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In the past against AIDS, today against Corona: dancing as therapy
Photo: Eduardo Ribas / iStockphoto / Getty Images
Madonna is almost 63. These four words should be enough.
It used to be the forever young soundtrack of my life.
Today she is the embarrassing »material girl« in my midlife doodle disco: »Take a Bow«, she sings hoarsely, we have gotten pretty old (together).
As you can see, it was my birthday again.
But why Madonna?
Because she sang me through the tough years.
Because for me today it is more than just a sign of old age.
More than a reminder that “I haven't got that long,” as a colleague announced when she saw my year.
A year to which I have to scroll down and down in online forms, "Deeper and Deeper".
Deep down there are the hits from back then.
"Like a Prayer" (1989), "Vogue" (1990), "This Used to Be My Playground" (1992): Every Madonna phase, no matter how fleeting, was an excuse to reinvent myself from time to time, even if it was just a t-shirt.
We were soul mates.
At least that's what I thought.
At least we shared a myth: like many adventurers who had come to New York City, I was imitating Madonna's rebel pose - a cultural appropriation of what the Queen of Pop had stolen from others to commercialize.
I looked for myself, but for a long time only found commercial clichés.
Voguen with the Queen of Pop
We even met briefly in the mid-1990s, she and I, well, with hundreds of others.
It was on the dance floor of the »Sound Factory«, the legendary club in downtown Manhattan, where Madonna, the gay icon, had »discovered« the Vogue scene (also that kind of culture theft).
I was dancing with friends to the latest Frankie Knuckles remix when an androgynous dervish began to vogue wildly next to us: Madonna!
Cool.
We greeted each other with a wordless nod, without losing our rhythm.
Soul mate.
In the end, all that counted was dancing.
Because we all danced for our lives.
For
our lives and that of the spirits who could no longer dance with us.
We were the grandchildren of the carefree “Studio 54” years.
The kids who had survived the AIDS crisis until then, at least and apparently arbitrarily.
Every day was uncertain, every night a victory.
We danced the fear of the soul, the grief and "survivor's guilt" - the guilt syndrome of half a generation who had "made it" while the others ended up on Hart Island, the island of the dead off the Bronx, like the nameless Corona today -Victim.
Night shift at the computer
On weekdays I was a mad reporter, on weekends I let off steam to the house beat.
Night shifts, mostly in the former factory halls on the West Side: »Sound Factory«, »Roxy«, »Tunnel«.
Or in the Gothic crypt of the "Limelight," which was once an Episcopal church until a Canadian with an eye patch bought it and made it the altar of heretics.
Madonna was a regular.
The only night shifts that I still work today are in the home office on the computer, until just before the editorial deadline.
The 9/11 attacks at the latest killed our pseudo-spiritual Madonna hedonism.
We hid in shock, and a new generation grew up, more interested in themselves, it seemed to me.
House became techno - we called it derogatory "pots and pans" because it sounded like hitting a pot to us - and dancing became something I no longer understand and can better explain the younger generation.
Like the AIDS era, New York's nightlife is just a nebulous dream.
"Sound Factory", "Roxy" and "Tunnel" have long since fallen victim to gentrification, torn down and replaced by luxurious mammoth aquariums in which hedge fund sharks swim.
The “Limelight” was last a shopping mall and a sports studio and is now only known for a drug murder that was filmed in 2003 with Mccauley Culkin (“Party Monster”).
It was a flop.
Off to the roaring twenties
But every time has its tragedies that call for therapeutic after parties.
Where will those dance who survive Covid-19?
How will they shake the fear from their soul, the grief and "survivor's guilt"?
The influenza pandemic from 1918 to 1920 was followed by the Roaring Twenties, the roaring twenties.
What will follow the corona pandemic a century later?
For my part, I have vowed to myself, if that is possible again one day, to find a dance floor again and let off steam.
And it would be nice if they played Madonna, even when she's 63.
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