Category Archives: Madonna

Released in the US on this day in 1998, Madonna’s ‘Ray of Light’ album is considered by most fans and music historians her best album to date. I’m in complete agreement of that, and have the added bonus of being at just the right moment to soak in its mysteries and majesty at the ripe old age of 22. When you are that age music somehow means more than it does at 45, and I’m not sad nor unhappy about that. It was perfect for its time, and it came out at the precise moment I was ready to hear it. 

‘Ray of Light‘ has mostly been about searching and seeking – universal themes that don’t diminish or deteriorate with time. If anything, such matters become more prescient and resonant the older I get, which is part of the artistic merit of the album. It’s always worth a listen – and all the way through – especially when the seasonal year is about to be reborn… 

This space was supposed to be filled with some tantalizing Valentine’s Day photos – I have a new leather harness and everything – but on the day it was supposed to happen I just didn’t have it in me. The Senate had failed to convict you-know-who, the winter had been dour and extra-frigid, and after getting sucked into the news station that Andy has on 24-7 I retreated to the basement and curled up on the couch for an extra-long movie – ‘Dr. Zhivago’ – which I had never seen before. Who could have foretold that the Russian Revolution would one day feel so quaint? On this crazy day, the world felt all sorts of wrong. 

Sapped of energy, and the desire to thrill, I slipped into a cozy cashmere turtleneck sweater and did my best to embrace the winter white running through my hair. I lit a few candles and tried to conjure some hygge, even as all my Valentine dreams dissipated. I just wasn’t in the mood for this love-fest. Lacking the drive to work out or do some yoga, I barely dragged myself back upstairs to meditate when the movie was over, but I did. It helped, as meditation always does, but even after the session I was left feeling drained and down.

As with many moments lacking in ambition, I turned to Madonna for some love inspiration. I tooled around YouTube looking for moments that happened around this time of the year. There was always her wondrous Oscars rendition of ‘Sooner or Later’ – and, later, the late-winter surreal marvel that was ‘Bedtime Story’ (which we have to reach on the Madonna Timeline) but I wanted something more overtly romantic. 

Madonna’s ‘Crazy For You’ was just coming into my life in the weeks following Valentine’s Day, if my memory serves, and so I bring this cover version into the blog and breathe new life into this somewhat sappy chestnut. On this day of all days, a little sappiness may be forgiven. 

The cynical side of me has often derided Valentine’s Day, preferring the sass and heartache of Dorothy Parker to any sort of sweet love song, but as I grow older I’m trying to embrace the harmless celebratory aspect of this day – and there’s nothing wrong with a little extra candy or flowers or fragrance. There’s more than enough bitterness in the word, and I’ve spent my fair share adding to that. It’s time to soften up, to let that cynicism go. Give in to love… 

{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

No one has had a better handle on the bittersweet and heartbroken anger that fuels empowerment better than Madonna. For all her steely nerve and breathtaking independence, she’s always been a romantic at heart, and she’s been hurt playing the game of love as much as anyone else. Maybe even more-so if we are to judge from her musical response to heartbreak. While some of her post-break-up songs are sorrowful (‘Take A Bow‘, ‘The Power of Good-bye‘, ‘Frozen‘, ‘You’ll See‘) there are others that simply rage, forming the jumping-off point to a whole new realm of empowerment, which always feels unlikely at such difficult times, but which has to happen in order to move ahead.

Here’s a little empowerment mix for anyone that needs to rage before moving on.

