Madonna: Being On Stage A 'Battle'

Describes It To Harry Smith; Also Speaks About Her Faith

(CBS)  For Madonna, being on stage isn't as easy as it might look to her audiences.

In fact, it's anything but.

”Its pretty overwhelming, to tell you the truth," she revealed to The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith in the second of a two-part interview. "One thing I'm struck with is, when I watch myself performing on the stage, I'm astonished at the difference between what I'm seeing and what I think the audience sees and what I feel.

"What I see is really pulled together and really choreographed and (has) nice costumes and good lighting and good sound. What's going on inside of me is like a war.

"I'm gasping for breath. I'm trying to remember everything I'm supposed to be, the words to the songs, the notes on the guitar, the steps. I'm thinking about the pain in my back. I'm trying to get enough oxygen. I'm looking at people's faces. Some people are desperate, some people are so full of love. It's so extreme, I always think when I go out on stage that I'm going into battle."

The diva told Smith the pressure doesn't stop there.

"I wear 'inner ears' so we don't have monitors all over the stage, so that the sound in my head -- you know, when you plug up your ears, you can hear your heart beat and hear yourself breathing? So I've got that on the stage as well. I don't hear the crowds, so it's a very surreal experience, the whole thing."

Madonna has taken up Kaballah, a form of Jewish mysticism, and she says it's impacting her life "enormously."

"One of the central aspects to the study of Kaballah," she tells Smith, "is the idea that we are responsible for our behavior, we are responsible for everything that happens to us. It's very liberating to not think of yourself as a victim. So I like that aspect. That has freed me enormously.

"I spent a lot of years feeling sorry for myself, when I was a child, the death of my mother, or growing up and feeling like I didn't have what other people had. I find it very empowering, although it seems daunting at first, to go, 'You know what, I deserve that, I own that, I brought that to me. That's a very different way for me to look at life.

"It's very liberating. So that has influenced me enormously. I'm getting better at not being bothered by things. I'm getting better at not taking things personally."

And that, in turn, is helping her marriage, Madonna says. "I'm getting better at being married and living with somebody who, for lack of a better phrase, irks me sometimes. I'm getting better at accepting. I suppose I can disagree with what he says or what he does, but I don't love him less. I'm getting better at loving my husband unconditionally."

Madonna kidded Smith about a few things he admitted to her. "You didn't read my books 'til last week; you didn't go to my concerts. Anything else you want to say that will disappoint me?"

Smith said, "Well, I could be completely sycophantic."

Madonna didn't let him off the hook that easily: "There's somewhere between ignoring me and being a sycophant."