gagablog 69: "Please Retweet", Sex, Puke, Art and Pop (and how the universe is actually created, sorry Sheldon DeGrasse Tyson)

I'm about to write my "Getting it Wrong" series of my understanding of Gaga's "Artpop" lyrics before I watch her video explaining them. I said I would only delay it if I had any reason to write about "Please Retweet" for gagablog #69 and thought it would not be liklely - I don't understand how "Please Retweet" = "69", which is a clue Gaga gave about it, and I assume it has something to do with computer programming language, which I don't understand at all. But sure enough, Gaga and fate provided me with a reason to write it after all, in the form of her South by Southwest performance and the media it generated. She was playing "Swine" and a performance artist, a hot girl, was drinking a bright green liquid then gagged herself and puked on Gaga, then they made out. I heard about it from TMZ, then heard about some of the discussion of it that took place on social media. There is an artistic message in all of this, the performance and the response, and it all does fit nicely with the theme of retweeting. My first thought was to connect puking and retweeting, and the unforgettable story from the movie "Stand By Me" in which the whole audience is compelled to retweeting an original puke, making the most epic puke story in history. Until now. Gaga's performance was the puke felt around the world, and the statements she yelled while it was happening are important to consider the meaning: she said something like "I don't give a fuck what you think about me" and "I am not pop music!". Also, she made out with the girl, covered in puke. I still don't get the RT = 69 refrence, but there was certainly sexual activity between Gaga and the puking girl, I think her name was Milley. I have not seen the full performance, they might not have been in a 69 position, but they were rocking back and forth on a motorcycle, I think, which has that same implication of taking turns/simultaneously pleasing one another. Puke is a beautiful, green, good thing as a symbol as part a sex act, especially 69/retweeting. You take in something of your partner then return it to them in your own way and both of you enjoy it until you are completely messy. The green liquid could be like the energy of life, sexuality, and we consume each other's sexual energy when we make out - but we don't keep it, we return it to them with some of our own fluids added, our own sexual energy. But it is all like the fuel of sex, and it is a beautiful thing. Of course there are all sorts of different sexual tastes - Gaga's collaborator R. Kelly is famous for enjoying Golden Showers, for example. Even though we should be able to celebrate the wide variety of prefrences we can have there is still a lot of potential for scandal and gossip about people's sexuality. While most people would find it gross to be puked upon, some people surely actually like it, and just because it would be an especially rare fetish Gaga is making a statement about accepting all sorts of "weird" sexuality. But of course most people think of puke as gross, even if it is a really pretty shade of green. It can be informative to consider every aspect of art and in this case I think the green liquid has special significance. I'm sure there is much it could relate to that I can't guess, but my first impression is both a suggestion of natural life force, green energy throughout the world, because Life, as an element, is most often associated with green. But it also has a very unnatural look, glowing like a chemical. I think this is a comment on the natural and artificial nature of sexuality - that we all have natural tendencies but our desires are influenced, and sometimes polluted, by society and the material world. Gaga accepts it all, and it becomes part of the art of it all, as a mess on her costume and as an event that makes people talk about it. Also, especially with the context of what she yelled, Puke is a symbol for Pop music, with all sorts of negative connotations. The only comment I have heard Gaga make about it was something about how art makes people talk about stuff, and regardless of some people's negativity she felt it was successful art to get so much response. Section 1 is about sex/puke, how the puke is a symbol for sex, creative energy, art, and communication itself - mostly based on my own ideas and the mystery of "RT (= puke) = 69". I started writing this the day before the "G.U.Y" video came out, the song that contains the lyric "please Retweet" and I imagine the video will provide more insight but I will wait to watch it until after I have written my initial impressions of Aura, Venus, and G.U.Y., to reward myself. Section 2 is about puke/pop, how puke is a symbol of everything wrong and bad about pop music but also dealing with the irony of elevating pop to the level of art. I think this is closest to Gaga's intended message and her point was well proven by the "scandal" around the puke performance, especially the evloving "criticism" of it by Demi Lovato, who basically represents pop music and the problem that makes us so judgemental of art, that the mainstream culture does not encourage us to consider ourselves artists but instead chooses and raises puppet artists to uphold the status quo instead of challenging it. All the hype over Miley Cyrus is basically the result of the industry trying to reclaim a robot who left their control by trying to shame her but she is following Gaga's example of being true to her real self instead of just being a product. Gaga criticized the corporate influence on music in her keynote speech at SXSW so this is an easy theme to prove, but don't worry I will ramble excessively. Section 3 is about how puking is a better analogy for the "creation of the universe" than The Big Bang Theory, and this is mostly my idea inspired by the universe, especially some TV shows, and the fact that Gaga, or literally the other girl, brought it up. Since writing section one and most of two, I saw Johnny Weir's interview with Gaga, some of it, and she talks about this performance. I think her comments are in line with what I say here, and I learned the other girl is named Millie and is actually a vomit artist. Gaga says it is specific to the meaning of Swine, which is still mysterious to me, so I'm sure there is some stuff I'm missing out on, but I think the vomit really symbolizes Art more than anything, and Gaga is honoring Millie as an artist the same way she does with the other artists she collaborates with. I think the themes I bring up about puke/sex and puke/pop all apply and are subthemes of puke/Art, and hopefully I'll melt my wings on some of the Art themes in the ramblings of sections 1 and 2, though the best secrets may be in future feedback from "you", if any. Even if it was not at all intended in this way and it is "entirely" my idea (and Television's, to give full credit) the whole idea of Art as creation makes it apply to my Puke the Universe theory being better than the Big Bang Theory. Section 1. The thing is, there could be any number of ways to depict sex and sexual energy on stage, so why was puke involved? Everything I said about sharing someone's energy, returning it to them, the way puking is a metaphor for sex, could be said with any number of other metaphors. It is kind of a stretch to associate puking and sex in the first place, which is why it is controversial art, but the above connection is based on the idea of puking as a symbol of retweeting/sex. Retweeting is an interesting analogy for sex in the first place because while everyone has their own natural tastes you might not even know you like something until you are exposed to it - if you don't know that being tied up is even "a thing", for a really basic example, you might not know what you are craving until you discover it. Then you get the idea, from someone or something - the "original tweet" in the analogy - and if you like it you say "this represents me, too, I like to be tied up," and retweet it, both becoming an original example to people who have never heard of it before and an encouragement to people who were considering it: "well, if someone like Harry can enjoy that, there must not be anything 'wrong' with me trying it!" I've always said that sex is communication in a very basic sense and relates to all forms of communication. The most direct communication is sexual, the "look" that you know what it means and nothing needs to be said. Sex is also at the source of much more complex communication, too, from innuendo to seduction to art. Basically we use communication to attract people and filter them so that we can find the best people at the best time to share an experience with - it does not have to be a sexual experience but the way anything can follow the same model of gaining attention, making a statement, and then proceeding to some activity shows how the sexual analogy can be useful for understanding any communication. And when seen evolutionarily, it is no surprise: animals have all sorts of communication, including the complex interaction of hive insects who talk through chemical trails and dancing. Birdsong is one form of animal communication we most notice, and while birds probably say many things to each other the most common use of birdsong is to attract mates, and this is the foundation for all animal expression. It starts with the individual concern to find a mate, this is the original reason to sing or howl or dance or leave chemical trails, then the same expressions become more complex for greater survival of the whole community, which also helps ensure more and better sex for the individuals. I know I sound obsessed with sex, and I am pretty well "addicted to it" and believe in it as a central part of my mystical understanding of the world. But I also just think it is extremely useful as a template for considering any activity or situation. Sex is one of the great mysteries of life, like the fear of death, and elements of that mystery enter into any consideration, especially if we are thinking about things magically, looking for the mysterious aspects. The internet is also a great analogy for communication, a growing record of where the global conversation currently is. It is no wonder, as the internet, communication, and sex are all analogies for each other, that the internet (our collective mind) is so focused on sex. Dave Letterman told a joke the other night, to commemorate the invention of the internet, that the guy who invented it came up with the idea while looking at a Playboy magazine and got to the centerfold and said "there has got to be a better way of doing this." There is a massive amount of internet dedicated specifically to sex, or porn at least. Even on sites that aren't specifically designed for dating the internet is a good place to meet people. It reminds me of church, that even if there are other reasons to use it the one in the back of your mind is you might meet some new person with common interests to date. Even when people aren't looking for romance, sex, or any sort of relationship, or don't admit it, you can see how much people want to relate to each other, how strong that basic need is to be acknowledged and paid attention to, by the popularity of social media. All networks show the current state of mankind in some aspect or another and the internet is full of digital networks that model or run actual networks, systems for controlling business, electrical and transportation grids, governemnts, etc. The social network online stands in the same relation to the social network in the physical world, they evolve together and show us things about our collective consciousness. It is desirable to be retweeted because it shows that someone paid attetnion to you and agrees so much they want to be associated with your original statement. Why do we all seem to want that so badly? The same reason so many of us want sex so badly, because we don't get enough of it. The same forces are at work to make us feel sexually repressed and undervalued. While many people resort to porn or other hobbies to relieve sexual tension in the absence of other people, we really don't recognize how much we need each other, just for basic acknowledgement, and many of us use social media to make up for that lack of attention. We might really crave something deeper but tweeting, retweeting, posting statuses, commenting, and liking is relatively non-threatening and easy to handle. I heard a discussion of technology on the radio and a lady was giving a report of witnessing an elderly lady interacting with a new robotic pet and how impressed everyone was by the life-like interaction and how it pleased the old lady, but the narrator she said she was overcome with a profound depression that this was where we were headed, instead of more interaction between people, just having more simulations of interactions because we are less threatened by them and find them easier to control. Arianna Huffington was on The Daily Show tonight talking about the increasing problem of being addicted to technology. This is a long digression to talk about how retweeting and communication in general relate to sex, and it is not even the most important part of the message of the puking performance. But to me there is great magic and art in this depiction of sex and especially the feedback aspect of the 69 position and how that relates to communication and sex in general. And how it is a "happy accident/coincidence/magical clue" that "retweet = 69" in programming language, even if I don't understand it in those terms, the fact that Gaga made that comment, had Millie puke on her and made out with her in it made that connection and message to me: sex and art, the stuff we live on and for, can be made toxic by "chemicals", social judgement / the corporate influence, but in whatever state let's enjoy them and make the most of them. Accepting everything about sexuality (and art and communication itself), even if it is "puke", is the path to redeeming it. The reason "retweeting" is so important to us, the reason why that selfie from the Oscars made "The News" when it was the most retweeted phot ever is that, in our current state we consider a RT count to equal acceptance, and it does. The more people like, accept, or support an idea the more it gets retweeted - people feel compelled to retweet something, or join a statement being made through social media, when they encounter a message they feel needs to get out there, something that is not getting enough attention, like the Kony 2012 campaign. One tweet that made the news in response to fervor over Kim K and Kanye making the cover of Vogue was "you know what you should be complaining about? Lieterally everything else in the world but this!" This comment sums us up so well; now that we have the power to talk with everyone in the world, what will we use it for? To gossip, or to make great changes? The basic idea is that twitter, social media, and the internet in general is so popular because there is so much that does need to be said, so much we need to address, but before we even get to "issues" we have the most commonplace issue that most people do not feel aknowledged or valued, by their community or even by anyone. "Please Retweet" is a plea to "please notice me, please share my idea with the world." When we retweet someone they know we noticed them but also that we agree, that someone else will associate us together. Why do we want that? It's a silly question because the most basic human need is to belong, but it goes even deeper: Why be the 6 millionth person to RT that selfie? It's not like anybody would miss it if you break the chain - but still, you are part of that huge group, and something about that feels good. Why RT something that is not already virally popular, or is just becoming popular? Because you feel you need to, because every little bit helps, because the secret to change is making people aware of issues and you know that "the powers that be" are not going to fix it, or even that they caused the problem, and it is up to us, the people, to make a grassroots change. This has always been the dynamics of the People vesus the Status Quo and the internet just makes it much easier to organize the actions of the people so we have more of a chance to create change than ever before. Evidence of this can be seen in the Occupy movements and the Arab Spring and other current revolutions. It's a new style and it reflects a power shift to the people as we join more awareness, and a tactical shift for the status quo as they increasingly rely on distraction, omission, and false debates to divide us as much as possible and keep us from progressing. The reason retweeting, or sharing an idea, is so important for certain ideas is not just because we want to belong to a group, but because we know the idea is being repressed and we know the best way to fix this is to join with others who share the idea and make it more well-known. This is the process by which mainstream society is finally accepting gay people and while we have made some of the most progress in America where people have had more freedom to gather and express themselves the same process has to happen in more places and continue until people become familiar enough with it that homophobia, and the oppression based upon it, cease to