The First Book of Michael (2 page)

As the man himself mused in 2001,

“I pretty much just get in a room and I start to dance… I don't create the dance, the dance creates itself, really. You know, I'll do something and I'll look back... I'll look back on tape and I'll go, "Wow," I didn't realise I had done that. It came out of the drums… Dancing is about interpretation. You become.... You become the accompaniment of the music. So when you become the bass of ‘Billie Jean’, I couldn't help but do the step that I was doing when the song first starts, because that's what it told me to do.”

I suppose, then, that flawless dancing is perhaps less a product of ‘not-thinking’ and more one of ‘faultless thinking’ – a connection with a supremacy that streams thought silently through the body as pure action, with no middle-man to muddy the message.

Or, as the physician and writer Havelock Ellis stated, “To dance is to imitate the gods.”

Michael reached levels of rapture in his dance that are reminiscent of Sufi Dervish dancing - his precision presenting us with a contemporary version of Hindu Mudras. The phenomenon of reaching transcendence through dance is well-documented. Spectators across history have borne witness to a performer’s spontaneous transformation, whereupon the dancer would no longer appear to be merely human. And upon these occasions, the watchers would instinctively revere, appreciate and accept the experience for what it was - a glimpse of God.

In 2002, Michael said,

"…the same new miracle intervals and biological rhythms that sound out the architecture of my DNA also governs the movement of the stars. The same music governs the rhythm of the seasons; the pulse of our heartbeats; the migration of birds; the ebb and flow of ocean tides; the cycles of growth; evolution and dissolution. It’s music; it’s rhythm. And my goal in life is to give to the world what I was lucky to receive: the ecstasy of divine union through my music and my dance... It’s what I’m here for.”

Following the
Brits ‘96
performance of ‘Earth Song’, fellow philanthropist Sir Bob Geldof introduced Michael to the stage, so that he could receive what Geldof described as the “one-off - like the man himself”
Artist of a Generation
award (albeit, “…what generation?” Geldof enquired, “…at least three have been listening to him already”). Geldof welcomed Michael using these words,

"...the most famous person on the planet, God help him… When Michael Jackson sings it is with the voice of angels. And when his feet move, you can see God dancing..."

Forum threads abound regarding the debate as to whether Michael was a better dancer or singer. It’s a tough one. Michael could vocally emote like very few people to have ever existed, and his technical singing abilities - the whole gamut of them - were second to none. But for me, the magic is in the dance. As he promoted the
Bad
tour, Michael’s then-manager, Frank Dileo, said that there were others who could sing as well as Michael, but no-one alive that could rival him for dance. And I’m inclined to agree. Michael himself, as he grew older, relied more and more on his moves rather than his voice. He felt most secure dancing. Which makes sense - I mean, how many iconic dance moves and routines can one man immortalise? It’s an embarrassment of riches. He was truly extraordinary.

Naturally, Michael had his influences. He threw the various geniuses James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Gene Kelly, Bob Fosse, Charlie Chaplin, Marcel Marceau, Fred Astaire and Sammy Davis Junior into an alchemy pot (imagine that party), and came up with – well, you know: that molten-metal angel-alien we witnessed morphing across stages, with a dance that entranced human beings all over the globe.

‘The Dance’ (as Michael referred to it in his book,
Dancing the Dream
), was Michael’s lifeline. Fred Astaire described him as “an angry dancer”, and Michael - after suffering a uniquely oppressed childhood - did indeed have a great deal to be angry about. But just imagine what a better world we would live in if all rage was expressed like this?! In Michael’s song ‘Blood on the Dance Floor’, it’s not coincidental that such a contrast exists between the guttural vox of the verses and the orgasmically unleashed vocals of the bridge, with its ecstatically sung lyric, “To escape the world I got to enjoy that simple dance”.

Dancing was how Michael meditated. Like he said, “Dancing is important, like laughing, to back off tension. Escapism ... it's just great".

And - as I intimated before - give me learning to dance like Michael over prayer or yoga anytime. As a teenager bullied at school, Michael gave me the refuge of his dance, and for this I shall be eternally grateful to him.

So, the years progressed, and I continued to try and honour my hero. Every opportunity I had, I’d show off the arsenal of moves I’d accumulated over the years.

I became a psychiatric nurse, with one of my initial placements being undertaken in a respite centre for people suffering with schizophrenia. As I did the early rounds one day, I observed one of the residents dancing in his room. I couldn’t hear the music he was dancing to, as he was wearing headphones so as not to disturb anyone. I continued on my round, then returned to the office. Whereupon, the senior nurse asked me to report on what the residents had been doing. I told her all I had seen, at which point she instructed me to write in the care notes of the ‘dancing resident’ that I had witnessed peculiar behaviour.

I asked her what that had been.

I continue dancing to this day. I doubt I’ll ever stop. I imagine I’ll be putting on shows when I’m elderly and in a nursing home. Or at least dancing in the privacy of my own room (when my parents - finally - won’t be able to intrude). The nurses will say I’m senile. I’ll refer them to the man with schizophrenia I once worked with.

Prior to an evening out, dancing around the house is perhaps the most enjoyable part of the process - a ritualistic prescient for what will inevitably come to pass on some unsuspecting dance floor. It’s a warm-up, a practice.

For what has got to be the best party trick in the world.

Got the point?

Good.

Let's dance.

CHAPTER ONE

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Michael’s art comprises a third of the triumvirate of topics that people discuss about him. The others being his legal tribulations, and his face.

The last occasion I saw Michael’s face in the flesh, someone had just hit him.

