Then, early 1988, as my plans to study abroad and to get high grades were in their infant shoes, it was announced that Michael Jackson would take his Bad tour on the road through Europe, and actually come to Belgium! Our first reaction was “What, did we hear that correctly? Am I dreaming?” No, it was true…he would come to Belgium. But through his music, MJ impersonated for me the energy and opportunities that were lurking in the USA. Once “BAD” was released, I immediately liked the music and the videoclips. My sister An was a big Michael Jackson fan during his Thriller period, so much that my siblings and I didn’t have to bother buying or playing the music or decorating the walls with his posters, as my sister took care of all, being the local fan-club in our family. This had been highly anticipated, not just by the world, but also at our house. It was a spark that had started to smolder slowly near the end of the previous summer (1987), when he had released his “BAD” album.
In 1988, the spark to ignite change came to me from an unexpected corner, but in the form of….Michael Jackson. Thanks to music, my brain had conquered it At the start of the 2 nd song, an underbeat of the song sounded very familiar….but I couldn’t place it until suddenly it evoked the images of the vortexes in me, and I realized that the underlying beat of the song tune and the rhythm in my dream were a match.įrom then on, I never had that dream anymore. I put in my favorite cassette of “Dare” (by the Human League), pressed the “play” button, turned up the volume, and lied down on the bed and closed my eyes. However, in my early 20’s, I was once taking a break from studying. It always evoked an immediate intense feeling of discomfort, a nightmare I would only be able to escape when I would suddenly wake up in sweat, but not remembering enough what had happened to control it. During my childhood and youth, whenever I had fever and would fall asleep, I would undergo a recurring dream, that would start with the visuals of a panther crossing a thick forest, and that would be followed by an abstract scene of several circular currents of energy, like vortexes or tornados, that would be moving according to a particular rhythm, regularly moving towards and away from eachother, but never touching or fusing eachother. I was aware that music could change the brain. Or as Ludwig van Beethoven once said ““Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.”. Certain music was able to touch me, to be a gateway that could transiently move my mental state to another place.
Whenever I didn’t have to study or work, I would enjoy just closing myself off from the outside worl, closing my eyes, and listen to music. It was almost as if many of the facts I had to memorize, the intellectual skills I had to develop, could ride the wave of music to enter my brain and get processed or stored. Most of the time when I was studying, I would have pop music playing in my room, as I felt that it helped to increase my productivity. From 5 th standard onwards, I had become a fervent listener of pop music – by groups such as Boney M and Abba in the 2 nd half of the 1970s, and then in the early 1980 the British music revolution (the Human League, Culture Club). Good music was able to directly go to one’s deepest portions of one’s innerself, or what some would call, the soul. It turned out, that I found it in art, more particularly in music and dance.įrom my childhood onwards, I had been very interested in listening to music, because music was powerful. I couldn’t find it in my immediate environment. It had to go deeper, it had to penetrate through my skull and reach my brain …and plant a long-lasting spark that could keep igniting a source of energy. A lucky charm that I could hang around my neck wasn’t going to suffice. But I needed something that could be a source of inspiration and strength during such challenging moments, because the road was going to be long. The urge to break out of my shell grew in strength. (Man in the mirror – Michael Jackson (written by Seidah Garrett and Glen Ballard)
Take a look at yourself, and then make a change If you wanna make the world a better place (a chapter of Koen’s autobiography about his life in 1988) Finding the spark to ignite the changeĪnd no message could have been any clearer