Gagablog 63: Artpop, the Holy Spirit carbonated: Mandela, peace love and liberation

Art is the Holy Spirit. Artpop is the Holy Spirit, carbonated and sparkling. Everything is divine, scientifically everything is made of light, but we take on the complexity of matter in this life. The Holy Spirit is liberation, love, the future that draws us on, gives us hope, and lets us know everything will be good in the end. The world is sharing in the event of celebrating the life of Nelson Mandela as the people of South Africa gather and are joined by the greatest gathering of world leaders in history. It's about to start, on TV, and one of the good things about working the night shift is being able to join in events live as they happen on the other side of the world, getting the world's first reactions to news. I have so much to say about it, it touches on so many issues, I actually appointed a great leader in my head to write this, somewhat, by jotting down some notes, instead of letting the mob rule of thoughts in my mind ramble on. But this is how it works and why Mandela was so important to people - we are all manifestations of the Holy Spirit but some of us put it forth more purely, just shine with it's brilliance. This is the reason we all respond so powerfully to the great figures and leaders of history, because they really bring out something, into a blazing fire, but it is something within all of us, a spark we all share and connect to. Gaga recently attended an exhibit honoring Isabella Blow and encouraged her monsters via twitter to check her out, thus virtually ensuring the immortality of her art, though I'm sure most monsters like me had not heard of her before Gaga made the introduction. She echoed something she said recently in her tweet that it is important to honor the artist while they are alive. This is especially important for artists since we often struggle and can't realize the art we are inspired by due to worldly difficulties. The reason we have these celebrations after people die is because of the nature of being an aspect of the Holy Spirit, the divine, and returning to the fullness of it - it lets people reflect on the fullness of life. Mandela has been ailing for some time and this was excpected, it is not as if people were holding off celebrating him in case he did anything in his final days to invalidate the good of his life. No, it is just that we can't fully appreciate the importance of someone while they are with us, or while we can still hope to be with them, because the real importance of people is in their spirits and until the liberation of the spirit from this world it is encumbered. Even Mandela, who was so inspiring to the whole world, had some resentment from his family for not being able to be with them as much as they would like for the cause. Michael Jackson's death was a surprise to the world, but the same thing happened that in death the full force and impact that he had on people could be felt. The reason we are sad at most funerals is because we think of the loss, of missing time with the person or missing what could have been. With Mandela and others who have great impact and live long lives, we don't feel so much loss or what might have been, but can be more completely happy for all they did. I get the impression that it is more common in African cultures to celebrate life at funerals and it is uplifting to see the joy in people as they are going to the stadium for the service. So far the ceremony is almost an hour late starting and the stadium is still filling up. There is something special about seeing all the world leaders coming together and being on equal terms paying respect to Mandela, but also the fact that the real message is that all people are on equal terms and should be treated equally. The thing we keep being surprised about is that the real power is in truth, in love and caring for each other. We keep talking about how remarkable it is to forgive people assume that liberation from fear and oppression is for the victims, but Mandela has told us and it becomes increasingly easy to see how they oppressers are the ones truly "suffering" from fear, oppressors are the ones sick with it even if they put the symptoms off onto the oppressed and take the suffering out on them. So forgivness is healing them, healing everyone. It really opens up some amazing ideas to celebrate such a great man when like the other greatest people in history his contribution involved asserting the essential dignity and worth of all people. They just finished the South African National Anthem in it's three different languages. Christine Amanpour made a good point that by keeping the old Afrikans anthem in the new anthem, Mandela "embraced and nuetralized" the old order and she mentioned this was an example they could follow more in the Arab Spring. But this is the essence of "loving one's enemies" from the Bible, or the Rule of Three or "killing" with kindness. We keep hearing anecdotes of Mandela exemplifying forgiveness and reconciliation and we can never get enough of these, we need it. But the reason we need it is because there is still so much disparity and oppression in the world. Anderson Cooper just started talking over a minister giving a eulogy and comparing Mandela to Joseph, which I thought might be disrespectful until they said Mandela himself was not particularly religious and that he believed in infinity and his belies were rooted in tribal religion he grew up with. This shows how all beleif ultimately leads to the same thing, it is the same Holy Spirit of liberation that calls us all into the future, to more ideal life. The thing about liberation and freedom is that we all long for it, we all need it. Leaders will emerge who represent this need more prefectly, who exemplify it. But we all feel it, and there are two aspects to liberation movements, the leaders and the crowds. The crowds will do it and the leaders will emerge to be the face of it and to help steer the crowd to minimize conflcit. Right now there is a crowd gathered in the Ukraine ready to force the government out because the president chose to stay allied with Russia instead of meeting a commitment to ally more with Europe. In this case, and in Syria, the government is acting against the will of the people in such a way that they are being overthrown. This is the sense that all people have for justice and equality, whether a leader has or will emerge to symbolize these movements or not. With the end of Aparthied, and so much more good and justice done in the world by Mandela, we have a clear example of how goodness wins. Goodness is the only thing that really can win because there is no real power in evil: the worldly powers that are used to oppress people are not powerful at all compared with the truth. Malala said this when she said she believes the gun has no power at all, but the pen, the truth, is what is powerful Carlos Santana said the same thing when an interviewer for our local denver news (I think) asked him what he learned from Mandela - he said it was that the Good had already won. Its the only way it can be. It's always possible to see the good if we are looking with our hearts. I was a kid in the 80's and first heard about Mandela and Aparthied because of protests in America trying to convince Reagan to support sanctions against South Africa. This awakened me to the idea that there was still injustice in the world and that some people who were supposed to be responsible to fix it weren't up to the task. There has been a "great man" version of History that idolizes Reagan but this was one area where he was obviously lacking, even if Newt Gingrich wants to emphasise the lessor efforts Reagan made to address the issue. The main reason people get to say Reagan was any good, anyway, was because he was president when the Soviet Union collapsed, but my best undestanding of that is he accomplished it by lying and scaring them by spending ten times as much as they could afford on weapons no one ever needed in order to strain and eventually wreck their economy - because weapons aren't good for anything, just a waste of resources. I was never down with that, or how the Reagan administration tried to scare us into hiding under our desks in case of nuclear attack. But I'm against most everything he stands for and oppposed to the mentality that idolizes or even likes him. As my love says, the best thing about Reagan is he had a monkey. The response to the death of Mandela shows how severely "off" some people are, how far they are away from seeing with their heart - but if we look closely it shows this about us all, in lesser degrees. When Newt tweeted praise for Mandela he got a lot of racist and awful responses from his base of support, no real surprise since they are awful, racist people. But he tries to "redeem" his mentality by implying he has any moral values with which to relate to Mandela, as if all of his policies aren't completely contradictory to the Holy Spirit of liberation. Newt is trying to distinguis himself from his base, people who call Mandela a "gorrilla" warrior, but they are all the same. He tries to make excuses for Reagan, but the truth is that sanctions did play a role in ending Aparthied and Reagan was on the wrong side of history and had to be convinced. But as I said, we are thankfully not all raging racists, though far to many Americans are and have been revealing themselevs as such especially since Obama took office. We actually want to get along, which is why we can be so unified in praising someone like Mandela who did so much to bring us together. But as we sit here praising ideals and feeling like we share them, we really need to scrutinize ourselves and avoid hypocrisy. We say we value Mandela and we do, the world did honor him in his lifetime. But are we honoring him, and what he represnets, the Holy SPirit of liberationa and eqaulity, as best we can, in everything we do? If we haven't been our best, can we start now, with this memorial service as a call to become what we know we should be? I just can't help notice some hypocricy in the way we talk about Mandela. Christine Amanpor was marvelling at how brutal African dictators also praise Mandela, and she wondered if they are being willfully blind to not actually live up to his message or if they are just going along with the crowd. I would ask that question of Newt Gingrich and other conservatives who are trying to appear compassionate by praising Mandela - as if they in any way "get it" when they are in fact the source of the problem - but not because I think they are incapable of getting the message, because we all have that spark of Holy Spirit seeking to set us aflame with liberation. And we love it when someone else does it, but one problem we have is the "great man" idea that only someone else can do it. This is the same problem we had with buddha and Jesus - lots of people like to pretend "He" is the only one who could do this, so they don't have to take any responsibility to do it themselves. In the case of Mandela and other great leaders, they do inspire people to do more themselves, and they do earn the great praise people give them. But the idea of deifying people, idolizing people, can be good if it brings us together (and unity is usually the goal of people we want to honor in the first place) bu8t it can be harmful if it makes us feel separated, less worthy, or uncapable. I heard an example of this in Dave Letterman's interview with Sir Ian McLellan - sorry about spelling - Gandalf. He said that he met Mandela on a mission to get his support for a measure to protect people from descrimination based on sexual orientation. Mandela sent him a book with an inscription that he respected or appreciated him and Ian said he was unworthy or undeserving of Mandela's praise. In a way, this is just being humble but it is also part of the problem I am talking about. Ian was seeking equality for gay people, for all people, he was doing the same thing Mandela himself did. Mandela recognized it and supported him, unlike Reagan who did not immediately recognize Mandela and support him, but it did take Ian making the trip and appeal and drawing his attention to it to make it happen. I'm not criticising Mandela or saying he might not have come to it on his own, but saying that Ian played a necessary role that should not be diminished. We can't say that only "great people" create change because we are all part of the ame thing. They just quoted Mandela saying he was not only one man, and the fairy sensitive-seeming Chris Cuomo just made the statement that the unique thing about this event was "regular people in the same place with the most important people in the world." We are all the most important people in the world and we can't let anyone else's position allow us to feel inferior or incapable. We do have way too much futiulity in the world and that is why it is so powerful to be inspired. And I'm reminded that some great people live up to the positions we put them in, like Mandela himself or Obama, and I was reminded by the heartfelt speech of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, which was sweet and powerful and reflected the Holy Spirit well. Obama is still more ideal than he has been able to realize, which reminds me of the limitations of office, even the highest offices, and makes me think how much more freely President Carter can speak about things after he is president and I look forward to Obama having that freedom and being that kind of voice and conscience for America and the world - though I also wish he could have another term or two. We should not think of Mandela, or Jesus or Buddha or anyone, as "above us" in any limiting way, only above us in a leading way, to raise us up. Nothing is too high that it is not connected to the lowest, indeed it is a sign of the highest level of development to be able to relate and help those who are held back the most, at the bottom. We also can't take the words we say and feeling we have when we honor goodness in people to be a placebo for doing good ourrselves, and this is something I hear in the way we are talking about Mandela. The newscasters say that brutal dictators honor Mandela without really following his example then they praise Mandela for speaking so bluntly to criticize Bush and Blair for the Iraq war but it's like they can't connect the dots and say that it is also ironic for Bush and Blair to claim to honor Mandela without actually doing what he said. The same is true for the conservatives defense of Reagan basically supporting Apartheid by not doing enough to oppose it, saying they chose to do that in the context of competing with the Soviet Union and communist countries for influence, as if that makes it okay. True goodness can be persued at every level, and if the opposition to Russian means we can't help other oppressed people, then maybe that should be a signal that there is something wrong with the opposition to the Russia. They're recounting now how Mandela flew to Lybia to broker a deal to free hostages when we couldn't and hatred that many conservatives here have for him is based on being allied with communist countries, but it was his