Michael changed my life. I know this sounds like a cliché, but I mean it.
He turned my world upside-down and in a whole new direction.
I wasn’t a big fan before…. When I was growing up and entering my teens, there was Thriller. Like every other kid in my neighbourhood I loved it. And every time it was shown on TV, somehow we knew about it, and rushed home to watch it.
In the years to follow, I heard bits and pieces of what people said and wrote about Michael. Michael himself was nowhere around in my life. Didn’t follow up on his music and career. Just heard the lies. Didn’t believe it, but just thought to myself: What a shame, such a nice man, victim of the dirty games people play, oh well… that is just the way it goes in this world….
(nowadays I can’t believe I was thinking like this, but I’m ashamed to say I was…)
I heard the news of his passing on when I was in my car on my way to work, had to stop for a while to pull myself together, had no idea why I was so upset, but I was… I came at work in a state of shock and was surprised to find others who felt kind of the same. It was buzzing around the halls in the school where I work all day. Then it faded into the background.
At the night of the memorial service I was visiting a friend. He has no TV and I was feeling very restless, I felt I had to watch the service, I had to get out of there, so I did… I listened to it on the car radio and when I got home I watched the service on tv, and broke down. There’s no other word for it. After a while there I was in ruins, just bits and pieces left of me….
Then something told me to go and search for the truth. Like I said before, never believed a word about what I heard and read everywhere about this man, but never bothered to look for the truth until then….. I was sleeping my way through life up till then…. Scared of feeling, scared of living, had some nasty experiences in my past which made me this way, but as I discovered Michael’s message I woke up. I decided: “Enough is enough. This man was an angel. It’s time the world knows the truth, things have to change!”
As I was making new friends from all over the world, who found each other at the forum of HTWF, and later on on Face book I got on the rollercoaster ride of my life and finally heard the message he was talking/singing/living.
It wasn’t a new message, I heard it before: The message of LOVE, but this time I really heard it, felt it and I started living it. I was able to heal myself through that message. Things really changed… For me and through me for others. I remember the first time I decided to be really open and kind to people I encountered, to smile at them, because a smile is one of the first steps to a better world… At first people got confused, then they started to smile back. Little conversations where in the “old” days there would be silence… Now I can say from experience: “A smile brightens up the day”
And my art, my painting changed. How could it not?
One of the first paintings I made inspired by Michaels message ( “If you wanna make the world a better place take a look at yourself and make that change”) tells the whole story. Listening to “Man in the mirror” this was what I had to paint…. And as I painted my hand taking down the wall, stone by stone, and let the world in, I did also in real life….
In every painting I make there is Michael….Michaels’ message of LOVE.
And that message seems to catch on, this year I’m invited to show my art in three different places.
Besides the paintings I started another little project called: Spread the LOVE…my way.
Wherever I go I leave a trail of cards behind with quotes for a better world from Michael and a picture of one of the paintings.
And I got a fantastic gift from two of my friends; They gave me my own little playground on the worldwide web: www.lukas-art.com
Somehow I think by sharing Michaels message of LOVE we will be able to Heal the World. That’s the plan :-)
MJFC has sort of adopted this project and I get messages from all over the world telling me they are going to do the same thing….
So when you’re talking about a lightning bolt experience… I think I had one, and it’s still going on…. LOVE to you!
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