Few issues can bring the Arab and Western World together these days. Religious, cultural and social differences, both perceived and real, run amuck - each region’s respective media doing its very best to manipulate all concerned. Every once in awhile, an event occurs that brings the base level humanity of all of us to the surface of our being. An event of global magnitude unfolds that reminds people across the planet that we are more similar than different, more alike than we can even begin to understand or, in some cases, would like to admit. On June 25th of this past year, both the Arab and Western Worlds came to a sudden halt upon witnessing the death of an American.
Michael Jackson had such a dramatic and tragic life. In so many ways he represented, in an extreme fashion, the full spectrum of our collective human experience. From the simple joys of childhood innocence, to the craving for acceptance, approval, and love from others, to the somber loneliness and bitter emptiness of our broken souls; many of us looked upon him and without ever realizing it, saw a reflection of us all.
From Dubai to Amman, from Beirut to Cairo, people watched the news of his death unfold on their televisions and remembered his music. Jackson was a truly global star and many thirty something Arabs looked back on their childhood’s and recalled how the gloved one ruled the world. His videos and songs were played; his moves and his dancing were emulated, not only in the streets of America, but in the deserts of the Middle East.
His painful final years will forever be connected to the Arab world and the tiny desert nation of Bahrain. Sheik Abdulla bin Hamad Isa Al Khalifa, a son of Bahrain’s king and an aspiring songwriter, befriended Jackson after the singer was found innocent of all child charges laid against him in his infamous 2005 circus of a trail. He invited him to live in Bahrain and showered him with money. Jackson lived there for approximately a year and kept a low profile. He never performed in any way and always stayed within arms reach of his royal freind and the entourage he brought with him. After Jackson left Bahrain in 2006, the sheik said Jackson failed to fulfill his part of what was to be a music venture. Jackson denied the charge, saying he understood the time and money spent on him and his children to be a gift. The two settled the dispute in a November deal and parted ways amicably.
When I was an eleven-year old boy, Michael Jackson was the coolest human being on the planet. The slightest glimpse of him on the television drew me in like a tractor beam. I tried to dance like him, to dress like him, to be like him. This past weekend my beautiful wife and I went to Mercato Mall in Dubai to see see Jackson’s concert rehearsal film “This is It.” My wife grew up a world away from my hometown farming village in the empty deserts of Doha, but she too listened to him as a young girl. In fact, the whole world did. And there we were, two souls who came together against all odds, but who had in fact been joined in spirit by the man we watched on the screen in front of us. So very far away from our childhoods, we were transported back to our beginnings one more time, by a man we both grew up in awe of… this time side by side.
What I saw onscreen was far from the frail and gaunt portrayal of the man often employed by the media in the days leading up to what was to be his grandiose return. His appears fit, strong and even vigorous. At times, I found it hard to believe he was 50. His choreography was tight, built upon precisely-timed movements and cues. It looked exhausting, but Jackson never shows any signs of being tired. It was clear he was a man entirely in charge of the physical instrument that was his body, making all he did seem as natural as taking an afternoon stroll. He was also so very patient and encouraging to his troop of young dancers, but the command in his voice reveals how much creating a new and different world on stage meant to him. I saw man in tune with everything aroud his presence, approaching even the most minute details of his upcoming performance with ferver and passion.
Jackson did not appear to be a man about let down his investors, his fellow performers or his fans. There is no doubt, he was fully prepared for his opening night. That I will always believe. Simply put, he was at the top of his game.
What stayed with me as we walked out of the darkened theatre was Jackson’s disinterest in engaging the cameras and how this only added to both his mystery and his legend. He did not want to acknowledge the camera, because then the world he was creating, the world in which he felt safest, would not be real. Michael Jackson lived in his own world, a world that was far away from all the prejudice and abuse he faced in this one, because that’s what he needed to do. Anyone who went through what Jackson did each day would have to somehow escape to another place, a place somewhere within the far reaches of the mind, if for no other reason, but to shelter his own sense of humanity. Being called a wacko and a freak, again and again, for years on end took its toll on the man. In all the time we knew him from afar, he rarely granted interviews, rarely spoke at all, placing himself into a protective cocoon of isolation. And nowhere did he feel safer than when he was on stage. In effect, throughout “This Is It” he was always performing, but not for those who might see what was being filmed; he was performing for the attending masses at his never-to-be performed sold out show that he saw in the deepest regions his neon kaleidoscope imagination. And what a show it would have been.
This amazing, kind, eccentric, intriguing, bizarre, talented giant is no longer with us, but the entire planet will never forget. And in that sense, Micheal Jackson, just like his life long hero Peter Pan, has reached his own form of immortality.
There were times throughout the film, upon realizing I was in fact watching the final hours of the man’s life, that tears welled up in my eyes. I miss him already and a part of me always will.
From David Anthony Hohol…
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