ability to connect with all sides of the spectrum. The newsguys are saying he was unique in being able to connect with all sorts of leaders, even those he was critical of, because he had basic respect for all. This is what we are missing, in our society and in the world in general. We need to have respect for all people. We tend to create an "other" class to take advantage of, either certain communities or "foreign" cultures, but there is no real "other". Obama just shook hands with Castro as I typed that and Christine is shocked" :it's so true, he brought people together in life and he continues to bring people together in death." Of course it IS the spirit of Mandela to shake hands, but it was still Obama who extended his hand and Castro who shook it - even though Obama will certainly take heat from it for redneck back home, the newsman just said it, but he also tried to downplay it, like it is just the spirit of the moment, when it really could be the spirit of an even bigger moment, the sign of the new era of cooperation instead of conflict. Mandela IS the spirit of reconciliation, the Holy SPirit, but his death does not mean this is gone from the world, but the opposite, it means it is now up to us more than ever to carry the torch. The newscasters were so aghast that "Nelson" was the name given (Obama is speaking now...) to him in school, replacing his African name. But it wasn't long ago we did the same to Native American kids and we still give immigrants more American names. Okay, Obama's speech was awesome and he said a lot of what I'm trying to say here, of course better and more powerfully. I studied speeches of liberation, that promoted democracy, for the Academic Decathalon competition in high school and this was one of those speeches. It touched on all the important points, that this "giant" was not above us, but one of us and connecting with us, that holding strongly to ideals allows for comporomise to reach larger goals, that we need self-reflection to become our best, that sacrifice is required for change and that we recognize some who sacrifice but many are "unknown", that equality and unioversatl franchise are essential, and that the work is not done and won't be as long as there is persecution and poverty in the world, including persecution for ideals or who one loves. He criticised leaders who claim to ally with Mandela's message but don't tolerate dissent. Focusing on the value of ideals and also our responsibility to act to reach them, Obama mentioned the need to write new laws and keep persuing equality and said we can all do things to honor Mandela and used himself as an example, saying he was stirred up by learning of Mandela in a way that shaped his life and also invoking Ubuntu, the african word for interconnectedness, translated as "I am me because of you." Mandela is a good example of the Holy Spirit because, especially as Obama mentioned, and is being conveniently replayed for me as I write this, he shared his truth with us, his faults and mistakes as well and said he was not a saint "unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps trying." We can all fit that category, and we are all reflections of ourselves. We recognize greatness in others, in Mandela, in Obama, in Gaga, because they have gone with where this Holy Spirit leads us all. We are all who we are because of each other, we are all in this together, and we make each other by our examples and lessons we teach through them. We are all Mandela, and Gaga, and responsible for carrying out their message. And we are the nameless and not-yet-known, too, and it is our responsibilty to discover, honor, and become those poeple, known and unknown, who advance humanity. Obama said that we will never see the likes of another Mandela. Maybe the good side of this is we won't need one, that there will be no more "great injustices" to address, but they kind of need one now in Syria and other places. And there are still the worldwide issues of poverty and war, and the same problem that was Aparthied in South Africa is still many injustices around the world, and needs to be opposed. The problem is worldly power being misused, the use of force and violence. And we are all part of a system that is guilty of it, that runs on it. We still accept fear as a motivator: we use the threat of military strikes to get some compliance out of Syria or Iran, we threaten to enforce laws, good and bad, with prison time or killing you. The two most glaring hypocricies I see in the way we, Americans, honor Mandela is that we love his non-violence when it comes to not retaliating for violence, but we don't love it enough to disarm and become non-violent ourselves. Even during the memorial I see news ticking across the bottom of the page about George Zimmerman, posterchild for the craziness of our gun culture. it's just wrong, I don't need to explain it all, it is based on fear, violence, and force. That's not how you get things done. We are all so impressed that Mandela did the impossible, and he did it non-violently. If he had used violence he could have only achieved the possible, spun revenge around for another cycle. But we want the impossible, the ideal, and we deserve it and can have it if we are brave enough to be true to goodness and have faith that Goodness always wins, has already won in the eternal time, in the future paradise we all know. We can't truly honor the non-violent spirit and still make excuses for weapons and violence - we have to disarm and be an example to others, weapons are not an answer to anything, not a good answer. Another major hypocricy, for Americans, is to claim to value "universal franchise", everybody gets a vote, but not actually apply this universally. I see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a clear example of this: we keep saying the only solution is a two-state solution, but what does this mean? All over the world, countries are working together more and more, and wee have to to face major issues. We wont necessarily start merging more countries, though I guess the EU has in a way, but we will start working together for more common interests. Dividing Israel and Palestine is counter to this trend - but what would the option be? Making Palestinians eqaul citizens with universal franchise, trh right to vote? WHat would be wrong with that, other than to a mindset that only cares about the Israeli side of things? But if Israel is rhe oppressor of the Palestinian people, and we actually believe Mandela that liberation is for the captors as much or more than for the captors, then wouldn't the best way to look out for Isreai interests be to seek justice and equality for the Palestinians? I think we should live up to our ideal of eqaulity in Israel by insisting on universal suffrage - but we need this in America, too, with so many conservatives trying to repress or steal the vote from certain populations. And probably our worse hypocricy revealed in Americans honoring Mandela is how much respect we have for him, and indignation, for having endured 27 years in prison. We have another story in the media now about a man who was freed after 25 years of wrongful imprisonment in AMerica and there are many more people like that in this country, and of course there are when you consider we have the highest incarceration rate in the world. We claim to be so opposed to the wrongful imprisonment of Mandela when huge numbers of Americans are wrongfully imprisoned for similar reasons, the mistakes or prejudices of those in power. We have to be willing to examine ourselves, to look to the best examples of leaders, not as lullabyes but to wake us up to live up to them. We can't let ourselves off the hook because it is someone elses problem or expect someone else to come along to take care of it. The one thing I disagree with Obama is that we will see another Mandela, many more Mandelas, because we will see more of him in all of us, his strong, pure example of the Holy Spirit brings it out stronger in all of us, Ubuntu. Of course I have a suggestion, the ideal version that we can keep in mind to see how far we need to go, and of course it is from Oz so i will get into more detail in my upcoming book "Oz Magic: From Radio to Gaga." But oz has one jail, and in that jail they only ever had one prisoner, Ojo the Unlucky. Their "army" is also only have one soldier and his gun is just for show and doesn't work. One reason for this is no one does anything wrong, and when Ojo is imprisoned it is because he acts wrongly since he did not understand the rules. But in Oz the rules are good, compared to here, now, where laws can be wrong and bad. Mandela challenged Aparthied in his trial, he made it a trial of Aparthied since he was not wrong, the system was. There are a lot of places where our system is still wrong, there is injustice we need to fight. Legalizing weed is one such fight, removing bad laws, but there are so many areas when one group of people is oppressed in favor of another and we need to be vigilant about exposing and reconciling all of these disparities and institutional or cultrual prejudices. We only hurt and take advantage of each other out of fear, we are afraid of one another and want to control the "other" to hide the fear, or make them fear us. But fear itself is our common enemy. We can all come together in opposition to violence and oppression, if we just believe what we say and act accordingly. We say good things all the time but we do need examples of goodness in action to live up to it, to have examples to follow. We all have that feeling of goodness, that spark and yearning, and we all get frustrated by the difficulties in the world. Accidents can happen, but we should all be vigilant against abuse of power because it is not an accident, but a system. We can't be complacent and Mandela and the tributes to him are beautiful reminders of this. We can't let any injustice get a pass because it seems to big to make fail, we have to have faith and bravery and end them. One reason I call this the Holy Spirit is I know from the Bible that in times of trial Jesus, I think, said not to worry or say pre-determined things but to allow the Holy Spirit to speak through you. To me, this means that the Holy Spirit is dedicated to justice, to revealing the truth to a Judge or someone in power. This means that the power structure can, should, and will change - the Holy Spirit will arrive to make it happen. We just have to be open to this: to be willing to face hardship and injustice because we know the truth, the Holy Spirit, has already won and knowing that it takes getting into struggle to make this happen but what happens will be for the greater good. We need to be alert, aware, sensitive to others needs so we can detect injustice, we need to be willing to suffer and sacrifice to address it, and we need the faith to know the real power is on our side when we seek justice. I like the quote from professor Cornell West that justice is love expressed to the world, loving the world equally. There is no real "other", no real opponent, we are all in this together. As we realize this and come closer to unity the things that hold us back will stand out as wrong even more. We are coming out of a recession but still are not all doing well. Anti-immigrant sentiment always rises in this country when things are "bad" and people are more generous when things are good. Last week I heard that 50% of Americans think we should not negotiate with Iran, 30% think we should do more diplomacy and 20% just want war. This disgusts me when we have a chance at a peaceful solution, even with the sateks being a potential World War 3 or nuclear holocaust. Sanctions, applying them and removing them when progress is made, is what the world did to end Aprthied, we kept up our end, eventually. Sanctions are supposedly what gained traction for getting Iran to give up developing nuclear weapons. Sanctions are a form of violence, but not nearly as bad as war. The thing is, how can we say "certain" people can have certain weapons and others can't? We give Pakistan many weapons including nuclear bombs but it is not like they have a qaulity that Iran is lacking. It is not like we have some special qaulity, as Americans, that makes us uniquely qaulified to have nucear weapons - we are the only country to use them, which if anything should disqualify us. But this shows weapons aren't any good, that the real good is done by communication, consideration, and reconciliation. It is when those break down that we resort to violence, but they can't work if we don't try them. Obama himself quoted Mandela that you have to trust someone in order to get them to trust you. This is the exact opposite of insisting we need guns, missiles, or violence to get that we want, based on the idea that we will eventually need to threaten people because we can't trust them. We live in an world abundant with resources and love, but restricted by people who control and starve people of this through exertion of unjust power. We just have to oppose that wehn we encounter it, and look for it hiding in ourselves or hidden from us in the world. We all have the chance to do that, and are especially called to that duty by the memorial and memory of Madiba. It is the buddha, seeking the end of all suffering, and the boddhisattva vow, to not enter nirvana until all people do. These great examples are here to stick around for all of us, to make us all as good. We are, inside, and we will be able to live that goodness outwardly as we overcome the barriers that separate us. Art is the Holy Spirit, what inspires and guides us all to unity, justice, liberation, peace and love. Artpop is that spirit manifest in reality, a drink we can taste and feel and refreshes us in special chosen moments instead of the air we breathe that sustains us all the time and we might not even notice it. Artpop is the carbonization of Art, the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit entered into carbon-based life forms. And it sparkles. Scientifically we, everything, is made our of light - light is the basic reality that combines and produces matter, and from there grows into complexity. But we are all rooted in light, we are all light moving through, revealed in matter, and it makes us sparkle. When we really live up to the light inside of us, we glow and shine, catch fire to others and light the world. But even before we fully turn on the light in us is called forth by great lights in the world. Mandela did this for many, and as Obama said he was the last great liberator of the last century. But we already have Gaga, and Pope Francis, Obama himself, and other liberating figures of this century and more to come. As the planetarium in the Simpsons said, "Who will discover the secrets of the universe/press my reset button? Will it be you? Or you? Or you?". Ubuntu - i am me because of you. What can I do to help you, what do we need? We can save the world, from all injustice, by keeping to this spirit. Everyone is an example of this, and while I did not get into many examples of Gaga doing this in this edition, it's essentially all she does - liberates us, empowers us, and brings us together. In Love.

