he pursues.
And Michael has always been of that innocence of heart, that purity of soul, yet, since boyhood, beguilingly wise, in understanding the essence of life, far beyond his years. Where the child and the adult meet, is in Michael’s willingness and want, to put the welfare and need of others before his own. That is honesty. That is innocence. That is unrequited love.
But as Time Magazine writer, Jay Cocks, once wrote of Michael, “Show business accepts innocence only if it can be sentimentalized; Jackson’s world of fantasy is easier to dismiss with malicious gossip than understand with sympathy.”
Perhaps it should have been said, the world accepts innocence only if it can be empathized. It didn’t take long for the world to turn away from Michael. People feel threatened by what they cannot relate to, and they try to destroy what they do not understand. People cannot empathize with Michael Jackson’s innocence, with his closed off world of escapism, and so they try to destroy that. They try to destroy that purity in him. Jane Fonda once said of Michael, “On some level, I don’t even know whether it’s conscious or not, Michael knows that he has to stand off the demands of reality and protect himself. His intelligence is instinctual and emotional, like a child’s. If any artist loses that childlikeness, you lose a lot of creative juice. So Michael creates around himself a world that protects his creativity.”
On that level, for the fact of his innocence, Michael creates his own world to escape into. A haven, built with the sole purpose of protecting that creativity. On another level, it is to protect him self. Michael is an easy person to hurt; emotionally, he is fragile. Fonda once said of him, “Michael’s like a harp string. He is so sensitive and vulnerable… every breath of wind that hits him reverberates in sensitivity.” In that way, it is essential to understand Michael as a child, as in having the sensitivity of a child. It is essential, in understanding Michael Jackson, to know that he is hurt as easily as a child.
David Williams, a guitarist who worked for Michael said of him “ Michael is a human being. He’s a person. If you said ‘Shut up’, around him, he’d probably break into tears. They think he’s shy and he’s evasive and all this. No. He’s just fucking scared and tired of people bugging him. He’s a little sweetheart, and people would eat him up if he let them.” And there does the dilemma lye of Michael forgoing his own well being for the sake of another.
It is based upon his unique perception of life, and often, his own words, that people feel threatened by Michael, and therein so inclined to attack him. And to, why people find it so easy in blaming Michael for the cruelty that this world treats him with. It seems always that people never look within themselves. For if they did they would surly find that the fault lye not with Michael, but with themselves. Their lack of comprehension and sympathy for Michael’s perspective of life is the very thing that causes their hatred of him. They are threatened by their own inability to explain him. And so they abuse Michael.
And Michael steps away from that world because of that.
Michael’s extreme isolation, due to his intense fame, of course, has only contributed to his feelings of being unable to relate to the people around him, but indeed it goes far deeper then this, to the very core of his being. To who he is mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And perhaps, it is the darkest place to be, surrounded by a world that has no conception of what you see, what you think, of who you are. He is lost in a world that will never accept him. Trapped, surrounded by people who want nothing more then to bring him to his knees, to break his spirit. The world frightens him because, for him, there is no real understanding at all, and worse perhaps, there is little sympathy for Michael. The world chooses to dismiss his unique being rather then face the reality of it.
At first, it seemed an attempt by people to change Michael. To conform him to what they were, how they knew the world and only how they knew it. People wanted Michael to stop being himself, and to start being like them. It didn’t work, so they evolved to the next step that human instinct allows for. To destroy that which they do not understand. They tried, in attempting to break his will, to force him to be as they are. One must ask them selves what it is that sparks in people an interest in another? It seems always to be their ability to relate to that other person. What the two perhaps have in common with one another. But for Michael Jackson, this concept does not fit. He is too different. His eccentricities are used only as an excuse to hurt him, not as the cause. Perhaps, on the surface, people have actually forced themselves to believe that they hate Michael due to his eccentricities, but deep down in their hearts, it has always been because he is unlike them, in every way. The world, for his difference, abuses Michael.
