Cleo wrote something very beautiful on her blog. She said:
If you can value the common man as much as those revered. [...]
If you can talk to king or beggar, then you'll see the Earth as it was meant to be. And you'll be blessed.
This had me thinking about the big hoopla out there regarding the death of Michael Jackson. I watched the memorial service and was pleasantly surprised - it wasn't the "show" I had feared to see. Instead, I witnessed people who were simply shaken by the loss of someone dear.
I for one have never understood the concept of stardom or our obsession with stars anyway and I think I never will. I simply don't see the need to put mortal souls onto pedestals, I don't see the necessity nor do I understand the need to deify perfect commoners. I cannot understand the almost religious veneration of Michael Jackson and some of the comments during the memorial service were way over-the-top for my taste, but I was still honestly touched by the whole event - an event that I wasn't gonna watch in the first place.
I wasn't touched by the larger-than-life stances, the idolatry and the near-beatification of a pop idol, but solely because of the personal accounts and the over-whelming feeling of loss and grief that those who attended felt.
I can relate to loss - most people can. We all know their plight and what an ordeal it is to lose someone. In that sense, we all share this common human experience that transcends all borders (religious, ethnic, national) - we're all mortal, fragile, lost and confused in the face of the complexity of our existence. And we're truly equal in the face of death...beggar or king...
And this brings me back to Cleo's blog post - in this life, in this existence, this divide simply shouldn't exist. Life shouldn't be about kings and beggars anymore, but rather about a shared experience, a feeling that our destinies are all inter-twined and that we desperately depend on one-another.
I would like to hope that we will some day evolve beyond the stage of king and beggar...that we will live in a universe where we can really be one - truly equal, man, woman, black, white, tiny, small, in health and in sickness...
PS: This is how we look from far, I'm sure...like wheat...like an ocean of wheat...
'Cos at the end of the day there is so much more that we share, that we have in common than there is that divides us...whether the divide is social, national or religious.
From far, we are a buzzing mass shooting through our galaxy at lightspeed - on the spaceship that we call Earth...
2 comments:
"I would like to hope that we will some day evolve beyond the stage of king and beggar...that we will live in a universe where we can really be one - truly equal, man, woman, black, white, tiny, small, in health and in sickness..."
A beautiful day it would be! Sadly we are so damn far from this ... so very far. Having this kind of hope is what more and more people need to have to get us on the right path. Too many don't give a shit.
We certainly do need to equal wealth so that no one has to beg and no one should sit on a throne.
I do think that people need celebrities and icons. This has been going on since the beginning of time. There is a school of psychoanalytic thought called Self Psychology that holds that idealization of others (starting hopefully with parental figures) is part of the development of the self. Many people continue to need this idealization, especially if they weren't able to idealize their parents as children. Better that people look up to Michael Jackson as an icon than some cult leader or dictator.
I think icons help inspire people. Look at what Usher and some of the other musical figures said. Everyone needs examples to inspire them. That is not the same as a passive idealization. There are many kinds of idealization and iconization and some are healthier than others. Using others as an example of what you aspire to is one thing. A passive and defensive idealization that distorts reality is something else. I don't think people had that idealization of Jackson actually. I think even his fans knew he had flaws. In fact I think that's why some of them liked him. I suspect many of his die hard fans are women with eating disorders or people with gender identity issues.
There's also no denying his place in pop culture or his talent for dance and spectacle. I didn't think the memorial was over-the-top. As you point out most of it was personal reminiscences. I thought it was very moving and intimate.
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