Precisely whereabouts upon Michael’s person is open to dubiety, though AEG Executive Randy Phillips - a man instrumental in convincing Michael to become involved in the doomed
This Is It
venture – flagrantly acknowledges the occurrence of the physical assault in an email exposed in the legal courts, during the trial in which Michael’s mother’s attempted to garner the truth behind why her son had died. Phillips also freely admits, in the same email chain, that he screamed at Michael “so hard the walls were shaking”. In a further email within the same conversation, Phillips remarks “we still have to get his nose on properly.” Whether this concern was meant literally or facetiously isn’t clear. Regardless, it appears that Michael was being bullied.

There exists a close-up photograph of Michael’s face taken during the ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ rehearsals for
This Is It
, which unarguably displays the image of an agonised human being. Yet, it was used to promote the posthumous movie’s release – apparently as proof that Michael was “in shape”. It has since been copyrighted – hence, limiting its distribution.
This Is It
was an empty hearse.
This Is It
was nothing less than an international snuff movie that took cynical advantage of Michael’s unrivalled levels of fame in order to rake in the dollars.

Randy Phillips had hit an evidently terrified and extremely vulnerable man. A man once worth billions of dollars, who had somehow found himself so heavily in debt that he had no option but to obey orders; a man that merely wanted to be able to afford a house for his children to live in; a man that had been whipped into shape to entertain an insatiable public since he was just five years old.

Michael’s face was talked about a lot that week of the
O2
appearance. The press conference announcing his much-anticipated return to the stage provided the media with all the pictures they needed to satisfy their perennial 'count-and-compare' cosmetic surgery feature quotas.

***

The story goes that Michael’s first taste of rhinoplasty was as a result of an accident on stage during 1979’s
Destiny
tour, when Michael was twenty-one years old. This may well be true. However, it was also around this time that Michael wrote a recently unearthed motivational guidance note to himself, in which he stated,

“MJ will be my new name... I want a whole new character, a whole new look. I should be a totally different person. People should never think of me as the kid who sang ‘ABC’, ‘I Want You Back’. I should be a new, incredible actor/singer/dancer that will shock the world.”

Theories abound behind why Michael would want to alter his face as drastically as he did, with the most popular one being that he suffered with the psychological condition Body Dysmorphic Disorder, as a result of his having been the most photographed child on Earth. However - by his early twenties, Michael had already conquered the world. Maybe he then wanted to conquer it as someone else.

Michael began drawing pictures of elfin faces next to photographs of himself with the number ‘1998’ next to it (a good example is in his autobiography,
Moonwalk
). And, although it’s true that Michael would sign many things with the curiosity-stoking ‘1998’, it holds a certain poignancy when viewed with hindsight alongside these seeming future self-portraits.

Perhaps there swirled a perfect storm of ambition, enforced rhinoplasty and the onset of the pigment-destroying disease vitiligo. Perhaps it was borne as a logical consequence of an insecure, innate perfectionist who had spent decades of his life rehearsing in front of mirrors. Perhaps Michael embraced and harnessed this tempest to create and control his Barnum-esque whirlwind. The transformation became a double-edged sword, however: it helped sate his desire for a cemented and easily recollected place in the memory of infinity - but at what price for his public palatability? Though the inherent irony of the backlash against the mutable complexion and shape of Michael's face, is that he did more to benefit race relations than anyone else in human history. Well, him and his friend Madiba Mandela.

***

The final days of Mandela were a familiar circus to those of us all-too au fait with the mechanics of the parasitic press; with their orgy of audacity and mendacity in their slavering anticipation of the corporeal death of a hero. Hundreds of people - comprised of fans, media and the merely curious - gathered outside a building, chanting a man’s name: singing for him, holding vigils, whilst the man inside the building suffered. As the great man’s granddaughter, Ndileka Mandela, put it, “[They] want a pound of flesh. In the absence of facts, [they] speculate.”

Thankfully, not all of the comparisons between Madiba and Michael are so painful.

Pictures of meetings between Michael and Mandela portray two bona fide heroes in enthusiastic embrace: brothers in arms. Imagine the charge in that room? Perhaps the most telling example of the bond between the two benevolent behemoths, however, is the quote from President Mandela describing Michael as “a close member of our family.” Michael reciprocated this love during the 2005 child molestation trial, with the words: “Mandela’s story is giving me a lot of strength”.

The colossal cultural strides that these men took, bridged gaps between religious and political differences; they stood as flaming torches amongst humanity: their fuel of humility starkly illuminating the darkness of jealousy - a jealousy manifest through their being globally slandered as miscreants. As Mr. Mandela stated, “The path of those who preach love, and not hatred, is not easy. They often have to wear a crown of thorns.” The two men were uniquely civilised human beings – evolutionary cusps, perhaps evidencing better than anything else an eventual spiritual progression for humanity. They invited us to celebrate the ecstasy of diversity; they personified Goethe’s poetic claim that “Colours are light’s suffering and joy”. If they were terrorists, they were terrorists of love.

There is a historical poignancy in these men dying in such close chronological proximity to each other. Signs of their time. The annual commemorations will be desperately and appropriately sad: morose celebrations of the life of the humanitarian entertainer stirring an emotive groundswell in preparation for the celebrations later that year of the life of the humanitarian politician - two giants among men that stood steadfast in the face of violent adversity, in their perceived-as-idealistic beliefs in peace. But handcuffed with this grief, must be the recognition that upon these two dates every year, our collective mass of mutual understanding evolves and multiplies exponentially.