Were I able to literally stand in my inbox this morning, it would have been raining shit on me. The reason? Because last night on Twitter I made a tweet about Michael Jackson’s passing that some thought unwarranted. I wrote – “So I guess this means Peter Pan gets Neverland back.”
I had good reason to.
I will not sit here and deny that Michael Jackson had an enormous impact on popular culture and music – to this day Thriller remains the largest selling album of all time. I will also not sit here and pretend that Michael Jackson didn’t most likely suffer from psychological problems, ones that he was probably deterred from addressing by many of those involved in what was a one man industry. Over time, the fact that those problems were never addressed very likely led to the man’s undoing – but for those that counted on him for a paycheck, I’m sure that their foremost concern was keeping the success train rolling even as he was unravelling. Look no further than Britney Spears for a current example of that phenomenon.
The sort of fame that Michael Jackson endured during his entire life comes at a very high price, no matter how many people believe that being famous is the best thing in the world. Truth be told, the man was in prison from childhood until his death, never knew a normal life, and because he had the financial ability to indulge his fantasies only sank further into a delusionary world. That world could have very well included child molestation. True, he was acquitted of it. That said, OJ was also acquitted of murder.
And that would be why I tweeted what I did. That the term “Neverland” would revert back to Sir James Barrie’s version of it rather than being associated with Michael Jackson’s home. That rather than being tainted by the specter of pedophilia, it would once again become “Never Never Land”, where the Piccaninny’s live and the Jolly Roger roams the seas.
I’ll not beat around the bush. While it’s speculation on my part, Jackson could have very well overdosed on medication that he was taking, medically required or not, could have been suffering from an illness that had been hidden from the media, or could have willfully committed suicide. I highly doubt that the Jackson family will allow the results of the autopsy to be made public, so we’ll probably never know if the cardiac arrest that resulted in his death occurred because of the influence of medication, be it needed or not.
At times like these, people only want to remember the good. But when it comes to art, and artists, what made them what they were cannot be overlooked. Michael Jackson was a very talented man, but that talent came at a price, one that was exposed by his bizarre behaviour over the years. That behaviour was a reflection of the man, and cannot be separated from his work. They are one in the same, just as Francis Bacon’s genius was tainted by dire alcoholism, Rothko’s was fueled by such severe depression that it would result in him shooting himself, and John Lennon struggled with contradictions within himself until the day that he was murdered.
No, an artist’s work cannot be stripped from that which made them great in the first place to placate the needs of those that only want to remember them in a singular way. The sum total of their parts is what makes them memorable, because without all of it converging on a single point within them they would have never produced the art that they did.
To overlook Michael Jackson’s bizarre qualities because he has passed away is to deny that those qualities played a role in his creativity. In truth, the desire to do so is much more a reflection of his admirer’s desire to saint him, to strip him of fault, to disappear those uncomfortable aspects of his personality so that his legacy is untarnished.
William Burroughs shot and killed his common law wife, Joan Vollmer, in Mexico in 1951 while playing a game of “William Tell” at a party. Burroughs had fled the United States to Mexico to escape the possibility of imprisonment in Louisiana after police discovered correspondence in his home between him and Allen Ginsberg regarding the delivery of marijuana. After the shooting, witnesses and officials were bribed to support the falsehood that the gun had gone off by accident. Burroughs would be forced to flee Mexico after his attorney fled back to the US to avoid charges of his own relating to a car accident. In the end, though he had fled the country, he was convicted in absentia of homicide, though his two year sentence would eventually be suspended. It was during his time in Mexico while dealing with the legal ramifications of shooting Vollmer that Burroughs would write Queer, which is now viewed as the pivotal turning point in his literary career.
William Burroughs was a Harvard graduate. He was also a heroin addict. Several years before the Mexico City incident he sold heroin in New York to support his habit. Vollmer, too, was a drug addict, though her addiction was to Benzedrine, which was sold over the counter in those days. It was in New York that he shared an apartment with Jack Kerouac.
As many of you are aware, William Burroughs would go on to write a variety of notable works, including Naked Lunch. Despite his obvious problems with drugs, and the fact that he was a convicted murderer, he still appeared on Saturday Night Live in 1981, in the films Drugstore Cowboy and Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, was featured in U2’s video for Last Night On Earth, and even hung out with Kurt Cobain.
In his later years, many of the photographs taken of him for journalistic and promotional purposes always featured him holding a gun – in obvious reference to his shooting of Vollmer, which, by the end of his life, had been transformed into acceptable legend.
Personally, I have always considered Burroughs a murderer. I have even referenced the shooting of Vollmer, the fact that Burroughs got away with it, and that it became part of his celebrity, in my own work…
“Hey Carmelina
Target practice is for Mexico
And I’ve become spectacular
Which is strange because I feel dumb”
Returning to Michael Jackson, the comparison is simple. Burroughs never had any qualms about admitting that it was Vollmer’s murder that transformed his outlook and forced him to confront his actions, saying later…
“I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan’s death, and to a realization of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing. I live with the constant threat of possession, and a constant need to escape from possession, from control. So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a life long struggle, in which I have had no choice except to write my way out.”
In Jackson’s case, his ghosts and phantoms were not something that he ever publicly confronted, nor admitted to – which could have included inappropriate sexual behaviour with children. Had his problems been confronted, perhaps he would not have embarked on the destructive physical and quite obvious mental path that he did. In short, had he ever come to terms with himself, perhaps he would still be alive.
In the end, had he done it, would he still have been as loved and admired? Or would the millions that now weep because of his passing have turned their backs on him long ago?
Nothing is created out of nothing. Artists do not simply reach into thin air and capture what others then use to define periods in their lives, their emotions, and even their perceptions of things. They must dig, more often than not in the mud, and in the case of the greatest of them, into places that most would never dare to go.
And so goes the scarecrow.
