Prologue

The principal tragedy of his life was to mistake attention for love, fame for family, material acquisition for true spiritual purpose. I will never forget how, when we first began our conversations that are the soul of this book, Michael said the haunting words that I used for the epigraph of this book:

I am going to say something I have never said before and this is the truth. I have no reason to lie to you and God knows I am telling the truth. I think all my success and fame, and I have wanted it, I have wanted it because I wanted to be loved. That’s all. That’s the real truth. I wanted people to love me, truly love me, because I never really felt loved. I said I know I have an ability. Maybe if I sharpened my craft, maybe people will love me more. I just wanted to be loved because I think it is very important to be loved and to tell people that you love them and to look in their eyes and say it.

I remember being stunned as a listened to him, his tear-ridden voice hauntingly describing the abject loneliness of his life. One cannot read his statement without feeling a tremendous sadness for a soul who was so surrounded with hero-worship but remained so utterly abandoned. Because Michael substituted attention for love he got fans who loved what he did but he never had true compatriots who loved him for who he was.

The ancient rabbis of the Talmud proclaimed that words which emanate from the heart penetrate the heart. Michael’s admission to me of how all he ever wanted from his career was the love that had so eluded him as a child pierced my heart like a dagger and drew us closer as spiritual soul-friends. I was being summoned into his loneliness.