Gossip Girl's final scene last night was of Blair and Louie getting into a car with the paparazzi cameras flashing at them. I guess they used a classic cinematic trick of slowing the background so that they were like the only two people and it really worked, it really gave me that feeling like I was there in that timeless moment. Maybe it was because I have seen this camera trick before and it reminded me of so many similar scenes, but this was even more pronounced - not just because of the emotion of the scene, though I am sure Blair's discomfort was a factor in the impression. Maybe they slowed down the background a lot more than people usually do in these scenes: the camera flashes were like stars or bright white crosses that just stayed there, still, while she slowly looked around. It made me feel what Blair felt in that moment and it felt mystical - the feeling of a moment lasting forever. I want to give credit to Gossip Girl for fashioning this scene so well but Gaga is the one who first presented this mystical idea in the perfect way for me. I've been meaning to write about this for years and assumed I would cover it in a detailed exposition of Paparazzi, the song that most perfectly reveals it, though the idea is in her other lyrics as well. It really is the key that got me thinking of Gaga in religious terms so I have a lot to say about it but I will try a condensed version here. When I saw the Gosspi Girl scene - when I and millions of others "became Blair" for a moment - it reminded me of Paparazzi and I had this idea: Identity is like a two-way mirror between us. We can see both of us in it, "You and I", and we can choose sides to identify with, but we are both in it together and it is something we share. Paparazzi's lyrics are so genius that I was sold on Gaga's divinity the first time I heard them. The chorus, "I'm your biggest fan I'll follow you until you love me" is a glorious two-way mirror: she could be singing from the perspective of the paparazzi, or from the perspective of the star. The sublime stutter, "Papa - paparazzi" inplies the quest and craving for fatherly/missing acceptance. The context, with some sort of Brittany melt-down in the headlines, marrying one dude briefly without hollywood approval then dating a paparazzi, and Gaga's performance at the MTV awards and the spectacle of the sacrificed star, put this quest for acceptace at the heart of The Fame. For me, there was always something perfect about the way she was both sides of the "star/lover-fan", seeking the love of the crowd or the attention of the star, either as a paparazzi seeking a good shot or as a groupie/girlfriend waiting backstage. She works multiple sides of the mirror of identity in Paparazzi and reveals a deep mystical reality in the flow of identity and attention.
Being swarmed by paparazzi is part of being famous. Some celebrities complain about it. Gaga not only embraced it but made it an art form in itself like everything she does. She said she sought to master the Art of Fame and by doing so she is a master of awareness and attention and Time. These are things we talk about but have limited understanding of. Since Gaga has a deeper understanding and is truly making the most of awareness and attention she gets the full effect of every situation. She respects the paparazzi and the attention they bring and makes the most of it - one direction for the lyrics of Paparazzi to go is that she will follow the cameras until they love her. She has described her wonderful fashions as a way of honoring those photographer's work and respecting the attenion of millions that they represent. By showing and giving this love in everything she does and wears, as she shows love in her music and messages to her fans, she is getting mroe and more love back. Its like she found the secret and is using it and showing others how to use it, too. Like she is saying "I am Love (and so can you!)". To me this secret, exemplified in the "frozen moment" when the star is surrounded by paparazzi, tells us something mahical about time and is one of the best ways to talk about it since we mostly only take time for granted and don't really get it.
The moment the paparazzi are immortalizing is depicted, in movies and TV, as seeming to last forecer for the star at the center of it. This is one irony of the "Who's who of you and I": it actually feels like expanded time to the star, but the moment will truly be immortal in a different way to the audience. People could look at pictures of that instant for years, for millions of years. It may be that when we understand spiritual physics we can determine that the star senses all the time that others will spend looking at images of the moment and that is part of how time slows down or expands for them when the moment is happening. This presumes a "connection" to all things, including future things, that I believe in but people don't talk too much about. I think talking about it is the key to magic, and I think what we are talking about - awareness, attention, and Time - is the heart of magic so everything can be explained through it. All ambition is a quest for immortality in a way, and all great innovators achieve it but there is something special about the quality in the entertainment world. There is something special about The Fame and Gaga reveals how it works with everything she does - she is surely the greatest Master of Fame in history. One function of the Fame is expanding time - that what she wears one day will be looked at for years, that anytime she is out in public there are images of her from every angle at every split-second. One of her songs, a few minutes in itself, has been heard and seen for centuries when all the attention is added up, even if it is only a year old. I am sure that Gaga will join many other musicians whose music is heard by people centuries and milinnea into the future and i think her impact in other ways will ensure she is always viewed as an important figure. Whether she is commonly recognized as a Goddess or not I htink she has already achieved immortality and will only get "more immortal" as time goes on.
This is all based on an idea that there is more Time within Time than we can experience when we barely notice it. We usually count time and basically observe it from an "outside" perspective. I was trying to find a secret mental route to sleep, taking a nap before Gossip Girl xame on, and realized that a obvious quality of sleep and dreams is "dream-time" which is not a different order of time like Nintendo seconds used to go by fatser than clock seconds, it is like an inversion of Time itself. Or rather, our limited understanding of time is because we have it inside out and are stuck in it, but when we dream, and probably when we die for a while, we are really in Time, inside of it not obseving, part of it, one with it, so that we feel Timeless. The people down under, in Oz, have mapped dreamtime and know what Time really is, from within it. Countless works of art from the rest fo the world allude to timeless moments. These are moments that surely correspond to a calendar and clock-time in which they "occured" but they are escapes from the Tyrant of Clock-time into the Timlessness of Dreamtime. Dr. Oz told us that American society is starved for good nutrition but we are equally starving for sex and sleep. I think all these issues - and every issue in the world by extension - have a skeleton-key solution and Gaga is giving it to us. Be fabulous, be divine, be your true self. The very path of following your dreams for The Fame, or for Love ("do you want love or you want fame are you in the game?" - Lovegame) makes more of the path for yourself and for others.
Together we are expanding time, iimmortalizing moments and discovering who we really are by admiring and playing with each other. This is the first birthday of the Gagablog, which I started as a birthday present to myself. It looks like I share a birthday with Charles Dickens, who turns 200 hundred today. And people thought he was long-winded, wait till they get a load of me.... and I hope I will have as good a reputation as a champion of the poor, 200 years from now, though I hope poverty will be a relic of the past then. I was born an Aquarius and a Dragon (and a planetary white dog according to my once-neighbor's reading of the Myan horoscope) and this is the Age of Aquarius and the luckiest year again, the Year of the Dragon. so I'm anticipating great things and being a part of them this year. This Gagablog has documented some amazing events and changes in the world this last year, from revolutions to the release of Born This Way and singles and videos from it. I think this year will be even more phenomenal, and while Gaga had expanded 2011 into decades or centuries, 2012 will be a millinium in itself. I plan to add more of my creative efforts and together with Gaga, and everyone, we will make a wonderful new world. It is always this moment, now, from which we can slip into something more comfortable - infinity. (''')
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