WELCOME TO INNER MICHAEL GUEST...

The gods of artistry have spoken. So has my Inner Michael. I loved how Michael would invite and feature artists he admired. So the gods (and Michael) whispered: "So invite them!" I have met some talented people on this journey and I have been in the arts long enough to recognize Le Artiste`. So I have invited them here... all for love. Enjoy.


Tuesday

Was it Always Meant to be This Way?

I wonder if it was always meant to be this way.

That we would only understand that something brilliant, something beautiful, had sat at our table, walked with us to school, danced with us when no-one else would, been there all the time - when it no longer was.

Into the space he occupied, into the vacuum, somehow has flowed all the love we withdrew and all the love we forgot.

All of us carried along on a journey since June 25th, a journey we had no idea we planned on taking.

We were caught unawares, without the the right clothes.

And now we find ourselves asking the questions we didn't ask before, because no-one was asking them.

No-one said what if?

What if that wasn't the way it was?

We thought we knew.

We didn't.

~Deborah Ffrench












SOMETIMES WORDS ARE ALL WE HAVE
~Deborah Ffrench

Sometimes words are all we have.

But sometimes, if we let them, they can carry us on the wings of the emotions they contain - to a place beyond words.

A place where we remember.

Michael.

Through the beginning,

Through the joy,

Through the splendour,

Through the catastrophes.....

......To the desolation we arrive.


The summer of 2009 will always be remembered as the the winter that took our brightest light, and for those who understand, it has been perhaps the hardest summer of our lives.

And so it should be.

Michael deserves nothing less.

I wish I could have met Michael, felt for myself the force of that fire, seen first-hand the curious grace of that smile. Scorcese described his persona as 'shamanistic', Spielberg recalls 'an emotional star child', Mark Romanek remembers him as 'metaphysical', Anjelica Houston 'a meteor.' Whatever the word used, all of these highly creative individuals were each in their way trying to express the indefinable 'difference' they felt in Michael's prescence.

You can hear it in every note of his songs, in his entire body of work.

And his voice, my God, that voice.

That soft yet tough, delicate yet bullet-bright force of power and beauty he could produce at will. It crept inside you when you heard it, tapped at the fortress of your innermost being, before offering - everything. It elevated the merely kinetic to the kaleidoscopic, music into magic and a thousand songs into the substance of the soul.

Some say Michael should be thought of as nothing more than an 80's artefact, a relic of the bad, brash, Lucas-filmed, pre-Aids, pre-9/11 years when we thought the whole world loved America and people adored their stars like the old movie idols from back in the day.

Maybe.

But what they fail to realize is this: every kid I know is discovering Star Wars for the first time. The Sistine Chapel is no less beautiful now than it was when its painter first stepped down and exhaled.

For true art is immortal and it lives forever.

Michael often quoted Michelangelo - who famously said: 'I will attempt to bind my soul to my work.' This is what Michael Jackson did. He put all that young idealism, that thirst for freedom, that yearning to 'move' and be moved, his desire to be the best, his love and his joy, his rage, his pain and his sorrow, his confusion and his loss; into his work.

And when all the lies and the untruths have faded with time, and those predators who even now pick at his memory like vultures to the bone have finished their feasting -

That work - and that love, will remain.

On June 25th the world knew a unity of sorts. It was as if the whole world, for a moment, felt the slow agony of being that misunderstood, that lonely, and that betrayed. Michael is free now. He sings and dances amongst the worlds. In his leaving, becoming at once a symbol of our lost innocence and the possibilty of regaining that.

And for those of us who know who, and what he was, and what he tried to do here,

Michael Joseph Jackson will shine in our hearts for all time.

I will not wave. I will say no farewells.

The Immortals need no goodbyes.

1 comment:

  1. I loved 'Sometimes Words Are All We Have.' It is a beautiful piece. Michael and his work will live forever. He may have left us physically but he will always be with us.

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