Driving up the coast for our second holiday of the summer, I put on the Immaculate Collection and explained to Olle that the singer was a girl called Madonna. We listened to a couple of songs and he then told me very earnestly, from his booster seat in the back of the car, "Actually, she should be on tv."
I assured him that she was very famous and that co-parent and I had even been to see her in concert, before he was born.
And there were more memories, which I silently ran through my mind: watching Desperately Seeking Susan in a woman-only audience (full house) at the Brixton Ritzy. Dancing to 'Get Into the Groove' on countless nights in countless nighclubs in 1980s London. Gossip about Madonna's relationship with Sandra Bernhardt. The 'Justify My Love' video. The SEX book.
Downhill in recent years. The Kabbalah crap. The egotism of her children's books. Marriage to the upper-crust Guy Ritchie. Disappointment and tedium has set in (for me, that is).
But bopping along in the car to 'Like a Prayer', memories of Madonna made me smile. She danced, she sang (if weakly), she had a gay brother and HIV+ friends, she flaunted her body, she shocked and taunted the uptight men of the media establishment, she was her own person. She did new things, the newness of which cannot be fully conveyed to a six year old boy whose favourite song is now 'Material Girl'.
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