Thursday, July 01, 2010

Strangelove, PhD or: How I Learned to Stop Hindering and Love Lady Gaga

My first impression of Lady Gaga was roughly : "oh, so this is what you would get if you shoved Peaches and every single incarnation of Christina Agullera into a meat grinder." I tried to watch the Poker Face video in order to make a list of everything that was wrong with it, but I just couldn't take it. I flipped off the television and that was it. I hated Lady Gaga.

And, OK, maybe i thought Just Dance was a fun song that would have totally been my Wednesday night jam if I were still someone who went out on Wednesday nights. But as far as i could see that was all Lady Gaga had. I figured that, in time, she would quietly shuffle off to Ibiza to hang out with the Venga Boys, and i went on about my life.

Then one day something aired on VH1 that captivated me with the same seductive power as The Ring from The Lord of the Rings. Once i was able to look away and got my wits about me I had the strangest feeling. You know how after you overindulge in dessert you can just feel the diabetes coursing through your veins? It was sort of like that except after watching the Paparazzi video sort of felt like i was coming down with clamidia.

I fought against my urge to eat moldy bread and allowed my love for Lady Gaga to secretly fester so deeply that when the bad romance video was released I watched with excitement and presence and from the first frame i got it and i not only got it i got Gaga.

Now there are so many things I love about her, but the very fact that i am a Gaga fan is at the root of my adoration. The journey i went on in the process of becoming a Gaga fan makes me grateful for the fact that she exists. I had strong opinion about her for a long time and it completely changed. And that's allowed to happen in me.

It is absolutely OK for me to let go of the way i thought about things in the past. If i change my attitude towards something I don't have to think the person i was who held it differently in the the past with the different opinion in the past was a bad person, and it is completely plausible for me to change things about my self the I currently can not see a chance of changing. And none of it has to be at the cost of what else I'm doing or i did that may be or have been laying the foundation for other parts of my life in the future. I am a house that is going to go thru many renovations in this life time. And if I'm happy being different than i was it isn't because who i was was so terrible... it was just a different version of me. And if i enjoy who i become in the future it isn't at the expense of who i am today. And knowing that makes me feel liberated, and saying it makes me feel powerful. And.

When I experience Lady Gaga's work I'm not simply enjoying a performance, I physically feel a wave of emotion connected to all of the blips of inspiration she has to offer, my right to evolution included. She is the little red string tied round my finger to remind me of that.

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