gagablog 112: Aura - Burqa - the Magic of Separation

I heard twenty minutes or so of Radio this morning, KUVO 89.3 FM in Denver, the Oasis in the City, public jazz station, I've been listening to for weeks. Pretty much everything I heard deserved mention here. It started with a news story about Germany considering banning full face coverings, which of course made me think of Aura since I was writing about it last night. Since I knew I would write a whole edition I went on facebook to share my last one, since this could be out in a few hours, and a group chat I found myself in convinced me to do a fairy magic workshop at Denver Pagan Pride next week. So I'm playing Artpop again and writing this. A moment ago I decided I would play the Boy George cd I got after this, to make magic for them to meet, him and Stefani, and then she sang "just ask your gay friends their advice" - then I met a gay friend I had been estranged from for a year and we made up in a chatbox. Culture Club is coming here in October or November and I really want to go, and Artpop ended while I chatted so I'll replay it as I write and then put in the other disc. (Now I'm listening to it as I read over and "edit" - "Time" is on, now)

       These were the events on the radio this morning while taking my son to school. The news report said they were considering banning full face coverings in public places in Germany. They said it was the result of the ascension of a right-wing, islamophobic political party. Of course it reminds me of the Republikkkans here, but mostly I thought of Aura-Burqa. I looked it up to correct spelling and sure enough it's the top search result, currently- here is the link to the story from Al Jazeera:  . http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/08/german-minister-proposes-partial-burqa-ban-160819130010768.html

      It's a question of religious freedom and persecution of minorities but it can have the effect of dividing people, in real life, some people will avoid Germany, or other places with biased laws, because of the bias, if they can. Or they will suffer imposition of other values, for no reason other than fear and misunderstanding. I'm not claiming to understand the burqa but I do understand the principle of religious freedom and have been keenly aware of it in the American culture that claims to believe in it but practises a form of deeply entrenched bias. I immediately thought of Aura, of course, and how I had just written about it yesterday and how when it was just a rumor it was called "Burqa." Typing that makes me wonder if "Perfect Illusions" will be the final title of the new single, after all, but I love the rumor and resemblance to our Foxzen album "Curious Illusions."

      The problem is fear and misunderstanding divide people. People are scared of the burqa in one way because they fear feminine power: when Gaga sings "The veil is protection for the gorgeousness of my face" it can refer to protecting her face from the elements and attention but also to protecting the public from her gorgeousness. Why is that a good thing? It gets into issues I could discuss and debate within myself for some time but I've mentioned at least some of this before. The part I want to focus on now is the misunderstanding that the veil is a choice. Helping someone out of oppression and being forced into something is good, and surely some German Muslims could feel a liberation from the veil they didn't dare to seek for themselves, but as I typed that, re-starting Aura to check the lyrics, I got to the part where she says "I'm not a wandering slave I am a woman of choice." Most women are not forced and don't feel forced into wearing the veil, it is their choice, and to deny them this freedom is oppressive. It's also oppressive to say people cannot be naked in public or have different laws for different genders. There is a protest  coinciding with Denver Pagan Pride this year where women are going topless to protest the biased laws. They just happen to be meeting at Civic Center Park where we hold the festival. The problem with these laws is not just the effect they have on people living there, the decision that we don't want to understand each other but force assimilation out of fear, but they effect the whole world and people's perceptions of each other. Even if this does not pass, the story gives Germany a bad image and people will avoid it. The radio reported that one reason they are addressing this is because of thousands of refugees coming to Germany. Even deeper than that, as "Church of the Poison Mind" comes on, is that it affectes huge numbers of people's perception of "others" all around the world, on "both" sides - it increases the idea that there are "both" sides when the greater truth is that we are all on the same side. This relates to so many problems, of war and international politics, but on the face of it is the veil and I have something new to say about the magic of Separation.

       As Gaga sings "Goddess of Love!" I am about to type that I always talk about the magic of Love "but" now I want to talk about the magic of Separation. I actually should say "loving separation" but there are other, good kinds of separation between people that don't seem so "loving." Banning people's beliefs and expressions is so unloving, though, that you know you have gone wrong. You know your whole society, or major parts of it, have gone horribly wrong when bigoted ideas and policies become so popular as they have in Germany, the U.K., and America lately. And they have always had power,these have always been biased, oppressive systems. The difference is the Future threatens that power structure and they are exerting themselves, with violence and fear-based policies, to defend an old order that is doomed to be replaced by a more egalitarian one. You can't force everyone to be together, to be the same. You can encourage more understanding, more connection, by being welcoming to it and willing to learn more about others, to change yourself as well as expecting others to change.

     This policy and other hateful, fearful policies that oppress certain groups have the effect of separating people in a bad way. In this case it is all over a veil that:"separates" people, individually, in a personal way - presumably, hopefully only by the choice of the woman who wears the veil. But this is a choice and a personal magic that should be respected, like any other religious choice or any other fashion choice. I don't mean to demean either of those categories by connecting them like that, they obviously are connected because we are talking about fashions that conform and denote religious beliefs. I hope we can have the same courage to protect other religious expressions as we do to protect "our own" and I hope this attitude will also include fashion, art, and all expressions. The veil, like any fashion, like any art, is a choice of expression, a filter to address the world. Like your social media account. People have the need to express themselves and in a variety of ways. All expressions are both ways of connecting with others and, magically, veils for covering ourselves. Connections themselves are also separations, they establish a connection, at an ideal distance, between the wearer and viewer, between the artist and audience. This is how close you look at this painting, this is how surprised you are by this meme, this is how much this costume reveals, this is how much this music makes you danse, danse, dance, (thanks, fairies) or sit back and relax, or march or whatever. This is how much this story pulls you in, to it's characters, to yourself, or takes you along a journey that takes you out of yourself, or into yourself in a whole new way. My friend just mentioned that he was spacey, felt like he wondered what to do, then he suggested he might go save Atlantis, which made me ask if that was back in time or underwater, both, he said, and I reminded him of the part of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea where he surveys Atlantis. "Tailor these clothes to fit your guilt" she just sang as we light another. After this playing, since this part has the most to do with Artpop/ Aura I will put the Boy George back on. (I ended up listening to Artpop more but am on the Boy George cd as I read over this, now at Karma Chameleon and my friend is marvelling at how many big hits were him - I grew up with him - and part of my explanation of how you would hear so many was their own popularity at the time and the other was the increasing likeliness they show up in new media for various reasons including more depictions ot "the 80's" but I mention it because the "increase and collectivity" of it, into the future, is an analogy for Fairyland, to me.)

        In this case the magic of separation, of fashion, expression, art, is that it recognizes that we all are connected, we all see each other and influence each other, but our expressions are the way we choose to conduct or restrict those connections and those are the rights of who we are. ("Victms we know so well shine in your eyes when we kiss and tell" Boy George started singing at the start of this paragraph as I am reading this over.) I hope my art, music, and writing, and the way I interact with people, will attract people to me. ("Wishing there was some kind of heaven" - Victims again during reread) And I hope their art, etc, and appreciation of mine will cause us both to grow and change. The same is true for understanding other cultures. You have to have interaction to learn from each other ("even though she knows she's misunderstood" she just sang) and the best interactions are ones that are respectful to everyone, not putting some people at a disadvantage. (when I heard the second verse it is "they" kiss and tell and I wonder if I got it wrong, "we", the first time, or if it's just like that. "Feel like a child on a dark night, Wishing we could spend it together.")

       The next thing on the radio that got my attention was a groovy jazz tune by a group I forgot the name of but they described them as young musicians. The song was called "Double-consciousness" and was dedicated to W. E.B. Dubois. I've never read his work and my first instinct was that I need to read him. Also it made me curious what "double consciousness" could refer to. I have no idea, in the context he might have used it, but it makes me think of my recent writings about "I and I and I" and makes me want to explain that a little more. My impression is the Jamaican use of "I and I" where Americans might say "you and me" is a recognition of the deep level of sameness we experience. Gaga just sang "make deals with every devil in sight" and what I mean by adding a third "I" is to recognize "oneself" and "others" and equal and same but also remembering those "other i's" within us, as well as other people besides the "two" of you, present or various degrees of unpresent, away, passed away, ancestors, spirits, fairies, sprites, animals, elements, and everyone. I and I and I is all of us, but any "double-consciousness" that can free us from the "us and them", Me versus You mentality this bullshit world is based upon is good for us, a step towards Magic. "I think we - I think we'd have a good time" she just sang. You and I, I and I, more togetherness is good. Us versus them, with us or against us, is bad. We can turn all these misunderstandings into sources for greater, deeper connection if we just attempt to increase our consciousness or double it. I suspect there could be a negative connotation to double-consciousness, too, like having to act certain ways to appease a restrictive society. In this case it relates to the veil and that's all I will say about that before I get going again.

