The miraculous Lizz Wright knows her way around a song, knows the way around an evocative musical phrase. Her voice knows love, and pain, bewilderment and heartache, bliss and contentment. She sings in the deepest night, at the break of dawn, on the rainiest afternoon – and somehow she makes it all bearable again. If such beauty and art can come from a love that smolders deep within, then there is hope in this world, there is happiness waiting to be uncovered… somewhere.
My eyes burn
I have seen the glory of a brighter sun
My heart aches
It has felt the peace of perfect love
My mind fails
As I try to recall the bliss of a glorious day
When I was sleeping, eyes wide open
Dreaming wide awake
A song like ‘Dreaming Wide Awake’ reminds me of that first flush of romance, that first ache of passion ~ the rites of love. When everything is new and unknown, wondrous and impossible, and the odds are long but there’s no other way. Already you know you cannot live without it, already there is a hole in your heart where so-and-so will remain, where such-and-such will live, where you can mark the day your life changed forever.
Who are you, stranger
To come here, and answer all my prayers?
Where are you from, angel?
You saved my life and disappeared
How do I find you?
Will you come when I need you?
Oh, how I´d love,
I´d love to be sleeping, eyes wide open
Dreaming wide awake
{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.}
When did your name change from a word to a charm?
No other sound makes the hair stand up on the back of my arm
All of the letters push to the front of my mouth
And saying your name is somewhere between a prayer and a shout
And I can’t get it out…
The road is dark, but it’s a clear stretch for a couple of miles. It’s still early in spring, but this night is just warm enough to open the windows and slide back the sunroof. I reach my hand into the rush of air, feel it push against my skin then move beyond. I’m driving along the back roads of upstate New York, listening to Track 3 of the new Madonna album, ‘MDNA’. As on all her records, there are a few stand-out tracks that instantly take up residence in the ear, songs that you feel emotionally, viscerally, and all-encompassingly. ‘I’m Addicted’ is one of them. I crank up the volume and the car picks up speed.
When did your name change from language to magic?
I write it again on the back of my hand, and I know it sounds tragic
Fame’s like a drug and I can’t get enough and it fits like a glove
I’m addicted to your love
I’m addicted to your love
I’m addicted to your love…
The same excitement that accompanies the release of every Madonna album is palpable in the air. It will, I hope, always be that way for me. Other passions may ebb and wane, but Madonna has always managed to inspire. This night proves no different. I’m as giddy as I was on the nights that ‘Erotica’, ‘Bedtime Stories’, ‘Ray of Light‘,’Music‘, ‘American Life‘, ‘Confessions on a Dance Floor‘, and ‘Hard Candy‘ were released. And the best place to listen to new music is in the car – in solitude, in motion, in tune with the driving beat.
Now that your name pumps like the blood in my veins
Pulse through my body, igniting my mind, it’s like MDMA (and that’s ok)
Fame’s like a drug and I can’t get enough and it fits like a glove
I’m addicted to your love
I’m addicted to your love
I’m addicted to your love…
Street lights whiz by overhead, the wind swirls madly in and out of the car, and in a way the whole universe is dancing – the stars in the sky, the glistening raindrops left from earlier, and the glowing dashboard. We move together, at ear-throttling volume and break-neck speed, as her voice simultaneously rises and deepens at this, the climax of the whole thing, the whole night, possibly the whole album:
I need this exchange
I don’t care if you think that I’m strange
Something happens to me when I hear your voice
Something happens to me and I have no choice
I need to hear your name
Everything feels so strange
I’m ready to take this chance
I need to dance…
Release, relief, and utter abandon. If I could have lived my whole life like I feel at this moment – a perpetual high, a lofty joy – I might have made something more out of everything. Instead, these occasional Madonna peaks will have to do. I ride it tonight, soaring like the smallest water droplet on the crest of the wind, careening through the night sky in gleeful amazement and wide-eyed wonder. I can’t wait to do it again.
Fame’s like a drug and I can’t get enough and it fits like a glove
I’m addicted to your love
I’m addicted, I’m addicted, I’m addicted to your
I’m addicted, I’m addicted, I’m addicted to your love.
