天命之年麦当娜

一连几天，耳机里听到的都是麦当娜的新歌《4分钟》。还是节奏压倒唱腔的舞曲，麦当娜没唱几句，倒是合作的贾斯汀始终铿锵有力，并以声调后扬的几声“麦当娜，麦当娜”作为全曲的华彩和结束。

现如今，再看到“麦当娜”这个名字，听到她的歌，或者见到她跳舞的样子，感受的不是一个人，而是岁月！50岁的娜姐今年仍在出专辑，而且还拍起了电影和纪录片，再加上养子风波和不绝于耳的离婚传闻，已到天命之年的她似乎从没打算退出公众的视线。5月号的《名利场》杂志拿她当了封面：还是穿得少露得多，青筋暴突、结实的大腿在空中摆出马戏团吊钢丝的样式，这富有力量的姿态好像寓意着所谓的美国精神：自由、纪律和努力。她就像那个国家输出的价值观一样，身上有一股劲儿，即使衰老，也要显示强悍。

――Eva

To reach Madonna, you must wait for a sign. When it comes, if you are pure of heart, you begin to move toward Madonna, and move fast. Like a pilgrim, you read and reread sacred texts: profiles and reviews, the first published in the early 1980s, the most recent published just a second ago, which constitute a kind of record, the good news, the 1)Gospel of Madonna.

I felt the presence of Madonna as soon as I landed at 2)LAX. It was as if she had been there a moment ago, and, in fact, while waiting for my luggage, I scanned a copy of the New York Post and came upon a picture taken the day before which showed Madonna, having come through customs, holding her two-and-a-half-year-old son, David, whom she had adopted in Malawi in 2006, the cameras an inch from her face.

I was rushed to Century City from the airport, to the towering new office building of CAA (Creative Artists Agency), the talent agency that represents Madonna, and seated in an empty 3)screening room. The lights went down, and for 90 minutes I watched a documentary Madonna has written and produced, I Am Because We Are, which is African folk 4)wisdom that means something like “It takes a village.” It too is about community―about identity and how it’s rooted in place. The movie

5)sings of Malawi, a landlocked little nation in sub-Sahara Africa, ravaged by aids, filled with orphans.

It opens with Madonna walking in a crowd of Africans. Then her voice, which is the voice of the upper Midwest painted in Oxford glaze: “People always ask me why I chose Malawi. And I tell them, I didn’t. It chose me. I got a phone call from a woman named Victoria Keelan. She was born and raised in Malawi. She told me that there were over one million children orphaned by aids. She said there weren’t enough orphanages. And that the children were everywhere. Living on the streets. Sleeping under bridges. Hiding in abandoned buildings. Being

6)abducted, kidnapped, raped. She said it was a state of emergency. She sounded exhausted and 7)on the verge of tears. I asked her how I could help. She said, You’re a person with resources. People pay attention to what you say and do. I felt embarrassed. I told her I didn’t know where Malawi was. She told me to look it up on a map, and then she hung up on me. I decided to investigate, and I ended up finding out much more than I 8)bargained for, about Malawi, about myself, about humanity.”

After the movie, I was brought to the office of Madonna’s manager, where I sat in a boardroom and listened to Madonna’s new record (Hard Candy) on an iPod. It was a long day. The morning flight, the articles, the movie, the record, then the interview. It was like being brainwashed. Like being dropped in a 9)vat of Madonna.

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Madonna made the record with Justin Timberlake, who co-wrote five of the songs and sings on four. Many of the songs are 10)hybrids, traditional Madonna super-pop, workout tunes giving way to white hip-hop, Justin Timberlake showering 11)cascades of rhyme. I was listening to the music, and it’s a record I think Madonna fans will like, because it’s filled with songs you can imagine blasting from the room where they hold

12)spinning class, but I kept thinking about Britney Spears. I mean, here is Madonna, singing with Justin, whose very public breakup with Britney marked the moment the pop 13)tart began her battle with the furies. And, of course, I was also thinking of those MTV Video Music Awards in which Britney, already well on her way to madness, 14)frenched Madonna. 15)In light of this record, and all that’s happened, I wondered if, in the course of that kiss, Madonna somehow extracted Britney’s soul from her body, or implanted the crazy chip.

This is a big moment for Madonna. There is the documentary and the record, but also a dramatic film, Filth and Wisdom, which she co-wrote, produced, and directed. Madonna’s debut as an 16)auteur. The movie will be released on iTunes, which, depending how you see the world, is a desperate act or a bold gesture.

What’s Madonna’s genius?

It’s not her work as a singer, nor as a songwriter, nor as a director, certainly not as an actor. In the end, Madonna will be remembered as a

17)minter of images. If you go back and consider her career―because Madonna is one of the stars of the age so presumably tells a story greater than her own, about her people or time―you will see there has been nothing but images, spun off one after another, like souls flying off the mighty wheel. Beautiful artifice, puzzles, surfaces, masks…Think back on her career. It’s not songs you remember, or not primarily, nor films, nor videos; it’s the scenes or 18)tableaux. You recall her career as a series of lit boxes, 19)face cards in a 20)deck: Madonna as a street 21)urchin, in

22)spangles; Madonna as Marilyn, in satin; Madonna as a deflowered virgin, 23)writhing onstage in a wedding dress; Madonna as 24)Saint Francis of Assisi, covered in 25)icons and weeping for fragile things. Madonna on the Cross, like Jesus, but better, because did Jesus ever come down from the Cross to sing a song?