       So at this point I was already planning to write this and then the guest host on KUVO, Rodney Franks, spilled this anecdote. He moved to Denver in 1991 from Kansas City, to Broadway and Ellsworth, and the other host commented that it was ground Zero, which I take to mean the middle of the city at the time when Denver was about to start blowing up and transforming into what it is becoming and has come a long way already. He said he wanted to play the next song, from 1991, by Poncho Sanchez, from his Cambia album. I missed the name of the song but he explained why he wanted to play it. ("Ill Tumble For Ya" is on in the background as I reread, now) He said when he moved here the locals had a phrase they greeted each other with and it was "Hey Bud." I thought this was awesome, both because I never heard it before and because it is ironic that this became Bud Central since legalizing weed here. The song starts with someone cheering a greeting in Spanish then a reply of "Hey Bud!" Maybe he lived here, too, maybe it was just coincidence, but especially since it was the same year, because he chose the song because of that connection, I felt I should mention it. The previous song prompted me to put DuBois on my reading list, this one prompted me to write about the irony of using the word "Bud." But I guess that was all I was going to say, besides maybe giving credit to weed for bringing people together, magically.

      Then I came home to type this but before I did I shared my last one to facebook, since I hope to have this out in a few minutes, just a few hours later. And of course I got into some conversation there and I'm glad I did. At first it was a group chat with some fellow Bernie supporters who are into magic, only one was really active but we had some laughs and decided to hang out and smoke some weed sometime. Then I saw a post from that friend I had been bitchy to and lost, commented on it, sent him a message and apology and made up with him. That was really nice. Then I heard from the girl I like online, who I've had a few chats with in recent months but more sparsely. I need to call my friend who could be coming any day now to visit, too, and I can't wait. But all of this is to say that while I intended to write this, just about :"Hey Bud!", before any of this happened, it was kind of cool that I had more friendly interactions than I usually ever have, all once after the other. I guess this can be expected if you have been offline for a few weeks, too, but it was nice, I was glad about it, and liked how it related to the magic of hearing about and deciding to write about "Hey Bud." Social media can be awesome, it is one of these filters like art or veils that help us choose how we interact with each other and who we become. The more we can feel comfortable expressing who we really are, in certain contexts, environments, or with certain people, the more we will all grow and become who we really can be, the best of ourselves. Like the art we have a duty to make if we have a talent for it, making good art, magic, and love leaves less space for the bad stuff to come through. It's a service to all of us. And standing up for every way that each individual and culture prefers to do this is the best way to benefit from all of our wonderful diversity and learn things about ourselves and "others" we never would have learned before.

       I guess I was going to tie this into the idea of separation in relationships or even taking a break, separating in / from a relationship. I just don't even want to go there, now, I am glad my lover and I are getting along and feel better just giving her space and accepting that it isn't me, she is just mostly stressed with all her obligations to her craft, career and the community. I want to be able to help her with it, or at least relieve the stress, but sometimes the best thing you can do, for love, is allow some space. I have trouble recognizing that but I'm learning it better. It helps me to lose myself in my own work, art, writing, and music, especially, but even if I'm not "feeling it" it helps to have this new habit, increasing in the last few years and really appreciated this year, of reading books. I think I will do that, now, so I can find out what happens in Wildfell Hall, then read Morrissey's autobiography and get a copy of Dubois (in editing spellcheck just suggested Dubious, Dubs, Daubs and Dobs) and I also am reminded of Black Elk Speaks which has been on my shelf for years but I only read a couple of chapters a few months ago, in the middle about the killing of Crazy Horse. I like how books set a pace, like a kind of calendar-soundtrack, and a time-period's own pace and peculiar time as well, especially in the case of these classic books I have been reading, jumping around through the centuries. They both fit into and color the time on your calendar in which you read them, your life at that time, or times, and have their own time and pace and period, too, and this makes for very interesting fun when looking for magical connections between the two. Sons and Lovers was Too Close for me to put down and is maybe still too close for me to process. I felt like I was in such a hurry to write about it when I was reading it then as soon as I finished I gladly dove into Wildfell Hall and I appreciate the downgrade in intensity, so far, and how much I just relate to her phrasing, I love reading and reading as long as she wants to write, just as I feel impressed by anyone who suffers through this. And I want to spare you and move along, since I think you get what I mean.

       We, all of us living together and all of us passed on before, who we access through art or just spiritually, we are all in this dance together. We swirl around each other, meet and part. When the music gets really good we all get into it, there are no wallflowers and everyone feels at home in the rhythm. That reminds me of the first Foxzen song we ever made, then lost, but found the music for and just need to finish recalling the lyrics, or find the sheet, and re-record them, "Free Inside the Groove." I'll stop talking about what I will do, now, and  just do it. I know I keep saying that, here, but this is a veil that only I can choose to remove, in my own time, and I kind of have to discover more who I am and be more me before I do it, but I feel closer and closer to I and I and I all the time, I think we're coming together, and likely in unexpected ways and ways that exceed our wildest dreams. Thanks for reading, please share and comment however you like! ("It's a miracle / dreams are made of emotion" played as i re-read that firct conclusion!)

       Ohm, and in case I didn't clarify, the idea of the magic of separation, within the vast magical world of Love as everything truly is, is that we are never "too far" even if we feel that way in heartbreak. There are other, closer, better loves and other better ways to re-unite with a lover, sometimes. But mostly we can preserve love longer by respecting each other's boundaries and pace at fitting us into them as much as we can and we can achieve greater love and loves by expanding our own boundaries. We are lucky if we can do this with one person for the depth these processes can achieve but usually we learn from each relationship and learn different things in new relationships as we apply those lessons, that seems to be the pattern most people have. The more we choose the amount of separation we want the more we can feel trust to build more intimacy and move beyond those fears and close those distances. But we have to respect and allow the differences, first, and I think that is where a lot of relationships, between people and cultures, go wrong. In a violent society we are all trained to look for differences as an excuse to abuse each other - at least to allow an abusive system to continue instead of protesting it and changing it. But in a loving society we look at differences, even disagreements, as chances to learn more about each other, to change and grow and help each other more effectively. It's good for all of us and it just takes a change of perspective. All of the art world calls us to this Loving World conclusion, like a fairyland destination in the future or just on the other side of our identity shelters. We take these veils down for each other in Love and we put them up, art included, to filter some people out and attract others. We can't be forced into loving and accepting each other and no one would want to, truly. We can only put up masks that attract and repel each other at our desire, and learn to make them more the way we want them to work as we feel the freedom to discover who we are in doing this, and why. We have to have the freedom to be different, to be separate, in various ways, in order to experience the pleasure of discovery and coming together in love, or even the comfort of staying apart when such is the case. But we are all connected and we can make the most of this, even with the idea of intentional separations.

       We have separation between nations and communities, sometimes so drastic they can be exploited by merchants of weapons to promote and escalate into war. Within nations we have separations between people, usually as part of a system that is unjust to many in order to favor a few. All of that separation needs to be addressed and the evils it causes need to be ended. Between individuals there are separations that need to be respected, boundaries and differences of values. This is appreciating the magic of separation in a world of interconnected, magical love. At the best it is just playing coy or a flirtatious "push", this magic of separation. When it's not between two people in love it's a respect of boundaries and differences, a chance to stay comfortably apart and unchanged or a chance to come together and learn and change from the experience. But it's also between people within us, a magical boundary that allows us to feel like "one" person and separate from others. This can be useful and dangerous. This applies to "others" other so-called "Individuals" in the world and the Other aspects of ourselves, since we all act with different groupings of personalities and struggle in the process of reconciling that with the usually stable "I" we feel. This is a reason for respecting the magical use of the veil even if it is used both to draw us in and keep us out. We use them within ourselves like tapestries to make rooms in a house but we can open up within ourselves, too and overcome divisions within us and become more whole. It is usually because of these divisions within us, in my case insecurity mostly, that we project divisiveness on others and end up driving away the people who are closest to us. But we can overcome that in ourselves and between us. It all comes from recognizing the magic and use of separation and space even in this experience of a time-field where we can't help but tend and lust towards the more eternal experiences of overcoming those bonds and separations between us. We have to keep making them, not for harsh drama when they get out of control, but to enjoy the play of drawing each other in and attracting new loves and ideas to grow, even in directions that we, presuming ourselves the maskmakers, have not anticipated, expected, or could even imagine. The more we look at our own veils as attempts to shield ourselves from these potential futures, the more we see them like Curtain Number One, Two, or Three from Let's Make a Deal, just shielding us from opportunity, the more we will be eager to build the courage to open them. ("Miss me Blind"just concluded with the re-read. Now I will exit before I get caught up in "Move Away": "Spirit changed the conversation, steppin stones across the land, I never wanted to be a hero, I never wanted to be a man - I hurt ya darlin, I made you cry, I hurt ya darlin, don't ask me why" - okay, I won't resist, that's too good: Spirit is like the 3rd Eye, I mean, Third I in I and I and I, us and More Us, everyone together, or some people/spirits in particular - stepping stones are usually for streams, across the land is not necessarily manipulation, bad, or wrong but it is peculiar, even out of place, like an imposition on relationships. Or it could be spirit calling him further, away from that love, in a good way that just had to be, laying out a path. Not wanting to be a hero, not wanting to be a man, these can mean different things and I don't want to get into the "move away"/Judgment Day part, in discussion or in life, despite all my claims to appreicate space and veils!!! But the aspect of not wanting to hurt the other, and needing space to keep from doing so, not being able to explain it, not being able to be close, that could relate to not wanting to be a "man", I certainly have always associated the aggressive, furstrated spirit with masculinity and relate to wanting some way around it, some way to not feel so physically dangerous like a bomb, or like I'm on a mission like a hero. But I do want to understand, personally, want to overcome and settle with whatever hero I am meant to be, not any one imposed upon my by social ideals but the one that can change the world and change myself and my experience of it, and whoever I can share that with. "Everyone must feel as I do, love is just to be close to you" Boy George got to, "Love is love is everything to me" by the time I got to let myself go - "everything you say must bring her closer to you")