• Living For Love– It’s all about getting back up again, literally and figuratively. “I found freedom in the ugly truth/I deserve the best and it’s not you.”
• Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You– “Now that it’s over you can lie to me right through your smile/I see behind your eyes/now I’m sober, no more intoxicating my mind/Even the devil wouldn’t recognize you, but I do.”
• Gang Bang– Madonna at her most bitter and pageful, ‘Gang Bang’ is a hyperbolized jaunt through a little bit of the old ultra-violence, but it’s her whispered delivery of barely-veiled vitriol that gives this track its lethal bite: “You were building my coffin, you were driving my hearse.”
• Unapologetic Bitch– A barbed gem from the ‘Rebel Heart’ opus, this finds Madonna unapologetically ticking off a list of offenses from a former lover: “Tell me how it feels to be ignored.”
• I Don’t Give A…– Blunt, brutal, and brash, this exhaustive rendering of all that’s required when moving on cloaks some potent heartache: “I tried to be a good girl, I tried to be your wife/ Diminished myself and I swallowed my light/ I tried to become all that you expect of me/ And if it was a failure/ I don’t give a…”
• Best Friend– How this bonus track from the ‘MDNA‘ period got lost in the shuffle is anyone’s guess, and it’s an eternal shame, as it’s one of the most devastatingly personal examinations of a failed relationship that Madonna has ever written: “I lost my very best friend/ Not gonna candy-coat it and I don’t want to pretend/I put away your letters, saved the best ones that I had/ It wasn’t always perfect but it wasn’t always bad.” It’s her most pointed and powerful take on divorce since ‘Til Death Do Us Part‘ from the ‘Like A Prayer’ album.

• Sorry– This dance-floor tantrum was thrown in the face of wrong-doing, when saying sorry simply isn’t enough anymore: “You’re not half the man you think you are.”
• Jump– In every romantic bust-up, there comes a turning point when the anger and rage turn to resolve and betterment, when a person finally realizes the only thing to do is move on, starting at the jumping point. Are you ready?
• Express Yourself– Continuing on with Madonna’s perhaps-greatest rallying cry for empowerment, this classic song demands nothing but the best for its protagonist, wisely leaving wimps and wannabes in the dust: “And when you’re gone he might regret it, think about the love he once had/Try to carry on but he just won’t get it.”
• Falling Free– The final song on the brutal ‘MDNA’ break-up album, this finds the ambivalent abstraction of setting someone free, and finding freedom of your own in the process: “I let loose the need to know, and we’re both free, free to go.”

• Messiah– A warning as much as a bittersweet resignation: “I am the promise that you cannot keep/ Reap what you sow, find what you seek.”
• I Fucked Up– Madonna never fessed up to being wrong for the bulk of her career, and we loved her all the more for it. By the time the divorce album of ‘MDNA’ came along, however, she had to admit her part in the proceedings, and did so in this blunt apology song. Like ‘Best Friend’, this one got lost in the bonus track shuffle, and its heartbreaking and almost unnoticed final line is tellingly ambivalent: “I’m sorry, I’m not afraid to say, I wish I could have you back, maybe one day… or not.”
• I’ll Remember– One should always end on a hopeful note, or at least a note of reconciliation. Maybe even redemption. Love is always worth the pain. 

{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.}

This particular story must begin not with a Madonna song but a selection from ‘Swan Lake’ by Tchaikovsky. It rises slowly from a mist, just above some tremulous body of midnight water sparkling beneath a mysterious moon, in the darkness of winter on the edge of glassy-eyed solitude. There is beauty here, and there is danger ~ the razor-thin line between love and betrayal. In so many ways, one wouldn’t exist without the possibility or reality of the other. When men dance with men, there is a whole new set of rules and mores. Rarely does the dance end without injury; sometimes it only ends with death.

IT’S A BEAUTIFUL LIFE, BUT I’M NOT CONCERNED
IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DREAM, BUT A DREAM IS EARNED
I CAN DRESS LIKE A BOY, I CAN DRESS LIKE A GIRL
KEEP YOUR BEAUTIFUL WORDS, ‘CAUSE I’M NOT CONCERNED

‘CAUSE YOUR WORLD IS SUCH A SHAME
‘CAUSE YOUR WORLD’S OBSESSED WITH FAME
‘CAUSE YOUR WORLD’S IN SO MUCH PAIN
‘CAUSE YOUR WORLD IS
‘CAUSE YOUR WORLD IS
UP IN FLAMES

We are in New York City for a production of ‘Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake’, the pseudo-ballet that turns the classic tale into a coming of age homosexual love story of sorts, while touching on all sorts of emotional mayhem and compelling visuals along the way, including a cadre of shirtless male swans that are feral, ferocious, exquisite and enchanting. I’d taken Andy to see it many years ago, and tonight I was gifting it to Suzie, along with the same pre-theatre dinner stop at the Russian Tea Room – for Tchaikovsky, of course. 

