Gagablog 56: Mother Monster

I missed Gaga performing on the first Youtube music awards tonight. I have not been online much lately so I did not know about it and only heard about it thanks to the BBC radio news on my way to work. I've told myself there is some magical good, some reason I missed it live - I can always watch it on youtube - and I guess it is easier to believe that after how frustrated I got trying to watch Swinefest live with iTunes freezing every second, that really seemed to grate on my soul. But it was nice just now going on twitter and seeing some comments and photos and talking to a little monster for a minute and just hearing an account of what she said. I guess the "message" here is more of the same, that I have been trying to get to in this blog and the world has been trying to get to me - to relax and realize you are taken care of and everything will be okay. And of course I am really trying to convince myself of this, since I have been in a frenzy for years now with ideas for my book "Oz Magic: From Radio to Gaga."

One thing I realized since freaking out when Gaga performed "GAGA of OZ" on GMA to introduce Applause with a live performance was that I will always be the best one to write MY book about Gaga/Oz magic, even if it does not come out right now. It is okay to take my time and make it the best, and to do my other art at the same time. In this spirit I am finally getting my Wendy book out there, though it was written 7 years ago and really isn't changing much in the editing. I'm feeling really good about this, and about making a band, all sorts of dreams I've had for decades and am finally realizing. I know I can do it all at once, and even this gagablog I don't have to wrap it up as much as stay wrapped up in it, to keep chasing this magical message because like dreams themselves there is a new one every day.

And I got some more affirmation from the world: first was deciding that "GAGA of OZ" was not Gaga's magical message to me to get busy or someone else will figure it out but rather a sign that I'm on the right track and encouragement and support to keep going. Of course I say "magical" because she does not mean to send me a message, personally, with her songs and performances, she does not know who I am: When I find a very personal one it is a sign of magic or inasanity or being in-tune with her art, with ART itself, in my own way. Or seen from the perspective that she is a Goddess then her message to me is divine, just like to everyone, and all part of some great design, so that all can be expected to get as mystical a message from it as they are capable of - the message will be as mystical as you are. I've always looked for the most mystical meanings in Gaga's music and art, and I've never been disappointed, only challenged and brought further into mystery and magic, but I don't claim to be able to explain it all the best, just the way I see it, a witch's perspective on Gaga, as a little monster in, from, or bound for Oz. The second affirmation comes from fairy tales I've been fortunate enough to find at the thrift store, many of which I've read in the last couple of weeks contain the message that all will come to him who waits - this is a theme found in a number of stories in "The Olive Fairy Book."

And now I know I will have to wait one more day, or the rest of tonight anyway, five hours until morning, to see Gaga's performance on youtube. And I know that will change the world - for me, and magically in a special way, just as yesterday morning there was a partial eclipse the kind we will not have for another 172 years, I think. I thought about how this magical message I am after changes with every day but various events of the day can be related to it. It is kind of like those one-a-day calendars you tear off another page for every day and geta  different inspirational message - reality is kind of like those calendars, in a way, which is probably part of why they are so popular, they are just one of the best little models of that aspect of reality - you taker off another day, live it, then it is gone. But things do happen all in a day, even if modern communication has shrunk the world enough that all days and nights around the world bleed into each other. One essence of magic is "co-incidence", things happening at the same time, events connected by time. I've been writing about this magical reality throughout this gagablog, I think with some success though through contorted means. But I felt like twisting things around and together to find hidden connections between them that "prove" magic, even though the nature of magic is to remain mysterious and unproven. I feel good in doing this, like we live in a twisted world and it takes some more twisting to untangle some of it, but I also feel it has been very confusing at times. Here is going to be one of the simplest and hopefully easiest to follow gagablogs so I will get on with it, "stop spitting on the handle and get to hoeing" as Tennessee Ernie Ford said on The lucy Show.

