I know that night is not the same as day time: things look different then. Night experiences become unexplainable at day light because they cease to exist. I know that night can be scary for the lonely, if they realize their loneliness.
Earnest Hemmingway, Farewell to Arms
Michael Jackson was a lonely person. He admitted it on multiple occasions during interviews. Loneliness is pain and quietness. Michael was the most widely loved, most closely surrounded by people, and the loneliest person at the same time.
It all started during his childhood. He comes from a large family of many brothers and sisters. The whole household is nestled in a tiny little house. What a contrast to the huge Neverland – land, extending over thousands of acres – and housing just him and his employees. Where does his loneliness come from? Probably, many factors play role: absence of real childhood, the huge talent gushing out of him, peoples` spite, or the fortune that he accumulated...
The absence of a normal life is one of the reasons. I cannot imagine the life of a hermit who is known by everybody. To be innocent while everyone blames you. To make a personal choice that is criticized by the whole world. This is a tragedy. Michael could lead a normal conversation with just a few people. Special treatment toward him was always there, out in the air. The treatment of the little child-star, the only black performer who broke all records with regard to the sale of musical albums. Michael did not have any friends – it was all about business around him. He dreams of going to school like all other children, playing games, playing the ball – but he can't – little Michael has to rehearse and appear onstage for the duration of the night. He has shared that sometimes, he would go out alone and camouflaged with a single goal in mind: to blend in, to watch the normal life, and to find friends. He didn't manage. Truly, he has friends who are stars just like him. Their closeness springs from the faith that they share.
People blamed him for being strange. However, what kind of person could you be, starting regular onstage performance at the age of 6? Since then, your life is an endless circle of rehearsals. You cannot go out on the street, without being followed by a crowd of photographers and yelling teenager girls. We don't speak of Rihanna who performed just 2 years. We are talking about the entire life of a person. Moreover, there is practically no one on the planet who can't recognize him.
Loneliness is a real and very deep state of a searching person with a sensitive soul. His soul was like that – sensitive, with a delicacy which stopped him from speaking about his personal life in front of strangers. This soul was searching – during all his life – something new and different to be offered to the world. Michael's perfectionism made his shows one of a kind. He was always full of ideas for new music, texts, dances, clips, and shows. Michael was an absolute innovator in everything he started.
When do we discover our loneliness? The answer is: when there is no one around telling us that we are not lonely. John Lennon said once: “At the end, you go home alone. You can't fill your bed with fans”. Yes, after concerts, Michael goes back alone to his hotel rooms. The stadium is still filled with crowds of fans, dreaming to touch him and to take part in his life. He is left alone with his pets, children, and employees who comprise his family. Well, yes, but you are almost there! Usually, people feel loneliest if they don't have partners. There is nothing more frightening than having no one to love. Michael was really alone – he couldn't find a partner to share the good and the bad. All people around him just came and left: no one remained faithful to him.
What was Lisa Marie Presley for Michael Jackson – we will never know. The rumours are quite diverse again: from camouflage to his real love. Maybe, they had a normal relationship like all other people. Facts are known only by Lisa: we will get them if she decides to open the box of secrets. Yet, their real or imagined togetherness disappeared pretty quickly. Michael and Lisa separated after an 18 months relationship.
What was Debbie Row, his second wife after Lisa, for Michael Jackson? My guess is a good friend and a woman who loved him: ready to make him feel better in any possible way - even by giving her children to him.
Michael provokes a strange motherly sense in all women who are trying to help, protect, and hug him... I don't really know what triggers this sense – whether his appearance: skinny, pale, looking through his big, brown, and warm eyes; his pure soul – the soul of a child who didn`t grow up; or his tender voice, faltering from embarrassment at moments… Yet, the child in him triggers this sense – you want to guard and protect him from the evil of this world. And you do it precisely as you nurture a small and helpless child.
That's how Debbie Raw was – she tried to protect him from the spite of the outside world. She gave him children to make him happy. And she succeeded – at least temporarily. I don't think that she can be blamed for selling or abandoning her children. She knew that her place was not next to Michael. On the other hand, the children's love would be the rescue boat for his lonely state.
It is a paradox that loneliness is the scourge of big cities. Statistics show that every second resident of a metropolis lives in a proud loneliness. Why are people so lonely, failing to share their feelings and thoughts with their friends and relatives? Something is making us isolate, though we are constantly surrounded by people.