       Thanks, everyone, for forgiving me and being nice to me and for reading my stuff, and thanks for any criticism, I will take it as a challenge improve myself and become more accessible - I will get better and make some good art with your support!

gagablog 111: I and I and I; Perfect Illusions and Curious Illusions

I've been mulling this edition over in my head for two or three weeks and haven't been online in that time. One reason I haven't written is the roller coaster of my love relationship, so many ups and downs I feel like odd days we have been breaking up and even days we've been starting over, lately. So I signed into facebook for the first time this month and see the news that Gaga is releasing a new single, "Perfect Illusions", and that it is about the highs and lows of modern ecstasy. Our first album for our band Foxzen came out at the start of this year. We got the title, "Curious Illusions", in a hurry, selecting at random - magic - bibliomancy-style, from the book "Heart of Midlothian." I have no idea what Gaga's relationship has been like but if this song is about their highs and lows I feel like we could relate. I kind of wish I had written this yesterday, or earlier today - things have been great between us since Sunday night (it's now Wed night.) We last argued Sunday morning, then again a few hours ago. I assume that, like a spell, the completion of these editions will encapsulate an "era"and I can't wait for this "breaking up / making up"  - like a Franklin's Tower Alarm Bell  - period to end. And more and more media I encounter continues to echo the same messages.
     
       For months I've been looking forward to this , number 111, because I like the number magic it suggests. I always hoped it would be an especially mystical one. Maybe it will be, maybe it is, coinciding with the announcement of Gaga releasing a new song, scheduled for September. I decided to title it "I and I and I" recently because it signifies our collective consciousness. The beauty of love is we experience ourselves, together. The horror and pain of heartbreak is the focus on this separation, which is a cruel illusion. Overcoming that illusion is bliss, feeling trapped or isolated or oppressed by feeling "different" and separate from others, feeling the illusion is real, hurts. I want to say that the presumed "end" of the Bernie Sanders campaign, with the theme of "Not Me, Us,".could be seen as the failure of the idea of Collective Good, the failure of Democracy. It's not really a failure of either ideal, just reveals how bad and entrenched the system is against which Good is striving. It seems to be a failure but truth and goodness will win in the end. Bernie could still end up being our nominee, even - I know they still talk about replacing Trump, somehow. You could react to the perceived "failure" of Collective Good by saying "If 'Not Me, Us' doesn't work, then it's 'Every Man for Himself.'" We could, in bitterness, turn to ourselves, to isolation and apathy towards any possibility to change the system. But we won't. Even if "we" aren't united in the same way we were, even if we are more "I and I and I" than "We," we still have the connection we felt, as a Movement. Even if our relationship is over, as lovers, we still have what we had - there's some famous movie line about always having some "place." Often at the end of relationships people say they need to focus on themselves, not in a  selfish way but resolving the inner I's and internal conflict between them. I wanted to use the "I and I" that I hear they say in Jamaica, too, to convey this united feeling, but add an I, especially for relationships, because I feel it can be much easier to deal with complex ideas like relationships, art, and magic if we consider ourselves more mutiple-y.

       I have a number of media examples from these last weeks that convey these ideas, including the two-part Dear John I just watched as I typed this intro. I have notes for most of them. But I want to pick up where I left off from the last edition. The most magical thing that happened was meeting David Sherry again, online in a Bernie Sanders group, the day after I wrote gagablog 109 where I mentioned him, more than a year after we "randomly" met and never had any contact since. Maybe I did not focus on it enough but it was a magical message when I met him in the first place because our band Foxzen had just made our first songs and meeting him, a successful, cool musician, was a sign to me that I was on the right track. Now I look at meeting him again as magical encouragement to continue the musical path. I don't know if I mentioned it before so I apologize if I'm repeating it but I returned a disc I found at the disc golf course by my house and the guy had a passenger in his car when he picked it up. I mentioned Foxzen and the passenger said he was in a band, too, (called Think!, I think) and they were going on tour opening for Megadeath next month - this was a few weeks ago but continued the theme, after meeting Snoop, that I was getting closer to musical spheres. Then my brother came to visit and I spent most of my time with him. When he flew back to Georgia he met the guitarist for Cracker on the plane, I think, and they became friends. I feel like these are all magical examples of music bringing us together. While it took weeks for me to start writing this, I feel the timing is magical, too, since I just heard about Perfect Illusions today, the news just came out yesterday, apparently, and I finally got the voicemail from my brother about meeting the guitarist after a two-week tech delay. I keep finding an old note card from April 28th 2016 about a dream where Peter Murphy is singing then on the second verse someone is singing along, a huge screen came on behind him and it is Morrissey in a dark studio singing with him. I guess it's similar Morrissey's performance of Tiny Dancer when he was joined on stage by David Bowie. I felt a glimmer of connection there and was reminded how much people talk about Daniel, and some other people, like they are not from Earth.

       The first note I have was from the Burns and Allen Show, replayed in the first week of August. George is talking to the audience, breaking the 4th wall the way only he does, and says "Anyone who has time to journal about his love life isn't really living one." This cut me to the quick. When I do feel in love I fairly burst with stories, images, and songs - but not journals. It's simply a better me, in love, the me I want to be. And I have time to journal because we're Not in love, me and my lover, most of the time, only rarely. I don't want to write at all in this mood but the truth is it is probably always better than arguing with her, just journaling about it, or about whatever, to get out of it safely. I don't really want to talk about the details of heartache and enumerate my failures, I'm sure I make them obvious enough anyway, but I will continue what I took notes on. His next joke was about his little black book where he had all his smoke signals written down - I loved this for the technological magic of it, and the fact that I credit weed smoking for making great connections between people, but just wanted to include it without an obvious connection. He said Minnie-Ha-Ha's smoke signal was always busy. I guess if I want to draw a connection like I expected I would, as I typed this, I would say that while we don't use smoke signals to contact each other like we did in those days we do still use smoke to contact spirits. I'm going to puff a bowl now and continue, it is 4:30 Thursday morning at the moment. The last note I had from that episode is that George was locked in his room, then someone lets him out, then he takes the key and locks himself in and says "I locked it again, this time from the inside." This stuck out to me as a magical sign, too - that i am the one magically locking myself up in here. I get upset when I feel my lover, or the world, is holding back from loving me, in some way or another, but the truth is I probably am the one locking myself up, locking myself away, by my attitude and behaviors.

       I and I and I also refers to a revelation I had about writing, both from the books I've been reading and thinking as a writer. All the characters are "I", are from the writer. When I write these I could start every sentence with "I believe" or "I think" - its all about me and my own ideas. I hope I can somehow get out of myself by mentioning how art (magic) seems to call me out based on the same ideas I'm pondering, or that discussing Gaga, the divine, will touch upon things to which others can relate. The way Gaga, or everything, is divine, is a way of talking about things, an approach to take, that presumes everyone will or can experience the same thing. One in 29 million are the odds of some kind of crash, according to a commercial on right now, it makes me feel like Han Solo navigating my own asteroid field of misunderstood words. But yeah, I wanna connect with people. I do feel like I am a much better songwriter and story writer than I am a journaler, and much better at art, too, but only when I get into it. I've realized I can't hold myself back and only make art when I feel good or in love. I know that, now, and I am building some practise experiencing it. I can even fool myself into thinking I'm in love and access this immense goodness of art and inspiration, but if I can't fool myself it's much harder. And maybe I'm realizing I've been mostly fooling myself, but not even able to do that well enough to make me feel artistic, though I sometimes do. The best thing about the last few weeks, besides the times when we were feeling in love again, was that we wrote four or five songs, finished two of them and my band mate made the music for at least three new ones. The new ones already get stuck in my head a lot and I feel they will all be really good.

