Events in London have really captured the world’s attention in recent weeks. Between the Live 8 extravaganza, the Olympics announcement, and the horrific terrorist bombings, the city has been sudden home to extreme human feeling: happiness and peace cruelly counterbalanced to hatred and devastating grief.

Within days of Madonna’s euphoric performance, which personified human resilience and hope, we were all again reminded about how fragile life is. I wistfully recalled my friend Jason, the first person who contacted me after the awful events of September 11, 2001. Although Jason was at the time working in Japan, his voice was the first to get to me in New York through all the confusion.

The following is an open letter to Madonna that reflects the importance of both of these people in my humble life. As you will read, Jason turned me on to Madonna and it is through her that I most associate the strengths of character important in these melancholic times. (Jason’s exuberance is legendary, so I did not have much of a choice.) I considered submitting this letter, in one form or another, for the Justify Your Love contest in which ICON solicited fan stories. For whatever reason, I just never sent it, waiting for the proper time to commemorate my best friend.

Almost three years later, I still miss him terribly. I wanted to take this opportunity to honor not only a huge Madonna fan that would surely be co-authoring this column were he alive, but to make a statement about the “rays of light” we all have around us.

Tell your friends and family you love them. Cherish memories of the beloved who have passed before. Pray with the families and loved ones of those who have perished for purposes of chaos, not order, not peace, not humanity. Not just in the London bombings but all senseless acts of violence around the world. Create, share, and learn.

Let’s be good to one another.

Nothing makes the darkness go like the light.

 

 
 


Dearest Madonna,

Let’s be honest: we’ve had a rocky relationship in the past.

While I have always loved your music and appreciated your many talents throughout the eighties and half of the nineties, I just didn’t exactly “get” you. It took some time before I fully came around and veered from mere appreciation to hard-core fandom, obsessively catching up on your entire discography, throwing an enormously successful Madonna-themed 30th birthday bash, and traveling to Lisbon to see you for the fourth time on the Re-Invention Tour.

My best friend, Jason, however, absolutely got you from Day One. He, a devout enthusiast, loved to regale us with stories of waiting to get into the Blond Ambition shows at Madison Square Garden; how he, a Chicago native, worked as an extra on A League of Their Own; and one of the pinnacles of his too-short life, when he finally had the chance to meet you at the Virgin Megastore in Los Angeles.

Jason’s adulation of you was nothing short of infectious. We were never lacking in references to you in conversation. Jason always joked about starting a religion called “What Would Madonna Do” (seemingly before you marketed that idea) and changing his name to Ciccone should he ever get married. He pored over your videos and concerts as if they were gospel and dissected your every incarnation, gesture, lyric. By the time Ray of Light - regarded by my group of friends, and probably most of the guys in my generation, as the ultimate statement of our lives at the time - had hit, I had relented in Jason’s passion for you.

We gossiped about Drowned World, which he had seen in London in order to catch it before us New Yorkers; deconstructed various aspects of your career like walking copies of Madonna as Postmodern Myth; and scrambled to secure our place in the Letterman audience when you appeared.

And then he was gone. Tragically and terrifyingly suddenly, Jason passed away in the summer of 2002. The most animated, intelligent, well-traveled, and gorgeous man we had all known was gone. It was his request (in a typically prescient statement during a year-long sojourn to teach English in Japan) that his funeral, in addition to remaining secular, feature your music. Not only did we honor that request by playing Rain after one of the many moving eulogies, but the distributed prayer cards featured a verse of Sky Fits Heaven.

Mutual friends have suggested that Jason’s Madonna-loving spirit entered me, as by the time Die Another Day was released, my interest had been markedly ramped up. I won’t bore (or scare?) you with the intricacies of how deep my feelings run, but suffice it to say so many posthumous moments of my relationship with Jason are inexorably linked to you and what you meant to him. During the Lisbon show, for example, you sang Crazy For You directly to our section in one of the most surreal moments of my life. After you had finished the song, my boyfriend turned to me and said, “She was totally singing to us. And Jason is right here with us, loving every minute of it.” That moved me beyond words.

You will forever remind me of Jason and the passion he had for your creativity and artistry. By association, at the risk of sounding cliché, you’ve really touched all of our lives.

For that, and for innumerable reasons, I thank you and love you.


 
 

 

 
   
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