Some time ago, Charlie Chaplin showed the contemporary world as a huge machine, encircling humans in the form of its little and insignificant screws. Baal Sulam compares us to cogwheels in a completely different sense. Who are we, after all? Are we machine parts, subject to wear and tear? Or may be proud and lonely creatures? Sill, we may be parts of the miraculous whole. In his remarkable movie Modern Times (1936), Chaplin describes the ill-fated adventures of a wonderer that blazes his trail in the harsh reality of the Great Depression. He finds a job spot as a conveyer worker at a huge plant, working in a prison-like environment. The insane work rate forces him to literally enter the opened jaws of the machine. We see the wonderer who is winding around the giant cogwheels, desperately trying to keep up with the work requirements.
Chaplin's Modern Times characterize his own time period. The master of tragicomedy is as if piercing the balloon of hopes with a pin, in the midst of a century of modernization. Chaplin is one of the first figures to ask as to where does progress lead: do we really become freer and happier persons with its help?
Michael tried to be different. He didn't want to take part in the huge machine: one of the many cogwheels that was told what to do. And he was truly different – onstage and in his real life. Like Charlie Chaplin, Michael Jackson was innovator. Not accidentally, he loved Chaplin's movies.
The movie of Chaplin does not give us a comforting answer. Reality does not do it either. Today, the proud and powerful USA, which wrote on its national flag “freedom and democracy”, magnificently descends and sinks in a state of crisis, reminding of a trans-ocean liner with leaky bottom. No one is holding hopes that the new technologies will solve all global problems. People don't believe in technology's power to secure personal freedom.
Our dreams of friendly robots were alive just a couple of years ago. They'll take care of all housekeeping while the owners play with the kids, lying in their comfy sofas. Odd enough, we are increasingly carried away in an endless chase of the fleeting moments of rest. Illusions fade, leaving us alone in the realities of our new century: luxurious trade centers and legal brainwashing through mass media. Yes, it is true – we all trust TV and newspaper information. You don't feel too comfortable, do you? Just stop at the nearby supermarket and buy yourself a wonderful present. You will resurface from your illegal gloominess! Maybe, you don't need the trinket at all, but you “have to” buy it – because we have a lot to sell. Obviously, we have turned into robots. In the century of know-how, we have lost the most essential technology: how to be a happy and free people. Michael tried to teach us how to be happy and free. That is why he was constantly surrounded by children. Because of their innocence, children don't know how to manipulate people.
The cabbalist Baal Susam writes the following: "Each individual in our society resembles a cogwheel, combined with other identical parts which form a unitary mechanism. A single cogwheel does not enjoy freedom but participates in the overall movement of all cogwheels, heading toward the programmed direction and completing the common task. The unprecedented egotism of the 20th century triggered an unparalleled competition between the cogwheels. Each of them tries to trick the others. People do not notice the links connecting the whole system. For this reason, they don't feel related to its structure. In the space of their limited worlds, they can't fit into the grand structure of cosmos. The place is left with solitary creatures that unyieldingly refuse to see anything which reminds them of their common movement toward the goal. Our freedom is constrained to falling down without a parachute. The earth is hidden in fog and we fly as if to somewhere. Actually, this is diving, rather than flying, and we have to escape immediately. If interaction is to take place, we have to give a new definition of the term “freedom” – this time, we have to take the needs of the whole (and this is what we are) into consideration. Real freedom – this is the freedom from the destructive power of egotism which scatters us in various directions. Sometimes, we feel that freedom is unlimited – you can do what you see fit, without taking into account anyone or anything. This is the way to becoming a slave to your own petty wishes. Real freedom lies in the discovery of the perfect and unitary cosmos where each detail serves the common good. In other words, the better the cohesion between the cogwheels is, the greater the personal freedom."
Michael believed in all this. He tried to recreate it in his personal art work. He was lonely precisely because he remained misunderstood. The egotism, emanating from the surrounding environment, was of large scale. Everyone around him tried to get rich at his expense, without taking interest in how Michael felt. Michael Jackson decided to remain a child in order to protect himself from the cruelty of the outside world. Pain was written on his face during the last 10 – 15 years of his life. Pain streamed from the depth of his eyes. His look was sad and his expression spoke: “Leave me alone. For some unexplainable reason, the whole world is against me; however, I don't have strength to fight anymore.” Too much dirt was poured over Michael, and he didn't manage to resurface. No one would manage with the task, if standing on his place.
