Lady Gaga

[Edward theurj Berge]

I know, there might be some controversy in putting her in this category. But I truly think she fits here and will make that case. I’ve already started in the commentary to her photo and video which I’ll copy-and-paste here. Also see our previous Gaia discussion at this link in Google docs. For me “spirituality” encompasses many things, including acceptance, love and liberation. I think she is about all three and more, and certainly in a postmodern context-media.

 

Also recall one of the most moving scenes from Avatar, when the tribe is gathering around the Mother Tree, singing-chanting, swaying-dancing, evoking imagery, invoking Goddess. I get this same feeling watching Gaga, the same deep connection to my primal roots, freeing me to sing and dance along, breaking the bonds of convention and being true to all my relations.

 

I want your ugly, I want your disease

I want your love

Love, love, love I want your love.

[Balder]

Yes, I think so too. I like some of her lyrics, and I appreciate her quirky "twisting" of the pop-video-diva role. But I guess I'm a bit conservative, because I don't see much "postmetaphysical spiritual" value in her new Telephone video. I'm actually really tired of the glorification of "Red" to the exclusion of, and at the expense of, most other values and perspectives that prevails in a lot of the slickest popular media.

In popular mainstream media, if I have to choose something (I don't listen to or view it much), I actually resonate more with something like this, believe it or not. The celebration of simple human compassion and care. The damn thing almost made me cry this morning.

[Edward theurj Berge]

I had a negative reaction to the Telephone video at first too (see link to original discussion). But this was my comment to her photo in our gallery, taken from that video:

"She's wearing glasses made of burning cigarettes. As you might know, in prison smokes are literally capital and highly valuable. If effect this photo is a statement on how we are chained to, and see everything through, barter-colored lenses. We are prisoners to our market-created desires and our capacity to afford them."

I'm going back to the Telephone vid with new "glasses" and things like the above are dawning on me. Such message are powerful liberators, methinks.

I also made this comment to the Bad Romance video:

"Note the one scene where she's in stop-motion and glistening, crystal beads are all around her, like the Indra's Net photo in the gallery."

That particular scene really evoked Indra's net for me. I don't know if that was her intention but it did so nonetheless. Especially in the stop-motion, like a freeze-frame, indicating how each moment or individual is apparently on its own but really connected to each other moment or individual with continued motion or reflection in every other.

Now I realize I might be reading into what I see, adding my own meaning. Well of course, as do we all! That's a main point of postmetaphysics, that we create the meaning and that the object or art or whatever has no given meaning, of itself, in itself, by itself. Indra personally told me so.

[Edward theurj Berge]

And then there's the chant that start's Bad Romance:

Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah!
Roma-Roma-ma-ah!
Ga-ga-ooh-la-la!

She is invoking Rama into herself! Holy shit! Rama, the avatar of Vishnu no less. Hmmm.

[Edward theurj Berge]

I'm also thinking that the diner scene is metaphoric. Beyonce's lover treats her like an object, like shit so she poisons him. This could be a social commentary on abusive relationships, how they are poisonous. Same with when Gaga poisons the rest of the diner patrons. Perhaps it's a statement on how Americans eat? How such fare as is found in diners is usually full of fat, salt and sugar and leads to obesity and diabetes? In other words, how we poison ourselves through diet?

[Edward theurj Berge]

Let’s address her bisexuality and the rumor that she is a hermaphrodite. She admits to the former and in an interview with Barbara Walters denies the latter. Of course this issue was addressed in the first minute of her latest video Telephone, where her clothing is stripped off and she gives a crotch shot to the camera in a see-through leotard. It is obvious she had no dick and one guard remarks to the other: “See, I told you she didn’t have a dick.”

The point is not so much that she is a medical hermaphrodite but that she has become a mythical or metaphorical hermaphrodite. The term comes from the offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite, Hermaphroditis. The latter is turned into a bi- or intersexual when Salmacis merges with him in her pool of water. Mythologically a hermaphrodite represents the union of male and female within any individual, mystically referred to as “the marriage of heaven and earth.” This also refers to the mystical marriage between an individual with God or deity. Some might contend that the former requires the latter, that we must balance the sexes within ourselves in preparation for the greater marriage of this balanced self with the divine. In modern mythology this story is played out in Peter Pan.

On a mundane level Gaga’s admitted bisexuality is an exemplar for breaking the convention of only engaging with the opposite sex. It also breaks the convention of monogamy. Granted both have significant survival and social functions in perpetuating and maintaining the species. But developmentally beyond this, when these functions have been satisfied for the species as a whole, is opening to a wider range of liberating love to more than one partner and more than one’s own sex. As we all know sexual love is quite powerful, especially when sublimated in tantric techniques beyond only physical ejaculation, to elicit higher centers of consciousness development. And within this methodology there is no restriction on polyamory or bisexuality. Liberation and unconditional love know no boundary.

So the rumor that Lady Gaga is a hermaphrodite is but an expression of the larger, cultural mythology that she is a child of the mystical marriage, a communicant and exemplar of marriage within herself and with the divine, and her message (Hermes) is love (Aphrodite).

[infimitas]

Not sure what to think of all the alleged esoteric connections, but I heard this on the radio and thought of this thread:

[Edward theurj Berge]

I was watching American Idol last night and to my surprise and delight Lady Gaga performed her latest single Alejandro. Of course it's already on YouTube so check it out. It's actually a quite good samba and she shows off some of her piano skills, on which she is classically trained. There is a brief acoustic intro of Bad Romance as a lead-in.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Tonight on Dancing with the Stars Chad did a samba to Alejandro. The dance wasn't so good but I enjoyed this excellent song being promoted.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Her latest music video of Born This Way. Holy Fricken A +. Maximize to full screen for the most profound effect.

[0zblaynau8wqh]

Lady Gaga is nothing to get excited about. Her works have blatantly plagiarized past musicians (Alejandro=Ace of Base-The Sign..Born this way=Madonna-Express yourself).She is obviously society's repetitive performance drone. Her videos and her music have been seen many times before. Come to think of it, I cannot, for the life of me, see what kind of following she could have possibly attained aside from leftover Madonna fanatics. Her ways and mannerisms in every interview are no different than that of a young Brittany Spears or other such popstars. Her videos have a bit of my interest, but growing up through the Marylin Manson decade, nothing surprises me. I'm very shocked no one has filed suit against her yet, though I'm not too sure about how copyright laws apply to the music industry. She may be "riding the line" a little. I found myself liking the sound of her music only because I've liked it when previous artists wrote it. I seem to believe she represents our tolerance of plagiarism due to mundane social repetition. Historically, this is a side-effect to overpopulation and it can't be changed.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Weird Al did a parody of Gaga's Born This Way called I Perform This Way that is, as usual, funny. Apparently Gaga did not give him permission to use the song on his new album so it's going viral on You Tube. Here's the story and video at Huff Post.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Lady Gaga's album Born This Way is a recent editor's pick at Rolling Stone magazine. From the review:

It's one thing to sing about a motorcycle, and it's another to sing about a unicorn. But when you put your motorcycle song and your unicorn song in the same song? And call it "Highway Unicorn (Road to Love)"? Now that's a pop visionary. Lady Gaga knew it was time to crank up the crazy, and she didn't hold back: Born This Way is her Eighties arena-rock move, going for maximum goth Catholic bombast. The whole album thumps like the soundtrack to a lost Eddie and the Cruisers sequel, one where Eddie gets crucified by Roman soldiers, while Gaga stands under the cross weeping and sending dirty texts to the DJ.

At the end of the article one can listen to her single Judas.