2011: Gagalations

After I noticed some striking (read: obvious) similarities between Gaga's Grammy performance and Alvin Ailey's modern ballet Revelations, the lovely ladies over at Gaga Stigmata agreed to let me write a piece for them comparing the two works and their meanings in the contexts of their debuts. You can check it out here. I worked a lot on it and am really excited to share it!

 

I also recently interviewed legendary hairstylist Vidal Sassoon. There's a documentary about his life out right now in NYC and L.A., and I saw a screener. It's so amazing, and he is an inspiration for anyone who has ever wanted to make art or do anything completely different and revolutionary. He also once cut Grace Coddington's hair - and we all know she is the only remaining badass at American Vogue  - so that, added to the fact that in a period of 15 minutes he legitimately referenced Bauhaus, Camus and Sartre, confirms him as a visionary and, possibly, my soulmate.

I leave for a week-long tryst in Spain in about two weeks! If anyone has any advice about what to do in BARTHELONA, let me know. xoxo

Born This Way: It's for 2011, not 1990

My review of Gaga's single Born This Way, which dropped this morning around 5 a.m. (yes, I did set an alarm and arise), is up on Sound System NYC. I want to post it below in full as well, but be sure to check it out over on the actual site! xo

“Born This Way” was not love at first listen for me: I found the opening lines banal and drab, the melody weak and the song as a whole monotonous and sort of, well, boring. Compared with “Bad Romance,” the debut single off her second album The Fame Monster, with its epic climbs and falls, its oh-u-oh-u-ohs, its screeching profession of love, “BTW” seemed lackluster. But I listened to it again, trying not to make it into something it’s not – that’s right, it’s about to get real meta in here – and I liked it more.

I played it again and liked it a bit more. I played it again and liked it even more. By the fifth listen I was dancing in my bed – where I was sitting after waking up at 5 a.m. to hear the song – and picturing a sunny, warm New York afternoon, walking around the city in shades and jamming out to this track. It reminded me of her summery tracks circa The Fame, with the same upbeat lyrics and happy-go-lucky “I love life” attitude.

In fairness, the track wasn’t particularly surprising. Lady Gaga has been saying for months that it would be the gay anthem of our generation (even Elton John vouched for this), and she’s been saying since the beginning of her time in the spotlight that the key to a happy life is loving yourself and having self-confidence. With the release of the lyrics via her Twitter account – a bizarre move that made me wonder why an artist would want to release a piece of work chunk by chunk – we got the message loud and clear.

It’s a gay anthem all right, in the most in-your-face way possible. With the release of the song in its full form –with melodies, bass and tempo – the literal nature of the lyrics made more sense. It seems the whole Internet is up in arms because, they argue, the song sounds identical to Madonna’s 1989 freedom anthem “Express Yourself,” but aside from a similar melody and chord changes (newsflash: all pop and rock music operates on about four chord progressions) I don’t think it’s identical at all. In fact, I saw more similarities to Madonna’s anthem from the following year, the epic “Vogue” – which, if we’re being honest, also sounds a lot like “Express Yourself.”

“Vogue” was a gay anthem for the 1990s, taking its inspiration from the underground New York gay clubs chronicled in Paris is Burning, where voguing was a dance form and a lifestyle. BTW’s lyrics mirror those in “Vogue” much more directly than anything in “Express Yourself”: “All you need is your own imagination/So use it, that’s what it’s for/Go inside for your finest inspiration/ Your dreams will open the door; It makes no difference if you’re black or white/If you’re a boy or a girl/If the music’s pumping it will give you new life/You’re a superstar, yes, that’s what you are, you know it” mirrors Lady Gaga’s verse: “No matter gay, straight, or bi/Lesbian transgendered life/I’m on the right track baby/I was born to survive; No matter black, white or beige/Chola or Orient made/I’m on the right track baby/I was born to be brave.”

