{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}
WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?
“I love beautiful things that one can touch and handle. Old brocades, green bronzes, lacquer-work, carved ivories, exquisite surroundings, luxury, pomp, there is so much to be got from all these. But the artistic temperament that they create, or at any rate reveal, is still more to me. To become the spectator of one’s own life… is to escape the suffering of life. I know you are surprised at my talking to you like this. You have not realized how I have developed. I was a schoolboy when you knew me. I am a man now. I have new passions, new thoughts, new ideas. I am different, but you must not like me less. I am changed, but you must always be my friend.”~ Oscar Wilde, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’
Amsterdam, NY ~ May 1990: The maple trees in front of my childhood home are resplendent in their first flush of chartreuse color. Their tiny insignificant blooms, in the same gorgeous shade of light lime, litter the sidewalk and lawn. It is the lusty month of May, at the dawn of the last decade of the millennium, and the great thorny hawthorne by my bedroom window is just beginning to let go of its white flower petals. Fluttering to the ground like snowflakes, they collect in the grass when their brief floating dance is done. As soon as they are finished, the gnarled old plum tree on the island in the middle of the street takes up the parade, opening its sweet blossoms, perfuming the air and attracting an abundance of bees. Everywhere around me spring is ripening into summer, with all of its requisite perfume and intoxicating freshness and life.
Bounding out of the house, I slide into the front seat of the family station wagon where my mother is waiting. She starts the car and suddenly the opening salvo of ‘Vogue’ comes over the speakers as I roll down the window.
STRIKE A POSE…
It’s the new Madonna song and I’m not quite sure I love it yet. It’s the way I always feel the first time I hear something new by Madonna. It’s how I know that eventually I will come to love it. The same thing happened with ‘Like A Prayer‘, and it will happen with ‘Frozen‘ and ‘Music‘ decades into the future. For now, we were listening to ‘Vogue’ on this balmy, sunny day in May. Whether it was the atmosphere, the music, or the proximity of summer, the moment held promise. I turned it up a notch and my mother looked annoyed, dismissively suggesting that it was just another song about sex. (She seemed to think that every single pop song was about sex.) The bass continued its pumping and pounding, and parental disapproval made me like it a little bit more.
“Why does she keep saying ‘go’?” she sniffed. I sighed.
“She’s saying ‘Vogue,’ Mom. Like the magazine,” I explained. “And it’s actually a dance that has nothing to do with sex.”
We drove off into the beautiful day, as flower petals fell from the trees above us, and the world opened up with all sorts of dizzying possibility. My fourteen-year-old self was just beginning to feel out of place, and if there was a pop-star misfit whose audacity I needed more than anything else it was Madonna.
Later that month, at the tail end of my freshman year of high school, I was getting a ride home from the guy who once took me on a date before I knew what a date was. He was actually the older cousin of a friend, but was becoming a friend in his own right, and I sensed something kindred about him without knowing exactly what it was. I got into his car as he shifted some items off the seat. It was hot from sitting out in the sun all day, and cluttered with movie posters and a tennis racquet in the back. I watched the other boys on the tennis court in front of us, hitting that neon yellow ball back and forth, their leg muscles straining and stretching, while lines of sweat ran down their backs and underarms, wetting their shirts and the top of their shorts. They heaved and grunted, while the track team whizzed by in their short-shorts waving like tiny flags about their thighs. The lusty month of May indeed.
As he started the car, there it was again: ‘Vogue’. He asked me if I liked it and I tried to play it cool and calm, but I couldn’t stop the excitement I felt. Whether it was the heat of the sun, the freedom from another day of school, or the suddenly-compelling thrill of being in an older guy’s car, I soaked it all in and let my fingers feel the fast-moving breeze outside the window. We sped away and I decided it was my new favorite song.
