Lady Gaga as a guide
Music tickles the process and one practical tip for the creative workspace
(Photo source:)
Hello readers,
This week I wrote 1185 words for the novel. I know that could be a day’s worth rather than a week’s, but I am going to be kind to myself and say that I am happy that many words came this week.
Music tickles the process. It can shake loose some set of feelings or decorate a feeling within my body. It often transports me back to a moment. Spin a Linkin Park album and I am back in my teenage bedroom listening to my CD player, feet on a basketball, bouncing on my bed, soaked in a super hero-sized earnestness, gelled hair, braces.
Music can reshape and transport me to a place I have never been before, too. Like any piece of art, music can take me out of my mind and thoughts. Pop music, for me, in particular, has done this because as a child, my cultural diet came from terrestrial radio, movies & TV, shopping malls. Each of those entry points are bathed in pop music. From one of those outlets, I then caught a song that does something to me internally. Say Van Halen or 3 doors Down or 50 cent or Maroon 5’s first album. It’s a stick of dynamite tossed in the big-ass world of my interiority and the song singes a feeling. It shakes me into another direction. For five minutes the song took me to another place in my imagination.
Then I snagged the album. Or I requested one of my friends with fast internet (I had dial up) to create a mixed CD. I found a way to listen and revisit that feeling. Later, I hopped online, which was where I listened to Lady Gaga’s “Born this Way” over and over again. It’s an album that ushered many pieces of writing out of my heart and mind during a particularly stormy time my life 2011 — 2013.
Gaga’s songs and videos in those early albums felt like poetry. My brain tried to tackle mermaids in Nebraska Barns, what it means to marry the night, or men in fishnets and heels, the large and impractical eyewear — the thunderous-dance-or-die sounds. There was something else embedded inside the Gaga persona, too — permission to be who you wanted to be. To even be a little weird. She seemed to pull a subversion and ironic stiff arm to the commodification of body and artist as a product. She was saying, here I am, but giving the viewer and listener something more, something deeper.
Gaga’s songs inked a permission to let go. For me, it was a permission to let go of who I was supposed to be. I could just be me. I felt like I could let go of a performance I put on, and to feel good about who I was, warts, weirdness, and all.
That feeling made it easier to write. It made it easier to live. I can hope everyone can find a song or two, or a musician or two, who can do that for them.
One character I am writing finds this in music. It might be best described by Carrie Brownstein in her memoir, Hunger makes me a modern girl:
“That’s why all those records from high school sound so good. It’s not that the songs were better—it’s that we were listening to them with our friends, drunk for the first time on liqueurs, touching sweaty palms, staring for hours at a poster on the wall, not grossed out by carpet or dirt or crumpled, oily bedsheets. These songs and albums were the best ones because of how huge adolescence felt then, and how nostalgia recasts it now.”
Music, fandom can be powerful agents in the chaos of creating, including creating who you are whether in adolescence or in adulthood. Music helps move an idea to reality.
This is why I am happy to see that the Biden administration has reestablished the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, a board that will advise President Biden on matters of cultural policy. Guess who is on it? Lady Gaga, of course.
We need art and creations to infuse and lift us and make us better. Never underestimate its power. Need some poolside tunes? Check out this digital treasure. For all things punk, experimental, and unusual rock, check out Viking’s Choice newsletter. I’d advocate for The Amplifier from New York Times (need to be a subscriber to get). Forest sounds are good listens, too.
Useful tip. Clean your chair. I work from home and often sit in the same chair. Writing is ass-in-chair-finger-on-keyboard work, yeah? Simple as that. Because ass is in the chair over many weeks, I think it can be good to give that chair a cleaning every now and again.
A little cleaning, resetting the smells can go a long way. Smell is a set of molecules. So change the molecules, change the energy. I recommend Turtle wax’s upholstery cleaner (made for cars but good for computer chairs, too).
All for now.
ENDIT.
I didn't know, but I did know about music and love that you brought it out! I love your writings Tucker and all of your awarenesses! (Is that a word?). You're so funny...who else would think to mention cleaning your chair and recommend what to use! Great mind and sending love😘