The Drama In Doing Nothing

We were just in Cleveland performing a program that veered from Elliott Carter to Giuseppe Verdi to Prince, with heavy doses of Stockhausen and a finale of Queen. If it didn't all flow together like a good mixtape, I think we'd spend a lot of time answering questions like, "How do you justify putting Prince on the same program with Mauricio Kagel?". Thankfully, the flow works. It always has, for the most part, and to me, it's a very honest byproduct of being a child of the 80's, when everything started to become instantly available. My brain's all jacked up with high and low culture, and it's never really been clear to me what the difference was. Once, when I remarked to a professor that I thought Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' was as unimpeachable as 'Tosca', he said that if I really felt that way, I shouldn't be studying in a conservatory. At the time, most of my professors would've shared that view, but I doubt it now, given how many of us kids who grew up on CHiPs and Chopin are taking over the teaching posts nowadays.

What brings all of this to mind is Moby Dick, actually. I got to chapter 36 today ("The Quarter-Deck"), and it reminded me of Michael Jackson's entrance on the Dangerous tour. In my edition, over 100 pages have gone by, and Ahab has been not much more than a ghost. He makes his first real appearance in chapter 28, where Ishmael gives us a full rundown on his appearance. But he really doesn't do much until chapter 36, when he all of the sudden assembles the entire crew of the Pequod on the quarter-deck.

Melville ratchets up the drama with the slightest effort:

"Sir!" said the mate, astonished at an order seldom or never given on shipboard except in some extraordinary case.

"Send everybody aft," repeated Ahab. "Mastheads, there! come down!"

The exceptional nature of the circumstance is deftly drawn, and then Melville has Ahab lob some softballs at the crew:

"What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?"

"Sing out for him!" was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of chubbed voices.

"Good!" cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones; observing the hearty animation into which his unexpected question had so magnetically thrown them.

"And what do ye next, men?"

"Lower away, and after him!"

"And what tune is it ye pull to, men?"

"A dead whale or a stove boat!"

Ahab has his crew in the palm of his hand by sheer dint of doing nothing for some weeks and then throwing them off balance. The sheer weight of their anticipation, their hunger for some direction, and the force of his personality marry in an alchemical moment. When, moments later, Ahab entreats these strangers to join him on his mad quest after a crippled white whale, they are more than happy to seal their doom with the fellow.

As I was reading the passage today, the image of Michael Jackson taking the stage kept coming to mind. On his Dangerous tour, he'd shoot up onto the stage from a trap door, amid fireworks. Then, he'd do nothing.

Like Ahab, he knew the power of his presence. By simply letting the tension build, as Ahab did in the weeks of his silence, Michael turns up the audience's enthusiasm to sheer hysteria. Then, after a minute of standing there in stone silence, what does he do?

He turns his head.

It's an absolute mastery of the moment and his audience. With that entrance, Michael, like Ahab, can command absolutely anything. Maybe I've watched too much TV and listened to too many rock records, but the connection makes sense to me:

Michael jackson - dangerous tour
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