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24
February
2012
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The Madonna Timeline: Song #64 – ‘Nothing Really Matters’ – Late Winter 1999

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{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.}

Nothing really matters
Love is all we need
Everything I give you
All comes back to me.

At the time, I was deep into my first serious adult relationship with my boyfriend. We were driving South – to Tennessee – to visit his home and family. It felt like a big deal, but also the most natural thing in the world. We left the Northeastern Winter, traveling into the Spring of the Southern mountains. We arrived as dusk settled on a balmy but cool late-winter night.

This has always been one of my favorite times of the year in which to travel – the stultifying stagnation of Winter usually has me beat down by this point, and I’m antsy and bursting to go somewhere – anywhere – and there’s no better where than a road trip.

The year of ‘Nothing Really Matters’ had been a snowy one in Boston, but as we drove deeper into the warmer climate zones, the dirty snow melted away, so that by the time we reached Tennessee, the ground was barren of Winter, even if Spring had not yet broken.

Looking at my life,
It’s very clear to me,
I lived so selfishly
I was the only one.
I realize that nobody wins
Something is ending
And something begins…

I don’t remember much of my meeting with his Mom. We got along well, talking for a bit in the kitchen after I put my bags in Paul’s childhood room. A walking iris bloomed in the front window of the living room. For the first time in my life, it was a plant I didn’t recognize.

(Later, years later, I’d find a walking iris in a local greenhouse and bring it home. They’re a strong breed, multiplying at the end of their blossoms like a spider plant, each one a new baby waiting to send forth roots once in contact with soil. The blossoms come at the tail end of Winter, just in time to soothe a snow-weary countenance.)

Nothing really matters
Love is all we need
Everything I give you
All comes back to me.

As I went to bed, alone, in my boyfriend’s old room, after he kissed me goodnight and went to sleep on the couch, I felt the daunting task of possibly entering a whole new family. It was a happy worry though, and I had the hope of one day belonging.

Sleep took a while to arrive. The room was bluish gray in the dim night, the shadows of toys and books were long and deep. Lying in his bed, I wondered what he’d been like as a boy. Would we have been friends? I breathed in the scent of the pillow, curling into myself, trying to forge into his past and his dreams.

Nothing takes the past away
Like the future
Nothing makes the darkness go
Like the light…

For the next few days we explored Chattanooga – visiting a cave and the historic sites of war battles, posing in front of waterfalls and cannons. We had dinner with his Dad and his girlfriend. At an imported furniture store we examined a Japanese tansu, and I bought a collection of heavy marble spheres, polished to a high gloss. (To this day, they sit in a green bowl in my living room, an echo of the past, a pleasant reminder of that almost-Spring week.)

As we walked through the town of his youth, thoughts of a future life together rolled out before me, like some long hallway runner, and I felt warmed at the thought. Everything about my boyfriend warmed me at the time – it was my heart that held a chill.

You’re shelter from the storm
Give me comfort in your arms…

In all, it was a very pleasant visit. As in much of our relationship, I was in a somewhat hazy space of not quite letting my guard down, but that time together was a happy one. As for Madonna, this song marked the last single from the ‘Ray of Light’ album, and it was a bittersweet close to that heretofore-unmatched musical era. To accompany it, she shot one of her most ravishing videos, based loosely on the book ‘Memoirs of a Geisha.’

It was a spectacular image overhaul – her hair black, shiny and bone straight – and fifteen years into her long line of transformations, it was a glorious reminder of her power to surprise and find new inspiration.

The video features a vivid, red-accented, kimono-draped atmosphere with a striking Japanese motif – a slightly disturbing clip of high-pop-art that shows what video can, at its best, achieve. She performed this song live on the Grammy Awards – her first-ever Grammy performance.

(Vocally, not her best – nerves seem to have gotten the best of her – but visually a stunning echo of the video.) She deservedly won a few golden gramophones that night – for the ‘Ray of Light’ album – and looked radiant doing so.

Nothing really matters
Love is all we need
Everything I give you
All comes back to me.
Song #64 – ‘Nothing Really Matters’– Late Winter 1999
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01
December
2011
Tags: General, Madonna, Music
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The Madonna Timeline: Song #57 – ‘Little Star’ – Spring 1998

{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.}

Never forget who you are, Little Star
Never forget how to dream
Butterfly
God gave a present to me
Made of flesh and bones
My life, my soul
You make my spirit whole.

This is a non-traditional Madonna Timeline, going back to something I wrote ten years ago, and an event that happened twenty years ago. The song is ‘Little Star’, from 1998’s epochal ‘Ray of Light.’ The hazy fog of early Spring is trying to arrive, while the chill of Winter has not yet limped off. The musical beauty of the entire ‘Ray of Light’ album finds a highlight here, with its light, skittering beats, but soothing overall lullaby-ish feel. An ode to her newborn daughter Lourdes, it is a heartfelt gem of motherly love and a wistful blessing for her baby’s future.

Never forget who you are
Little star
Shining brighter than all the stars in the sky
Never forget how to dream
Butterfly
Never forget where you come from
From love

Yet as personal as Madonna’s songs can sometimes be, they speak on a universal level as well, and for me this will always remind me of the story I wrote for a now-defunct newspaper back in Amsterdam, NY. As I wrote it, I listened to this song on repeat, felt the thawing of a long upstate Winter, and the new breeze of Spring. My story has little to do with the song, but somehow the melody, the yearning, the wish for something good came to be a part of what I was writing. The love of a mother for her child also has resonance here, in heartbreaking ways.

You are a treasure to me
You are my star
You breathe new life
Into my broken heart…

It’s been over twenty years since the boy in the following story killed himself. There are songs that were popular then that take me instantly back to those dark days that followed – “Hard to Say Good-bye”, “Save the Best for Last” – but it’s this one that has come to symbolize the healing powers of time, the way life continues to go on, no matter how devastating the moment. In some ways it’s like it never happened, and in others it’s like that was all that ever happened.

