Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens illustration by Arthur Rackham
Back in 1994, I sold rare books in West Hollywood, at one of the largest antiquarian bookshops in the country. My office was located in the Illustrated Book Room, and the walls were lined with first editions and limited editions of all the great illustrated books. Beautiful books, printed on handmade paper, mouldmade paper with deckled edges, the stone lithographic illustrations tipped in, with special tissue guards protecting the rich images.
It was a large shop, and the bibliographic material was in the upstairs reference library, far from my desk. One morning in 1994, I was rushing back from upstairs, and roared around the corner into my office area… right into Michael Jackson. Not into him exactly, but into his personal space. I have a lot of physical energy and must have surprised him … because his eyes widen in what looked like pure terror.
The moment passed and Michael quickly pulled back into himself. We had many movie star and famous customer/collectors, so Michael Jackson in my office, did not surprise me. His ‘presence’ did. So sad! There was no ‘there’ there. Absolutely no vitality. It always seemed so odd to me, that someone could have such HUGE energy onstage, and be so completely vacuous offstage.
There is a scene in the movie “The Hunger” - Tony Scott’s first feature film. Catherine Deneuve plays an immortal vampire who takes on lovers that eventually are doomed to suffer a living death. She has an attic full of them, still alive, but they are just rattling bones with dusty skin and haunted spirits. On first impression, he reminded me of the men in that attic scene.
Amost all of the specialty antiquarian bookstores in LA have Michael stories. He was very kind to my bosses, inviting them and their children to spend a weekend as guests at Neverland.
He or his staff visited frequently — all of his staff people then, were good, kind people. Michael loved books, loved magic and seemed to come alive there. I remember him telling me once, that his driver, who accompanied him on his book seeking jaunts, was a very good artist. His tone suggesting I may not thought much of him (untrue, his driver was a very sensitive, kind man). It was good that he was protective.
Come away! O, human child!
To the woods and waters wild,
With a fairy hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than
you can understand.W.B. Yeats “The Stolen Child”
Fame is strange and not always very kind.
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