(c) Breeze Vincinz
Probably the most effeminate thing about my character, outside of my predilection to fellatio, is my undying affection towards all things Madonna. I would tend to believe that I am on a slightly higher phase of existence than those silly school girls who used to scream at Beatles concerts but the truth of the matter is that I have often thought about what I would truly do if I ever did meet her and truthfully speaking I’m almost positive that I would scream at the top of my lungs until my eyes welled up with tears and then faint soon after.
In the simplest of terms, I just admire her. I am one of the millions of people who truly found inspiration in the lowly-girl-from-Detroit-makes-it-big story and for her to do it with such a sense of artistry, independence and humor has always endeared a very special place in my heart… and in my life quite honestly.
It’s no surprise that I was most definitely one of the people who pre-ordered her latest incarnation Hard Candy and downloaded it the second it was available. It’s been in heavy rotation on my iPod ever since and Beat Goes On, her duet with Kanye West, is the single reason why I started going back to the gym.
Usually when I dig an album this much I begin to peruse what others may think of it on such sites like Amazon.com or the comments on iTunes or YouTube. I did the same thing when Erykah Badu, Tori Amos and Björk released New AmErykah – Part One (4th World War), American Girl Posse and Volta respectively. With all of these releases the comments have all been mostly positive but then there are those rogue one-star comments that always get me, particularly with Hard Candy. More often than not, the people who despise the album truthfully seem to be pretty ambivalent to the actual music on the album but truly despise the negative aspects of what they think Madonna represents.
I got this same feeling when I read Rich Cohen’s interview in the May issue of Vanity Fair whereas he spent a lot of page space theorizing the idea of Madonna as opposed to actually presenting these theories to the woman herself and having her speak for herself or even in the very least, asking her about her music… you know… the shit that got her here in the first place.
Soon after, I bumped into article after article by different journalists and critics about how Madonna is just a waste of space, how desperate she is, how decrepit and old she is, how she should just quit because she’s embarrassing herself. One critic wrote an extensive soliloquy carefully detailing the myriad of reasons why she is a boring, desperate has-been who has absolutely has no place in modern music.
Considering that I do hold Madonna in fairly high esteem I do admit that I have a biased against these writers, but even still, even if I were not such a fan I think I would still wonder if these guys truly felt that their anti-Madonna ascertainments were actually helping people or… are they fighting against the cool kids that never allowed them to sit at their lunch table or even still… making the comments that they feel they will receive once they hit 50 themselves and have the audacity to not just roll over and die.
These critics are a single pearl to a necklace of thought I started a long time ago about the role of teachers, journalists, critics and bloggers alike. It’s a question of intention, integrity and consequence. There are certain artists that I personally despise that I want to scream from the mountaintops in hopes of there demise (James Blunt, Soulja Boy… I’m lookin’ at you…), but I do wonder what significance it would have in the big scheme of things… and what would it say about me since I’m slowly learning that… what you despise defines you as much as what you admire.
There is overlap in the roles of teachers, journalists, critics and bloggers. The ultimate goal of all them is to communicate information to a group of people. I think the differences lie within their intentions. I think teachers communicate to enlighten. Journalists communicate for the sake of communication. Bloggers communicate to self medicate. And critics, well… I think critics communicate to self congratulate, because it’s not really about enlightening people, or enlightening themselves really… it’s more about finding the wittiest ways to frame the most vile of intentions in the most urbane language and being congratulated for it (Rex Reed… I’m lookin’ at you...)
And the truth of the matter is, as much as people bitch about opinions and their similarity to assholes (everybody’s got one), people are curious to know about them. It’s what makes journalists, bloggers and critics that much more colorful than teachers. They all can present the truth, but journalists, bloggers and critics can add the flavor of opinion and that’s what makes them much more palatable. And while a teacher can come off as an intelligent drone, journalists, critics and bloggers have their opinions which gives them personality… for better or for worse.
But it does make me pause to consider my own intentions, because I think I have slid across all four circles at one point or another and I just hope that no matter the ranting (and Lord knows I can rant…) that somebody, somewhere got something out of it… and it’s that hope that keeps me going.
Or as Rich Cohen finally got out of Madonna after several pages of processing the idea of her without any real dialogue from her, “You have to get to a point where you care as little about getting smoke blown up your ass as you do when you become a whipping boy… because ultimately they both add up to shit. You just have to keep doing your work, and hope and pray somebody’s dialing into your frequency… if your joy is derived from what society thinks of you, you’re always going to be disappointed.”
So as teachers, journalists, bloggers and critics alike rattle on with great fervor, anger and passion about the significant insignificance (or the insignificant significance as the case me be) of a little lady named Madonna, she just keeps going and going to her own beat. And I in turn keep going and going listening to her music every morning on the treadmill, on the exercise bikes on the lat pull machines. In my mind I imagine a brood of teachers, journalists, bloggers and critics chasing after her as fast as they can, and she is always in front of them running as fast as she can, but not to get away from them, she doesn’t even know they’re there. She’s just running because she likes running and she has her own goal to get to.
I keep that in mind every morning now on the track listening to Madonna’s duet with Kanye West “The Beat Goes On”... to just keep going, for my own sake, not for the multitude of people who have demeaned, emasculated and humiliated me over the years about my appearance, or for the family members who deemed my lot in life to resemble a wildebeest and not to achieve an acceptable weight to comfortably slide into gay culture’s anorexic-eque leanings. I run to my own goal for my own reasons. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m not being chased… there are always going to be “playa haters” around trying to dismiss your successes because it’s not there’s, It’s always going to be someone around telling you you’re not running fast enough. You just can’t give in to it, because once you allow your run to become someone else’s chase… you’ll always lose.