       I finished reading "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" around this time and had all sorts of theories about Love I wanted to expound upon based on it's characters. First I want to admit I spent my whole life thinking 20,000 leagues was a vertical measurement. I guess there could be a message that I have misunderstood love in a basic way, seeking highs, verticality, instead of steadiness and safety, longevity. Mostly it was like four different kinds of Love or wills, the four main characters. Nemo loved his destiny, his revenge, his family and hated the loss of them but turned it into a mission, a kind of Love. Arronax is in love with Learning, with the earth. Consiel is in love with Science and classification, but also in shares a love with Arronax as his "servant" that is kind of peculiar. Ned Land is part of this Love in some ways, uniquely sharing their fate and building experience and friendship with them but is more a symbol of the Love of Freedom and "home" in a way. It is interesting how similar the loves of Ned and Nemo are, yet how they have conflicting "goals". I would probably explore all of this much more   -the idea that Nemo is the Will and Ned the Ego, the same tension in two opposite directions in a way, but as soon as I finished it I started reading D.H. Lawrence's "Sons and Lovers" and it completely absorbed me. I read it probably faster than I have read any other book, I couldn't wait to conclude it, much as I am in haste to finish this, to end the "era" it corresponds with and move past these ideas of Love tested and separation of people. Since finishing "Sons and Lovers" I began Anne Bronte's "Wildfell Hall" and feel a kindred spirit with her merely for sentence length. But since I wrote this (now it is Thursday afternoon and I'm rereading before finishing it) I see another common theme developing in Wildfell Hall about other people's opinions and social awareness standing in the way of love. The reason I felt so affected by Sons and Lovers is the obstacles to Love that was so close reminded me too much of my own situation. The characters and relationships were too much like myself, like my own, to be comfortable or remain in the limbo of being half-read - I didn't want to be on that journey with Paul that I was already on, in a different way, in my own life. I felt too much like him, but with some important differences, too which made me occasionally switch and identify with the other part of his relationship,his lovers.

       The only magical things I noted from "20,000 Leagues" was a slight musical connection. I played a Cocteau Twins album and a few minutes later read the line of the book where they see an "ice-blink" and he describes it. I never knew what an ice-blink was. The only other time I ever heard that word was the Cocteau Twins song "Ice-Blink Luck." I don't think it was on the album I played - Treasure? - but I don't listen to them often and it was certainly magically notable. Now that I reach for a magical meaning I can't remember what the word means -  like an oasis of ice, like a mirage, where the glare appears to be solid? Am I drawing that conclusion to conform with recent hours of feeling my relationship has been a delusion? I noticed he used the word "you" to refer to himself  - I was on high alert because the timeline of the book reached March 15th, a date I react to because my only other lover in my life broke up with me on that date. I noticed he refers to himself as "you" even though the implied "you" of the rest of the book is Us, the reader. I was thinking about how, from a writer's perspective, all characters are "I", it is the same from the divine perspective - we're always talking to ourselves, whether we write "journals" for ourself or "works" for others, we are all "I". I was nodding off as I read the next part, where he picks up a book and absentmindedly "reads" it then realizes it is his book. He was nodding off, too. It was like the book was a mirror to see ourselves in, like they all are, but as I scraped the coast of dreams while reading this passage I felt like we were seeing each other, and our own reflections, through pages of glass.

       This may have been August 5th, 2016, or the say before, when I saw that Burns and Allen and was reading this part of the book. I know that on that date, the 5th, I was watching Decades, the channel all about commemorating dates through the decades. In 1970 it was the date that Huey P. Newton was freed from jail after massive public protests. They gave a short history of how and why they formed the Black Panther Party, especially noteworthy in today's news climate. On the same date Nixon resigned. And years before it was the same date that the public learned of the death of Marilyn Monroe. "You're what?" "A Witch!" Samantha just said on Bewitched as I type this. I was about to say I concluded there was a theme of revealing things but also the results of a history of strong corruption and evil. I turned the TV off during a Subway commercial and the last word said was "sub" and I closed the book at the end of the next sentence and it was "central staircase" just as I descended the stairs in my house. All this meant to me at the time was that I was sliding into more magical time-spaces, correlating with the world, with Art. I watched a game show rerun of Match Game 78 that day, too, and the challenger had a necklace on that read "Magic", mentioned her boyfriend was in the audience and the host said "well there's the magic." I'm adding this line in the edit, after re-reading this paragraph, and am reminded of the "scathing" Justice Department report on Baltimore police that was conducted since they murdered Freddy Gray two years ago. I was reminded there has been local news about the Commerce City police department in Colorado, an officer fired for repeated fondling of women in traffic stops and another one for another kind of crime and the whole department under some sort of scrutiny. This is the tip of the iceberg for a lot of work we need to do reforming the police departments and it's not going to happen the way it has been "happening", or not happening, all at the whim of the police themselves.

       I'm in love with Art, too, not just girls. Art, the world, has courted and shown love to me, through all this magic and creations and wonder. I've always taken it seriously, like a lesson I don't want to learn, that Gaga says "art won't wake up one morning and tell you it doesn't need you." (the quote is actually more like "tell you it doesn't love you anymore" but I figured the typo revealed something about me - thanks, fairies.) For some reasons I saw myself in the character Paul in Sons and Lovers. I felt like I did want encouragement and support to be an artist, even if I knew the cosmic law was that you Had to Only Believe in Yourself, have No One Else to believe in you, to really become an artist, you Must go through that - I still don't want to. I want someone to love me before I'm and artist and when I'm an artist. But I know I'm being picky, insisting someone love me when I feel certain someone will love me for my art, just because no one is willing to love me in order to produce that art, based upon the promise of it. I feel silly typing that but I feel there is some universal truth in it and I have a few more media examples that relate to the same thing.  But I think my only lesson is to "skip love", for now, and focus on Art.

       There were two episodes of Bewitched one night about a week ago, one where a college intern, Dusty, falls for Darren as a result of magic and another where they were all trapped in the house, did not know whose spell it was so whoever they conjured in could not escape, either. I'd seen the first one before and decided to mention it because Samantha suspects a lovespell has been put on Dusty but since Endora has promised to not interfere she wonders who did it and decides it is "Serena, my cousin, the Love Goddess." Endora says the magic was done "by someone who disapproves of your marriage and wants to make trouble for it." The effect of the lovespell on Dusty is shown by her going from calculating and critical of Darren to being smitten with him and fawning on him. I noted that not because I want mindless adoration but because those are the poles between love and judgment. Love can withstand criticism and judgment, a person can grow more with someone being honest with them and helping them change, but there is a point at which criticism can become stifling to Love. I'm not saying Dusty would have been in love with Darren if she was just less critical, it obviously took a spell, but it just showed how you can overlook anything, everything, when you are in love. I'm not saying I want someone in love with me "because of a spell", forced to be or "in my power", unaware or something, I want magical, natural love. I want criticism and to be held to a better standard, to grow and improve, but I don't want only that or an idea that I can't be any better and must always be reminded of failings. Love is supportive. Just as teachers can be harsh and hard, I'm thinking of the Mr. Miyagi archetype, the tough love is still Love. But mere toughness is not love, if it is not loving, and there is too much emphasis on toughness and not enough on love, in society and in between people's relationships.

