Saturday, August 01, 2009

Jackson 2021

I always knew Michael Jackson was eccentric. But I, like most others, thought his eccentricities had ended with his untimely death so long ago. Years have passed since news about Neverland Ranch, or wearing pajamas to the courthouse, or sleeping in hyperbaric chambers with chimpanzees. Yet here I am now, in a suite on a private cruiseliner, conversing with a man who is unmistakably the King of Pop himself.

His nose is a little different, and his hair is long enough to touch the floor when he sits down, but otherwise he looks just as he did at his so-called public viewing over a decade ago. He no longer wears the flamboyant jackets or sequined gloves people remember him by; those sit behind glass in a rock museum somewhere. Actually, ever since I started watching him on the cruiseship, I haven't seen him in anything but a lavender Japanese robe.

"I never once considered myself a messiah," he says to me in his feathery voice. "The only reason I compare myself to Christ is because I believe music is holy, just like the Word of the Bible. And my mission is to spread the Word."

"But your death, Michael —" I reply.

"Yes, Michael's death," he says. "The Michael you know died that day. I am not the Michael you know, Wacko Jacko and all that. Michael lives on in the music now. Look, I can barely even dance anymore."

He gestures at his wooden cane, which he uses for back pain, then shows me the contents of his satchel: a cornucopia of prescription painkillers. His lips begin to quiver and he puts on his aviator shades. Even in his old age, he obviously still longs for the days of pop culture supremacy.

"I have to ask, Michael, what made you decide to stage your own death?"

"Who wouldn't want to stage their death in my — you understand, I made beautiful music for people and I got destroyed for it. Why did they do me that way in the courtroom? Mister Sneddon had nothing on me in there and he destroyed me. I was murdered, my character was murdered."

"Sneddon was just doing his job."

"Mister Sneddon is a vile, vile man," Michael says nimbly. "He doesn't know the kind of joy and innocence a young child brings to the world. At Neverland the children would stay over and we would have warm milk and cookies and watch cartoons and it was always such a happy time. Sometimes some of my show-business friends would be over too. Paul McCartney is even more crazy about cartoons than I am, you know that?"

"But how in the world did you do it? I went to the public viewing of your body for godsake."

Michael's face flushes with guilt and he smirks mischievously, like a kid caught stealing from the candy jar. "That was a wax figure in the casket," he says.

"You're kidding me, right?"

"No, I mean it, it was really wax," he says, taking off his glasses to let me see his eyes. "I wish I could have brought it to life. It was this beautiful likeness of me, so beautiful — the way I see myself in my dreams sometimes."

"I'm sorry Michael," I chuckle nervously, "but I find this utterly incredible."

"Let me tell you what's incredible. Tabloids calling me a freak show for two decades, that's what's incredible. Evil people using their kids to extort money from me, that's what's incredible. So what if I enjoy the company of children? So what if I live a certain lifestyle? The problem is that celebrity turned everything in my life into a show. I liked it at first. But then people just became so full of hate that in the end I needed to get away from it all."

"A wax figure in the casket, Michael?! This is just crazy. How come the media never picked up on this?"

Michael sits back and brings his fingers to his chin. His foot begins to pump restlessly to a rhythm in his head. "You know," he says, "it really wasn't that hard. Doctor Murray did such an terrific job putting the spotlight on himself that they didn't pay much attention to it."

It all makes sense, in a Michael sort of way. But it is sad. The tragic metamorphosis of a beloved pop icon into this man, a bizarre recluse who staged his own death to stop the world from ridiculing him. As my eyes travel across a picture hanging on the adjacent wall — it is of him being visited on the set of Captain EO by Diana Ross and Quincy Jones — I feel compelled to ask him how he now spends his time in this quiet afterlife.

"I like to watch myself dance," he says, referring to a collection of music videos and live performances he has stored in another room on the ship. "Whenever I dance, it's like my body leaves the ground. I don't feel like I own my feet, or my voice, or the music I write. It all comes through me from some greater place."

He stares shyly at his shoes, clicking his heels together a few times, chortling softly at some passing thought. The way he looks reminds me of the scene in that famous documentary by Martin Bashir when Michael is sitting in the Giving Tree, awaiting inspiration for his songwriting — that weird combination of utter inculpability with the belief that he is God's message on Earth.

"Do you think there's any way you'll be able to dance again?" I ask.

Curiously his eyes light up at the question. He giggles, covering his face with one of his scraggy hands. "Will I be able to dance again?!" he repeats back, seemingly amazed that I proposed the possibility.

"Well, I was only thinking —"

"Wait here just a second. There's something I want to show you."

Leaning disdainfully on his cane, he stands up and hobbles over to an unassuming mahogany armoire in the corner of the room. Even as he hobbles, he somehow still looks weightless and fluid, like his body is suspended by the strings of a puppeteer. He starts pumping his foot again excitedly.

"You know," he says, "daydreams may be pleasant, but accomplishments are much more satisfying."

Then he opens the armoire. Inside, there is a lifesize replica of Michael, standing smugly with eyes closed and hands folded in front. Uncannily realistic, like the one I saw in the coffin at Neverland, except this one depicts him from the days of the History World Tour: ornate military uniform, ammo belt across the chest, forearm-length wrist cuffs, and tight leather boots like one wears on swamp patrol.

"I'm sorry, did I interrupt your meditation?" Michael laughs to his counterpart, then reaches into the armoire and produces a small thumb-sized gadget with a glowing red light. "This is MJ the Sequel," he says. "He is one of my good friends, isn't that right MJ?"

And he presses a button on the small device. The curious replica emits a few clicks and computer sounds, then a steadily increasing hum, like a small fan being turned on inside. Michael stares at the figure eagerly, fidgeting with anticipation; I find my excitement growing as well, and lean forward to get a closer look.

"You're not going to believe what you see," Michael says to me.

Moments later, as I watch in fascination, the replica gradually opens its eyes. They are beautiful, lustrous eyes, with a chillingly humanlike aspect; I see them dart around, pause, dart again while the figure seems to orient itself to its surroundings. It straightens its torso and delicately begins to move its limbs, and I am dumbfounded by the realism and subtlety of the movements. For the next couple of minutes the figure persists like this, and I am already imagining where Disneyland will be using it for its upcoming Michael tribute theme ride.

Suddenly, to my great surprise, the figure turns its head and fixes its eyes on me. I laugh in admiration at first; but as it continues to gaze at me intently my heart starts pounding fast and I dread to think there might be something more to this animatronic twin than just moving parts. Turning back toward Michael, it squirms and stretches its arms and legs, sluggishly and deliberately, like a slave whom Captain EO just freed from a heap of twisted metal. By now Michael is buzzing like a trapped fly and I dare not even move a limb when, in an authentically Michaelesque but stuttered falsetto voice, the figure speaks:

"Personally, I like to be called Pop Eye Carmichael Jackson. It reminds me of my childhood."