Prince and Michael

I remember just where I was sitting when the news of Michael Jackson’s death flashed onto my phone: a conference room in a Santa Barbara hotel where the annual conference of The National Society of Newspaper Columnists was about to commence. Those of us of holding office in that organization were gathered at an oval-shaped table making last-minute plans and back then, in long-ago 2009, I was probably the only one impolite enough to have my phone out. (Nowadays even at weddings ceremonies you wouldn’t be surprised to see the bridal couple tapping and scrolling, tapping and scrolling during snoozy moments in the very service.)For whatever reason, in in that room, I was the one who knew first. “Michael Jackson died!” I exclaimed, interrupting.You just couldn’t believe that Michael was dead. You thought he would go on and on, having cosmetic surgeries and then corrections on the surgeries ad infinitum. You thought he would always be giving himself whole-heartedly to his audiences the way he did. (How many shows did he have booked for his upcoming London concert run at the  time of his death? Fifty, wasn’t it?And now, these eight years later, it any easier to accept the fact that Prince too is gone? We’re not even used to the idea that Bowie will never again sing for us.Still, there’s a new immortality available to us with this miracle of technology that we take so entirely for granted.When the news of his death went out yesterday, I spent a solid hour watching YouTube videos of Prince, the mischievous lad, the intelligent man. In 1981, when he opened for the Stones in nothing but bikini bottoms and a trenchcoat, he was booed and had things thrown at him by the audience. Afterward, Mick Jigger called him to offer comfort. "You’re ahead of them, is what it is,” Mick told him. "The world will catch up” and he was right about that. In the early 80s the Stones drew a macho crowd. Think of the way the Hells Angels themselves were hired to provide security at the testosterone-drenched Altamont concert where real violence erupted and one person lost his life. Big swaggering males aren't a big part of the audience at a Stones concert now, boy. The Stones evolved, and so did we all.Michael, in his teen years was marketed as a nice hetero boy, though really he was just a nice boy. (I never believed for a moment that he was seducing children there at his Neverland ranch.) The victim of parental abuse himself with the hitting and the shaming he suffered at the hands of his father, I believe he took refuge in a kind of permanently childlike, asexual realm.Prince, by contrast, was never asexual in his presentation He played with the idea of gender norms and rightly so when you get down to it sexuality is a mystery to us all. It's the sacred fire, the thing that brings the babies - or doesn’t – and in his celebration of it, he gave a whole lot of people the courage to be who they are. We will miss him.

San Francisco's City Hall, lit up in Prince's memory

Start with Yourself, Kid

The longer I live the more troubled I am by how casually unkind we are to one another. How causally unkind I myself have been toward others.Just in conversation.Just behind their backs.To be funny,  you understand.As if that made it any better.When my sister Nan and I were kids, we heard many a joke at the expense of others around the family table. My sense of it was we thought we were great wits.I see now that my people felt unsure, not good enough, judged by the outside world and this wit was their armor.But still.  People not present were always getting characterized by some witty term. If an old fellow’s hair rose slanting from his head they called him "Stiff Wind" or "Mister Nor’easter." That kind of thing. People not present were always getting ‘acted out’ based on their body language or verbal tics.I impersonated someone at my tenth birthday party, a merry affair with all my young cousins and Franco American Spaghetti for the entree. At one point I made my face look like the face of an elderly family friend whose mouth and left eye drooped due to a birth accident, and felt an immediate shocked silence on the part of my young.  The one 13 even chastised me, gently.You’d think that would have taught me. And it did, mostly. Yet I look back at my first columns from the early 1980s and here are many references to 'a fat lady' , 'old people' and so on. I would never use such terms today and I don’t know why I used them then except that we all felt much freer to speak so.  And the Fat Lady was a figure of fun, was she not? Someone you paid money to go stare at at the circus? So what made us finally feel how sad her fate was? Maybe reading tabloid stories of people so large teams of police and EMTs have to take out the windows or even the whole sides of their houses to get them to the hospital for the medical attention they need?This past week, somebody sent me an email containing terrible allegations about our President  It was a “forward,” meaning that he had not composed it. Still, he had sent it to his whole address book. I thought about it for a few hours and finally wrote him: "Dan, can you take me off this list? I find emails like this so upsetting.” And he wrote back. “I’m sorry Terry. It won’t happen again."It was that easy.So yes I’m going to keep on hoping for civility 'out' there” BUT! I am also going to start policing my own self too and rooting out all signs of unkindness.  I think of Michael Jackson and the powerful message he sent out in this song. Ah Michael, with your demons. How we all still miss you![youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9Nh84lfvW0]

