It’s taking a few days to get back on schedule and back into this time zone after nearly two weeks on vacation.

Thanks to Fal for her provocative guest commentary which kept readers’ occupied here on the blog while I struggled to catch up on reading and resting there in Hawaii. Cough. Cough. It was a struggle.  I managed to break the spine of a new novel and lose myself in it while on vacation: Mother of the Believers by Kamran Pasha’s, a tale of the events and conflicts surrounding the beginning years of Islam as told from the point of view of Aisha the second wife of the Prophet Muhammad. Got another hundred pages of the book to finish before I launch into a commentary. Mind you, I’m bristling with thoughts and impressions.

In the meantime, time for a trip down memory land. In light of all the feasting going on surrounding Michael Jackson and his death, I thought I’d take this time to introduce the younguns’ here on the blog to someone Jackson idolized and drew inspiration from. He was one of the two entertainers (the other being the legendary James Brown) whose singing and entertainment style had enormous impact on Jackson the star-struck boy sitting before his parent’s black and white tv.

Enter Mr. Jackie Wilson (1934-1984).

While I remember swaying to a few of his tunes when I was girl, Jackie Wilson was more a heart throb to the women in my mother’s generation.  I remember the women from my neighborhood gathering in our living room to watch him on the black and white television with his processed pompador and leg tight pants singing, sweating, pulsating with sensuality. I was still too young to understand what all the sexual fuss was about at the time.

Although I gotta admit watching this video of Wilson with his falsetto tenor singing one of his signature songs “Lonely Teardrops” — a performance that dates sometime in the late 50’s or early 60s– I think I can understand now why women fanned themselves with their dress tails standing there in our living room watching Wilson perform and why they stumbled back to their dreary lives and tired husbands with faraway smiles on their faces. It takes watching Jackie Wilson perform a song like “Higher and Higher” twirling, flipping, and diving, throwing the mike around without missing a note to really see his influence upon the young Michael Jackson. Wilson knew how to entertain. Says Rolling Stone, “Jackie Wilson was one of the premier black vocalists and performers of the late ’50s and the ’60s. No other singer of his generation so perfectly combined James Brown’s rough, sexy style and Sam Cooke’s smooth, gospel-polished pop.” Wilson’s career came to an end as a result of a fall he suffered during one of his performance (a heart attack sent him over the edge) which left him in a coma and vegetative state for nine years before his death.

Sometimes it’s good to remember that great performers do not emerge ex nihilio, but that many of their innovations are not innovations at all, but are lines, steps, sounds, and unfinished thoughts of others who in their day were equally great even though now long forgotten.

Special thanks to Fal for granting me permission to post her reflections on last night BET Award Show with its special tributes to Michael Jackson. I couldn’t catch the show here in Hawaii, but thanks to Twitter I managed to catch folks’ reactions to the show.

I am deeply troubled by the buffoonery of the 2009 Black Entertainment Television Award Show where “blackness” guaranteed BET’s ownership of honoring Michael J. Jackson’s life. Of course, there is an endless laundry list of technical, sexist, homophobic, and simply tone death performances that I could blog about. However, the most compelling issue for me is that we witnessed consumption at “it’s finest” where Jamie Foxx unabashedly highlighted his many upcoming projects and the beauty of his voice, where every five seconds large digital placards of sponsorship appeared before our eyes beseeching us to buy their wares, where Joe Jackson plugs the revival of his singing career, where the infamous golden arches tell our children that they should dream of working at McDonald’s when they “become big kids,” and where we the viewing public further the cannibalization process of Michael Jackson by not turning our televisions off in righteous indignation because consciously or unconsciously we enjoy the thrill of consuming flesh . . . the gossip, the speculations, the betrayals, the “sins,” and yes “if it bleeds then it leads” or in the case of the BET Award Show if it stereotypes black people then it sales.

