{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.}
FINALLY, ENOUGH LOVE
I DON’T SEARCH, I FIND
I DON’T SEARCH, I FIND
The summer of ‘Madame X‘ feels like a lifetime ago, and in so many ways it feels like the last summer of innocence. I suppose all previous summers were the last summers of innocence. Music brings back memories almost as potently as scent. So does this blog, thanks to summer recaps, part one, part two and part three. As for this song, ‘I Don’t Search, I Find’ we locate Madonna musing with some introspective lyrics over a moody dance track that thrillingly recaptures the ‘Erotica’ era in the best possible ways.
The days of losing oneself in the hedonistic wild abandon of dance clubs somehow feel far away too, and somewhere in the past of ten or twenty-five years ago the dim sparkle of reflected light, bounced about off disco balls and mirrors and the eyes of the seeking, is still splintering its pretty shards through history. Eyes sleepy with drink or drug sweep the dance floor of time, looking for possibility, looking for reciprocated desire, looking for, above all things, love – always for love.
I FOUND LOVE
I FOUND SOMETHING NEW
I FOUND YOU
YEAH, I FOUND YOU
PLATINUM GOLD INSIDE YOUR SOUL
I FOUND LIGHT
I FOUND EMOTION
Those nights were filed with darkness, and thinking back on some of them I can feel the fear I probably should have felt then. Like the time I cajoled a guy into driving me from Boston back to Brandeis one night, and he ended up pulling off onto a dim side road, stopped his van (yeah, he drove a van straight out of ‘Silence of the Lambs’ and I was in it) and wanted to talk. Nothing came of it, and I was not even scared at the time it happened – only in retrospect do I feel the danger and naivete of youth, and forget its invincibility. I feel the same way about certain nights at tea dance, when the pulsating throb of the dance floor pumps its lifeblood through my system, and the whole mass of dancing people moves as one organism, gracefully fluttering in one singular sensation. There was community there, and happy co-existence. We needed each other to make it work, and we could rely on each other to make it happen. I fear that those days and that synergy may be gone forever. Not only because of our current situation, but the changing landscape of humanity. For now I shall side with cynicism in the hope of being proved wrong.
IT’S OUR GYPSY BLOOD
WE LIVE BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH
WAITING TO MOVE ON
AND IN THE END WE ACCEPT IT
WE SHAKE HANDS WITH OUR FATE
AND WE WALK PAST
THERE’S NO REST FOR US IN THIS WORLD
FINALLY, ENOUGH LOVE
For me, this song also reminds that despite the collective pulsation and sensations the dance floor once provided, those moments were largely few and far between. Mostly I just witnessed them from a safe vantage point, not usually joining in and moving with the masses. I never tore my shirt off and rubbed sweaty torsos with a group of men (not on a public dancefloor at any rate) and I didn’t do any of the drugs that sent so many off to some fantastical journey through the convoluted alterations of their brain. I sipped on my screwdrivers and got a little/lot drunk, but that was the extent of my dance floor debauchery. Occasionally I would go a bit further, but for the most part, when I honestly think back on my not-entirely-plentiful nights out, I remember them largely in solitary fashion. I never had a huge group of gay friends with whom I could tag along for regular jaunts to the club. Part of me thought I wanted that, but whether it was social anxiety or simple diversion in taste, I never pursued it. And so my dance club experience was largely limited, and largely made in solitude. Which makes this particular Madonna song somehow resonate with me, as it captures the loneliness of the scene as much as it celebrates the sonic atmosphere.
I DON’T SEARCH, I FIND
I FOUND PEACE (I FOUND PEACE)
I FOUND A NEW VIEW (I FOUND A NEW VIEW)
I FOUND YOU (I FOUND YOU)
YEAH, I FOUND YOU
It’s music for when you want to circle the perimeter of the dance floor, or hover on some balcony just above all the action. That was my territory for the most part. Once in a while someone would tear me away from such solitude and I’d join in the exertions, quite adeptly because I did get the gay dance gene, and for a few moments I’d legitimately enjoy letting go, but soon enough my socially anxious senses would return and I’d slink off to the bathroom or the bar and end it before it took me anywhere too far from where I’d come.
It does what the best of her latter-day work does: references the past in reverential form while looking ahead to the dance floor moments that are yet to come. Will we ever dance again? It’s too soon to say, but Madonna has not given up the fight, and neither have I.
FINALLY, ENOUGH LOVE…
SONG #161 ‘I Don’t Search, I Find’ ~ Summer 2019
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