exist. Section 2. Puke is something almost everyone finds disgusting. As a metaphor for sex and sexual energy, Gaga is making a statement that sexuality in all it's forms, even those that some people find gross, is acceptable, and that sexuality itself is not "bad" or "gross" as so much of society treats it. It challenges our ideas about what is "sexy." In the controversy around her performance, a little monster posted a quote that read (I think "the purpose of art is..." or something like that) "...to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable." The specific quote was from a book written around 2000, but it was a rewording of a quote from 100 years ago. The green puke has significance in the sex/retweet context, but the more likely thing the puke symbolized was "Pop." Gaga is considered a pop star, a celebrity, and she is, but she is so much more. She said she never wanted to be famous, a celebrity, but she wanted to be "A Star." This might mean the same thing to many people, but to me she said it that way to brng up the magical aspects - she wants to inspire and guide people and make people fall in love, like the stars do. A star is so much more than just a celebrity or entertainer, with so many more magical implications including permanence and cosmic, heavenly power. In the SXSW perfromance Gaga declared that she was NOT pop music and does not give a fuck what people think. This is a very important message, especially coming from Gaga and especially in this context. Because by certain standards she is the "biggest pop star there is" but this is not the system she values and it is more important for her, personally, to be an artist. She said in a recent interview that she is not motivated by more money or fans but wants to enjoy the art and relationship with other artists and supporters, all supporting each other. Even though she is a Big Star and really famous in the maintream, they can't claim her for their own, for their ordinary world, she doesn't fit it, she is revolutionizing it. It's not even ironic that many artists supported Miley Cyrus's controversial perfomances, while every "media person" tried to shame her back into the fold. Gaga has never been one of their products, she never fit in and they've never known what to do with her, other than calling her weird. People love to say she does what she does and dresses how she dresses "just to get attention", like it is all just another pop gimmick, when it is actually the opposite, it is to become art. And pop can be art, it happens, but it is the special and rare example in an industry geared to un-art everything by controlling the message. For the entire history of the music industry there has been tension between the industry and the artists it manages, with artists fighting for more control over their own art. The pop music genre is the one that is mostly the industry's product and artists have to be extra clever to get meaningful messages across - one reason I was so impressed by Gaga, using the pop genre to subvert their rules. Pop music has become increasingly overtly sexual, and yet there are certain taboos and Gaga worked around them and set new standards with clever songwriting, such as sneaking "fuck her face" onto mainstream radio in "Poker Face." That was one of my early clues that she was special and different, but it only took a few weeks for me to realize what she was doing was more like the Grateful Dead and Rap, artists who were very popular and successful but as the essence of anti-pop, than Pop - creating a subculture that would transform the whole culture. Costuming, image control, and stage and video production have become more important as the music industry involved advancing media, from TV and the MTV era to the internet and social media and download culture. Artists have become more sensational, on and off stage, but Gaga takes this to a whole new level, elevating every aspect to the level of art. This is the whole idea of Artpop, elevating pop to art. And the reason pop needs to be elevated is that there is something wrong with it. Pop music has wide influence on society because it is so ubiquitous, but the messages most pop artists put out serve to re-inforce the status quo instead of challenging it and therefore contribute to holding us back instead of helping us progress. Even when artists like Gaga sneak in and put forth new and challenging messages the industry has ways to water them down with other offereings that seem similar but lack the magic of the original artist. This is how I see the Grateful Dead and Phish - the Dead were rebels, using the industry for their own goals but mostly existing and succeeding greater than any other band on their own, outside of the industry. The Grateful Dead themselves helped sponsor Phish by giving them equipment, in order to siphon off some of the huge crowds that were making their shows less idyllic than they could be. But I'm sure Phish also had more industry and media support because of the goal of the people in power to have a "substitute" super-popular hippie jam-band that did not have the conscioussness-expanding messages that the Dead have. I "prove" this theory by the maintream media announcement that the Phish 1999 New Year's concert was the "concert of the century" but it is also evident in every offering of the music industry. There are many "Phishes" in modern pop music to Gaga's Grateful Dead. Altogether it shows what a good influence Gaga has had on the industry, but comparing them shows that Gaga is the Artist and the imitators are the industry response. Gaga is the most recent big stars to make bisexuality a prominent part of her image and Katy Perry's song "I kissed a girl" is the Pop response and shows where the industry was at that time - portraying lesbian experience as cute, something to try, and a fad, trying to capitalize on it in a way that is less than inspiring, and ignoring entirely how much people suffer for social stigma against it. And the song does help lessen that stigma in a way, as part of the trend to accept all sexuality, but where Gaga is ahead of the curve, setting the example to be followed, Katy Perry and others are industry attempts to "catch up" (make money on something similar) without really going there. Gaga's Born This Way was such a strong message of empowerment that on the one hand the media had to try to knock it with comparisons to Express Yourself and on the other tried to capitalize on the "new trend" with songs like "Firework" and other Girl Power anthems - but if the industry had their way "Girl Power" would have just been a 90's fad, they cheesed it out enough then. While they might think that making a bandwagon will make it easy to push the feminist idea off a cliff, it is actually just the beginning of a whole new era and will never go away. Respecting women, and sexuality, will be the major transition between the current society and the future one. Artists will always be the first ones to see the new era, visioanry-style, and show the rest of us the way, while the industry will always try to uphold the status quo and make us think we already have what the artists are arting for. Even in the midst of this revival of Girl Power, thanks to Gaga, one of the most popular songs was Beyonce's "If you like it then you better put a ring on it", with the message that a woman's value is still determined by whome she marries and the size of the rock. I saw Lisa (?) Vanderpump on Craig Ferguson and she showed off her ring and said she had "earned" it after 30 years of marriage - "Don't you think I earned it?" she asked. And this is the other day, in 2014, and from a very successful businesswoman, admittedly "older" but from an era when feminism was really getting going, but must have passed her by. (And I found out from Access Hllywood today that she is in the G.U.Y. video! ANother, uh, coincidence I guess) These ideas are so old Craig Ferguson did not know how to respond when she said that, you could tell he just felt bad for her or he might have made fun of the whole idea. Most people are progressive like that, really in every way Americans are growing more progressive, but there are enough backwards people to make "All the Single Ladies" popular and enough to voice those old opinions often enough that in many circles they are still deemed acceptable. This is the problem with Pop: we all want to be pacified, we want to just sit back or dance and enjoy, but more than that we crave meaning. When we hear a pop song that actually has meaning we get really excited. We get excited by any meaning we find in music, but most other genres we expect it more and expect other people who are fans of the genre to appreciate it, too. But with pop music, when we notice something new, artistic, creative, or important, we get even more excited because we know "everybody" will know the song and the message can really transform the world. By contrast, people are so suspicious of all art, including Pop, that when there is a message they can't accept that it comes from the artist but insist it is part of "marketing" - I come across this idea a lot when talking about Gaga as a Goddess to people who want to criticize, that she is just like a model who showcases, or steals, other people's art. Gaga herself commented on how people are reluctant to give female artists, especially, any credit but assume soemone else, a man, must be controlling them - and that was just a comment on how we think, culturally - basically revealing that society teaches us to fear art and fear the feminine. I'm guilty of it, too, suspecting JK Rowling to be a Front for a committee, for example. Any message in music gives us something to believe in, but a message in pop, rare as it is, gives us a message we can all believe in. Micheal Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" comes to mind as a work of art/pop that elevated human consciousness on a large scale and who knows what the total effect of it is. It takes a real artist, a genius, to use the pop music genre to consistently put out artistic messages, as Gaga does. Other people can do it, there is a whole industry to make it possible, but even a industry puppet can become a real artist in the process of emulating artists: I'm impressed by the way Katy Perry has grown as an artist, for example, as she has grown as a person. It seemed like she was still trying to gain her preacher-parents approval when she criticised Gaga's "Alejandro" video by saying she did not believe in using "blasphemy" as entertainment - I can realte to that since my dad is a preacher and my mom a priest, though thankfully mine are liberal and support me as a little monster buddhist witch. But Katy was basically disowned by her parents and I guess either saw through their bullshit or gave up on trying to please them (her first album was a christian album, so she had already come a long way just to be a sexy pop star - and they pushed her away for it) and her new song "Dark Horse" is all about the magical world she has gained by leaving behind the restrictions of oppressive religion. She has grown, and other artists grow too when they have such a Great Artist influencing the landscape. I think of how clever you have to be to really get a message out there in Pop music, and I'm reminded of the debate the American Idol judges had about someone's performance of "Pumped-Up Kicks" based on the tension between the happy sound of the song and disturbing nature of the lyrics. I guess it is like a modern version of Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" and both are probably more popular than they would have been if they had not had a message people desperately wanted to hear, something to address the terrible era of "school shootings" we are in. Another song that is a decent enough pop song but got super-popular for a more artistic reason is Carly Rae Jepson's "Call Me Maybe". I had missed it and only listened to the song after reading an article about how popular it was. The clever idea, that made it art instead of just pop, came across in the video when the guy she is singing to and crushing on turns out to like boys and hits on her guitarist instead. It is this kind of twist that makes people notice, and in this case it is a powerful message that it is normal and cute to be gay and a relationship between two boys is as exciting and song-worthy as between a boy and girl. ANd the fact that it is such a typical pop song makes this twist even more powerful, a message both conscious and subliminal that all love is good. Of course this is not a radical idea to most people today, but because it is still radical to the "status quo" people really responded to it and felt they were not just part of liking something, but taking part in an important change, by sharing it. One reason the "I am not pop music!" message is so strong is because of where it was delivered: SXSW. Growing up in Athens, Georgia, the true heart of alternative music, I would read our local coverage of SXSW year after year and it seemed like it started out a little bigger than our local Athens music festivals but got huge as the years went on until it became a requirement for altenative musicians to perform there and "everybody" did. But in recent years more and more established artists have perfromed there as well, prompting criticism that it is losing it's spirit. In this way I can get over my Athenian "jealousy" of Austin - at least our festivals did not go corporate, but then again one reason they did not grow was because the uniquely alternative nature of Athens meant that was just not a direction we would go, and this is the real difference between SXSW and Athfest or other Athens festivals - we are the "real" alternative capitol and stay true to that spirit, but of course all our bands play SXSW like the rest of the country. It is not a bad thing that SXSW got so huge, or even that bigger industry acts play there, this is part of why it is so huge and important and keeps growing. But the whole point of alternative music is to do it without the record industry influence. Gaga spoke specifically about this in her keynote speech, saying we don't need record companies and that they don't have any money - implying the reason people assume they need them is for support but we can support each other just by enjoying each other's art. In her keynote speech, Gaga advised us not to rely on the internet or talent shows to make our music, but to go about it the old-fashioned way, knocking on club doors to get gigs, like she did. She also said if the fame went away she would be happy doing that again. This is one reason she is not pop music, she was always an alternative act, even with popular-style dance music, and she paid her dues as her own artist, playing clubs and bars like rockers do who aren't just industry creations. Yes, she made it big, but she is still an artist on her own terms, the main reason bands are "alternative" and she had every right to play SXSW - as everyone does, really, but the complaint against mainstream acts applies more to Justin Beiber, etc. Gaga has been criticized as if it is all for fame and money, as if it is just pop, as if there is no message there because they don't want to hear it. This came out in two ways before and after her SXSW performance: a few hours before the show Jimmy Kimmel interviewed her and referred to one of the most over-used and boring cliches that people say about Gaga when talking from a non-artist perspective. Kimmel is an artist himself, a funny commedian, but in this case like other talk show hosts he represents the media view that has to criticize and poke fun of the revolutionary, to appeal to the "masses". I'm sure this is the same reason he scheduled Morrissey on the same night as Duck Dynasty, he thought it would be funny to the uncaring, insensitive "common" view that Morrissey is "weird" for being such an out-spoken animal-lover or so gay or sexually ambiguous or chaste or whatever. He asked her if she would ever just come out in jeans and a T-shirt and I've heard this so many times in different ways, even later that night on the TMZ piece about the puke show in which one of the usually-funny papparrazi says she just wants to be shocking and what would really be shocking would be to dress normally. First of all, she has worn more "regular" clothes on some occasions, it's not like she has never done it, so people who make these comments aren't really paying attention. She told Jimmy "wait until tonight" -and I think she was in jeans and a T-shirt, but more importantly I think she was hinting at the whole Puke/Pop message. Basically, they say she is all just pop, just trying to shock to get attention, and if you want to ignore the art you can say that all over again with the new puke example that really proves your point. The message of this is that Gaga is covered in Pop like she was covered in puke, and the bad things about it sh rejects, it's not "her." Then there is the positive interpetation of Puke/pop, the fact that puke it Millie's artistic medium, it was a beautiful shade of green on beautiful girls who won't stop turning us on regardless of what covers them, and that it got us all talking and "everybody saw it." These are good things about Pop, hot girls, pleasing visuals, influencing the world - and the more artistic it becomes, the more it becomes Artpop, the better. Pop is