I watched Michael Jackson's memorial yesterday. It was a well-conceived and dignified event. Like most people, though, I had work to do; so I multi-tasked, watching the memorial while working. For the most part, multi-tasking allowed me to keep an emotional distance from what was happening on-screen.Emotional distance is nearly impossible to sustain, though, when observing a loss; even the loss of an entertainer like Michael whose only connection with you was his music's deep entrenchment in the popular culture of which you are a part. The first sign for me that I was less emotionally distant than I had thought was when Usher sang, "Gone Too Soon." I began at that moment to feel my heart moving up into my throat, reaching a crescendo as Usher approached Michael's coffin. I was able to push back my emotional response, however, and maintain my composure. That experience presented itself again when Jermaine Jackson spoke on behalf of the Jackson family. Even then, I continued to maintain my composure.
All that composure fell apart, though, when Michael's eleven-year-old daughter, Paris, made her brief remarks at the end. While most people are mourning the loss of a generation's artist, Paris' remarks reminded us that Michael was also a father whose loss his children mourn more personally and intimately. I found it impossible not to be touched with a profound empathy for Paris' pain and for that of her brothers. I cried uncontrollably, shutting the door so no one could witness my emotional display.
The fact that I was even watching Michael Jackson's memorial (and listening to Michael Jackson's songs and watching Michael Jackson's videos), much less having an emotional response to it, presents itself as a contradiction given that just a few short days ago I cynically wrote about news media and others blowing Michael's death way out of proportion.
I still hold that we should keep our response to Michael's death in perspective. After all, tempus fugit -- time flies and slows down for no one. Moreover, we as a society are confronted by many real and immediate problems that demand our significant and proactive attention. It seems we can ill afford to be distracted even for a moment from responding to those problems, even by Michael's death.
In death as in life, though, Michael commands our attention and his passing leaves us with a vacuum. Michael commands our attention because he has achieved that rare status few ever achieve, even as many try to claim it: that status as an artist. Many engaged in creative expression are talented in their respective media, whether their expressions are through music, storytelling or the various visual media. Some even make a lot of money with their expressions. But their expressions do not elevate them with Michael to that elite club of artists.
I think the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was absolutely on target in his insights about art. And his insights help us to comprehend Michael's life and art more fully. Art properly communicates to the universal human experience and embodies the zeitgeist of an age or the soul of a generation (actually Hegel would go on to say it embodies the universal human zeitgeist itself), and so does the very life of a true artist. For that reason, the right to interpret and own the meaning of art and the life of the artist does not belong to the artist, but to the generation he or she embodies and to the succeeding generations to whom the art and the life of the artist continue to communicate.
For a long time, we will continue to dissect the meaning of Michael's life and his art. In the process, we will make new discoveries about ourselves, the generation Michael's life and art embody. The many generations that follow will continue to dissect the meaning of Michael's life and his art. In the process, they will learn something of human life and experience and understand our generation more fully.
It is because Michael and his art embody our generation that we feel a profound loss from his passing. In losing Michael, we have lost a significant expression of our own experiences. In some ways, our whole generation passed with Michael. Moreover, the meaning of his life and his art embodies and communicates to the full range of our generation's experiences, not just parts. His art embodies our successes and our failures, our hopes and our despairs, our unity and our divisions, our justices and our injustices, our graces and our sins, our love and our selfish narcissism. We knew that his story -- our story -- was a story in development. While he lived, we could still hope that it would end as a story only of successes, fulfilled hopes, unity, graces, love and shortcomings redeemed. We could still anticipate that Michael's legacy would be our own story of redemption.
That could never have happened, though. While Michael and his art transcend individual expressions of the soul of our generation, the universal human zeitgeist transcends the artist. While embodying a generation, Michael could not redeem it. That search for redemption and happiness is a perpetual pursuit. It is part of what defines us as human, so much so that to cease the search would be to cease being human.
That is where the paradox in remembering Michael's legacy begins. We celebrate the tremendous capacity for good expressed in Michael's life and in his art, even as we openly acknowledge his weaknesses. In doing so, we allow ourselves the freedom to celebrate our own capacity for good and to openly acknowledge our own weaknesses. Then our generation has the opportunity to complete the story Michael's life and art express. By turning to our own capacity for good and working to allow that capacity to triumph over our weaknesses, we will ensure that, in the end, Michael's legacy becomes our own story of redemption.
I guess Michael's death matters to us after all.