gagablog 62: Thanksgiving and Loneliness

I was so grateful and excited about Gaga's Thanksgiving show with the Muppets and I enjoyed it so much, but even more has happened since then making me thankful and excited that I have not written about it. In my personal life I'm going to see my dad and stepmom and mother-in-law and grandmother for the first time in two and a half years, and on top of that I just got tickets to see Lady Gaga for the first time. She's performed a lot of things, and made a commentary for Artpop, and I still have to catch up on most all of it. The Thanksgiving show was amazing and profound, and I have to comment on it for how it effected me and what it meant to me. It made me super happy to hear Gaga was doing another Thanksgiving special, especially with the Muppets. Her last Thanksgiving special is my favorite entertainment for this holiday, and the Muppets have been like family all my life. Our whole family watched “The Muppet Show” together when I was a kid, I watched Sesame Street all my life, with some breaks, through my teenage years with my little sister, and again with my kids, and I have loved the Muppets in all their movies. I put up a video on youtube with my love of Bert and Ernie singing “Just Dance” and “Beautiful Dirty Rich.” I always connected with the Muppets, especially the way they honored the qualities of sweetness, cooperation, community, creativity, individuality and even weirdness. I probably identify most with Gonzo, Ernie and Telly, and maybe Janice (Janet? Sorry, I'm tired), but with all of them in different ways. There is a certain loneliness, outkast quality to the Muppets, that makes the family they form together, and with their audience, even sweeter. Gaga is the same way, someone tweeted to me that she brings us outcasts together and I agreed that I've often said the same thing. I see it as the spiritual quality of inclusion and love, the kingdom of heaven Jesus spoke about in the parable of the Shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine sheep to search for the lost one. I see Gaga as a savior figure for taking this to the ends of the world and really representing it for us, and rubbing off on us. I'm so thankful for this and one major part of thanksgiving is expressing thanks, to deity or nature or whatever for providing the goodness of the world. I also have to say that the performances were, as always, amazing and I will have to refrain from gushing about them to make my point. We are also thankful for each other, and this is possibly the most important thing about thanksgiving, togetherness. Feasting and festivities are all about sharing them with family and friends. While for many this and other family holidays are super stressful for dealing with family, and much of the talk in the media is about this, for others the stress of the holiday is from being lonely, either because you can't be with your family and loved ones or because you don't have any. I'm really lucky and thankful to have my own family here, but of course miss my family back home who I have not seen in years, especially on Thanksgivings, my dad's favorite holiday. But I still relate to loneliness because I still experience it often, due to my work and sometimes to my mood. I thought it was really sweet of Gaga to mention loneliness as a theme in the Thanksgiving show, both because it fits with that all-important theme of inclusion she shares with the Muppets, the idea of seeking out the lonely and weird and bringing everyone together, and because it is an issue for so many people on this holiday. Gaga speaks strongly to a lot of people who feel lonely, either separated from their families of “black-sheep” within them, often because of homophobia still in many societies and families. But there are all sorts of reasons to feel weird or outcast and Gaga speaks to many of us, all who listen anyway. When she mentioned she felt lonely it made me sad, of course, though it made me happy that she was taking the moment to relate to lonely people and include us, to bring us out of our loneliness by reminding us how everyone can feel this way but we are together with each other and with Gaga, even in this sad experience of feeling all alone. Like I said I often feel lonely, because I work nights all alone with hardly any contact with others – watching over kids sleeping in a treatment center. I try to reach out to people online and talk, and could not use facebook most of the year and quit doing it, though I never talked to people much there anyway. But I recently got on twitter and have had a few conversations, but so far my experience of twitter seems to highlight loneliness, in a way. So many people talking, or saying things, but not a lot of back and forth, deep conversation. It is the limits of the form, but also how the whole thing caters to a certain kind of expression and a certain level of interaction. I'm so lucky and grateful to my love who soothes me and spends time with me and cares for me, but I have issues from growing up feeling lonely a lot and still spend so much time alone that I can feel it strongly. It's probably also empathic, sensitive, Aquarian nature, etc. But I've “dealt with” loneliness on many levels, including the extreme loneliness of many of the kids who live where I work, some of whom were so abused and neglected as babies and toddlers that they have terrible behavior issues even at ages 4-11, the age we have at my part of work. Hearing that Gaga was lonely at times was touching, and that felt good, but mostly it was sad. She is reaching out to us, though, and teaching us to reach out to each other. When we are lonely the quickest cure, what we want the most, is someone to reach out to us. But often the best way to connect with others when we are lonely is to reach out to someone else. When I got on twitter last night one of the first tweets I saw was someone saying they felt lonely and unloved. I said we are always loved, and when we are alone we are loved by art. I guess I conveyed my meaning, there was a tweet back of appreciation. I meant art always loves us and we can choose to be in love with it. It's often easier, we are inspired a lot, by being in love with someone, like Gaga says “I'm my best when I'm in love with you.” If we have no one around to relate to, we can relate to the spirit of inspiration and creativity, to art, and make something. Making art is a way of connecting to people even into the future. Loneliness itself can be a strong connection to inspiration, especially for music, with as many love songs about longing as being in love. I once wrote a lyric, a year or two before I heard of Lady Gaga, that went “I'm lonely, that's why she gives these songs to me.” Gaga said one of the hardest things was getting injured and having to cancel so much of her tour, but it was at that time that she composed Artpop and we can hear and see how glorious it is. The reason Gaga says she is lonely is because on tour she has to be away from her family and friends. She is on tour for her love of Art, the Holy Spirit of creativity, and what art means and does for people. She loves us by loving art, knowing her art inspires and encourages us and makes us feel love. So she is sacrificing her personal love, time spent with family and friends, to show a greater love for art and the whole world. She is choosing to face and feel lonely at times so that others, millions of others, feel so much less lonely, or feel fulfilled for life when they connect with her or meet her. This is a sacrifice to art and to love, to the world, to us, but it is also an example to us. We can best face loneliness not by ignoring it or acting tough, like we don't need our lovers or friends or family or anyone, but by admitting we do need each other and acting on that. We can allow ourselves to feel lonely in order to get things done to help others, or we can allow ourselves to engage the loneliness of someone else to help them feel better, instead of ignoring them. This is the example that Gaga is showing for us, that the most powerful and successful of us also feels lonely but that the best response for anyone feeling alone is to reach out to others. This is a message for rich people, too, since wealth can really isolate people and insulate them from community, so much they might not notice it except a pain in their soul. Wealth may be the strongest thing to separate people, in fact, as greed is the source of the system that keeps people in strife and basically at odds with one another. Gaga's example to the rich is to embrace humanness and empathy that we all feel alone at times, and to use riches and success to connect with more people and help people more. Gaga's example to all of us is to find our inner artist, writer, singer, whatever and make the most of our true calling, to be in love with art and share it with the world, to be in love with the world through art. This is the greatest success, to make people happy and to help people, to give them what they need, and we can all live up to this better and better. We become our best selves by trying to do the most to help the world. The art we make creates community, between artists and with audiences, and community is a major love we are all missing, we just need more of it. But the more we have, the more we can make, and sometimes we discover in loneliness, with only art, that we have it all. Gaga reached her transformative moment, married the night, when she was at her loneliest, with just her and her bedazzler. We can all do this, for in accepting loneliness we are actually at our strongest, being able to go for a task, create the art only we can make, or being able to reach out to someone feeling lonely, or accept someone reaching out to us. These are all the essence of love, our greatest strength in admitting our common weakness, loneliness, and sharing it with each other, through art or the love of friendship or affection. We experience loneliness in some of the most profound ways as kids, but we all need to overcome it with love, not “toughness.” Toughness is the bullying way out as kids, but becomes the norm in a lot of ways as adults. This is a major problem and one Gaga addresses in her art and what she says to us directly. So many monsters relate to the scene in the Born This Way Ball DVD where she says, in the dressing room, that she still feels like a loser sometimes, like she did in high school. There is a reason why she connects this feeling with school, and a reason we all relate to that, some more than others. We grow up in a society where we all need more community and belonging than we have, but we come to accept the limitations and isolation and keep busy to ignore it, that's a typical American adult way, and many more societies are becoming more this way. I never accepted this and in general did not see many positive examples of “manliness”, besides in artists, mystical men and in my family. I was always happy to be “young-at-heart”, even if that meant admitting to being tenderhearted and wonderous and insecure and imaginative, even if it meant being scared and lonely at times, or making art and music most people find strange. I still feel like a kid even now that my son is 13 and way bigger than me. But one reason our society doesn't take enough actual care for kids, despite our rhetoric, is because we don't want to face that insecurity again, in general, we don't want to have to relate to that difficult time, we just don't want to really think about what kids go through, we just want to keep busy and keep them busy- generally. That's the problem. Gaga is so special and important for focusing on kids, so much of her concern is for kids and so many of the little monsters are actually little. But they are also the wisest kids, as kids tend to be, but can flourish with actual encouragement and love. Gaga gives this to us and we all need it so badly, you can see this in how people respond to her and say she saved and changed their lives. And it is because she faces her own insecurity and loneliness, her own feelings of being an outkast, with art and love, connecting us all. Because we all feel this way, it is the inner child in all of us who can always use more love, and the artists who hold onto that open heart. But the rest of us need to discover our artist, opening our hearts. The worst way to grow up is to “deal with” insecurity by saying “I don't need love or friendship, I'll just work hard and enrich myself.” This is the scrooge way and we all do it a little, more than we should. The best way to deal with it is to accept it and know that others will often feel lonely, too, that it is an opportunity to connect with people, through reaching out personally or if no one is around, through art. We grow the best of ourselves out of the tenderness of remembering we need each other. The good thing about feeling lonely, and even in ideal societies the reason we will still have times of feeling lonely, is we seek out others and hopefully find love. If we are lucky enough to find love and accept it and appreciate it enough, it is the best thing to grow and replace loneliness forever. But even love between two people is best, is what it fully can be, when it leads to the couple doing better for the world. I'm guessing Gaga found her love in Taylor, but I'm still a little worried or concerned. She said all the Artpop songs were real, no fantasy other in the magic of how the music came together, so I guess the “you” who she is in love with is someone for real, the “you” of all her songs, and most of them are love songs, is a real person or people she knows. I guess at least one of them is for Taylor, but I wondered why she did not mention him as someone she missed, but said family and friends. Maybe it is just them keeping their personal life personal and not mentioning each other much when on screen as their public image. I've caught some interviews by Extra or whoever with Taylor and he never seems to stoked to talk about her when they ask. I saw him that morning at the Thanksgiving parade and he said he was thankful for family and friends but did not mention her. Maybe monsters who pay closer attention expect this, please tell me, I seem to recall her saying she would not talk about her personal, love life. But it just seemed sad that with as many people who would be so grateful to be with her that he could not say something about being thankful for her, to connect with all the people who are thankful to get to love her from however far away and wish that they, that we all, could be closer. As “Gypsy” finishes in the background I wonder if it is someone she will be in love with for life, if it is someone mystical or she hasn't met yet, the Shaggy Man of Oz – if it is about finding the lover to travel the world with (take me!), or if it is about being a traveller in love with the world, as the countries at the end suggest. I need to listen to her commentary, but I have an idea. This was, again, supposed to be a “short one”, and I think I have one more longish gagablog in me about abundance, US/Iran, Mandela, liberation, and Art as the Holy Spirit and Artpop as the Holy Spirit, carbonated and sparkling. And maybe about Christmas, Gaga's Christmas iconography is so hot and festive. But after that I think I will try to make them shorter, maybe a commentary on each of the Artpop songs, then another one on each after I hear her commentary. Please let me know what you think, I'd love to talk about this stuff more with anyone, and while I keep writing these to put the ideas out there for any magical effect, the magic of conversation would be awesome. Thanks for reading and sharing! I'm so inspired especially by Artpop that I will be doing more drawings and music soon and can't wait to share them with everyone. Paws up, love each other, Artrave for Christmas, and Happy Holidays!