       I've seen that episode before, I think it is an early one ("you better believe there is Belvedere, Bewitched, and the Beaver" the commercial just said in the background.) There is a mirror on the wall by the door. In later episodes, including the next one where they are trapped in the house, the mirror has been replaced by a picture of a girl. My Nana has the same picture in her house and has had it all my life. When Samantha is breaking the news that they are trapped in the house to Darren she keeps saying "I love you very much" to mitigate his angry reaction. This is again the theme of Love versus anger and criticism but anger and criticism will win if you insist upon them and we all are habituated to do so, so it helps to have someone repeating love to help us out of that defensiveness and isolation. A commercial for FOX shows had someone saying there were "voices inside the walls" and then they show the model of the house Darren is advertising and how the walls move. Since I see the moving walls as a symbol of changing boundaries in relationships then voices in the walls conjures the idea that spirits, deities, or people in our lives and ourselves, our various selves, set these movable wall boundaries for us. I suspected Tabitha could have done it, inspired by the model house she couldn't play with, and Darren asks if she could have done it and Samantha says "this is Big Witch stuff, not little witch stuff." Now, in the middle of another / the same argument with my lover, I feel like this is saying we are treating this all like little magic, like our words don't matter enough for us to be more careful with them, but it is Big Magic, Love, and can do everything if we just get into it. Endora brings the playground equipment in for Tabitha and since they can't move it they shrink it to go with the house which ultimately inspires Samantha's idea for an excuse for Darren. To me this is simply the value of play and fun, it must be fun and if we focus on fun we can find creative, inspired solutions to all relationship problems and feeling stuck. They conjure Esmerelda thinking it is one of her wonky spells gone wrong and she says she is trying to meet the salad chef of the Intergalactic Playboy Club, Ramon Verona, for a date. This reminds me of Morrissey and his song "Last of the Famous International Playboys" and the fact that I got his autobiography at the thrift store a few weeks ago. I know I should read it, I feel I will certainly relate and find plenty to relate my "egotism" with, while instead I read Sons and Lovers and felt indicted by a piercing depiction of "me." I suspect Morrissey and I could be like Paul in many significant ways and yet took divergent approaches to sex but I really need to read more of what Morrissey says about himself to get better conclusions, just as I need to actually watch and listen to all the other stuff Gaga puts out besides just her music. Samantha calls Dr. Bombay (there is another episode on, now, and Endora just gave a speech to the coven about their founding in 1692) and he says he is coming from a "Bull Session" with his nurse and dropped his cape making a pass at her. This makes me think how he is motivated by love, how the bull session is also bullfight metaphor but in this magical-love dimension he makes a pass at her, instead of her, as a bull, passing him, if he is the one with the cape. This just makes me think of the inversion of power in dominant-submissive relationships, how it is useful to let go, sexually, to overcome the need to be controlling in "regular" life. Bombay tests the pressure in the house with an Atmospheric Oscillator that looks like a cyber-hybrid Tuba. He says the reading is 80 over 60 and it is usually three over four fifths, which I reduce to four thirds being normal and them being at fifteen fourths. He diagnoses that they are victims of vaporlock, due to noncontinuous use of magic since Samantha married a mortal, like magical buildup. I relate this to the creative force, lust and inspiration, when it is suppressed. Bombay is inspired by his own haste and lust for his nurse and knowing he can't undo the spell from inside he slips out under the door as a photograph. For relationships this idea of not being able to find release from inside, while trapped within, applies to the basic need for an "other" to love in the first place and also the frustrations of lengthy partnership leading to a need for an outside, different perspective. Once slipped outside she uses this spell to return to him to his form from the photo: "To make this house conventional make Dr. Bombay three dimensional!"  (As I typed that, this was on the current Bewitched: "though you're only make-believe my love..." Waldo spells to conjure a phantom Samantha, then his mom tries to talk him into going for another girl besides pining for Samantha all the time. A few hours ago the Insider was reporting Hugh Grant advised that discreet cheating was the only way to have a relationship.)  To me the 3-D remark also implies taking these lessons from the screen into our "fuller" lives. ("One of Nathaniel Hawthornes ancestors actually presided at the Salem Witch trials" - from Darren  in the current episode.) Endora says of "Derwin" - or Vice Versa, my note is unclear - "I never thought I'd say this but you've been a big help." She is the one trying to break them up all the time, so from one perspective this could be a sign that even if I am objectionable to some spirit guide of my lover's and she wants to break us up, at rare moments she could actually appreciate me. Or he could be helping break them up by being a doofus. ("Just wanted to meet your husband, see what you see in him" Waldo just said to Samantha.) The model house Darren is using has movable walls - a symbol of changing boundaries in a domestic relationship - but the final conclusion they come to, to justify the delay meeting clients, is a movable roof, as well, so the kids can play outside. It seems to have more symbolic use, a movable roof as a symbol, than it seems like a really good idea. It means to me that we have compromises and in-between states. It means we can shift, move boundaries in relationships and one kind of relationship we can change the dynamic with is the spirit world, our higher selves, the divine, as represented by the movable roof allowing more access to outdoors. Compared to the crisis in Sons and Lovers that Paul and Miriam cannot reconcile their lust with repressive morals the idea is to find some compromise, to move your idea of whether worship is best indoors or in nature, signifying being indoctrinated and being free of this as well. They call Esmerelda in case it is one of her spells gone wrong and she says she is meeting a date on Jupiter. Samantha tells her a gentleman warlock is supposed to call in person. This makes me question my roundabout, magical approach, even the idea that art is the path to love, because I want a more direct route, but the secret to magic is probably anticipating the twists and turns and progress towards goals even when we seem to be going the other way. Esmerelda is worried because her sense of direction is off and she can land on "Mars, Venus, and Pluto but can't hit Jupiter." This stuck out of course due to the planetary themes of Artpop and Gaga's connection with Venus but also the casual connection between the planets in the magical world. It also makes me think of being easily able to access the worlds of Anger, Lust, and Darkness but not easy to change our sense of Authority of Self, represented by the "Head" God Jupiter. In the end they determine the house has become magically vaporlocked and they must distribute metaphysical particles to prevent it  -the problem is that Samantha has not been using her magic because Darren forbids it. So the conclusion is her asking him if she can use magic more often to prevent this. Can she use it "once a day? Once every two days? Once a week? Once in a while?" He frowns at all those suggestions.  To me this is like "how much love can we have?" and maybe we are all vapor-locked into various places by not having enough love, or having too much stagnant, to allow escape.

       It was that day or a few days later, 8-10-16, that I saw another Decades, a biography of Gloria Swanson, and they were showing it because Sunset Boulevard had premiered on that date. I never saw that movie but my friend came by later that day and said he had rewatched it just the night before, on a whim. Neil Diamond was also included on that date, they played an episode of Mannix with him performing at a club called The Bad Scene. He had been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, or won a Grammy, on that date. This of course reminded me of David Sherry, and Groundhog Day, the Bill Murray movie.

       The next day we went camping to see the shooting stars. I had our new song, Well Wisher, stuck in my head all day. It was raining in the afternoon so we watched a Simpsons DVD while we waited. The episode we picked started with a "Rain Delay" black and white cartoon which was magical timing. The next night on TV was the episode where they are taken in by The Leader, the UFO cult, and that was followed by the episode where Lisa loses her faith in church and becomes Buddhist. If I want to sum up the lesson of this I will point out the fabulous fantasies that the Need for Love can make believable and the craving for something real amidst the misrepresentations of Love and Magic (Art) in modern religions. After that I watched Serena the Teenage Witch with an eye for magical clues. There is a snobby girl she is rivals with who wants a new Homecoming Queen Throne for herself but Serena wants to spend the budget on a poetry slam and they have a vote at the school which the rival buys. Serena wants her to admit that she stole and bought the election. I'm on high alert at this point for some magical clues about how to deal with Hillary Clinton since she is the same entitled snob who cheats for her own ends with no regard to anyone else's needs or the community or artistry. And most recently an aide leaked the information that she has dementia, which should be obvious to anyone who sees her read a speech, and he was murdered. We had been discussing that morning why the Bachelor's Canadian Daniel talks about birds so much and I mentioned birds are a common crazy-person go-to. I mentioned the Sanford and Sons where Fred gives the lady at the Feel Good party the suggestion to crow like a rooster and she starts doing it over and over. Serena is in the other girl's head, shrunk and flew in with a spaceship, and gets her to act like a chicken. In the Bewitched that just ended Waldo turns Darren's boss into a crow. Canadian Bachelor Daniel calls himself and others, like Nick, "Eagles" but calls Josh and everything about him "Crow" and calls the women "Pigeons."  We also watched the Simpsons today where Homer gets medical weed, which prominently features crows at the beginning. And the Bewitched episodes I mentioned above were followed by a Mork and Mindy where he makes a reference to a "New Man" which has some relation to an Electric Chicken but my note lack details. When Serena is in the girl's head she considers just making her admit that she stole the election but decides it won't be right unless the girl decides it for herself. Maybe that's a clue we just need to hope for Hillary to step aside on her own. But of course the girl doesn't do it  - though I think they end up getting the poetry slam at the end, anyway, because she hated the new throne. The whole idea of her being inside the other girl's head is a fun way to look at the idea of an "I" and the notion of how deeply we can influence each other. In love we "become" one or experience our oneness in different ways. It's because the rival is a snob, acting superior and separated from everyone else that she is selfish in the first place but this is what she would need to correct before she could "be" Serena, be on the side of Truth and Art and Compassion. It's the same for Bernie and Hillary: she could say everything he said but it won't matter unless they truly came from her, unless she really meant them, unless she was going to go against all her backers and actually do good in the world.

       It's also the same for us in love. We can say the words but they don't matter unless we mean them, unless they are from the heart. In the side-story of that Serena episode her one aunt gives her other aunt "non-love" chocolates that make her disgusted by her lover, the vice-principal. There are two kinds of "possession" going on which bring up these more detailed ways to look at "I and I and I." When Serena is in the girl's head she could be her "I" but instead stays "herself." When the aunt tries to foil their love she gives her chocolates that possess her mind so she thinks she is not in love but the Real Her still is and eventually sees through the magic. I'd like to think it was just a spell keeping us apart, my lover and I, and that we could break through it. Just typing that reminds me that we will, if we want to, but maybe we don't. Maybe it's time to explore other "I's".

       There was a second Serena episode all about her judging people on looks when her green, "witchy-looking" cousin visits. Her aunt has an exercise machine called a "Domina-Tron" and it dominates her with a commanding voice and reminded me of recently seeing the Treehouse of Horror Simpsons where Pierce Brosnan is their automated house who falls in love with Marge. Seemingly without context the machine demands that she "Become Aware!" and that was noteworthy to me. It reminded me of a conversation we had that morning, or in recent days, about people being afraid of robots. My comment was we should worry about programming ourselves better so we don't have faulty, violent people. Once we work that out we won't have to worry about robots going "bad" because we won't have those tendencies or "needs" ourselves -  we won't need robot soldiers or robocops if we don't have soldiers and cops anymore, for example. Since it was on sale for one dollar we downloaded a Wii U game called The Fall. The basic idea is you are an AI unit and you have to subject your human pilot to dangers to unlock survival systems, a growth based upon conflict. In this episode her aunt is inventing things to help the world and is considering which problem to address. Serena walks in as she says "'War'  -I like it!" and replies "since when have you become a Republican?" Later her boyfriend says to her "thanks for your support during my transition to a hideous man-beast" and I believe someone gives someone a heart-shaped rock for a present. I see a connection between man-beast and war, violence, but also with sex: Hillary could be saying the same, thanks for supporting her becoming a man-beast, since she would have the full powers of the greatest war-hawk in the world if she became president. Paul is a beast when it comes to sex in Sons and Lovers, but it's not good. Probably the best connection is with Beauty and the Beast where love makes it a good thing to be a beast, if done in the right way. At the end of the episode her cousin gives her a present, a bullwhip,and says it is a clue to the Family Secret and the other clue is this: "We all have good and bad parts." Until writing this the bullwhip was mysterious to me: I assumed she would use it in some kinky way so it was for her, for love in general. But I failed to see the connection with the "man-beast" idea until typing this, that maybe it is not just for taming herself but the whip is also for taming her man, beast-wise. Either way, if we all have beastly elements then the secret is acknowledging them, appreciating them, making the most of them but in the right context, with some training, some intentional pleasure and pain, symbolized by the whip. On my note card I summed it up that "it is up to Me to make love good" if I am the primary one who claims to believe in love in our relationship. If love, our love specifically, is as good as I say, or can be that good, then I should have the faith in that to not ruin it with doubts or mistrust. But then again if it is all a sham and she doesn't really love me but just keeps me hanging on then that's the reason for the doubts. When I suffer from doubt and despair it seems to be the case but I feel like the better me knows better, knows we are good together but suffer from something more like a non-love chocolate than a mismatch.