We started this Sunday off with a lively jazz rendition of ‘Autumn Leaves’, and we shall close it with this slow-burn wind-down of the amazing Lizz Wright and her rendition of ‘When I Fall’. After all, it is, well, fall – and this is the perfect song for ending a simple, quiet weekend at home. A final few moments of relaxation, and letting go. I need to learn to do that better.
I invite you to pull up a chair, or lean back on the couch, play this music, and unwind with me. There is solace in company, especially when a song like this is playing. (Or one like this.)
I want to be wild and bold enough to run with you, my baby,
I want to skip time, lay the hours aside and stay with you, my baby,
But oh if I look down now, tell me, will I fall?
And what if the water’s cold when I fall?
I want to be still, and quietly say I’ll lay with you, my baby
I wish I were brave and sure today, to pray that it’s you, my baby
But oh if I look down now, tell me, will I fall?
And what if the water’s cold when I fall?
Until I met Andy, I had a habit of falling in love in the fall. Somehow, without fail, that’s when it usually happened. It was as if after a summer of building myself up, I let my guard down for a moment, and by October the deed was done, and the die had been cast. Often, these feelings were not returned, and had they been I honestly don’t know what I would have done. For the time, it was enough just to have the chase, the longing, the need ~ and without a result I just ended up trying harder.
If you don’t know that yearning, consider yourself lucky. It’s not something that has ever come to good, save a few phrases I wrote that still touch my heart but will not be repeated here. See, if you love and love and get nothing in return, there is something that dies in you. You can’t help but lose a bit of yourself. Some think it noble, some think it madness, some think nothing of it at all (those are the ones that hurt the most) – but I wouldn’t take any of it back, nor do any of it differently. I would fall time and time again, willingly, happily, honestly, and not regret one of those times. Even the painful ones. Especially the painful ones.
The water may be cold, but it’s proof that you’re alive. That you are here. That you still feel something.
We’ll share our new religion
Dine on rose and apricot
We won’t count the hours or days
And we’ll dance until we can’t
It is my favorite hour, and I am in my favorite place. The last light of day streams in through the bedroom window, bathing the bed in rays of sun. This is where I will read, or sleep, or simply look around – at the walls, at the ceiling, at the curtains framing the window. It is a place of quiet, and repose. A glass doorknob acts as a prism, throwing off shards of rainbows, and a robe hangs, eerily empty, beside it. I will wrap myself in it later, when the sun has gone and the evening has cooled. For now, we remain separate.
Ah, somewhere in the sunset room
It’s like a portal to another world
We have no need for clothes or shoes
And without words
Convince me you’re not counterfeit
And I’ll show you what I’m made of
There are tangible textures and objects in the room – wood, cotton, and paper – and then the more intangible things too – light, air, and heat – and somewhere between the two is me. We are both present and absent at all times, but for this moment I feel more present, more alive, than is customary. Feel the softness of the sheets, feel the ply of the pillow, feel the lightest pricks of the sun on my arms. I touch – the corners of a blanket, the pages of a book. I see – the subtle ridges of the rug, the swirling knots of the wood. I smell – the faded hints of cologne, the remnants of sleep. All of it feels like home.
We’ll have breakfast of chocolate and velvet
Brush off the dust of sleepy memory
We’ve awakened in a sunset room
We own, we own the sun and the moon
In this room, the years of my life pass in shifting light.
In this room, a state of perpetual arousal piques all senses.
In this room, the sun sets and the day ends.
In this room, the moonlight peeks.
In this room, the day begins again.
In this room, I have been happy.
In this room, I have cried into the night.
In this room, I alone have dreamed of not being alone.
Oh, somewhere in a sunset room
We’re craving winter, we’ve lost the afternoon
We’re dreaming on clouds of saffron silk
Bathed in a golden light, defying gravity
Oh, so completely
Oh, oh, so completely
Oh, somewhere in a sunset room
It’s like a portal to another world
We have no need, we have no need for clothes or shoes
The memories of our limbs intertwined, at the very beginning of when you were first getting to know me, and will we ever truly know each other? All that you see here, all that I’ve allowed you to see, can never reveal what I’m made of, but you draw it out, against the years, against the hesitation, and in this room my heart opens anew.
