Photo Credit: Ricardo Gomes
When a star dies, all that is left after its death is a tiny white core. It’s ironic, though, that it’s considered a death. After all, there is still something there. Still bright, still beating.
Witnessing a legend up close
This past year, I went to see the biggest female pop star of all time spend most of their concert sitting, lying down, sitting again, and then making out with her twin self. Her audience of mostly 45-year-olds, with the random addition of a lost 20-year-old all growing increasingly concerned by the 60-year-old’s antics.
And yet, despite the insanity, there was still something so compelling in that concert. A vision that made me still want to talk about Madonna even after her prime, even after a star’s life.
Legacy in the present tense
Madonna is someone who is almost exclusively referred to in the past tense. There seems to be a pause before the addition that not only is she still alive but still making music as if her time has already long passed and any light she might shed is simply a pale reflection of something far more extraordinary.
Something that we no longer can see, as it was buried underneath the layers of years that have “worn her down”. And yet. The truth remains that her legacy still reverberates across the culture. Every single female pop star alive today can say that they were inspired by her, that every time they take the mic, they are showing their direct relationship to her as a performer.
But that legacy seems to stop at a certain point, and after which Madonna herself is considered irrelevant, with nothing more to give, no more warmth, no more love. What can a woman who refuses to be a crone, to simply slink away in peace, be in a world that has no space for her? But her concert proved that if Madonna is not given a space, she will make one for herself.
Provocation and nostalgia
Catholic emblems were set ablaze while the star levitated from on high, and yet the most controversial thing she had to say was her confirmation that she will not go quietly into that good night like we expect so many before her to go.
Perhaps not as big of controversy as say making Jesus black before making out with him, but it was a taste of how bright her star used to shine, and just the image alone was enough to make me nostalgic for a time I wasn’t even there for.
A divisive show by design
That is not to say that her concert was flawless, far from it. A common criticism was how she declined to play any of her classics, instead focusing solely on her new album, mixing in her classics as transition pieces between songs off her album “Celebration”.
Of course, the “performance” she herself gave was mostly confined to standing in place, sitting down, or the occasional lying down and performing bed gymnastics with breaks in between to finish her third beer of the night. But, somehow, it did not detract from the concert, only serving to illuminate how great she used to be and how little she could care about anything other than following her muse in the moment.
Indeed, even the detractors complaining how she only plays her newest fails to understand that Madonna is not one to be constrained by anything, not the ideals of her time, whether it be the decade or age, or the person she once was. She is Madonna, not just in the past but in the eternal present.
Why her presence matters now
These demands of who Madonna should be also fail to understand the significance of Madonna existing here and now. She is one of the very few big names we have left, a fact made poignant by her surprising Michael Jackson performance in the middle of the concert, which comes a bit out of left field and serves as a jolt to the senses.
Because you realize–she’s the only one really left. All the other big names have been lost, whether it has been to violence or succumbing to their own personal demons, lost in a drug haze. She alone wears the scars of realizing she very narrowly escaped the toll that all the fame of those years had to pay, and she still has the will to make music, to still want the public to hear her, see her even after all these years of being their personal favorite chew toy.
Give her flowers while she’s here
When Madonna is gone, truly gone, only then will we understand what it was like to have a legend among her midst still performing, still travelling stadiums. Only then will we understand that even in the flickering moments of her declining star, she still shone a light brighter than most will in their entire lifetimes.