TFTD Michael Jackson

Thought for the Day
Rob Marshall: 27th June 2009
Good morning
Yesterday I listened to the Michael’s Jackson’s earth song, over and over again: “What about the sunrise? What about the rain?
What about all the things, that you said we were to gain….
What about killingfields, is there a time?
What about all the dreams, that you said were yours and mine?

And I realised, perhaps for the first time, how the combined weirdness and brilliance of Michael Jackson’s life was rooted in a child-like innocence
and that the world really wasn’t that bad – apart from the damage that human beings created around themselves.

Touched by genius, a music purist – a composer, writer, performer and superb dancer – Jackson’s dense creativity manifested itself in truly bizarre ways. Criminal proceedings only added to a mist of unease and mystery which often swirled around him.

Jackson’s undoubted artistic genius was rooted in his desire to withdraw from celebrity mainstream culture to be a recluse – and to imagine an unreal world where priorities are more focussed and reality is only a haze in the distance.

So that when he did burst out onto the stage – his contribution was at least thoughtful, often charged, sometimes sublime – and not least because whilst living in the world – he did not always want to be part of what he saw and witnessed. And the result only added to a sense of confusion and raised more questions.

Michael Jackson’s passing shows how massive a part music plays in many people’s lives. There is a profoundly spiritual aspect to the music that you and I love – marking rites of passage, present and former relationships, cadences in our lives that we might want to celebrate again and again – or quite simply forget – until we hear the tune. Thomas Beecham said that good music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and quits the memory with difficulty.

It is quite clear that Michael Jackson wrestled as a recluse, with the world, with man, with God and with himself. He saw humanity as flawed and lamented his role in it. In another of his songs, Heal the World, Jackson described love as a place of the heart where in making a little space for ourselves – we could make the world a better place: he writes:
If You Want To Know Why; There's A Love That Cannot LieLove Is Strong; It Only Cares For Joyful Giving.

But it’s the Earth Song, with which I began, which reinforces Jackson’s belief, through music, that however flawed our starting point, we all need to take a little time out to ask some profound and even theological questions:
He sings: What about the man? What about the crying man ?What about Abraham ? What about death again ? Do we give a damn?
The answer, I think, is that in his own unique way, he did.