“An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty.” ~ Oscar Wilde, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’
Despite how much I loved Madonna, it was still the relatively-early days of my obsession and I was somehow under the impression, mostly self-imposed and without reason, that I only liked certain songs and wouldn’t want to hear anything new from her. I was not yet the super-fan I was to quickly become. I’d loved ‘Material Girl‘ and ‘Dress You Up‘ and ‘Crazy For You’, but the first time I heard ‘Papa Don’t Preach‘ I wasn’t so sure. Then I grew to love it. The same thing happened with ‘Open Your Heart‘. When all my Catholic upbringing worked to scare me off the ‘Like A Prayer’ album, that glorious choir brought me back. When I was frightened by the whispered prayers at the onset of ‘Act of Contrition‘, the funkified groove of ‘Express Yourself‘ returned her to my good graces. So many times I’d been ready to walk away from Madonna ~ not out of any malice or ill-will, but simply because I doubted that someone could speak to me so often and in so many ways. I don’t know why I fought my fandom for so long.
The song was an instant smash, and remains one of Madonna’s best-selling singles. It introduced the world to the gay underground dance craze of voguing, and despite any misgivings one may have about the cultural appropriation of such art, it had an incredible impact as far as bringing those Harlem balls into living rooms around the world. The lead-single and unlikely cornerstone of the ‘I’m Breathless’ album, it was powerful enough to stand on its own (and really had little to nothing to do with that concept album). I didn’t realize all the social signifiers, underlying messages and ideas that the song and video were prompting in me; I only knew that I was powerless to escape its call.
While I couldn’t pinpoint their origin, and had likely never even seen the Horst prints on which some of the video is indubitably based, I could sense beauty – even the faded echoes of recreated beauty – and it stirred something deep within me. The men in the video, all dancers from her Blond Ambition tour, intrigued me in a different manner. The male form and face, all brooding brows and intense eyes, the gaze that would haunt and hold me rapt forever after, was also on display here, and something told me their desire was not for Madonna, or any woman for that matter. A gaggle of gay men who embraced their femininity, while power-housing their way through the rigorous work-out that voguing could encompass ~ they were fierceness and fabulousness and inscrutably everything to me. ‘Vogue’ voiced its message on a thrilling primal level I had yet to understand, beckoning to join in the dance even if I wasn’t ready. Politely, I deferred.
STRIKE A POSE…
Soviet Union ~ July 1990: Summer had arrived. School was done. I was joining a People-to-People Student Exchange program that was on its way to the then-Soviet Union, doing our part in melting whatever lingered of the Cold War. We were forging a new world without understanding how the old one got us into such a mess, and were blithely unaware of the political shifts happening beneath our feet and setting the stage for what was to come. At the ripe age of fourteen, I didn’t much care about politics. It was my first time out of the country and away from home for so long, and after a day or two of trepidation, I embraced my freedom and my friends. The days passed too quickly, but we made our memories. Our American band of innocent teenagers roamed the country, learning as much from each other as we were from our Soviet counterparts. A young man by the name of Rat had shown us around earlier in the trip, but on this night we were nearing the end of our trip and left to our own devices. Seeking a diversion or another glimpse of Soviet life, our chaperones brought us to a discoteque. (Yes, it was really called a discoteque.)
In the Soviet Union everybody smoked, and they weren’t the smooth cool menthols that my Uncle Roberto favored. These were heavy, strong, incense-like cigarettes. The club in which we found ourselves was filled with their strange pungent smoke, while videos were projected onto a large wall at the far side of the room. Though it was July, music moved a little slower around the world in those days, which meant that the American hits of May were now parading before us. M.C. Hammer’s ‘Can’t Touch This’ and Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares to You’ played over the sound system. I sat with a few friends in a lit booth, feeling older and more confident than I’d ever felt before, but that wasn’t saying much.
The opening notes of ‘Vogue’ came on, and secretly I rejoiced. It still wasn’t cool for a guy to like Madonna, much less to like her to the extent that I did, and at the time I kept it mostly a secret. The bass kicked in and I did nothing but sit there while others took to the dance floor. I wanted so badly to join them, I wanted so much to let loose and show off my dance moves. I could do every single element of choreography with exact precision, but no one would ever see. Not then. Maybe not ever. I was simply too shy. Too many things held me back.