My hands are open, I stand before you, and I will show you…
I’ll show you
Yes, I’ll show you what I’m made of
Yes, I will
I’m gonna show you what I’m made of
Yes, I will
Yes, I will
I’m gonna show you what I’m made of
They try to say what you are, spiritual or sexual?
They wonder about Solomon and all his wives.
In the body of the world, they say, there is a soul
Admittedly, some serious music folks will likely disagree with 1987 being a great year for music, but I don’t care. I’m a pop fanatic through and through, and when you’re twelve years old, a pop song can make a big impression. Looking back over some of my previous Music posts, a number came from 1987 – like ‘Open Your Heart‘, ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now‘, ‘Livin’ On A Prayer‘, and ‘Who’s That Girl‘ (which started the Madonna Timeline).
To the musical canon of 1987, I’d now like to add ‘Alone’ by Heart. It went to #1 in July of that year, a few weeks after Whitney Houston’s ‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody’ reached the top (which I remember waking to on the first day of summer vacation, and dancing out of sheer excitement for a new Whitney Houston song – see, I wasn’t lying about the pop fanatic bit). But while that was a song for the start of the day, ‘Alone’ was solely for the night.
I hear the ticking of the clock, I’m lying here, the room’s pitch dark
I wonder where you are tonight, no answer on the telephone
And the night goes by so very slow, and I hope that it won’t end all alone.
When the day was done, and the night cooled the atmosphere, I would open my window and breathe in the outside air. An old thorny hawthorne tree reached its barbed talons close to the house, nearest my room, but rather than feel threatened, I always felt protected by its multitude of sharpies. In the spring, its white flowers would rain down like snow – we’d sweep them up with shovels before they dried up and turned brown. Now, at the start of summer, the spring blossoms had already fallen, and tiny green fruits were forming – their red mushy form in fall would cause more distress to our driveway, but that wasn’t for a few months – for now they held tight to their branches.
I would do what most kids did in the freedom of their summer days – ride my bike, walk the woods, swim in the pool with our neighborhood friends, collect baseball cards (yes, I did), and simply putter around the house if it rained. I did more unconventional things that most other boys didn’t too – like watching the NBC soap operas while sipping Crystal Light iced tea and sucking on raspberry hard candies, or working on a perennial garden in the backyard flanked by coral bells, anchored by iris, and extended by a row of daylilies. But for the most part, my days were unexceptional, the stuff of carefree childhood. At night – that’s when things changed, and what was safe and harmless in the light of day could take on ominous tones, dangerous dimensions, terrifying meaning. It was at night when I started to grow up. At night, I felt alone. And I listened to this song.
Til now I always got by on my own, I never really cared until I met you
And now it chills me to the bone. How do I get you alone?
How do I get you alone?
I remember standing in that bedroom close to midnight, the warm light of a child’s room glowing and throwing its assumed safety into every dim corner. Looking out my window into the black night, I wondered: did someone wait out there for me? Would this person be able to find me? Would we find each other? It was such an immense world – more immense than I could even imagine at that early stage of life. Yet even then I yearned for someone. And that someone was a him. I don’t know how I knew, couldn’t put it into words, but the people I felt most connected to, emotionally and physically, were guys. But then it was for friendship, companionship, someone with whom I could share an adventure. I could not access the romantic loneliness of this song yet, but I could sense the pain. I knew the yearning, and I was just beginning to feel the want and desire.
You don’t know how long I have wanted to touch your lips and hold you tight
You don’t know how long I have waited, and I was gonna tell you tonight
But the secret is still my own, and my love for you is still unknown… alone.
I would come to know the romantic heartache here a few years later. The heartache that came from loving someone who did not know, and who did not love me back. This song would return then, haunting me and daring me to play it, to open up to that sort of pain, and I would. I would always be that way, always open for more, hoping that the one out there in the dark of night would arrive. For all my sense, for all my sanity, for all my cold, hard, calculation, I would be a romantic until the end. Underneath it all. I thought that they could tell. Why couldn’t they tell?