Day of Rest

It's late morning here and I'm still exhausted, both from an event that I worked seven months on and also two deaths.The deaths have me hollowed right out, one the death of Jess Zaslow by car accident as he drove to promote the latest of his wonderful books and,  I'll readily admit, Whitney’s death too.I don’t pray in a way that might be recognizable to the fathers of the faith I was born in, but I do pray in my own haphazard way; never for myself but for others. I’ve been praying for years for Whitney. I prayed for her and for Michael Jackson because both seemed so lost: one mired in a self-hatred that made him turn to scalpels to alter the man in the mirror and the other because - well, because she has looked so sad and fragile for so long now. I just watched some YouTube video her trying to get through the shows on her latest tour and really you have to press 'Stop". You just can’t bear to watch.It was yesterday that I heard of these two deaths and also yesterday that the Multicultural Network of our town put on this amazing event to bring people together. I want to write about Jeff and about the event but I think I’d best wait. I got home at 5 last night; fixed two plates of  food for us and then slept clear through the latest spine-tingling episode of Justified and HBOs’ Saturday night premiere of Something Borrowed and the ten o’clock news, Then I turned out the light  and slept 8 more hours.Prayers work sometimes and sometimes not: that could be one conclusion here. Another could be that you’re in no position to be fussing over somebody else's well-being until you start taking care of yourself.I’ve been sitting in my nightie writing for the last four hours (though none of it was for Exit Only here – this post took five minutes.)I just looked at the clock. It’s after 11:00. High time for coffee and breakfast.But God bless the dead. God bless them; they rest from their labors.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xtZHMPcS9I]

Lift Me

When I was young and under the influence of the nuns, I was told to keep silence on this day, at least from noon until 3 when tradition says Jesus suffered that death-by-strangulation that crucifixion is. I couldn't do it then or for many years after, even though I knew how silence concentrates the mind.  I always thought the Jews had the better idea at the Seder, having the youngest ask that great starting-point of a question, “How is this night different from all other nights?”  which kind of translates to “Who are we and how did we get to this place?” This is a question I ask myself every morning on waking from the kind of deep sleep I always sleep, so all-forgetting I sometime wake and calmly think  'Soon some kind person will come and lift me from this crib!'  For Christians today is  Good Friday . I remember the Good Friday they played "We Are the World" on practically every radio station all over the country at exactly the same hour. I was driving through beautiful western Connecticut calling on newspapers to sell them my column. I had just had my last baby and knew he was my last felt..... I don't know, released into the rest of my life somehow. I spent much of yesterday driving too and just at sunset when I finally stopped the car and sat looking around, three deer crossed the field front of me and it was as if I had been waiting all day for them; as if seeing them proved that there really is this other reality just around the corner and out of our everyday sight, which is pretty much the idea communicated in most of the world's religions.    Here for you now accordingly ,  "We are the World," written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie, as it was sung at the funeral  of poor Michael not quite two years ago now.  Note the ecumenical symbols above the singers’ heads.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-ToznKNe6U&feature=related]And to really walk down memory lane, treat yourself to the original version here below. And remember this week to keep holy the Sabbath, whatever form a Sabbath day has for you.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy1gp3F5NhY]

Who's Old? (With a Tip o' the Hat to Michael)

I got the message I was old 3 times in 30 seconds when I picked up my young friend Angie the other day. She hopped in the car, shot me a quick a look and asked if my hair was really long enough to be gathered at the back of my neck. “Nah, it’s fake, They call it the Fun Bun,” I said, yanking it off to show her.“O-KAY,” she said in that certain young way that always makes me feel a tad defensive.“Hey what’s the point of being old if you can’t have fun? If you can’t wear a thing like this?” I said, pointing now to the pouch at my waist.“A fannypack?” she said, actively working to suppress a smile.“But I need it!” I cried, pulling from it that tiny device with the white ear buds that has made so much money for the good people at Apple. “How else would I carry my.... my ... my Walkman here?”Which prompted an even MORE indulgent smile -  and this from someone who still wasn’t alive five years after “Bad” came out.But you know studying the pictures from that famous video I see now that my hairstyle then was exactly like Michael’s hair back then. In fact I really LOOKED like him - only I never learned to snarl and look all mad like he did in these clips. I was taught to just smile and act all sweet and that was probably just as well, because I have a hunch the young are gonna let us live only if we DO smile, and stay twinkly, and keep on furnishing them so much amusement.And now  .....Michael, an angel even then:[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsUXAEzaC3Q&feature=avmsc2]

