(8 of 10)
I don't sit around and contemplate my fame or how popular I am. I know my manager sometimes looks at me with dismay when he tells me I've sold 6 million records or sold out in 17 minutes, and I just say, "O.K." I'm glad but that's not what interests me, numbers. What interests me is what happens in my confrontations with people every day and in my performances every night. Not figures on a piece of paper or how much money I have in the bank or any phenomenon. I don't think money has changed my life. I never had money until now, and I never felt the lack of it. I buy more clothes. Right now I live out of a suitcase. I don't own a car. Just before the tour, I took driver's ed. and got a license for the first time. I rented a car and it was a thrill.
DRUGS. I don't take drugs. I never really did. They don't do anything for me. All the feelings I think drugs are supposed to produce in you, confidence or energy, I can produce naturally in my body. The only problem is going to sleep. But I don't take sleeping pills. I drink herbal teas.
THE NAME MADONNA. My mother is the only other person I have ever heard of named Madonna. I never had trouble with the name. Not in school or anything, of course. I went to Catholic schools. And then when I got involved in the music industry, everybody thought I took it as a stage name. So I let them think that . . . It's pretty glamorous.
CATHOLICISM. Catholicism gives you a strength, an inner strength, whether you end up believing it later or not. It's the backbone. I think maybe the essence of Catholicism I haven't rejected, but the theory of it, I have, if that makes any sense. I don't go to church but I believe in God. I don't say my rosary but I think about things like that. The thing that has remained with me most, I guess, is the idea that you do unto others as they do unto you. It's not right to steal or lie or cheat. I think it's pretty creepy when guys cheat on their wives and the other way around, stuff like that. When I was little, I had all the usual feelings of guilt. I was very conscious of God watching everything I did. Until I was eleven or twelve, I believed the devil was in my basement and I would run up the stairway fast so he wouldn't grab my ankles. We had the kind of stairway where there were spaces between each step.
CRUCIFIXES AND ROSARIES. I think I have always carried around a few rosaries with me. There was the turquoise-colored one that my grandmother had given to me a long time ago. One day I decided to wear it as a necklace. I thought, "This is kind of offbeat and interesting." I mean, everything I do is sort of tongue in cheek. It's a strange blend -- a beautiful sort of symbolism, the idea of someone suffering, which is what Jesus Christ on a crucifix stands for, and then not taking it seriously at all. Seeing it as an icon with no religiousness attached to it. It isn't a sacrilegious thing for me. I'm not saying, "This is Jesus Christ," and I'm laughing. When I went to Catholic schools, I thought the huge crucifixes nuns wore around their necks with their habits were really beautiful. I have one like that now. I wear it sometimes but not onstage. It's too big. It might fly up in the air and hit me in the face.