Michael Jackson, 12 years following your voice #2
“Proofs weary the truth” Georges Braque
There are certitudes, no, evidences, which exceed the understanding, although no demonstration can be established.
"Proofs weary the truth" said Georges Braque. There are indeed intimate, deep, essential domains within which proofs prove nothing, they distort, they even distort because they are not up to the challenge.
I often wonder how and when the anchoring was done. At what point did Michael Jackson, in his entirety, with his musical and visual discourse, with his genius, with his emotions, with his guts, his humanity and his entire vulnerability, pass from the outside world into my DNA.
And by the way, is there an outside world? And if so, was he really part of it at any given time? Didn't it just, quite involuntarily, echo my sensitivity, awaken and stimulate those little bits of me that are also found in you and in many human beings? Don't artists have power over us because they conform to our expectations, to our needs as an audience, a niche, a market? Don't we give them their power by the mere fact of all the projections we make on them of our intimacy, of our desires, of our interpretations? In the case of Michael Jackson, I think that it goes far beyond. That it is deeper, more mystical even, I dare say... I have this feeling that he touched us and transmitted something stronger than a part of our human condition, yet constantly turned towards the sky.
Of course, in my life as in yours, there have been key moments. There was a moment, of all moments: the one when the little girl that I was saw and heard him for the first time in consciousness, that moment of encounter that made me enter his world, that operated a tilt, a lightning, a subjugation. It left a long trail of stars, that moment, forever attached to him. It imprisoned and attached to its person any other possibility of wonder that I could have known elsewhere. For, from then on, no one else could transport me like he did. There has been no other magician in my life. All the ones I met soon tired me out.
Only, I had not measured, until this June 26, 2009, the depth of the anchorage, its definitive, visceral, even vital character.
What scientist - especially with the one-sided, monolithic, Cartesian, all-human science that we are developing almost blindly, to which we cling like drowning men, when perhaps, without a doubt, other much more solid, much more inspired branches could just, at hand, bring us back to the shore much better and faster - what scientist, then, could find the proofs of this presence of Michael in our lives, in the literal sense of the word, and know how to explain them?
So many things cannot be proven, but they are very real. Trying to demonstrate why and how a work or an artist touches you is impossible. And one of Michael's lessons, here again, is to teach us to love outside of demonstrations. Unconditionally. Wasn't this one of the keys to his quest?
Without doubt, this is the part of intuition and of this instinct from which our society, with its ways of thinking and functioning, tends to cut us off more and more...
And for good reason... Michael is there. And if he was there before, in the light of our consciousness or lurking in the shadows of our unconscious, how much more so in the last 12 years! We have all mourned other artists, other charismatic figures who had accompanied our lives at different times. But how many of them and how many of their losses have transformed our lives to the level that Michael did?
So many of us have looked at the world differently, after his departure, have understood and felt the world in an even stronger way, have changed our course, sometimes our lives... Isn't this a testimony of his presence, beyond anything? I am not talking about presence as a virtual hint of life by proxy that would operate in the memory, in the vestiges of memory. I am talking about a living presence. Do you understand? Isn't it a testimony that beyond the musical, videographic, scenic genius, he was not only an immense creative spirit that overflowed its contours, but also and almost above all a force of soul, a power of transformation, a vital energy that his body did not limit and could not even, by itself, contain?
"Love lives forever," he said. I think he knew that. He didn't just know it in words, in intellect, in a ready-made formula. He knew it from Always. Of his Before, his Present and his After. He knew it as we are, as we embody, as the lung that breathes, as the blood that flows, as the heart that beats.
He gave to this short sentence a texture, a matter, a depth, an aura that seems to condense a power that exceeds us all. With the wave of his barely embodied voice, with the elusive movements of his fluid body, he has carved a path in us, lit a torch, bequeathed a message. And he accompanies us. Still. Always. With every step. At every sunrise. At every sunset.