I decided to write about Aura, Artpop, and Applause a few days ago. The DNC begins tonight so it is the last time to influence the outcome, to get the delegates and superdelegates to save democracy, to save their party and the two-party system, for whatever that is worth to them, too, and ultimately save everything by nominating Bernie. I knew I wanted to write, even though I just published the last one yesterday, but thought I might not have time, since my brother is in town visiting and I rarely get to see him. But some magic this morning convinced me to go ahead and type this up.
The idea behing Aura-Artpop-Applause is media manipulation versus magic. Manipulation is what te media is doing to us, trying to make Hillary the inevitable candidate. Magic is what will happen, Bernie becoming the candidate, miraculously. The cynic in me says the Real "power" players planned it this way all along, to make us think Democracy won out when Bernie wins the nomination, but it all plays into their scheme. I don't mind that scheme, I think it is up to us to demand Bernie so they know we won't accept anything less, then will be up to us to make sure he can reach the agenda he laid out. But they tried to see if they could get away with scamming us, again, I suppose, and found out they couldn't -assuming they are now switching gears to support Bernie instead. Or it's just fate, the way it was meant to be, and no one is controlling it. The important thing is to realize that manipulation is some kind of force, some kind of violence or threat. Magic is, by nature, the opposite of that. Magic is the "last resort" to dealing with hopeless problems, but also the best way to overcome when worldly powers are against you, in major or minor ways.
Worldy powers rely on manipulation, on a basic threat of violence or force. A much better way to influence people is with coercion, a promise of better things. That is because magic is essentially to make things better, to oppose mean forces that are making things bad in the first place. I realize I don't have much insight into Gaga, anything about her love life, or nearly as much as many monsters about her artistic process. But I remembered one thing and it came to mind the other day. She said Aura was her choice for the first single for Artpop but at the record company behest she let them release Applause first, instead. I have an idea that I know the statement that Gaga was going to make with Aura, then Artpop, and finally Applause, with other singles between, possible, but those three in that order, but that message, that magic, was jinxed by manipulation and the lesser, non-ceative forces that use manipulation, fear, instead of magic, hopefulness.
I will say as much as I can about that message at the end, just want to include all the little magical events that happened since posting the last gagablog yesterday and get one more spell in to say we will select Bernie as the nominee. The initial seed of this gagablog was a note I did not include in the last one. I heard a story about Alexandria Virginia on NPR. They are one of the richest areas in the country but still 75% of the school kids are on reduced or free lunch. I lived there when I was just a little kid, I have a few memories, I think we lived in public housing, lots of kids around. Anyway I was going to add this to all I have been saying about inequality and I don't have specific tie-ins except that I planned to mention it. Then yesterday in the pool we were playing Keep-Away and I realized something about that game, versus just throwing the firsbee around, and it made me question how at young ages we play these games that set up thinking patters we never or rarely fully escape, such as "someone" will inevitably be left out. The non-competition of "catch" where everyone is included has a magical dimension, compared to Keep-Away, especially as an early life model of the way things can be. I'm not saying we should ban certain games. I'm saying if we think about how the behavior of adults and institutions can be compared to "Keep-Away" and how that contrasts with the shared mentality symbolized by "Catch" you can see how this analogy can be applied to many things. It's very basic.
I wrote down some notes this morning from Leave it to Beaver. Beaver was reading Ivanhoe and learning about the idea of chivalry. He had taken up for some girls. I wasn't paying close attention. Apparently he got beaten up by a bigger boy he challenged, trying to be chivalrous. His dad reminded him that "Discretion is the better part of Valor." Wally interpretted this for him - "Don't mess with fellas bigger than you." This connected to what I was talking about last edition and stood out as a basic "foundation" for the way too many of us accept "The Way Things Are" when they don't have to be that way. Ward told the Beaver to not take the law into his own hands, to leave it up to the Authorities. Wally establishes that you just don't mess with someone "bigger" than you, meaning more capable of violence. So the basic idea is, since some people can act outside of rules of decorum but may be more powerful than those who would challenge them, you need a system in place to weild power resposibly to stop the bad actors. This is all based on the idea that ultimately, in some situations, violence is the only answer. I don't accept that this is true, but even if it is, the only way to set up that system is if the authorities are Just. The problem is a system where the authorities are not held accountable and become increasingly unjust. That is the problem we are faced with now.
I wanted to include this just because of the media magic idea of Beaver trying to live out the book he was reading, in a way. They even made a comment I wish I had noted about books being the only way for people to experience many things in the past.But what really stood out was when June says, at the end, that she used to imagine she was the heroine of books she read. Then she lists them, "Lorna Doone, Little Women, Becky Sharp..." Readers of the gagablog will know how important Lorna Doone was, to me, as the last book I finished, about a month ago. I perked up to hear her discussing this, just imagining being a character, because I think of this simple, commonplace actiity a being a pure kind of magic and certainly a way magic reminds us to notice it, by putting characters and ideas in art we encounter to clue us in, just as June Cleaver and family were giving me clues, today. Ward asks her "did the teachers understand?" (her daydreaming in class. Her response: "No, they just gave me cod liver oil." To me this is another example of the world of manipulation versus the world of magic.