Instead, I sat still and stoic. Cool and aloof. If I could master such restraint when one of the greatest dance songs ever written was blaring in a country half a world away where nobody even knew me, I could master anything. And I did.
The memory fades like that acerbic cigarette smoke, wisps and tendrils and dissipating particles disappearing into thin air. All that remains is the music. The boy who once sat there listening is long gone.
LOOK AROUND!
EVERYWHERE YOU TURN THERE’S HEARTACHE
IT’S EVERYWHERE THAT YOU GO
{LOOK AROUND!}
YOU TRY EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO ESCAPE
THE PAIN OF LIFE THAT YOU KNOW…
“I can sympathize with everything, except suffering… I cannot sympathize with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.” ~ Oscar Wilde, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’
When we returned from Russia in the middle of that summer, I felt adrift without an anchor or a shore in sight. The friendships I had made felt miles away. I held onto the days and watched the hollyhocks rise into the sky, picking off Japanese beetles and dropping them into a jar of oil, then watching as mildew took the lower leaves in spite of it all. When fall arrived, I dreaded the start of school and the social situations that it would entail. Nervous about the whole thing, I focused on Madonna’s upcoming appearance at the MTV Video Awards, which at the time was the big newsmaker for musical acts. It was worthy of the hype and build-up.
She opened the show in a legendary ensemble, straight out of ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ in a Marie Antoinette get-up: a sky-high powdered wig, over-exaggerated hoop and bustle, and dangerously-draped decolletage. A hand-held fan was thrown about with practiced flair, and a few peeks at her lacy undercarriage brought hoots and hollers from the crowd. It was one of the greatest performances of her illustrious career~ pure lip-synced artifice for a song that placed value on momentary poses and aloof arrogance. I watched it with awe and reverence, wondering how to capture that magic, how to conjure that beautiful enchantment. The best I could do was find a frilly white feather and stick it into a hat for the upcoming Halloween parade. But my magic was growing within, and on those school mornings when I was on the verge of being sick about all that might come at me during the day, I listened to ‘Vogue’ and believed that I was better than all of them. Even if it wasn’t true.
WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS AND YOU LONG TO BE
SOMETHING BETTER THAN YOU ARE TODAY
I KNOW A PLACE WHERE YOU CAN GET AWAY
IT’S CALLED THE DANCE FLOOR, AND HERE’S WHAT IT’S FOR SO…
‘Vogue’ and the ensuing year or two of Madonna music (the ‘Immaculate Collection‘ and ‘Erotica‘ albums) somehow got me through the rest of high school, literally saving my life on several occasions and solidifying a love for Madonna that has since never waned. It was there at a pivotal time in my adolescence, and it arrived at the perfect moment, at a point where I may have needed it most. If you’re a young gay teenager in a sea of vicious, mundane, cruel and apathetic surroundings, you have to hold onto some fantasy in order to survive. I didn’t believe in myself then. Believing in oneself was a mantra that Madonna herself had espoused and preached to her fans for years. We pretended, we wanna-be’d, we dressed in rosaries and rubber bracelets all in the hope of finding that belief. I wasn’t there yet. I still did it all stealthily and secretly, perfecting those regal dance moves in my bedroom at night, for no one to see. I listened to the song and hoped it would buoy me as much as possible, but internally nothing was really changed. It was all on the outside, all superficial glamour and shallow, if sparkling, trappings.
COME ON, VOGUE!
LET YOUR BODY MOVE TO THE MUSIC
HEY HEY HEY, COME ON, VOGUE
LET YOUR BODY GO WITH THE FLOW
YOU KNOW YOU CAN DO IT.