Isolation was inevitable: simply an escape. Escape from people who did not understand him. Escape from the world and his moral values. No one notices the positive side of the person – we don't find it interesting – the dark side is what intrigues people.
Loneliness becomes the best friend of Michael Jackson. It’s a friend who can't betray him, unlike other people who were his supposed friends. The beloved children betrayed him: they filed a court case against him, preferring money over his friendship. Friends, employees, and even strangers used him as means for quick wealth. They filed against him, too. After his death, people who knew him gave public interviews one after another. If one has tons of money, it is difficult to understand the motifs of people around him: whether he is loved, liked, and wanted friend or everything is done with a special purpose in mind. Michael was deluded on multiple occasions because he trusted the truthfulness of the people around him. At one point, they showed their true faces. Life is difficult when you don't know whether someone won't try to stab you in the back; life is hard when you don't know whom to trust: today's friends may become your future enemies. You just cannot share the things that worry and excite you. Tomorrow, you may read in media: “Each ant can climb on the back of an elephant and suffocate it”. The ants were all over Michael, and he couldn't get rid of them until his death.
Michael Jackson remained alone in his views and ideas. According to psychology, one of the deepest human needs is the overcoming of separateness and isolation, together with the attainment of unity and belonging. The satisfaction of this need has a leading role in human development and happiness. Loneliness contradicts human nature, loneliness is hell! Michael lived his whole life in hell, being unable to gather strength and save himself. Was there someone to take him out? Obviously – the answer is no.
If the soul of Michael could speak, we would hear about its feelings throughout all these years. Here is what she might share with us: “Faces. Thousands of happy faces… somewhere – on the other side. I look at them, wanting to reach them, and I know that what I'm looking for is not there. I see smiles, hands reaching to hug me, lips ready to kiss me… and I cannot reciprocate. It's all farce, just a mask to hide my soul. I envy them! I envy them for their smiley faces and their pure hearts which are open to happiness. It's beautiful there!!! On the other side. At one moment, I want to be there, leaving everything behind, but I know that their happiness cannot make me happy. I know that my return is inevitable… Sometimes, I am so close, sensing a fraction of their happiness. I feel love and belong to them. It looks as if the mask, rooted deeply in my soul, is falling down. I am free as all other beings. I hide away. There in the empty cold space - so familiar and mystical at the same time. I am scared but safe. A strange force, emanating safety, attracts me when I want to escape. High fence is erected on all sides. I look up – nothing, just an empty black space. The walls gather at a single point – somewhere high up. There is no way out! I am standing at the center. Through the walls, I look at the people passing by.
Some of them stop and approach, stretching their hands through the fence, without reaching me. They do not understand that I can't get out of my cage. I see them depart, and I'm left alone again. Sometimes I feel terrible, knowing that these shackles separate me from everyone on the outside – from all beloved people…At other times, it's comfortable here – I'm locked… alone.
People don't understand that I cannot get out. Some of them don't even notice the cage. They leave embittered, thinking that I have repulsed them. Others fight and try to let me free. At the end, they understand that escape is impossible. Being embittered – they give up and leave. I don't want them to suffer!!!
Often times, I delude people that I`m hiding there, expecting exactly their appearance. In reality, no one knows the truth... This cage is protecting me. I feel such a loneliness and safety inside. I am afraid of people, and I don't want them touch me – to reach my soul. I was just like them once. I was there, on a marvellous green loan. I knew what happiness was. Yet as if for a moment, I turned my head and saw this place. I got scared and didn't look again. However, it started attracting me, penetrating gradually into my soul. I felt the power, as if whispering to follow its way. And then, I saw the shade which was slowly moving toward me... I remember the ominous smile: the last thing that I saw before merging with my body...”
Did really Michael feel this way? I hope not. Yet, these words are so strong, as if he pronounces them and fuses with their might. These words were chasing him during the last years of his life.
We are all alone. Loneliness is a part of life, and suppression won't eliminate this state. After all, we are alone, no matter who is around us! Man is born alone and departs from earth alone – no matter who has partnered him throughout his life. We are left with the hope that our life has made some sort of sense. Michael's life was like that – he left such a large part of himself that we will never forget him.
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