music and fashion and attitude, it is art underneath all the packaging, and the art can come out. The other thing that happened that showed Puke is a symbol for Pop is Demi Lovato got in on the act, twitter-stage. She got offended about the idea that the Swine performance could be related to bulemia and had struggled with it personally. I'm sensitive to this, but at the same time I feel like on a deeper level, without knowing it maybe, she felt offended that she is like, Pure Pop, straight from DIsney I think, and the idea of Puke/pop, or criticizing Pop, was criticizing her, like calling her puke. And it kind of is, Gaga is so strongly rejecting the idea of being Pop. But the truth is Demi, like Katy and Miley and others who didn't start out like Gaga but are influenced by her, can and will get better, the art will come out, and they will make Artpop instead of just Pop, too. But you can only do this if you admit that Pop is kind of puke, and needs to be made art, while it's all out there all over the place anyway. I think this has something to do with Andy Warhol, the art of the stuff that's already out there. But in reverse, as Gaga said: maybe instead of putting it all out there for us, she wants us all to put it out there, through us, to make everything art by making ourselves art, as she has. Or, in my terms, reconnecting us to the magic all over the world by restoring our magical natures. It's amazing how much Demi Lovato woke up in a few hours due to this discussion, and I'm sure she will learn more from it and it will influence her art in the future. One of her first comments was something like "you can't just call anything art and that makes it so/ok." Then of course she got feedback, responded, in the discussion mentioned how she did not want to promote the idea that there was anything good about bulemia, having suffered from it herself. I hope peopleare influenced by this discussion and it can help individuals and society deal with this and similar problems, and this is one advantage of having this discussion that Gaga's performance brought up. By the time Demi wrote a longer tweet explaining herself, I assume a few hours later after discussion with people, or what passes for it on twitter, she said something about how she wanted to explain it for people who did not understand the art of it. This is completely different than suggesting it is "not art" because some things are too gross or wrong to be art just because you call them that. She said it was art, but she felt compelled to explain something about it so people did not misinterpret it as endorsing bulemia. I think this is amazing, it shows the power of art, and people's response to it, to educate us, to bring up difficult issues and emotions so we can all work them out together. It is not ironic to me that Demi's comment was so similar to Katy's comment years ago about Alejandro, that she did not approve of using blasphemy and calling it art. It's the same comment, based on different difficult issues. Both Katy and Demi have become more like Gaga through her artistic influence on them and the life experiences it gave them -they've learned and grown, and honestly this is the direction we all grow. I certainly did not intend to take this tangent but now that I'm here, and since no one reads this anyway, right?, I can tell a "secret" that this is all witchcraft, magic, and it is right and good. Magic is growth, it is coming together and witches make things happen, make stories come true. It's all about awakening magic - once you start it, it happens, an the more you do it, the more it happens. This is why I worship Gaga, because she does it the most, but I know even she gets better and better, has room to grow, and that is the same for all of us. The higher examples we can find and respond to the better we will become. Following Gaga has not let me down for 6 years now, and I don't expect it ever will, but I do realize I will become more myself, and can go for more of that, thanks to her being my Mother Monster, giving me this spiritual birth, and I can see it happening in other people, too. Before I got suspended from Twitter I used to tweet the Pope. I would ask for him to sanction gay marriage, especially in order to help orphans who need families since that is who i work for, and I would ask him to start having women priets again. He didn't delete my tweets like the inappropriate ones people sent him. Last night Jimmy Carter told Stephen Colbert he would join the Catholic Church as long as the current Pope was in place and if a woman priest asked him. My mom is a priest, Episcopal, and it makes me tear up to type this. The Pope was a little quicker than Jimmy Carter, even - I forgot where I heard it but earlier last night someone mentioned that the Pope said the next pope should be a woman! It should not be so revolutionary, but it is, since the last female pope, or papess, they had was centuries ago and they killed her when she had a baby and they found out she was a woman then they invalidated what she had said and done. And there is still resistance to women priests, but hopefully this is a sign that, like resistance to global warming or peace, this will be the end of it and we will move on into a new age. Do I give Gaga all the credit for this? Well, yes, in my way - I don't think it was my tweets to the Pope that did it, or predicting such things in previous gagablogs, except magically. That's the kind of witchcraft I do, working with the ideas you expect to come true to fulfill some fantastic story. And I think Gaga has an influence on the world consciousness that does lead to these developments, she has direct influence on issues she addresses, and she has the most amazing magical, artitic influence. And now that it is really getting going, now that Artpop has arrived and more of us who are influenced by her are making more art and music ourselves, it's really going to move quickly. This is the magical future for all of us, calling us forward. We're all going there, anyway, but becoming our best selves as eagerly as possible lets us help more people, faster. Gaga gives us the example of how to do it and shows us how exciting and fun it will be - she's a glimpse of the future when we will all be more like her, in ways, and mostly more like our real selves. She said the puke performance was fitting for the song "Swine" and when I first heard Swine was at the first Artrave, and the speech she gave before it made it sound like it dealt with being abused, but I could not hear it all thanks to the terrible, constantly freezing iTunes feed. The lyrics make me think of the record industry, too, so I know I will have to learn some things to divine it's real meaning. When the TMZ guys were breaking the story to most of the world they were making fun of how ironic it was that Gaga was criticizing Pop/industry and right afterwards the camera panned to the Doritos logo, sponsors of the show. The truth is there is no such thing as irony or coincidence, this is just what we call magic when we encounter it and want to emphasise the accidental nature of the event so we can keep not believing in it. Gaga talked about Doritos and how they had been supportive of her and her vision, and how they had donated to our Born This Way Foundation. This reminded me of her deal with Target, that fell through. As far as I remember, she was going to grant them exlusive distrubution, or first distribution, of her new album or single, but on condition that they stop donating to right-wing politians. They agreed, but then backed out of it, and did not get the album. I don't know how much it hurt them, but I still hold it against them that they make those donations, and many people would not have known about it were it not for the way Gaga tried to change them. I think I did hear about it, but have a much stronger memory and better impression of Target when the deal was still in place. By calling out Pop, rejecting it and saying she is not just a product and no one should be, Gaga is bringing out the art in pop, making it Artpop. By using her amazing talent to gain vast influence, and use it for good purposes, she is using Artpop to change the world from a usiness standpoint, bringing out the heart in industry. She's taking everything and making it better, expanding Millie's theme of artistic expression. Making puke into art shows how everything can be made into art, even Pop. When Gaga puts that on a stage that everyone will hear about, along with her comments, her whole message, tells us that we can be art, no matter how bad we have felt about ourselves. I guess this is the message of Swine, too, whether it is about people trying to take advantage of each other artistically or sexually, whether it is about Pop or rape-culture, is that we don't have to be fucking pigs, we can let that out, and become ourselves instead. In buddhism the Pig represents greed, which applies to forcing people into sex or forcing artists into pop - just making money instead of art. In the Bible Jesus dispells the demons from the possessed man and sends theminto the pigs. I have nothing against pigs, they the wonderful, magical animal Homer could not believe, but the reason we use them to depict negative things about our natures is the same with Swine as it is in these religious examples, but I suspect it is because Gaga is taking it to a whole new level that I don't fully get it. My guess is that it does have to do with casting off baser nature and becoming better, but also doing that by admitting how we are all subject to it, even giving into it in ways. To me, this is just like redeeming Pop - you gotta do it, why not? I always call it "fixing the radio" - I don't like what I hear and want to make it better by making better music. But I only really listen to pop stations since Gaga, and it is etting better, just not enough. So I'll make some music soon, and reveal all this magic faster and better that way. Section 3: I've never believed in the Big Bang and had some Television-magic confirmation of my suspicions the other day, maybe the same day as Gaga at SXSW, or the day before or after. Here is my problem with it, it is just such a boring and unbelievable example of the limits of male-dominated, linear thinking. Seriously, a Big Bang? Like that is not some metaphor for ejaculation that just makes the Male the center of the universe? Based on a male-light feminine-void association this implies, the Explosion is the start of everything....but there was a void for it to expolde into, right? Which came first? I'm not saying the male is light and the female void, I'm just saying that those associatons are all part of that male, linear, non-magical mentality and even on it's own terms it is easy to see the phallusy. I think the universe is more entangled than linear thinking can oomprehend, but if we insist on linear thinking we have to do it assuming there is an end of the line somewhere, a break in the thread of time and an end to the universe, an edge. This is great kind of thinking to build a table or something when there is an edge you want to get to, but for building a model of the iniverse it is silly. I can prove it in different ways, I think I've known the secret to this stuff, unified field theory, etc, for decades but I don't want to talk about it so no ninnies try to make a weapon out of it or some such nonsense. But I feel like I was given a signal to at leats start talking about it, to give some clues, at least enough to refute the silly Big Bang theory. So my magical cue came from TV: Craig Ferguson reported that someone found some lost papers of Einstein's in which he talks about his suspicions of the Big Bang theory - since we did not know this before, thought he was one of our smartest guys and thought if he accepted it, we should too, well, how many questions could have been stifled by people who did not quite get it, questioned it, but figured "Einstein is smarter than me, and he believed it, so...". I did not feel any inferiority to Einsteain, and I just trusted my instincts that it was bullshit, and formed more ideas based on my own "model" instead, which I think is much better. So hearing Feruson mention that, that Einsteain questioned the Big Bang Theory, made me feel validated to doubt it myself. And thinking that he did not have enough of a alternative idea to really put forward, enough to be more open about questioning it, makes me feel pretty smart. I've had the basic ideas for decades now, as I said, but I was really considering bringing it up recently because of all the hype for the new FOX version of the show "Cosmos", which came out earlier that week. How "ironic" that all that hype led up to the big premier, the Big Bang edition, ****, and was all about how certain the scientists were that the universe began that way, then a few days later a discovery is made and Einstein, one of our best scientists, may have opened the door to a new, better understanding that makes that theory quite uncertain. How embarassing for FOX! Ha ha, I know they are beyond embarrassment, but to me it was like a sign to go ahead and talkabout it. Then I got another sign, at the moment i typed ****, that made me feel magically certified to question science: the light in my room started flickering and popped and went out. It's one of those swine-tailed ones that are supposed to last years. Anyway, could be a sign to go to bed before the sun comes up, but no one will read this anyway, right? Seriously, leave a comment if you want. It could have been a rerun, the Einstein papers could have been discovered months ago and the FOX people just did not decide it was enough to change the certain way they presented the theory. But it was the first time I saw it - maybe CBS played it to poke fun at FOX, I don't know. Anyway, later that night they showed a definite rerun of Burns and Allen I'd never seen on another station, and Gracie gets hypnotized to be the smartest woman in the world. She is talking about Einstein and how she does not agree with his theories: she has a superior view. I feel like this relates exactly to things like the Big Bang Theory that must have been becoming known and popularly discussed at the time, in the dawn of the Atomic Age. Gracie, or whoever wrote the script, either magically or intuitively knew that the Big Bang Theory was bullshit. They suggested that Einstein believed it but Gracie was smarter by not beliveing it, and anyone who was not the VERY smartest would not be likely to understand how it really was if Einstein didn't get it. Again, I say it was magical or intuitive that Gracie sensed this, but maybe she had her own theory about the universe, like me, and knew Einstein was wrong or wasn't quite smart enough to get it, though 50 years later we might have discovered that he was. This has a strange parallel to Artpop that I did not plan to write but just noticed: the problem with thinking only one person is a genius, accepting his conclusions, is it gets in the way of discovering your own genius. This is how the Big Bang theory lasted so long, we all thought Einstein believed it, it turned out he didn't really, but in the years we thought he did we did too, and no one felt smart enough to really challenge the idea. Pop music has been the same for decades, with the most powerful messages having to sneak through, all because people assume only certain people are truly talented so they resort to letting the industry make them into something and kind of try to emulate real artists. The truth is we are all real artists, we all have talents, but the industries often prey on people's fears of what we don't have instead of nourishing what we do have and use that to convince people they have to be someone else. If we feel like other people are over us we won't seek to outdo them. That's one reason I worship Gaga, not to feel oppressed by her amazingness but to feel challenged by her to make my art and be as amazing as I can. What does it all have to do with the Big Bang Theory and how the universe was really created? I've just read The Moonstone and should be asleep. Well, I was ready to write my theory based on the magical connection of two Tv shows, from fifty years apart, coming on the same night to refrence questioning Einstein's ideas, including a fifty-year secret revelation that Einstein himself was questioning the Big Bang theory. And I guess I always knew he was cooler than to believe that because of all the cool things he said. But it was also significant, and magical, that this was coming out just days after the most major effort in a long time to popularize science, specifically the Big Bang theory, and also at the height of popularity of that show about psuedo-nerds of the same name. This whole phenomenon of believing people because they are supposedly smart, instead of trying ideas for yourself and adding your own, is the problem with pop. See where I'm going with this, bringing it all together around retweeting/puking? I was pleased to hear Bill Walton announcing a March Madness game and he worked "it all rolls into one, and nothing comes for free" into the banter and another Dead lyric that was either from Loose Lucy or Lazy Lightning, I think. While I've had my own ideas about the unified field theory and universe, I will still be shy about them, save them for my Oz Magic book, and just give some clues here. I decided I would