Time has a way of closing the most accepting and open of hearts. Time and experience and a careless world that I explored with ceaseless abandon. Tormented, I would thrash about in bed late at night, entangling my limbs in sweaty sheets, always alone, because who would want to stay?
Til now I always got by on my own, I never really cared until I met you
And now it chills me to the bone. How do I get you alone?
How do I get you alone?
Will that sort of hurt ever be alleviated by anything, or anyone? Is there a single other person who can do that for us? Is it something we must do ourselves? I was too young to explore such existential questions back in 1987. I would think back to that year, one of the last before I left my childhood for dead, and remember this song, playing in my bedroom, and me, watching out the window, and wondering.
The night breeze blowing over the foot of the bed was cool. In an oversize t-shirt that my Dad got for me at the track, I pulled a single sheet up to my neck and turned on my side. The leaves of the hawthorne tree rustled in the wind. I was just a boy still, too young to be so troubled. Too young to feel so alone.
——————————————————————
{To close, a live acoustic version, taken at a show in Seattle in 2003. In some ways, slowed and quieted like this, it’s even more powerful.}
If anyone ever asks you if you are alone, there is but one answer:
{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 is a pretty straight-forward paint-by-the-numbers pop love song, the kind that Madonna can do in her sleep, and it sort of sounds like part of it was done in exactly that way. Another of the more lack-luster cuts off her otherwise-electric MDNA album,’Superstar’ is standard fare, with its adulatory lyrics and bubblegum melodies, and as such it feels a bit flat.
You’re like Brando on the silver screen
You’re my hero in a mythical dream
You are perfect just the way that you are
You’re Mike Jordan, you’re my superstar
Ooh la la, you’re my superstar
Ooh la la, love the way that you are
Ooh la la, you’re my superstar
Ooh la la, that’s what you are
It may be most notable for its use as the 2012 Bravo television summer theme song, and it does have an easy-going summer vibe to it, somewhere along the soft-focus lines of ‘Cherish’. But the latter eventually won me over – this one has yet to do so.
I’m your biggest fan, it’s true
Hopelessly attracted to you
You can have the keys to my car
I’ll play you a song on my guitar
Oooh la la, you’re my superstar
Oooh la la, love the way that you are
Oooh la la, you’re my superstar
Oooh la la, that’s what you are
Still, it’s neat to hear Madonna ticking off other historical greats, a little wink and nod to her epic ‘Vogue’ rap, and the song should also be noted for it being the first on which her daughter Lola added backing vocals. (Though if no one told me that I’d never have heard it – and to be honest, it’s still a stretch to make them out.)
You’re my gangster
You’re like Al Capone
You’re like Caesar
Stepping onto the throne
You’re Abe Lincoln
Cause you fight for what’s right
You’re my angel
Bringing peace to my life
Ooh la la, you’re my superstar
Ooh la la, love the way that you are
Ooh la la, you’re my superstar
Ooh la la, that’s what you are
Usually, she does a little better in the lyrics department, especially when swooning over objects of desire. These are too trite and repetitious to merit much more than passing notice, and that’s not something you can typically do with Madonna.
I’m your biggest fan, it’s true
Hopelessly attracted to you
You can have the password to my phone
I’ll give you a massage when you get home
Ooh la la, you’re my superstar
Ooh la la, love the way that you are
Ooh la la, you’re my superstar
Ooh la la, that’s what you are
I’m guessing she didn’t find much of interest in this either, as it was one of the few cuts on the MDNA album that she didn’t perform on the most recent tour. I’m equally uninspired, and unimpressed. Let’s just fast-forward.
You’re Bruce Lee with the way that you move
You’re Travolta getting into your groove
You’re James Dean driving in your fast car
You’re a hot track, you’re my super duper star
You’re my superstar
You’re my superstar (ooh la la, ooh la la)
You’re my superstar (ooh la la, ooh ooh ooh ooh la la)
Here
And laugh about our funny little ways
While we have a few minutes to breathe
Then I know that it’s time you must leave
The afternoon sky doesn’t fade, it grows deeper in color, the blue background forming a backdrop against the suddenly-flaming clouds. But I do not see it – it’s too far above and beyond the range of the limited windows. Only the John Hancock Tower registers above the tree-line outside our place, and two hotels resplendent in the dying sun.