This only shows that we do not know how to honor our dead. We only know how to consume them and extract the last bit of value from their dead flesh. With Michael Jackson’s death, future record deals will be made from sampling his catalogue, cottage t-shirts industries on each street corner beckoning people to remember Michael through purchasing a t-shirt, increased Itunes downloads of Michael Jackson’s work, juicy gossip to make the workday bearable, legal rangles on CNN about the authenticity of Michael Jackson’s will, biased scholarly debates on Michael’s masculinity, psychological fragility, and his love of children. Of course, I too am guilty of participating in feasting upon his flesh, after hearing the official announcement that he was dead, I raced to Itunes and bought one of his greatest hits albums so that I could remember and honor him.

But does buying an album and then privately consuming the purchase constitute honoring the dead?

Of course, all of this is not to say that consumption in of itself is bad because we need to consume various things to live, however, when consumption becomes the end in of itself and when it is not intimately connected to the idea of mutual replenishment than it becomes capitalism where I take more from you and there is no guarantee that I will give you anything in return unless it too benefits me.

Did anyone else notice that not one of Michael Jackson’s songs that deal with accountability (i.e. the Man in the Mirror), building a peaceful global community (i.e. We Are the World and Heal the World), environmental justice (i.e. Earth Song), critique of globalization/policing (i.e. They Don’t Care About Us), ending global racism (i.e. Black or White) justice and safety of children (i.e. Little Susie/Pie Jesu and Childhood), and the need to be connected to each other (i.e. Will You Be There and Stranger in Moscow) showed up on last night’s BET Awards show? Why not? Because these songs are Jackson’s kryptonite critiques on consumption behaviors.  And BET decided that that’s not what interests his fans, especially his young fans like those of us who are 20something like myself.  But I disagree. Yeah, there was Ciara’s song Heal the World, but my ears don’t allow me to count her rendition. (But that’s another story.)

Hey, I am not saying that Jackson’s pop and romantic tunes should not be celebrated because they should. But something is wrong when not one ballad about healing, community, connectedness, and environmental responsibility was featured in any public or pronounced manner.  That omission says something about where we are as a society. Certainly reminds us that the Black Entertainment Television channel  cares more about black consumption than black legacy.

Someone special told me recently that the way you honor your parents or mentors is not by submitting to their authority or legacy, but by choosing to live your life seeking your purpose so that if your parents or mentors had to choose to live their life over they would choose to live your life because your purpose is enriching the world.

Here’s how musical legend Michael Jackson would have been remembered last night if I were producer of the BET Award Show.  I would have ended the show featuring global cultural workers who enrich the world followed by a musical medley of Man in the Mirror, Heal the World, Will You Be There, and Earth Song set against the video depictions of current political events—political protests in Iran, rape in the Congo, foreclosed houses in the US, fighting in Israel, and Hurricane Katrina—and environmental concerns—erosion of beaches, global warming, pandemics and epidemics of all kinds. All of which was to remind the audience that Michael Jackson cared deeply about people and the current state of the world. Thus, we honor him not only by remembering his soulful music—Billie Jean, Thriller, and so forth—but by choosing to live our lives dedicated to the service of humanity, a life that if Michael Jackson had to live his life over he would choose our interpretation of his best vision. That’s what I think should have been done last night. Or something like that. Anything but how BET and last night’s performers chose to remember Michael last night.

I guess it gets down to this: Can we expect people who live in a consumeristic culture to know how to honor the dead when they don’t even know how to honor the living –without consuming them alive?

Had to come back on to note the passing of a pop icon from my past.

Part of my routine here in Hawaii has been losing myself in the music on my ipod. Two songs that get me over the hump 20 minutes into my routine there on the elliptical machine continue to be Jackson’s “Wanna Be Starting Something” and “Billye Jean.”  Followed by tunes by the Temptations “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg.”

White kids had the Beatles back in the day. But we black kids swooned and screamed and mimicked the dances moves  of “The Jackson Five.” And then there was the monstrous album hit “Thriller” in 1982 which sealed his fate as a pop superstar.