The evening is threatening rain, which is actually rather benign for a January night. Even so, I brought the wrong coat for rain. After our dinner, and mocktails at The Plaza, we have an hour or so before the show, so we duck into a teahouse called Radiance. Warm wooden surroundings echo the heat of the teapots. We consider a turmeric blend but opt for something called Serenity with chamomile and lavender. When Serenity is an option, one should always choose Serenity. There, in the midst of a dark gray night, and before the curtain rises on ‘Swan Lake’, we nestle into a secret nook hidden in a non-descript stretch of street across from the theater. It is a jewel-box of a teahouse that perfectly cradles us within its curving carved wood. My necklace of black feathers, a last-minute find while waiting for Suzie to arrive, and just the thing for an evening of dramatic swans, is mostly concealed by an ornate silk scarf scented with Tom Ford’s ‘Oud Fleur’.

IT’S A BEAUTIFUL PLAN (HMM), BUT I’M NOT CONCERNED (OH YEAH)
IT’S A BEAUTIFUL GAME (HMM) THAT I NEVER LEARNED
PEOPLE TELL ME TO SHUT MY MOUTH (SHUT YOUR MOUTH)
THAT I MIGHT GET BURNED
KEEP YOUR BEAUTIFUL LIES (HMM) ‘CAUSE I’M NOT CONCERNED

‘CAUSE YOUR WORLD IS SUCH A SHAME
‘CAUSE YOUR WORLD’S OBSESSED WITH FAME
‘CAUSE YOUR WORLD’S IN SO MUCH PAIN
‘CAUSE YOUR WORLD IS
‘CAUSE YOUR WORLD IS

A twist on the typical take of this balletic tale, this version always brings out new sensations and emotions depending on where one is in their life. The first time I saw it I was touched by the familial relations and the way image and outward appearance of a family unit was more important than what went on behind closed doors.  It was a brilliant rendering of that space where what people saw of your back as you sat down in the front pew of church with your family mattered more than what was in a little boy’s heart, where appearance counted for more than substance, because what happened behind the walls of your childhood house could better be hidden and explained or unexplained away all that much easier. Distant parental figures unskilled at unconditional love, particularly for a child who didn’t behave or desire the way most other children did.

That first time I was also moved with the way the show illustrated the first flush of romantic love, that feeling of being both wanted and protected, loved and desired, cared for and completed. When the protagonist arrives at the edge of a lake and finds the beauty of the swans, it was a transcendent experience for anyone who has spent any amount of time hiding and then discovering who they were. For a gay man of a certain age, it was powerful stuff.

For this evening’s performance, those moments touched me again, but I was most moved by what happens when it appears there may be a happily ever after, when man and swan dance together while the world of swans and humans looks on, and then attacks, because at some point every couple comes under attack. Most of the time the attacks come from the inside – occasionally they come from an outside source, and only the lucky ones get out without an element of destruction. The final scenes were heartbreaking, as the very essence of love and companionship was torn violently asunder, and the envy and vindictiveness of others intrudes, ripping any remnants of innocence apart. The swan troop swoops in and attacks the one swan who saved the young man, because not everyone can be happy in the happiness of others. They killed him, but they could not kill love. The young man dies too, but not his love. For its time, it existed – like a little fire, providing warmth and haven from a cruel, frigid world – and it lasted for as long as it lasted. In such a sense, love can be both finite and forever.

The curtain fell. The show was over. We exited the theater.

Another ballet was about to begin… a Dark Ballet.

Beauty.

Darkness.

Dance.

Sacrifice.

