Pendulum: And My Idol Died (By Popular Demand) By Dele Momodu

(I wrote this article the very night MICHAEL JACKSON died
and wept throughout the typing… My wife looked on in wonderment… I
rate it as one of my top three articles in 40 years… Now that
Michael Jackson is back in the news, more for bad reasons than
good, many people have requested me to intervene on behalf of one
of my known heroes of all time. I have nothing more to add or
subtract from what I scripted on Thursday, June 25, 2009, which was
published on this very page on June 27, 2009… Please, enjoy, or
just read, and form your opinion…)

God, please forgive me, for claiming publicly that I worshipped
an idol. Truth is I did. I worshipped Michael Jackson. I hated
anyone who ever passed snide remarks about this greatest showman on
earth. Strangely, I never met my idol. He was a god I accepted in
good faith. A god I would have loved to meet. But I kept faith with
his music, and was privileged to have met some of his siblings.
There was nothing I did not try to meet him. I always knew it was
only a matter of time before the relentless vicissitudes of life
would take its final toll on this extremely frail but prodigiously
talented artiste.

Michael was supposed to be the peak of success but he was the
limit of sadness. His fame eclipsed that of all his siblings
combined. He was the very epitome of achievement. No artiste in
history had generated as much controversy in one lifetime. Like the
quintessential dancer that he was, Michael waltzed from one crisis
to the other. He was the true example that the world may pretend to
love success, but the world actually hates success. Every imaginary
story was conjured, or concocted, around this stupendously famous
man.
He packed more than the activities of a thousand years into the 50
years he lived on earth. The world is allowed a glimpse of such
demigods once in a blue moon. Michael was a deviant in all ways. He
defied the laws of gravity and motion. He was a spirit child, and
he acted the part perfectly. He was bound to go the way he came,
with a bang. It was impossible for him to go with a mere
whimper.

In his time, most things he touched turned into gold. He became
as popular as the Coca-Cola bottle. He was known everywhere and was
more popular than most world presidents. In our school, every music
group mimicked Michael Jackson. At the then University of Ife, one
young man became famous on campus for his dexterous performance of
Michael Jackson in “Beat it”. He is the same Femi Elufowoju who’s
currently doing Nigeria proud as an actor in the elite theater of
London’s West End. Michael was every child’s ultimate idol. Even
for those of us who grew up in rural settings, and had no
television sets at home, we knew this boy who danced better than
James Brown. His name resonated like Iraqi bombs, exploding beyond
boundaries.

This was the main cause of his problems. Success breeds more
sorrow than joy. There is the intrusion of privacy. The financial
demands of trying to put up an appearance. The envy of peers, and
the subject of sibling rivalries. It was impossible to ignore
Michael, whether you hated or loved him. To describe him as an icon
was an understatement. Everything around him was big news. He was
never going to live a normal life, like you and I. He was sentenced
to his own prison, and would never be able to break free.

Michael lived in a society where the policy was everyone for
himself and God for us all. He was a lonely child. He started life
too early. And fame and fortune beyond imagination chased him. He
was haunted by both. They became his albatross. He had to wear a
mask to go out. He was said to have experimented with all manner of
weird disguises. He earned the acronym, Wacko Jacko. He was easy
prey for both genuine and counterfeit extortionists. They found all
manner of excuses to take his money, and practically took him to
the cleaners.

Michael lived and was sustained on maximum hype. He regularly
reinvented both his person and his career. From being an innocent
Black kid, he transfigured into a white ghost, who became whiter
than snow. It was speculated that the record labels that made
incredible fortunes off him had encouraged him to engage in
bleaching away his blackness, a terrible habit that would later
become an incurable obsession. It probably worked initially. But it
soon became a tragic flaw in his persona.

Those who wanted any reason to detest him found perfect grounds
for merciless assaults. He was insulted and abused. His unusual
love for children was another sore point. He was called a child
molester. Who knows? Neither you nor I were eye-witnesses. Such
stories abound about newsmakers everywhere. As a devotee, we
accepted him warts and all. He was human after-all. I learnt a lot
from his life. That success would never guarantee happiness. That
money would never buy peace. That your friends would rather watch
you die when you get into trouble than offer a helping hand.

