OF A GOLDEN AGE

In a timely, uncanny fashion, I had a draft saved called “I’ll Be There” with a link to this YouTube video: State Farm’s I’ll Be There commercial.

This commercial is wonderful and makes me kind of weepy every time I see it. Its soundtrack features a remixed version of the Jackson 5 classic beginning with Michael Jackson’s voice, isolated a capella, singing this line I’d never really heard the words to:

You and I must make a pact, we must bring salvation back.

It turns out the words I remembered were the more pop-tropey ones (“I’ll be there to comfort you,” “You know he’d better be good to you”), and not the well-crafted, interesting ones mixed in:

I’ll be there to comfort you,
Build my world of dreams around you, I’m so glad that I found you
I’ll be there with a love that’s strong
I’ll be your strength, I’ll keep holding on

Let me fill your heart with joy and laughter
Togetherness, well, that’s all I’m after
Whenever you need me, I’ll be there
I’ll be there to protect you, with an unselfish love that respects you
Just call my name and I’ll be there

I can’t think of anything more heartwarming than building your world of dreams around someone, of an unselfish love that respects that person! Jeez. No wonder the commercial chokes me up.

Now Michael Jackson has died, abruptly as far as the public is concerned. I am not a real Michael Jackson fan by any definition, although I do love the Jackson 5 and consider that his creative peak as far as music that appeals to me. (That said, at a dinner party last year, a friend’s fiance reenacted the entire “Thriller” dance in about sixteen square feet of apartment floor space while wearing a white wife beater and porkpie hat, and I loved the hell out of it.)

But really, what I will remember about Michael Jackson is that for whatever reason, what he saw and the world saw never lined up, and he destroyed his body and his life in pursuit of something no one else felt was rational. The man was clearly mentally ill and had personal problems that were never kept private enough nor made public enough to satisfy anyone’s curiosities, which made them last for decades. And since his choices didn’t make sense in any paradigm the public understood, this will prove to be his lasting legacy.

no responses