Storm.

All of it fits within the realm of Art, that all-encompassing way that humans have developed of dealing with the world as we know it. How to interpret and shape a vision, how to reflect upon and expound upon the particular time at hand, how to express a way out when one needs to escape. Art, in its most desperate state, is survival.

It was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art during the Met Gala when Madonna premiered a snippet of this song during her magnificent performance, paving the way for the dark beauty that would be her ‘Madame X’ album. It was theatrical, and the ‘Dark Ballet’ bit incorporated classical piano riffs and some balletic dancing recalling Madonna’s own storied beginnings as a dancer, where she was supposedly christened ‘Madame X’ by none other than Martha Graham.

I WILL NOT DENOUNCE THE THINGS THAT I HAVE SAID
I WILL NOT RENOUNCE MY FAITH IN MY SWEET LORD
HE HAS CHOSEN ME TO FIGHT AGAINST THE ENGLISH
I AM NOT AFRAID AT ALL TO DIE ‘CAUSE I BELIEVE YOU
GOD IS ON MY SIDE AND I’LL BE FINE
I AM NOT AFRAID ‘CAUSE I HAVE FAITH IN HIM
YOU CAN CUT MY HAIR AND THROW ME IN A JAIL CELL
SAY THAT I’M A WITCH AND BURN ME AT THE STAKE
IT’S ALL A BIG MISTAKE
DON’T YOU KNOW TO DOUBT HIM IS A SIN?
I WON’T GIVE IN

By far one of Madonna’s most experimental works, this song joins a largely-unrecognized canon of astounding aural adventures (see also ‘Gang Bang‘, ‘Mer Girl‘, ‘Act of Contrition‘ and ‘Secret Garden‘ – not all of which work, but none of which are dull or boring). It’s also a reminder of the darker fare of her later work output after 2001 or so, such as ‘Beautiful Killer‘, ‘American Life‘, ‘Killers Who Are Partying‘, ‘Revolver‘ or’Messiah‘.

Tchaikovsky is sampled here in a nod to the genius and insanity of ‘A Clockwork Orange’, and it’s brilliant and mad and utterly exhilarating. Her voice digitally distorted beyond recognition, and past the point where words can even be understood outside of the printed lyrics here, she warps the human sound into a computerized entity at once remote and commanding. There is a chill to the proceedings, in spite of the bouncy ballet music, and the juxtaposition is one of the most thrilling moments on the entire ‘Madame X’ opus. Three decades into her career, to find Madonna still experimenting and daring us to hear new things is quite a remarkable feat, one that should not go unnoticed in this era of play-it-safe stars and ultra-careful celebrities. The chance to get canceled for one kooky mis-step looms terrifyingly on the landscape of any burgeoning starlet; that Madonna dances boldly on in the presence of such landmines is testament to what I’ve always admired about her.

She ends the magnificent journey with a spoken warning as Tchaikovsky spins giddily on behind her:

THEY ARE SO NAIVE
THEY THINK WE ARE NOT AWARE OF THEIR CRIMES
WE KNOW, BUT WE ARE JUST NOT READY TO ACT
THE STORM ISN’T IN THE AIR, IT’S INSIDE OF US
I WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT LOVE AND LONELINESS
BUT IT’S GETTING LATE NOW
CAN’T YOU HEAR OUTSIDE OF YOUR SUPREME HOODIE,

THE WIND THAT’S BEGINNING TO HOWL?

The electronic classical interim fades as the simple piano melody and its dour minor key returns. There is one last line, sung plainly, as much a wish as a sneer. It contains all the hope and poison of the world, and the unspoken notion that if everything was always beautiful, we might never recognize beauty. How sad, when you think too much about it, when you really dig into the philosophy of the idea. How glorious too, that we have the opportunity to live in this world right now. To live in the world at any time, really. We are afforded such scant joy in the grand scheme of the universe.

IT’S A BEAUTIFUL LIFE.

SONG #160: ‘Dark Ballet’ – Spring 2019