On An Upswing
Jan. 13th, 2002 12:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
enteleinI just watched VH1's Behind the Music for Madonna. It was so much fun to track my own life through each of Madonna's transformations. I never sent in one of those "True Blue" video re-makes, nor did I ever wear rosaries as a belt, nor did I bleach out and spray up my hair, tie it up with a piece of lace, but I remember who I was at that point in my life. I also remember where I was, emotionally, when "Live to Tell" was a hit.
Ditto for "Lucky Star," "La Isla Bonita," "Like A Prayer," on and on and on through every hair style and new lens filter on every video. She is a timeline for my adolescence, my young adulthood, my life now. For much of it, I was one of the kids saying, in a rather snide tone of voice, "Well, I respect her as a very savvy bussinesswoman," with one eyebrow raised, you know, as if to tell you what I thought of her as an artist, a singer, a sex object.
I'm a lot less harsh on pop culture, in my own head, than I used to be. Maybe it's because I understand it a lot more, as I am finally letting go of a lot of the bullshit that made me so very Little Miss Adult-Like as a kid and through my teens. I wasn't a jerk about it, really, but I never really enjoyed the world ofpopular culture, never allowed myself to obsess, never collected anything except magazine pictures of A-Ha. I allowed myself A-Ha, and even then only because they were a Norwegian group that started out small, stayed small time, and were the pop underdogs that kids like me were meant to worship. Even then I'd be self-mocking about how much I loved them. I was too ready to admit they weren't really all that. I think now: All what?
Seeing Madonna's many different faces flash by on the screen left me with a bigger amount of respect than I thought I would have for her, despite the loving testimonials of her closest friends, her back-up singers, Harvey Weinstein. It was seeing her, in the face of so much scrutiny, coming to terms with herself, having a resonance, letting her life speak to her like a book, and now she's writing it.
I mean, she's always been writing her book, you know, but it's been by grabbing the pen out of someone else's hands and getting a few words in before the public drowns out the ink, smears it beyond recognition. Now she's writing and writing and writing, and the crowd is background noise. I would love to achieve that.
Perhaps if I ordered some yoga tapes, I'd be all set!
Ditto for "Lucky Star," "La Isla Bonita," "Like A Prayer," on and on and on through every hair style and new lens filter on every video. She is a timeline for my adolescence, my young adulthood, my life now. For much of it, I was one of the kids saying, in a rather snide tone of voice, "Well, I respect her as a very savvy bussinesswoman," with one eyebrow raised, you know, as if to tell you what I thought of her as an artist, a singer, a sex object.
I'm a lot less harsh on pop culture, in my own head, than I used to be. Maybe it's because I understand it a lot more, as I am finally letting go of a lot of the bullshit that made me so very Little Miss Adult-Like as a kid and through my teens. I wasn't a jerk about it, really, but I never really enjoyed the world ofpopular culture, never allowed myself to obsess, never collected anything except magazine pictures of A-Ha. I allowed myself A-Ha, and even then only because they were a Norwegian group that started out small, stayed small time, and were the pop underdogs that kids like me were meant to worship. Even then I'd be self-mocking about how much I loved them. I was too ready to admit they weren't really all that. I think now: All what?
Seeing Madonna's many different faces flash by on the screen left me with a bigger amount of respect than I thought I would have for her, despite the loving testimonials of her closest friends, her back-up singers, Harvey Weinstein. It was seeing her, in the face of so much scrutiny, coming to terms with herself, having a resonance, letting her life speak to her like a book, and now she's writing it.
I mean, she's always been writing her book, you know, but it's been by grabbing the pen out of someone else's hands and getting a few words in before the public drowns out the ink, smears it beyond recognition. Now she's writing and writing and writing, and the crowd is background noise. I would love to achieve that.
Perhaps if I ordered some yoga tapes, I'd be all set!