       I just realized that the article I read about "Perfect Illusions" said Gaga and Taylor were "taking a break." The last time I saw the news it was that they had broken up, the engagement was off. I guess taking a break sounds less final than a break-up, and the engagement would be "off" for a break, too, if that means it could be on again. Taking a break can be good, but I guess you have to find the good in it. We've basically been taking a break, or trying to, all this year, but I don't want to take a break, I want to be together and make everything better. Still, a few months ago I guess I accepted the idea better, was looking for positive aspects of it, and had a crush on a girl and started writing fairy tales. I was passionately inspired to write them for a few weeks until I decided the crush was a delusion. Still, it helped me get into that fantastic, imaginative zone. I guess I could say I can reach that state with my lover if I can just convince myself, even if she really doesn't feel strongly for me anymore. But the problem is I guess I know it is not true. Or at least, according to how we have been, who we have become, it's not true anymore. And it makes sense why I have been curious about other loves for years now if the main thing keeping us together has been my delusional hope while in reality we've just been unravelling. As the person who does not want to take a break it's not as good a thing as it sounds. For the person who wants a break, fully intending to restore the relationship if possible, it seems fine. For the person who does not want a break, me in my case, it's hard because it seems like breaking up. Maybe this is my chance to deal with my own fears of loneliness. Maybe it's just time after 18 and a half years being exclusively with her to be with someone else. Anyway it's time to finish this, she just left after getting upset with me again. I feel like she just lies and says she cares about me, or could care about me again in the future, in order to manipulate me. But I'm probably just really hard to be with. I'll finish this instead of wondering about it or ranting about the way I think it might be, which I don't like. I would like to dream about how I want it to be, but I will just say I wish we were in love again.

       I'm glad I have these notes and shows to refer to. Focusing in on the theme of this edition more I would say I want to talk about the Three I's in Aura, Artpop, and Appluase, to continue the idea I brought up last time. I do at the end of this if you want to skip down. I didn't feel I had time to explore it, I had to publish before the DNC. Since then I have felt like I have plenty of time, like it was "all a scam" but that the goal was to convince people it was all a scam, because if we still seek to see through it, expose it, and end it, we will, but Apathy is their Trump card, or they think it is because Love hasn't come up in the deck in so long, seemingly. There are just different kinds of Love. All of these last dozen or so editions have been tangents away from Sexxx Dreams - I was on a mystical journey through a hazily-understood Artpop when I got side-tracked this way. I actually had some exciting, arousing content in a dream the other day after literally almost a year of anticipating it, writing "around" Sexxx Dreams. Maybe now that my impossible dream of being Gaga's lover is closer to coming true, just barely, than it has been for years but now is finally time to get back into magic fully. George Burns reminded me of this in his monologue that was replayed on August 12th, 2016, the night after our camping trip. His joke was that he heard two men talking and one said he dreamt he walked to Malibu. The other said he dreamt that there was a knock at his door and it was Marilyn Monroe and Ava Gardner. The first asks him why he didn't ask him to come over and he said he did but when he called his wife answered and said he was out walking to Malibu. I love this because of the shared dreamworld idea and because of the idea that he would want to get away with making out with the movie stars, as if he would be free from marital concerns in the dreamworld, but the whole "joke" is based upon reminding him he is married in the dream, too. I guess this makes me wonder if even the relationship, or my hope in it, seems delusional, is it "more of a dream" than everything else? And is that a good thing, if so? I love dreams, they are magic. I feel there was some mention of dreams, their super-reality, in something I read recently but I can't recall it. Instead I am reminded that every single classic book I have read recently has some mention of  a witch, except possibly 20,000 Leagues. But a witch figured prominently in Lorna Doone and Paul mentions Lily's hair with flowers in it makes her look like a witch then in Wildfell Hall they suspect, hopefully, that their new neighbor is a witch. I like how they are all very positive associations and of course it is just magical coincidence I have been reading those three particular books recently. It's a surprise to remind me how magic, nature, connects us all.

       My last note card began a few nights ago when I saw another Carson rerun. As soon as I turned to it he said Donald Trump was in the news again. The episode must have been from the 1980's. The news was that some report said Trump was no longer a billionaire but had lost 500,000,000 dollars and Carson said he would pause so everyone could get out their hankies. Then he joked that Trump was "one smart cookie" when he announced that the half of his wealth he lost was Ivanna's half, his newly-ex wife at the time, I presume. The Carson asked "who saw Trump on NBC last night?" (an interview with Sam Donaldson, I think) and one person clapped and he said "that will make NBC happy." The white cop on Sanford and Son just said "it's very rare that victims of social injustice greet us with welcome and respect... how do you spell 'honkey'?...'Y.T.?'.. "  - They thought his cousin's fiancee might be a con man but it turned out she had taken their money to remove it as a temptation to gamble but then feels bad for not trusting him, decides to do what he would do if she did trust him and bets twenty dollars on his horse and wins. This is like a magical principle that we sometimes provoke what we want to avoid, or, in positive terms, can make the most of problems with someone by reaching a deeper level of intimacy between us. In the end Fred concludes he raised her and just wants her to be happy and "if she can be happy married to paleface, why should chief complain?" Well, that was on TV just now but back to the card.

       Last night after arguing with my lover again, an argument she says I was 100% unreasonable in, I turned on some TV since I couldn't sleep. It was Dear John. I've been kind of scared all year, since last fall, when Dear John was added to the Antennae TV line-up, because I'm often afraid we will be in a new break-up period and sure enough we have been all year. This was a two-part episode featuring John's college creative writing professor he idolizes, an award-winning poet. He says at one point that poems have to "simmer underground" and this appeals to me as a slacking artist but I've been proving to myself, whenever I give myself a chance, that songs come to me like fairies, instantly. I know I have all the ideas and stories, images and expressions I want to share and just want to unlock them. I couldn't use the keys I've been hoping to use but I know there are others. But I felt so much of this Dear John like an indictment of my own neglectful attitude to my lover, Art. When I feel like my issue with my lover is feeling like she doesn't care about me, but see how I am acting like I don't care about my art unless someone cares about me, first, I realize I am creating the very problem I complain of. When John has his mentor read his poems he is over-eager to hear his impression of them then is crushed when he says they aren't great. "What kind of writer would I be if I let one rejection get me down?" he asks before putting his poems in the garbage disposal. The trouble, the struggle with love and art are the same in this way, rejection seems to be the main obstacle but also seems capable of mounting exponentially, insurmountably, at least in our minds, in our experience. This episode of Good Times in Honest Sam, the televangelist, and he just told James the name of the game is Trust. "Rev you're so good I almost gave you a dollar once myself" Willona. "You should give in to those feelings, they come from God." "But the dollar came from the Devil, it was alimony money." "Oh, you;re divorced?" "M-hmm, divorced but not desperate." "I'm not selling anything but happiness" Sam says to talk him into taking the $100/day offer over his $2.50/hr job.When John is crestfallen in the group Mary Beth reminds him that when she first moved to the city and was struggling in her acting career she felt like giving up but "you gave me good advice- remember what it was?" John says no and she says "Darn, neither do I." The important thing is that any kind of support helps for someone who needs it.

       I want my lover to believe in my, to believe in our love and in my own magic, my talents and potential and the ways I think, the way I am, the way I feel all this art inside of me and just want to express it. But I know I can't rely on anyone else for this, as much as I want to,it's like a cosmic law, and I don't need to resent anyone for a perceived lack of support. I love Gaga for supporting me, inspiring me, without even knowing me. I feel the same way from the books whose authors are long-dead, who could not have written these books that fit my life so perfectly with "me" in mind, except in some spiritual sense. The first Dear John episode ended with the development that Johns hero stole his poems after denying their worth and turned them into his publisher as his own, securing his $15,000 advance. He is staying with John and the publisher leaves a message about how much she enjoyed the poems and mentions one, where a lonely man on  beach throws a stick which is returned by a German Shepherd, that made her cry. It ends with John feeling flattered and betrayed. I don't want to make a relationship analogy or get into trust, just to say we love in different ways. As an audience we sympathize with John, as an artist I want his poems to be great, for him to expose his mentor and get a book deal for himself, just as I would love to publish my own poems, if I start writing them again. So I sympathize with John and don't want him to suffer, feeling conflicted about exposing his mentor, but wanting validation as an artist himself, feeling betrayed. It makes me say his love for art should win out, that his mentor is not repaying his love for him by stealing his art but going for art would be rewarded, a path to being a famous poet. I want that, I want that for John even though he is a fictional character in a TV show that ended a generation ago. That's how much I want it, yet in my own life I insist I want to be in love and have someone in love with me before I can progress, artistically, even though I  know this is just a cop-out and even have increasing recent experience of making good songs even when I don't feel fantastic - but I give more credit to the songs themselves, to fairies, for that, anyway, though when I catch myself saying that I feel the same way about stories and art, too. It's always there, I just need to open myself up to let it through. I have always felt that opening happens best in Love, especially passionate love, but I do know there are infinite ways of love and more self-love ways can activate my art as well.