“Vogue” and “BTW” are the same – they have the “same DNA,” if you will – in that both Madonna and Gaga aimed to produce pop songs that would speak to the masses while representing a culture they wished to pay homage to. The difference is this: in 1990, Madonna had to be subversive in her lyrics, because homosexuality was more of a fringe-society experience than it is now; in 2011, Gaga doesn’t have to, so she simply doesn’t. Perhaps the literalism of her lyrics is just her attempt to capture the zeitgeist for a generation not prone to holding much back re: expressing ourselves. We curse, we talk dirty, we promote weirdness and, yes, we love the gays. Gaga has said she wrote the song in just 10 minutes, which has pros and cons. But maybe if she really aimed to write the anthem of her and our generation, all she had to do was sit down and let the words flow. It seems that’s what she did – how successfully she’s done it will be determined over the course of the next 20 years. For now, beauty’s where you find it.

a love letter to st. jerome's

I've never told this story on my blog, which is a massive oversight on my part. Better late than never: how I came to fall in love with St. Jerome's.

On a brilliant but oddly cool Sunday in April - it's always "oddly cool" in April in this city, it never seems normal to me - four friends and I got blitzed on bottomless mimosas at Benny's Burritos' brunch in the West Village. Then we went to a convenience store and bought Darjum Specials and walked around the city like we owned it before heading up to the High Line for a lovely stroll, then drinking (more) afternoon beverages on the Gansevoort rooftop. Two people had to make their exits, leaving Zachary, Jenny and I the sole troopers remaining to find something to do with the rest of the evening. We were still on the West side, but I suggested we go get dinner at the Sunburnt Cow, one of our favorite restaurants on the LES. So we hopped on a bus across town and got (yet more) wine and food while we talked about art and our dreams and hopes for the future.

The Sunburnt Cow, it should be said, has changed a little bit in the recent past, but it used to be staffed by only gorgeous and super-friendly Australian men. While we were drinking and eating, we decided we still weren't done with the day, and wanted to go to a bar to wrap it up. We asked our server what he recommended in the area, and he told us about an awesome bar named St. Jerome's on Rivington and Suffolk. He said, on Sunday nights they play an awesome mix of rock-and-roll and old school blues. He said, there's no sign on the door, you just have to know where it is. He said, I go there every Sunday night after work. We said, sounds amazing, before stumbling over, taking photos along the way.

 

Taken moments before our first trip to St. J, in a graffiti-covered alcove across Rivington.

We walked inside, and it was like a dream. It was dark and foggy. There was a disco ball spinning, and classic rock bumping on the stereo. The bar was practically deserted. I don't remember if there were any people in there aside from us and the bartender and maybe a few people sitting at the bar. The rounded seats were musty and falling apart at the seams. The walls were maroon, but everything seemed like it was in black and white. I didn't learn that the walls were maroon until later. Candles flickered on wooden tabletops. It smelled of whiskey and wood and tack on the backs of punk rock stickers. We sat down. A sign behind the bar read, $2 buds, every night until midnight. It was perfect. I had found my bar.

Before that first visit to St. Jerome's, I knew a little about Lady Gaga's pre-fame life go-go dancing and playing shows on the LES, but I didn't know any specifics. Some time after we first went there, I learned that St. Jerome's was her bar. She danced there, and she and Lady Starlight and Luc Carl and that whole gang of LES outcasts used to hang out there all the time. I couldn't (and still can't, really) believe that I learned about and fell in love with this place completely independently of any knowledge of Lady Gaga's former presence there. Some places just have energies.

 

Lady Gaga and Darian Darling in St. Jerome's, circa 2007.

Zachary and I in St. Jerome's, summer 2010.

Lady Gaga and Lady Starlight in St. J, circa 2007.

Zachary and I in St. J, summer 2010.

St. Jerome's is my bar, it's our bar. I haven't been in a minute, and I miss it terribly, especially now that Zac has moved to New Orleans. It just seems like our place, and it feels weird going there without him. I still love it there, and I'll drink a $2 bud anytime, but it's not the same.

Lady Gaga released her first song off her new record, "You and I," this summer. It's a love letter to her boyfriend/St. Jerome's manager Luc Carl, but I hear it, at least partially, as a love letter to St. Jerome's. I learned the chords and recorded myself singing a version of it - my love letter to St. Jerome's, a bar that materialized at a time when I was just beginning to be re-born and which has stuck with me throughout. I love you.

There's somethin, somethin about this place
Somethin about lonely nights, and my lipstick on your face...

HLLWN 2010

Schmom B. Says: Probs.

leaving for lollapalooza (aka gagapalooza) today, i have only one word for you, c/o Schmom B.

off to a field in chicago for three days to jump around and hopefully dance in the rain and maybe rub mud on my body. probs. bai.