Gerri Hirshey, a writer for Rolling Stone magazine, recalled an interview he conducted with Michael Jackson in 1983, “When Michael and I sat down to talk, there was no mistaking the strain. Sometimes, he shook with the effort. It was no act; the Boogie Monster was Bambi outside the klieg lights. He said he could explain the fear-he just couldn’t get past it. He was afraid of saying too much, didn’t know how to protect himself. Whenever he spoke his mind, people said he was, well, strange. Ten minutes into it, I could see his point. As he explained the tea party of garden statuary around his coffee table-including a Narcissus figure named Michael-I could hear how it would read. It nearly made me bawl. He was trying so damned hard.”
Jane Fonda would say, “Dad was also painfully self-conscious and shy in life, and he really only felt comfortable when he was behind the mask of a character. He could liberate himself when he was being someone else. That’s a lot like Michael.” In some ways, Michael reminds me of the walking wounded. He’s an extremely fragile person. I think that just getting on with life, making contact with people, is hard enough, much less to be worried about whither goest the world”
But even after all these years have passed by since that magical night, on Motown’s 25th anniversary, things don’t seem to have changed for Michael. Things don’t seem to have become any easier than they ever were. In 1984, at the height of Michael’s popularity, even a then 13 year old fan, Amy Gancherov, noticed that, “he looks so sad.” She thought at the time that it was perhaps because “everybody is always shoving things in his face.”
Perhaps.
Or perhaps it is because; Michael is truly alone. He seems not to have companionship, no one to talk to, no one to understand him, no one to comfort him. He once said, “Even at home, I’m lonely. I sit in my room sometimes and cry. It’s so hard to make friends, and there are some things you can’t talk to your parents about. I sometimes walk around the neighborhood at night, just hoping to find someone to talk to. But I just end up coming home.”
It is the very story of his life. Michael Jackson has always had to suffer loneliness, and it is a heavy price to pay. For at those times, when Michael most needs someone, there seems to be no one there at all. This world seems never to have been made for, perhaps never deserving of, one so innocent as Michael Jackson. What it comes down to is, Michael is sad. And he cries for it. He cries, with not a soul to hear him.
Michael once said, “People think they know me, but they don’t. Not really. Actually, I am one of the loneliest people on this earth. I cry sometimes, because it hurts. It does. To be honest, I guess you could say that it hurts to be me.”
By: Nicole Reis
“He is a composite of the image that nature desires for every individual to attain…”
- Bob Jones (Vice President of MJJ Production’s) on Michael Jackson
Let the stage be set. The crowd is loud, and uncontrolled. Anything goes in an atmosphere like this. With each passing moment, the patience of those in attendance is waning heavily, and they begin to stomp thunderously with anticipation, gripping the edge of their seats, starring intently at the slim figure upon the small stage. The young man passes back and forth, speaking softly into the microphone. He understands the excitement building up in those watching, and he lets it sit there, a moment longer, just to the point of near frenzy. And then he begins, an effortless dance, and a rhythmic voice. Four and a half minutes, and a lifetime of memories.
The evening is late, the magic created in that one performance is behind, and it is quiet now. No audience, no stage… no energy. The lights are low, and what remains there is only that same young man. The one who had, only hours early created such unparalleled excitement, is now strangely silent. He appears, if possibly, even more slight of frame now, fragile, almost weak. He is sitting, alone. His thoughts now elsewhere. Not towards the stage, or to those who had earlier shouted his name with such utter devotion. Nor towards the deafening applause he had received, or to the recognition of all those other stars who had seen him that night. No, the young man was thinking not of what great heights he had achieved, but of how he could have been better. He is angry with himself, upset that, for him, he was anything but perfect. He is not so much disappointed in that he could perhaps have been better for himself, but more so disappointed in that he did not give the audience all he had thought they deserved. And that is the nature of this young man. Not to be perfect for himself, but always to be perfect for others.
