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Michael Jackson, and Conduits for Thinking

At times, when we interact with others and speak with others, we use them as conduits for our own thinking. We test our own ideas before airing them to a wider public.

“I hate labels, because it should be just music. Call it disco, call it anything, it’s music to me, it’s beautiful to the ear, and that’s what counts. It’s like you hear a bird chirping, you don’t say, ‘That’s a bluejay, this one is a crow.’ It’s a beautiful sound, that’s all that counts, and that is an ugly thing about men. They categorise, they get a little bit too racial about things, when it should all be together. That’s why you hear us talk about the peacock a lot, because the peacock is the only bird of all the bird family that integrates every colour into one, and that’s our main goal in music, is to integrate every race to one through music, and we’re doing that.”

On the sleeve of the Jacksons’ Triumph album, released later that year, Jackson would write, “In all the bird family, the peacock is the only species that integrates all colors into one … We, like the peacock, try to integrate all races into one, through the love and power of music.” Evidently he wanted to try the analogy out before airing it to a wider public. Just as well that I nodded approvingly. “When you go to our concerts, you see every race out there, and they’re all waving hands and they’re holding hands and they’re smiling. You see the kids out there dancing, as well as the grown-ups and the grandparents, all colours, that’s what’s great” – cue one last nervous giggle – “that’s what keep me going.” – John Pidgeon, The Guardian