{"id":10669,"date":"2026-07-16T12:29:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T17:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/?p=10669"},"modified":"2026-07-16T12:30:40","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T17:30:40","slug":"no-single-story-the-lives-we-leave-behind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/no-single-story-the-lives-we-leave-behind\/","title":{"rendered":"No Single Story: The Lives We Leave Behind"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"501\" height=\"420\" src=\"https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/Essay-Photo.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-10670\" srcset=\"https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/Essay-Photo.jpeg 501w, https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/Essay-Photo-300x251.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/Essay-Photo-370x310.jpeg 370w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 501px) 100vw, 501px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\" id=\"h-by-adrian-rosenfeldt\"><em><strong>By <\/strong><strong>Adrian Rosenfeldt<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A close friend of mine died unexpectedly. I had known him for years: his fierce intelligence, difficult personality and lifelong devotion to music, art, travel and writing. A committed atheist throughout his life, he held no affection for organised religion. But like many of us, he had been raised within a deeply Catholic world and attended a Jesuit school. As the saying goes, \u201cOnce a Catholic, always a Catholic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yet the service held in his honour was a traditional Orthodox Catholic mass complete with incense, solemn liturgy and sermons about resurrection. The mass attempted to place his life within a much older spiritual narrative. Sitting there, I became aware of a strange disjunct between these two portrayals of the same person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 After the service, some of his close friends quietly remarked that the funeral felt inauthentic. I felt this too. Yet when I mentioned this to someone standing beside me, they simply replied, \u201cFunerals are for the family.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For those of us who have lost someone close, recognise that our memory of them rarely survives through a single coherent narrative. Different aspects of a life persist in different ways and not always comfortably alongside one another. French philosopher Rousseau once suggested that the self is largely the product of memory. If this is true, then part of a person continues living as long as there are still people carrying that person within their consciousness, and there can never be one definitive memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At my friend\u2019s funeral, he was described in terms of three simple identities: lawyer, writer and art lover. Yet none of these descriptions adequately captured the force of his personality, his strange enthusiasms or the way he moved through the world.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-medium\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" src=\"https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/free-online-fiction-poetry-art-300x225.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5712\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the days after the funeral, I found myself thinking about other lives that cannot be encapsulated in a funeral, in a eulogy, in one memory or identity. One of those lives was Michael Jackson. Watching Netflix\u2019s new documentary\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.netflix.com\/au\/title\/81929201\"><em>Michael Jackson: The Verdict<\/em><\/a><em>\u00a0<\/em>and reading about the extraordinary box-office success of the recent biopic\u00a0<em>Michael, <\/em>I found myself asking the same question that had troubled me since my friend\u2019s funeral: is it ever possible to reduce a human life to a single authentic story?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 To put it lightly, critics were not enamoured with the biopic\u00a0<em>Michael<\/em>. Its\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rottentomatoes.com\/m\/michael\"><em>Rotten Tomatoes <\/em>critic score<\/a>\u00a0currently sits at just 39%, compared to 97% from viewers, an extraordinary disparity. The reviews I read were scathing. The film was described as \u201cdeceitful,\u201d \u201csuperficial,\u201d \u201cover-simplified\u201d and \u201csanitised.\u201d The controversies and child molestation allegations surrounding Jackson\u2019s life clearly contribute to this reaction and will again return to public attention in Netflix\u2019s documentary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yet I suspect some of the hostility toward the film reflects a broader cultural shift. Being a young music fan when\u00a0<em>Thriller<\/em>\u00a0was released in 1982, I still remember how universally adored Jackson was at the height of his fame. The clips for Billie Jean, Beat It and Thriller felt almost supernatural at the time. How did he sing and write all those hits, design and star in those groundbreaking music videos, and choreograph those dance scenes? Looking back, it is also remarkable to think that Michael Jackson was the first black artist in America to take over the white-dominated pop charts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My ten-year-old friends and I didn\u2019t think about Jackson in racial terms at all. We all wanted to be Michael Jackson.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-medium\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" src=\"https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/free-online-fiction-poetry-art-300x225.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5712\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As I was driving home from the funeral on my own, one vivid memory returned to me with unusual force. Not long after my friend and I finished school, we both went to ConFest, a hippie gathering on the Murray River, with my sister and some of her friends. Despite enjoying being out in nature, my friend and I were not impressed with what we saw to be the faux primitivism around us: the earnest hippie workshops, the fire twirling, the self-conscious spirituality. At some point, partly out of boredom and partly out of frustration, I put <em>Thriller<\/em>\u00a0into the boombox I had brought with me and turned the volume up loud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 People around us were horrified. In that setting, the disco rhythms and contrived mainstream glamour of Michael Jackson were beyond the pale. The music seemed to violate the festival\u2019s entire ethos of authenticity. Without warning, my friend stood up and sprinted down a dirt path leading away from our campsite, eager to distance himself from the attention the music was attracting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My response? I immediately grabbed the boombox and ran after him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Having avoided exercise for most of his life, his sprint did not last long. We were now near the centre of the festival. It was Saturday night and we were surrounded by people. Bent over and struggling to catch his breath, my friend realised there was no escaping Michael Jackson. For a moment a look of irritation crossed his face, but then he burst into laughter at the sheer absurdity of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is the way I will remember him. Not as a figure in a linear story with a punchline highlighting his earthly achievements, but as a spirit full of contradictions and feeling: intelligent, reckless, independent, lonely, short-tempered but also capable of enormous warmth and generosity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is how we continue living after death\u2014not as finished stories, but as spirits, moods, songs and contradictory memories carried within the lives of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Dr Adrian Rosenfeldt<\/strong>&nbsp;is a writer and academic based in Melbourne, Australia. He teaches at the University of Melbourne and has written widely on culture, spirituality, and contemporary society. Adrian writes articles and hosts podcast conversations exploring spirituality and contemporary cultural life. His work is available at&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/about.me\/arosenfeldt\">https:\/\/about.me\/arosenfeldt<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Adrian is also the author of the book,&nbsp;<em>The God Debaters<\/em>&nbsp;(2022).&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"501\" height=\"420\" src=\"https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/Essay-Photo.jpeg\" alt=\"Book of Life\" class=\"wp-image-10670\" srcset=\"https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/Essay-Photo.jpeg 501w, https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/Essay-Photo-300x251.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/Essay-Photo-370x310.jpeg 370w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 501px) 100vw, 501px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Adrian Rosenfeldt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-10669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","tag-short-story"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v15.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>No Single Story: The Lives We Leave Behind | Faith Hope &amp; 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