The Boys of McNulty
(Written for The Sidewalks, Spring 2001)

We were never supposed to have been friends. By high school he was a popular jock and I was a dorky honors student. He played basketball while I played the oboe. We didn’t exactly travel in the same circles. In the end we both gave in a little, distancing ourselves from one another and pretending the past had never happened. But I can’t forget. It’s been almost ten years since this city lost Jeffrey Johnson, and still I can’t forget.

We were far from good friends during our waning years of high school. Though our lockers were close together, there couldn’t have been two more outwardly different guys. It didn’t start off that way. In the beginning we were equals, similar in many ways. We both went to R.J. McNulty Elementary School, we both lived in the Van Dyke area, and we were both lovingly brought up by two good parents. Jeff and I each had different best friends, but the boys in the honors class of McNulty were in many ways a brotherhood ~ bonding together against the icky, and more numerous, battalion of girls.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In Mrs. Loomis’s second grade class we were awarded stickers for a good day of work. We amassed these treasures on a personal folder with our names printed neatly across the top, and at the end of the year the student with the most stickers would win a prize. We all had more or less the same number of stickers, though the subtle differences were discussed and debated among us.

One day my Mom innocently told me how Jeff’s Mom had once said that Jeff wished he had as many stickers as I did. Never one to let an opportunity like that go by, I confronted Jeff and he embarrassingly admitted it. I felt badly as soon as the words left my mouth, and his slightly crestfallen mood confirmed that I had unnecessarily inflicted pain to make myself feel better. But kids don’t realize this, and while outwardly I acted superior to him, inwardly I wondered at who the better person really was, and why it even mattered.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Each February his family threw him an elaborate birthday party. I begrudgingly attended these events, mostly on the stern advice from my parents, but I inevitably had a good time, always glad I had gone when all the other kids were talking about it the following day at school.

There was a lot of love in the Johnson house. Jeff’s parents and his brothers might have sometimes seemed at odds, but they had an easy way of getting past all disputes, talking and laughing through it all in a manner that differed from the quiet turbulence of my own home. His Mom organized the party games: Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey, and a homemade party task that involved dropping a clothes-pin from the height of your waist into a thin-necked jar on the ground (this being the only one I had a chance of winning due to my height, or lack-there-of). These were innocent parties, where boys and girls were friendly and everyone seemed to get along with each other.

It was in gym class where Jeff was truly at his best. He was by far the tallest and most athletic out of all of us: the first to climb to the ceiling on those giant ropes, the kid who routinely hit home-runs during wiffle-ball, and the one who kicked the ball farthest during kickball. Once or twice a year Mr. Noto brought out a gigantic sphere ~ five feet across and covered in patches of ripped cloth. The class played various games with this ball, the culmination being a contest between two teams who fought to get the ball to the opposite side of the gym. We started in the middle, and groups of us tried to push and maneuver this impossibly immense thing across the lacquered floor.

One contest featured three boys against three boys or three girls against three girls, another pitted all the boys against all the girls (the girls usually won, but only because they outnumbered us two-to-one). In a novelty match-up, Mr. Noto himself challenged our greatest player, Jeff, who was almost up to the teacher’s height anyway. Still, it wasn’t quite a fair match, so he gave Jeff a little help: namely, me. (And little help I was.)
It was Jeff and I against the brawny teacher. Huffing and puffing and exerting all their energy, Jeff and the teacher battled it out while I fought not to step on my cardigan sweater. Needless to say, Jeff and I lost, but we had put forth a valiant effort, and that was what mattered.

A few months later we were taking part in the end-of-the-year physical education tests, a time when we journeyed outside to figure out how many push-ups and sit-ups we could do in a minute, how far we could throw a shot-put, and other essential tasks which would no doubt prepare us for a well-rounded life.

Apparently not content to humiliate us with the gigantic ball episode, Mr. Noto discreetly approached me as Jeff was preparing to throw the shot-put (that eight-pound ball of iron that people throw for… whatever reason). He said that he’d throw it past Jeff, and I was to run out as though it was my throw. Even I thought this was funny since Jeff was at least a foot taller than me and had muscles where I had bone. As he reached the length of his shot-put effort, my supposed throw flew past him by a few feet. His jaw dropped and he looked around incredulously, eyeing the shot-put, eyeing me, and eyeing how far it had out-distanced his throw. For once I had beaten Jeff Johnson outside of the classroom, if only for a moment, and when he finally figured out what we had done, his smile was grand.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

On one spring day I got a call from Jeff. School was out for the day (was it the week of Easter vacation?) and a group was playing Dungeons & Dragons at Bill Barbato’s house. It was Bill, Jeff, Chris, Joe, and Ben, I think ~ the boys from McNulty. I wasn’t really into the game, and would have much rather stayed at home watching soap operas, but they needed another player to make it even. Reluctantly, I agreed to come down.

I did not have the first clue as to what went on in a Dungeons & Dragons game, and I still don’t. I saw a bunch of weird dice, some crazy rule books, and told them to just tell me what to do and when to do it. The day was burning slowly along, my disinterest in the game somewhat mollified by the presence of friends and the suggestion that we go outside and act out a scene from the game. Someone (and I swear to God it wasn’t me) threw a bunch of stones to signal a battle or something, and one of these flying boulders hit Jeff right in the head. There was a moment of surprise on his face, just before the pain registered, followed by Jeff scrunching up his face, holding his head, and crying.

Like all tough boys our age, we avoided eye contact at first, embarrassed and ashamed in the presence of anything remotely akin to naked emotion, but to our credit we worked up the courage to see that Jeff was all right. We trudged back inside ~ perhaps our re-enactments were better left to our imaginations ~ but I wanted no more to do with Dungeons & Dragons. Jeff’s crying had spooked me. He was the strongest boy I knew. If he could crumble with the well-aimed toss of a stone, what would become of the rest of us? After allowing them to divide the rights to my character, I cited a pressing engagement and walked the few blocks to my home.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Such was the then-slow passing of our years at McNulty. There were battles and fights and disagreements, but we always managed to stick together. As we prepared for Middle School, we seemed to linger a little longer after class, and laugh a little more. When our time at McNulty came to a close, we shared a distinctive bond, but it was the elusive bond of childhood ~ a bond that would quickly disintegrate with the onslaught of adolescence.