This edition is not going to be about Gaga as the Goddess showing the emergence of a new magical reality like all the other ones, this is about something much simpler and easier to understand. I've been thinking about this idea for a week or so, since the first US government shutdown in 17 years and since Gaga came right out with it and said directly that she is our Dorothy, Glinda, and Wizard. In these weeks I also found a couple of statues at the thrift store that I think are Quan Yin and once again the universe is confirming this theme. A goddess takes care of things, nurtures us. THE Goddess cares for all creation - I don't know what makes that so hard to say, I suppose because insisting on one goddess above all others seems to venture in the same direction as getting the gender wrong and all the evil that can lead to, but I'm not particular either way. For Me, Gaga has always represented the highest Goddess imaginable, the goddess of love and art and inspiration, magic itself. But even if someone wants to see her in a lesser role she is still taking care of "her creation" even if she is not responsible for All Creation. I give her credit for that, not to put pressure on her to fix everything but because I truly believe that is the power of art and the Artist is Divine - like buddha, though, or Jesus, or the goddess in any other form - divinity comes through all of us, some just sing it more clearly.

The point is that a god or goddess takes care of things. Taking care is one of the main roles that divinity plays. Taking care of things is good, it is almost the definition of goodness, and one reason we have our imcomprehensibly powerful dieties taking care of things is because there can never be too much care, it can and does go on infinitely and we can alwas find more ways to be more caring, it can never be overdone. Dieties are fashioned out of or are the ones that fashion our highest ideals - we might assume that we are not wholly good but we can envision absolute goodness, call it god or goddess, and aspire to more of it, to be closer to that ideal. I recently had a revelation that the patriarchal focus of the Bible could be to contradict the primal male tendency to kill babies - I know that sounds terrible but I read some science report that traced the development of partnering in apes to protecting one's young from other males. These males would kill unguarded babies to reduce competition. This sounds horrible and of course we aren't like that but when I thought "why don't women kill babies, why is the men?" it seemed obvious - which made me then consider that maybe the Bible was to teach a ideal vision of "Fatherhood", exemplified by the -gasp - even MALE god who was loving - and even if it left some gaps and created other problems by being so male-dominated that is still a few steps improvekment over baby-killing. If this sounds too simple bear with me, because one of the problems we have talking about certain ideas is we get too complicated before we are ready and end up arguing about complexities when we could be agreeing about simplicities. Goverment is another entity that takes care of things - we can argue about which form is best or whether or not it actually does a good job taking care of things, but beneath it all there are certain things to be taken care of that we create or accept government in order to take care of them, and whether or not it does a good job is another issue. In America we often claim to have the "best" form of government or at least the best ideal of government that, even imperfectly realized, still is better than other forms with "lesser" ideals. I did not beleive in democracy when I was a kid because it seemed to be bearing some evil fruit through the years - not because of the ideals but because it was corrupted. But I assumed there would be some improved form of government to arise, and I still believe in the Oz ideal. But the Oz ideal is not undemocratic, just includes the idea that the greatest public good can be perfectly known by a girl ruler.

I did not want to get too much into this here since I'm writing a lot about it in my Oz magic book, but this just made me notice another issue in our democracy: even though we have the ideal of government "by the people, for the poeple, and of the people", we end up with career politicians, I guess because no one else wants to do it, or we all assume they have some special skills or training, when it is obvious that many or most of them are terrible at what they are supposed to do, though they may be great at getting donations, etc. But the idea that "the greatest common good" can be known, understood, and implemented by a young girl has a powerful message: good is easy and simple, if something is so difficult and hard to understand that only certain people can do it, they are ticking you. It's the whole priests vs populace dichotomy that has existed in most religions and it is the same thing that makes us say "politicians" and the "people", two separate groups, even though we are supposedly running our own governement, it is supposed to all be "us".