        As it turns out there is a big twist in the second episode which changes my perspective and sympathies somewhat.  The mentor quit drinking 2 years ago and is convinced he can't write without drink. John learns this from the publisher but also learns much more - the publisher never believed the poems were his work and thought they were terrible, too, but was accepting them and continuing the ruse to appease the company and get him his advance so he would have more time to discover that he could write without drinking. She talked about how great a talent he was and how such a temperament must be treated delicately so he can produce again. She says she was also his student but she doesn't want to hurt him, implying John does.  She believes in him as a writer and tells John how much terrible stuff she has to read, including his own. John goes to confront his teacher and the man replies "The muse has been refusing to put out." He seeks sympathy from John, mentions his three ex-wives and five kids, then says of all his many students John is the only one he stole from. There is a side-plot about the AA group leader who complains to Louise that her Merchant Marine husband is back home indefinitely where he used to be gone days at a time. She complains that all they do is talk, he says they will have plenty of time for "other stuff" since he is around all the time but that is what she wants, not talk. Says it's like going to bed with a stranger and Louise says "I wish I could be so lucky." This reminds me of my lovers jests about sailors and feeling like I've just been around too much in recent months since I lost my job. Although they agree John should be upset they say he feels torn about what to do because he does care but the editor tells him he is being selfish and heartless. Instead of Johns poetry being too good to pass up, and he hoped, it turns out she saw his desperation in turning them in because they were so bad. While the audience was sympathetic to John as a wronged artist the plot shows that his teacher is the real artist and he just doesn't have it. I wonder if I need such a revelation to accept some sort of end to our relationship, just realizing I'm not good enough or right for her but not feeling bad about that, not feeling hopelessly heartbroken just because I've had so much hope in us. Even if I was only acting the last time I agreed to try and break up with her and seeing the positive option of falling in love with someone else, imagining it, anyway, it worked enough to let me feel the possibility of love again and the call into that magical ream, enough to want to write fairy tales. And songs have come to me as easily during loving and unloving moods.

      John finally confronts his teacher, at a cabin, and promises to help him overcome whatever is holding him back from writing, "fear, insecurity, despair, whatever it is" and his method is to be so obnoxious that he gets over it, reading his poetry to him until he writes a poem. He accuses him of "not using your God-given talent which leaves space for more bad poetry" and this is one reason I feel I need to get over myself and let the music and art out whenever I hear bad songs on the radio. But I've been listening to the jazz station, the Oasis in the City 89.5 FM or 89.3 FM, I think, exclusively for the last few weeks. This episode had some other art and performance aspects, with Kirk trying to win a talent contest with the girls as "the Kirkettes" and other conditions they refused, turning out that Ralph was a talented singer to replace Kirk and led him to say "a man's gotta doo-wop what a man's gotta doo-wop." I wrote "1992 - protect', or "protest" but must have been distracted and I don't know what it is from. The ultimate takeaway from the John episode is that everyone can play a role in making art or in supporting artists, including striving for art in themselves and transforming themselves and art itself as a result, whether they are "successful" or not. The process of art i success itself in the Fairy Realm in ways that undermine and overtake the standards of "success" in this attempt at a nonmagical world, this sham world we live in built on false foundations of division and inequality. As the new Harry Potter Prequel preview is on I am reminded how many people could write great stories if they just had the Dole, just a basic level of support to live and to feel the encouragement of being basically worthy to exist. That is the essential Love we all deserve yet miss out on, in this world, currently, but if we can just feel at home, here, we can easily reach beyond into the fantastic. I think about how Gaga says she appreciates the whole team that supports her because when she is in her creative state she is like a baby. "Idols are all around... heroes aren't driven by fame, they are carved by courage" - a Ram commercial just now. I was thinking of some insurance commercial that is on these says all about dreaming as a kid and the idea that having support, security, to dream, like the luckiest of us do as kids, is the secret to being able to realize our utmost potential.

       An episode of Three's Company came on last night after the Dear John. At one point, "planning"/pondering this I and I and I edition I considered that it would be bad writing, worse writing, but I could start every sentence with "I." It was the episode about a health inspector demanding a bribe from Jack to overlook a restroom being a half inch too low. Larry walks in as Terry says this on the phone: "I wouldn't do it if I didn't want to, Walter, once you see how fun it is you'll wonder why we didn't do it all along." Of course Larry thinks she is talking about sex, or I did, I assume that was the joke to him coming in and making that assumption. And while that breaks the boundary of decorum, that's the pressure of the social tension that makes it funny and surprising to him and the audience, it would be nice if people could have more of this attitude about sex, too. Of course she is actually helping him recover from being robbed at work six days in a row and he is afraid of leaving the hospital so she is coaching him. Still it has this meaning of needing someone to help us come out again when we have been traumatized and most of our inner artists are traumatized by this unfeeling, anti-feeling culture. Janet uses a tape recorder to catch the bribe attempt that reminded me of a recent Good Times we saw where Penny, Janet Jackson, uses a tape recorder to stop her biological mom trying to frame Willona. She also had employed an actor to pretend to be in love with Willona. This reminds me of two things, especially: all the corruption in the system and politics, from the police to Hillary, and how you never completely get away with crimes, history will expose them and record them, eventually.And it reminds me of the idea of acting like you are in love to manipulate someone versus actually being in love. The person who wants to love you will make this an easy, awful trick. I suppose it is one thing I am worried about, that my lover is not genuine, only pretending to love me, but I also know that is probably my own issue and my suspicion is equally devastating to our relationship, but while she might not be doing what I suspect, I am suspicious, fearful, at my worst, and I know that is anti-love, ruining our chances, and I have to find the confidence, somehow, to overcome this. The show takes another turn when Jack tries to play the tape for the cop but rewinds too far and without Jack knowing the cop hears him discussing picking up the pot he wanted with Furley: "I got that pot for ya, highest quality, from Mexico, and you don't have to worry about the heat, either." Jack had asked him for a special heat-resistant pot for the Bistro. So while Jack is trying to get the cop to see him give the bribe to the crooked inspector the cop is distracted watching Furley at the table with the undercover girl who asked him to turn her on. This reminds me of how cops have been focused on the war on drugs at the expense of all sorts of white collar and other crimes being allowed to go uninvestigated, not to mention their own crimes. When the cops pull their guns on Three's Company but the kids disarm them and point the guns at them, Larry says "call the police" then the cop says "we are the police" and Larry hands him the gun and says "I think you dropped this." This is a clear example to me of how the police are the only ones "allowed" to use violence. I don't claim everyone should, like the "2nd Amendment People" I think no one should be "cleared" for violence or have a license to kill, I think it is essentially a bad idea.

       I feel like this idea was repeated in the Good Times I watched as I wrote this, today. One was about Sam the Evangelist, and I don't even want to get into what those themes said about Love, God, Trust, and Money, but the second one was where Michael gets suspended for telling his teacher that George Washington was a racist slave master. James is mad as hell since school is so important, since he dropped out in like the 4th grade to go to work. He is going to spank Michael, the "militant midget" if he doesn't agree to apologize to his teacher but Michael won't give in, on principle. JJ advises him to moan and carry on to take up the time and lessen the beating but Michael is resigned to take it silently. He keeps flopping over James's knee when he comes in and it irks James that he is in such a hurry to get spanked. They get to talking, Michael tells him about Crispus Attucks and other famous black people and how he had to get a black history book to learn this since there was nothing about black people in his school books. James comes around and decides not to spank him and then apologizes for wanting to spank him. Michael is surprised and impressed and takes his Dad's example and says if his dad can apologize to him then he can apologize to his teacher. This was so clear to me: violence and the threat of violence is not the way to change behavior and produces resentment. But leading by example is the way. I've said it before, with by far the largest military we can end war simply by leading the race to disarm, especially since we have the furthest to go. James, the strong, scary, big man, apologizes to the "Militant Midget," kind, passionate, justice-hungry Michael. Education, learning some history from Michael, is what made him realize he was wrong to take up for a biased system with violence. He grows, changes, apologizes and this sets the example and relieves the pressure so Michael can change, on his own will, for good reasons, himself. At the same time Florida tells Michael he should value school since getting incomplete information is what caused him to seek more and the conclusion is that he should get everything good he can out of school but also from everywhere, essentially to make the most of things. I want to do that in my relationship, too. Mostly I want to get out of the cycle of negativity and make positive,loving progress. I want this for the country, for culture, too. At the end of the Three's Company they still don't have strong evidence against the corrupt inspector until Janet says "just give Jack back his five hundred dollars, then" and he replies "It was only a hundred and twenty-six!" and the cops take him away. This is just greed revealing itself, in the end, and reminds me of all the recent news, at least online, about the Clinton Foundation being a big scam and funnel for influence.