“Soul and body, body and soul ~ how mysterious they were! There was animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality. The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could say where the fleshy impulse ceased, or the physical impulse began?” ~ Oscar Wilde, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’
New York City ~ Late 1990’s: We stood in a bamboo-backed club at the edge of Chelsea in some garage-like set-up that was the hottest spot of the moment. It was the late 90’s and people still talked to each other without a glowing phone in our hand or pocket. We had conversations then. We connected. And on this night, with a friend of a friend who was still quite a stranger to me, we shared a drink at a gay dance club. Madonna came on, and though ‘Vogue’ already sounded like a quaint oldie, it still had the power to sway, and we all moved to the music. We were in a quieter corner where we could almost see out to the river, and the stand of bamboo that served as a divider lent a tropical aspect to the otherwise cool night. I asked him what his first memory of ‘Vogue’ was and he smiled, dreamily closing his eyes. I knew he wasn’t a big Madonna fan, but some songs transcend musical taste and preferences, and the best Madonna music always makes the people come together.
“I was in a car in California,” he said, gradually opening his eyes and looking off into the distance, “driving down the highway with this insanely hot Latin guy in the passenger seat. This song came on and he started moving to it, doing incredible things with his hands and body…” here he paused, savoring the moment, “and it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.” He got lost in his memory again.
I smiled and said simply, “That’s awesome.”
The memory fades into the New York night. The lights of the city move out of focus. The abstract passing of time ticks off the years. ‘Vogue’ is there, whenever I need it, but other things come into my life, much of them in the form of Madonna’s own new music. ‘Bedtime Stories‘ and its essence of survival. ‘Evita‘ and its domineering elegance. ‘Ray of Light‘ and its elemental rebirth. I moved around a bit and had my heart broken. Life had its way with me, and it was harsh and lovely and sad and wonderful. I did my best to take part whenever I could. There was a certain confidence I was able to slowly build, a real and genuine confidence that up to that point had only been veneer and sparkling surface. If you play at something long enough, it becomes real. Somewhere in the time since ‘Vogue’ first came out, I had become an adult. Still, I leaned on that song.
ALL YOU NEED IS YOUR OWN IMAGINATION
SO USE IT THAT’S WHAT IT’S FOR
GO INSIDE FOR YOUR FINEST INSPIRATION
YOUR DREAMS WILL OPEN THE DOOR…
Sometimes, on certain occasions, it’s difficult for me to simply walk into a room where people are. Nerves and worries and the desire to be perfect are potent elements just waiting to conspire in a vicious circle of social anxiety. It’s always been that way for me. I wasn’t able to name it or see it for years, which made it all the more insidious and devastating. Yet it was so. I suppose no one knew because I confronted it in terror-stricken fashion by seeming to go in the opposite direction. I took my stage directions from Madonna, the consummate and supreme show girl. I made vanity an art form, because I hoped that if I could pretend that I believed in myself some of it might one day come true. If I looked and dressed and acted the part, I could be the guy that everyone watched and loved. Even so, crippling doubt and insecurity occasionally plagued me, particularly when large groups of people were about, such as at parties, where my public name was, for better and more often worse, made.
There are several ways to prepare for a party entrance when you’re an introverted extrovert, and I’ve tried all of them to varying degrees of success and effectiveness. For many years, particularly before throwing a big bash at our home, I’d go the meditation route: deliberately carving out fifteen or twenty minutes before the party started to reflect and calm the nerves. I’d close the bedroom door, put on some soothing music, lower the lights, and sit on the floor or the bed with my legs crossed in lotus fashion, vainly hoping to quiet my racing heart, to quell the nervous jitters that always came with seeing people, even in my own house. Then there was the opposite sort of preparation, when I’d try to pump myself up like Judy Garland before she walked onto the stage of the Palace. For that I usually watched ‘Auntie Mame’ and, yes, listened to Madonna. No song was more perfect for that sort of prep work than ‘Vogue’, and no entrance, up to this point, was more exciting than Madonna’s appearance at the start of her ‘Reinvention Tour’, which found ‘Vogue’ opening the proceedings in an amalgamation of all that it had become over the years.
“Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates. Art is always more abstract than we fancy. Form and colour tells us of form and colour ~ that is all. It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.” ~ Oscar Wilde, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’
IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE IF YOU’RE BLACK OR WHITE
IF YOU’RE A BOY OR A GIRL
IF THE MUSIC’S PUMPING IT WILL GIVE YOU NEW LIFE
YOU’RE A SUPERSTAR, YES THAT’S WHAT YOU ARE
YOU KNOW IT
‘Vogue’ had become an anthem for everyone who felt that they didn’t always belong. It was a belief that we all had some bit of fabulousness within us. It reminded me, at my most dire moments of self-doubt and self-destruction, to keep going. To put on a brave mask and forge ahead. To cock my head back, put my hands on my hips and announce to the world, “This is who I am.” I never really had that before this song. Most days I still don’t, and whenever I need an extra jolt I put this on. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, I’m reminded that I am fierce, I am fabulous, and fuck you if you don’t like it.
When you’re as blunt and honest as I’ve made the mistake of being at many of the wrong times, you get used to being a figure of notoriety in whatever social circles you frequent. Known as much for my saucy and cutting tongue as for my outlandish outfits, I carved an image for myself that was as off-putting and repellent as it was desperate and needy. In a remarkable way, my attitude of supreme aloofness and untouchable airs may have worked too well. It was an image designed to give the appearance of confidence ~ the ultimate act in a life of make-believe and pretend. If I carried myself with the haughty imperiousness of a celebrity it was from years of fantasy, but no one knew the difference. Pretentious and presentational, sassy and superficial ~ this is what ‘Vogue’ was all about. Gritty survival through glamorous elegance. Untouchable, unknowable, unforgettable. If you were concerned only with yourself, how could anyone else possibly hurt you? Vanity ~ cool, spiked, deadly and dismissive ~ played a necessary part in navigating a cruel world. When they beat you down, when they call you ‘faggot’ and ‘sissy’, when they disavow and disown you, the only thing left to do is strike a pose, ascend the throne and assume your rightful crown.
COME ON, VOGUE!
LET YOUR BODY MOVE TO THE MUSIC
HEY HEY HEY, COME ON, VOGUE
LET YOUR BODY GO WITH THE FLOW
YOU KNOW YOU CAN DO IT.
Super Bowl 2012:They carried her into the football stadium as if she were Cleopatra. Hidden behind enormous palm fronds, she sat like a Queen awaiting the big reveal. The icy opening of ‘Vogue’ sent a hush over the crowd; everyone wanted to see what she would do, even the fans at a Super Bowl half-time show. The pressure was on. She had admitted she was nervous. It was a big deal. Once those fronds parted, she stood up and commanded the entire stadium ~ hell, the entire world. Her golden headdress sat regally atop a nest of amber curls. A sparkling cape-let twirled behind her as she spun around on a still-moving platform carried by rows of muscular men. It was a spectacular entrance, and a lot was riding on this 12-minute production. Madonna was introducing the world to her new single ‘Give Me All Your Luvin‘ and setting up a new album, ‘MDNA’ – the best way to christen the whole thing was by a ‘Vogue’ intro. Reimagined with Egyptian hieroglyphics and a gladiatorial theme, the song indicated that Madonna came to slay, and she did. It was a set-piece more aligned with Broadway than anything that had ever been done at a Super Bowl before, and the theatrical backdrop of the whole thing entertained the most jaded watcher.
This new version of ‘Vogue’ gave a preview of the stunner she would offer during the ‘MDNA Tour’ in just a few months. Decades after it was written, the song still had the ability to inspire and astound, and a whole new crowd of people was joyously enthralled. There is a YouTube video of a father who had taken his son and friends to the Super Bowl, and in it you can hear him extol the greatness that is Madonna in a genuinely enthusiastic run-down of her performance. It’s a treat worth hearing, and a reminder that this woman retains the infectious exuberance and desire to thrill every time she steps into the spotlight. How does one reach that level of confidence and power? I don’t think most of us will ever know.