say something about it, though, since I knew the Cosmos show would make the idea more pop than ever, and bring out the art, finally, the magical understanding of it all that makes the Big Bang theory silly. And when Gaga and Millie did the puke performance I was like Eureka! This is the key, the symbol, the sign it is time to talk about it. A few months ago that super-dork Stephen Hawking said black holes don't really exist, "not the way we thought they did." Of course he is the one who gave us the first way we thought about black holes, maybe 30 years ago, and he was supposed to be so smart that once again people think they could not come up with a better idea, but here we are thirty years later and he has decided the idea isn't good enough, that something else is going on. All these scientific ideas are interdependent and understanding one differently can change everything. I've always felt the same way about black holes, that we were overdramatizing them based on basically the same thing we did with Gods, personifying them in a way that makes them "incomprehensible", beyond us, when in fact we are all part of everything and it is all a lesson to us. The new understanding of black holes is that they don't suck something away for good - well, duh! that is so "how big is the universe?" kind of thinking. How big is the universe? How big is it supposed to be? Is mine big enough, is it as big as yours? As we get more feminine influence in the direction of science it will get better. The multiverse is the compensation for the ridiculousness of a shaped universe, but both ideas are ridiculous and show the silly nature of science so long as it remains Pop instead of becoming Artpop. So my clue to how the universe is really created, the clue given to me by the TV and TMZ, thanks guys, the Clue that Gaga's mystical art inspired, is that the universe was not created at some point, either by a Father God or by some Big Boy Bang, both of these ideas just show something about the limitations of a certain mentality - both of these ideas are pop. I knew Cosmos was wrong because they strongly suggested that global warming was a natural phenomenon, even this time, and that the polar bears would have to just deal, adapt, or die. That's just wrong, FOX wrong. Pop wrong. But we can get some art out of the same TV, and other kids like me will hear that Big Bang theory, and the certainty behind it, and just know it is bullshit in their hearts and help formulate the new theories once we move past the oppression of the boring, popular one. It's the same way with Pop music, or any art, but Pop is the worst for suggesting only certain, special people can do it. As long as we think only certain people were born to be the best artists or scientists and those people arn't us, we won't make it better but just drag it down. We have to realize that we are the best, by whatever inspires us, but if it's people make it ones who bring that out in you, who bring the you out in you. Because your talent might not be music or art but it is something and discovering it and using it will make the world magical. So how is the world created, if it "was" not created since it didn't ever not exist? How is it continally created? Like puking, honestly, the whole taking something in, letting it out with some of you mixed in. Light creates the world of matter and the spectrum of vibration in between. We've been baffled by the void and the idea of dark matter and black holes but they all come to the same thing, and Stephen Hawking's new revelation is a clue to it, though mystics have probably always understood it way better. He says a black hole does not permanently suck in light, for example, but that it could hold it for a long time then release it. And there is this idead of mini-black holes, I guess they are scinetifically accpted, but I wonder how long it will be before we notice micro-holes, too. I guess my idea is that you can see the universe as intewoven meshes of light and darkness but only as in illusion for a greater truth of wholeness, just as youcan lookfor the smallest and largest but the secrets are in how they are the same. The mind ponders things in certain ways but we can know in other, more profound ways. The limits of science are the limits of the mind and even greater connectivity between minds and a collective supermind of the internet and improving instruments broadens our spheres of consideration and gives us so many more clues, but putting it all together has always been something we can do in any mentality. Zen considers how all phenomena are products of the mind and this is true for us in analogies of the cosmos as it was for them in analogies of the natural world. The problem the scientific mentality has with discovering the unified field theory is the flaw of science itself, of mind-based knowing. Science even proved to itself decades ago that it can't be an objective observer, that the act of observing itself influences phenomena,but it can't accept that conclusion enough to actually progress past uts foundational insistence on peer review - the truth is no two people can observe the same thing, and also that we are all always observing the same thing. I mean, science has worked for certain things, it has great value, but if it wants to live up to its artistic and magical potential, which it must to understand the unified field or do interstellar travel, it has to let go of the limitations that make it Pop and become Artpop - not accepting that anything so mystical as the nature of the universe has been proven but looking at the new discoveries as clues to a great mystery we already know and are a part of. In the analogy of art beng like light, the creative force, and black holes and the void being the receptive force, we all take turns as the artist and audience, as creator and retainer. Everything is always growing, emerging from light, from creativity itself. Destruction is an illusion, nothing ever really goes away we are just held and returned. Things just disapear and reappear later, but we always create more appearance. If we don't get tricked by linear thinking that there must have been a beginning with absolute nothing before we won't assume there would ever be an end with nothing after - and we need to transcend that thinking because it is the kind of thing that makes us put undo importance on things in life to the point of committing awful crimes and war against each other. It's all the secret of not being afraid of each other any more, not being afraid to get close to each other, not even being afraid of each other's puke or taste in pop music. Not being held back as the masses who only look up to the great lights, but realizing how "we are all superstars" and becoming that by believing it and acting that way. we create the universe all the time, and the unified field theory is in us, obviously, we are it. The more clues we have the easier this will be to see, and technological advancements are miracles and will be even more so when we expect magic from them and that is not just a phrase. But ourselves even more so, because more clues make it easier but we have always had enough, for every variety of human mentality. We are all always in the unified field. Mystics have shared the direct experience and lovers and artists share it with each other and everyone by example. We are all of us all of these things, and even when we can get robots to replace our jobs there will always be that thing that only we can do, the things that make us who we really are. We can always get into this even in our spare time after work while waiting for the robots, and the more we do the more that magical path opens and stretches for us.

gagablog 68: The Glory Rainbow on Venus: Classic Cosmic Gagamagic "What does it mean?"

Scientists on Earth got a picture of a Glory Rainbow on Venus the other day. This is the first time a rainbow has been photographed on another planet by us. "What does it mean?" Gaga is on Jimmy Kimmel's show tonight, and I imagine she will play Venus - I haven't heard any rumors other than the ones for weeks that she is making the video for it, and the one on the planet Venus herself. Ok, maybe Gaga will decide to perform Venus tonight and picked it in the last couple days, after this news, just to freak people like me out over the cosmic connection. Maybe she won't perforom it. But if she does, I think it is far more likely that she has been planning it for weeks and the Glory Rainbow on Venus is the magical confirmation that the time is right. I love this kind of magic, I'm all about it: the kind that happens. I can't help but think, if this rainbow coincides with the performance that has been planned for weeks or longer, "what does it mean?". I'd never heard of a Glory Rainbow before, though we have them on Earth and I've probably seen one I just don't know exactly what it is. The name implies majesty, divinity, like crowning Venus as the Goddess of Love. The fact that it is a Rainbow signifies love and also equality and acceptance, especially for the LGBT community which Gaga helps represent. I'm fully convinced the cosmos and weather like to play along with art and music, I've seen some dramatic examples including the slowest, tree-of-life shaped lightning bolt growing up into the sky during the final ticklings of Bruce Hornsby's "Black Muddy River" tribute to Jerry Garcia at Lakewood Ampitherater in Atlanta. This one just pleases me to no end, a light show in the sky to announce the birth of Venus due this evening - and I'm not sure if she already performed it with the Muppets on that Special, but this would be the real release of Venus if she performs it tonight. This is what I call classic cosmic Gagamagic because it is all about how art creates and reflects reality, and how events, personal events, cultural events, world events on every level and cosmic events can all conspire to reveal magical messages - and the best way to process it all is through art, and art will reveal the ultimate meaning. THATS ABOUT ALL I HAVE TO SAY - Glory Rainbow on Venus the other Day = Venus Performance tonight on Jimmy Kimmel, and Coronation of Gaga as Venus, Goddess of Love. Sorry for the all caps, I currently can't get this thing tomake paragraphs, maybe I will insert those when/if I invert it chronologically to make it into a book. But the following will be some traditional rambles, the above was the "short" edition I keep promising. Related news: I'm going to see Morrissey and relaxing my boycott of Jimmy Kimmel just in time to see Gaga! Due to health reasons, then Kimmel, Morrissey had to cancel his shows here for the last few years, and the tickets are always good for the upcoming shows but the last time he was starting his tour on Kimmel and Jimmy scheduled Duck Dynasty with him so Morrissey left the country in offense and cancelled the US tour - that's what I heard, and I'm sure Morrissey would do that since it is so offensive, especially to him, to be scheduled with Duck Dynasty - and this was before they were so famous for homophobia, I think, based on them killing ducks and him being so vigillantly vegetarian. But either way it is highly offensive and you know Kimmel did it to be a smartass. Morrissey is famous for insisting that no meat be present in te building when he does an appearance and having adjacent McDonald's shut down while he is performing. I think all performers should follow the lead of Stevie Wonder and others who won't perform in Florida or states with stand-your-ground laws in protest, to get people to change. I think these are responsible actions for artists with influence to take, and I've always personally felt that Morrissey was persoanlly largely responsible for popularizing vegetarianism in my generation. So I decided to get over my boycott of Kimmel, even though I only occasionally see him during commecial breaks of Dave Letterman anyway, and I did watch Snoop Dogg on there the other night and was pleased with the kind words he had to say about us here in Denver. While on talk-show tangents, my favorite Craig Ferguson mentioned our cannabis job fair my buddy was planning to go to, had to work, found out he did not have to work but still isn't going - no resumes ready. Ferguson had some good jokes about no one showing up if it was for people who wanted to hire stoners or stoners looking for work, but I think hundreds of people went. Business is booming, and it is catching on in other states quickly when they hear about the tax money, especially! But mostly because it is so safe and good. It's all as I predicted in my book "All I really need to know I learned from smoking weed", available on Amazon, and I dedicated it to Gaga for her role in it all. It's already at the forefront of national and even global conversation but I suspect by the time "Mary Jane Holland" is the focus we will be turning a major corner in the US towards legalization. I heard some head of international drug policy, some U.N. thing I think, whining about 2 problems with Cannabis: that is was a gateway drug because so many rehab patients said they started with cannabis before moving "quickly" on to "hard" (actual) drugs. To this I say if they moved quickly they might have been predisposed to those to begin with, but most importantly if pot is available legally you don't have to deal with people who have access to actual dangerous drugs! Duh! And his other complaint is that it is stronger than in the 70's, and that is obviosly just jealousy from people who haven't tried the better, modern weed with all of it's infinite advantages. But that guy was on the radio the other night and I wanted to squeeze him in somewhere, I think those ideas are silly, being disproven, and going away, special thanks to Washington, us in Colorado, and Uraguay! Gaga has always stood for liberation of people who are oppressed based on sexuality, Morriseey has too. Why could i boycott Kimmel for offending Morriseey by pairing him with the DUck Dynasty, yet still continue to watch the Bachelor with Jaun Pablo after his homophobic comments? Well, I'm mentioning it to absolve and explain myself, and have always kind of hate-watched the Bachelor/ette, or watched it to discuss the people and "the way people are", but I was already especially hatewatching Juan Pablo, because I had a positive first impression but very quickly decided he was a douche and the winners were the girls leaving - which I think most people agreed with by the end of the season. But the reason I mention it is because it is so typical of people who pass judgement, that they are hypocritical - and I know I am doing it now, too, ha ha, but I have to point it out, and I'm admitting I'm a hypocrite for watching it and supporting the whole thing in the first place. But he said gay people were too pervert for the show, and tried to "explain" that, but never did I guess, and I would guess he meant gay people were more likely to hook up but not really find a spouse - which is exactly what he ended up doing! He is probably famous as the most "pervert" Bachelor just for what he said to Claire in the helicopter, but if he meant "not being serious enough" about marriage was enough to invalidate you as a candidate for the Bachelor, and erroneously associating that with being gay or lesbian while the same time hiding that he himself was doing that - well, to me, even if this show s not really good for people I would still enjoy seeing a "non-traditional" Bachelor or Bachelorette with male and female "contestants" or whatever they are and I think since many people watch the show for the dynamics between people, as I do, and a show with a Bachelor or Bachelorette who was choosing between gentlemen and ladies, or a Gay Bachelor or Lesbian Bachelorette, would do a lot to open up everybody's eyes that "love is love", or even "Tv love is Tv love" - but people would see the same dynamic and realize it is all the same thing, regardless of gender. While on my hypocrite horse, how can I go to see Morriessy, or boycott Kimmel for scheduling Duck Dynasty with him, when I currently eat meat myself after years of quitting it here and years of quitting it there; when I proclaim Gaga is my Goddess yet I think she still wears furs? I defer to her on that until I know more because I love her so much and for my own sake I think I should just go vegetarian again, for good, to do the best for myself, the world, and to make the best most magical connection when I go to see Morrissey in a couple months - and a couple months after that, the Artpop Ball! I can't wait for my first time to see Gaga and I think I will speed up to be ready for it, start doing a lot more creative work and reach an artists pace again, finally, in order to be the most prepared to magically connect with her at Artpop and make the most out of the experience this summer. So unless I come up with some clever reason to work the idea I don't understand that "RT", Retweet, is somehow "69", for gagablog #69, or some fantastic development in the world comes up that needs comment, I will start my official "getting it wrong" series and explain my impression of the Artpop lyrics, song by song, then listen to Gaga explaination and start getting it right from then on - soon! Thanks for reading and for your patience and ideas! I wish for magical rainbows appear in your life, too, and let's check out the pictures of the one on Venus!

