God Heals Through Children
Shmuley Boteach: All the pain that you have endured with all the attacks, and I have seen it firsthand, and I say to people, so much of the garbage that is said about you is invented and unfair. So why haven't you just become a cynical adult, and thrown in the towel?
Michael Jackson: I'll tell you. Because with the pain, and the arrows that people have shot at me nobody else would have been able to take it. They would have probably committed suicide by now. . . they would have become a drunk. Because they have been very cruel and rude to me. And if they don't think I hear it and see it, I do. I do. It's been the children. I am holding on for them or else I wouldn't have made it. I really wouldn't have made it.
SB: The children have given you the support to continue? Or are you saying you continue because you believe that God gave you a mission to try and care for these neglected children?
MJ: God gave me a mission, I feel, to do something for them and they have given me the support and the belief and the love to hold on, hold on. When I look in the mirror I feel healed all over again. It's like being baptized. It's like God saying, “Michael, everything will be ok,” when I look in the eyes of a child.
SB: So as far as you are concerned, you seem to be saying that you have completed every mission apart from your greatest mission and you are hanging on for that great mission and that is that you can bring care to children. Does that mean that you no longer have the same musical ambitions?
MJ: Are you kidding? It is heightened a trillion-fold now, from dancing to music, it inspires me even more now.
SB: But can you show love to adults, do you still trust adults?
MJ: I trust adults. . .
SB: But you are still wary initially. . . you have to be.
MJ: Yes, because they have really betrayed and deceived me in so many different ways and at so many different times. I have had adults with tears coming down their face, saying, “It's a shame what you have been through and I would never ever ever
ever
hurt you or do anything. And they turn around and they hurt me. Honestly, that's the kind of crap I have been through. . . tears rolling down and hugging me. And they end up a year later suing over some ridiculous. . . like a photographer over some pictures, or some person who gets terminated and I didn't terminate them, but I get sued by them and I didn't do it. This is the sort of silliness.
SB: At that moment they probably meant it and that's the problem. A day later emotion can change. But deep down you can still trust. You may have cause to feel betrayed and let down, but you have to overcome the fear you have of people. That is extremely important. I wouldn't be your friend if I didn't believe that. You've taught me more about appreciating my kids, and I want to teach you more about being fearless.
MJ: Ah, that's sweet. I have had so many parents come to me, because when their kids see me, they fall in love with me. They go nuts. They wanna play and climb trees and I do all that with them. They take me aside with tears in their eyes and go, “Michael, I don't know my children. You have taught me to really spend time with my children. I need to learn that.” They tell me that all the time.
SB: But children bore most adults, especially if they're not their own.
MJ: But how? Honestly, tell me the truth, do they really bore them?
SB: Yes. First, because children need a phenomenal amount of patience and most adults do not have patience. Second, children ask so many questions, and, the adult thinks, “I want to get on with my work!” Because parents have decided that making a million dollars is important, but the child wanting to know why a cat has four legs is not important. Do you like those questions from children? Do you think that children know what is important even more than adults?
MJ: It depends on value, on what we consider to be truly important. In my true opinion, to be an entrepreneur and climb the corporate ladder and all those other, worldly things that people do, that's worldly to them. I think children worship fun, love, they worship attention. They want a fun-filled day, things that when you experience it with them you have a special place in their heart forever. It changes who they become and what our world becomes, the totality of what happens in this universe becomes. It is the future.
SB: But what if someone says, “Fun isn't serious. We have to work. We have to cure diseases. We have to build houses and find out what the weather forecast is for the weekend. And fun doesn't do any of that. Children have to grow up to know that they have responsibilities, that they have to do work.”
MJ: I think we learn through play, through having fun and after having fun I think magic happens. Or during having fun, magic happens. I know for me it does. I wrote one of the prettiest songs I've ever written when I was playing with some children, for this album. It completely came from them and when I had my songs laid out I go, “Ok, this one came from this kid, and this one came from this kid.” They inspired it. It came from their being and their presence and their spirit. It's true.
SB: So children are like a swimming pool and the water represents Godliness. And as you get older and grow up the water begins to freeze until it becomes ice. And children are just this reservoir of warm, free water and you can just play, whereas ice is hard and cold and not inviting. So you want to get adults to thaw, as it were, melt the pool again.
MJ: That's why when I direct moviesâand I am going to start directing again soonâI see everything through the eyes of a child. All my stories are going to be about issues about children, how they are affected by the world and how they see the world through their eyes, 'cause that's all I can relate to. I can't deal with some court story or murder crime. I don't understand that. I can understand if a kid were involved in a crime and tracing his life and what happened and why it happened and how he is feeling being sentenced to life and what goes on in that little heart that is pounding. I can understand that. I can direct that, I can write about that because I feel that.
SB: How can an adult get that feeling? Is it a gift? Can I acquire it? Being around you I do feel it more.
MJ: That's really sweet.
SB: I love my kids very much, but I don't love other people's kids as much. But when I see Prince, he melts my heart because he is such a warm and loving kid.
MJ: That's how I want them to be. Since they were very little I taught them to love everybody.
SB: How are you going to preserve that as they grow older? You are going to have to protect them, obviously, from that
News of the World
thing.
A rare picture of Michael's children had just appeared in
News of the World,
a British tabloid, a few days earlier. Prince and Paris had gone from Neverland to Los Angeles for a doctor's checkup. In the back of a limousine with tinted windows, Prince was playing with the electric windows, which then opened, and a photographer quickly took his and Paris's picture. Michael was devastated. He called me in the middle of the night from Neverland to see if something could be done to have the picture removed from their website. A day later, a lawyer fired off a letter, but the picture remained. Michael often told me that he is protective of his children's images, and put those silly scarves on their faces when they are in public so that they can't be photographed, to protect them from kidnapping. My own thoughts were that he hated people speculating as to their paternity and whether or not they had a resemblance to him.