Man in the Mirror

Here at the annual conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists I’ve just heard a talk by Jeff Zaslow, author of The Last Lecture on Professor Randy Pausch’s amazing final talk before his death from pancreatic cancer and the sound of gulped-back tears filled the room.Randy left behind three small children even younger than the three left by Michael Jackson, God rest his troubled soul.These children of Randy's won’t remember their dad and he knew that. It is the cruelest and yet the kindest thing that happens to you as the sorrowing left–behind one, the way your spider of a heart wraps the time immediately following the death in such thick numb bunting you can’t recall them.When, at 45, my sister Nan lost her young husband Tom to death on the tennis court, she blundered blindly through the whole following year. Then one night she 'saw' him as she lay in their bed. He stood at their bedroom door in the tennis outfit he had died in. “I want to come back,” he said plaintively. “You can’t!” she exclaimed through fresh tears.  “Your friend took your job and I gave away your clothes!”Was it a dream or did Tom really come to her that night? And if so, did he repent the pack-a day cigarette habit, the six-hard-boiled-eggs-and–six hot-dogs suppers chased down by whole pints of ice cream?  Does Michael repent the fact that he exhausted his frail and pain-wracked body in preparing for the superhuman task of a 50- show tour? We can’t know. But if we could speak with our dead just one time more I think they would have us take a long look in the mirror and resolve from here on out to spend our own remaining days loving all those of whatever age who shelter in our care and nurture. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcYv5x6gZTA]

Dorks on Segways

I came to DC for the AARP 50^th birthday bash and convention Thursday night because I knew I'd get the chance for a bargain-price Segway tour. That was my secret REAL reason coming here but then two things happened: (1) I found out that a tall athletic way-younger-than-me fellow columnist shattered her pelvis riding one and (2) I saw what dorks people look like traveling in them.

So thus far I’m grounded but I’m still having fun. There are thousands upon thousand of people here in the gargantuan Convention Center, and not that many with grey hair either since the organization starts romancing you the second you turn 50. I invited my friend Pat to come with me. Her registration fee was 30 bucks and mine was just $20, so never mind that they make it ridiculously easy for you to come to this annual wingding but you also get all kinds of deals on hotels, rental cars, insurance, airfare, etc. etc. 365 DAYS A YEAR. (I read recently that 40% of the population will be over 50 by something like 2011 and how frightening a thought is THAT, kids?)

The last time I was in DC it was to sleep 30 to a room with a bunch of teenagers who jumped over every parking meter they saw and kept chinning themselves on the ceiling rails of the subway, so the company is different this time but the spirit's still great.They’ve got Martina Navratilova and Magic Johnson, Cal Ripken and the agelessly crinkly Shirley McClaine. The last two nights there were concerts by Natalie Cole and Chaka Khan and Chicago and tonight the big headliner is Paul Simon who I sometimes think is my cool older cousin so familiar is his every song to me.

Barack spoke to us by live feed this morning and 5,000 people were clapping and stamping their feet. And Maya Angelou and Quincy Jones who are having a little visit with us in the auditorium that seats like 500,000 are just plain bringin’ down the house.

I say 'are' because I’m in this auditorium as I write. 'She' just asked 'him' if he enjoyed doing Killer. He was up all night flying home from China so so didn’t quite catch the reference.

"Uh, Killer Joe?" he said.

“No NO!“ said Maya in that deep school teachery voice of hers. "I’m talking about that big album you did with Michael Jackson!”

When she realized her mistake she laughed harder than anyone and slapped her knee besides and I thought HERE'S a person that would NEVER worry about bring thought a dork and I’m just wondering now: is it too late to scare up that Segway tour before my flight home at tonight?

Man in the Mirror and My Blue Day

I felt slightly blue today maybe because the garage is brimming with things I’ve been told that I personally should take to the dump, just because I’m the one who put them out there. That I should be the one to get my hands dirty handling a bunch of broken coffee makers and blow-driers, never mind the bath mats that have had bleach spilled on them and so look like victims of vitiligo, the bleach coming into it because every few months I go through a stage where I feel like changing the colors of things and so dye the towels, my clothes, even the lampshades if I don’t like the way they look on a particular day, and then sometimes well most of the time I end up making the colors perhaps a little TOO vivid and have to try toning them down with a quart of Clorox. All right so now I feel bad about mentioning “vitiligo” because just think how hard it must be to have that pigment problem and be spotted all over like Michael Jackson. Wait a sec, now I’m Googling Michael who I have been worrying over ever since his nose fell off and would you look at that! There are scads of videos on You Tube where you can watch his face change over the years, in, like, time-lapse photography practically.

‘Course now I feel even sadder thinking how people love to criticize poor skinny MJ who certainly did NOT molest any children and I should know. Sometimes I think I’m the only one who really knows him now that Diana’s gone, the only one who’s been there for it all, the Liz Taylor friendship, the Barbara Walters interview, the Oprah one, his own descriptions of how would take him to the mirror as a little fella and say “Look! Look how ugly you are” and all.

But hold the phone maybe I’m not the only one! Because here’s this chat room I’ve just entered where people have been really dicing him up fine and a young woman weighs in and says to this other moron “How OLD are you anyway? All you ‘teens’ need to grow up so you don't become lame donkey-ass adults. Grow up, teenager!” Well now I believe that’s done it! I feel completely cheerful again. “Lame donkey-ass:” now there’s a phrase that’s worth remembering!