posted: July 1, 2009

posted: June 29, 2009

I wanted to be Michael  Jackson in 2nd grade. Like many other pre-pubescent boys, I started popping and learning his signature moves, practicing in my parents' bedroom in front of their mirror. I watched "Thriller" on the big screen at my town's roller rink and breathlessly shouted to my mom after the 3rd viewing, "I've got Thriller pumping through my heart and I can't get enough!" There's a great photo of me from this period, overjoyed to be wearing my Thriller T-Shirt, I'm sure just like hundreds of thousands of other white suburban grade schoolers in the 80s.
A few years later, I fell violently out of love with him when "Bad" came out and everyone ridiculed his surgically altered, feminine, bleached face. What I didn't dare to tell any of my friends, who loved making fun of Michael Jackson for being "gay," was that I secretly wished I had the courage to remain a fan. For the next 5 or 6 years, I watched his music videos hundreds of times on MTV, including "Leave Me Alone," one of my all-time favorites (well worth watching right now), and let his songs play on the radio if I heard them. But I couldn't bring myself to buy another record after Thriller. It was just too embarassing. Before puberty, it was acceptable to admire and want to emulate a musician who was equal parts masculine and feminine (while bridging "black" and "white" music styles to boot). By Jr. High School, it was unthinkable.

I'm a little surprised at how grief-stricken I am by his passing. I've been watching videos of him performing and playing his music constantly for the last few days, marvelling at his genius and regretting how I've pushed his influence out of my mind. I've come a long way since 4th grade, stopping at Oberlin College and the San Francisco bay area before settling back in NY. I'd like to think I'm mostly past my culturally inherited homophobia, which I think includes fear of feminine men. One of my favorite bands a few years ago was Le Tigre, whose transgendered member JD wrote my favorite song of theirs, "Viz." "You call it coolness, but we call it  visibility, you call it way too rowdy, we call it finally free!" In other words, by the time I got out of school, I'd say I was open-minded enough to see past Michael's strangeness (his compulsion to transform himself into an ever-more-perfect white woman) and be able to continue to appreciate his gifts.

But I guess what pushed me away for good was the pedophilia charges. It's one thing to take an aggressive stance about race or gender, flaunting an uncomfortable middle ground between the two accepted poles of identity. But to watch him cross the adult-child boundary was too much for me, and I think for most of his mainstream audience. I'm not convinced he actually had any sexual relations with children. But it seems pretty clear that some of them slept in his bed and cuddled with him. It's very likely he was sexually abused and he probably had a similar disorder to most pedophiles, an inability to cross the threshold into adulthood and see children as the age they really are. He probably related to these boys as if he was the same age, with all the desire for experimenting and playing that it entails. Some friends with experience in the field have hypothesized to me that he might have had untreated bi-polar. I think he had a classic addict's personality, which manifested in his finances and his prescription drug dependence and possiby in an obsessive need for approval and love from children. Regardless of what the diagnosis may be, he was terribly, terminally sick. And he was never able to get the kind of care that might have saved him.
I find it all pretty heartbreaking. Now that he's gone, I have tremendous sympathy for him. He was obviously in enormous pain his whole life, which makes his continual top-of-the-charts success all the more stunning and inspiring. You can't fake the radiant joy he was channeling when he was at his best. And it's arguable that no one worked harder at perfecting his vocals or dance moves. If you freeze a frame from almost any of his performances, you'll find an exquisite piece of design, including every part of his body, from each finger of his hand down to his feet. If you listen to the acapella tracks circulating on YouTube, you can hear just how well-crafted every attack, pause and breath really is. You can feel the anguish ringing out of his vocal chords, especially on a song like "Remember The Time" And you can feel the child-like thrill on all his hollars and his outro ad-libbing. The man was a true artist in every sense of the word.

As Questlove of The Roots wrote shortly after Jackson's death, "I just hope that he will get due justice in all the press memorials. I know he was mired in controversy the last decade of his life but i think its time we let him rest in peace and learn to separate the ART and the ARTIST. That is the MJ i will forever remember." Me too, from now on.

posted: June 11, 2009

Full page illustration for Time Out New York's "Do You Belong in New York?" quiz issue. Art director was Adam Fulrath and he was a joy to work with as always. It's sort of a "Where's Waldo?" type thing, but you're supposed to spot annoying city behaviors (things only real NYC residents would know).  Major inspiration was drawn from this insane piece of beautiful art by eboy.

posted: May 12, 2009

This was a fun project. Illustrating Christen Clifford's home birth story. She's a writer and performer who lives in the same neighborhood as me. My wife and I helped edit her essay into comics format and then I illustrated it. The piece ran on Friday just before Mother's Day. Check it out. We've gotten a lot of nice responses so far, but the biggest compliment was having Christen use a panel from the strip as her Facebook profile pic. We may be doing more of these in the future. Keep your eyes peeled...

Back story from the SMITH mag website:

If you want to publish a story about motherhood the week before Mother’s Day and not be a hideous cliché, it better be good. It better be vivid and real and personal and unique. Something like a totally raw comic strip about home birth, complete with shit and placenta, hatred and love, Facebook, The Daily Show, and hot naked photos of the majorly pregnant author. We thought you’d like that.
Christen Clifford is a fearless writer who has appeared on SMITH before as well as on stage and in many other publications. Her intensely confessional works are so intimate and honest they elicit more me-toos than TMIs. She met cartoonist David Heatley on the playground, as creative New York parents are wont to do, and read his graphic memoir in bed the day after baby Vera was [home]born. Christen immediately saw the story of her daughter’s birth in David’s child-like, evocative style. Now, quite fortunately, we can, too.

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