The young man was Michael Joseph Jackson. He was 25 years old when he performed on Motown 25, and since then, he has come to be recognized by many as perhaps the greatest performing artist of any place in time. And he is that. His talents are unmatched, and it does not seem likely that there will ever be another person of his capability. He is a singing and dancing genius, and a musical visionary. Creatively and emotionally brilliant. For his talent alone, the man is to be admired.
Let us move forward, or perhaps backward would be more appropriate. To 15 years earlier, the start of a professional career in show business, which would succeed in, and surpass all and any expectations. Michael Jackson was nine years old at the time, going on ten, and, even at such an age, none had ever seen such a dynamic performance artist. He was unique, and it was plain to see. He already stood out, even amongst those consummate professionals of the stage and show. And it was a strange dynamic. Here you had a boy, a child who, when he appeared on the stage, was anything but that. He had all the grace and maturity of a seasoned adult, and an already developed sense of expression for emotion. In every other way, Michael was still a kid.
Time warp. Let’s move forward. Back to 1983, Michael, age 25. He no longer simply stands out among his peers, but rather, seems to have reached new heights of gifted that are forever unattainable to anyone and everyone. This is the time when the world stands up, and cheers loudly in admiration of Michael Jackson. He is our phenomenon, as we then said, our wisp of quicksilver.
And he sits there, after all of the adoration, alone, crying to him self. He is hurt. To him, he could have been better. In every other way, he is still a child.
Michael’s need for perfectionism is connected in so many ways to who he is as a person. And that need for perfection seems often to lead to the very root of so many of Michael’s fears, and to so much of the pain that he has suffered throughout his life. It is from a lack of what he has always found most essential.
Michael has been subjected to an absence of love his entire life, and it hurts to see that. Because he is perhaps the one person who gives love, unrequited love, to everyone. And people don’t show Michael love. They never really have, from the time of his childhood. So how is he to ever know that he is deserving of unconditional love, when it has, throughout his life, been consistently denied him?
Michael’s nephew, T.J. once said of him in response to a question regarding Michael’s perfectionism, “Yes, because he was recording one of our songs. And he was apologizing: ‘Sorry, I wish I could do it better.’ It was, to us, perfect. To us, it was beyond perfect.
Michael Jackson seems to feel that he is somehow undeserving of the worlds love. And he is desperately afraid that what love he does receive will somehow always be taken away from him. He is afraid that people will stop loving him. Michael once wrote in a letter to his fans, “I love all of you so, so much. I’m very lonely without you, you are my life always, please love me always.”
It is because that is the message he has been given throughout his life. And so he tries, with relentless punishment to himself, to earn that love. He endures hurt in hopes that he may receive love, in hopes that he may be deserving of love. And as he once sang in an autobiographical song, “he cries because there is a lack of love.”
And therein lies the contrast. He is onstage, the consummate performer, going forward, never breaking his expression of apparent satisfaction with his effort. It is after the show, alone, by himself, that he is in every other way, still a child.
It is an interesting parallel, between Michael Jackson as a boy, and Michael Jackson as a man. He seems, in every way, never to have changed. “He’s the oldest man I know, and he’s the youngest kid I know.” That’s how Quincy Jones simply described Michael, and it, really, ciphers down to just that. On that stage, even when Michael was less than perfect, he continued on, always the professional. Later, when all the glitz and glamour were gone, he cried to himself, as though he were a child who felt as though he had done something wrong. That is the nature of Michael Jackson. When Michael must deliver, when he must present, he is in every way, wholly mature, a complete adult. For all the rest of his time, Michael is a child. He is pure of heart, pure of soul. He is pure of nature, a true innocent, perhaps the only one of his kind. Michael Jackson is unique in that he has retained all the best qualities attributed to both childhood and adulthood, and none of the more unattractive aspects of either. He represents, on every level, the absolute best of humanity.
