[CitizensTruth] FW: Deepak Chopra- A Tribute to My Friend, Michael Jackson

[Ragen Gillam]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/a-tribute-to-my-friend-mi_b_2212
68.html
Deepak Chopra

Posted: June 26, 2009 01:08 AM 
A Tribute to My Friend, Michael Jackson 


Michael Jackson will be remembered, most likely, as a shattered icon, a pop 
genius who wound up a mutant of fame. That's not who I will remember, 
however. His mixture of mystery, isolation, indulgence, overwhelming global 
fame, and personal loneliness was intimately known to me. For twenty years I

observed every aspect, and as easy as it was to love Michael -- and to want 
to protect him -- his sudden death yesterday seemed almost fated.

Two days previously he had called me in an upbeat, excited mood. The voice 
message said, "I've got some really good news to share with you." He was 
writing a song about the environment, and he wanted me to help informally 
with the lyrics, as we had done several times before. When I tried to return

his call, however, the number was disconnected. (Terminally spooked by his 
treatment in the press, he changed his phone number often.) So I never got 
to talk to him, and the music demo he sent me lies on my bedside table as a 
poignant symbol of an unfinished life.

When we first met, around 1988, I was struck by the combination of charisma 
and woundedness that surrounded Michael. He would be swarmed by crowds at an

airport, perform an exhausting show for three hours, and then sit backstage 
afterward, as we did one night in Bucharest, drinking bottled water, 
glancing over some Sufi poetry as I walked into the room, and wanting to 
meditate.

That person, whom I considered (at the risk of ridicule) very pure, still 
survived -- he was reading the poems of Rabindranath Tagore when we talked 
the last time, two weeks ago. Michael exemplified the paradox of many famous

performers, being essentially shy, an introvert who would come to my house 
and spend most of the evening sitting by himself in a corner with his small 
children. I never saw less than a loving father when they were together (and

wonder now, as anyone close to him would, what will happen to them in the 
aftermath).

Michael's reluctance to grow up was another part of the paradox. My children

adored him, and in return he responded in a childlike way. He declared 
often, as former child stars do, that he was robbed of his childhood. 
Considering the monstrously exaggerated value our society places on 
celebrity, which was showered on Michael without stint, the public was 
callous to his very real personal pain. It became another tawdry piece of 
the tabloid Jacko, pictured as a weird changeling and as something far more 
sinister.

It's not my place to comment on the troubles Michael fell heir to from the 
past and then amplified by his misguided choices in life. He was surrounded 
by enablers, including a shameful plethora of M.D.s in Los Angeles and 
elsewhere who supplied him with prescription drugs. As many times as he 
would candidly confess that he had a problem, the conversation always ended 
with a deflection and denial. As I write this paragraph, the reports of drug

abuse are spreading across the cable news channels. The instant I heard of 
his death this afternoon, I had a sinking feeling that prescription drugs 
would play a key part.

The closest we ever became, perhaps, was when Michael needed a book to sell 
primarily as a concert souvenir. It would contain pictures for his fans but 
there would also be a text consisting of short fables. I sat with him for 
hours while he dreamily wove Aesop-like tales about animals, mixed with 
words about music and his love of all things musical. This project became 
Dancing the Dream after I pulled the text together for him, acting strictly 
as a friend. It was this time together that convinced me of the modus 
vivendi Michael had devised for himself: to counter the tidal wave of stress

that accompanies mega-stardom, he built a private retreat in a fantasy world

where pink clouds veiled inner anguish and Peter Pan was a hero, not a 
pathology.

This compromise with reality gradually became unsustainable. He went to 
strange lengths to preserve it. Unbounded privilege became another toxic 
force in his undoing. What began as idiosyncrasy, shyness, and vulnerability

was ravaged by obsessions over health, paranoia over security, and an 
isolation that grew more and more unhealthy. When Michael passed me the 
music for that last song, the one sitting by my bedside waiting for the 
right words, the procedure for getting the CD to me rivaled a CIA covert 
operation in its secrecy.

My memory of Michael Jackson will be as complex and confused as anyone's. 
His closest friends will close ranks and try to do everything in their power

to insure that the good lives after him. Will we be successful in rescuing 
him after so many years of media distortion? No one can say. I only wanted 
to put some details on the record in his behalf. My son Gotham traveled with

Michael as a roadie on his "Dangerous" tour when he was seventeen. Will it 
matter that Michael behaved with discipline and impeccable manners around my

son? (It sends a shiver to recall something he told Gotham: "I don't want to

go out like Marlon Brando. I want to go out like Elvis." Both icons were 
obsessions of this icon.)

His children's nanny and surrogate mother, Grace Rwaramba , is like another 
daughter to me. I introduced her to Michael when she was eighteen, a 
beautiful, heartwarming girl from Rwanda who is now grown up. She kept an 
eye on him for me and would call me whenever he was down or running too 
close to the edge. How heartbreaking for Grace that no one's protective 
instincts and genuine love could avert this tragic day. An hour ago she was 
sobbing on the telephone from London. As a result, I couldn't help but write

this brief remembrance in sadness. But when the shock subsides and a 
thousand public voices recount Michael's brilliant, joyous, embattled, 
enigmatic, bizarre trajectory, I hope the word "joyous" is the one that will

rise from the ashes and shine as he once did. 

 

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