Those of us who have not felt about Michael Jackson as Valerie Elverton Dixon feels could learn from this essay how moved many people have been by his music, his life and his death.
Dr. Valerie Elverton Dixon is an independent scholar who publishes lectures and essays at JustPeaceTheory.com. She received her Ph.D. in religion and society from Temple University and taught Christian ethics at United Theological Seminary and Andover Newton Theological School. Her last piece on this site was about torture, here.
On the Occasion of the Memorial of Michael Jackson
By Valerie Elverton Dixon
It is a deception that the perceptive among us eventually see through. The deceptive illusion is that we each are merely individual atomistic specks of dust drifting singular and alone in air and sunlight, that whatever identity we claim naturally must separate us from each other and from creation. The separation causes fear and conflict. Thus, we imagine we are in a Hobbesian war of all against all for survival. Michael Jackson’s memorial service exposed this illusion for the lie that it is.
Hinduism calls this illusion of separateness Maya. Maya says: not that. It tells us that I am, we are, not this or that, not him, her, them. Not those. It weaves a veil that hides the connections that connect us. It pulls down a curtain between the ordinary and the sacred, between the blessed and the cursed, between the chosen and the rejected. The work of enlightenment is to see through Maya. The work of faith, religion, ethics is to lift this curtain, to pierce the veil and help us know that I am, we are this and that, him, her and them. The thing that seems so remote from us is a part of us because all are component parts of a whole. All is all.
Therefore, when we war against another, we are fighting ourselves. Every homicide is a suicide. Every hungry, crying, dying child is our own flesh and blood. Every lonely one of us is our own isolation.
Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, the symbol, the carrier or an extraordinary charisma, touched the lives of people all over the world. Veterans of the Iraq war speak of seeing children moon walking in Baghdad. A reporter speaks of a child in Central America asking him about Miguel Jackson. We are familiar with his music that calls us all to care about making the world a better place. Healing the world is a personal moral responsibility. We see the video of “They Don’t Really Care About Us” where Michael is one of the two million Americans in prison while chaos and human misery stalks the outside world. However, in his memorial service, we saw the larger than life superstar as a man with friends and family, with a mother and a father, with brothers, sisters and children who would miss him more than we.
Pastor Lucious Smith prayed and reminded us of Michael’s membership in family – the Jackson family and the human family. Queen Latifah, speaking for his fans and reading a poem by Maya Angelou, said he was the biggest star on earth, but a human being first. Barry Gordy, founder of Motown, remembered soft ball games and a take-no –prisoner showman totally in control on stage, but shy and childlike off-stage. Kobe Bryant reminded us that Michael holds the record for contributions to charity by a pop star, and Magic Johnson remembered eating a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken with him.
Rev. Al Sharpton said he never gave up dreaming and that the strangeness imputed to him was not his but rather the strange response to him. Brooke Shields recalled a mischievous friend who loved to laugh. Martin Luther King III and Bernice King conveyed their empathy to a family whose famous member suddenly dead caused a world tectonic shift creating a tsunami of global grief that washes over private family sorrow. Bernice King told of Michael’s thoughtfulness to call her mother during her final illness. Michael made her dying mother smile. Sheila Jackson Lee reminded us that in the United States of America we all are innocent until proven guilty.
Smokey Robinson remembered a child singing an adult song—”Whose Loving You?” – with soul and know. How did a person so young know about lost love and regret? Marlon Jackson, a brother, told of Michael having to shop for music in disguise. And Michael’s daughter touched us all to the core when she said her father was “the best father you can ever imagine. I love him so much.” Her Aunt Janet pulled the child to herself in a fierce embrace that was at once comfort and protection.
The line of demarcation between them and us disappeared. The ordinariness of these remembrances and emotions were similar to our own lives. Our own griefs recognized themselves in his daughter’s crystal tears.
And then there was the music: “I’ll Be there”; “Jesus is Lord”; “I Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer”; “Will You Be There? “Human Nature”; “Smile”; “Gone Too Soon”; “Whose Loving You”: “We are the World.” In the music, Maya disappears. In “Will You Be There?” we hear a demigod proclaim his humanity, his capacity to be wrong, lost, confused, in deep despair, facing doubt, frustration, violence, turbulence, and fear. In his vulnerability, he asks if we will be present to help him and thus to ourselves to navigate hard moments.
In this, he is us. And we are the world.