Jeff and I shared a unique friendship ~ sometimes brotherly, sometimes adversarial, often competitive, occasionally poignant, always honest ~ and in some small but fundamental way we each had a hand in shaping and influencing the other’s life, as all childhood friends do.

I can still vividly recall our last meeting during that summer. School had just ended for the year and I hadn’t seen Jeff for a few days. He had been our paper boy for a while, and I was purposely avoiding him during the afternoon delivery hours. I can’t say why, except that I didn’t want to face him for some reason. On this day, he caught me by surprise.

He rode his bike up to our side-porch, his worn, gray newspaper bag slung heavily over his shoulder, and he sheepishly handed me an envelope. It was near the end of June ~ the end of our years at McNulty, the end of our innocent friendship, and the end of our Youth.

“My Mom wanted me to give this to you,” he said. I opened it as he sat on his bike on the other side of the gate. It was a picture of the five of us at a Gifted and Talented Competition, taken a few weeks prior. We had to get an egg through an obstacle course without breaking it. Dubbing ourselves the “New Yolkers” (most decidedly NOT my idea), we were dressed alike in white T-shirts with a “NY” Logo inside of an egg, drawn on with black marker. Of course, our egg broke within ten seconds of beginning the challenge, but I still had a fun time. After we lost so dismally, Jeff’s Mom rounded us up for the picture I now held in my hands. I remember his embarrassment at having his mother take the photo, and his red cheeks are still there, framing his forced smile. Such parent/child sentimental ways touched me ~ his Mom trying so valiantly to hold onto her youngest son, even as he inched and yearned to grow up.

I thanked him for the picture and felt a sudden sadness, despite the hot sun and the promise of a full summer ahead. I think I knew that we would never be the same again.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Upon entering Wilbur Lynch Middle School, our little group was splintered into five different factions. I was placed in the Honors program and I think Jeff was in Regents. Our lockers were close by, but we rarely spoke. We had one class together that year ~ our last one ever. It was Health 101 with Miss Siebe. Jeff sat behind me ~ Johnson following Ilagan in the abysmally tiresome alphabetically-ordered classroom configuration. We passed answers back and forth during tests and cracked jokes at our not-so-well-liked teacher. The next year we didn’t share any classes at all.

I don’t remember much about Jeff during our early high school years. Did he attend Bishop Scully for a while? I don’t recall. We registered each other’s presence peripherally, if at all. It wasn’t until our junior year, and a few days before his death, that we made any sort of meaningful contact, and to this day I’m not sure what it meant.

His locker was near mine again. The bell had rung for the next class to begin, and Jeff and I were straggling behind everyone else; the halls were quickly emptying of noise and students. Looking up at him as I picked out books from the bottom of my locker, I first noticed his cross ~ a silver one hanging on a black cord around his neck. I made note of it because it struck me as vaguely uncharacteristic for Jeff Johnson to wear anything remotely like jewelry. When I rose to my full height (and still looked up at him) I saw that he was staring at me strangely. It was the most we had looked at one another in years.

There was a slightly disturbed expression on his face, an unsettling look in his eyes and I wish so badly that I had asked if he was all right, instead of giving him a disgusted glance and demanding in a sarcastic, annoyed tone, “What?!” He simply shook his head slowly and awoke from his weird trance. It would be the last time I saw him, at least the last time that I remember.

A few days later my parents would knock on my door, sit down on the bed, and scare the hell out of me with their grave faces before saying that Jeff Johnson had shot himself. I managed a quiet “Oh…” and didn’t say anything more about it. The rain started shortly after that, and wouldn’t let up for days afterward. Amsterdam’s perfect All-American boy was gone forever, and we were all left wondering why.

For reasons of my own, I couldn’t help but think, “That should have been me.” Jeff had everything. He was attractive, smart, friendly, and well-loved by everyone. I often doubted that I possessed any of those traits. I wanted suddenly to go back and give him all of my stickers in second grade.

I did not attend his funeral. Almost everyone else in the high school did, but I simply couldn’t. That wasn’t the Jeff I knew, at least it wasn’t the Jeff I wanted to know. Or maybe it was, and I couldn’t bring myself to go because of that. I didn’t need to say good-bye ~ I had done that in the summer after sixth grade, when we both said farewell to the shared past and began walking different ways.

The sad truth is that if Jeff were alive today we probably would not be friends. I have trouble enough keeping in touch with people from last year, much less someone from high school. I mourn for the many other people who would have been lucky enough to have known him ~ but mostly I mourn for the boy who handed me the picture of our childhood, and somehow quietly understood.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

May the angels protect you
And sadness forget you
Little star
There’s no reason to weep
Lay your head down to sleep
Little star
May goodness surround you
My love I have found you
Little star
Shining bright…
Song #57 – ‘Little Star’ – Spring 1998
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14
November
2011
Tags: General, Madonna, Music
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The Madonna Timeline: Song #55 – ‘Drowned World/Substitute for Love’ – March 1998 ~ Present – Parts 1-5

{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.}

PART 1

A late-winter evening – sometime after midnight. I am scheduled to work at Structure the next morning, but now I sit, wide awake, thrilled and enthralled. A new Madonna album – the Madonna album of all albums, Ray of Light, has been released. The date is March 3, 1998. The opening track ~ ‘Drowned World/Substitute for Love’ ~ fills the room, downstairs neighbors be damned. I lie on the hardwood floor – solitary, isolated, alone – and, for perhaps the first time ever, all right with that. At least, as all right as I’ll ever be – and it may never be entirely all right.

