JACKSON SOUNDTRACK

 

I am five years old

and in Kindergarten

Michael Jackson’s Thriller

has just come out

The song I remember most is “Beat It”

Alex Maynard, the son the late Bob Maynard

and the late Nancy Hicks Maynard

has just turned three

I remember him dancing around the house

singing “Beat It, Just Beat It”

 

Five years later

I am now in fifth grade

The Children’s Troupe

of Roberts & Blank is warming up

for our rehearsal of “joE”

We dance to “Man in the Mirror”

from Michael Jackson’s album Bad

My friend, Niecy,

who is sick of hearing the song

says, “Oh, Lordy Jesus,”

which receives laughter from her friends

We have been dancing to “Man in the Mirror”

 

Another five years later

I am now fifteen

and wrapping up my ninth grade year

We are in Germany

In Nuremberg’s Altstadt or old town

we walk towards a restaurant

All of sudden “Black or White”

from Michael Jackson’s album Dangerous blasts

We all turn our attention

A crowd has gathered around an outdoor stage

A Black model and a White model

start dancing in black and white striped short-sleeved sweaters,

short white knit shorts, white crew socks and black sneakers

We stop for a second to watch the show

In this town where the Nuremberg Trials took place

 

On that same trip we are traveling home on a Swissair Boeing 747-400

that is traveling from Geneva to Los Angeles

“Keep It in The Closet” also from Dangerous

is playing on one of the audio channels

 

 

 

It is two years later

June of 1994

I am now seventeen

and it is the summer before my senior year in high school

Dad and I are traveling on American Airlines #14

a red-eye DC-10 jet traveling between Honolulu and Los Angeles

I am not able to sleep with a crying toddler

a few rows up

and a movie blaring in my eyes

I listen to “Human Nature”

my favorite song by Michael Jackson

from his album Thriller

 

Again two years later

June of 1996

I am nineteen

We are now in Japan

and traveling on the bullet train

between Tokyo and Kyoto

We are at the beginning of our Japanese tour

I am listening to “You Are Not Alone” on a compilation CD I have

1996 Grammy Nominees

Fuji-san flashes by

 

It is now four years later

August of 2000

I am twenty-three

I have just returned home

from studying abroad in Luton, England

for two and a half months

and I am about to enter my senior year of college

at the University of California at Berkeley

“ABC” from Michael Jackson’s album ABC

plays in the background of a commercial

for Old Navy’s graphic tees

I go to Old Navy and buy a couple of graphic tees

 

It is now July of 2002

I am twenty-five

AmeriCorps is having its end of the year retreat

at the Marin Headlands

The theme of the evening dance is ‘80s music

“Billie Jean” is one of the songs that is played

I put my Thriller CD in my suitcase three weeks later

to bring down to the Atlantic Center for the Arts

in New Smyrna Beach, Florida

Once I am down there I do my exercises to it

on the living room floor

in the master artists’ cottage made of pinewood

I also listen to it walking in between the cottage and my workshop

on the wooden boardwalk that keeps us separated from the

snakes, alligators, the armadillo and the tortoise

that makes the Atlantic Center their home

 

Even though he has died,

his soundtrack, so significant in my life,

continues