想要采访麦当娜，你必须静待机缘。如果你心意虔诚，机缘一到，你自然会走近她，奔向她。像个圣徒一样，你一遍遍地读着“神圣的”文本资料：关于她的个人介绍和评论，从上个世纪八十年代初刊登的第一篇关于她的报道到仅于一秒钟前登出来的最新消息，这些文章构成了娜姐的个人记录、正面的消息报道，亦是“娜姐福音”。

我一飞抵洛杉矶国际机场就感觉到了麦当娜的气息，仿佛她刚刚来过这里，而实际上，在等行李的时候，我翻了一下《纽约邮报》，碰巧看到一张她的照片。这张照片是前一天拍的，照片中的她刚走出海关，怀里抱着2006年在马拉维收养的两岁半的儿子大卫，镜头离她的脸部不过一英寸的距离。

我从机场急赶到世纪城，来到美国创新艺人经纪公司高耸入云的新办公楼，这家公司就是麦当娜所属的经纪机构。我在里面一个空荡荡的放映室坐下，随后灯光变暗，在之后的一个半小时里，我观看了由麦当娜亲自撰写和制作的纪录片《密不可分》，该片名源于一句来自非洲民间的名言，寓意“养育一个孩子不仅仅需要一个家庭的力量，还需要整个社会的力量”。这部电影还描述了社会群体关系――关于独立个体及其得以扎根发展的因由。电影讲述的国家是马拉维，一个位于非洲撒哈拉边区的内陆小国。国内艾滋病肆虐，孤儿比比皆是。

影片一开场，麦当娜走在一群非洲人中间，紧接着传来了她的声音，美国中西部偏北地区的口音加了些牛津腔的雕琢，她说：“人们总是问我为什么选中马拉维。我告诉他们，不是我选中马拉维，而是马拉维选中我。一位名叫维多利

亚・奇兰的女士曾打电话给我。她是土生土长的马拉维人。她告诉我，那里的艾滋病孤儿超过一百万人。由于没有足够的孤儿院，这些小孩子到处都是。他们有些流落街头，有些睡在桥底下，还有些藏身于废弃的大楼里。被拐带、绑架、，什么都有。情况真的非常紧急。听上去，她身心疲惫，简直快要哭出来了。我问她我要怎么帮忙。她说，你是一个很有影响力的人。人们关注你的每一句话和每一个举动。我觉得很羞愧。我告诉她，我根本不知道马拉维在哪里。她要我在地图上找找看，然后就挂上了电话。我决定去研究了解一下这个国家，最后，对于马拉维、我自己，还有人性，我有了更深入的了解，所认识的远比我期望的要多。”

看完电影后，我被带到麦当娜经纪人的办公室，坐在会议室里，用iPod听麦当娜的新专辑（《硬糖》）。这真是漫长的一天啊！一早就搭飞机，然后读报道，看电影，听专辑，再采访。我像在被洗脑，如同被丢进一个泡满麦当娜信息的大桶里。

专辑《硬糖》由麦当娜与贾斯汀・汀布莱克联手制作，贾斯汀为专辑写了其中的五首歌，当中四首由他配唱。专辑中很多歌曲都糅合了多种音乐元素，麦当娜一向超流行且动感的音乐曲风转向了白人嘻哈音乐，贾斯汀在其中加入了大量的节奏。我听着这些歌曲，深信这是一张娜姐的粉丝会喜欢的专辑，因为里面全是那些可以想象在健身房“动感单车”课室里爆发出的歌曲。但是，我却不停地想到小甜甜。我的意思是，与麦当娜搭档的是贾斯汀，他与小甜甜布兰妮公开分手之后，这个人气小妞开始变得暴躁成狂。当然，我也想起在某年MTV音乐大奖颁奖典礼上，已经迈向疯癫的小甜甜与麦当娜当众法式激吻。想到这张专辑，以及过去发生的一切，我怀疑在与小甜甜的激吻过程中，麦当娜是否摄取了她的灵魂，或者给她植入了疯狂因子。

对于麦当娜来说，现在是个重要时刻。她的纪录片和专辑相继面世，还有一部她参与编剧，并制作以及导演的剧情片《下流与智慧》也上映了。这是她执导的电影处女作，将在iTunes里发行，这种发行方式可以说是孤注一掷，也可以说是一项大胆的举措――取决于你怎样看这件事了。

麦当娜的天赋是什么？

她的天赋并非体现在唱歌，写歌，或者导演上，当然也不是体现在演戏上。到最后，麦当娜将会作为一个“形象塑造者”让人铭记于心。如果你回头审视她的事业，浮现在你脑海里的只是无数的形象，仿佛从时代的巨轮里一个接一个飞出的灵魂。因为麦当娜是时代巨星之一，她应该不单单代表自己，还反映了当时的人们或整个时代。漂亮的技巧、谜团、外表、 面具……回顾她的事业，你记得的不是她的歌，至少主要的不是歌，不是她的电影或音乐电视，而是她的舞台布景或造型。在你的记忆中，她的事业就像是一系列的发光灯箱，一副扑克里的人头牌：身着镶满闪光珠片的衣服，打扮成街头古惑女的模样；身穿丝缎，作玛丽・莲梦露状；扮演被蹂躏的处女，穿着婚纱在舞台上痛苦挣扎；化身基督教圣人圣方济，如圣像般披裹装束，悲悯天下弱小。麦当娜还上过十字架，像耶稣一样，但是她更胜一筹，因为你有见过耶稣从十字架上走下来放声高歌吗？

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