gagablog 67: Getting it Wrong, Ragnarok

Saturday a week ago was Ragnarok, the day the ancient Vikings predicted the world would end when a wolf eats the sun and moon and a giant serpent rises from the sea. The sun and moon are still shining right on their Viking faces and they just have to stand there groving on it, to quote Homer. They "got it wrong" in a way, the danger of prophecy, and it is funny to compare such an epic event with an "average" Saturday - how could they know? Prophecy is an aspect of the magic of story-telling: prophecy is seeing how it will end, knowing where it all leads. All stories have truth to them, and the most meaningful stories are those that prove true as more experiences fulfill the ideas. Stories about the world ending are usually wrong, but it is interesting that they still have a certain power, including how they outlast the culture that predicts them - surely that is one reason Vikings or anyone predict thousands of years in the future: they expect to be around to see it fulfilled, at least they expect the culture that wrote the story to be around to see it end that way, that is kind of the secret magical goal of and reason for making end-of-the-world predicitons: you kind of fear that so much could change that even your way of life will disappear, but since you can't see beyond your own culture - maybe even forseeing the end of that culture but can't accept it - you come up with a story that preserves your "character" until the end then curtains close and "everything" ends. This is an example of having a belief that does not really work and trying to fix everything to make sense around it. But there is some kind of truth in any prediction, in any story, and magical benefit to looking for it. In the case of Ragnarok, the Vikings are not around to see last Saturday, yet the idea survived, someone figured out what the date was supposed to be, and we were talking about it, posting on facebook about it, and for at least a day or two we collectively thought about Vikings more than we have in centuries, so in a way they "lived again" to see it. "Coincidentally" I heard the last week on the radio about the most historically accurate collection of Viking artifacts on display in a museum in England, I think, right now. There is a prophecy from the Phillipines that hopefully is not coming true, a disease that has started there that was predicted to affect the whole world - hopefully this is also "wrong" but it does make me think of a serpent rising from the sea, in a metaphorical way, anyway. Every day is "the end of the world as we know it" (R.E.M.) because each new day has amazing potential. One current event connected to the idea of the end of the world is the revolution in Ukraine. On the one hand, in a single day events could take place that lead Russia and America into war, even nuclear holocaust that literally destroys humanity, "our" world. But also, and this is thankfully the path we seem to be on, the violence can be minimal or nonexistant, we can come up with new solutions to old problems, and have a Brave New World that is better than ever, starting each and every day. Religious ideas can usually be twisted - dieties have larger watches, etc - but there is truth in the reason for the story, and the fact that we keep predicting things, or telling stories with any spiritual and magical ideas at all, shows there is some truth to how this all works, even if we aren't that good at it. I should have known my prediction that the Broncos would win the Superbowl was "getting it wrong" - mainly because I have been considering this "getting it wrong" edition in my head for months and felt compelled to write that edition in the middle of it, but it IS part of my "getting it wrong" period. Still, I think a lot of the things I talked about in the prediction are true, they are useful considerations about magic, but in hindsight I can retell the story in a way that makes more sense: the two teams from states that legalized weed made it to the Superbowl, which is enough of a pro-pot sign in itself - all my speculation that Denver would win because we did this better was first, speculation, they may have done it better and second, not really related. All things are connected and the excitement of magic is in revealing a hidden connection, but the connection of legalizing weed/going to the Superbowl was magical enough and all there really is to it, applying to both teams. I do think we were better in Denve than Seattle about legalizing weed, I don't have a lot of concrete evidence for this but it is the impression I got as it was all going up, and I think we were recently honored by a study that says Denver is the best city in the country for stoners and also that Snoop Dogg is having his Wellness Festival in Seattle on 4/19 and in Denver on the more significant 4/20, which is also Easter this year, another coincidental sign of diety approving of weed. The "real" reason the Seahawks won is they played a much better game - I'm not ignoring reality and the most direct factors, but I do love talking about "other" factors, too, the magic of it all. Weed is not that especially connected to football in the first place - I'm sure many players smoke weed but it is much more associated with basketball and soccer players. Snowboarders are maybe the most weed-smoking athletes: my coworker told me that the first time snowboard was included in the Olympics they disqualified the top 30 performers and would have given the gold to the 31st because he was the first one who did not test positive for weed, but instead they decided to declare weed-smoking part of snowboard culture and just allow it. Weed will probably become more associated with the NFL, and more and more things, the more it becomes socially accepted. Around the time of the Suerbowl NFL commissioner Roger Goddell made a statement "out-of-the-blue" at a press conference about how the NFL "would" (will) welcome weed once doctors can point out some benefits. You CAN hold your breath for that because there are so many, and that kind of incentive will get some doctors to conduct and show some studies. But since both teams are from states that legalized weed, even if this has a magical effect, it can't be the determining factor in the story. The real majical factors are more related to the stories around the teams and the fan attitude: on one hand the story dynamic is the Veteran Quarterback versus the Young Superstar and that can go either way, magically: both are significant factors people relate to and inspiing stories, both have an underdog quality. I admit to pulling for Peyton for the veteran connection because we are the same age, which I don't like to think of as old but it is in NFL terms. And while we had some great stories in the way Peyton made the rest of the team better and Champ deserved a SUperbowl ring as a Bronco, they just had a better, even more inspiring story: the "why not me?" / "why not us?" story. Russel Wilson's dad asked him "why not you?" and he took it to heart and motivated his team with the phrase at the beginning of the season - "why not us?" - and it became a theme for them, and their fanbase. It would be their first Superbowl, and maybe if there is a weed connection it is that they did not feel quite as good about legalizing it as we did, were a little hesistant, basically not trusting themselves enough, and a Superbowl win makes you all feel really good about yourselves and the way things are going and it will help them get over that and go for progress with full positivity. Sports success has an effect on the mood of a community and fanbase, but the fanbase attitude has a magical effect on the team - everybody senses this and seems aware of it in a way and people act according to various degrees of seriousness in this, but since we don't really openly take it seriously we don't talk about it in a way that could really help us learn about magic. But it is more openly discussed all the time, it has always been implied in the way Sportscasters and newscasters talk, and the more excited the whole community is the more you hear regular local news anchors talk about destiny, end most everyone gets behind the campaign to Support the Team. All this support has a magical effect and I did not want to criticize the Broncos fanbase before the Superbowl but I did think to point out that even at the height of Broncos fever because we were going to the Superbowl and expecting to win, as much as this culture drummed up Broncos support, the height of excitement for the Broncos here felt like the level of excitement for the Bulldogs in Georgia during the off season or a losing streak. It's unfair to compare any other fanbase to Dawg fans when football, specifically the Bulldogs, are an absolute religion in Georgia, but it shows something about how all this works. For example, after the Broncos lost everyone on TV was noticeably sad, no one was even happy for the fantastic, record-breaking season at that point, and most people were making comments like "I still love the Broncos" and many said exactly that - as if it were a question! To me, as rabid as some members of Bronco Country can be, this just shows where we are lacking, a kind of entitled feeling that gets in the way of appreciating, and therefore making the most of greatness. I'm not saying a lackof faith made the Broncos botch the first snap or the rest of the game, but I am saying that while I did start some rituals to help them win but did not complete them and feel a little guilty for that, I also know I was still cheering for them and crazily hopeful even to the last minutes of the fourth quarter then heard about the bars downtown emptying out during the thrid quarter! I do think we, as a fanbase, have shown a disturing lack of faith, to quote Vader, and someone should make us agree. I mean, a month or two before the Superbowl a local station did a poll and found that when asked "Has Peyton Manning lived up to expectations or does he have more to prove?" only 72% said he had met or exceeded expectations and 28% said he had more to prove to them! WHat do they want? Oh, obviously a SUperbowl win but if we have the attitude that if we don't get it it makes the rest worthless, or makes us have to insist we still love them, because it's assumed we don't anymore, well we don't deserve to win with that ungrateful attitude. By contrast, they "why not us?" story was fueled by it being their first Superbowl win and not being seen as contenders at the beginning of the year. And the Seahawks fans are nototrious for being supportive. I was not in Denver when they won the Superbowl before, and it is a much bigger city now, so I might be wrong, but when I heard that 900,000 people showed up in Seattle to celebrate the returning champs I wondered if the celebration would have been as big in Dnever - probably, actually. But I also got the idea that if anybody showed up to cheer on the Broncos return after the lost the Superbowl but to honor their fantastic season, it was only like a few dozen people. If the Seahawks had lost I can imaginc hundreds if not thousands coming out to say "good try, we support and believe in you." You could say it is fanatical for Bulldog fans to "always" believe in our team but really the biggest obstacle we have is because we are so good our player go pro earlier and more often: I was pleased to hear Chris Collinsworth refer to the "NFL-caliber" program we have at UGA. Part of the reason we attract such good players from around the country and keep such good players in the state is this collective belief that the Bulldogs are the best, records notwithstanding. Any team with a supportive fanbase will keep improving, and support grows with belief and is hindered by entitlement - so you want to expect and hope to be the very best but never demand it or feel entitled. This magical principle appies to everything I just think it can be easy for many people to see in mass phenomena like football. Gaga has the most supportive "fanbase"/family ever, of any person or organization I can think of. We are supportive of her, of each other and of the rest of the world to improve. Her art is incredibly prophetic but she does not predict the end of the world, rather she predicts the more accurate "end of the world as we know it" - her perspective is visionary, from the future when the things we suffer from currently don't exist: no more greed, hatred, bigotry or war - I call it Oz because it was so well predicted in thos books and I will soon be writing my "Oz Magic" book to show how Oz predicts this world and Gaga represent the transition into it. The way little monsters will revolutionize the world artistically is the same way the internet has started revolutionizing the world technologically, and we are obviosly working together. The internet connects us, connects our thoughts, and can liberate us. We suffer from imposed divisions and imbalance, injustice, that keeps certain people "in power", in wealth and other people "powerless", in poverty. But while the economic system has been based on the ability of some people to exploit resources for their own profit, the new value system is emerging that will make profit meaningless, because the new standard will prioritize people's ability to make resources available with as little waste (profit) as possible - this is already happening thanks to the internet and how companies are transforming to provide as much for free as possible just to have your attention for further advertising or polling or whatever - the new value system is not based on how much of your money we can get, but how much of your attention and effort we can get, how much we can motivate you to join us in collectively contributing to the society. Once this really gets underway it will transform the world and we can already see the beginnings of it: petition and other campaigns to raise funds and awareness have proven that individuals can still pool our resources and efforts, even or especially the "poorest" of us, and create change. A recent boycott of McDonald's, one of our largest employers, has forced them to agree to pay their workers more, for instance, and many internet-based campaigns have brought issues to people's attention and gotten results or raised awareness to produce results in the future. People are blanking out their social media profiles to protest the killings in Syria, for instance. This could just be silly or it could catch on and really get people's attention and force action, and it seems like the more potentially silly/worldchanging events we can participate in the more we can realize how involved we can be, even with minor efforts, and how much effect we can have. It kin of relies on magic to make something go viral or be a trend and change things, and the magic happens naturally but can be much more powerful if we intend it. The internet has had the effect of actualizing people restoring a sense of worth and potential to people who have otherwise felt impotent or disconnected. As humans we are dvided by certain ideas, misrepresentations and misunderstanding of each others' cultures and experiences and the more we lear about each other the more we can get over any divisions. Some people in power want to keep divisions in place and even have us kill each other for them because they make money from it and this is wrong and will change from every angle as we transform the world. The most important part to me is art. Community has been repressed to keep us separate but the internet is connecting us and all it takes is some ideas to spread and people will demand better, overthrow ther governements and install ones that work better for everyone in the country and better with every other country. This is the hallmark of the new and future organizaional model. All (or most) past organizations, governments, businesses, and religions, all shared the same flaw: no matter howbenevolently they may have begun they are perverted by the influence of human