Free The First Book of Michael by Syl Mortilla

crotch whilst simultaneously incorporating the sign of the cross; walking forwards and backwards at the same time; and – the very embodiment of the philosophy – the toe-stand.
     
    ***
     
    There are those that criticise some of the tactics Michael deployed in his efforts to promote his idea of the healing power of love. However, Michael had the talent and work ethic to back up his propaganda machine. All the promotion in the world will only get you so far without the requisite talent and industry. Besides, what’s wrong with the use of any technique, when the message being promulgated is to love one another? As far as role models go, there is none better.
     
    Throughout the eighties, Michael was that rare public figure: encouraged to be liked by parents, with this encouragement enthusiastically reciprocated by their children. He was a true unifier. It’s hardly surprising a world governed by greed and funded by hate chose to bring him down. But in doing so, they martyred him.
     
    Michael’s success was down to his mastery of all the components of being a superstar: he combined his otherworldly talent with his transient physicality as a means to an end, to remain relevant-yet-enigmatic in an effort to further his fame, and hence his message. In spite of all the change, there was an immutable undercurrent that ran through all his conduits of conveyance - that an appreciation of the wisdom of children is the essence of, and answer to, world peace.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER THREE
     
    Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.
     
    F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    In order to get close enough to the microphone when recording songs, the child Michael stood atop an apple box. From this elevated position, he conveyed a supernaturally precocious ability for perfectly expressing the joy of romantic love.
     
    The paradox of Michael’s back-catalogue is that the themes present in his childhood material (having been written by adults) were mature beyond his years, whilst the ideas he explored in his self-penned adult work were more akin to those that would inspire a child.
     
    As a child, Michael could merely imagine what romantic love was like, yet he managed to relay its emotions with a visceral conviction. His song ‘With a Child’s Heart’ is advice on attempting to assuage the tumultuousness of life by approaching each day with the carefree attitude of youth. Contrasted with the other songs of his childhood career, in which he effortlessly relays the euphoria of adult love, the song ‘With a Child’s Heart’ anomalously drips with the tangible pain of a subconscious awareness of the irony in the words he is singing. As Michael said during an interview in 1980,
     
    “When I was small I didn’t really know what I was doing, I just sang and it just came out sounding… pretty good.”
     
    The formative Jackson 5 years left no-one in doubt with regards Michael’s capacity for conveying emotion through his voice. Though it was not until Michael left Motown, that we were requited with this voice singing songs that he had authored himself. With ‘Blues Away’ came the epiphany - many artists never write a song as important as this in their entire career. Yet, this track - from the eponymous The Jacksons album - their first after unshackling themselves of the artistic constraints that bound them at Motown - was a mere taster; a tantalising teaser of what was to come.
     
    Whereupon one need look no further than Destiny - the subsequent Epic release from The Jacksons .
     
    The opening track - the bassline bonanza that is ‘Blame It on the Boogie’ - is the sole song on the record not written by the brothers (though, coincidentally, it was penned by a Michael Jackson namesake). The album palpably throbs with both joy and heartbreak. The autobiographical nature of the lyrical themes are prescient of the standard ideas we would come to