To simply just say that Michael Jackson is a good person is a sore injustice. There is an innate goodness to Michael. He is a superb human being, truly the best of all men. He exemplifies what is wonderful in this world, what is important. His love for all life, not simply his own, is genuine and unfaltering. Michael Jackson simply has a nature that is good. It is in his very being, in his very soul, to be good. And he is kind beyond himself. His entire life, he has directed all of his abilities towards helping people, children and adults alike, achieve a greater standard of living. He holds within him a universal love, one that he shares with all people, not simply any one individual. And he gives that love unconditionally. His greatest reward in knowing that he did so out of his heart. Michael Jackson is unselfish, and he cares. Truly cares. He is pure, in heart and in soul. He defines love. He is the very core of that emotion.
Bob Jones once said of Michael, “He is truly the nicest, and if there is anything such as being God-like, he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t believe in thinking bad thoughts. That’s why I am suspicious of most of them who come through here, because everybody has an agenda, and it’s either to get over or something, and we live in a society of that. The society we live in is ruthless, and it’s all the buck and nothing else, and that’s what America’s become. When I look at him I say, ‘It’s good that God chose you.’ That’s the way I look at it. It’s good that God chose you.”
Frank Dileo (Michael’s former manager) once said of him “He’s not afraid to look into the worst suffering and find the smallest part that’s positive and beautiful.” Seth Riggs (Michael’s voice coach) recalled of Michael when on tour “Every night the kids would come in on stretchers, so sick they could barely hold their heads up. Michael would kneel down at the stretchers and put his face right down beside theirs so that he could have his picture taken with them, and than give them a copy to remember the moment. I’m a sixty-year-old man, and I couldn’t take it. I’d be in the bathroom crying. But Michael could take it, and right before going on stage no less. The kids would perk right up in his presence. If it gave them a couple days’ more energy, to Michael that was worth it. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a prince of the world.”
For Michael, it is his greatest goal in life to help people. He wants only for them to know that they have been, and that they always will have been, loved by somebody. And he seems always to be on that endless quest for innocence in people, to awaken in them, that same purity that resides within his own heart and soul.
Riggs would again later recall, “He would always take time to see the sights (referring to Michael when he was on the road). I recall that when we were rehearsing at Liverpool, he stopped the rehearsal so that we could look at some beautiful clouds that had wafted in. That’s how Michael is. They closed down the Louvre in Paris for a whole day while Michael and the rest of us went through. In Rome, Franco Zeffirelli gave him a big party. All of the lovely crème de la crème were there, and suddenly Zeffirlli couldn’t find Michael. He looked all over and finally found Michael in a room with a bunch of kids in their pajamas, and they were all playing.” Riggs continued, “He’s the most natural, loving person I’ve ever known, a very good person, as corny as that sounds. He’ll see a picture of a baby, and if it’s a cute kid, he will go absolutely gaga over the picture. During the tour, on his nights off, he would go into a toy store and buy ten of this and ten of that and then stay up all night long putting batteries into the toys, making certain each and every one worked so that he could have them ready to give to kids back-stage the next day. As if he didn’t have enough to worry about.”
Looking at Michael, one can see that he is a person who is truly made entirely of love. That emotion is the core of his very soul. His nephew, T.J. said of Michael, “He’s fun. And a lot of love. So much love. The maximum amount of love a person can have. That’s him.” Trinity Williams, a U.S. Army sergeant, said of Michael, “ The one simple reason I am attracted to Michael is because he is Christ-like. The way he cares for people and the love he has for people can only be God-driven.” To create beauty and happiness for others, so selflessly, so unconditionally, that is the very essence of his heart, of his soul, that is the very essence of who Michael Jackson is as a person.
But most important perhaps in understanding the remarkable nature of Michael is that he retains a child’s imaginative ability to create, with the intellectual capacity of an intelligent adult to express that creativity. He is a walking paradox, an inexplicable phenomenon. All aspects of Michael Jackson’s life seem to clash with one another simply by way of Michael’s character.
