PREAMBLE:
It begins with a girl dancing. The choreographed abandon is limited only by the pastel confines of her bedroom. ‘Baba O’Riley’ is blasting over the stereo, and the girl thrashes wildly in carefully-executed movements. You’d almost think it was unstaged, yet this is practice. Each motion is deliberate. Each exercise is calculated. Each toss of her hair absolutely planned. The end result, though, is the look of sheer unbridled wildness, a thrashing of controlled chaos. She would make the world think she had lost control, and she’d hold that world in the palm of her hand.
She spins round and round, jumping up and down, while those iconic guitar chords herald the arrival of something magnificent. She mouths the words, ‘Teenage wasteland,’ and stops. It won’t work. It won’t be enough. She looks in the mirror as the music plays. She pulls off her blouse, tugs her skirt down, and stands there in a bra and underwear. As the familiar musical progression sounds again, she modifies her movements now that she is free from the binds of her Catholic school-girl uniform. It is at that moment when she realizes what must be done.
A pounding on the door, and then the sharp words of her father: ‘Madonna, get ready for school.’
The Delusional Grandeur Tour: Last Stand of a Rock Star
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