It begins with an ambient sonic atmosphere – chilly and yet pulsing with life. It ushers in a new era for Madonna, and a new chapter for me. Then, clear as the purest crystal, the plaintive coo of the woman I have followed for all of my cognizant life.

I traded fame for love,
Without a second thought
It all became a silly game
Some things cannot be bought…

On the night at hand I stare up at the ceiling, wondering at the whole, well, wonder of it all. Having graduated from college, having traveled the world, and having ended up right where I began (working retail at a ridiculous salesperson job that I couldn’t help but love), I have no idea where to go or what to do, but at twenty-three years of age that’s exactly where I’m supposed to be. That doesn’t ease the restlessness, or the melancholy.

My heart has been broken – not in a very real sense, and not in a sense that anyone who’s been through any serious heart-break will honor or understand – but in my own way it’s been a painful few years. My best friend Suzie, when asked by her brother if I have a boyfriend, responded, “He’s had a lot of… bad boyfriends.” Which wasn’t entirely true, but not entirely untrue either. Count on Suzie for a telling sound-bite. As magnificently melodramatic as it is, it’s still not quite accurate.

I’d had a lot of men in my life who didn’t treat me well – not just lovers, but family and friends – but it was mostly because they didn’t want anything to do with me – not due to some personal antipathy they felt. If only I could inspire such a depth of feeling.

My heartache stemmed from an absolute apathy that many of the men I fancied – romantic and otherwise – felt, or profoundly didn’t feel, for me. There’s a very different sort of emotion that evolves from being ignored as opposed to being actively disliked. If there’s a heat to hatred, at least there’s that heat. The cruel chill of indifference is somehow more insidious, more ruinous, in the long run. It slowly decimates the soul, instead of instantly destroying and offering the bitter salvation of strength in re-building. It simply defeats, without a chance of redemption. That apathy would be the ultimate downfall of my life – as well as the unlikely savior. But I’m getting ahead of myself again. I did not know that then.

Got exactly what I asked for
Wanted it so badly
Running, rushing back for more
I suffered fools so gladly
And now
I find
I’ve changed my mind…

Back then I thought the key to happiness did not lie in my own hand. (I wasn’t quite ready, privately at least, to believe Madonna’s words of wisdom from 1994’s ‘Secret’). Publicly I pretended I was strong, that I could make it on my own, but deep down, in the secret inviolable insecurity of my heart, I had always believed that I needed someone else to validate my existence – a partner to make my life whole. Chalk it up to one too many Victorian novels, or Disney’s deluge of brainwashing happily-ever-afters. Whatever the reason, and whatever the politically-incorrect inclinations, I thought I needed a man, and wouldn’t be all right without one.

With no one to guide me, I made my own way, carving out my own set of rules designed to distance and safeguard against heartbreak, but they never worked. I could get the guy for a night or two, but that was it. Maybe they were all just looking for a quick one-off, or maybe there was something wrong with me. I never had the courage to ask. You can tell when you’re not loved – especially when you love the person. No matter how much you may desperately wish to see that love returned, in their eyes you can see when it isn’t.

The face of you
My substitute for love,
My substitute for love…

To hear Madonna questioning her own worth, to listen to her search for love, was emboldening. That the woman I had long admired for steely strength and ultimate control had her own doubts gave me a certain hope, and made me feel less alone, less unsure. She saw me through that bitter end of Winter – and the brutal awakening of Spring. There would be lonely nights, tear-stained pillows, and solitary walks with nary a concern for safety. I would throw and thrash myself across one-night-stands and men who only wanted their way with me. I hid the pain with drink, smoking clove cigarettes with throat-bleeding abandon. I tried to fill the void with distractions of every sort, vices that were their own slowly-suicidal path to the end, to oblivion. And through it all, the voice of the woman I adored carried me along.

Should I wait for you?
My substitute for love,
My substitute for love…

PART 2

In the messy sheets of sterile hotel rooms, I find myself looking out at cities strange and fantastical. Bodies of water – some rivers, some oceans, some lakes – stretch out from day to day. A different place, a different room, a different way of escape. Time passes, as do the men in my life. They shape me, they make me into someone else, then they too move on. The dense solitude of searching for companionship takes its toll, yet I do not feel lonely. Not yet.

I traveled round the world
Looking for a home
I found myself in crowded rooms
Feeling so alone…

There is occasionally kindness here, in the crook of an arm, even after the spurt of quick passion. Sometimes – most times – I don’t want to cuddle, and I don’t mind if they leave without a word. Once in a while I’d like them to stay, and whenever that is they never do. Somehow, I am still so young, still not quite removed from boyhood, even if my heart is worn.

I had so many lovers
Who settled for the thrill
Of basking in my spotlight
I never felt so happy…

In the darkness of these gatherings, the hurried push and pull of trying to find my way into another human being, the desperate clawing at skin, at hope, at connection ~ I search to find salvation. At the hands of cold, hard men, whose sweat and heat are only deception, whose smiles and twinkling eyes are but a mask, I cry out in rage or passion, and they never know the difference. What do they see when it slows, when face-to-face we look into each others’ eyes through the hazy salty film? You see, I do sometimes cry, and never at an opportune moment, but most do not see. It’s better that way.

The face of you
My substitute for love
My substitute for love

Was there tenderness in those days before Andy? There was. It was just fleeting, abstract, and infuriatingly obtuse – impossible to rely upon, cagey to the very end. It lent everything such an air of defeat, of pointlessness. The struggle of it all seemed too much, too elusive, and the promise of happiness – of, dare I even say it, love – proved futile.

When I did find it, for a few months, even a few years, the rapture felt fleeting, and always a bit false. I was never quite myself, lost in a gauzy world of the person I thought they wanted me to be, this soft-focus bundle of nerves and unsteadiness. It would never feel real to me. Even Andy – stalwart, safe, steady man he would prove to be, never quite felt real for years. Maybe I wanted too much. Maybe what I wanted did not even exist. Maybe my own whole existence was a fool’s mission. And so I wondered.