But it is in the perplexity of Michael’s being that he elicits wonderment. He seems only to be adult-like when he needs to be, out of necessity. Those are times of assertion and expression. In everything else, Michael Jackson is child-like. He is as curious as a child, as creative, and as imaginative. He is as sensitive as a child, as frail, as vulnerable. He is as sweet, and as unconditionally loving as a child.
He is as brutally honest as a child. Michael once said in an interview from 1983, “If I talk, I say what’s on my mind, and it can seem strange to other peoples’ ears. I’m the kind of person who will tell it all, even though it’s a secret. And I know that things should be kept private.”
He is as painfully shy as a child. And he’s shyness has, in a way, become his nature. Michael is not shy in the normal context of that words definition. It is regularly a case of embarrassment. But for Michael Jackson, it is a case of fear. His shyness is paralyzing, debilitating. He once said, “My brothers say that everybody intimidates me. That’s not true, but I do avoid eye contact with a lot of people.” He continued, “I’d much rather talk on the phone, I’m much deeper in conversation on the phone than I am in person.”
He is a child, in heart, in soul, in nature and in emotion. And in being so, it is both responsible for his genius, and responsible for his fragility.
The creative genius that Michael holds within him can be attributed to his ability to view the world through the eyes of innocence. And in seeing things as such, he is able to understand, more clearly then any adult, the relevance of emotion, the importance of love. And in comprehending such things so clearly and so easily, Michael is able to draw from the most seemingly simple things, the greatest inspiration. And with that inspiration, Michael creates such brilliant works of creative genius, so unimaginable to the rest of the world. Because Michael can see things, can understand things, on such a level of purity, based on true emotions, he is aware of wonders which lye within the universe, yet to be discovered. Those wondrous things unbeknown to us, but so brilliantly vibrant to Michael, he gives to us through his genius for song and dance. And it is a gift of priceless value, for no person, other then Michael can bring it into our limited view. When we are children, perhaps we can see such beauty within the universe, but we find it impossible to ever express ourselves, and as we grow older, we lose that creative ability. This is the uniqueness of Michael Jackson. Being as a child, Michael creates as a child, on a level of genius that escapes those other people of the arts.
And as a child, Michael is of course, immensely curious, of all things. Be it his reading great amounts of literature of both fiction and non-fiction, to starring intently at a painting for a long while, exploring its every possibility. That is the nature of Michael Jackson, in having such intense curiosity, as that of a child’s.
And he is as forgiving as a child. Brook Shields once said of Michael, “ It is very hard, when your family turns against you, and when anyone you befriend slaps you in the face. It would amaze you the way people hurt him. What amazes me even more is his ability to forgive. He acknowledges their frailty, and he allows it to eat away at him. Can you blame him for wanting to be surrounded by the innocence and purity of children? The light in their eyes is what he wants to keep alive in his own soul. In a way, Michael is not of this world.”
But being as a child is in nature, Michael is also paralyzed in much the same way a child is. And perhaps that is what allows so much hurt to enter into his life. Because as often as Michael is hurt by people, he does not allow himself to be blind to them. Michael, in a way, feels obligated to notice the troubles of other people, and he takes it upon himself to help them, no matter what the cost to him may be. People have continually brought pain into Michael’s life, due to his kindness, and it is only made worse by his willingness to always forgive. They continue to hurt Michael, over and over, because he continually allows people back in. And it is not necessarily something that Michael is even aware that he can control, because it is in his nature to be kind, and it is in his nature to forgive those who have abused him. Because of his refusal to ignore the problems of other people, Michael allows himself to be used, and to be hurt, over and over. He never really has just looked out for him. Sidney Lumet, director of the film The Wiz, once recalled that his teenage daughter asked Michael to sing. “O.K.,” Michael said, affably. “But cover your eyes.” “I think he was embarrassed by the closeness of the situation,” said Lumet, “but his desire not to be rude or hurt her led him to say yes.”
