A Voice Like a Fly in Amber

Now that I have a fancy new corporate job, I’m regularly walking between train and office, and I often listen to a couple of songs along the way. Last week it was The Jackson 5, and I was struck by what an odd experience it is to listen to a young Michael Jackson singing. As an audience, we know so much about the future of that voice’s owner, none of which is known to him. We know about his past as well, more than most people would have known contemporaneously. That voice is a fly trapped in amber, frozen between the weight of knowledge on either side of its timeline.

And amber feels like an apt analogy for the sound of that voice too. The texture, the grain, the way it gently rumbles and cracks through sweet lightness. It’s warm and a little rough, with an oh-so-poignant catch to it that belies its youth. Is it the incongruity of the poignancy and the youth what draws us to that voice? I wonder whether people in 1967 could hear that poignancy and whether they recognised it as such? 

You know how sometimes  an idea completely outside your previous experience seems to embed itself in your life? You keep seeing references to a previously obscure historical figure, or come across the same archaic word 3 times in a week. Well the idea of intergenerational trauma has been scooting around in my life for a few months now. Before December last year, I had never heard of the concept, but now I see references to it all over the place. I ponder on it quite a bit, and I find myself thinking about it while listening to MJ sing. I As a group of people, African American's have, without a doubt, a few seats at the table of intergenerational trauma. 

These days, I assume, everyone knows about Joe Jackson’s awful treatment of his children. It's impossible to deny the trauma of being descended from a slave. But beyond that, what did the father himself suffer to become such a person, and to treat his own children in such a way? What trauma was he trying yet failing to escape? It just makes me feel unbearably sad to think of the piles and piles of suffering that we can only know through remnants like a breathily sung chorus or a bizarre baby-dangling incident. 

When thinking of how that trauma was passed down to Michael, both through his experiences at the hands of an abusive father and through the inheritance of his ancestor's lived trauma, I can only wonder at how terrible it could possibly be. What kind of trauma makes someone want to erase their own face? I don’t know whether I am imagining it or not, but I do think that it's possible to hear little clues to that trauma when listening to this music. Perhaps that's what we respond to as listeners, the all too familiar emotions of pain and trauma, made easier to bear through the vehicle of a 3 minute song.

Today, it's impossible to hear a young Michael Jackson without thinking about, and feeling sad for, the adult version of that singer. How wonderful that I am able to walk along Flinders Lane in the early Autumn evening air, and listen to that beautiful, sad and aching, huskily yearning voice while I do something as mundane as head to the train station. I mean, it’s an incredible privilege have access to something like that. My earbuds contain multitudes, and I am so grateful.

Further Reading

The two books in particular that shaped my thinking on intergenerational trauma are Homegoing and It Didn't Start With You