Lady Gaga, parts one, two and hot

So yesterday was the hottest day so far this year in New York Mothafuckin' City. It was also the day Zac and I sat outside from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. to be among the first in the door at the Lady Gaga concert. For the mathematically challenged, that's TEN HOURS. It was hot, but it was bearable, because we're both from the dirrty dirrty and we know the meaning of true heat. Yesterday was nothin.

We were sixth in line to get in the door, which totally made the wait worth it. The day before, we went grocery shopping and bought (in true Southern fashion) enough groceries to last us a week. We packed our food and headed out our East Harlem door around 8:30 yesterday morning. We got in line at nine and spent all day talking with other Gaga fans, including a gaggle of adorable Europeans who had flown to the city just for the concert and were first in line. It was a fun time.

And, natch, we were interviewed several times by local news organizations. Here's the video taken by my new favorite reporter, Lindsay Meeks, from the New York Daily News. It's fucking amazing.



I also wanted to include here, for the first time ever, an essay I wrote way back in January after I saw Lady Gaga the first time. It was my inaugural attempt at summing up this amazing artist in 1,500 words or less. I submitted it to Gotham's website but it was too long and never got published. It's still relevant, especially since I just saw her for the second time, and I wanted to share it.

---

Don’t you ever let a soul in the world tell you that you can’t be exactly who you are. – Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga is two months and one week younger than me. She turned 24 this March, which makes me wonder if she does all the things that I do. Does she toss and turn at night because she can’t shut her brain off? Does she long for her childhood, when she used to sit on her parents' rug listening to Queen albums, and her greatest worry was what kind of sandwich she would eat for lunch? When she's not touring or recording, does she go home to her parents' Upper West Side apartment and sleep in her old bed? Does she then wake up the next day and eat breakfast with her family around the kitchen table? When she's home, is Stefani Germanotta there? Does she wear cotton pajamas and socks and laugh when her dad tells a joke? In short, is she just like us?

It seems appropriate that I spent part of my 24th birthday inside Radio City Music Hall with Lady Gaga. As I watched her undulate on stage, I asked myself these questions, among others. I had never encountered someone so simultaneously transparent and impossible to read: as she raised her eyebrows and lovingly referred to us, her fans, as her "little monsters," I felt as though she was my best friend in the whole world. I felt like I knew her better than I had ever known anyone. And as she then yelled frenetically at us, demanding that we tell her she's sexy and clap and scream and jump for her, I realized why: I felt that I knew her so well because she has brilliantly filled a niche that no one has filled since Madonna. She has marketed herself as a perfect reflection of a whole generation. If you're lonely, little monsters, just remember that I'll be lonely too. And this is The Fame.

The bass crawled through the room and I felt that I was no different or separate from any other person in the crowd. I wondered as I watched her who she really was, underneath it all. She would tell us she loved us more than anything in the world, and thank us for everything we’ve done for her, and then she would scream at us and taunt us for being nothing more than Fame-crazed* whores who stole her former life from her. She switched so fast between loving and hating us – the people who made her wildest dreams come true – that it was hard to keep track, or to know which sentiment was more sincere. But as a generation who lives in a constant state of Internet-fueled anxiety and confusion because we seem to have too many choices and not enough wisdom to make the right ones, we see that she is our mirror: rough, honest, loving, but (above all) bewildering. We grew up on Tim Burton and Nickelodeon and MTV; give us dark bewilderment, or give us nothing at all.

It’s precisely because she exists as two opposing people simultaneously that Gaga speaks so well to our generation. She is Stefani, the person each of us 20somethings currently is, the nobody walking around the streets of New York, with nothing but a dream and a will; and she is Lady Gaga, the person we all imagine ourselves as inside this dream. Every 20something I know has a Lady Gaga of themselves in their head: whether we want to be writers, artists, singers, actors, or reality TV stars, we all want to be Lady Gaga. We all want other people to worship us for our work. And maybe unlike any generation before us, because our parents told us we can do anything in the world – plus the added element of coming of age in a time when fame is made easy by YouTube, blogging, and a number of other Internet tools – each of us actually believes we can and will become Lady Gaga.