Probably the most effeminate thing about my character, outside of my predilection to fellatio, is my undying affection towards all things Madonna. I would tend to believe that I am on a slightly higher phase of existence than those silly school girls who used to scream at Beatles concerts but the truth of the matter is that I have often thought about what I would truly do if I ever did meet her and truthfully speaking I’m almost positive that I would scream at the top of my lungs until my eyes welled up with tears and then faint soon after.In the simplest of terms, I just admire her. I am one of the millions of people who truly found inspiration in the lowly-girl-from-Detroit-makes-it-big story and for her to do it with such a sense of artistry, independence and humor has always endeared a very special place in my heart… and in my life quite honestly.
It’s no surprise that I was most definitely one of the people who pre-ordered her latest incarnation Hard Candy and downloaded it the second it was available. It’s been in heavy rotation on my iPod ever since and Beat Goes On, her duet with Kanye West, is the single reason why I started going back to the gym.
Usually when I dig an album this much I begin to peruse what others may think of it on such sites like Amazon.com or the comments on iTunes or YouTube. I did the same thing when Erykah Badu, Tori Amos and Björk released New AmErykah – Part One (4th World War), American Girl Posse and Volta respectively. With all of these releases the comments have all been mostly positive but then there are those rogue one-star comments that always get me, particularly with Hard Candy. More often than not, the people who despise the album truthfully seem to be pretty ambivalent to the actual music on the album but truly despise the negative aspects of what they think Madonna represents.
I got this same feeling when I read Rich Cohen’s interview in the May issue of Vanity Fair whereas he spent a lot of page space theorizing the idea of Madonna as opposed to actually presenting these theories to the woman herself and having her speak for herself or even in the very least, asking her about her music… you know… the shit that got her here in the first place.Soon after, I bumped into article after article by different journalists and critics about how Madonna is just a waste of space, how desperate she is, how decrepit and old she is, how she should just quit because she’s embarrassing herself. One critic wrote an extensive soliloquy carefully detailing the myriad of reasons why she is a boring, desperate has-been who has absolutely has no place in modern music.
Considering that I do hold Madonna in fairly high esteem I do admit that I have a biased against these writers, but even still, even if I were not such a fan I think I would still wonder if these guys truly felt that their anti-Madonna ascertainments were actually helping people or… are they fighting against the cool kids that never allowed them to sit at their lunch table or even still… making the comments that they feel they will receive once they hit 50 themselves and have the audacity to not just roll over and die.
These critics are a single pearl to a necklace of thought I started a long time ago about the role of teachers, journalists, critics and bloggers alike. It’s a question of intention, integrity and consequence. There are certain artists that I personally despise that I want to scream from the mountaintops in hopes of there demise (James Blunt, Soulja Boy… I’m lookin’ at you…), but I do wonder what significance it would have in the big scheme of things… and what would it say about me since I’m slowly learning that… what you despise defines you as much as what you admire.
There is overlap in the roles of teachers, journalists, critics and bloggers. The ultimate goal of all them is to communicate information to a group of people. I think the differences lie within their intentions. I think teachers communicate to enlighten. Journalists communicate for the sake of communication. Bloggers communicate to self medicate. And critics, well… I think critics communicate to self congratulate, because it’s not really about enlightening people, or enlightening themselves really… it’s more about finding the wittiest ways to frame the most vile of intentions in the most urbane language and being congratulated for it (Rex Reed… I’m lookin’ at you...)And the truth of the matter is, as much as people bitch about opinions and their similarity to assholes (everybody’s got one), people are curious to know about them. It’s what makes journalists, bloggers and critics that much more colorful than teachers. They all can present the truth, but journalists, bloggers and critics can add the flavor of opinion and that’s what makes them much more palatable. And while a teacher can come off as an intelligent drone, journalists, critics and bloggers have their opinions which gives them personality… for better or for worse.
But it does make me pause to consider my own intentions, because I think I have slid across all four circles at one point or another and I just hope that no matter the ranting (and Lord knows I can rant…) that somebody, somewhere got something out of it… and it’s that hope that keeps me going.
Or as Rich Cohen finally got out of Madonna after several pages of processing the idea of her without any real dialogue from her, “You have to get to a point where you care as little about getting smoke blown up your ass as you do when you become a whipping boy… because ultimately they both add up to shit. You just have to keep doing your work, and hope and pray somebody’s dialing into your frequency… if your joy is derived from what society thinks of you, you’re always going to be disappointed.”
So as teachers, journalists, bloggers and critics alike rattle on with great fervor, anger and passion about the significant insignificance (or the insignificant significance as the case me be) of a little lady named Madonna, she just keeps going and going to her own beat. And I in turn keep going and going listening to her music every morning on the treadmill, on the exercise bikes on the lat pull machines. In my mind I imagine a brood of teachers, journalists, bloggers and critics chasing after her as fast as they can, and she is always in front of them running as fast as she can, but not to get away from them, she doesn’t even know they’re there. She’s just running because she likes running and she has her own goal to get to.I keep that in mind every morning now on the track listening to Madonna’s duet with Kanye West “The Beat Goes On”... to just keep going, for my own sake, not for the multitude of people who have demeaned, emasculated and humiliated me over the years about my appearance, or for the family members who deemed my lot in life to resemble a wildebeest and not to achieve an acceptable weight to comfortably slide into gay culture’s anorexic-eque leanings. I run to my own goal for my own reasons. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m not being chased… there are always going to be “playa haters” around trying to dismiss your successes because it’s not there’s, It’s always going to be someone around telling you you’re not running fast enough. You just can’t give in to it, because once you allow your run to become someone else’s chase… you’ll always lose.
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