Should I wait for you?
My substitute for love
My substitute for love…

PART 3

It is not all sadness or solitary rumination, and there are glamorous moments of decadence and distraction to ease the emptiness. Parties to fill the nights, cocktails that overflow into the morning, and a wardrobe bustling with only the most fashionable accessories. To some it seemed a life of enchantment, a charmed existence where I could be made giddy at the purchase of a Prada bag or the tilt of a couture hat. Trendy sunglasses hid dark eyes, and streamlined suits compensated for slouchy hangovers. Traveling to distant cities and following friends around the world became a mainstay – it was easier to call a suitcase a home, to consider my friends a family, and to distract myself with everything that didn’t matter.

There were so many substitutes for love. And, yes, even love – if it makes any sense, became a substitute for love. For that pure self-love – that “greatest love of all” that I would forever be lacking, and forever making up for in any other way. That sense of self-worth and self-respect was never instilled in me – and I would never be good enough. If I could get someone else to love me, maybe that would be the way to self-acceptance. It had to be. There was no choice. All other possibilities had been exhausted.

I recognized then in Madonna, as I do now, an incredible insecurity – I share with her that need to be loved and adored unconditionally, with all the conditions we place upon it and none other. It will always be unfair, and we will always be just a little bit unhappy because of it. But we try harder too.

So we search to fill that void in manners both bizarre and inappropriate, over the top and attention-getting. It’s not attention we’re after – it never was and never will be. If that were the end to our means we would have been there right after we started, lo those many years of crazy costume antics ages ago. The attention is the aftermath of our destruction, the result of our romantic quests, because in the end that’s what it’s always been about, hasn’t it?

The best part of the song is at hand. It is the key to so much – the litany of shared experiences, echoing loneliness – the glory of musical abandon and emotional release all at once. Everything hinges on this. It is the summation of a lifetime searching for Love, and the dim, terrifying realization that it may never be enough.

No famous faces, far-off places,
Trinkets I can buy,
No handsome stranger, heady danger
Drug that I can try
No ferris wheel, no heart to steal
No laughter in the dark
No one-night stand, no far-off land
No fire that I can spark…

We speed to the bitter climax, music building all the while, and the guitars crash into oblivion as our desires collide at that tricky triangle of want and hope and need. The nights blur into one night, filled with grays and shadows and whispered kisses of abandoned dreams. An empty pair of underwear lies crumpled by the door. A trail of two socks leads to the bed. A young man bereft of his usual armor of garments thrashes restlessly among the sheets.

The pillow is damp.

The memory is torrid.

The man is alone.

PART 4

It is the song I play whenever I feel lost or upset, and while that may make it a strange choice for my favorite, that’s the way it’s always been. My heart and my head find a necessary solace in the acknowledgement of sadness – there is something more meaningful to that than the giddy dance-break of joy. As the woman at hand once proclaimed and questioned, “What’s the point of sitting down and notating your happiness?”

It changes through the years and seasons too, lending itself to multiple meanings, endless readings, shifting into a symbol of universal significance – because in the end it’s always about love, no matter how highly singular or specific.

It is there for the first chill of Fall, when I meet the first man I will ever live with, and there when I realize it’s over, on a cruel winter’s night, as crystalline snowflakes flutter silently upon the Windy City. It is there in that healing Spring of Boston, and every healing Spring since then, when the cherry blossoms dangle like little ballerinas, floating overhead in the night wind. And it is there in the subsequent summers, the time of the year in which I met Andy.

Sitting in the parking lot of a supermarket, in the high, dull heat of one of those summers, on an all-too-quick lunch break and wanting nothing more than to drown my boredom, I listen to Madonna’s voice, and the song opens up again – as one of deliberate rumination on the distractions of life, and the crutches and self-medicating ways we choose to relieve our pain. For me, there was no greater discomfort than boredom or stagnation.

I wondered if I could live in upstate New York and not get restless, provided there were outlets – of Boston, of New York, of a honeymoon in London – even as they were growing further and further away, if not falling apart altogether. I wondered if I could live with someone who didn’t want to do the things that I wanted to do, whether we could compromise and make it work because he was a good man and I might never find that again – but was that really the way to live? I thought of the things we give up for love, for recognition, for the simple act of doing something that mattered – and the trade-off suddenly seemed blurry and undefined. The darkening swirl of a world drowning.

I was both touched and repulsed by the inability of him to read my mind, all the while knowing how unfair it was of me. There was a greater tenderness and resonance to the love that I had for him, and at the same time I was more than willing to give it all up for one moment of heartfelt understanding.

Then the love of a life together, of partnership and marriage, and the subtle maneuverings required for both, impresses itself upon my mind – such glad and grateful relief – growing more resonant as the years pass, forging a deeper bond than any flight or fancy could ever create, and I am made happy again, as happy as I may ever be. Does anyone ever really know happiness until it has passed?

The song swells with the heart, and she sings the sadness complete. It is an exquisite sadness. A fiery and quick slash of rage, a burning tear – the salty, searing droplet of love, of life – and an ache so lasting and raw it throbs under the burden of the ages.

… And now I find I’ve changed my mind…

PART 5

Tonight, I write this as I sit alone in the condo in Boston, where I sat the first time I heard this song over thirteen years ago. I cannot tell you how far I’ve come since 1998 – or if I’ve come very far at all – the same uneasiness with myself, the same insecurity and doubt, pervades my existence – and I have to wonder if this has all been a substitute for love – every last bit of it. It kills me to question that, but it would kill me more not to say it. That’s where we are, that’s where I am. But in the song – as in most of Madonna’s best music – there is some brief bit of solace, of aural understanding and empathy. She’s been there – she knows, and she continues to go on.

The journey of finding love, especially that ever-elusive self-love (so much more than ego and self-confidence, and so often mistaken as such) is proving a life-long one, and even when the heart is full, I want for more. There are distractions enough in this world, but all the trinkets and fancy bags and new shoes will never fill the void – there is no substitute for it.