The truth is, if we can accept that things don't have to be as complicated as we have made out, if we realize that all this complication only serves to enrich a few people who are tricking the rest of us, we can get focused on doing things much better. We need to just accept our own ideals instead of trying to weasel out of them when we don't live up to them. I've come to believe in democracy more because I have a better opinion of human nature than I did when I was a kid. Basciually I think we are good enough and smart enough to keep improving and rediscover some good things we were led astray from but there are still corrupting influences holding us back. The only good thing is the greater the tension becomes between the good future and the evil holding us back the easier it is to see exactly what is wrong with the evil parts. The first thing I wanted to bring up about the conservative, backward-looking mentality is how they try to criticze the government by calling it a "nanny state", implying there is something wrong with a government taking care of people. Religious conservatives are often stupid enough to claim that charity for the poor is their job, according to the bible they say, so the government should not be doing this, as if there is some kind of fight to be the first one to help the poor. This just isn't the case, there are way too many poor people and not enough help. It is really stupid, but happens all the time, that conservative, lie-and-call-themselves "christians" say the governemnt cannot provide charity because that is their job but if they were doing the job well there would not be hungry people, or even poor people at all. I think it is all to keep the military going, because so many people join out of desperation, they have to keep the population desperate to fill the army, and the prisons, because they have it set up to make money off of that, too - the government "taking care of people" seems to be fine with conservatives as long as "taking care of people" means killing or incacerating them, but never helping anyone.

