On Michael Jackson

We can’t figure out who he really was because, though we scramble for tidbits of highly personal information about celebrities, we’re not really interested in who they are.  We can’t figure out who he really was because everything about celebrity forces the construction of a public personna that not only obfuscates, hides and protects but that also seeks to sell itself, sell “the” mask of the self, seduce as many people as possible and pander to the more base instincts of human beings and consumer culture.  Michael Jackson created a man who couldn’t be known and who, most likely, could not know himself.  Almost everyone in his life, including his fans, collaborated.  And are still collaborating.  And most likely always will.  At this point there is no other choice.  He has affected us and the world we live in whether we acknowledge that fact or not.  He is part of the lives of people who don’t even like his music unless they are dead to the world.  We will talk for a bit about Michael and then we will stop and as part of that conversation we will continually ask why we are talking about him so much.  Most of the talk centres around that question:  who was Michael Jackson?  We can never answer that question, finally, about anyone.  But the more we gather about a person like Michael, the less we know.

And yet.  In his music, his voice, his videos, his absolutely magical dancing body and his art, creativity and self-expression remain. I remember it.  I choose to remember those glimmers of  joy, those cries of the heart, those gestures that reflected us to ourselves and broke out from time to time into this fragmented fallen world so alienated from itself that that it cannot begin to answer, who?  Whoever Michael Jackson was, it’s most likely that he was fully consumed.  For a little while longer, we’ll feed on his death.  Then there will be the music and the moves and what we find there …

 

Have a look at these:

Michael Jackson: Of Mortal Coils and Music by Natalia Antonova @GlobalComment

Michael Jackson: Freak Like Me by Richard Kim @TheNation

Dance

Claudia Moore

Cyd and Fred

Cyd Charisse with Fred Astaire in “Bandwagon”

Notice Cyd’s leg come up to Fred’s armpits

Eleanor & Fred

Lovely production of “Begin the Beguine” with Eleanor Powell and Fred Astaire

Fun & Amazing

Almost five full minutes of Eleanor Powell choreographed by Eleanor Powell – I’m in love!

Civic Holiday Frolic

Wait till about 1:28 for Eleanor Powell and Buddy Rich – have fun!

This is a holiday just for the sake of having a holiday far as I know.  Fine by me.

Fab Friday

Wherein Fred Astaire makes a cane look sexy

If there was such a thing as past-life incarnation, I’d want to go back as Fred Astaire.  Or his cane.

Stephen Harper and Yann Martel

Yann Martel  is the Mann Booker award winning author of The Life of Pi.  In 2007, he attended a reception in Ottawa marking the fiftieth anniverary of The Canada Council for the Arts.  The next day, he and his fellow artists were guests of Parliament.  After which he wrote as follows:

How many Members of Parliament do you think showed up at a reception the previous day on Parliament Hill meant to be a grand occasion on which the representatives of Canada’s people would meet the representatives of Canada’s artists? By my count, twenty, twenty-five-out of 306-with only one cabinet minister, the one who absolutely had to be there, Bev Oda.

[...]

By comparison, the equivalent celebration of a major cultural institution in, say, France would have been a classy, flashy, year-long, exhibition-filled affair with President Chirac trying to hog as much of the limelight as possible. No need to go into further details. We all know how the Europeans do culture. It’s sexy and important to them. The world visits Europe because it is so culturally resplendent. Instead, we stood around, drank our drinks, and then petered away in small groups.

So we should have been prepared for this perfunctory salute in the House of Commons. Nonetheless, I was surprised. Even embarrassed. Not for myself. I mean for all artists, from Jean-Louis Roux, great man of theatre, electrifying doyen of the fifty celebratory artists, to Tracee Smith, a young aboriginal hip-hop dancer and choreographer, recipient this year of her first Canada Council grant, to unknown emerging artists throughout this country. Do we count for nothing, you philistines, I felt like shouting down at the House. Don’t you know that Canadians love their books and songs and paintings? Do you really think we’re just parasites feeding off the honest, hard work of our fellow citizens? Truly I say to you, there are only two sets of tools with which the rich soil of life can be worked: the religious and the artistic. Everything else is illusion that crumbles before the onslaught of time. If you die having prayed to no god, any god, one expressed above an altar or one painted with a brush, then you risk wasting the soul you were given. Repent! Repent!

[...]

The Prime Minister did not speak during our brief tribute, certainly not. I don’t think he even looked up. The snarling business of Question Period having just ended, he was shuffling papers. I tried to bring him close to me with my eyes.

Who is this man? What makes him tick? No doubt he is busy. No doubt he is deluded by that busyness. No doubt being Prime Minister fills his entire consideration and froths his sense of busied importance to the very brim. And no doubt he sounds and governs like one who cares little for the arts.

But he must have moments of stillness. And so this is what I propose to do: not to educate-that would be arrogant, less than that-to make suggestions to his stillness.

For as long as Stephen Harper is Prime Minister of Canada, I vow to send him every two weeks, mailed on a Monday, a book that has been known to expand stillness. That book will be inscribed and will be accompanied by a letter I will have written. I will faithfully report on every new book, every inscription, every letter, and any response I might get from the Prime Minister, on this website.

Speaking Through the Body

 

WATER FLOWING TOGETHER is an intimate portrait of an important American artist, New York City Ballet’s Jock Soto, one of the most influential modern ballet dancers. Soto graced the stage of the New York State Theater for 24 years, partnering such renowned ballerinas as Heather Watts, Darci Kistler and Wendy Whelan. On the eve of his retirement in 2005, The New York Times wrote: “Ballet is a man called Jock.”