Madonna In Concert: Does She Know Who She Is?

On stage, Madonna looked at four women surrounding her like a square. They were posing as Madonna from the past. One “Madonna” wore a wedding dress, like Madonna did for “Like a Virgin.” Another “Madonna” was dolled up like Marilyn Monroe, as Madonna appeared in “Material Girl.”

One by one, the real Madonna, if there is one, flicked the wigs and clothes off these “Madonnas” standing at four posts, and Madonna, now 50, sang “She’s Not Me” at each of these iconic “Madonna” images, as if to inform the world that the true Madonna is not the one you know.

But does Madonna know who she is?

If you listen to this song, the lyrics less poignantly find Madonna telling a man (her soon-to-be-ex-husband?) that other women he lusts after are not Madonna. But in concert at the MGM Sunday night, these “Madonna” icons suggested: You don’t even know who I am, and I am certainly not these younger, other Madonnas, whom you know from the “Like a Virgin” video, and the old “Material Girl” video, and so on.

Madonna has a penchant for doing this, publicly pooh-poohing her past incarnations — incarnations that made her who she is — as not wholly definitive of her inner character. Well, duh. Madonna is the accumulation of all her Madonnas, in the same way that you and I are the sums of our pasts, presents and potential futures.

That’s a simple notion, of course. But watching Madonna revisit her own, well-known journey through the ages, reminded me of the journey to Buddhism in the classic book, Siddhartha. I am not about to say Madonna is Buddha. Bear with me.

In the Hermann Hesse book, Siddhartha begins life in the 6th century as a boy of wonder who grows up to take in life, in all its glories and self-destructive phases. He explores in order: self-denial; sex; material goods; love; career; lust; wealth; gambling; drinking; suicidal tendencies; parenthood; death of a loved one; wisdom; and the enlightenment of nirvana.

This is, as you know, the classic life struggle for peace and happiness through stages of temptations and sacrifices and triumphs. Siddhartha learns that the spiritual and human path to happiness lies in life experiences, which are meaningless individually but meaningful collectively.

Madonna, like all of us, is searching for that private joy (to paraphrase Prince) while trying not to infringe on other people’s happiness. She just happens to have lived her phases more publicly than us, and still does.

She has traveled from struggling artist to pop sensation, material girl, pop and social icon, sexual exhibitionist, borrower of youthful ideas, activist, mother, divorcee-to-be, and now 50-year-old woman still seeking validation by proxy of large crowds and multimedia.

On stage, she vamps and vogues and wears tiny slivers of clothes and high heels and sunglasses and childlike knee socks and rhinestone shoulder pads, while rewarding the loudest fans with praise. She admonished the sole woman talking on her phone in a front row, claiming this one out-of-line follower hurt her feelings.

But validate, the crowd did, for two hours, on their feet, clapping in sync, screaming “I love you,” as they continued to be drawn to her singalong songs and her self-actualized, fearless striving for respect, affection, fame and passion.

Near the end of all this, Madonna sang a ballad from “Evita,” the story of an icon often beloved and reviled, begging the crowd in verse, “You must love me.” Madonna raised one hand, palm up, to inquire further for mass love. The crowd roared. Madonna smiled large, satisfied for now that her path to nirvana or faux nirvana continues, perhaps as it has for any number of public chameleons who existed only in character, Peter Sellers most similarly.

The leftover questions are plain and waiting for Madonna: What life phase are you in? And can you ever be enlightened?