gagablog 61: Marilyn Gaga, "your lover and your mistress"

Ok, wasn't going to say anything about it, I was going to let it slide. But Gaga brought it up with her performance at the AMA's last night, ro rather the critics did by suggesting there was anything wrong with it. I wrote the last edition, "JFK-Obama-Gaga, Time and Timelessness" before the performance and just finally saw on the news some images of what she actually did. I would have to write something anyway, since my previous title implies I would say something about the performance itself. But I knew I would have to say something when I saw that haters are saying her performance was in "poor taste." Let me make is simple: if you aren't an artist, you really have no valid opinion on "taste" in art - it does not matter what you think, art is beyond you, just don't worry about it. I'm an artist myself and will be glad to share my opinion on it. But I am also male, so I felt a little awkward making any comment on some of the controversial issues around Kennedy, so I just focused on the idolized and idealized "spirit" that Kennedy represents, and the symbol fo the Eternal Flame. I am not part of a persecuted minority group, now that I live in Colorado where pot is legal, so I don't really have a compelling personal opinion about civil rights. Civil rights are justice and I think this should be obvious to everyone, but Kennedy has been described as having to be convinced to support Civil Rights, and I just can't idealize someone who could not see that on his own. Also, he was a womanizer. I have a naive opinion of womanizing, since I'm not a woman and don't know that side of the experience and I have not womanized so I don't know that side, either - I don't think it is necessarily the appropriate male role. But at least in our society, womanizing is not really a sin, or even really a misdemeanor. Not that our society is right, and not that womanizing is completely wrong. The good thing about womanizing is the sex -that's the fun part and I suspect why people get into this line of work. But our society has demonized sex, and demonized women, and this is the problem: the same double standards that apply to all sexual issues but judge men and women differently. I suspect the good things about womanizing are it makes men more charming, through variety of experience, and more attractive for being more confident or better actors. Whether it is from confidence of the man or some bad-boy-loving complex of the girl, womanizers are hot, by today's standards. Brittany Spears wrote a song about it in which she is supposedly criticizing a womanizer, but she is still paying attention to him and there was something about him in the first place that attracted her. I think it is something we only pretend to be upset about, while secretly fantasizing about the sex. And the sex is the good part - the bad part of womanizing is lying, betrayal, and hurting people. And the worst part is the way it perpetuates the unnatural idea that corrupts our civilization that women are property. The very worst outcome of this idea that men can own women is when men kill women over "infedelity", or kill their spirits with abuse, but the same idea that women are "disposable" objects for your pleasure is at the heart of the evil of womanizing. You did not have to look at Gaga's performance as disrespectful to Kennedy, you could have looked at it as honoring his relationship with Marilyn, as a tribute to them and their love. If there is something scandalous, a problem with depicting it, it is because of something scandalous and wrong in the historical events, not in something Gaga is doing. Our minds supply the ideas that Gaga is saying this particular thing or that, to even assume that R. Kelly represented JFK instead of Obama - because if "it doesn't matter" then it is a story about a presidential affair, no further details necessary. And if it is specifically about Kennedy, it did not get into controversy, just depicted sexuality and romance between people we know had a famous, one of the most famous, romances. Its not like she had Jackie O' Perry walk in on them or the MTV security murder her at the end. If we want to talk about performances being possibly offensive, what about Katy Perry appropriating Geisha culture in a likely disrespectful way, or Ke$ha dancing in a cowgirl suit with "Indian-style" backup dancers? But I'm not here to whine and complain, but to show why Gaga made some great art and what it means. Gaga "brought these issues up" by performing as Marilyn Monroe making out with the president, but she focused ont the positive, not the negative. Of course we can't help but remember and think of the the negative implications, too. And this is the point: I'm not the only one who glossed over controvery about Kennedy this weekend, that is how it goes when you honor a martyr. Gaga was not bringing up a sore subject, his relationship with Marilyn, she was bringing up something we were all basically jealous of him for and have soul-level issues with. She was touching our souls by connecting with this story, contributing to it's eternity (like a doppelganger on Vampire Diaries repeats a lovestory with a new character in a new age). Like I said, we can see Gaga's performance as honoring the love between them, or between any man and mistress. We can see it as "good." And if we think of bad things, they were there in the history of JFK and Marilyn, it's not like Gaga created these ideas to besmirch their memory. It's like when Craig Ferguson tells a joke about a scandal and scolds the studio audience for "ooooooh"-ing him by saying, sarcastically, "Oh, right, because I am the one who....(insert scandalous activity here)". People shoot the messenger when something "gets to them", when they can't just digest something as entertainment but it actually effects them somehow, when it is art. Gaga's great artistic message with this performance is to show how we love the scandal, we fantasize about the naughtiness, but don't allow ourselves to admit it. Then we repress those details in order to memorialize someone in an ideal way. But it is not actually ideal to be unsexual, it is ideal to be sexual, and in fact JFK had sex with one of the most ideal women in history - yet it was a scandal. And it may have been the worst kind of scandal, and the very worst of the evils of womanizing, if someone killed her to cover it up. That would sum up everything that is wrong with the ideas of using women, women being disposable, and men being more important than women - its the most classic example. But leaving that aside, giving Kennedy the benefit of the doubt, he still was responsible for putting her in such a difficult situation, and other women as well, by being dishonest. This is the essential reason why Gaga is a more perfect liberating figure than JFK or Martin Luther King, Jr - neither of them were personally sexually liberated. The certainly were great lights on the path of liberation for society, inspiring people to great things, but the "dark side" is that they cheated on their wives and could not be honest about it, that they likely used their influence over women to take advantage of them - and that is not the worst part because lets hope everyone liked the sex, but it shows a lack of satisfaction and fulfilment and wholeness - not to want to have sex, we always want sex, but to not be able to be honest and strong enough about being completely open about it. Even Jesus spoke to a sexually repressed audience in terms they could understand, so his liberating ideas about sex are only available to those "with ears to hear", in parables. But we don't know about Jesus's sexuality, other than we can assume if he was a "man" he had some form of sexuality - maybe because it was taboo, then too, if he was gay, or because of later rewriting Mary out as his lover and trying to imply negative things about her by associating her with prostitution, to make him fake-perfect asexual. Yes, it was a different time then, people would not accept the president doing naughty things like they do in Europe and even a generation later - look what happened to Clinton compared to what happened to Burlesconi (that's not really his name is it? I'm remembering it funnier, right? too ironic!) That whole scandal could have just been a needed lesson to the country on the greatness of blowjobs, instead of impeachment and leading to the election of Bush and all the evil that entailed. But what if the president, even Clinton, had just come out with the truth? Maybe we could have shifted, faster, as a society. Because of course we will reach a more liberal, tolerant future, someday. There is no other possibility than that soon we will look back with wonder on this time when people felt that had to hide being gay, etc. Gaga's message in "Do What You Want" fits perfectly with the Marilyn Monroe story - even the idea that she was likely killed, her body martyred, but her message and influence and power as an icon remains strong. They can bury and repress her body but her spirit will shine even brighter, her voice can't be stopped. Gaga herself was echoing the Voice, the Spirit of Marilyn, reviving her for us at this perfect time when the man is honored but we keep forgetting the women. If we don't want to look at this performance as positive, then it is because we notice something wrong, but it is not something wrong with Gaga but with our society, or with the way Marilyn was treated. That might not be something we want to adress but it is real and it matters. Gaga is an artist, it is her role in this world to bring up things in special ways and remind us of the magic and meaning we are missing out on, and she did this brilliantly - and I've only seen seconds of the song so far, without sound, on the news - but so hot! And what better way to honor JFK and Marilyn - because thier hotness is immortal, a great example of the immortality of beauty. All the greatest efforts in human history have that element of striving for or becoming eternal. Gaga overflows with eternity in everything she does and it is no wonder her timelessness would line up with the timelessness of JFK/Marilyn on this 50th anniversary, that is the magic of being "timely", because even the eternal comes to us in moments. Gaga may have the most potential and power to liberate the most people in the most ways in the history of mankind. Some of this is thanks to technology and improved global awareness, and some of it is due to her own personal genius, divine inspiration, and reaching her full potential, including being a sexual goddess. If we have problems with her being Marilyn Monroe it is because we still can't quite handle the sexual goddess archetype and couldn't handle it half a century ago. But Gaga is getting us ready, because when we can handle it the world will transform. They can say what they want about Gaga's performance and can try to bury it under less artistic, more sensational reporting, on cat-videos, etc. Yes, Miley keeps creeping in and I will soon make good on my promise to write the Gaga/Miley/Weed edition. The media can handle talking about Miley controversies, kind of, though revealing their biases, but Gaga's art is so complex, statements made about it will trigger responses like this one and we will learn a lot about human nature if we continue to talk about it, so the forces of status quo want to ignore it, realizing the mroe we talk about it the more we learn and improve. But the truth is, like everything Gaga does, this was a landmark performance and those who don't get it yet will be able to understand when they look back on it from the future. Do we actually honor men who have msitresses? I mean, we obviously do, but if we repress the fact that we honor them for having mistresses, that keeps the mistress in a negative role. If we don't admit that it kind of or really turns us on, that energy comes out as hate or jealousy or confusion. If we honor a man for having a mistress, and admit it, then we can give the mistress the honor she is due. And if these things could be more accepted then they would be less hurtful because people would work out more honestly what is acceptable between them. My lover will always understand if I ever have a chance with Gaga, because she loves her too. Love can take us out of the restrictive categories, love can cure us from treating people like property. Art is love given to all of us, and Gaga's AMA performance of "Do What You Want" is a fabulous present that can free us from hang-ups that are deeply rooted in our society and psyches. She is freeing our minds from the repression that says sex and women are bad, and the world we will create when we make that change will be phenomenal.