“What a blessing it is that there is one art left to us that is not imitative! Don’t stop. I want music tonight…” ~ Oscar Wilde, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’
Her Super Bowl appearance reminded me that the best of Madonna’s songs have always brought people together. I asked my friends what ‘Vogue’ brought to their minds ~ whether it was a memory or a feeling or a simple connotation that was personal to them. The responses were as varied as they were heart-warming. Ginny said it reminded her of fashion magazines and being unique. Maria said, “I remember the video and how it was just mesmerizing. Still is. Definitely remember mimicking the face framing with friends. Classic.” Spending time with friends was a common theme for this one. It brought back memories of riding to school in Catholic girl uniforms for JoAnn and Ali, with a few black rubber bracelets for good measure.
Sue claimed, “This isn’t anything you will want to use,” but she was wrong: “We were at the Syracuse fair and my daughters were in one of those video trucks singing and dancing to ‘Vogue’, thinking they were really as talented as Madonna. It was televised; I still have the video. All ages love Madonna.”
Straight men were equally-enamored of the video, for slightly differing reasons. “The only thing I really remember is watching it over and over again on MTV,” Joe recalls. “It was a little crazy.” By far one of my favorite reactions came from Skip, which should surprise no one. His memory was, “At one of my Dad’s firemen’s games. A bunch of kids were talking about it after a Friday night game. They said you could see naked boobies.” My brother’s only recollection was of the song playing in my room on school nights, with the door closed. (He knows every Madonna song written prior to 1994 from osmosis; favorites include ‘Cherish‘, ‘Dear Jessie‘ and ‘Where’s the Party?’ ~ no lie.)
After all these years, it was ‘Vogue’ that still brought people together. More memories, all cloaked in warmth and love. Kent remembered, “When it first came out I called the local radio station to request it so many times that I got yelled at by the DJ!!” Carla recalls watching it with her older sister: “I was 11 and thinking she was so glamorous and wanting to be like her. As kids we would act out the video and her dance aspect of it. Well, not Missy but me. It was very different than other videos and artists of that era.”
For fellow gay men, the song and video struck different nerves and memories. Brian thought back to the early 90’s: “I remember the young queens at the bottom of Christopher St. They’d line up their radios and wait for ‘Vogue’ to come on. The minute it did everyone fell into formation and worked the pier. It would go on all night! Also the idea of ball culture becoming so public and commercial was transgressive, disturbing and exciting all at once.”
Another Brian was similarly enthralled: “Studying the video, learning the basics, voguing in the car with my best friend in high school. Madonna was life! Love! Exuberance! To this day, someone will request ‘Vogue’ at a wedding and I will have no choice but to get up on the dance floor and strike a pose.”
Nick, of Kilted Bros fame, expounded with his usual eloquence: “I remember the day it premiered on MTV. They made a big deal about it. I went to a co-worker’s house and we were slowly getting stoned and drinking wine when they announced the video. I thought that the intoxicants had been working overtime because the video was unlike anything I had seen at that time. When it ended, you had just enough time to blink because they played it again moments later. I was enraptured.”
For some, ‘Vogue’ delved even deeper. “I was 13 and really interested in checking out guys for the first time,” LeeMichael recalled. “The video for ‘Vogue’ drove me wild because the guys I wanted to check out kept flashing by so fast I had to watch over and over again to see them!”
“It reminds me of the summer of 1990 when I first started fooling around with other guys,” Chad said. “I was 19. I had a radio show on a college station playing alternative music, but one day I slipped in ‘Vogue’… Reminds me of dancing at the club when it was just about the music and nothing else. No alcohol or drugs.”
The sexuality on covert and overt display, along with the gay overtones of the video, whether I realized them or not, became a big part of why this song resonated with so many.
BEAUTY’S WHERE YOU FIND IT
NOT JUST WHERE YOU BUMP AND GRIND IT
SOUL IS IN THE MUSICAL
THAT’S WHERE I FEEL SO BEAUTIFUL
MAGICAL
LIFE’S A BALL
SO GET UP ON THE DANCE FLOOR!
