On George Michael and Self Destruction
It used to be that at this time of the year, I’d put George Michael on and drink alone in my dining room.
Like other children of the 80s, I grew up listening to “Faith,” watching him become the pop star who became trapped by the image he created. In my 20s I watched him try to break out of the box that the record company, and the world, wanted to keep him in. And in my 30s, I sat in my dining room, listening to his songs about the world breaking him. I drank to those songs, because the pain he sang about was so visceral and familiar.
Now that he is gone, too young, a lot of people are writing about what he meant to them: the redefining of masculinity, the pop star, the gay icon. For me, George Michael’s music is tied a self-destruction and a search for freedom. His music reflects the things that are in me: the sugary pop, yes, but also many things much darker.
George Michael said that his demons were two-fold: grief and self-destruction. I wanted him to move past it. If he could, perhaps I could too?
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For a lot of years I too struggled with the conventional success that comes with performing. My performance was on a much smaller stage, far away from London and million dollars homes. My performance involved feeling like I always had to be “on” — always people pleasing, be it making pretty pictures at a magazine, or shoving down the anxiety and depression instead of dealing with them. If I could just make things look OK, they’d be OK. It is a common struggle for many, and some of us turn to ways to numb out the cognitive dissonance. George did — he’s quoted as saying as much.
Just keep going at all costs. It’s what the world tells us.
“When you shake your ass, they notice fast, some mistakes were built to last.”
The world likes to tell us how to look and act and be. In George Michael’s case it was these things: straight, a pop sensation, bound. Bound to the image he had created, and which had brought him great success. Bound to corporate contracts. Bound to a set of behaviors that were socially acceptable, all the while there was someone “he forgot to be.”
The worst years of my self-destruction were among some of my best professionally. My ass shaking was quite different than George’s, but I can say this — when I listened to his music, I heard something in my gut that said: “Slow down. Stop. Listen to yourself.” And: “You will break if you keep living in a way that is not your truth.”
I deviated from my truth for far too long.
In those years I stayed up at night and drink cheap white wine at the world, only hurting myself. I read about George Michael, the drugs, the arrests, and the way that the world made him the butt of a joke. I felt nothing but kinshp and empathy.
In his lyrics I also heard hope, a prayer for freedom and redemption. I played “Waiting (Reprise)” from his 1990 album “Listen Without Prejudice” again and again.
There are no other words I know that tell the story of how vapid and unfulfilling conventional success can be:
“All those insecurities
That have held me down for so long
I can’t say I’ve found a cure for these
But at least I know them
So they’re not so strong
You look for your dreams in heaven
But what the hell are you supposed to do
When they come true?”
“Well there’s one year of my life in these songs
And some of them are about you
Now I know there’s no way I can write those wrongs
Believe me
I would not lie you’ve hurt my pride
And I guess there’s a road without you
But you once said
There’s a way back for every man
So here I am
Don’t people change, here I am
Is it too late to try again?”
Don’t people change? Isn’t there a way back? Is it too late to try again?
The day after his death was announced, I’m watching the footage of George Michael on Oprah in 2004. It was hailed as his comeback, with the release of his first album in a decade. He was fit and strong, with a clear voice as he sang “Amazing.”
It’s a ridiculously upbeat song about how he found love again after losing his partner to AIDS and his mother, all in a period of a few years. It’s so upbeat, but if you listen closely to the last lines, you’ll hear:
“As this life gets colder
And the devil inside
Tells you to give up…”
Then the song ends. It fades out.
That album was a comeback, but for the next decade he was plagued by trouble after trouble, including a near-death bout of pneumonia, car crash, and arrests, at least one of which resulted in a stint in rehab.
From an interview he did wiht People Music: “Released from jail after four months, ‘I realized it had to be something to do with me,’ he said in an interview about his drug problems. ‘It shook me out of my denial. After that crash happened, I started drug counseling and was two weeks in detox, none of which I made public. It feels so completely behind me now. It really does.’”
That last quote stays with me. Were his demons behind him?
Because mine will never really be completely in my past. And I hope they never totally are. Because I never want to go back to who I was during the darkest days. Fearful. Self-consumed. Always looking for external validation.
I obviously didn’t know George Michael as a person. I’m just another fan, another struggling soul, putting my own story on top of his. But I do know what I won’t do today and what I pray I will never do again: put on his music and drink.
I am listening to it loudly though. and do believe there is a way back for every man. For me it comes only by knowing my past will never really go away, but is being folding it into the person I am becoming. I hope, like George, I will make words with it that will help someone else.
I wish I could reach back into the past and know George Michael, which will not happen. So today I reach forward, knowing that the same devil he sang about is whispering the same lies to people struggling today. And that the freedom he sang about — that can come true too, even if perhaps it never did for the man who sang of it.