Talented. Gifted. Charismatic. Soft. Gentle. Traumatized. Controversial. Bizarre. Pathetic.

An era in pop music is over. A piece of my past is gone.

Rest in Peace Michael Jackson. May the best of you continue to live on in creativity, music, and dance.

If making sure there’s spotty Internet service in my room here in Hawaii is God’s way of seeing to it that I rest from my labors, I am not impressed.

But how do I explain the fact that for the five days I’ve been here on the Big Island in a room overlooking mountains and beach, five time zones away from my normal routine, I haven’t been able to compose one intelligent paragraph? Evidently I write better when I’m pissed. Or feel passionate. Neither of which I feel here in Hawaii. Everything’s surreal to me here. I feel awful about what’s going on in Iran. I was sad to hear about the train derailing in DC.  And I had meant to write here on the blog about fatherhood and masculinity for Father’s Day.

Nothing.

But still I can’t say that I’ve entered that place of sabbath rest our biblical ancestors had in mind in (Gen. 2:4): “God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it and abstained from all the work which God created to make.”

It’s taken me me three days to stop checking my email. Four days to stop checking my cell for texts. This morning a co-worker wrote asking for some information I promised to send while on vacation. The information he needs is sitting there on my desktop computer. Another one of God’s jokes, I suppose.

I’m lying around not doing much here in Hawaii, but it’s not like I’m resting. More like just not doing anything productive. Which, believe me, is not the same as resting. I go to the fitness center and work out every day which is no fun. Definitely not resting. More like “working” out.

The beach where we’re staying is beautiful — and baby I do mean beautiful– but, unlike the the many pale faces here with us at the resort,  laying out in the sun has never been my cup of tea. There’s a luau tonight which the young ones will enjoy, and snorkeling later in the week which my baby’s daddy looks forward to. But me? Nothing. It would help if I liked the book I’m reading (recommended by a reader). But I don’t. Heading back to Borders when I finish this post.

Resting is work, that’s for sure. It’s taken me five days to unwound from my normal routine. In this age of 24 hour Internet and 24 hour cable news and constantly charged cell phones, where the lines between work and home have become blurred, where it’s possible to always be on, available and accessible, it takes some time to shut off. Unplug. Chill.

I like 12th century Nachmanides interpretation of the Genesis 2:4 verse better which says:  “God ceased to perform all His creative work.”

But God I’m a blogger. Readers forget you if they click on and see that you haven’t written anything fresh in three days!

The notion of resting from one’s labor was a radical idea when it originated centuries ago. (So was the idea of tithing, mind you, but that’s another post.)  Demanding sabbath rest was the slaves’ way of saying to the Empire, to slavemasters, to landowners, to supervisors, “enough is enough.”  Slaves are not machines.  Even the poor deserve time to themselves, with their families, to breathe in God.

Rest is a radical notion because it says, “the world has already been created. There’s really nothing more that can be added. Everything else is tinkering.” Sit down, be still, and observe God’s creation.

Rest is a radical notion because it says to all,  employers and family alike, “you are not the boss of me.” While I have obligations to you I don’t belong to you. I belong to myself and to my Creator.

Here’s something to consider. The Hebrew word for rested, vyenafesh, can sometimes mean rest, ensouled, breath, to catch one’s breath, sweet fragrance, passion, and inner being. A living being is the more popular translation. Each of us has a nefesh — a soul. Meaning, we are not machines.  Rest is taking the time out to gather the bits and pieces of our self that we’ve given away to others– whether for money or out of  love– and to put our self/our soul back together.

I leave you for now with a story found in a book about renewal.

In the deep jungles of Africa, a traveler was making a long trek. Laborers were engaged from a tribe to carry the loads. The first day of the trip the tribesmen marched rapidly and went far. The traveler had high hopes of a speedy journey. But the second morning these jungle tribesmen refused to move. For some strange reason they just sat and rested. On inquiry as to the reason for this strange behavior, the traveler was informed that they had gone too fast the first day, and that they were now waiting for their souls to catch up with their bodies.