greed so that they end up serving one dominant desire over all others. It's the patriarchal model and has everything to do with this cycle of civilization developing with unnatural, violence-enforced male dominance and repression of the feminine. The new organizational model will be one that restores the feminine ideal to prominance: instead of serving a dominant desire the value of organizations will be in howmuch they benefit everyone. Little monsters are an example of an organization built on the new value system: Gaga makes a lot of money and uses it to improve her show and art, the collective experience, and to promote meaningful social initiatives that can improve people's lives even beyond the scope of art, in more concrete and social ways. The same forces that repress the feminine repress art, and the same monetary structure that says "yuo can't make a living off art" is being transformed. In the same way the internet activates and connects people and makes transformation and revolution possible by spreading information that was hidden, art connects people and can lead to the same transformations, but artists have felt repressed. Gaga's major message is to eliev in yourself, value yourself, and express you talent. She is directly encouraging as an example and says flat out that the "new" emerging economy is actually a greaty place to make a living as an artist, and I think one reason many of us little monsters feel like she is such a good mother monster is because our biological moms were either unsupportive or thought they were being supportive by encouraging us to do other things than art to "ensure a good living" while the support we most need is not for stable finances but for strong and creative spirits. By telling us to make art and showing us the reward- love and the ability to transform oneself and the world - Gaga is awakening a spirit that will change the world. It will be the artistic revival, a new renaissance as significant as the last one and even more powerful: that renaissance was the confluence of art and industry including architecture and the modern technologies of the time, all with goverment support instead of suppression, and when that confluence happens again, soon, with the current state of technology it will be evn more powerful. The "end of the world" is always the beginning of a new one. I heard a guy on the radio talking about developments that changed the world, and if you ask people what the major ones were they might point to religious, political, or philosophical milestones but that if you crunch the numbers, statistically, there was only one thing that made a major difference in human behavior, that really put us on a new trajectory, and that it was the creation of steam power. He described this as the first time we could move so far beyond the limitations of our muscles and compared it to the internet, saying this represents and even more tranfromative development, overcoming he limitations of our minds. Just two night ago "the world's first cyborg" was on a TED talk saying that since our senses are how we gain knowledge, enhancing our senses gave us new kinds of knowledge. This is already true for the internet, so many of us are lucky enough to be able to look anything up on our phone at a moments notice. But he has antennae that allow him to see the colors of sounds, and can even see into the infrared and ultraviolet spectrum. To me this is an obvious opening of doors to a whole new world, and different people will be able to develop different senses. In years of conversing with people in the magical community I am well aware that many people already have and develop extra-sensory skills naturally, but when they are being developed technologically for anyone's use people will gain a new understanding and relationship to the world and each other - the "discoveries" and uses of magic in such a situation are inevitable. It's kind of like legalizing magic to make technology that does it. The same way legalizing weed allows for actual testing and expiramnets that really prove its miraculous powers and (re)discovers more, "legalizing" magic, making it something common people can experience and is not taboo to discuss opens up whole new possibilities. Many people can naturally see auras, read minds, remote view, heal people - really evey magical function you can imagine is being performed by someone naturally but more and more of them are becoming available to everyone through technology. I easily envision a day in the near future where we can scan for DNA from our phones and know the ancestry of anyone in a second, which could just be interesting to people or useful for mating or something but to me it is just intriguing to find out who has fairy blood or who Jesus's great-grandkids are, etc. So many things could be developed this way, and the magical people who do it naturally could either help develop it or if they resented it becoming commonplace would hopefully develop themselves even futher, staying out of science's reach, but therefore giving it more mystery to try and solve and abilities to emulate. I go into all the detail about the internet changing the world, and ourselves, because it is the same model of giving the power back to organizations of inclusion from organizations of division, through intellect, that Gaga is doing through art at the same time. Art always has come from everywhere, artists are influenced and inspied by other art and this is a mgical thing that happens but also relies on communication,being exposed to more art. The internet itself allows people more exposure to everything, but Gaga's special role is really focusing on art, bringing it out of people and bringing artists together, exposing us to more of each other. In "Aura" she says "do you want to see me naked Lover?" and in Artpop she says "come to me, in all your glamour and cruelty, just do that thing that you do, and I'll undress you" and "the melody that you choose, can rescue you" and "we could belong together - Artpop." The theme of seeing each other naked has the same message in two forms, making love. Being physically naked with Gaga, or anyone, implies making love, a supreme motivation and magical experience. But the same supreme motivation and experience is to reveal ourselves, spiritually and creatively, to make love by making art. In one way Gaga implies "make your art, I will notice you and we will get it on", and this is true: make your art and Gaga, or some hot guy or girl, will discover how much they want to make out with you- it happened for Rick Okasec and Roy Orbison and countless others who might not have had a chance without rock. The spiritual interpretation is that our spirits are clothed in glamour and cruelty, but these are not really "us", we are the pure spirit underneath, and if we come to her, join her in Artpop, we can strip that away and be our true artistic selves. I know not everyone thinks they are an artist but this is still for everyone, it benefits the whole world and everyone in it. Making art involves an artists beliefs, personality, and society and it is the best way to educate each other. Not everyone is creative in an artistic sense, but we all have the natural, magical ability to respond and relate to art. The more we know about it, the more we are exposed to art, the better we get at this, but it is inherent in everyone, we have just been starved for art and too few of us have discovered our taste for it, and those who already love it can only be turned on by more. In the same way the cyborg enters a whole new awareness for seeing colors and spectrums ordinary humans can's experience, we all get new awareness with exposure to more art and the more we learn about it the more of the spectrum we can see, through learning about the spirituality, culture, society and personality of the artist. Art is the forum that can bring all people together and include all varieties of religion and personality and culture and it is the best way to learn about anything. Too much raditional religous and secular education are based upon the fear of getting something wrong, but the message of Art is everything is right, you can't go wrong just do it, let your artistic spirit thrive, as an artist or anaudience, and good things will happen and everything will improve. The internet is powerful in helping us overcome the limitations of our minds by making a record of the collective mind that we can all, potentially, access and benefit from. Gaga is powerful for focusing this collective mind on art - this is the nature and magic of art that it is all connected, but Gaga as the supremely influential Artist is serving as the Goddess at the center of it, fully bringing it out in society to it's rightful central position, even as she plays a central role in the transformation of the world. "Everyone" recognizes how influentail she is in artistic circles and her little monsters, and as an social and economic phenomonon, but that is still only an image of her full significance. Someone posted a Kurt Vonnegut quote: "If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts." This phrase is frought with negativity and judgement but stands against it, says it is to be opposed, that being gay or an artist is a good thing, He goes on to talk about what I've mentioned here, that the idea is developing your soul not "a living" because he says it won't do that. But now art is a more viable living, and being gay is more accepted. But we still have a long way to go and that quote still resonates, and there is a reason these ideas are connected. Being gay, and love in general, has been repressed by the same forces that oppress women and sexuality and art in general, and all of these things are being liberated together. Gaga is the perfect example of this. In the same way the internet lets us overcome the limits of our minds, Art helps us overcome the limitations of our spirits, of our belifs, and enriches both beliefs and spirits with new ideas, connections, and encouragement. This transformation, which will eventually bring all religions and cultures together harmoniously through art, is going on in accord with the transformation made possible by technology, and all will lead to a new world where we live based on sharing overabundance instead of counting and charging and worrying and fighting over limitations. We are overcoming all limitations in order to become more fully ourselves and more fully together and Gaga is the perfect example of this. There can be no real truth to a prediction of the end of the world in a bad or violent way, that is focusing on the negative aspects of humanity that we simply must overcome. The truth is in a hopeful end of the world as we know it in favor of a better one, without the problems that make the world we know now so horrible. We have to have faith in ourselves and each other and act on it, focus on that great future and what we need to do to achive it, and act with trust and eager desire to unite with all people because we know we are all good and get better the more we focus on and respond to goodness. I'm so thankful to Gaga for showing the way, leading by example, making such great art that inspires so many artists and budding artists, and growing increasingly positive and loving as the natural example of what happens when we reveal our artistic spirits and live for the Applause, the way our art can make people respond and especially make happiness. Just touching on the Artpop lyrics reminds me how much I need to write the Getting it Wrong series. This will be my exposition of the Artpop lyrics, and I call it getting it wrong because I want to get my impressions of the Artpop lyrics down before I learn the truth. Months ago Gaga posted a link to her own explanation of the songs' meanings and said there was "no fantasy" in the songs other than how they magically connected to the music, implying that every word is intentional and relates to actual events in her life. I can't imagine what these things can be and I can't wait to hear it except that ever since I heard this video exists I have wanted to write down my impressions first, even before reading the actual lyrics, and "get it wrong" by giving my ideas before I know "the truth." I want to do this for two reasons: One, I think the messages are so mystical that if I can't relate to the moreliteral meaning I am still getting a related meaning out of each line and I would love to compare that impression to the one I get once I know more. Two, I just want to have that to remember how I understood it assuming that understanding will change with more direct information, and I remember how much I loved Bauhaus when I first heard them as a young teenager, and how much I loved the lyrics I thought they said that I was sad after I read the actual lyrics and found some differences - and loved them still - but could not remember how I had mis-interpreted them. I think our beliefs and understanding, or misunderstandings, of a song can have profound effects on us, especially profound and magical songs. The clear example for me is Terrapin Station, one of my favorite Grateful Dead songs. For all the years that I felt lonely and unlucky in love, and even for a few years after I found love, I misheard a crucial lyric in the song. Just listen to it if you don't know it, it is awesome and magical, but the line "the lady fairly lept at him" I had always misheard as "laughed at him" - giving the whole song a completely different meaning. He actually gets the girl but I always thought she rejected him. It took a few years living with a girl who actually "gets me" before I was ready to hear the real message and all that it implies - again, listen to the song. But the message becomes, certainly, "go for it" instead of "you can try, but she might just laugh at you and pick the guy who just plays it safe." I don't expect to get a completely different message from Artpop once I actually read the lyrics and hear the backstory behind them, but from a magical perspective I can't wait any longer. One of my explainations of "evil" is willfull stupidity, how people have to deny global warming to remain right-wing, etc. I want people to overcome the willfull stupidity, the desire to remain ignorant so you don't have t grow and change, and yet I am guilty of it by procrastinating and not writing my exposition quickly, if I must, and then listening to Gaga's explaination and enlightneing myself, which I believe will also coincide with a major enlightenment in the world. With more wars threatening to break out we need as many enlightening forces as soon as possible so I'm "ready to do my-sen part" to quote Boss Nass. Gaga is doing her part, a major role as Goddess of Love, and encouraging us all to reach for our potentials and reach just as high. She is a perfect role model for artists - and as Daniel Ash sings "It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does" - but she also is giving art back to everyone, to "audiences" too. Artpop is all about making art popular through all methods, art, music, fashion, makeup, radio/net shows, design, technology - everything is coming together to serve the greatest purpose of Art and we rightfully have a sexually, spiritually, artisitically empowering Goddess representing and leading this transformation. All love for Gaga and the Gaga within us all - Applause! Let' finsih getting it wrong and we can get everything right, make everything art, in the new era. "It's the end of the world as we know it" and with the bright future of the much better world opening through its ruins we can all easily sing along with Michael Stipe to the end of the line "and I feel fine." Because of the Glory Rainbow on Venus I will write one more little, actually little, gagablog soon before moving on to the Getting it Wrong series - unless anything else fantastic happens that must be mentioned! Thanks for reading, and please comment if you want to. Everything is good when we immerse ourselves in the magic of art!