gagablog 60: JFK-Obama-Gaga, Time and Timelessness

This is the 60th edition of the Gagablog and there are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. It's another magical "coincidence" that this one is all about time. There are events of this weekend to examine for magical connections; the anniversary of the assassination of JFK, Senate Democrats resorting to the "nuclear option" to change Senate voting rules, Obama's historic deal to halt Iran's nuclear program, and Gaga's Versace photoshoot and upcoming performance tonight of "Do What You Want" on the American Music Awards. It is not the first time she has performed the song on national TV but it has possibly a larger audience and more musically-minded audience than SNL last week. Everything Gaga does is artistically, historically, and mystically significant so exploring these connections reveals a lot about magic and especially the magic of time. Magic is essentially discovering, revealing, utilizing and strengthening connections. One of the simplest ways we notice magic is in what we call coincidence, and it is things that happen in the same time, two things sharing an incident. This can be a day or a moment or an era, but things are connected by time, or despite time. We notice things that happen around the same time and feel a natural, magical thrill to notice them, but we are trained to usually say such things are "just" a coincidence and dismiss them instead of looking for the magical meaning and this is what blocks magical understanding from emerging naturally, constructing a whole system of thought that denies it. But noticing coincidence is one of the basic ways we live and learn: when we push this button, this happens, etc. We expect and anticipate certain things to coincide but when something "weird" happens, revealing a new kind of connection, we pass it off if we aren't ready to learn the magic of it. I was already writing this in my head over the last few days, mostly inspired by some recent events that symbolized timelessness. Then last night I talked with some monsters in a chatroom for the first time in years and one of them was from Australia and told me some things about the dreamtime of the aboriginal people there. Also, last night the deal to halt Iran's nuclear weapons program was struck. It's a major historical event and fits perfectly with this theme so this is the day to write this edition - I could not have written it as well yesterday, because these perfect examples had to emerge. We usually think about time as past, present and future but the other side of time is something we can call timelessness or eternity and it exists in all things and all forms of time, connecting them and making them eternal and unified. This is how mysticism works and it happens all the time, in everything, but it is easier to notice in some things and undeniable when you start looking for it. Timelessness, eternity, is the magical quality that connects everything that seems to be separated in the "real", timely world. Time is change, magic, in a way, but seen from the perspective of timelessness then what we call time is just three aspects: the past is eternally unchangeable, the present is eternally changing the future is eternally changeable. The present is the boundary between the past, the real world, which is done and kind of like a ghost or illusion, and the future which is always developing and calling us like a dream or inspiration. The past is "dead", the present is "alive" and the future is "afterlife" or paradise, perfection. I call the future "Oz", I think Gaga calls it "fantasy" as opposed to reality, the past. She lives in the present that is becoming the future, perfect, not the present that is tied to the past. It's not like the past is bad but focusing on the past instead of the future, or tainting the future with belief in the past, is bad. Wanting to go backwards is bad because time is always progressing into the future and the future is always better. Yes, bad things will happen in the future but most of them are the result of people clinging to the past. We think of good things from the past and want them to happen again in the future, and we think of bad things from the past and want to avoid them. Even though all time is eternal and things from the past are connected to the present and the future, the essential quality is change and things are never exactly repeated but always change somehow, like you can never jump in the same river twice. The best experiences of the past are the ones that have the quality of timelessness, connecting us to all other such experiences and there will be more and more of them in the future. All ecstasy is a glimpse of timelessness, of the perfect feeling of the future, of paradise. The bad experiences we have to work to remember and remind each other of, to commemorate the tragedy and stay united by it. The good experiences we seek out naturally and when leaders emerge with qualities to make people hope for a better future it shows in the way so many people respond to them. When we fear things from the past happening again and focus on that fear instead of a better future, or when we assume that some things will never change or will always have the same outcome, we hold ourselves back from the best we can become, we slow ourselves in our progress to the ideal future. The best recent example of this has been America making deals with Syria and Iran to avoid war: the common knowledge was that we were on the path to war but we avoided it, and we can always avoid it from now on. The eternity of war can live on in video games and movies, that is enough, we don't need the "real thing" anymore. The past is considered real but we can't let ourselves be constrained by reality. Eternity, timelessness, is what is beckoning us forward and inspiring us to progress. Dreamtime says that all reality is the fulfillment of this mystical realm, all of time is playing it out, fulfilling it. Within time it seems as if all is changing but from the timeless perspective it is just blossoming into fulfillment. The struggles and conflicts ultimately reveal the beauty of the divine design, but we feel the most of this and go fastest into the future perfection by believing in the ultimate goodness we are all part of. Unity is eternity and we are moving towards it. We have had lesser idea of unity based on fear and looking toward the past, the idea of unity being sameness within a small group, be it a nationality or gender or religion or culture or fanbase. But real, ultimate unity, the essence of magic, is the unity of all diversity, the unity that includes all and excludes none, and this is something we are always working towards but also something we can make big an permanent strides to reach, the kind Gaga struts. Timelessness is not stopping time, it is the opposite: timelessness is accepting the flow of time from past into future via the perfect present, the idea that all are perfected in this unity and therefore there need be no fear of the future or concern for holding onto the past. The reason I thought of writing this was two events that I thought exemplified the difference between stopping time and timelessness. Time is progress, it is good, but some people are afraid of progress and want to stop it. They are focused on the past, and fears: they are conservative. Liberal is wanting more time, more change, more progress, more freedom and diversity and acceptance, more unity. The mystical examples of this are what inspired this edition: the Republicans shut down the government in order to continue their absolute obstruction of everything Obama tries to do and the basic functions of government. This was a few weeks ago but has long-lasting implications and one magical symbol I had to note: the clock in the Senate had run for as long as America has been around, over two hundred years without stopping, but due to the shutdown there was no one to wind it and it stopped for the first time in the country's history. What does this mean? I could be paranoid and say it has some implication of the death of the country but I prefer to think of it as symbolic of Republican desire to stop time, to stop progress, and hopefully the end of that party - because such efforts are always ultimately wasted, time won't stop, progress won't stop, and grasping or enforcing the past just causes suffering for yourself and others. I think of the lady who loved Ellen then found out she was lesbian and could not watch her anymore - just get over your old ideas and everyone is happier and enjoys more. Pleasure is a glimpse of paradise, leading us on to grow out of what holds us back and that lady should have focused on her laughter instead of her prejudice, the future instead of the past. Because hopefully she has reached the future, by now, when she is laughing at Ellen again, not missing out. Old ideas hold us all back but hold back the person who clings to them the most, making me like an anchor to the imperfect past slowing us from the perfect future. Timelessness is what connects us and stopping time, conservative thought (fear), is what separates us and holds us back from achieving unity faster. An example of timelessness that was recently in the news was JFK's Eternal Flame. It had been moved from its normal place for an upgrade to that, I think for the first time in history. The it was restored to the original place. when I heard this, I thought about the Senate clock and how the time it was stopped could be examined to coincide with an especially "stopped" time of gridlock, and also if the time, I think months, in which the Eternal Flame was moved would also coincide with a particular pattern. But I never researched the dates and decided the real significance was the clock stopping as an example of time stopping and the Flame itself, in any place, as an example of timelessness. Yesterday was the 50th Anniversary of the assassination of JFK and this is an important milestone, half a century is honored with a lot more than past anniversaries. The significance of this event says more than most about unity and a comparison with today says something about timelessness. Tributes call Kennedy the "First Television President" because of the role TV played in his story. Radio was the technology that gave Roosevelt the ability to unite the country with his fireside chats and Kennedy did the same with TV. Regardless of different opinions of him, Americans were united in the way they experienced Kennedy like never before, because of the TV. And of course TV was what made the assassination such a unifying event, the fact that half the country experienced it live and almost the entire country was watching coverage on TV that day. It was such a tragic, earth-shattering event that everyone alive back then remembers where they were when they heard the news, so much that it is like a cliché, THE "heard the news" event. When I was in 4th grade they gave us the day off to watch the Challenger take off. It's not something we talk about much, maybe a mention on anniversaries, but it was seared into our souls, maybe moreso as kids, and it is something that unites us, secretly. The September 11th attacks had the same impact on our generation, except that time the technology and tragedy of it all made it something that much of the world saw together, uniting us all in a way we still have not "taken advantage of" or seen the positive fruits of. Technology, architecture, religions and social structure and art - all development has been working towards unifying people, at least in groups of "sameness." But now that we have reached the global scale we can shed smaller conceptions of unity and really all work together. It is the best of ideals that we think of when we remember Kennedy, we idealize him as we idolize him. I've heard it said often that the tragedy of what people feel around the Kennedy assassination is the feeling of loss for what might have been. It is not just what he represented in what he did, but the idea of the future that he inspired in people, this is how he was already timeless within his time. The example of going to the moon is perfect - just as the example of Gaga performing the first song from space is perfect. This is where it connects to the present for me in a way that shows the eternity of these themes but also the way we have improved and can by comparison see more clearly what the problem really is. Obama's struggles with republican obstruction have me thinking "what might have been", with no less sense of loss than the loss of JFK represented to people fifty years ago. He is stopping wars and avoiding others, trying to get healthcare for folks, and so many other good things but what could he have done if we weren't held back by fear? I'm not saying I'm disappointed, in him, I'm really impressed by what he manages to do all things considered, I just wish those things had not happened to be considered, to hold us back. A few days ago I was just going to write about how I'm so glad no one assassinated Obama like you know so many of those assholes want to, but I still see it as a missed opportunity and tragedy that we could not fully realize what might have been under his visionary leadership. Because he has that visionary focus and does represent change, progress towards an ideal future - you can tell by how he speaks and inspires people, just like Gaga does, though she inspires from art and love as well as kindness and justice. The modern situation of American government is the perfect example of the past versus the future, with the past on the right