"Hello, little monsters. Do you like my show?" she purrs from beneath a neon-yellow wig and a thick layer of red lipstick, false eyelashes and black eyeliner. "If you don't, I don't care, because you can fucking leave."

The crowd roars in approval. A thousand cameras pop off flashes as Gaga, clad in a skin-tight nude bodysuit fashioned of rhinestones and flashing LED lights, slinks toward the back of the cube-like structure that frames her stage. The stage lights flash white before they drop, and the bass vibrates through our bodies. An image begins to flicker across the three large screens that make up the walls of Gaga's three-pronged world, and supersized digiGaga appears before us in a gorgeous, flowing white frock. We continue to chant and jump as the music climaxes and the image switches to a solid bright white. When Gaga returns to us, she is straddled by a girl with long dark hair, wearing a black unitard and knee-high boots, sticking two fingers down her throat and vomiting blue paint on Gaga's perfect, luminescent dress. Over and over again, she purges through her open mouth while ours gape. I’m sort of like Tinkerbell. You know how Tinkerbell will die if you don’t clap for her? I'll just die without you, my little monsters.

The Monster Ball is genius performance art – along the same lines as Andy Warhol, Patti Smith and David Bowie, it would probably be more appropriately housed in the MOMA than in Radio City – because it's a tool Gaga uses to simultaneously worship her fans, who are both the byproduct and the cause of her sudden rise to fame, and to fight with them. She says, "Fame is killing me," and we believe her. We believe her because we can see it happening. It’s in her face, in her body – which seems to be growing more and more skinny and sinewy - and we can hear it pulsing underneath her scratchy, raw vocal chords. When she says that fame is killing her, she means it both literally and figuratively; it’s literally making her exhausted and ill – Gaga recently confessed that she tested borderline postitive for lupus, the disease that took her aunt’s life – and figuratively it’s slowly killing the person she used to be.

Gaga lies down on the stage and contorts her tiny, lithe body so she is facing us. “Do you think I’m sexy?” she asks us. The crowd’s roar grows to a deafening trill. “I think you’re sexy. When people ask me why I spent all my money on my shows, I just tell them it’s because I have the sexiest fans in the world. But, the question is, do you think I’m sexy?” We scream again. “I don’t believe you!” she screams in return.The reason we scream for her now is because we know that she knows she’s not classically sexy; unlike Britney or Beyoncé before her, Gaga has never pitched the allure of her sexuality as one of her strong artistic qualities. She rarely shows her eyes, often hiding behind dark sunglasses and large hats and sometimes full-coverage masks. She is often nearly-nude, but her nudity never exudes raw, dripping sex like Britney’s did. But it doesn’t matter. In less than two years since her rise to fame, Gaga has sold more than 10 million records and been able to create an entire fan base centered on a singular idea: Don’t be afraid to be yourself.

The reason we little monsters love our Gaga so much is that she is not just a person – she is the never-ending, drug-reminiscent orgasm of my generation. It's like we literally gave birth to her – as if all the young 20somethings in America got together and had a giant orgy, and when we were finished we looked to the middle of the crowd and there was Lady Gaga, laying on the floor, curled up in the fetal position. We have no idea how she got there, but we know she's a part of us, and always will be. We just have to be careful that, like wild primate mothers who prefer to digest their progeny, we don’t eat her right up.


*Uppercase Fame is decidedly different from lowercase fame in Gaga’s world. Uppercase Fame is the ability to proclaim self-worth, which Gaga claims everyone has inside of them, while lowercase fame is the common usage, denoting notoriety or popularity.

Gaga Stigmata: Go read my guest post!

I was published on Gaga Stigmata today. It's a literary journal dedicated to smart and well-written analyses of Lady Gaga's art. I re-hashed the post I wrote in November comparing Gaga's Bad Romance to Stanley Kubrick's films A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey. I worked hard on the new version, adding a good amount of research and in-depth analysis about what, in my opinion, the similarities signify. So, go check it out! And, while you're there, click to follow the blog. They need followers!

Also - fellow blogger Hannah Miet and I are reading at Bowery Poetry Club this Sunday at 4 p.m. This time we're not just open-micing it - we are actually featured readers. We are each reading two poems, and we are reading first, so all my 20something friends have to plan to be there at 3:45 since we all perpetually run 15 minutes late.

Art and love.