It seems, because Michael desires never to hurt anybody, he allows people to hurt him.
It becomes more so painful when one realizes the extent of Michael Jackson’s sensitivity. A child can be made easily to cry. It does not take any great effort to hurt a child emotionally, and often what pain they suffer will likely last for a long time, if not always. Michael Jackson indeed, as with his curiosity, has the sensitivity of a child. Emotionally, Michael is easily hurt. And the impact and the intensity with which Michael feels pain, with which he takes the abuse of another, is so incredibly immense that, some insult, some attack that most would take only in passing, will shack Michael to the core. As with a child, Michael is made easily to cry. Because of his extreme sensitivity, because of his heightened sense of emotion, he feels the impact of literally everything that hits him a hundred fold that which anyone else may take it. Being so painfully sensitive can make it difficult enough for Michael in having to simply deal with people, to even make contact with people, let alone having to cope with a world that is so purposely cruel towards him. And a cruel game that people play with Michael is this. The world seems almost to bait Michael, in making him think, that if he gives of himself so completely, then we may extend some kindness to him. But really, people have never had any such intention of showing Michael acceptance. It is so much more amusing for them to torture him, to continue to make him suffer.
And perhaps what makes this so sad is that, in his heart, Michael is an eternal optimist. He continues to hold out hope that one day, after all of his pain and suffering, the world will finally accept him for who he is.
When Michael was a child, he once said, “Whatever I sing, that’s what I really mean. Like, I’m singing a song. I don’t sing it if I don’t mean it.” The beautiful thing about Michael Jackson is, he means what he does; he is honest in everything he pursues.
And Michael has always been of that innocence of heart, that purity of soul, yet, since boyhood, beguilingly wise, in understanding the essence of life, far beyond his years. Where the child and the adult meet, is in Michael’s willingness and want, to put the welfare and need of others before his own. That is honesty. That is innocence. That is unrequited love.
But as Time Magazine writer, Jay Cocks, once wrote of Michael, “Show business accepts innocence only if it can be sentimentalized; Jackson’s world of fantasy is easier to dismiss with malicious gossip than understand with sympathy.”
Perhaps it should have been said, the world accepts innocence only if it can be empathized. It didn’t take long for the world to turn away from Michael. People feel threatened by what they cannot relate to, and they try to destroy what they do not understand. People cannot empathize with Michael Jackson’s innocence, with his closed off world of escapism, and so they try to destroy that. They try to destroy that purity in him. Jane Fonda once said of Michael, “On some level, I don’t even know whether it’s conscious or not, Michael knows that he has to stand off the demands of reality and protect himself. His intelligence is instinctual and emotional, like a child’s. If any artist loses that childlikeness, you lose a lot of creative juice. So Michael creates around himself a world that protects his creativity.”
On that level, for the fact of his innocence, Michael creates his own world to escape into. A haven, built with the sole purpose of protecting that creativity. On another level, it is to protect him self. Michael is an easy person to hurt; emotionally, he is fragile. Fonda once said of him, “Michael’s like a harp string. He is so sensitive and vulnerable… every breath of wind that hits him reverberates in sensitivity.” In that way, it is essential to understand Michael as a child, as in having the sensitivity of a child. It is essential, in understanding Michael Jackson, to know that he is hurt as easily as a child.
David Williams, a guitarist who worked for Michael said of him “ Michael is a human being. He’s a person. If you said ‘Shut up’, around him, he’d probably break into tears. They think he’s shy and he’s evasive and all this. No. He’s just fucking scared and tired of people bugging him. He’s a little sweetheart, and people would eat him up if he let them.” And there does the dilemma lye of Michael forgoing his own well being for the sake of another.
It is based upon his unique perception of life, and often, his own words, that people feel threatened by Michael, and therein so inclined to attack him. And to, why people find it so easy in blaming Michael for the cruelty that this world treats him with. It seems always that people never look within themselves. For if they did they would surly find that the fault lye not with Michael, but with themselves. Their lack of comprehension and sympathy for Michael’s perspective of life is the very thing that causes their hatred of him. They are threatened by their own inability to explain him. And so they abuse Michael.