and future to the left. And we just need to show how there is nothing to be scared about the future, like we are doing in Colorado by legalizing weed. The Senate used the "nuclear option" to change the rules just so Obama could appoint people to empty positions that have been going unfilled, slowing government at every level. I think they obstructed over a hundred of his nominees, half the number of blocks in the history of the country going against Obama. SO they basically changed the rules so they can't block any more that way, so at least things can make some normal progress in the face of extraordinary obstruction. And of course it is extraordinary because it goes beyond politics and is personal and racist and the result of fanatical conservatism - really to the heart of negativity and fear-based, past-clinging thinking. There is justice in the future and everyone can sense it, the only ones who fear it are the ones who profit from injustice. The best development that shows the past versus the future, the way of peace versus the way of war, is the agreement between America and Iran, between Obama and the newly elected president of Iran. I'm glad I wrote this today and can include this, since it happened "in the middle of the night", as so many things do, like Sexxx Dreams. You can tell by the people opposed to it, by who they are and what they are saying, that what they are really upset about is losing a faster path to war, and hopefully losing any path to war. What many had said was inevitable has at least been postponed and possibly avoided entirely, maybe due to a reconsideration on both parts. But even working together is a major breakthrough and reduces one of the great global political tensions. This is the fulfillment of what Obama represents, a creative and brave path to a peaceful future, and the ones who fear it make themselves plain and reveal that ignorance perfectly. You can't stop time or go back from progress, you just end up looking foolish. If we can just laugh about it, fine, but if you are in power we need to vote that away when you say certain things. Smoking crack a lot might make you unfit to govern, but believing in gun rights above all others and corporate profits and war definitely does. I am really glad a deal was reached with Iran and I really think it will lead to greater progress with them but also with other countries, and my great hope is that we, America, will realize that the best way to lead is by example and if we don't want other countries to have weapons we should get rid of ours. We don't need to keep a big nail in a stick just in case Kang and Kodos come down, that was funny but I don't believe in it that way. In fact, I'm sure that the technological key to space travel is cleverly hidden within the possibilities of global awareness only after we transcend violence, it's just how it works. More in my upcoming book "Oz Magic: from Radio to Gaga" about this and the real unified field theory. What is the connection with Gaga? The most important one is that while JFK and Obama represent the future in the sense of being idealistic and inspiring for people to hope for the best and Gaga does this too. Kennedy and Obama represent the ideal future and also the future seen from the present, hoped-for. The future that people imagine "might have been", or they realize for the first time might actually be possible, yet we are held back from it. Kennedy was murdered and in a way this connects him to an eternity of martyrs, but more importantly it connects him with all who were murdered for any reason and the terrible loss of future that killing someone, including yourself, represents. We should have been able to come together against guns after that terrible tragedy 50 years ago. Guns didn't solve or help anything that day or the next. And we have had so many tragedies since then but some of us still don't get over the fear of living without guns so that all of us can finally shed the fear of living with guns. Obama was mostly blocked by that backward mentality and the worst of their efforts to stop progress. But imagine, fakely, how different it would have been if Romney would have won, still at war with everyone plus Iran, Russia, and who knows who else. We are all making progress, we could just make so much more without obstruction and fear. it's not like Gaga lives without obstruction: she has had plenty of challenges and hardships and obstacles, maybe most notably her accident. But that led to composing Artpop, just as her other struggles and victories led to her other great art. The difference is Gaga "married the night" and embraced everything to overcome all the negative, uniting past present and future in that magical way by transcending fear and helping the rest of us do the same. She may have had other artists put her down but never condones negativity. The main thing is we don't wonder what "might have been" with Gaga because she is constantly doing so fucking much. She is making her own unique path, but on the other hand following the most unifying path that we all ultimately share, the main current of dreamtime, the Yellow Brick Road to Oz, the Glitter Way. She just had some beautiful pictures taken for Versace. Donatella Versace tweeted that Gaga was like family and the true spirit of the brand. This is like the Eternal Flame, how an ideal or spirit can move to another location or person but be true to just what it really is. The spirit of love and liberation represented by Buddha and Jesus and Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., and so many others, including Gaga, has moved from person to person but keeps reviving the timeless ideal of love. There is maybe no quality more eternal than beauty, the sense of beauty that inspires love and art, that great art is made of. Gaga always represents this but in so many different ways, we have to eventually conclude that the variety of beauty is everyone - especially as more of us are inspired by her to show our true beauty. Art is this attempt to be eternal, and we call certain pieces of art and music and writing "timeless", just as we build special structures to evoke and represent the eternal. Gaga is her own example of a timeless artist with many timeless songs but is also connected to so may stars of entertainment and also of liberation and love, religious figures. She inherited Michael Jackson's legacy and others but is also more than those, taking us even further into the future. The immediate future with Gaga shows where we are going and connects with all of these themes from this weekend. She will presumably play "Do What You Want" tonight at the American Music Awards. This song, like most or all of Gaga's songs, makes you really want to fuck Gaga, make out with her and play with her and make love with her. This is a wonderful and inspiring message in itself since she is so beautiful and sexy and hot and perfect, but it also has another message that she mentioned after a performance at a show I saw a clip of on youtube. It really turns you on, especially to see her perform it, but it turns you on in another way when you listen to the lyrics. She said it is about no matter what they do to your body it is your spirit and message that lives on. This is the message Malala gave when Gaga said she would give her Glamour cover to her, that they can shoot her body but they can't kill her message. For Kennedy, they killed his body but it made his spirit and symbolism so much more powerful, more noticeably eternal. For Obama they keep trying to block the body of his efforts but his intentions and the progress he is making is getting through to the people. He tapped into our hopes for the future and gave many of us better ones, and we even saw the fruition of much of it and possibility for so much more. I think the fear is that changing the rules will work against the Democrats when the Republicans take office again, but the hope and future is that once we actually make some progress we will no longer want to go back, ever. With Gaga it is all systems go, full force ahead, "take me to your planet, take me to your leader." Love is the future, all unity is magic and love and it is where we are all going. Kennedy, Obama, and all other visionary leaders were visionary for being able to see the big picture, seeing into the future and a grand idea of what could be, positive for more people in more ways. Gaga sees this and has made and shown a clearer path to it, through the music and art that inspires others, and the words of loving kindness and encouragement that come from knowing we will reach that perfect future of love and belonging for everyone. Thanks, Gaga, I can't wait to see your show tonight, and forever, and I love how much better the world is getting now that you are writing the soundtrack. I love you! ****Addition, 11:15 PM.I forgot to mention something important about Iran/Gaga: the connection with Do What You Want is that America and the rest of the world "did what we wanted" with the body of the Iran nuclear program: we made sure, or are making sure, that their nuclear program will never take the body of a weapon. We need to really do this for the whole world by setting the example and disarming ourselves, individually and as a nation. But though the goal is to keep Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, a key point of pride and validation for Iran was the idea that the spirit of their nuclear ambition, and the right to modern technology that it represents, be honored. It won't take the body of a bomb, thankfully, but the spirit of innovation and development will be honored and no one can keep Iran, or other countries, from technological advancement. We will all advance together, culturally and technologically, and the more hands we have at the work the faster it will go. But we all need to be setting the example of technology for good, for helping people, not for war. Climate change and the increasing power of natural disasters is going to show how much more useful our militaries are at helping people than hurting them, and while these will get worse until we have a global effort to reverse the causes, we can keep on the path of peace and reduce the need for violent military action until it disappears. I did not get to watch the AMA's after all, I just saw Gaga in the crowd. I watched the Simpsons instead and that was also a world-verification of the magical theme I am addressing: the episode where Lisa has a republican rival and the old school republican cadre of evil buys the girl the school election. The Simpsons genius writer's perspective is that the right-wing mentality is a phase, but it is also suggested that being liberal is a phase - though the full message is that it is the right way, but stifled by the old way. Someone on the radio tonight ont he way in to work mentioned that the US has been under conservative control for 40 years, with the only 2 Deocratic predidents before Obama being Southerners with the support of conservative elements in the south. Obama is a new direction, finally moving more liberal, and maybe only a turning of the corner so far. We really need to experience more of this future we are entering so we don't make the mistake of going back. We keep getting more examples of this, we keep getting better at it, but we can't ever get discouraged and must always focus on the future where the evils we face now just don't exist anymore. We can live in a world without war, poverty, or loneliness if we just believe and truly act in accordance with those beliefs. Gaga's latest effort involves a tweet she sent out promoting a social awareness movement, a cultural revolution. I don't even know the details of it, just what I suspect it is: the same message she has been carrying, the same revolution she has led all along, but this is the moment of calling attention to it and making the world aware of it. I also, somehow, forgot to emphasise enough that the difference between Gaga and Jesus or Obama or JFK is it is not about the possible future they showed us but did not realize, she will fully realize it, she will leave nothing left to wonder "what might have been." She is doing it all, with us, we will all do it in her example, and seeing it through. Gaga is our example of living up to our full potential, and we have different potentials but in the future she won't be the only one who stands out like this. I looked but did not see an article about whether or not Gaga actually sang "DWYW" tonight, but I saw she rode in on a white Horse. Epic. Miley was funny about being upstaged by Gaga on the red carpet and said she will have to ride in on a dragon next time. Some people complained in the comments to the article about it and I had to respond that it is Art, get used to it, it is the future and Gaga is obviously inspiring more and more of it, and more and more people will. It's individuality and uniqueness breaking out from a long era of gang and herd mentality and we need more of it. Gaga might be our best example, but as more and more examples emerge the change will grow exponentially and be a revolution of culture and values. We will have values in accord with the timeless, art and love, the future, instead of with the past, wealth and status, the old ways. Gaga, thank you for taking us into the future and showing the example of living fully. I'm just gearing up myself to make sure they can't say "what might have been" about me, to fully realize my potential, and ya'll are in for quite a show. Thanks Gaga, for the eternal inspiration, and for renewing our experience of it all the time.