Some people are born with what I would call a “happy gene”. They are, for the most part, kind and good people who do what they’re supposed to do with their lives, and are made happy and content from it. This is not to say they don’t suffer – and often suffer much more tragic hardships than the rest of us, but their happy gene remains intact – they carry on – they don’t let it destroy them. The one thing I was born without – and the one thing I have killed myself to create – was this happy gene. But you can’t make it. You can’t will it into being, or learn how to access it. You’re either born with it or you’re not – and I, like Madonna I suspect, was not. It doesn’t mean we don’t feel happiness – we just feel other things a lot more, even if we never let on.

The early darkness of Daylight Savings Time has descended upon Boston. In the distance, the John Hancock building sparkles high in the sky, while the neighboring hotels blink with the lights and drawn shades of strangers going about their transitory time in the city. The world goes on as it always has. It feels as if the last thirteen years have sped by outside the window while inside I remained unchanged – yet in those thirteen years how much has happened, how much life has been spent and mourned and celebrated.

This moment of solitude does not have a neat or happy ending, and the resolution of the song is one of indeterminate proclamation, not unlike this last post on my favorite Madonna song.

The face of you, the faith of love, the way of the heart.

This is what I have learned.

This is where I have been.

This is where I must go.

This is my religion.

Song #55– ‘Drowned World/Substitute for Love’ – March 1998 ~ Present

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19
March
2011
Tags: General, Madonna, Music
2 comments

The Madonna Timeline: Song #35 – ‘Amazing’ – Fall 2000

{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.}

You took a pretty picture and you smashed it into bits,

Sank me into blackness, and you sealed it with a kiss.

If only I could let you go, why do I need you so?

Neatly dove-tailing with the latest news that William Orbit has scored the soundtrack for her next directorial effort, workingly titled W., ‘Amazing’ is one of the last collaborations Madonna shared with Mr. Orbit. From 2000′s Music, it was one of the only two cuts they produced together for that album.
While the worst of his work with her is treacly and uninspired (‘Time Stood Still’ and ‘Runaway Lover’ for example), the best of it shimmers and soars (‘Frozen’, ‘Ray of Light’ – hell, the entire Ray of Light album).

 

It’s amazing what a boy can do,

I cannot stop myself.

Wish I didn’t want you like I do

Want you and no one else…

A movie score could be the perfect bit of alchemy to set his ambient sonic moodscapes to flight, doing for W. what Trent Reznor did for The Social Network. Of course, this is all guesswork and speculation at this point – Madonna has been characteristically quiet during her creative mode. (Though I wish she would get back into the studio and make some new music.)

You took a poison arrow and you aimed it at my heart,

It’s heavy and it’s bitter and it’s tearing me apart.

If only I could set you free,

You worked your way inside of me.

 

‘Amazing’ is one of the brighter, poppier moments of the Music album, but like most Madonna songs it has an ambivalence that runs throughout it. She was about to marry Guy Ritchie at the time, but based on this song (and the eventual outcome of the marriage) things were not completely smooth-sailing. No one captures that push-and-pull better than Madonna.

It’s amazing… Love you and no one else…

Song #35: ‘Amazing’ – Fall 2000

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08
January
2011
Tags: General, Madonna, Music
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The Madonna Timeline: Song #24 – ‘Shanti/Ashtangi’ – Summer 1998

Madonna

{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.}

What can one say about this bit of sung Sanskrit from 1998’s brilliant ‘Ray of Light’ album? Personally, not much. And yet… and yet. There is something about this song that I’ve always liked. No idea what is going on lyrically, but I forced myself to learn the words and sing along (which is a nifty car-ride trick to impress, or in my case underwhelm, any friends in trapped earshot).

Vunde gurunam caranaravinde
Sandarsita svatma sukhavabodhe
Nihsreyase jangalikayamane
Sansara halahala moha santyai
Hala, hala
Ahahu purusakaram sankha cakrasi
Ahahu purusakaram sankha cakrasi
Dharinam dharinam sahasra sirasam
Dharinam dharinam sahasra sirasam
Vande

It’s a bit of chanting to ease the soul, and for a number of years whenever I felt stressed or scared (I distinctly remember repeating the mantra silently to myself while riding up in the elevator to my first state job) it offered a small piece of peace, or at least a welcome distraction to whatever I happened to be dreading.

Om shanti, Om shanti
Shanti, shanti
Shantay Om
Om shanti, Om shanti
Shanti, shanti
Shantay Om 

But what does it all mean? It’s been a while since I’ve brushed up on my Sanskrit (and by ‘while’ I mean forever), so here’s how it supposedly translates, by way of the internet:

I worship the gurus’ lotus feet
Awakening the happiness of the self revealed
Beyond comparison, working like the jungle physician
To pacify loss of consciousness from the poison of existence
In the form of a man up to the shoulders
Holding a conch, discus and sword
Thousand headed, white
I bow respectfully
Peace

I don’t know about you, but the only thing I got out of that was ‘Peace’. No matter, the music and the Sanskrit combine for a mystical experience, the beat and melody make for an irresistible combination of hooks and bait, and the whole thing is better than it has any right to be.

I’ve always thought that Madonna should make a world music album – something along the lines of Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland.’ This seemed like it might mark the jumping off point for that, until I heard its descendant, “Cyberraga”, a B-side from the ‘Music’ sessions. Maybe one song in Sanskrit per career is enough.

Om shanti, Om shanti
Shanti, shanti
Shantay Om
Song #24: ‘Shanti/Ashtangi’ – Summer 1998
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14
December
2010
Tags: General, Madonna, Music
1 comment

The Madonna Timeline: Song #20 – ‘To Have and Not to Hold’ – Earliest Spring 1998

{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.}

 

To have, and not to hold,
So hot, yet so cold,
My heart is in your hand,
And yet you never stand close enough for me to have my way…

The thawing of that cruel and bitterly cold winter of 1998. The remnants of my Rochester ruins. The frozen wharf of a lonely Boston night. Biting winds, and the slow, gradual rebirth of the earth after the soul-rending slumber, a snow-covered sleep.