“And, certainly, to him Life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation. Fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment universal, and Dandyism, which, in its own way, is an attempt to assert the absolute modernity of beauty, had, of course, their fascination for him. His mode of dressing, and the particular styles that from time to time he affected, had their marked influence on the young exquisites of the Mayfair balls and Pall Mall club windows, who copied him in everything that he did, and tried to reproduce the accidental charm of his graceful, though to him only half-serious, fopperies.” ~ Oscar Wilde, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’
What part of ‘Vogue’ was it that called out to me so strongly when I was a gay boy? At the time I didn’t know most of the Hollywood stars that she referenced and I hadn’t seen ‘Paris is Burning’ to be aware of the origins of the dance. Even the predominantly-gay cadre of back-up dancers played only a minor part in piquing my interest in the song. There was something else at work, something that pulled me on a primal level, that spoke to my chemical make-up as a gay man.
What exactly constitutes gay culture? How does one characterize it? Is it socially taught and instilled, or is there something more basic and fundamental at work, something more acutely scientific? More specifically, what was it about Madonna and this song that drew me and so many others toward it? I didn’t know about Horst, I didn’t study classical art, I didn’t even know about the Harlem gay balls that birthed the Vogue dance. Yet something dragged me into it. Something attracted me so strongly and intensely that I had to do everything I could to become closer to beauty, to be one with the music, to make this song an anthem and personal rallying cry. Is a single pose enough to change one’s life?
BEAUTY’S WHERE YOU FIND IT.
Through every crippling moment of self-doubt, through every minute of heartache and despair, through the best of times and the worst of them, ‘Vogue’ would be my secret weapon against all that ailed me, the one song in my arsenal that could be counted on, more than most friends or family, to prop me up and make me believe in myself. It would keep my head up whenever I hesitated or worried, instilling some magical power that allowed me to move beyond my anxious social concerns and walk into a room with an unbreakable veneer of nonchalance, confidence and defiance.
In ‘Vogue’, Madonna listed the names of Hollywood legends, and in another century or so she will have just as lasting a legacy. The song and video were instantly timeless, a black-and-white Valentine to celebrity and stardom. It took an obscure gay dance trend and galvanized it. Equal parts past, present and future, it immediately became an iconic moment in Madonna’s enduring canon. With a few well-chosen and deftly-executed poses one could channel eternal bravura.
GRETA GARBO, AND MONROE, DIETRICH AND DIMAGGIO
MARLON BRANDO, JIMMY DEAN, ON THE COVER OF A MAGAZINE
GRACE KELLY, HARLOW, JEAN, PICTURE OF A BEAUTY QUEEN
GENE KELLY, FRED ASTAIRE, GINGER ROGERS, DANCE ON AIR
THEY HAD STYLE, THEY HAD GRACE, RITA HAYWORTH GAVE GOOD FACE
LAUREN, KATHERINE, LANA TOO, BETTE DAVIS WE LOVE YOU
LADIES WITH AN ATTITUDE, FELLOWS THAT WERE IN THE MOOD
DON’T JUST STAND THERE, LET’S GET TO IT
STRIKE A POSE, THERE’S NOTHING TO IT
VOGUE.
In the ‘Truth or Dare’ documentary, ‘Vogue’ is given a rather serious intro with various members of the Blond Ambition Tour spouting psychoanalysis on Madonna and her place in the pop-culture world. Scenes of her alone in a hotel room highlight her isolation. She sips daintily at a steaming cup of tea, then rummages through a pile of documents on the desk. Making a business call, she holds her head in studied exasperation.