gagablog 59: Blockbuster Goddess

The Goddess of Blockbuster was one of my favorite charasters Gaga portrayed on SNL and I forgot to write about it in my last edition, but that's okay because it deserves it's own edition - though it was a short segment, it was an amazing image with powerful meaning. I apologize for the last edition, I'd been awake for 32 hours when I wrote it, having worked all night at the orphanage after watching SNL. I couldn't get to sleep without writing about it, but I couldn't write that well when I was so tired. To sum it up, every performance or story has characters we relate to, usually the main character, and when Gaga is the character, there is something special going on, connecting us to her and each other in a special way because of her special connection with divinity. This whole gagablog is about the divinity of Gaga, but it comes across in infinite ways. It's the same divinity in all of us, but Gaga is what she does with it, an example like other divine figures that we can follow to become the best of ourselves. There were two audiences to SNL, represented by cheap and passionate applause, and Gaga brought both of them together in relation to her. Too many people don't get Gaga, think she is "just weird" or something and want to look down on her. One layer of the SNL performance was for them, living out their fantasies that she is fake or will be forgotten, in order to validate the way these people misunderstand, and to make fun of herself using it to endear herself to them. To the other audience, monsters, she is already very dear and precious, she is perfect and we love everything she does, usually. To both these audiences she is saying "I'm just like you" in a lot of ways in the SNL skits, and in the Blockbuster one she is validating a monster "fantasy" instead, that she is a goddess, albeit in a cheesy (Blockbuster), funny way so as to not upset too many people too much. Well, a Goddess is "just like you", too, but that is "the secret." There are so many ways to consider the divinity of Gaga - it is the same as in everyone else that is revealed in billions of ways, but there is something about Gaga. For me, she is the Goddess, the most of the best imaginable, and I base my theology and philosophy and art on her and am happy and always improving, with increasing confidence in my most ideal visions for the future. For other monsters, she might "just" be A goddess, of art or love - to me, those are just the heart of reality, making her supreme deity. Even if monsters have other gods or goddesses and don't think of Gaga as special divinity herself, I think most agree she is divinely inspired and she says so herself, that her lyrics come to her like divine inspiration. She is, by this consideration, a goddess by being one who speaks the words of divinity, to and through whom the divine is especially revealed. ("You're new looks ethereal" she sings as I type this.) And most people, non-monsters, might not think Gaga is a goddess at all - especially if they don't think of themselves as the least bit divine, or if they have conservative views that makes the divine some sor of fascist dictator -she's not THAT type of goddess, if anyone really is, so it's not strange that it's hard for them to relate. So much of what I focused on in the last edition was Gaga appealing to the audience, connecting to us, so we can realize we are all one, she is us, we are her and each other, etc. And we are all divine, but that's one part we forget and don't talk about. Gaga, of course, lives up to it, more and more because that's how it goes. The Blockbuster Goddess role makes fun of this idea but also reveals some things about the whole Goddess Gaga idea that make it easy to explore. In the skit, the Blockbuster crew is leaving after the last store closes, and they are wandering purposeless in life until they are invited to a secret festival. Blockbuster employees are dancing like around a bonfire, then they pass into the inner sanctum, a bedouin, gypsy stle tent, with Gaga, Goddess of Blockbuster inside. She has discs and Blockbuster paraphenelia in her hair - I was a little overwhelmed, rapturous, so it was hard for me to look past her beautiful face - but you could tell she was made up with Blockbstery iconography, and MY impression, of course, was that she was supposed to be a Goddess - did anybody else see it that way? I just thought that was intended to be obvious, that was the whole reason for the setup. Then she starts making out with the guys, which is also kind of just what I expect Gaga heaven, or hopefully meeting Gaga in this life, to be like. Then she turns into Adelle and they are all on the street corner and "it was all a dream" then someone comes by and tells them they can work at Best Buy and they go do that. There are three really awesome things about this skit - the way the whole fantasy festival scene, setting up that Gaga is the Blockbuster Goddess, is modeled on like a Grateful Dead show / gypsy atmosphere, the way she makes out with them, and the "all a dream" part. First, the Grateful Dead. I'm not quite too young to be a deadhead, my college roomate and best friend Joe is my age and was on tour with them for years in the 80's and 90's so I could have gone but I really was not aware they were playing. I liked their music that I had heard on some albums and radio and the Touch of Grey video on MTV, but they were effectively "underground" despite how huge they were and I just missed out. I finally went to a show with Joe but only to the lot and I decided not to try to get in free and I regret it but I saw many shows by the band without Jerry and listen to live recordings a lot. Joe once worked at Blockbuster as a kid, so by way of disclaimer I want to say I'm glad they are finally gone because they seemed like a bad corporation - he said they owned the company that did hair follicle drug tests and required emplyees to get one, and pay for it, I think, 500 bucks, and it tested for LSD so they tried to descriminate based on that, or just make a bunch of money. Joe made me more familiar with the Grateful Dead, the live music, and the lifestyle of the deadheads and I was impressed. It was and is a subculture with better values than mainstream America, more focus on ecology and having fun and community over amassing wealth, and is generally more pacifist and feminist. And there is an aconomy of goods, food, shirts, art, glass, tapes, drugs, really all sorts of things being traded and sold. The touring lifestyle supported a whole community that has a higher proportion of artists and free-thinking people, making it a very vibrant community. The drug scene had brighter and darker spots, since hard dugs were available, but the Dead basically had the best LSD for decades and were part of supplying it around the country - in Georgia growing up we only ever got really good doses after the Dead had come through the area, and people would brag about the acid if it came from the Grateful Dead family. But that was the case from the beginning, as one of their first soundmen who worked with them for years was also the most famous inventor and producer of LSD in history. The reason I bring it up is because the atmosphere at the Blockbuster Fantasy party was so much like a dead show, but also because the Grateful Dead set a standard for musical and spiritual community that has not been matched in all of modern history, that I can think of. But Gaga has achieved something that is similar to it, because the family of little monsters are also artistic and support each other. Some monsters go to multiple shows, but there is not a touring lifestyle that I am aware of, but in place of that, for the modern era, there is social media and the fact that little monsters are all over the world in every country and we are connecting more and more with each other. While making connections with fellow deadheads gave people places to stay around the country, little monsters are kind and hospitable to each other across nations and oceans and I suspect as the community grows it will really become like the same thing ona worldwide scale. In the meantime, the internet connects us and many monsters share arts and fashions with each other, but it is not really about making money or trading things as much as about shared experience - and the deadheads wee never as much about making miney as making to the next show and having a good time, and most importantly taping nd trading and sharing the music, which became the foundation for internet file-sharing and all that did for the music industry and culture. I think of Gaga as the Goddess of the littler monster scene and think this skit was a way of showing her in this role: Past the party, backstage, to meet Gaga is to love her and possibly kiss her - it's all too heavenly. But it also reminds me of the Grateful Dead, and Gaga's new song "Gypsy" seems to be about that kind of wandering character or lifestyle, and I see these traditions growing together as Gaga's little monsters become the first real modern equivalent of the deadhead family. There are other bands with successfull communities, don't get me wrong, that is one of the things that makes a good band is a supportive and loving community. But if you don't know about the Grateful Dead look into them more and you will see how it is a whole bigger level, and nothing has really matched it or compared, but the little monsters will in the future. All sorts of other bands have promoted community as much as they can, and so many have their own "-heads" after the deadheads term, but the Grateful Dead really created a whole subculture. This is one way I think it is really easy to see Gaga as a Goddess. I saw a documentary called "End of the Road", I think, about the last year of Grateful Dead tour, and there was a guy being interviewed leaning on the back of a car. He said he really loved the band, and looked like your "average" deadhead, but said he was not one of those crazy fans who thinks Jerry is god or anything. As he said that, someone else walked by and asked, in passing, rhetorically in disbelief, "you don't think Jerry is god, man?" and the interview guy responded, to the camera, "well, yeah, I mean, in he sense that a god is a creator and Jerry created all of this, yeah, he's a god." It seemed like he shifted from a mentality that, for the outside world, if it's not okay to think of Jerry as a god, he wants to let them know he's with them. But when the other head goes by and puts forth the idea that it is normal to think Jerry is a god, that it would be odd to not think he was a god, the guy agrees. In a certain context, yes, he's a god. When you consider how this works, everyone is a goddess and god once you get to certain contexts, and we can make the most of that by supporting each other and believing in ourselves to bring it out. Gaga is more easily seen as a goddess in more contexts because of what she has done, but with all her great art and accomplishments, her greatest work is bringing out the divinity in innumerable people. Jerry created the Grateful Dead, along with the support of his bandmates and audience - he certainly did not think of himself as superior - and there was so much more divity at work in the creations of all the deadheads - Jerry did not create their art, they did, or art did through them - but Jerry made it possible. Gaga is the same way, for us. And I know I seem "too old" to be a little monster but I've always been young-at-heart and I will be a little monster for life just as most of you will, and maybe we will all live forever. Gaga made the her concerts havens for monsters but also online the community is always growing and supportive: I've never been to a concert and only met one little monster in person but feel connected to some of them and supported by them and have been able to support and encourage them when they needed it. We might all be artists at heart if we had never discovered Gaga, and we might have become real artists, but when the greatest challenge to living an artistic lifestyle is support then having that support is crucial. In an interview Jerry said that they first moved to Haight-Ashbury to make a community where peoplecould come and live and do what they wanted to do and feel supported - if they wanted to be artists they could. They