Michael Jackson - A Modern Master with a Child's Heart

It's a well-known fact Michael Jackson had great care and concern for children. He also maintained a childlike persona, speaking openly to interviewers about his belief that people should retain the innocence of a child. What may not be as talked about, however, is that Jackson's interest in children and the childlike was parallel to other one-of-a-kind creative geniuses of the modern era. From his playfulness and his fondness for children, to his belief that he had a gift from God to share with the world, Michael Jackson had many of the same behaviors scholars document in the lives of modern masters such as, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, and many more. These individuals, as well as Jackson, had one particular common characteristic of creativity, which Harvard psychologist, Howard Gardner calls that "special amalgam of the childlike and the adultlike," both in personality and in ideas.

All creative masters combine the "childlike and the adultlike ...

and may feel that this fusion ... is an indispensable part of their genius," Gardner notes. And, they seek to preserve these traits and cultivate their features. For instance, in 1984, Jackson spent a week with his friend, Jane Fonda and her father, Henry Fonda, during the filming of On Golden Pond. Speaking then with Time reporter Jay Cocks, she said, "His intelligence is instinctual and emotional like a child's. If any artist loses that childlikeness, you lose a lot of creative juice. So Jackson creates around himself a world that protects his creativity,"

In her recent account of helping him locate and purchase the property known now as Neverland Valley Ranch, real estate broker, Gloria Rhoads Berlin said, "He viewed Neverland as an opportunity to have the childhood he never had" and he intended it to be a "paradise for all the children of the world."

Princess Elizabeth von Thurn und Taxis and her brother, Prince Albert von Thurn und Taxis, visited Neverland as children.

They met and befriended Jackson through their mother, Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis. In a recent issue of Finch's Quarterly Review, where she is the features editor, Princess Elizabeth said,
"Michael had everything a child's heart could possibly desire. We played for hours ....
He loved throwing water bombs and super soaking one another. He really turned into a
kid. He didn't mind his hair getting drenched and the make-up he was wearing washing off,
he was enjoying himself and that was that. We were young enough to enjoy the children's paradise but old enough to really remember and realize how special this actually was."

This childlikeness can be a positive trait when it features innocence or freshness, or it can be negative when it's selfish or retaliatory. For instance, the composer Stravinsky, though interested in the world of children, did not act like a child. Rather, he picked fights to win and to humiliate the "enemy." Cite As for retaliation, some of the songs on Jackson's HIStory album are angry diatribes against former Los Angeles District Attorney Tom Sneddon's 1993 raid on Neverland, especially the song "D.S. is a Cold Man." [Some people assert that Sneddon had a "vendetta" against Jackson.] The raid came about in response to claims of molestation from the father of a 13-year old boy, whose family Jackson had befriended.

Other songs on the HIStory album strike out at the sensationalized yellow journalism of the tabloids. Retaliating could also be defiance, which is a trait Einstein valued. He "esteemed the mind of the young child, granting it powerful intuitions about physics," scholars note. He placed the mind and spirit of the young child "on a pedestal," like other creators, including Jackson, who also studied the scientist. Einstein found satisfaction in childlike traits, such as curiosity and defiance of convention. (cite) Jackson believed in defiance, as well. Once when an interviewer asked how he came up with his ideas, he cited being "defiant" as a means of stoking his creativity.
Stravinsky anchored his music in basic elements of the medium, using primitive rhythms and harmonies that impressed him as a child. The artist, Picasso, cultivated a childlike personality. The fragmented forms in his art showed characteristics of young children, with the simplest of shapes and all aspects of the visual experience represented simultaneously. Like Einstein, Picasso "clowned for the media." He also had a quest for possessions, and a desire for total control, taken to be "infantile." In his book, Extraordinary Minds, Howard Gardner noted that Gandhi was very childish and cultivated the look of a young child.

The writer, T.S. Eliot was called "childlike, endearing" and considered the most repressed in his life, though not in his powerful work, The Wasteland. Eliot was childlike in that he "loved puzzles, produced bawdy doggerel, and verses for children." His appreciation for the novel and offbeat, fragmented nature of verse and its concern with unconscious and symbolic themes is in the same childlike universe as the artist Stravinsky and the scientist Einstein. Like Jackson, who was often called an "old soul," Eliot also seemed old when he was young. Eliot enjoyed the elder statesman role. Jackson saw himself as a father to the world's children, a hero, a benevolent king, and protector, according to the artist David Nordahl, with whom Jackson commissioned paintings for many years.

Martha Graham sought to remain forever young in her person and her work. "the art form she selected used the body for expression" and the elemental expressions she favored drew on the child's imagination, according to Gardner. The dancer, Twyla Tharp noted this "sense of innocence"also as the "final skill" of the dancer-"forever the child"-the dancer does not know that failure can hurt, that one can fail.

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