This is the precise inversion of intention, weaseling out of our ideals, that is really responsible for all the continued evil in todays' world, in America and around the world. The News of Today, today, November 4th where the sun has come up, or the end of 11-3 in Hawaii I guess, as I write this: Morsi. the deposed President of Egypt, goes on trial. The Syrian governemnt continues to kill and starve its people even as progress is made removing their chemical weapons. The American government is no longer shut down and the fallout has republicans with the lowest apporval ratings in history. Obama and / or the NSA is facing criticism worldwide for spying on everything, everywhere. The highest-profile bullying story I have ever heard of has just broken, with a football player leaving the Miami Dolphins over bullying. And we hopefully are nearing a turning point where the Redskins, R-words, will change their name. Millions of people were probably lucky enough to see Gaga perform on the Youtube Music Awards, and far less people were probably lucky enough to see that eclipse on the east coast in the early morning that won't happen for another 172 years. All of these stories, excpt the last one, have a common theme: taking care of things. Gaga cares for us in many ways, but for me the most important is how she mystically supports us, with inspiration and encouragement to follow our dreams and arts. To me this is the core sustainence that we are missing most everywhere else, and she provides. She is our spiritual Mother, and also just like us is herself a monster, a freak to the world and outkast, but all the time I've been focused on how magical and special it is to be a monster and have not put nearly as much emphasis on how important it is that she is our Mother, that she takes care of us. I have not seen it yet, but from what that girl on twitter told me, Gaga thanks her fans and also her lover and gives him, Taylor, a kiss and hug after the performance. This is the good example, the goddess example, of taking care of people, showing people love and encouragement and that you are with them. The other examples, the government examples, are how not to do it: conservatives are willing to shut down the government just to try to keep people from getting healthcare and in fact they don't want the government for anything other than police and military - they want a bully state instead of a nanny state. "Nanny" is supposed to sound bad because it tells you what to do, but on the one hand "government", the definition of the word, is "telling what to do" and self-government is basically self-control. The only reason we ever need police and military is people not controlling themselves properly but the real solution to this is to provie the resources and methods and examples for all people and nations to exhibit self-control - and lead by example. The Syrian regime is obviously not taking good enough care of it's people, killing them and starving them to quell protest. They are getting rid of chemical weapons, and this is a good thing, and one of the reason it is happening is because of the threat of an American attack - the threat of weapons. While on the one hand it is too bad and shows how far we have to go that threats of force are what we find effective, but on the other hand it shows how far we have come that the threat of force was sufficient, along with communication, to change the course of events instead of actually using force. This is a step in the right direction but only a step on a long road. Still, there is a bus of nonviolence always going down that road much fatser if we just want to hop on instead of walking step by step. This is because we see a truth in what happened in Syria that points to a greater truth: weapons are really only good to convince someone of the mistake of using lesser weapons - but the most powerful weapon is not one that destroys. The most powerful "weapon" is the truth and the truth will win over any amount of violence - the truth belongs to the people and you can't kill everyone. The Syrian regime will topple because it is not taking care of it's people. Mubarak was overthrown in Egypt because he did not take care of the people, and killed them when they protested, just as Assad has been doing but getting away with it. When the Egyptians elected Morsi, he could have done more to respond to the entire population instead of just the Muslim Brotherhood and the mistakes he made got him thrown out and arrested, including repeating his predecessors mistake of killing protestors. I heard Morsi's communications director give an interview on the BBC on the way to work, and he was comparing the fact that Egyptians complaining that Morsi did not represent them to Americans saying the president is only for the Democrats or Republicans. There is a comparison to be made but our presidents don't kill the opposing protestors and at least the democrats are trying to reresent and include everyone and people who oppose that are just assholes. In America we are suposedly "taking care" of our citizens by spying on everyone. Propenents would say you have nothing to worry about if you aren't a terrorist and critics would say "you are treating me like a terrorist!" or "so does you spying on me mean you think I'm a terrorist?" The ethics of spying are one thing but the whole idea of "terrorist" goes far deeper: of course as long as there are people evil and crazy enough to commit violence we should do everything we can to stop it (isn't that all the argument we need to enact gun laws? Who argues against that except those same crazy, evil people?) But the idea of being called a terrorist brings up important things about our expectation to be taken care of. If you aren't planning terror, you presumably have nothing to worry about someone spying on your phone - then if some thing happens that does cause you trouble, not only do you have to deal with that problem, someone stealing your business information or something, but you also are inclined to feel like you have been treated like a terrorist - you aren't a terrorist but your rights were revoked just as if you were. If nothing bad ever happens because you are being spied on, but just ebing spied on makes you feel like a terrorist, well that isn't very nice - but it's also not the worst thing ever. What I'm getting at is the government says it is "taking care of people", doing it's job. Who does it take care of? It's people - but they could be all over the world, or all the people of the world can be considered "the people" that every governement is working together to protect from "the terrorists", as seems to be the global trend. One reason there is hypocricy in the outcry about spying is that it is really different countries sharing information, not just the US spying on everyone. Maybe no population knows how much it is spied upon and instead of admitting it some other countries would rather just blame America. Anyway, Bush should get the blame for it since it was his program and Obama should be credited that all we know of that he had to do with it is shut offending parts of it down. But deeper than all this is what it means to be a terrorist, or more importantly what it means to be a "person" instead - because no matter what nationality, the implication is "government", somebody's government, is going to protect you from the terrorists. Hopefully one day there will be no terrorists and everyone will be "people" but what does this time tell us about ourselves? Supposedly that we value all people, and no matter where you live or anything about you - unless you are a terrorist - you have rights and value. This means everyone should expect to be cared for and valued. We imply that we believe this and that we all have a common enemy, the terrorists, but when we aren't worried about actual terrorism we manage to find ways to treat other people as less valuable, based on any trait of difference. The trick is to find a way to include even the "terrosists" and crazy, evil people in the whole group of "people" who expect to be valued and cared for. What would a rich person feel about being given a free meal? One problem in America is that so many of our crazy, evil people are rich and don't feel motivated to connect with "the people" but feel threatened by everyone and keep ther wealth in gated communities and evil politics that only serve one group. This is the same mistake Morsi made, and while in America we have been making that mistake all along there will finally be a tipping point where people throw off that kind of rule. In the meantime it is sad for them because the isolation of avarice is far worse than the community of poverty.