She wanders to the balcony, cracks open the door for a peep at the screaming fans down below, and blows them a quick kiss, but she remains shockingly alone. The eternal juxtaposition of popularity and solitude hints at a likelihood of self-destruction, yet Madonna has never gone that route ~ not in 1991, and not as of 2018. Maybe that’s what has appealed to me all these years. Throughout a career of ups and downs, where fame has fluctuated and success has ebbed and flowed, Madonna has never, at least publicly, toyed with the self-destruction that toppled so many pop stars. Such elegant resilience and steely strength, sheathed in sequins and show-biz pizzazz, is an anomaly these days, where stars burn impossibly bright yet fade within a few months. The monolithic grip that Madonna, Michael Jackson and Prince exerted in the 80’s and 90’s has been muted with the advent of the internet. There are still stars that look to command similar sustenance ~ Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, Rihanna, Lady Gaga ~ but we have yet to see how they will stack up thirty years into their respective careers. And Madonna is still going.
Perhaps, at this stage of the game, such endurance is its own appeal. Perhaps merely surviving all this time is an art form unto itself. Perhaps a pose struck enough times becomes more than a pose. In the middle of the ‘Truth or Dare’ performance, Madonna gives a toast at what appears to be some fancy dinner or cocktail hour. She is giving thanks, in a very Madonna way, to her dancers and tour support crew, dolled up in impossibly-glam form with a net sweater revealing signature black bra, and perfectly-coiffed curls reminiscent of Marilyn. Raising a glass, she concludes, “To love! L’amour!” Eyes to heaven and nose in the air, she toasts to her own fabulousness.
“And Beauty is a form of Genius ~ is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it. You smile? Ah! When you have lost it you won’t smile… People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought its. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible…” ~ Oscar Wilde, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’
Loudonville, NY ~ Late winter/early spring 2018: Icy winds rush past the small window of the master bathroom. At the early hour, it is still dark. It’s harder to face the minutes before dawn when it’s winter. Looking into the mirror, at the lines around my eyes ~ earned from years of laughter and tears ~ and at the gray hair that is on the march to overtake the black, I pull the weathered bathrobe a little closer against my skin before throwing the whole thing off. I reach up to the stereo and press play. Today, I think, I need a little help. Back in the mirror, a forty-two-year-old man looks back at me through sleepy eyes.
‘What are you looking at?’ the commanding voice of Madonna in her youthful prime asks in fierce, menacing and imperious fashion. A record of her instrument at the height of its power, her voice is frozen in time, yet as present and pressing as it was in 1990.
I pull off my t-shirt, my hair a riot of wiry salts and winsome peppers.
‘Strike a pose!’ she demands.
I turn around and look with slight dismay at the middle-aged man in front of the mirror, sucking in my burgeoning stomach, squinting to make it better, or worse.
‘Strike a pose!’ she declares again, and I fix my posture before marching naked into the shower. The shower stream is hot. In the palm of my hand I pour the last few drops of a Mandarin Oriental Spa body wash, a splurge of their Quintessence fragrance as a reminder of a massage a few years ago.
‘When all else fails and you long to be something better than you are today,’ she sings, and slowly my body responds. The brain makes connections. The plans for the day coalesce. By the time I start drying off, I’m awake and alert.
Opening the cabinet of cologne, I toy between the options of Tom Ford and Frederic Malle, deciding on the latter this morning. The art of dressing oneself is lost in the rest of the rush to get ready for work, and soon I am slinging a Prada messenger bag over my shoulder and heading out the door.
OOH, YOU’VE GOT TO LET YOUR BODY MOVE TO THE MUSIC
OOH, YOU’VE GOT TO JUST LET YOUR BODY GO WITH THE FLOW
YOU’VE GOT TO JUST…
VOGUE.
Outside, the day has grown brighter. Hints of spring surge on the wind. Soon the chartreuse shades of another season shall greet us. The maple trees will drop their insignificant but bright little blooms upon the earth, the cherry trees will weep tears of the lightest pink, and the tilt of the world will lend a warmer sun to our days. All the splendor, all the beauty, all the precious charm…
“What an exquisite life you have had! You have drunk deeply of everything. You have crushed the grapes against your palate. Nothing has been hidden from you. And it has all been to you no more than the sound of music. It has not marred you. You are still the same… You are the type of what the age is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.” ~ Oscar Wilde, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’
SONG #142: ‘Vogue’ ~ Spring/Summer 1990 & forever after
