Poetry & Blindfolds

Considering their royal titles, not many people have written about the parallels between the King of Rock, Elvis Presley, and the King of Pop, Michael Jackson.  Yet the parallels and coincidences abound like a musical version of the fabled Kennedy/Lincoln parallels.

*Michael’s first Top 10 hit, “I Want You Back”, was in 1969, the same year as Elvis’ last Top 10 hit, “In the Ghetto.”

*Both died eight years after their last Top 10 hit.

* Elvis was accused of stealing the black man’s music; Michael was credited with stealing it back.

*Both decided to name their property with words that ended with “land”, as if to suggest they were their own sovereign nation. 

*Both had Lisa Marie Presley.

*Both went from being iconic geniuses and inspirational artists to cartoon versions of themselves.

*Both died white.

* * * * * * *

Michael Jackson became THE star when I was in high school.  Although I never owned any of his records (except for ‘The Girl is Mine’, which had my fave rave, Paul McCartney, on it), he got me through the misery of high school better than a good friend.  In my joke above, I suggest that Michael stole the black man’s music back; that’s not exactly true.   In my opinion, Elvis did his interpretation of black music and Michael did his interpretation of white music doing its interpretation of black music.  Although not nearly as funny to say, it explains how Jackson, more than any artist since Elvis, transcended and obliterated the whole ‘us and them’ feeling really for the first time since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.  I daresay that Jackson opened such a pivotal door that he can and should be credited in part to the US having its first black president.

His music was exciting, brilliant, new, familiar, theatrical, sexy, tough… you name it.  I hear the same energy in Elvis’ Sun Studios recordings.  And it with that same cynical sadness that I observed the arc of Elvis that I must observe the arc of Michael.  Genius.  Innovator.  Passionate explorer.  Surrounded by people who give into his whims and fill him with some sort of show-biz fermaldihide to keep him in place, on the throne, a living memory that can do no harm.  The man inside vanishes, leaving a caricature that bows to the man’s past glories as well as any sycophant.  A caricature that should be a protagonist on a David Bowie album (rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust, specifically) and not a real person.  A caricature that suffocates under the weight of his past glories and his present admirers.  A shadow after sunset.

And then there’s the Generation X’ers.  My people.  Notoriously self-important and proud of it, teaching the Generation Y’ers how to lift vapidity to high art.  “Farrah and Michael in one day,” they bemoan, “why is this happening to me?”  One can almost sense the joy and lust in these postings - finally, a pretty tragedy that doesn’t impact me to go along with two wars that don’t bother me. 

In a world filled with endings, it is difficult to come to a conclusion here.  I must say I am grateful for the music of Michael Jackson and the good memories it houses, evokes and inspires.  Just as strongly, I mourn the lonely king who could not break out of the castle.  Perhaps it is simply fitting to say, he was a man, take him for all in all; I shall not look upon his like again.

Or, as my friend Emily said, ’someone you never met just died.’

I’ve been spending too much time on the computer; I think I have to relocate my love for books.  To wit, here’s my book list for Summer 2009!

Crazy people are, let’s face it, pretty common.  It seems, for every person walking down the street whistling, there is another person who is whistling out an orifice that is more troubling.  I’ve seen my share of crazy people and am tied to a few, loathe as I am to admit it.

In the realm of science fiction fandom, there are those who are not satisfied to enjoy a tale and let the possibilities and promise roll around in their heads.  No, there are a select few who wear head masks that could be mistaken for a swollen testicle but which is really the dome of a Klingon.  There are those who hold brooms differently now, as if a certain grip could lend to that broom the power of flight.  There are those who see sand dunes and, instead of thinking of temperature or humidity, allow their minds to think of giant worms sprouting out of them.

These are my crazy people.  I have long been a fan of science fiction, from ‘Star Trek’ to ‘Doctor Who’ to ‘Babylon 5’ to the original ‘Battlestar Galactica.’  I am fully aware that my ‘mainstream’ enjoyment of these stories, books and films contributes to my crazy people.  For without mainstream interest – that is, interest that permits a story, book or film to travel beyond its creator’s walls – there would be no crazy people.  So it is inevitable.  My appreciation of William Shatner’s portrayal of Captain James T. Kirk feeds into a crazy person’s pride at being the first person in his or her group to know that the ‘T’ stands for ‘Tiberius’.

Likewise, in the realm of music, I have my crazy people - in fact, I was one of those for a very long time!  You could name a Beatles song and I could tell you how long it was, in addition to scores of other random and incredibly useless trivia (to pick a song at random: ‘Come Together’ is 4:16; track 1 on side 1 of ‘Abbey Road’, b-side to ‘Something’, originally a fast rocker but slowed down thanks to Paul McCartney’s swampy, bouncy bassline, etc.etc.  — all of these facts are just in my head).  Although I have grown out of that kind of crazy, that doesn’t mean that kind of crazy ceased to exist in the world.  Indeed, you can still find people who know the time of day that Pete Best was called by Brian Epstein to inform him that he was no longer in the band.  I’m not one of those anymore, but I am well aware that my mainstream enjoyment of the Beatle boys keeps the crazy folks percolating out there somewhere.

If one can conclude anything from the above, it’s what I’ve said: mainstream appreciation of anything, be it a genre or a music or television show or a actor or anything, creates conditions in which crazy people can grow and flourish.  In fact, crazy people can only exist because of mainstream appreciation.  I think this is a pretty sound theory.

And then there’s Scott Roeder.  He can be called crazy – in fact, some friends and family have already called him as much in the few news reports I’ve read about the man himself.  Scott Roeder was a religious man (”very religious in an Old Testament, eye-for-an-eye way,” according to his ex-wife).  He thought government was doing a bad job (and joined a militia to express that disappointment loudly).  He once subscribed to a magazine suggesting “justifiable homicide” against doctors who performed abortions, and apparently likened Dr. George Tiller to the Nazi death-camp doctor Josef Mengele.  And Scott Roeder shot Dr. George Tiller to death while the doctor was acting as an usher in his church.  Operation Rescue, an pro-life establishment that has been around for years, did not literally applaud Roeder but went on record as saying the doctor, who did abortions and late-term abortions within the scope of the law, was a “mass murderer” and that his practice was “truly demonic.”

Who’s in the mainstream for this crazy guy?  

You?