There was something raw and tender about the winter of 1998. Living in Boston at the time, and following the bloody trail of my bruised but not yet broken heart, I longed for love as I got lost in the muck of desire and decadent depravity. It wasn’t a sexual awakening I was seeking, or even a blooming of the soul, it was the acceptance of not knowing where I was meant to be, and greater than that an acceptance of realizing I might never know. It was the journey of almost every early-twenty-something – both lost and found, both elated and despondent – and I embraced it as much as I pushed it away.
That March, Madonna released her best album to date, ‘Ray of Light’, the album that changed her career, solidified her status as an artistic force (when she so desired), and gave her lifelong fans cause for celebration and reflection at once. The music was especially moving for me – one of those moments of youth where music collides with the magical time of the early twenties – and in each song I found something in which to marvel, to ponder, to wonder.
The witching hour of the midnight release at Tower Records on Newbury Street arrived and the new Madonna music poured forth from the sound system. After rushing back with album in hand, I hastily put it on the stereo and laid down on the cold wooden floor. My silly retail job – the very first job I procured on my own, and one that I loved so dearly because I was so good at it – would begin in just a few hours. It didn’t matter. Madonna’s voice – the one that guided me throughout my childhood, the one that had shaped me into the young man I was – sounded throughout the empty rooms. Born out of night and darkness, born out of the depths of winter which echoed with frozen memories, it was music to soothe the soul. Looking back, I realize it was music of meditation, even if I was decades from meditating.
Today marks the 24th anniversary of the American release of ‘Ray of Light’, and with the day comes the remembrance of the night I flew through Copley Square and the front yard of Trinity Church on roller blades, my black coat fluttering wildly behind me as I screamed loudly into the night air. It recalls the fall I said hello to a new love and the following winter in which I said goodbye. It brings back the loss of innocence, torn from the firmament of my youth like a little falling star. More than that, it shines a sliver of light on a past that feels both dimmer and brighter than it probably ever really was, cracking open the heart like a frozen drop of water cracks open a rock.