Here, Michael was right. It was always grotesquely unfair to two innocent and vulnerable children for the world to speculate as to whether Michael is their true father. It is simply nobody's business. Could you imagine inviting a dinner guest to your home who sat there scrutinizing your children's eyes and hair to determine if they were your biological children or if they were adopted? Could you imagine being asked by your neighbor, “Is this your husband's son, or does he come from a sperm donor?” But Michael's handling of the subject, in particular by veiling the children in public, was typical and unfortunately extreme and weird. To be sure, the children do need to be protected from a prying public. But they also need a normal upbringing and balance must be found.
MJ: I teach them to love everybody and to be kind and to be good in their heart. But they have that naturally. I didn't have to program it. . . they have it naturally.
I have to say, Prince and Paris did really seem to be extremely gentle and well-mannered children. And exceptionally close to their father.
MJ: What you don't know about me is how much I love film and art and I want to direct so badly. I could scream, I want to show the world through the eyes of a child because I understand them so
much. Their pain and their joy and their laughter and what hurts them. And I see the world through their eyes and I want to portray that on film. That's my real passion. I love it. It's too much.
SB: So as a director you can give the whole world your view of how children are because they can see it through your eyes, even if you do a movie for adults?
MJ: Yes, and I searched my heart many times and I said, “Can I do a real serious film for adults?” And I know I can. But I don't think I would enjoy it. I don't think I would enjoy it. I know I can do it, but I wouldn't enjoy it.
SB: If there was one movie that you could have directed, which one would it be?
MJ:
ET
,
The Wizard of Oz, 400 Blows
, which is a great movie by François Truffaut. I love
Shane
and I am crazy about
To Kill a Mockingbird
. That's the story that I see and every time I see it I have a lump in my throat in the same place. Have you seen it? Oh, I can't wait to show it to you. Please see it with me. We'll turn off all the phones and we'll just watch it.
SB: Can the kids watch it?
MJ: Absolutely, they will learn. It's about racism in the South. It's about a man who is put on trial saying that he raped a white woman. There are some hard areas but it is seen through the eyes of children. Man this movie will wear you out. I love it too much. It is definitely one of the best movies. I wish I had directed it. Oh God, it is so sweet.
Do Black People Have Greater Musical Talent than Whites?
Shmuley Boteach: Let me ask you a question. . . Well, but I mean, that's what makes you uniqueâthat you are talented across the board. Do black people have more rhythm than white people? When you speak about dancing and everything. . . I mean, it's like a joke, but it's not just a joke that white people have no rhythm.
When you speak about, like, the natural rhythm and everything and the way these black kids in the ghetto, the way they dance, you always talk about that. It's like natural. . . you always see it around here in Manhattan? These kids on the street who busk. It's amazing!
Michael Jackson: It's amazing, and it is natural. . . they have a natural rhythm that nobody can explain. It's a natural talent.
SB: Do you see white people having that rhythm?
MJ: It's not the same and I'm not saying it out of being. . .
SB: But the sense of timing. . .
MJ: Stan would always tell me, and he would go to all the black clubs. . . he would sit in the Apollo Theater, he called it Cut-time rhythm. He said he had to have the black rhythm so he hung out with the blacks to get that cut-time rhythm [mimicking noises]. You know that's what rappers do nowâthey do cut-time rhythm. That's what it's all about, it's that natural rhythm thing.
SB: That reflects their inner rhythm?
MJ: Yeah, yeah. But you take a little black child and they got the rhythm of a grown-up, like a real dancer. And it's just a natural ability, you know?
SB: Without trying to penetrate this too deeply, traditionally, Africa was more childlike than Europe. Europe prided itself on its sophistication, its perfumes, its fancy clothes. Africa was dismissed as “more primitive” but therefore much more natural, more organic. They were much closer to the earth. So it could be that they never detached themselves from those natural rhythms?
MJ: But how does that become genetic?
SB: I don't know.
MJ: Could you take a Scottish or Irish child and put him in that same situation, let him be born in Africa among those. . .
SB: Well, that's the whole question about Elvis, right?
MJ: Elvis always hung out around blacks.
SB: And he acquired that rhythm, right?
MJ: Yeah, he acquired that rhythm, he wanted to do the steps, and he talked black and acted black. We knew Elvis very well and Lisa Marie and myself always talked about how. . .
SB: Had he not been a white man, you don't think he would've been as successful, right?
MJ: Not nearly. Not nearly because it would've been expected of him. Remember the slogan that Philips, who owned Sun Records, he said, “If I could only find a white man with a black man's sound, I could make a million dollars,” and in come walks Elvis Presley.
SB: Now, you ask an incredible question: “How does that become innate, you know?” And especially science today doesn't believe in acquired characteristics. You can't transmit characteristics to a child that have been acquired in a lifetime. So, if you have great musical talent, you can give it to Prince. But if someone taught it to you, you can't give it to Prince. He'd have to get it on his own. It's not in the genes.
MJ: Yeah, yeah.
SB: When I was in my preaching competition, the first year, when I came in second, I lost to this Caribbean preacher and we were so close. I lost by like 3 points out of 130 points and everyone said to me, “He had timing, you didn't.” He knew like, you wait, you know the way a preacher has to build up. And all my friends said to me, “Shmuley, he had rhythm.” [both laughing]