A masquerade party at the condo – the celebratory act of getting-over-it – and the lingering pangs of hurt, the sorry aftermath and sad spilled drinks of forgotten guests. A crumpled costume, all wrinkled wreckage – such fabulous flotsam and jetsam, glittering and gay in the night, sorrowful and woe-ridden in the morning.

To look, but not to keep,
To laugh – not to weep,
Your eyes, they go right through,
And yet you never do anything to make me want to stay…

The elusive, seductive pull of being told the object of your affection does not adore you back. Whispered longings, secrets never said, the killing ticking of a clock in the middle of the night, when no one is around, when the rest of the world has gone to sleep with its lovers, when the silence is crushing, and the loneliness all that is embraceable. Long gray slivers of moonlight across the floor, and a flickering candle beyond the door.

Like a moth to the flame,
Only I am to blame…
What can I do?
I go straight to you…
I’ve been told,
You’re to have not to hold…

You walk alone in the night, beneath the burgeoning buds of cherry trees, into the most romantic time of the year. You sleep alone in the dark, unafraid because you have no choice, and still you want, you yearn, you hope. There is so much to be shared.

To look, but not to see,
To kiss, but never be the object of your desire,
I’m walking on a wire and there’s no one at all to break my fall…

And then you think you find someone, and they stay with you for a while, the breeze blowing through the curtains in the night, and everything might be okay for a while, but things are strange, and the night turns cold, and you realize in your heart of hearts that it is only for a while.

Don’t break my heart…
Only I am to blame… 

Song #20: ‘To Have and Not to Hold’ – Earliest Spring 1998
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17
November
2010
Tags: General, Madonna, Music
5 comments

The Madonna Timeline: Song #14 – ‘Frozen’

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{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.}

 
You only see what your eyes want to see,
How can life be what you want it to be?
You’re frozen when your heart’s not open…

I had been hoping that the iPod would not choose this song for a while, as it’s one of the most emotional Madonna songs for me – the kind that perfectly aligns with a momentous time in one’s life, that both illuminates and shades that time, becoming a mini-anthem, dirge-like or not, and I cannot hear the song without being somewhat affected and reminded of that moment in my life.

You’re so consumed with how much you get,
You waste your time with hate and regret,
You’re broken when your heart’s not open…

It was the winter of 1998 – January – and I was living in Boston but searching, as always, for a break from where I was. Upstate, friends awaited me in Rochester, New York – and I headed there for a few days of carefree fun to dispel the wickedness of winter. We headed to a club for drinks and dancing, and in the darkness between the flashing lights, I saw him for the first time. A cute guy in overalls and a baseball cap – and a smile that was somehow, and unfathomably, meant for me.

My friend Gina went up to him and introduced us, much to my embarrassment, but he was nice and we talked. I’m not going to lie – when you’re 22 and single, every first meeting carries with it the possibility of being the first time you meet “the one”. (When you’re 35 and married, you realize that’s not how life really works.)

He must have known that then, but I did not. We went our own ways at the club for a while, but found our way back together at the end of the night. He wrote his name and number on a cocktail napkin and told me to call him the next day.

I was staying at Gina’s apartment, and when we got home she told me that he was a chef at a new restaurant. The next day we made reservations for dinner there, and he invited us into the kitchen to say hello. We agreed to meet up after his shift.

If I could melt your heart…
We’d never be apart…
Give yourself to me…
You hold the key.

The intervening time between dinner and meeting him is a blur, as is much of those few days. I remember being incredibly nervous until I saw him, as if I could never quite believe he was real, and whenever he was absent (which was most of the time), I felt panicked and desperate and almost maniacally hopeful. (Attractive traits all around.) I hid this as best as I could. There would be no crazy letters of self-saving ultimatum (not yet anyway – they would come later), and in those first few days I was free to imagine that this was the start of a great romance. That night it certainly felt so.

We went to the Avenue Pub – a local haunt less keen on style and more concerned with strong drinks. We sat at the bar and I met a few of his friends. At one point his hand rested on my knee – a sign of affection or camaraderie, I wouldn’t ever know – and though I usually cringed at being touched, with him it was all right, it was endearing, and it made me feel like I might be loved. Such a simple gesture, I don’t know how I could allow myself to believe it was so fraught with import, but there you have it. My state of mind. His casual carelessness. Our mutual desire.

Now there’s no point in placing the blame,
And you should know I suffer the same,
If I lose you, my heart will be broken…

I followed him back to his place, a rather lengthy drive through the cold winter darkness. In the dim light of a night that was suddenly filled with falling snow, we kissed and undressed. Shades of silver and gray swam among wrinkled sheets. It was warm next to him, and it was one of the only times I fell asleep without unease next to a man. What followed would do that to me. Not through any act of deliberate cruelty on his part, but in the absence of returned love – the debilitating draining that inevitably befalls unreturned affection.

In the early morning light, a layer of white snow covered the waking world. He got up to take the dogs out. I asked, jokingly, if he was going to wipe the snow off my car. He grinned before closing the door behind him. I dressed quickly in the dark chill of that morning, my body knowing even then that I needed to leave. When he returned, he asked me to stay, but I couldn’t tell if he meant it. Outside, I made the discovery that he had brushed the snow off my car.

For the rest of my stay I will call him daily, to see if he wants to meet up. He will hedge, say yes, then cancel at the last minute. I will sit, showered and dressed, in Gina’s apartment, for the next two nights – even extending my trip with the hope that he would be able to make it, and then when I absolutely had to return to work I made the solitary drive home.

Love is a bird, she needs to fly,
Let all the hurt inside of you die,
You’re broken when your heart’s not open…

Once back in Boston, I had a few phone conversations with him in which he explained that he would have liked to see me, but he just couldn’t schedule it with his busy work week. I understood, and mentioned I would be back in Rochester in a few weeks, so perhaps we could meet then. He agreed, and like a fool I believed, and returned – by bus to Amsterdam, then with my parents’ car to Rochester.