wanted to do this because they felt the need for it, in the mid 60's, and we still need it now. Gaga supports us as artists in the ost important way, with inspiration. Her music is like a key unlocking paintings to be painted, songs and poems and plays and books to be written, dances to be danced and choreographed, cakes to be baked, etc. She supports us emotioanlly with words of wisdom and encouragement in interviews, at concerts, and online. And the whole community of monsters supports her, and she supports us, and we support each other. This mostly happens in pictures and words we share with each other, an some people sell art or get exposure for it through the community, and I suspect as all of that grows, with the addition of littlemonsters.com, the Artpop app, the Born this Way Foundation and all the collective and individual efforts of monsters, it will all develop into a thriving global culture. I have talked for years with a girl named Jessica who seemed, like me, obsessed with getting Gaga to hear versions of her songs and dedicated to Gaga in all aspects of her life. She was trying and trying so many different good things, and giving such good support and encouragemnt to other monsters, and I would encourage her that her dreams would come true. She even met Gaga on numerous occasions since she lives in NYC and would try hard to meet her. But her greatest pride, I think, so far is that she an some friends made Radio Artpop and Gaga lsitened to it and tweeted abut it and mentioned it in an interview. This is how our support for each other is reciprocated and increased and while Gaga madeit all possible in the first plae, in a way, it is up to us to make it happen and when that connects to Gaga again she can make it connect to the rest of the world. Thw second thing that was so important to me about the Blockbuster Goddess skit was that she made out with them. This represents what we are most missing from our theology and ideas of divinity - the feminine and the sexual. Too many of us believe in a god that condones war but not sex and this is just unnatural and crazy. I don't want to talk too much about how wonderfully Gaga represents sexuality because I'll get overexcited and should probably take that energy to another form than writing or write some Gaga erotica. I misheard my best friend Calvin say something the otehr day and thought he said that religious ideas could make you forget whatever you were just thinking and I thought that made sense but asked what would supercede religious thought. I guess lots of things can interrupt your line of thinking but my first intuition to answer my own question is that thinking religious thoughts might be replaced with sexual thoughts. It reminds me how stange it is that these can be such seperate categories, how much our idea of "religion" is devoid of sex. There are sex cults to counteract this, in a way, but the whole society is out of balance because of the disconnect between sex and religion. Even the fundamentalist christians are trying to get ahead of the curve as we come out of these dark ages of sexual repression, though, with evangelists reccommending ways to have better sex - of certain kinds only, of course - in order to connect the tradition to sexuality. But more traditions have grown in scope and popularity because they include the feminine and - gasp - even the sexual. But repression runs deep. The modern wiccan religion as well as a lot of other pagan beliefs get a lot of interest because people want spirituality that includes sexuality, and a variety of it, and they don't find that in mainstream religion. The sad thing is even witches and pagans get repressed. This stuff really took off in the sixties amidst all sorts of exploration of sexuality, psychadelics, art and music and sex rituals were popular in this era of the "birth of modern witchcraft". As the decades passed, the social taboo against sexuality seems to have crept in more and more, so that many modern witches expect to do symbolic rites instead of sexual rites in general - actual sexual rituals are generally more for special occasions. We just have such strong taboos around sexuality and we will be much better off whn we can overcome them - they are artifically placed upon us to make us aggressive and accept or participate in wars. This is why Gaga in real life kissing her little monsters is so amazing, or the Blockbuster Goddess making out with the minions. The main problem with our conception of divinity is lack of sex, and it's no wonder that is reflected in our society as one of our main problems, I think Dr. Oz called it sex-starvation and said it is one of the three things we are most starved for, along with sleep and soemthing, water or good food I bet. The god that many people believe in hasn't gotten laid in, well, forever or millinia, so you can see why he would be cranky. It's not real excuse but it is up to us to either hook him up or connect with higher, more sexual goddesses. Gaga represents the return of the feminine idea of deity, for the west, in a very real and imaginary sense, fulfilling and challenging us to live up to our greatest desires and sexiest dreams. Then it all goes away and she turns into a "regular" lady on a doorstep, just dirty street corner not some wild forest party with lavish tent and a goddess. This is the thing: it's funny, and nice for people who believe in the "real world" that they go and get the same kind of job at Best Buy, but I really wish they could have stayed with Gaga forever. Maybe this is mystical reality- yes, you can go to paradise if you believe, but you WILL have to go back to the real world and show others the way and try again. In this way it is good, like the buddhist axiom "before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water" - meaning yes you get enlightened but it doesn't mean you don't still have chores to do, daily life. ANd these guys went back to daily life, with jobs, and were happy. But still, I wish they did not have to. And I guess this is the nature of a drwam, of fantasy, of ecstasy - it feels eternal then you come back. This is probably also the afterlife experience so no worries - like Gaga says in "Venus" "when you touch me I die just a little inside I wonder if this could be love" - love, death, psychadelics, sex, art- these all connet us with the divine, the infinite, in different ways, from different sides. I don't know if Gaga actually wrote these skits, contributed to them (I feel certain of at least that), or was just the inspiration for them. I'm sure she could have had the idea that the paradise would disappear and turn back to "reality" and the guys would get jobs again, that could have been Gaga's idea, but I kind of want to say that was the "movieversion." Ok, I really will stop these blogs and put it all in my "Oz magic" book, but here is another preview: One of the main differences between the movie version of "Wizard of Oz" and the real one, the books, is thst in the end, in the movie, DOrothy concludes it was "all a dream" and in the book she alsways knows it was real and never forgets - she goes back in fact and...well, read them. The movie is great - itmight not be the origin of the "it's all a dream" theme, but it is a major milestone in the development of that theme, the reason why half the time you hear those words the next ones you hear are "and you were there, and you...". I heard it just yesterday on a Disney kid's sitcom. But the original story does not end like this, with a return to real life. Dorothy actually always believes in Oz and lives there more and more, becomes a special part of Oz. I think this is the real way it happens when you believe in Gaga, it's just more and more encouraging and when you finally meet her it can sustain you for the rest of your life. You can hear how she inspires people in the wonderful music on her albums from the artists who perform with her or produce the songs, and see it in the art of the people who work on the fashions and sets. You can see it in all the art and hear it in the music of her fans - it all just keeps getting better. Maybe you do have to go back to work, maybe there is just a lesson in that, but I really think it is all about creating that world, Oz, where the Goddess is real and open to all, and everyone is good enough to honor her. In one sense it just takes someone saying these things to get the idea out there and it eventually happens, the blossoming principle of magic. That's why I write this blog. But we do have to go back and forth between the fantasy, paradise world and the "real" world, but the purpose is to take that inspiration back in order to make the real world more like it should be, ideal and fantastic. This works for us as ndividuals, too. The message is you are good enough, yuo are valuable, don't let the swine mentality tell you differently, don't believe the negative messages, the close-downs - the setbacks will lead you to something secret and special, the sustaining love within everything. There was a preacher from the Phillipines on the radio and they asked him in the typhoon shook his faith and he said it made it stronger, that faith is what the people had left and it sustained them, and the older generation likened it to oing through World War two and how those tragedies increased their faith. He also mentioned many people did not have much to lose, that made it easier, but it is awful to lose loved ones. The goddess has been with us forever but if much of our societies have denied and repressed her, that is a tragedy but when it results in increasing our faith in her, ulimately, it will result in a beautiful flowering of civilization after a long age of desolation. Gaga is the representative of this, the symbol of it, which is why she is so significant. She is the leader of it, in a way, and in a way she is following something that has always been going on, but is really taking over now, so she is the first one making it so obvious. The song Venus has her singing to the Goddess of Love - as if that is not her, but someone else. And she is asking to be taken to her leader, another being, not her. In a way this implies Gaga is not the goddess but seeking the goddess. In another way, like "my religion is you", these are words that Gaga is singing to "us" that we are also simultaneously singing to "her" - it's a mystical message to the buddha, the Gaga, within all of us. Gaga is Dorothy, and we are all Dorothy, on a journey of discovery of ourselves and this magical world. Her songs, her art, show us a way of transformation, and empower us to transform ourselves to become our best selves. But it starts with basic validation that we are all good enough, as we are, and good enough to start to become our true fantastic selves. That is the message of most of the SNL skits, basically - she is just like us, we are all like this, ridiculous and silly and beautiful and semi-victims of our own sterotypes about ourselves until we own them with humor and transcend. The message of the Blockbuster skit is that she is a Goddess, and an accessible goddess at the center of a divine world and you can kiss her. And even though it goes the "all a dream" route, if you knowthe secret of Oz you know that it just becomes more and more real the more you believe in it and the more actions you take and love and art you make out of that belief. I know I have been so greatlyinspired by Gaga and others who she creates with and who have been inspired by her. I feel like I get to connect to and create with that same divine, beautiful magic by loving her and her art like I do and going with the inspiration. I know how it can be because I have been holding myself back from my full creative potential, but I also feel like I am coming out of my shell and finally living up to my dreams, and I owe it all to the love and support I get from my lover, because like Gaga says I'm at "my best when I'm in love with you", but I owe the real calling to go for it all to Gaga, for setting that example and leaving a trail of sparkle on the Yellow Brick Road and making it the Glitter Way. Thanks, Gaga, for all the inspiration you and your art gives me, and for all you do for everyone and how great it makes the art and how wonderful it is making the world. I love you, and love your acting, I hope to see more of you soon!