But darling be home soon
I couldn’t bear to wait an extra minute if you dawdled
My darling be home soon
It’s not just these few hours but I’ve been waiting since I toddled
For the great relief of having you to talk to
Such a simple time, the hours between day and dusk, but how meaningful when they’re shared ~ with a song, with a cocktail, with a bowl of Marcona almonds, or with a friend. In these summer months I don’t mind it, coming so late in the day. Come fall, I’ll feel a little differently. Fall will make it a little harder. It always does.
And now
A quarter of my life is almost past
I think I’ve come to see myself at last
And I see that the time spent confused
Was the time that I spent without you
And I feel myself in bloom
A twist of citrus has turned itself into the vague shape of a heart, and is there anything sadder than an empty martini glass? The last light of the day has now gone away, and the hour of eight is upon us. Shall we dress for dinner, or shall we stay in? These are happy concerns, joyous questions – the carefree pondering of lucky people. One more drink, and then we’ll go, something more to draw this moment out. It’s too nice here.
So darling be home soon
I couldn’t bear to wait an extra minute if you dawdled
My darling be home soon
It’s not just these few hours but I’ve been waiting since I toddled
For the great relief of having you to talk to…
I used to hate this song. It played on one of my grandmother’s music boxes, and I never liked the sadness and melancholy of the melody. Her other music boxes played happy waltzes or cheery standards – this one was a depressing dirge, even if you wound it up as tightly as it would go, trying to speed it along and bring about a livelier rendition.
Thirty years later, I have discovered a new appreciation of it. When sitting in Copley Square last week, I listened as a trumpeter played it, without accompaniment, just like the lone notes of a music box. I looked it up again and listened to the words, and when I found this version by the great Ella Fitzgerald, I was hooked. That change of heart doesn’t happen very often, especially with a stubborn coot like myself. Sometimes, though, something different happens, whether by chance or circumstance or the simple act of Ms. Fitzgerald working her vocal enchantment over a deliciously languid piano.
Walk my way
And a thousand violins begin to play
Or it might be the sound of your hello
That music I hear
I get misty the moment you’re near
Yes, it’s over-the-top, and perhaps romantically overwrought, but now and then it’s okay to indulge in that. In fact, sometimes it’s a necessity. We are too quick to stop the possibility of love, too closed off and guarded to simply let it happen. And why should it be so? As the lone trumpeter played the last lingering notes, the square resumed its chatter and noise – cars beeped at pedestrians, tour buses called their carriage back aboard, and sea gulls cried from the turrets of Trinity Church.
Can’t you see that you’re leading me on,
And it’s just what I want you to do?
Don’t you notice how hopelessly I’m lost?
That’s why I’m following you
I took out some paper and began to write. It’s what I do when I begin to feel lost. If I can find my way on paper, it usually translates to life. Not always, but most of the time – even if there are messier things than can be solved by a few well-chosen words. I wrote to a few friends, to some family, to a loved one, and then I wrote to myself – things that I didn’t want to forget, things that were too valuable to lose, things I couldn’t afford not to remember. And as tends to happen when it got fleshed out on paper, I felt a little better.
On my own when I wander through this wonderland alone
Never knowing my right foot from my left
My hat from my glove
I’m too misty, and too much in love
Disclaimer: I’ve never been a big Kelly Clarkson fan. Nothing personal, and I enjoyed a song or two, but she always seemed a little too aww-shucks-goody-two-shoes for me. Didn’t she also say ‘Cool beans!’ ad nauseum? But this song – it’s pretty cool. It reminds me of the pop songs of the 80’s – big melody, dramatic beat, melodramatic sentiment – and the magic that a pop song could conjure with a few select chords and the right message, aimed straight at the object of affection, or, in this case, lost affection.
Some pop songs can change the world – or at least my little world – in the way they help you get through something. They strike a chord that resonates on a deeper plane of shared pain, and shared understanding. There is solace, sometimes, in company, in someone that gets what you’re going through, someone who’s been there before. It’s not enough to express condolences – you need someone who knows where you’ve been, what it’s like to be so broken, what it’s like to miss someone so badly that you can’t catch your breath for fear of crying.