It’s strange, and a little embarrassing, to look back at my actions then, but whenever a sense of shame sneaks over me, I remind myself that I didn’t know any better. I didn’t understand that there were romantic rules of attraction, and to go against these rules meant certain ruin. If I liked someone, I let them know it. I didn’t wait three days to call, or act unavailable. If I was smitten, I didn’t hide it, and if I wanted to see someone, well, I drove six hours to see them.

Like most of the men in my life, I loved him – or thought I loved him – more than he would ever love me. As I get older, it sounds sillier and sillier for someone to say, but at that moment, in that time of my life, it was anything but silly.

On my second, third… fourth trip there, he didn’t even bother to return my calls. I sat in the car and cried, wrenching tears from a writhing shell of a body. In a rare moment of desperation, I called my Mom and simply told her that things weren’t going well. I didn’t give specifics, I just needed to hear her voice.

It was winter, and Madonna was gearing up to release her Ray of Light album, leading off with the single ‘Frozen’. The snow fell around me as I returned to my parents’ home, and I shoveled the driveway to keep from going crazy. Walking off into the backyard forest one night, I laid down on the frozen ground, letting the snowflakes tickle and melt upon my face. On a still winter’s night, you can hear them fall – tiny pings and rustling crystals – and if you wait long enough you can join in their frozen mass. I did not wait that night.

If I could melt your heart…
We’d never be apart…
Give yourself to me…
You hold the key.

There would be more tears, and more pain, and more feelings of doubt and insecurity, and always the wondering as to my own worth. I could gain the attention and enthrallment of any number of people – yet the ones I loved the most couldn’t be bothered to love me back. It would be the conundrum that informs my life to this day.

You only see what your eyes want to see,

How can life be what you want it to be?

You’re frozen when your heart’s not open…

As for the song itself, ‘Frozen’ marked Madonna’s masterful move into electronica, by way of Morocco. With its sweepingly majestic Middle Eastern strings and barren drum programming, it melded an icy chill with desert heat – exemplified by a Goth-like video shot in the desert night. The first time I heard it was on one of those obsessive trips to Rochester. Sitting in Gina’s sad little apartment waiting for him to call, I watched as the video came on MTV – and in the tradition of ‘Like A Prayer’, the first time I heard it I didn’t like it immediately. Soon enough, it was one of my favorites – the crux of yearning and learning, obsession and lonely resignation.

If I could melt your heart…
Song #14: ‘Frozen’ – Winter 1998
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30
October
2010
Tags: General, Madonna, Music
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The Madonna Timeline: Song #10 – ‘Sky Fits Heaven’

 

{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.}

Traveling down this road,
Watching the signs as I go,
I think I’ll follow the sun,
Isn’t everyone just traveling down their own road,
Watching the signs as they go,
I think I’ll follow my heart…

Finally! This is the first Madonna song that the iPod has chosen from her Ray of Light album – my favorite, and in many opinions the best, record she’s ever made. ‘Sky Fits Heaven’ is one of its stellar tracks – for the wondrous traveling images, and the metaphysical musings she proffers.

I can’t say that there is a definitive memory I have of listening to this song (though the whole Ray of Light time period was an emotional one) it’s a welcome reminder that we’re all on this journey, and it is the journey that matters.

This is also a great driving song if you have a long way to go – shifting (some might say jarring) changes in tone, time signature, and style keep it always interesting, while the glorious soaring chorus makes you feel like you’re taking flight, that anything is possible, and the road you’re on is the only road you’ll ever need.

Madonna gave a rousing aerial performance of this song on the Drowned World Tour in 2001 (see below) – where she flew around the stage in the kick-ass Geisha portion of the show. Yes, actual flying – because she can.

It’s a very good place to start.
Song #10: ‘Sky Fits Heaven’ – Spring 1998
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26
June
2010
Tags: General, Madonna, Music
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Summer Memories: Has to Be Madonna

{You can play the song, but please ignore the cheesy slide show.}

The official start of summer is upon us, and though it’s been many years since I had summers off, I still get a thrill when the season arrives. There are many summer memories I could share, but most fall flat in the retelling because they don’t so much encapsulate an extraordinary event or interesting happening as much as they evoke the feelings I had at the time.

I remember the summer of 1998 quite distinctly, though I wasn’t working full-time. Staying with my parents was the easy way out of a hot city summer in Boston. I think it was during the last few weeks of my retail stint at Structure, and I was in and out of the Malls constantly. The sterile white-washed brightness of Crossgates, so cool despite its roof of windows, offered respite from the heat, and though I spent many moments walking in its endless hallway with countless other shoppers, I often felt alone and isolated.

Madonna’s ‘Ray of Light’ single had just dropped and I picked up the CD-maxi with the B-side ‘Has to Be’. It was from her ‘Ray of Light’ sessions, ambient and moody, and perfect for the purgatorial summer doldrums that were about to set in.

Outside, the car was an oven. I opened the windows and cranked the AC before stepping back out into the sunshine. A wave of heat escaped, rising above the steaming roof. Tearing off the plastic wrapper, I pulled the CD out and examined the artwork. A bright multi-pointed star spun around its axis, the same minimalist fare on an aqua background that signaled the ‘Ray of Light’ release.

In the CD player, Madonna’s voice intoned, “Breathe in, breathe out… I say a little prayer.” A dirge-like plaintive delivery with the cool, watery, electronic vibe provided by William Orbit, the song was rightfully a B-side, but like most of her throwaway work, there were a few glimmers of brilliance.

 

I know there’s someone out there
Waiting for me,
There must be someone out there
There just has to be…

 

I should be glad that I’m alive,
It could have been much worse.
I might have never loved at all,
And never known what I am worth

 

In the heat of the afternoon, summer left me feeling haunted, and restless. I went back to Boston, walking the steamy streets at night and waiting for love to reveal itself.

 

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