Good Mourning Madonna
A neo-post-modern take on Sunset Blvd. But with a happy ending. Yeah. THAT kind.
I stood on 18th street. At the curb. Wrapped around a construction site was a wooden wall blocking off the constructing. Behind me I heard murmuring and turned to find a guy standing, transfixed really, in front of a poster that had been plastered on the wall.
It was a poster of the band Heart, by which I really just mean the sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson. They looked appropriately witchy, which was the style of the time, circa 1979. Sort of Stevie Nicks'-esque with a touch of a Windsong commercial. But it was the guy pinned to it that my caught my eye. And my ear.
“Pretty….sooooo pretty…” he part lisped, part sighed. I’m sure if he hadn’t felt me there, he’d have been stroking it. He may have been stroking it and I have just forgotten. The poster I mean. Not his crotch.
But even knowing I was there wasn’t enough to stop his very public reverie and the wholesale purchase of his ass by Madison Avenue image projectors. He’d been caught and I found it as funny as I did sad.
Neither laughing nor crying though I, completely absent any sort of irony, stared at a photo set of Madonna not even four years later.
“What are you doing?” My roommate at the time was nothing if not a pragmatist.
“This fucking Madonna…” I trailed off.
“What?!?” Irritation had more than crept all over his voice. It was stomping on it. “What do you think you’re looking at?!?”
“She’s hot.”
“You’ve been staring for like an hour. It’s creepy.”
“What’s creepy is that it’s taking you so long to leave…”
“And I don’t even want to think of what you’re going to do when I leave,” he choked. “Listen. She’s just a woman. No better or more significant than any other woman.”
“Whatever.”
“Whatever.”
[R]ecord impresario Chris Blackwell when he turned down the prospect of signing her: “I didn’t think she was particularly talented in any way that made me think signing her made sense.”
When I interviewed Blackwell live, the audience gasped.
This stuck with me though. William Burroughs talked about that Naked Lunch moment when you actually looked at what was on the end of your fork and considered it in total. This was that in reverse. Not seeing carrion but something well beyond the real, this restoration of mystery.
Over the years and out of the haze of a young man’s understanding of the world, a willingness to see, or not see, has waned. Waned enough so like Wallace Stevens once wrote (about his vaunted “blue guitar”) you can “see things as they really are.” We’re all struggling with how we see ourselves, how we are seen, and the comfortable point where those mix and match.
All of which I wish I had been in possession of when I spoke to Madonna the one time I did speak to her. She had started Maverick Records and I had impressed on a friend whose band was about to get signed that he should give me her number.
“I’m not going to do anything creepy,” I said, while doing something creepy. “I just think Whipping Boy would fit in real perfect there.”
He passed me the number with the proviso to not mention it had come from him. Whipping Boy had entered its post-hardcore phase and it really made sense to me. Moreover I liked to imagine that what I imagined were movie star good looks would make an impression so, a date? A deal? I didn’t feel particularly picky.
I mean I had remembered Madonna from the clubs when I was clubbing and I felt mostly like record impresario Chris Blackwell when he turned down the prospect of signing her: “I didn’t think she was particularly talented in any way that made me think signing her made sense.”
When I interviewed Blackwell live, the audience gasped. But I understood. However she had bewitched me with image. Not the music. Not the dancing. Just…the face.
So I called. And she answered. Unmistakably Madonna. I paused, took a breath and hung up the phone.
Whatever.
I got scared but I also was scared because I realized I wasn’t ready. I worked with a cat, Leon, who was in the “Like a Prayer” video and over the years I’ve gotten closer or further away from entering her orbit. She and Sean Penn having braced one-time friend Rollins at one of his shows. Near sightings, near misses.
But all the time the sense that I both understood and aggressively misunderstood what she was doing. I mean Warren Beatty? Made no sense to me. Guy Ritchie? OK, yeah.
And recently, in what could undisputedly be called her Norma Desmond phase, I find Madonna calling out to me again. Post-Drake being disgusted that she tried to kiss him live, and currently in the midst of every one having an opinion about how she looks and how she’s come to look that way.
…[W]hile she invites commentary, she should also be allowed to embrace justifiable dismay that people are being so personal about her personal brand.
I could be wrong but it feels to me sort of like telling a magician that his rabbit sucks.
Now, while it has been true that her personal brand has been laser focused on her personal brand, the brickbats being thrown her way seem unkind and misplaced to me. That is, to say, while she invites commentary, she should also be allowed to embrace justifiable dismay that people are being so personal about her personal brand.
I could be wrong but it feels to me sort of like telling a magician that his rabbit sucks.
So, how about we agree on this? Madonna can go on being Madonna and if you don’t like it, to paraphrase what Prince said when he was once asked about marriage, you can just make believe she doesn’t exist. But the media documentation of her aging (inevitable) seems…perverse.
Especially since the punchline doesn’t feel like it extends far beyond, “oh, look…she’s OLD”…a punchline we’ll ALL get a good chance to enjoy IF we live long enough. And especially since the media played a large part in setting up that joke.
I’m not asking you to leave Madonna alone. I just haven’t been able to stop thinking though of how we can’t seem to leave Madonna alone. Which maybe is a blessing, and a kind of curse. For both her and us.
Now, if you excuse me I’ve got to get back to working on OXBOW’s next record, “Love’s Holiday”, out this summer on Ipecac Recordings and of absolutely zero interest to Madonna. Which won’t stop me at all from calling her about it. AND hanging up as soon as she answers.
Whatever.
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But forthwith, my memoir…A Walk Across Dirty Water And Into Murderer’s Row. The first part of the title lifted from a Whipping Boy song (“Four Stations” off of The Sound of No Hands Clapping). The latter half? Maybe the guys who have tried to murder me.
Anyway, it’s not out until 2023 but if you wanted to pre-order it now, boy howdy, do it.
I still remember my 5 yr old daughter singing "Like a Virgin" and wondering how I was gonna explain that to her grandparents. Thankfully, the kid never sang it for them. *whew* Being of a certain age, I was always more in tune with metal & grunge than pop. *shrug*