gagablog 66: Football/Religion: Peyton Manning, Champ, Broncos win the Superbowl of Weed for Denver, the REAL Emerald City

Peyton Manning is a football God, Champ Bailey is living up to his destiny and name, the Broncos are awesome with lots of support and it's the Superbowl of Weed, between the first two states to legalize recreational weed as soon as we did it, and everybody's talking about it. But Denver did it a little better and these are all reasons the Broncos will win it tomorrow. The following will explain it from the magical/weed/destiny perspective with some ideas of how football (and many other things) works like religion in our society. "My religion is you" is a verse from Gaga's song "Teeth" that has also become a basis of my religion, and other little monsters: my religion is Gaga also means my religion is you. It is not a unique belief, it is the same belief that comes through in all other beliefs, but from the special perspective of art and magic. Loving and honoring the Gaga witin everyone, everyone's potential to transform through art and bravery into their best selves, is the same thing as honoring the Buddha within everyone, or the idea that everyone is within the grace of the divine or the love of Jesus. Saying "my religion is you" has a special focus, though - it's mostly saying I honor and want to connect with the greatest within you, the creative spirit that makes you holy, but it is also saying my religion is all of you, I look at my encounter with you as the experience of and pathway to the divine. We usually think of religion as the way to connect to the divine, to gods and goddesses. The literal definition of the term religion is like recconnecting. While we do somehow feel disconnected to the divine and need reconnecting, and certainly we have great confusion between us about how different religions seem to do this, and endless variety within them of people's experience of doing it, we do have a common belief that we are each connected to or part of the divine and no matter how we describe it sharing any experience with others makes it religious. Of course church and other religious institutuions are examples of people coming together for "religious" purposes but when seen from the magical perspective that everything is divine, then any time poeple come together, in any fashion, is a religious experience. Everything is really divine so every shared exprience has a religious quality to it, the only experience that is not religious is the mystical experience, where one is face to face with the divine or loses one's identity in association with the divine. But everything that happens between people has that element of religion, of these divine sparks flashing out to each other to make a connection. Religion is a way to connect to the divine through connecting with each other. The things we call religions do this by gathering people for explicitly religious purposes, but any gathering of people, or meeting on the street or lovemaking, has a religious aspects because everything is truly divine and sharing an experience of it is reconecting to it even if we just call it being freindly. It is easy to see this when you look at it from a magical perspective or break it down and look for it. Some people are religious about football. Many people are really religious about football, actually, though I guess relatively few would say that football is their religion. I think that many more people would admit that while they have another religion football is intimately connected to it and God wants the Bulldogs to win. This is especially true in the South but even here in Denver where christian religion doesn't seem that prominant they say "God must be a Bronco fan why else are the sunsets orange and blue?" (which, of course, we get the best sunsets of all different colors here so there are some really awesome orange and blue ones) People who have religions that they don't connect to football, or that don't have any other traditional religion they really believe in, might notice they have religious ideas and feelings about football. Newscasters and people on the street talk about destiny and things being "meant to be" around football. Budweiser has been running commercials for years with the theme of fan superstition affecting football games. It seems like in the first year or two they referred to it more in terms that suggested magic. In the last few years they call it superstition, or I think the line is "it's only superstition if it doesn't work", which implies that superstition is silly but if it works it is "more than that" meaning magic even if they don't want to call it that. I have no problem with superstition, I think it is fascinating and shows a basic, common belief we all have in magic. I also think our religious thought, for all their variety, all have a magical dimension that could help us understand how they are all similar, and also help us understand magic. But a lot of religions have fear built in around thinking about magic, and I think it is easier for some people to understand magic through a different framework than a religious one that might say "magic is evil, no no no." People might not want to think of their religios beliefs as magic, and they might notice how superstition feels magical and not asssociate it with religion, call it two different things. I think we will be much better off when we bring it all together from both ends of the spectrum, what we feel and believe (supersition)on the one end, and what we think and say we believe (religion) on the other, and football is a good field to do this on. We can try some plays and see what wins, come up with new philosophies. It's not nuetral, there is conflict between teams, kind of superficial like the conflict between sectx and religions, but all fans are football fans and this unites them in a way. The specific superstitions around football can help connect us, too. Different teams have different cultures and phenomena that grow around them. I saw a special on TV about fan superstitions and they mentioned that 40% of female Eagles fans wear the same Jersey for every game and usually don't wash it. This statistic has all sorts of magical information, from the belief that you can wash out luck to the idea that what we wear affects it, to the religion of doing something that connects you to 40% of the other women in the area. Even if that is "their thing", it is not like Eagles fans are the only ones who do this, it just happens to have caught on there to become part of the culture, but I'm sure there are fans of every team who do the same thing or something very similar, displaying the same magical belief, and probably many teams that have the same phenomenon just to a lower percentage. But all of these people, separated by different team affiliations and geaography, share the same belief and kind of belief and it is something that unites them. When I took a cultural geography class they told us that the best, clearest indicator of where someone lived in the country, the most distinct regions, were based on asking people which sports teams they supported. Of course there are fans of some teams all over, but the majority of a teams fans live in the area, so the teams are reflections of the cultures where they play. Sports, especially football in America, is one of the greatest forces for bringing us together and giving us a sense of collective identity. Colorado has a very strong state pride identity that seems really weird to me and I don't think is common among other states, but I still would not feel wrong to say that Bronco Pride is stronger than Colorado Pride. It's always strange to me how the local TV always refers to Coloradans and how things effect us, specifically, like we are the only ones we should care about, and maybe that is peculiar to being kind of culturally isolated in the middle of the country. There is also a consistent emphasis on Broncos things, it's always in the news and you see the iconography everywhere, but now that we are in the SUperbowl you see just how far it can go when all of that kicks into overdrive - FOX has had hours of Bronco/Superbowl coverage every day for weeks, hitting any random angle and broadcasting from "Superbowl Avenue" in NYC. And you just hear people talking about destiny a lot more, from newscasters to my boss at work wearing #24 because it's "Champ Bailey's time" to the guy at the supermarket who said "you know why it's such a nice day?" with a wink in his eye to which I corectly replied "because the broncos beat the patriots and are going to the SUperbowl!" and we nodded and smiled as if to say "the way God wanted it." We all have this sense of destiny around football, because of how it brings us together but also the nature of the drama of the game. Fans on either side believe in their team and have their belief strngthened by a win and tested by a loss, but in big games that is determined by magical, miraculous, fateful plays and we all share that experience, whether it is the one that put us through to the championship and we share the glory of it or kept us out and we share the despair - either way it brings us together as a team, and it deepens and extends our appreciation of football. There are reasons we come up with religious terms and descriptions for these most miraculous plays, and we as fans share the glory of them and it makes us love football even more, but also people who didn't care about football before see them or hear about them and it might bring them into loving football, too. I had a professor, Glen Wallis, for an "Introduction to the Religions of India" class who began class by saying it was too vast a subject to try and do anything like that in a semester and started us off with a group discussion on what religion was. I think we came up with the idea that it was a way of understanding the world we live in and predicting into the future, maybe some others, and he asked what qualified as a religion based on that criteria. I said "football" because I thought about how, within the world of football they sportscasters and analysts are always talking about what is going on and who is doing what and preicting what will hapeen in the future, the outcome of a game or the fate of a player or team, or something going on with the industry or fans. I also was kind of cheating because there was a frat guy in front of me with a T-shirt that had this on the back: "In the northeast it's a (something), in the West it's a (something), in the (somewhere) it's a cultural event, in the (somewhere) it's a pasttime, but in the SOUTH it's a RELIGION" and of course it was a Georgia Bulldogs shirt. We actually do think of it more that way, even if that shirt was kind of a "joke", but coming from that perspective it is easy to see how our feelings about football are religious or magical. Football brings us together and we often come to identify with a team but often the reason why we love, or hate, a team is because of a player. This shows that as passionate as people feel about teams, as much as it becomes like a mass hysteria, it is all essentially a response to things about individuals who make up the teams. It is not a football moment, but Knowshown Moreno's tears before a game this season became a meme for a reason, even people who don't care about football respond to that emotion. The players, who reach cult status in many ways, all have their own personalities and qualities, of course, and people respond to them in different ways. I've personally never been impressed by the super-cocky attitude of some stars but other people like this and say it is part of being a champion. I did not like Peyton Manning for a long time because I had an impression of him as being cocky - completely wrong I realized after some years but the only impression I had was from a cable commercial that had him saying something boastful. Then I saw him in a documentary and he was incredibly humble and just seemed completely awesome. The same documentary had Farve in it and I gained great respect for him to actually hear about him, and also Tom Brady and my dislike for him was confirmed as he presented himself as the real cocky jerk he seemed to be. But Peyton really impressed me when I saw that, when he was still a Colt. It seemed fate that Andrew Luck would take over the Colts and wear that blue horeshoe, facing up for good luck, on his helmet - there is something beautiful and magical about that. And there is definitely something magical about Peyton Manning "growing up" and becoming a Bronco to have the best season ever, breaking records and winning the Superbowl. These things just seem meant to be. One thing Peyton said in that interview that really made me like him was that at one point, playing Tom Brady to go to the Superbowl, he said he had never prayed during a football game, for football, before. This surprised me because I knew he played for Tennessee and had a southen accent and I thought about how many religious southerners would pray for football, but also I knew that some took religion "more seriously" and would not combine the two, and he seemed to be of that type. But he said that during that game he prayed for the first time for something to do with football, praying that since Tom Brady already had two or three Superbowl rings couldn't Peyton have this chance to get this one. And it worked, he got what he wanted. Of course many people pray and we can't really say that some god decides who wins, but the important thing is that we care enough to seek something magical, and magical things happen. I did not like the Broncos when I moved here because I disliked John Elway - I just had a bad impression of him when he played when I was a kid, maybe he didn't deserve it, but I decided I did not like the Broncos back then. When i decided to move here I thought about it and realized that was the reason why, I did not like Elway, but nothing really besides that, and I just decided it would be more fun to become a fan and like the Broncos and it did not take me too long to get into it. I'm a Bulldog for life but the Falcons weren't that great when I was a kid and though I liked them I did not get into them as a favorite team, I was just more into college football as a kid. When I moved here Champ Bailey was already one of their stars and since he was a Bulldog it was easy to cheer for him. Bulldog pride runs deep - in a press conference the other day Manning, Woodyard, and Welker all came out in Broncos gear in front of an orange backdrop but Champ came out in a Georgia jacket. I called my dad to tell him. So I became a Bronco fan when I got here and John Elway was just selling cars at the time so I did not have that "conflict of interest." And if there was anything else I disliked about Denver it was Shanahan and he was gone pretty soon after I got here. WHen Knowshown Moreno came in from Georgia my love for the team deepened based on affection for them as Bulldogs and as people. I was involved with a pagan group and, just for fun, we did magic spells to help the Broncos win and they went undefeated for six games, then we stopped doing it and it didn't go so well, but during that time it was prety exciting. And I had come to really love some things about Denver by that time, especially the mountains and weather. I felt like it was growing in good ways, with more young and liberal people moving here, and deserved to get higher profile, which really comes with sports success. Now I feel that way even more strongly, and especially the situation of being the Superbowl of Weed makes me sure that Denver will win based on magical principles and our attitude. 