Today in Madonna History: On December 25 1982, Madonna’s Everybody debuted at #9 on Billboard’s Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart in the USA.
I will never forget jump roping on the playground and singing this song with my 2nd grade best friend Shannon who was, like me, labeled “gifted” and singled out for accelerated math and reading studies. They made us sit in the back of the room or sometimes leave the room altogether to study alternate content by ourselves.
This had the effect of otherizing us in the eyes of our peers and internalizing it as youth angst. We coped with this — especially in moments where we were left to ourselves — by singing and laughing and dancing instead of studying. It was she who first introduced me to Madonna when she sang “Angel”. I couldn’t get enough of it!!
A few years later, in 5th grade I was in another school district with another group of accelerated kids and by now “Material Girl” was the hot hit of the day. I didn’t even know what “gay” meant but I knew the other kids were mean to me. It came on the radio in our classroom and as I sang along, one of the other kids said rudely “why don’t you just become a girl?”.
This was the first time an insult really sunk in deeply enough for me to wonder if something was “wrong” with me, and after that the insults started cutting as I began to realize their frequency. They came more often than I’d noticed and they always carried the sense of disgust and the cultural pressure to suppress my being to conform and appease their norms.
This was impossible, of course. You can’t verbally or physically abuse the gay out of somebody any more than you can pray it away. Through my own journey through addiction and working with other addicts in early recovery I have learned that my experience was not unique. As we internalize self loathing, we internalize abuse and erasure.
Even as the teenage years grow into open rebellion, and we reject these narratives on the surface, they are eating away at us on the inside. We reject their lies by existing in a perpetual state of defiance, but inside their lies have become our truth. We are committing suicide in slow motion, erasing ourselves with self destruction one “party” at a time.
I remain a die hard Madonna fan to this day, but today my liberation transcends music. Today I embrace the love of my Creator knowing full well he created me exactly this way. I blast her albums (old and new) and sing my heart out with rejoicefulness that is deeply tapped into a source of life that animates the entire universe.
After decades of suffering, I found healing, but many have not, and many more still are being programmed every day to self destruct just like I did. To believe that their very existence is a crime against nature; to enact the promised destruction on themselves; to escape the pain of life by fulfilling the lie that they are worthy of only death.
“Everybody” is a song about unity. About love and joy and the shared experience of losing oneself on a dance floor. To completely give oneself over to the exuberance of celebration so completely that the pain of everyday life is removed. My prayer this Christmas is for the mountains that harden our hearts be moved, and joy and unification take their place.
Love can move mountains, but we must command those mountains to move, and then put action into the work of actually moving them. In this we are never alone!! There are people everywhere fighting the same fight, hoping the same hope, loving the same love. May 2019 bring joy and abundance and healing and life to the hearts of everybody!!