Part of me thinks songs like this are silly, disposable, trifling bits of ear candy, forgotten in a few months and left off any greatest hits album. But another part of me, the part that remembers what it’s like to let someone go – well, that part of me thinks a song like this could save someone’s soul. No matter how strong we think we are, a little disposable pop music therapy goes a long way to easing a rough day.
The man in 119 takes his tea all alone.
Mornings we all rise to wireless Verdi cries.
I’m hearing opera through the door.
The souls of men and women, impassioned all.
Their voices climb and fall; battle trumpets call.
I fill the bath and climb inside, singing…
A girl who loved me more than I could love her once made me a mix-tape with this song on it. Yes, I’m of the generation that made mix-tapes. I was reminded of this having just seen ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ for the first time this week. It was gorgeously done, with a soundtrack to match. (No doubt some of them will inform future posts here.) For now, we have Ms. Merchant with her plaintive coo of ‘Verdi Cries’ – a song that brings me back to the end of my high school hijinks and early college mishaps.
He will not touch their pastry
but every day they bring him more.
Gold from the breakfast tray, I steal them all away
and then go and eat them on the shore.
It’s interesting the way a good song like this changes when you revisit it twenty years later. Back then I was mostly entranced by the sad piano melody, barely able to make out some of the lyrics, not caring enough to try to decipher the poetry contained within. Today, I’m slightly better to make sense of things, and to appreciate the stories of others. Growing up for me has been the arduous job of finding value in other people, of opening up to others, of risking pain and love and trusting that even the hurt will be enriching.
To see the seas and shores of someone else, to get a glimpse of how they see the world, and knowing that we each have our quirks, some loved, some lamented – it makes me ache in the best way. We remain so separate, even when connected, but once in a while we manage to break through, to touch one another and become something else, something more than two. Back in high school and college, I thought it was all about finding a perfect match, a person who would complete and fill in everything that I lacked, some wondrously complemental component keeping us together. So desperately did I want that, I gave my heart away, tossing it out like a message in a bottle, bobbing aimlessly in the sea, waiting for the nudge of waves, the terrible storms, the carelessly-passing ships.
I draw a jackal-headed woman in the sand,
sing of a lover’s fate sealed by jealous hate
then wash my hand in the sea.
With just three days more I’d have just about learned the entire score to Aida.
Sometimes I wonder if I did it all to see what I could still feel, whether my heart was still capable of such passion, such treacherous emotional heights and dips, and it’s both glorious and ruinous to find I can. At each end, for there were many ends, I thought the same thing: I will recover from this, but I will never be the same. I wish I’d hung onto some of them. No one can rend a soul like that and not mean anything. At least, I’d like to think so.
Holidays must end as you know.
All is memory taken home with me:
the opera, the stolen tea, the sand drawing, the verging sea, all years ago.
It came upon me so suddenly, just when I thought it was safe. Too young to know better, too old to let it go, I felt the slow turmoil work its way through my head, my heart. I thought I had learned to separate them, but no. Not in his eyes, not in the world of possibility he dangled before me. I challenged everyone to say no to him, and my friends, fools and disbelievers, did their best. I would not hear of it. My heart longed for him, and he was so bad for me. The kindling was thin, and bone dry, splintering in the fireplace, preparing for the combustion. The flames always came for him, but he was quicker. It was madness to follow, madness to trail in such fiery wake, and I ran into the burn with watery eyes, daring him to singe me when he couldn’t even be bothered to care.
The stranger sang a theme
From someone else’s dream
The leaves began to fall
And no one spoke at all
But I can’t seem to recall
When you came along
Ingenue
In those days, it happened in much the same way. A careless but kind gesture, a simple unintended innuendo, a crinkle-eyed smile just a little less than vague ~ and me, reading too much into it, hoping and craving some sort of intimacy so badly I pushed reason and wisdom aside. As if a twenty-something guy could have much of either. I don’t know… I don’t know why I fell, so hard, so often, so stubbornly, but there I was, and there I will be.
