Fire season is full upon us now and it’s early. About 260 fires so far and 260,000 acres burned including the Farewell Lake lodge that the firefighters vowed to protect and then pulled their gear out of there to fight somewhere else. The original cabin had been there since the 30s. One fire is less than 20 miles from here and burning this way. It would have to jump the Knik River to get to this house but the smoke is all over the place. (That's the mountain in front of the house obscured by smoke.) I had to drive through it on the way to and from work yesterday.
Before work I was surfing the T and V and came across something called 19 hours of Lady GaGa and it made me a little curious. I have been aware of her and her outrageous outfits and somehow I think unconsciously I recognized a kindred spirit though I am pretty sure I have never heard a single song all the way through. So, interspersed among music videos, there was a fairly serious interview with her, done last November. No wild outfit, although a wild wig, and you could actually see her eyes, but she spoke very softly and very confidently. Over the years I have thought about and talked about with a few people, the creative process and the creative personality. Here is one. One thing a friend and I were discussing not too long ago was the sensitivity it takes to write. Her point was, considering how extremely sensitive you have to be to write, how can there be any writers with all the people in the world quite willing to criticize? So this Lady GaGa admitted to the interviewer that she often cries as she is writing her songs. That to me is artistic sensitivity. And I can understand the wild outfits in that context. My answer to it was develop an overwhelming, if false, ego and express it loudly. Hers is to generate outrageous outfits that draw critical attention away from what is really important to her and protect her sensitivity.
The interviewer kept trying to get off topic and she kept reminding him the agreement was to talk about her music. No romances, no sexual preferences, no catty remarks about other artists, she very deftly deflected those questions. One other moment struck me. She expressed an interest in Andy Warhol’s art, which seems obvious. But she spoke of looking at a Warhol in the Louvre. Get this, a wild rock star going to the Louvre. At any rate, she said the painting looked nothing like the Warhol works she was familiar with. At some point in this viewing she admitted to crying again. Then a curator explained to her Warhol painted the particular work early in his life, when he was 23. Her response at least during the interview was, wow, that’s how old I am now. I have so much more in me, I have so far to go.” This from a person who is at the top of her game and her genre already.
And, oh yes, the bad love in the title. In one song she sings I want your ugly, I want your pain and some other phrases along that line. The interviewer asked her what that meant, bringing up negative images in a song about love. And, her thought was, love is total, you don’t get to pick which parts of your partner you wish to love. You love the beauty, but you also have to love the ugly and you don’t have true deep love until you love the whole person.
Enough, I guess. I was just impressed with a very complex person who showed a fascinating creative intellect. And I bought two songs on iTunes. Ga Ga ooo la la
And the fires keep burning and life continues to be obscured within different kinds of smoke.
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