Can't read my, can't read my/she's got me like nobody

I am getting emotional. As in I am having an emotional moment. Today, Saturday, April 3, 2010, I got my first tattoo. It hurt like a MOTHERFUCKER and I yelped like a little pussy and I did not enjoy the process at all. However, now back at home, looking at my new arm art, listening to Gaga sing Pokerface at her piano - the acoustic version I first heard about a year ago - tears are welling up in my eyes when I remember why, back in September, I wrote about why I thought she would inspire my first tattoo. I wasn't sure then if I would go through with it or not - but the roughness the past year created in me has begun to flower into a celebration of who I am, and I feel more confident in that person than I ever have before. Gaga inspires me to be just who I am, unapologetically, and to explore parts of myself that I've always wanted to but have perhaps feared. Anyway. Before I get into all that, here's the tattoo experience.

I waffled for like 30 minutes before I went through with getting it. I have really sensitive skin, and I also have eczema, so I wasn't sure that it was the best decision. Once I made a decision - after saying something about it being an existential crisis and pulling out my favorite "no one can take a bath for you" spiel - she started inking me, and it only took like five minutes. An excruciating fucking five minutes. This is right after it was finished, all wrapped up, (with) a pretty little bow:

Finished art, unwrapped (with a cameo by my toothbrush):

I love it. It's cute, right? It's cute, but it means so much more to me than just that. Bullet lists are everyone's favorite, so here it is, unedited, what this tattoo means to me, who I am, right now.

- 2009 was the year of my first true heartbreak. Gaga was there with me, somehow, at every step along the way, and in my memories of that year, she always will be. It's not an exaggeration to say that by the end of last year, I was completely fucking destroyed. I've come a long way in the past few months, but I am not ashamed to say that I still miss Andrew and I still sometimes cry for his loss. I cut him out of my life because I had to, but it has not been easy.  A part of me still loves him. When I hear Brown Eyes, I think about him, and I probably always will. I'm OK with that. I learned the possibility of my emotional depth because of him, so ultimately I'm nothing but thankful.

- Gaga has always been pretty outspoken about her bisexual experiences. I have always had bisexual curiosity and tendencies, but I've just recently began to explore it. I don't really consider it fodder for this blog, but a world has opened up for me, and I have never felt more free or comfortable in my own sexuality.

- I am more free than I have ever been. I have stopped caring what others think of me, and I have taken to cutting and ripping my clothing however I see fit before I go out. I wear dark eyeliner and slick my short brown hair down with pomade. I wear glittery eyeshadow. I don't really consider something worth wearing unless I have somehow taken my hand to it or one of my friends has. Zachary sketched my tattoo for me. I never even knew what freedom was before this stage of my life, and now that I've tasted it I never want to go back. I can't even remember what I did before I made things or at least felt the drive and necessity to make them.

- I am more in love with New York than I ever have been, if that's even possible. This city continues to inspire me, envelop me, develop me and create new worlds for me. Literally everyday is an adventure, and I am surrounded by my dearest friends, who are actually my family, and I could not feel more blessed. Gaga represents New York for me, because that's where she got her start - she frequented St. Jerome's, which is my new favorite bar on the LES - and she just sort of embodies the grease, grit, dirt, harshness, and glamor of the city.

- Rivington Street

- I have recently discovered about myself that I truly feel like I'm meant to be an artist, and I think of myself as one, even though I am still really young and don't know quite what I want to do. I've been reading and learning about Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol, and, yes, Lady Gaga, and what they did as young artists in New York.  I'm learning about myself through them. I am dabbling in poetry and songwriting, as well as trying to learn more about the art world in New York.

To that end, I recently transcribed onto my bedroom wall a poem Patti Smith wrote when she was 24, which is obviously how old I am now, about New York.

Here's video of her saying it aloud, back in 1971. I have no idea if she wrote it before the interview and was reading from memory, or if she wrote it on the spot. She was really into improvisation, so the latter would not surprise me.

Patti was born on December 30, 1946. I moved to New York on December 30, exactly 62 years later. I find this appropriate, because it took moving to New York for me to truly be born, and the process, I hope, has only begun.