The nights spent pacing cold hardwood floors, the cool embrace of rumpled sheets, the sad sounds of solitude – the rustling of fabric, the creak of a floorboard, the sigh that filled the room, spilling into other, empty rooms, and more empty rooms after that.
Slowly, those rooms filled, with some who stayed, and some who stayed and then left. They held quiet nights of close friends, and loud gatherings of boisterous parties. The rooms grew in size and scope, widening and lengthening, leaving the past a shrinking corridor growing darker ~ the doors opened and closed, and the parade went on and in and through, and all the while one or two would capture my attention and interest for a while, and when I was lucky I’d capture theirs too. Those were the moments that mattered. Those are what I will remember – the times when our trajectories mingled, side by side, hand in hand, following the same trail of stardust, casting our own shadows upon the moon, making our mutual mark on the firmament. But it was never enough, and few can travel in such perfect tandem for too long. That didn’t stop me from trying, from flailing with pathetic desperation, a fish fallen from the sky, squirming in mid-air before the scoop of a net – savior and killer, and just let it be the end.
Then the release. The unsteady righting of oneself in the deep rolling sea, the return to darkness. And the rise all over again – too many fish in the sea indeed. After a while a hunter learns, follows the patterns, senses the signals – but even the best get tricked sometimes. I smiled at the subsequent falls, after crying for a while, and I learned to love the danger, the ebb and flow of the heart, the strange fickle fascination some men held over me. Every time I gave my heart…
Ingenue
I just don’t know what to do
These days, I find myself just starting to miss those days, when I was so ready to thrash and throw myself upon the mad shore of crashing waves and brutal, raw, uninhibited passion. The access to obsession wanes with each passing year, slowly dimming as time fades, closing itself to the smallest pinprick of light – yet from such a small vantage point a picture of immeasurable wonder can yet be seen. The possibilities open up, upside down and reversed and righted in the end, for it always goes right in the end, always goes the way everything is supposed to go. Maybe that’s the reason for the growing calm. Or maybe that’s why it’s still such a thrill.
My fire burns for you.
The tree-lined avenue
Begins to fade from view
Drowning past regrets
In tea and cigarettes
But I can’t seem to forget
When you came along
Ingenue
It was 30 years ago today that Sire Records released Madonna’s debut album, entitled simply ‘Madonna’. Unlike many casual fans, and some die-hard ones as well, I’m more a fan of her later work than her earlier stuff. In fact, with the possible exception of ‘Holiday’ (and then only when it’s done up Blonde Ambition style), I’m not enthralled with any of the cuts off her first album. (Not even ‘Borderline’, and certainly not ‘Lucky Star’.) But I’m aware of their importance in her career, and I know many a fan who considers them integral to her oeuvre. So with that in mind, let’s celebrate this date, because 30 years of anything is pretty damn impressive.
{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.}
While it’s one of the weaker cuts on the otherwise-brilliant ‘MDNA’ album (Review #1 and #2), ‘I Don’t Give A…’ is also one of Madonna’s most defiant fuck-off songs to date, brutally referencing her role as ex-wife and single mother, along with all the other things that go into making Madonna the icon she is.
Wake up ex-wife, this is your life
Children on your own, planning on the telephone
Messengers, manager, no time for a manicure
Working out, shake my ass, I know how to multi-task
In an exhausting list of all that comprises her life, she ticks off the mundane and the meaningful, and after thirty-plus years of doing this – and doing it her way – you have to give her credit. The song speaks to defiance and courage, doing what you’re going to do no matter what, no matter how many people tell you not to do it, and following your heart in spite of a world of doubters and naysayers. I know that feeling – we all do on some level – but only a few of us fight through to the end, to find justice and the realization that we were right all along.
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…
The song itself borders on a bit of a rap. Whenever Madonna goes rap-lite, it’s a crap shoot. It can work brilliantly (‘Vogueâ’ or ‘Mother and Father’) or it can go down dismally (‘American Life’). This is somewhere between the two, but she doesn’t embarrass herself, even when chased by Nicki Minaj (who gets the epic final line).
