Corey Feldman was on The Today Show last week to promote his newest labour of love, and the people have made it abundantly clear that they hate it.
But I watched the Today Show clip and the music video, and once I got over my initial shock, the first thing I felt was profound sadness for Corey. Here he was, a 45 year-old man who looked older, acting like a young man decades younger doing "slap dat ass." And we're making fun of him for it rather than seeing what lies beneath the surface.
Corey is a lost boy.
(No, not like the TV show he was in. He's an actual, factual, real lost boy.)
His childhood has been robbed. He was thrust into public performance from the age of three. He's a survivor of molestation and hard drug abuse. He was also befriended by Michael Jackson and then, Corey says, abandoned:
"He did real damage in my overall life. I was a 12 year-old boy who was hurt by his family and ignored by people at school. Michael would sit and talk to me for hours and he would listen. Then he would get bored. The biggest thing that Michael's done to children is befriending the ones that are in need and then abandoning them."
What I saw when I watched 'Go 4 It'? I saw a man standing there, asking to be seen and heard, as he did something that he loves doing.
We all know how the state of our children's attachment tanks can affect their behaviour. What we often neglect to realize is that we need our buckets filled, too. Many of us are fortunate enough to have friends and family that keep our buckets topped up and we may go for long, long periods of time where we forget that they might even exist.
Until they're empty.
Look down, deep inside yourself. I would be surprised if most of you never had a time, however brief, where you were feeling low in your life. When you were sitting there, wondering, what the hell am I doing here? What is the purpose? Would anybody care if I wasn't sitting here?
We have lots of labels for crises in our personal lives that might be precipitated by an empty Love, Importance, or Voice bucket. We might call it the blues. Or a mid-life crisis. It might look some like adultery, or anger management, or even suicidal thoughts. When people are having some of these, we often say things like: they're attention-seeking.
How dare someone seek attention when they need some!
...right?
"It was a song, okay? It wasn't that weird," he said, adding, "I'm sorry if it's not good enough for you, but you don't have to beat us up. I just want to say that, like, why is it okay to, like, publicly shame us? ... I don't understand ... It's, like, not PC to, like, say somebody is fat or somebody is white or somebody is black or somebody is yellow or green or if they have a short leg or if they have a missing finger. Like we can't talk about these things. But it's okay to bash Corey Feldman and the Angels."
Does that sound like a healthy 45 year-old man with full attachment tanks to you? Should we be patting ourselves on the backs and saying "well done!" to each other for clipping the attention-seeker's wings?
Corey, I see you doing something that you love. Keep doing what makes you happy.
I see you.
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