In football, the Dolphins players, including team leaders, weren't taking care of each other and the official  leadership was not taking care of the situation. The problem is probably one that happens far more often than the public becomes aware of, bullying is insidious in our culture and shows up in most every venue. But the lack of leadership, of governance, to take care of the situation is what is making it national news and tranishing their image. The tarnish on the R-word's image is turning it into all tarnish since the controversay has gone on for decades and now that it is in the natioanl debate they are still using the same insensitve arguments to keep the name. I wrote a speech on why Georgia should not have the Rebel Flag in our state flag and it is the same issue - you can't honor people by offending them. In this case it is a good analogy for America - the racist is in power, insisting on keeping the name, but the country is changing so that market adn social forces will force a name change. The owner will either have a change of heart of end up selling the team as obstacles pile up to keep it from doing good business. Or I could just say the Ghost Dance is being fulfilled. These football examples are smaller versions of the same thing: government that does not take care of things gets changed or removed, or at least bad press. The new pope is a good example of this, too: the scandals had gotten bad enough to force the resignation of the last one but the new one is actually going in the right direction. The other day I heard he kicked out a bishop who had made lik an 80-million dollar mansion because the guy was not being sensitive to poverty.

The debate over healthcare, or frakking or global warming or military actions - pretty much any debate iun whcih the republicans are involved on Team Badguy - shows where we are as a country. We have some sort of "issue" with the very idea that government can take care of things. A year after the devestation of Hurrican Sandy people are still waiting for relief aid because it took months to approve it due to republican obstruction. Making obstacles to disaster relief was unheard of before, and this is one of the clearest examples of "governemnt taking care of things." The way to take care of things the best is without greed or prejudice or favoritism. Taking care of things is good, and government is good for doing it, and is better and better the better it gets at taking care of things. This does not mean making all decisions for us, because of course we are at our best and healthiest when we make our own decisions based on our best possible well-being. But there are some decisions we don't need to make: there does not need to be a loaded gun on every crosswalk, for example. There is not one, so we don't have to make the decision "do I use this? why is this here?" or take any chances accidentally using it - but how restricted should they be? Maybe we shouldn't actually make decisions regarding healthcare, either - or maybe being wealthy should not give us options other people don't have, because maybe healthcare is a basic right that everyone can expect and that should be good enough for all. And maybe, locally, nationally, and worldwide, we could axtuall live up to a standard that government can be good, will be good, and that no decision is too complicated that a kind young girl couldn't come up with the best solution to it. When a child is confronted with the problem of hunger, he or she might say "feed everyone then." Adults who "know more" might be inclined to say "it's not that easy" but maybe we need to unlearn some of the things we know and find ways to make it happen if "even a child" can see what needs to be done. We can figure out the how, if we believe in the why.

These ideas are all based on non-exclusion. In governement, including the widest variety of views that represent the most people will form the best governement. We seem to be working on this worldwide and maybe are due to finally overcome national suspicions and rivalries. Maybe the NSA scandal will help bring about a new era of trust and cooperation. We make mistakes and we get better and most of what holds us back is fear of this kind of change or fear it won't happen, that things will "get worse." But people who think things are okay as they are are just isolated from huge amounts of suffering in the world, and the truth of that will win out in the end. Some governements and institutions will get better at including more people and doing a better job at taking care of everyone. Gaga is the ideal example because, like Jesus example of the kingdom of heaven being a good shepherd, leaving he flock of 99 to find the sheeo who was lost, Gaga brings all the outkasts together, all the ones who have artistic or sensitive natures and have thereby felt rejected by the courser world, Gaga takes us in and says we will forge that more personal, loving world through our art, and I'll take care of you along the way.

I love you so much, Mother Monster, and thank you so much for all the love and support you show me, even before you know who I am, just because you know there are people like me out there who haven't had a place in th world but we're making the world as good as it can be, a paradise, Oz world where everyone has a place and is taken care of.