All those shedding crocodile tears now obviously saw Michael in
his various stages of dilapidation – that those who can never match
your talents would always attack your efforts. That at the end of
it all, all is vanity indeed. Human beings are always quick to
judge others. They leave the log in their eyes and chase the speck
in that of others. Michael this, Michael that, was all we heard.
Now that he’s dead, may be they’ll leave him alone, and allow the
dead to bury their dead.

The problems were just too many for Michael. And the burden must
have been too heavy to bear. It is difficult to imagine how he even
lived for this long. He had marital problems. He had acute
financial problems. From being one of the richest men in showbiz
history, he became a pauper, as poor as a church rat. His grace to
grass story was one of the most frightening examples of the fall of
man. It could not have been easy. It was as if he had no family,
and no friend.

The man had helped to raise money for the world, but the world
failed to raise money for him, in his time of dire need. They
watched his life collapse while everyone minded his own business.
This is usually the tragedy of great people. They are often seen as
the supermen who can solve all problems alone. But my illiterate
mum knew better, and used to warn that there is a thin chord
holding the heart to the human body. It is just too fragile.
Die-hard fans like me were hoping for a miracle that would teleport
Michael back to his original state, when he was that adorable kid,
and everyone thought he was older than Michael. Michael had that
childlike innocence that made him vulnerable. But he was awesome.
The world was not big enough for his stage. Music was his life and
we had all foolishly believed that he could live, sing and dance
forever. We followed his every move, shared in his triumphs, and
suffered in his pains. He was human, very human. He had his
foibles, like all mortals do. He tried to keep to himself a lot,
and came out of his shrine only when necessary. He was called the
weird one. He had to be. His life was too extraordinary and too
sensational.

I was always hoping to meet him, one on one. And even dreamt of
bringing him to Nigeria to live under our protection, when his
troubles became too suffocating to watch. We toyed with asking the
Ooni of Ife or the Alaafin of Oyo to make him an African Chief and
get our government to turn him into our national treasure. That
would have been feasible in a land that understood the power of
entertainment and tourism. But one Arab tycoon stole him to
Bahrain, where I believe life must have been very miserable for
him. He was just too broke, and was facing certain humiliation of
unimaginable proportions.

The bailiffs were after him like bullets. Before his very eyes,
his prized possessions were auctioned. His Neverland Ranch, which
was his recreation of paradise on earth, became a dead place and he
had to give up the ownership of this private sanctuary. By the time
the relationship between him and his Arab friend broke down, and he
had to return Los Angeles, the damage had been done. He was forced
to move into a rented apartment. Just imagine, from living in
paradise to living in the pit of hell. It is better imagined than
experienced.

What I admired most about him was how he kept readjusting to his
excruciating conditions. He accepted his fate with uncommon
equanimity. He was determined to prove that he wasn’t finished. He
travelled to London recently to promote his forthcoming world tour.
He needed to disappoint the cynics who thought he was down and
flat-out. His plans were going fine. He had sold a record 750,000
tickets for his concerts. For him, the shows were meant to be the
grand finale to an incredible career, the sort we are not likely to
see again in our generation.

Also, he was working hard to leave a worthy legacy, and a
formidable empire for his family, especially his children. He was
said to have written hundreds of songs which he never performed,
but were meant to be released only after his death. He was a
workaholic. He probably died working. He didn’t want his fans to be
disappointed in him. They were the reason for his existence. We
meant everything to him, just as he meant everything to us.
You don’t have to be a doctor to know he must have died of
exhaustion. The London concert was meant to be his final farewell
to the world. He had gone as far as getting a personal trainer to
beef him up for the tour. His existence depended on proving this
ultimate point. It was a dangerous fixation that would prove fatal.
He had been off-stage for too long. Unknown to him, age was no
longer on his side. Everything that has a beginning must have an
end. He did not accept the verdict of God. The Lord giveth, and the
Lord taketh. It was time to go and the time to be set free.

The elephant collapsed two nights ago. I cried like a baby. My
wife had always found my love for Michael Jackson very strange. If
she did not know me well, she may have suspected me of unprintable
inclinations. I had wished Fela truly kept death in his pouch. We
would have begged him to keep Michael for us forever. But Fela
himself was killed by death. It is one debt we all owe. Sooner or
later, the king of all bailiffs must come, and take possession of
all. This is the reason we must do our best and leave the world
better than we met it.