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The child in the mirror

Photo: AP

Peter pan Michael Jackson desperately craved the childhood he missed

Every time I was reminded by the media, through words and pictures, of the horror show that had become Michael Jackson’s life, I would remember the five-year-old cherub with a frizzy halo I had seen on a black and white TV set in 1972.

It was the first time I had seen television and I saw a lot of it that year on my Singapore vacation. In a cartoon show called “The Jackson 5ive”, featuring the fictionalised adventures of a Motown band, the animation would be interspersed with footage of the actual Jackson Five in concert. That is where I saw the chocolate angel with the wide-set eyes and melting smile, dressed in a glittering suit, singing and dancing like the genius he was already on the way to becoming. Because this was old footage, and the boy on the screen had turned 14 in real life. It was the teenager’s picture that I cut out from a Singapore tabloid called “Fanfare”. I had labelled it “Michael Jackson” in case I forgot his name.

Forget his name? Would I ever? Would the world? In the years to come the child star would become the king of pop. He would sell millions, make millions, lose millions, be revered, be reviled, grow up and yet stay a child. But the year I saw the image of the boy with the heartbreaking smile, frozen in time on the TV screen, the tidal wave of fame had yet to engulf him. We had yet to know that the childhood he so desperately craved was the one that he had missed. Most of us leave behind the monsters of our childhood. Michael Jackson never got away from his past; he let it swallow him whole. The goblins set up house inside his head and locked him up for life.

But no goblin could lock up his musical genius. The five-year-old I saw long ago would change, and change again, over the decades. The pitch-perfect treble that sang “ABC” and “Rockin’ Robin”, and later (my favourite) “Got to Be There”, would morph into the strange hiccup-and-tremble of the Thriller album. The Moonwalk would rule the planet. And the man who changed into a werewolf in the video would in real life change the colour of his skin. When he sang that it don’t matter if you’re “Black or White”, one couldn’t help noticing the unintended irony. Didn’t the “Man in the Mirror” see what he had become?

Of course the media monster ate him up for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It exposed his every wart and scar, hyperventilated over his every gesture and showed us (pictures don’t lie, do they?) the painted doll he had turned into. My reigning emotion was pity. How could they forget the greatness of the man? Was it so long ago that he danced like a “tiger on vaseline” (to echo Bowie in another context) and inspired a million imitations? The mawkish “Heal the World” I would rather forget but not “Bad”, not “Billie Jean”, not “The Way You Make Me Feel” and all those countless hits with which he reigned over the airwaves.

His much-touted “last concert” did have an ominous ring to it, especially in the wake of reports of his declining health. But this came suddenly. This came too soon. Goodbye Michael. May flights of multi-coloured angels sing thee to thy rest.

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