       I and I and I is about all of us and about our relationship to each other through love and art and magic. Since I'm out of notes on media magic I suppose I should take the Aura-Artpop-Applause approach I began in the last edition. Aura presents a specific type of "I" - I compare it to the High Priestess Tarot card. It's all about the real girl and the veils of the girl. These are already two kinds of I's, or an I split into the open, outer, public and the secret, inner, sexual realm. It applies both to a Lover and to an Audience. It's a flirtatious song, it comes on to you. Artpop is more of a Love song. Aura is about you and me and the divisions between us, veils upheld to make romance or stripped away to make love. Artopop is that making love, the we in "we could belong together." I grabbed the cd to play the song and blaze one as I write this and got the explicit, uncensored one. I said I would listen to it to celebrate Gaga being released from the Hillary spell, supporting Bernie, and maybe that, or something like it, will happen as I get back more fully into the real Gaga. Listening to Aura now I remember how much it rages against constrictive social values, just as a "move of passion" as she sang as I typed that. "Dance, sex, art, pop" is like a mantra of entering deeper levels of magic. She never really says the girl is her, just asks you how much you want to see her. It's mysterious about identity because it deals with the mystery of identity. Now she is being more explicit in a way, as / addressing Venus, but I don't know if I want to examine the I in all of these songs or focus on the ones that start with "A" like my name does. Just because I saw a connection between the three, a progression of the relationship of the I of Gaga and the I of the audience in those three songs. As I wrote that I was peaked by "when you touch me I die" and it reminds me of all the Sons and Lovers talk about merging with the cosmos through sex, feeling a little death. While Aura is the promise of this merger through Love Venus is more an experience of it happening. But let me get to Artpop, even if I have to skip some songs. Without getting too deeply into it, G.U.Y. right now reminds me of the double-standard about raising boys and girls expressed in Windfeld Hall regarding being protected from temptations. But I wonder how those attitudes will develop as the two principle characters come together in love, since I have only read about a tenth of the book. I feel like, now, she is expressing my own desire to be the one for my lover, the guy under her. It's a simple desire I tend to over complicate.

       Now that Sexxx Dreams is on I remember how the last dozen or dozens of editions have been tangents I've spun off on when waiting for the dreams to key me into this song. Now that I finally had an erotic dream, around the same time Gaga took a break from her relationship, I don't really want to talk about it. I can say, as she says :I can't believe I'm telling you this" that there is some role of an "other" in relationships, who we really are, who we show promise to become, who haunts us from the past, and the influence of "other" people entirely, people not in our relationship, or other relationships. I feel it is a deep-seated problem, holding us all back at our hearts, that we seem to think there are limited types of love, or only "one kind", like there could be only one kind of anything. But even if we don't fall for the most restrictive ideas the restriction affects all of us and at unknown levels. We can just have more kinds of love, different loves, to overcome all the different struggles and dangers of being in love. That can be the love of books or media, art, or nature, the world, or community, or our own projects and passions. They can be other people or other creatures in many different ways. I finally remembered to water my orchids today, or yesterday, too. We get caught in these traps of lesser loves, or non-loves, delusions, and end up trapping ourselves even worse by making excuses for it. Now Manicure is on, really making me want to write about it and make the mistakes of misunderstanding I enjoy, then finally read the real lyrics since it's been years, now, I've kept myself in this ignorance, simply from an I that I expressed and stuck with. Maybe if there is an era I want to end, that is ultimately the one I need to overcome,my own limitations of saying "I want to write all about my misunderstandings, first, before trying to understand better." I owe it to the world to become my best, sooner than later. I don't need anyone else to help me, even if I know I love how that works when i feel like my art is "for"someone. It has been a long time since I was inspired by the hope to get in touch with Gaga, Stefani, herself from my art, but when I remember that feeling, now, it's as strong as the best kinds of love, crushes, and most delicious illusions.

       I've been kicking myself for not writing my Oz Magic book but I found a little trick that might make all of it easier, regarding he secrecy of Fairies. If I can say I am certainly not a fairy but will write from a fairy perspective, just as a magic trick, then I might be able to race right through it effectively instead of all this backwards talk I do here. I have some more I want to say about Do What You Want With My Body relating to a pdf I read today, linked on facebook, about triggering different chakras, let's say- it was all in terms of a magical system I don't really regard. Now Artpop is on, time to smoke up and get serious.

       Artpop isn't just about "We", there is a distinct "me" and "you" and a coming together through the magical path of Art. The "you", the "I" of the audience, is the I of the artist within us, the one we can become by transforming into our best selves. There are all the fantastic talents you, I, have that can bring us to Gaga, that can make us together. People who are successful in the music, art, theater and fashion worlds do get to meet Gaga but it is more open and mystical than that, too. It's all about meeting the Goddess, inspiration, though making the art she calls us to make. "You", I, have all the "subtext and fantasy," the subtext and fantasy, that makes the journey possible, like a hero. She refers to herself as "me" - "come to me" - a destination like Oz or heaven, then she refers to "My", the things she possesses. But they aren't material possessions, well, sort of - her brick-string heart, which isn't exactly physical, it's her passion, but honors the mechanical and physical nature of that passion, at least as a hybrid in this digi-industrial world, to steal from a recent commercial. The other "my" is "my artpop"  - which could mean anything but one suggestion is it is the art she makes. The two "My"s are her heart and its product, her art. It's all about the Art. She mentions "we" repeatedly in the first part of the chorus and "I" in the second the first time she refers to "i"  - besides the first line where she says "I'll undress you"  - is in the treated, mechanicalized vocal bridge where she says "I try to sell myself but I am really laughing because I just love the music not the bling." It's not a secret that she's in the music industry for the art, not the money, but pointing it out at that time, in that way, shows how keeping the right focus helps save you from the pitfalls of fame and fortune, of getting overwhelmed by it and taking it wrong. She is in it for the connection, to belong with us, to express her art and inspire and encourage us to express ours. I will have to stop holding myself back with this interminable gagablog wiring and do more real, fantasy story writing, short stories, long ones, my Oz magic book, and especially more Foxzen songs now that Curious Illusions is magically being reflected in Perfect Illusions.

       This is as good a place as any to mention that last time I heard Boy George on the radio he said he had never met Gaga, yet - this was a few years ago. I read a the inlay card for "at worst, the best of" from 1993 where he says "Style and content are inseparable, I always knew that. I will continue in the tradition of my idols, Quentin Crisp, Marc Bolan and David Bowie." I read Crisp last year, or the year before, and again it reminds me I should read Morrissey's autobiography next, or now. It reminds me how all art connects with and increases the power and range of all other art, especially where there are close connections but the potential is to connect everything, easily, harmoniously, by appreciating it as magic. He concludes "Art should never kiss the arse of conventionality" and I will add that Love is the same way. Then "The stage is a fantasy realm, closets and lemon juice blondes don't belong on it." I interpret this nicely to mean the world of art, the fairyworld, too, is more real than this one, not "fake" or lesser, it is More Magic, more the Future, more what we will become and it belongs to those Future People - "I own the world, we own the world" she sang and I typed that. He concludes, before the thank you's: "Click your heels, Dorothy, it ain't over yet." If I had written my beek (book, thanks typo fairies) before I got this cd last week I would have had to edit it into a future edition. I'm going to close this because I really went all out to indulge myself with no reservations, just write and write it all, and still feel I left a lot out I could have said, and said better. I've been confused in a swarm of love and heartbreak, lately, all of my own, our own, creation. I know the way out of it is the way I want to go. Oh, I should conclude the Aura - Artpop - Applause idea before I go.

       The first and second verse of Artpop are very similar, describing the same kind of journey to "me" and how to do it. But the first she says "and I'll undress you" and in the second it's all like a natural process, like the path to fairyland, the yellow brick road you just have to follow. Now Applause has started. I in Aura is a secret mystery like a flirty lovesong, I in Artpop is the destination, Love, the merger of artist and art and artist and artist. The I in Artpop is Big, Famous (as she sings "suddenly the Koons is me") and like Art itself singing to us, making us all an Audience and connecting with us as admirers of Art, of magic, like lovers of fairyland. Its the Applause, and the lights coming on, that make it real "now" or make it real loud. Aura is the I we want to know, we see from a distance and want to be closer with, like a personality or Aura. Artpop is the promise of how art, magic, can bring us together, like the soul or calling of the spirit, the call to the future, no charges to accept or deny. Applause is the I of identity, of becoming, of a goal, the pinnacle of experience. Applause is the experience of joining, through a stage, through the medium of Art, and becoming more alive, all of us, through this ability to share experience and manifest better realities, the better, truer future, through art-media-magic.    .