15 years is a long career in the NFL, and since the Broncos have not been to the Superbowl in that much time and Champ Bailey has played with them that long, and played spectacularly, there is a great feeling that he is due to win, it is his destiny and his time. There is also a strong feeling that Peyton Manning is one of the greatest quartebacks of all time and that reputation will be enshrined for all time with another Superbowl win with another team, especially with all he has been through. I'm sure there are other great stories on the other side, too, and a great story between the quarteback battle of the young, new quarterback against the veteran, experienced quarterback. From my personal perspective, Denver already deserves to win based on these things, and on the idea that this is a beautiful growing community that deserves even higher profile, prestige and business that come with a Superbowl victory. And I'm sure there are reasons Seattle "should" win that have similar dynamics but I don't live there and I don't know what they are, other than I can support them because Nintendo America is there and my brother told me one of their wide recievers is deaf, and that is really cool. But the real things that will determine who will win are the sill level and play of the teams and luck. I don't know much about football but the statistics are even, they are evenly matched teams according to all the measurable football factors. For one, it is only the 8th time in 46 Superbowls that the two best teams that year are playing, and according to statistician Nate SIlver they are evenly matched, too close to call - I saw him on the Colbert Report. So in this case it comes down to luck. My band director, Mr. McClure, used to tell us about football being a game of luck. He was trying to inspire us, or make us feel good for being in band instead of football in a ulture where football was really valued and of course band has been seen everywhere as geeky. He wanted us to practice, to get it perfect, and said that we can do it, because we did not have to leave anything up to chance. He said football began with a coin toss, it was a game of luck, but music you could just do it right with enough work. Of course both teams have worked hard, that is why they are the two best teams. People who see it from a football perspective might point out ways one team or another has an advantage, but I trust the statistics that it is an even match. So if it comes down to luck, to destiny and magical factors, who will win? The Broncos, and this is why. The most magical thing about this Superbowl is that it is the Superbowl of Weed. Both teams are from the two states that just legalized weed this year and everyone is talking about it, the late night comedians don't stop making jokes about it, that aspect is kind of everywhere. In the mentality that sports outcomes can be meant to be, it seems pretty obvious that the Divine is sending a signal that legalizing weed is a good thing, that good things will happen for your state if you do it. In years of smoking weed I always celebrate Superbowl Sunday with a Super-bowl of weed - celebrating everything with weed really but it was fun to have the irony of it being a Superbowl Sunday, and I celebrated it even in years when I was not really into professional football. Now, this Official SuperBowl of Weed has special and magical significance, and I think it will have a magical outcome based on this. When I first moved to Colorado, to Telluride, in 1996, I think, I was impressed by how they grew really, really good weed here. It was like paradise in the mountains and I knew it would be a good place to live and get better. When I moved back here in 2005 Denver legalized weed that year and when we elected President Obama the 10-or-20-yr-old but nonexistant medical marijuana industry exploded to thousands of stores and a huge shift in the culture, a truning point from which great things have grown. I did not want to get a medical liscence because, coming from the South and being aware of how evil a segregated society is and how long it takes to undo the damage from it, I did not want to participate in what I saw as creating a class structure where some people could have rights that other peoeple did not have. I eventually got one for my own safety and convenience and also because my friend said that supporting that movement was a step towards full legalization, which turned out to be true. The whole process just gets more abundantly useful and easier the more we actually go for the ways we can use cannabis and hemp when we can actually do it openly and cooperating with other aspects of society. It is fantastic to me that the Colorado State Fair will have a Weed Pavilion beside its Beer Pavillion and giving out fair ribbons for all sorts of weed-related competitions this year, including best brownies, plant, and homemade bong. It is also fantastic that Obama has made comments recently debunking the myths of weed being more harmful than alcohol and also taken action towards legalizing hemp at the federal level, another key step. For some states, seeing the benefits and non-risks of medical marijuana are the best course to legalization, for ohers the great advantages of hemp will help persuade them. But we are all moving in that direction because it is a key to the peaceful and abundant future that is our destiny - read all about it in my book "All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Smoking Weed" - and the two states blazing the trail are rewarded by their teams being in the SUperbowl, and Denver doing it a little bit better will be rewarded by the roncos winning. When I lived those few heavenly months in Telluride I used to go to the library to read. I found a book called "The Meaning of the Flowers" or something like that and it was just pages and pages, lists of flowers and plants and what each one signified. So a red rose meant romantic love and a dandelion meant friendship or whatever. I looked and it had an entry for cannabis or marijuana, I forget what it called it, but the meaning was "fate." I think about how weed is a magical plant, probably the oldest most widely used magical plant in history and around the world and with the most uses, most of which we are yet to discover or rediscover. I think about how it has been repressed and how much can be achieved by bringing it into the light, and how that will coincide with a change in our society so that we become more appreciative of nature and more careful with our environment. I think about it as being our fate in a very meaningful way, as a culture and nation and species, but I also think it means fate for individuals, that smoking it can help people understand themselves from teh perspective of fate, of magic. So the things we do around weed are especially fateful, the reason why it teaches us to be generous and kind and appreciative of it. I decided to get a medical card because my friend said it would help liberate the weed more fully in time. But I heard about debates going on in other states that had medical marijuana and were considering legalizing weed, but the medical marijuana community were aligned with the assholes who wanted to oppose it just because they already liked the way they had things set up,for themselves. I think this is a selfish attitude and against the spirit of weed itself, which teaches us there is plenty to go around once we stop the restrictions. Weed is so abundant, and valuable, it can completely revolutionize our whole idea of economy - it's in my book. My friend lived in Seattle and he said that many people in the medical marijuana community there were opposing legalizing weed on these grounds, that it was good enough for them as it was, they didn't want prices to rise, etc. He said an ounce of really good weed still cost almost 400 dollars there, the same price as a decent deal in other states where it is completely illegal,if you are lucky enough to find it at all. The weed laws are so oppressive it makes sense that people would want to keep a purely medical situation if they are finally assured of their supply and freedom from persecution for smoking ut fear wider legalization would bring a crackdown from the federal government and ruin it for everyone. I think we are certainly discovering in Colorado that there are so many benefits to legalizing it, and so many different kinds of people moving here for different reasons o take advantage of those benefits, that it will produce a whole new culture, a renaisaance of productivity and creativity. Both Washington and Colorado should be proud of legalizing recreational marijuana. I don't know if we did it by a wider margin, I don't know if they don't have the same thing in Seattle that we have here, news stories every night about weed and the newscasters making lighthearted jokes about it, but I do get the impression that Colorado is more fully behind legalizing weed than Washington is, and I know both states have areas that oppose it, too, and maybe it is just demographics. I certainly would not suggest that Washintonions are more snobby than Coloradoans, maybe they are, I don't know, but Coloradoans can seem pretty snobby in some ways. But in this case I got the imprssion that Washington was just not quite as cool about legalizing weed as Colorado has been, and I think that is why we will recieve the greatest reward, luck, magic and destiny by winning the Superbowl tomorrow. We already have the best weed in the country, partly thanks to our climate and alititude but of course also to the expertise and strains that have been cultivated in the state or brought here, more and more as we attract more of the best. And we have the best prices, almost half of what people pay elsewhere at best, with many paying much more or can't get this quality at all. These are the natural rewards of people here being cool about weed, organizing and voting for it, and the magical reward of getting in the Superbowl can magically promote it, and more by winning, but of course all of that is the result of hard work by the Broncos. Still, magic helps us both for many reasons and helps it all come together, to promote this city that is doing great tings and about to do many more. In the world of deserving to win the Superbowl Denver deserves it in many ways, and being the coolest and best about legalizing weed is just the icing on the cake that is orange and blue. I don't live there so if Seattle is somehow way more progressive about weed than Denver I'm sorry for assuming otherwise, it is just the impression I got, and it makes sense because we still seem to be more in the national spotlight for it. I also have a personal reason for hoping Denver beats Seattle, one that probably no one else in the world cares about, in this world. Years ago i started claiming that Denver was the Emerald City, from Oz, because I figured as America lived up to and transformed into its idealized version, Oz, Denver would be in the center, corresponding to the Emerald City, and if we legalized weed and were on the forefront of that movement, as I predicted and is so essential to becoming Oz, we would be especially "green", and everything would be colored by the greeness in the same way the Emerald City is bathed in emerald light. And of course with weed stores on almost every block you do see a lot more green around, that part has started coming true. But when I told someone I thought Denver was really the Emerald City she said Seattle was already officially the Emerald City, by choice of the voters, even if they commonly called it something else. I think they chose that because it is really mossy and green? And of course they could still have the same claim to be emerald based on moss AND weed, and no one else is even asking to call Denver that, but in my own mind we are in a better place for it, right in the middle, with the country divided roughly into quadrants of culture in each cardinal direction, so it would make sense. And Oz can, and will, be worldwide in my view, all of humanity will live in a world without war or money eventully, but it was originally envisioned in America based on American experience and I believe there is a mystical way it will come true here, including Denver becoming more prominent in the "green" sense than Seattle, even though both should be proud and ewarded for blazing he trail. There is just a lot of prominence and attention that goes with winning the Superbowl, that is the reason I am associating it with us having a better attitude toward weed, or a name only I care about. I realize this only matters in my Gaga fantasy that we will become Oz, and though I believe in it and think it will make sense in the future, I really don't expect anyone else to understand it. But I'll write it anyway, just in case, or for the future. I have no idea if Gaga is as intentional about Oz as I am, but this is the only connection to her, the green/emerald city connection, which is pretty obscure, maybe "just for me". But when I responded to her tweet about Tim Tebow and it got the most views of my blogs for a while, I realized I had to write one for Peyton Manning because he is way better. Of course everything I say about football in this can be applied to other sports, or really any other activity - everything is connected in subtle ways and there is magic in looking for those connections and comparisons. But football is a huge phenomenon in America so it provides such powerful, massive examples of belief and how people connect around the activity and relate to it. It's just a really big deal and even though it's also "just a game" the outcome has major repercussions for the city and the fans - it effects the economy of money and of emotion and attention and prestige within the nation. Players don't think about those things, they don't effect the game that way, from the skill side, the activity, but only in terms of destiny - it was this city's year. And this year it is Denver's year, it's our year. It's the year of the Horse, Happy Chinese New Year as of yesterday, so there is that, too. All of this is very loosely connected, but magically it all comes together. Peyton Manning did not move here for the weed, it has "nothing to do with him" he is such a traditional "good guy, clean American boy", but legal weed does end up affecting the culture in so many ways so that what was already a great place to live and raise a family gets better and better. I think his success here will increase the likelihood he will stay here and continue to give Denver that image as well, for people who are put off by the idea of it being a weed paradise, they can think "Well, Peyton Manning likes living there and if it doesn't bother him it probably won't bother me." I know it is going to be a great game, I hope the weather doesn't make it uncomfortable, and I just know the Broncos will win, but I'm really excited to see it, more than any Superbowl ever before, I think. This has all been about the wierd magical luck that can affect the outcome, is it Denver's destiny to win, have we done enough of the right things right and will the spotlight spurn us to fix some other things? These are questions of destiny, and spirit, and these will play a factor in tomorrow's game even if there will be no way to measure them. But everyone will be able to see and enjoy a great display of skill and sport and we will collectively form powerful memories from this game. I just hope and expect all of those will contribute to everyone thinking it was the year Denver legalized weed and won the Superbowl, that Champ Bailey and others got their rewards for their love and work for the game and that Peyton Manning crystalizes his place as one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, and his place in Denver. Thanks to everyone whose hard work got them this far and will win it, you've got this! Go Broncos!