Theos-Talk Archives (February 1998 Message tl00275)

Here is an interesting excerpt.

mkr
======================================

SPIRITUAL GIRL

New outlook

Century-end Jitts, The Quickening, Millennium Madness -- whatever you're
calling it -- seems to have claimed its latest victim. Material Girl turns
Spiritual Girl, in the new-found spiritual world. Madonna time: 1998.

The record release parties are set; new videos are hitting heavy rotation;
incense is burning.

"The woman who served as a channel for cultural myths about carnal pleasure
and worldly accomplishment is trying to do the same for that most abstract
and idiosyncratic of human yearnings," writes Ann Powers in Sunday's
upcoming NEW YORK TIMES profile. "Stepping into a role that some will surely
think is beyond her, Madonna is now manufacturing a fantasy of the soul."

Gone are Madonna's whips and chains and erotica, the color this spring on
the dance floors is Sanskrit and cabala. And ginger tea after your daily
yoga session if you really want to strike the pose. Talk about a remix.

Alone in a silent room, face up on the floor in a yoga pose known as the
corpse, Madonna crying uncontrollably.

Powers writes: "The 39-year-old singer, notorious for being the pre-eminent
quick-change artist of her generation, found herself in this odd and
vulnerable situation more than once in the two years that led up to the
release of her new album RAY OF LIGHT [out Tuesday]. She was not
engaging in a kinky sex rite or a new performance style. She was doing what
had not come naturally, she says -- confronting herself.

"'As my body was opening up and I was going into places that had been locked
for so many years, it was releasing emotional things,' she said on a recent
afternoon in her Manhattan apartment, 'I'd be lying in sivasana' -- the
totally prone corpse pose -- 'and I'd be weeping. Or I'd do a forward bend
and tears would come to my eyes. I'd sort of get embarrassed and think, why
is this happening to me? But I realized that I was going through a catharsis.'"

The woman who once borrowed sources and styles from drag queens and vintage
Hollywood, now goes for Greek legends and "The Autobiography of a Yogi."

"The weirdest thing is, the more open you are to things, the more you
suddenly become aware of people's divine nature," Madonna tells Powers.

Next stop heaven.