Drawbacks aside, check out the phenomenal finale to this song. There are no words (literally) as the music builds to its climax. It was most effectively staged in the MDNA Tour when, after chucking her guitar and disappearing for a moment, she rises atop a single platform. A red cross glows above her, and as the music builds, she goes higher and higher, prone but defiant, down but going up, and in the end she smashes it all to bits, along with all the judgment and stifling preconceptions that have dogged her over the years.
I’m gonna be okay, I don’t care what the people say
I’m gonna be all right, gonna live fast and I’m gonna live right.
There’s only one queen, and that’s Madonna, bitch.
{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.}
I’m gonna wake up, yes and no
I’m gonna kiss some part of
I’m gonna keep this secret
I’m gonna close my body now
In the late summer of 2002, Madonna released her first James Bond theme, ‘Die Another Day’. The jittery, stilted techno-buzz of her collaboration with Mirwais (begun two years earlier on ‘Music’) continued here, but seemed to be keeping time and maintaining rather going in new exciting directions. Still, the strings were a dramatic touch, and the song itself was a neat credo to Madonna’s death-defying career.
As one of those between-break soundtrack songs that she releases to bridge her musical output (think ‘Crazy For You‘, ‘I’ll Remember‘, ‘This Used to be My Playground‘, ‘Beautiful Stranger’ or ‘American Pie’) I focused and obsessed about it as I tend to do when starved for new material, but in the ensuing years its interest and structure has weakened. (It would also prove to be the lead-off, and highest-charting single for her ‘American Life’ album, though it felt a bit tagged-on at that point.)
I’m gonna break the cycle
I’m gonna shake up the system
I’m gonna destroy my ego
I’m gonna close my body now
Minor Madonna chagrins put aside, I mostly thrilled at the first few listens. It was late summer, and I was about to embark on a new project (The Talented Trickster Tour Book: Reflections of a Floating World). The sun was beating down, drying and browning all that was once fresh and green. It burned the little remaining moisture out of the leaves, desiccating their veins, leaving them brittle and cracked, ripe for the fall. The scent of a dying summer has never been entirely sad – such things cannot go on forever, and it’s good to know when to take a rest. It’s also a good time to recharge creatively. My focus tends to disappear in the hazy summer months of chlorine-fueled filters, so when fall was on the horizon and a new Madonna song was on the stereo, it was the perfect collusion for a creative explosion.
I think I’ll find another way
There’s so much more to know
I guess I’ll die another day
It’s not my time to go.
For every sin, I’ll have to pay
A time to work, a time to play
I think I’ll find another way
It’s not my time to go.
It always rings hollow and trite to talk about the ‘creative process.’ Not only that, it reeks of self-importance. As much as I like to give off that vibe, it’s not really me. But I do think there’s something worth noting in the way that certain artists give so much of themselves up for their art. If we really care, a little of us dies with everything we create, at least if it’s worth something, if it matters. You can’t rend an emotion, a reaction, a feeling, without being affected in some small way – and often in some large way.
We thrash ourselves, mutilating our emotions, putting our process through the ringer, for an end result that is never guaranteed. Not only is it not guaranteed, it runs the risk of ruin. We are vessels, conduits for some greater force, and we’re not always in control. In fact, I’d wager that most of us are supremely out of control when it comes to that. Why do we do it? What makes some of us go to such extremes? That won’t be answered in a Madonna Timeline – at least not this one.
I’m gonna avoid the cliche
I’m gonna suspend my senses
I’m gonna delay my pleasure
I’m gonna close my body now.
The video Madonna filmed for this is actually much better than the song – showing three versions of herself: the tortured prisoner (in bloodied, beaten, torn-tank-top form), the white tufted heroine, and the black-clad villain who gets it in the end. In it, the battle between good and evil, light and dark, artist and human, finds visual release as two Madonnas battle to the death. It’s fitting that she references Sigmund Freud, considering all the psychoanalytical undercurrents running through the piece, and a deeper reading than this one will be might have more to say about her three characters and their relation to the id, the ego, and the super ego. On the surface, it’s a nice ode to Bond, a chilly, taut martini of a song that manages to be both elegant and raw, positing deeper questions within the guise of the stuttering techno-beats and deconstructed strings.