And Michael steps away from that world because of that.
Michael’s extreme isolation, due to his intense fame, of course, has only contributed to his feelings of being unable to relate to the people around him, but indeed it goes far deeper then this, to the very core of his being. To who he is mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And perhaps, it is the darkest place to be, surrounded by a world that has no conception of what you see, what you think, of who you are. He is lost in a world that will never accept him. Trapped, surrounded by people who want nothing more then to bring him to his knees, to break his spirit. The world frightens him because, for him, there is no real understanding at all, and worse perhaps, there is little sympathy for Michael. The world chooses to dismiss his unique being rather then face the reality of it.
At first, it seemed an attempt by people to change Michael. To conform him to what they were, how they knew the world and only how they knew it. People wanted Michael to stop being himself, and to start being like them. It didn’t work, so they evolved to the next step that human instinct allows for. To destroy that which they do not understand. They tried, in attempting to break his will, to force him to be as they are. One must ask them selves what it is that sparks in people an interest in another? It seems always to be their ability to relate to that other person. What the two perhaps have in common with one another. But for Michael Jackson, this concept does not fit. He is too different. His eccentricities are used only as an excuse to hurt him, not as the cause. Perhaps, on the surface, people have actually forced themselves to believe that they hate Michael due to his eccentricities, but deep down in their hearts, it has always been because he is unlike them, in every way. The world, for his difference, abuses Michael.
Gerri Hirshey, a writer for Rolling Stone magazine, recalled an interview he conducted with Michael Jackson in 1983, “When Michael and I sat down to talk, there was no mistaking the strain. Sometimes, he shook with the effort. It was no act; the Boogie Monster was Bambi outside the klieg lights. He said he could explain the fear-he just couldn’t get past it. He was afraid of saying too much, didn’t know how to protect himself. Whenever he spoke his mind, people said he was, well, strange. Ten minutes into it, I could see his point. As he explained the tea party of garden statuary around his coffee table-including a Narcissus figure named Michael-I could hear how it would read. It nearly made me bawl. He was trying so damned hard.”
Jane Fonda would say, “Dad was also painfully self-conscious and shy in life, and he really only felt comfortable when he was behind the mask of a character. He could liberate himself when he was being someone else. That’s a lot like Michael.” In some ways, Michael reminds me of the walking wounded. He’s an extremely fragile person. I think that just getting on with life, making contact with people, is hard enough, much less to be worried about whither goest the world”
But even after all these years have passed by since that magical night, on Motown’s 25th anniversary, things don’t seem to have changed for Michael. Things don’t seem to have become any easier than they ever were. In 1984, at the height of Michael’s popularity, even a then 13 year old fan, Amy Gancherov, noticed that, “he looks so sad.” She thought at the time that it was perhaps because “everybody is always shoving things in his face.”
Perhaps.
Or perhaps it is because; Michael is truly alone. He seems not to have companionship, no one to talk to, no one to understand him, no one to comfort him. He once said, “Even at home, I’m lonely. I sit in my room sometimes and cry. It’s so hard to make friends, and there are some things you can’t talk to your parents about. I sometimes walk around the neighborhood at night, just hoping to find someone to talk to. But I just end up coming home.”
It is the very story of his life. Michael Jackson has always had to suffer loneliness, and it is a heavy price to pay. For at those times, when Michael most needs someone, there seems to be no one there at all. This world seems never to have been made for, perhaps never deserving of, one so innocent as Michael Jackson. What it comes down to is, Michael is sad. And he cries for it. He cries, with not a soul to hear him.
Michael once said, “People think they know me, but they don’t. Not really. Actually, I am one of the loneliest people on this earth. I cry sometimes, because it hurts. It does. To be honest, I guess you could say that it hurts to be me.”
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