Michael Jackson

January 1

Before I start the story, a little about Michael Jackson.

I offered to give my autographed copy of Thriller to a friend - for a year - (wouldn't give a thing like that away forever!) - for Christmas...

She thought I meant it was a printed signature...

So, that got me to thinking about MJ this morning, and in response to her asking me what I remembered...here are the 3 letters I sent...[English is her third language, thus the language explanations....]

1

ok, this is a MUCH better story to tell, but I'll try to write it

my friend - well, first -

camera dollys (dollies?) look like simple things - like shopping carts, kind of - on which you put a movie camera, when there's a "tracking" shot. it's like a wagon, on which you put a movie camera. Except, because there are all sorts of fancy hydraulics and god knows what, one is worth about a hundred thousand dollars...

anyway, it was slightly odd - it was - that he always had a friend who was twelve, in that - when the friend got older, he really wouldn't hang out with him any more. So it was kind of like he was friends with the age, not the person? which one could argue is kind of using people. not deliberately, not consciously, but..

anyway, he and his friend were in a sound stage (at a movie studio - a sound stage means like a big warehouse type building, in which they film movies), just the two of them, when my friend walked in. i don't know if he wanted something from m, or if he needed something from the soundstage and happened to walk in.

and michael and his friend - one was pushing, the other riding - were racing around the sound stage with the camera dolly, and m was going "

WheeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!"

He suddenly saw my friend, and said: "X - don't tell, okay. Please don't tell." (i've X'd my friend's name out!)

You have to speak English to understand that, really - "don't tell" is short for "don't tell on me", and it's something you would never say - never - after you were 12, and probably not after you were 5 or 6. And he was totally serious.

And my friend thought, but didn't say " You're f***ing Michael Jackson!!! :0 Who the fuck am I going to tell?!? :0 :D"

You understand, it wasn't like don't tell the press or something - that wouldn't have even been a vague issue, that wasn't what he meant. Just like - don't tell...the grown up in charge, basically.

Except, he was Michael Jackson - he WAS the person in charge.

But he didn't see it that way - he totally, honestly, and sincerely didn't.

That was what he genuinely was, and it is tragic, tragic, that there never was an adult who had his best interests at heart to take care of him, to allow him to do what he did best, without fucking all the rest of it up as he really honestly was still a child, always...

I thought about it, and then wrote this a half hour later...


2

i will say one other thing, while I think of it...

michael jackson could never have become michael jackson tdoay.

today, everyone in la - every shop assistant - knows the phone number of paparazzi, and knows they'll get a hundred dollars or something if they tip them off when anyone famous is nearby.

his whole fame came from a kind of mystique. that couldn't happen today..

before I knew someone who knew him - which is how I spent most of those times in his vicinity - I used to run into him ALL the time one year. Like, I was afraid he recognised me and thought I was some obsessed kid following him around (I don't really think he thought that!)....

the first time, it was a school day, but for some reason (!) i was in the shopping mall. It was morning...on a weekday...totally deserted...

And m [Michael Jackson] came by with one of his friends (who was also not in school!), going to the toy store. that was the first time I ever spoke to him, and he kept asking me questions about myself, but I was too shy, and kind of said something stupid, and sort of ran away...

but my point is - I saw him enough times, especially at the movie studio, that I absolutely to this day could recognise his driver, who acted also as a kind of body guard. Yet when I saw him that first time, at least, it was just him and his friend (and me!), in a totally deserted mall...

not in a million years could someone build fame around a mystique today...it couldn't happen in the mainstream media...

Then I wrote this...less than an hour later...


3

i'm suddenly getting really wistful about that...

just, like, there was something so innocent...i mean, i was just a kid, but so was he (even though he wasn't!)...and he looked relatively normal, y'know (i don't recall staring at his face, but why would I?)

he was just some kid, playing his game in a way that got the world's attention...

i think what happened to me recently, that I told you about...that really evil person going terrible things to me - I just...I mean, if you think about it, that's what destroyed mj - he was a genuinely and sincerely innocent and sweet person, just - i mean, I heard interviews where he referred to himself this way - christ like - haha -but, y'know...

and the bad thoughts and bad ideas of the world killed him...he had no...no guidance, and was ultimately just a child. I heard Paul McCartney referring to him, after he died last summer, as a ...child, or a boy, or something - and then corrected himself,and said, well - not precisely, but he was...

i've never thought any of this through, before. i've never even told anyone about seeing him in the toy store since the week it happened...

but there is something really tragic about innocence lost...adults call it growing up...and they call innocence naive, and growing up...um..acting adult, I guess.

but just because something comes after, doesn't make it better.

people have always said that about me - that i'm kind of...not...um...corrupt, or whatever...like a kid, always...

m-----[my friend] - but you don't know him - in [city in France] said that once, when I leapt over a fence, rather than walking around it, as everyone else did! (M----- was in his first year of high school, but he walked around the fence!)

m [Michael Jackson] seems to have been the fool...it DOES appear that it is sophisticated "grown up" people who win.

Charlie Chaplin, y'know, was thrown out of the United States, and lived in exile (he was English, so he could be thrown out) - he was thrown out for going to a communist rally - but the point is - he sincerely believed in something...and was punished for it....i don't know...

it's funny, to remember so clearly - I do remember, I remember what he was wearing...to have an image in my mind so clear...of, really, the most famous person on earth! (i remember the other occasions, too, of course...)

but - it just touches me, somehow, as it never did before...it was just some weekday morning, and....

and it DOES make me sad that...he didn't get good advice about how to handle his problems...