The most magical thing happened to me after that. I mentioned David Sherry in my last gagablog. I wrote that part about a week ago, maybe two. I published it yesterday and went on facebook today to share it around but never got around to that. I commented on a post in a Bernie group, about Donna Brazile. Someone left a reply to my comment and I noticed it was him, David Sherry! I told him I had just written about him the day before, had only met him once, by "chance", over a year ago. There were many related connections when we first met that made the meeting seem magical and a good omen for our band, Foxzen, which we had just started. One was he mentioned a "small island country" and I had a feeling he meant Malta. I asked and he said it was Malta and I said I could see how he would expect many people to be unfamiliar with it but I had done a geography report on Malta in the 7th grade. But this meeting was like meeting Snoop the day after posting a meme associating him with Bernie. I wrote about David Sherry and we met again, online, the next day after I posted it, just by continued magic.
I was telling my friend about this, and about a meme I shared today where Winnie the Pooh asks Piglet "What Day is it Today?" and Piglet says "It's the day we BERN this motherfucker to the ground" and Pooh responds "My favorite kind of day." She said that was funny because she had just said those words in a joke earlier, let's burn this place to the ground.
As soon as I posted the last Gagablog I had an idea that I was missing something. One hint that came to mind was the meaning of the name "Snoop." I realized it relates to sluething, to secretly spying and revealing something. I realized it related to all the email releases that are ending #hillawho's campaign and handing the nomination to Bernie. It's the core of what we are doing here, just as legalizing weed is one of the things at the core of the Bernie movement and Snoop represent weed. But he, his name, also represents ninja-like revelation of secrets. That is what we are experiencing, now. The recent emails have shown Debbie Wasserman Shultz and the DNC were biased against Bernie and tried to rig the primaries for #hillawho. She has been forced to resign, at first, this morning, they said she would resign after the convention but I think she resigned today, or will. They've replaced her with Donna Brazile in the interim but other emails have been released showing Brazile was totally biased against Sanders, too, saying she would cuss out the Sanders camp if the issue of rigged elections came up - that's the thread where I re-met David Sherry.
My lover just told me there is weed store here in Denver that offers a five percent discount to Pokemon Go players. It reminds me of last night when my sister told us there is a dog shelter that offers to Pokemon Go players if they don't want to look "silly" or whatever just walking around they can rent a shelter dog to walk for five dollars an hour. They ran out of dogs and have a waiting list and I imagine many of them get adopted that way. My lover just said, about the whole Pokemon Go phenomenon, that "Growing up when things were not this way its just like WIzard of Oz land, like "is this real?" ". Since Oz is the basis of my magical belief I feel this is a sign I am on the right track, baby, even if I'm rushing, now, late to meet my family for a cook-out.
What I wanted to say about Aura - Artpop - Applause is what I want to say about all of this, to sum up. Magic is uniting, the true power which overcomes all lesser powers, the powers of manipulation. There are times when things do go wrong but the more we believe in magic and act in that the more we can fix. I should not say anything about Gaga's love relations, as I gave into last edition. I don't know anything about it, I shouldn't just ponder without at least trying to find out more about her and how she feels. But I do know something about the marketing versus the artistic vision for Artpop. I know she wanted something else, I believe Aura, to be the first single but the record company chose Applause. It spoils the message to have that song, first, is all I am saying. If Aura had come out first, the introduction to the Artpop era, it is like the High Priestess Tarot card, the veil being displayed, a mystery to reveal. Artpop is the magic, the potential of what can happen as we get into it. Applause makes it clear, in this context, that What Is Going on is the magic of connection between art and artist, the magic that is Art itself, a celebration of Art. But outside of that context, or as the iniial impression of what all of Artpop will be, Applause could be seen as self-glorification, for those who don't have ears to hear. Aura - Artpop, first, before Applause, would have given people those ears. It would have been magic, more magical. Instead, in that one dimension, "Order", Time, song-release dates, manipulation, marketing, won over Magic and Art.
This is a symbol of how Gaga can be Trapped, even with all the divine powers she has, she can even be trapped in herself. I was going to say "if she truly, in her heart, supports Hillary I presume it can only be the result of this kind fo trap." But no one, in their heart, supports Hillary. It's not possible, it's a hearltess position to take. So I will say she is being kept from her true heart, and true purpose as the Goddess of Love, just as we all are, by some kind of Trap we've fallen into. Usually we fall into these traps because we accept some idea that we are undeserving, unworthy. We have felt like the outsider in a game of Keep Away, and we all have been, in different ways. But we just need to change the game. We need to overcome competition and violence as a standard and make the new foundation caring and helpfulness. We need Bernie and we will #bringthesuperdelegatestoheel and win this convention, for Democracy to win and show it can still be possible, and to save the world from all our devestation. And we will do it, together, and all improve by overcoming the personal fears and hurts that hold us back from love. Thanks, everyone, please share!
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