{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.}
Have you ever swum in the black of a summer night?
I don’t mean in a brightly-lit pool or an ocean under a full moon.
I’m talking pitch black, perhaps in a lake not surrounded by electric-laden homes, when the sky might be dotted with stars but no moon. When you can’t see where the water ends and the sky begins, you can only feel it. I would imagine that it’s as thrilling as it is terrifying, that without being able to tell where water meets shore one would feel maddeningly lost, but at the same time absolutely free. We are so rarely without boundary or vision. I wonder if it echoes back to the darkness of the womb, to the amniotic fluid surrounding us before we learned to breathe air. What a strange state to be in – the very ends and beginnings of our lives.
I RAN FROM MY HOUSE THAT CANNOT CONTAIN ME
FROM THE MAN THAT I CANNOT KEEP
FROM MY MOTHER WHO HAUNTS ME, EVEN THOUGH SHE’S GONE
FROM MY DAUGHTER THAT NEVER SLEEPS…
A minimalist track murmurs a muffled introduction. The music is as close to liquid as music gets. Credit the wizardry of William Orbit and his way around gurgles and bubbles and water-like personification. As the main conjuror of the aural texture of Madonna’s ‘Ray of Light’ album, Orbit helmed things like a proper ship captain, navigating the watery environs that informed so many songs on that great work of art. For its final cut, the devastating ‘Mer Girl’ closed proceedings with a dark, poetic, and often tortured treatise on life and death, particularly the early loss of Madonna’s mother.
I RAN FROM THE NOISE AND THE SILENCE
FROM THE TRAFFIC ON THE STREETS
I RAN TO THE TREETOPS, I RAN TO THE SKY
OUT TO THE LAKE, INTO THE RAIN THAT MATTED MY HAIR
AND SOAKED MY SHOES AND SKIN
HID MY TEARS, HID MY FEARS
I RAN TO THE FOREST, I RAN TO THE TREES
I RAN AND I RAN, I WAS LOOKING FOR ME
What swims in that primordial darkness of fluid and life? What particles of matter comprise and collide to give us purpose and meaning? What other beings or entities share that lake of night? What gives rise to connection, to affection, to love? There is beauty in the blackness, in the way it goes on forever and swallows everything up. Immortal being. Endless existence. A point in time on perpetual repeat. The fluid stirs, all warmth and life and lack of light – the time frame expands. Infinity.
I RAN PAST THE CHURCHES AND THE CROOKED OLD MAILBOX
PAST THE APPLE ORCHARDS AND THE LADY THAT NEVER TALKS
UP INTO THE HILLS, I RAN TO THE CEMETERY
AND HELD MY BREATH, AND THOUGHT ABOUT YOUR DEATH
I RAN TO THE LAKE, UP INTO THE HILLS
I RAN AND I RAN, I’M LOOKING THERE STILL
AND I SAW THE CRUMBLING TOMBSTONES
ALL FORGOTTEN NAMES
When describing the summer before her ‘Ray of Light’ album was released, Madonna characterized her state of mind as haunted. The violent deaths of Princess Diana and Gianni Versace had hit close to the rarefied circles of the upper-level celebrity echelon. Madonna had been in the tunnel where a Princess crashed, had walked up the steps now bloodied with a designer’s spilled life. She had known death from the age of five, the age one typically begins to make memories, to know and to be aware. She felt it again and again throughout her life – all those friends that died from AIDS, the ones that had informed the woman she was becoming. She knew its indiscriminate, cruel pull, the way a person was there one day and simply gone the next. It was a terror that destroyed as much as it made her resilient. She defied it in most ways, teased it in others, yet it remained a steadfast dancing partner, as reliable as her own fame, as faithful as her most die-hard fans.
I TASTED THE RAIN, I TASTED MY TEARS
I CURSED THE ANGELS, I TASTED MY FEARS
AND THE GROUND GAVE WAY BENEATH MY FEET
AND THE EARTH TOOK ME IN HER ARMS
LEAVES COVERED MY FACE
ANTS MARCHED ACROSS MY BACK
BLACK SKY OPENED UP, BLINDING ME
Like no other Madonna song before or since, ‘Mer Girl’ is the most introspective and raw she has been, both lyrically and musically. It never quite resolves itself. Death here is not only an end. It’s a stepping-off point. To where, no one can know or say, but when you’re running away from one thing, you’re running toward something else. Whether that’s nothingness or some other state of oblivion may never be known.
I RAN TO THE FOREST, I RAN TO THE TREES
I RAN AND I RAN, I WAS LOOKING FOR ME
I RAN TO THE LAKES AND UP TO THE HILL
I RAN AND I RAN, I’M LOOKING THERE STILL
AND I SMELLED HER BURNING FLESH
HER ROTTING BONES
HER DECAY
I RAN AND I RAN
I’M STILL RUNNING AWAY
The ambient music drains before Madonna finishes her delivery. The last lines are sung unaccompanied and alone. There is vastness and emptiness here. There is a hallway that runs on forever, a sea that never reaches the shore. There is loss unending, sorrow without solace, a ruin that can never be restored. Somewhere there is light – somewhere the sun and the moon and the stars shine and reflect and sparkle, but not here.
This is the end…
Before the beginning.
SONG #144: ‘Mer Girl’ – Summer 1998
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