Love and art and New York always,

Meghan

a poem for gaga

I wrote this poem half-asleep and sort of hungover this morning. It is Lady Gaga's 24th birthday, and I actually wrote it as an ode to New York, but since it seems highly appropriate, it became an ode to her and how she inspires me and my friends and our art. I love you New York, and I love you Lady Gaga.

happy birthday, gaga

saw a show last night in brooklyn
the lead singer was a girl
blonde
bangs
sparkly leotard
marching band majorette shit
i thought of gaga
doing this
just a few years ago
and patti
(with less sequins)
even more years ago
people have shaken new york
with their feet for years

inspired
we tromped to the L train
16 minute wait
fuck no
(why i won't live in brooklyn)
hailed a gypsy
wailed across the williamsburg
manhattan winked and took us in her arms
ludacris on the radio
cabbie laughed and cranked it
"oh my goddddddd you fucking rock"
would have loved a car yesterday in the sun
to just drive drive drive
above the city

fast forward
home
drunk
shower
i love finding the LES under my nails
after i
publish my first book
anthology
whatever
i will dedicate it to st. jerome
yes, the patron saint of libraries
but also the patron faint of rivington
where we danced in the dark
i bought a flashing nemo necklace
(four dollars totally worth it)
i found him there
and myself
under the disco ball

fast forward
bed
hungover
i want a (brooklyn) bowl
of cereal
time to go to the bodega

The reason Lady Gaga is an artist and I love her

So, yes, the Telephone video came out last night. It's good. It's really good. I have some problems with it. Namely, that the story in the video has nothing to do with the lyrics of the song - which, LBO, I'm totally willing to overlook based solely on the fact that within the first 60 seconds we see Lady Gaga's shaved vadge - and the over-the-top product placements for Virgin Mobile, PlentyOfFish.com, Diet Coke, Polaroid, etc etc etc, which kind of bothered me, but not enough to make me dislike the video.

However, there is one scene that basically encompasses everything I love about Lady Gaga. Starting at 2:15, we see Lady Gaga, coke can rollers in hair, standing in a common area with a bunch of other prisoners when a lady brawl breaks out. (PS, I basically loved the video from the moment the text "Prison for Bitches" appeared across the screen. Yes. Yes. Yes.) And guesssssss who makes a cameo during said scene.

None other than Stefani Germanotta - Lady Gaga before she was Lady Gaga. I actually mentioned to Zac recently that I wished she would go brown and make a cameo as her old self, or even do an entire performance as her old self, so thanks, universe. When I first watched the video, I wasn't sure it was her, but on a third and fourth run-through, and lots of pausing, I'm 99% sure this is Lady Gaga "dressed up" as her old self, which is sort of a brilliant idea, considering that "Lady Gaga" herself is the result of costume, makeup and the creation of a character, i.e. dressing up.

Hellllllloooo, Stefani.

EDIT: As it turns out, it's Gaga's younger sister Natali making a cameo in the video, not Gaga as her former self. Meh. This makes the video less cool for me; however, I will concede that they look a lot alike and the effect is sort of the same. It still ends up looking like Stefani, and I do wonder if that's what Gaga intended.

Aside from this moment, the video had several brilliant points. A rundown of my favorites:

After we see her blurred naked vadge, the two dyke prison guards walk away and exchange the following words: "I told you she didn't have a dick." "Too bad." BRILLIANT.

Wait, is that the pussy wagon? From Kill Bill?

"You've been a very bad girl. A very, very, bad, BAD girl, Gaga." 'Nuff said.

Bey then feeds Lady Gaga a bite of a honey bun, and Gaga says, mouth full, "Mmmm mmmm, Honey Bey." Yes. Yes. Yes.

All the gays using baguettes and lettuce heads as telephones.

I meeeeeeean. If there's a universe that exists in which this is not fucking hilarious, we should just blow it up.

 Bey wearing yellow and the sunglasses from Paparazzi. I love a throwback.

Yeeeeep. 'Twas in fact the pussy wagon. Dear Quentin, Thanks for being my BFF. Love, Lady Gaga

Considering that I've loved Beyoncé for years and my love for Lady Gaga is tattoo-worthy, this video was basically orgasmic for me. I don't think it was as good as the Bad Romance video, but I also think they're just completely different. Bad Romance is futuristic, inspired by Stanley Kubrick, and very avant-garde; Telephone is sort of a Western, inspired by Quentin Tarantino and Baz Luhrmann, and very tongue-in-cheek. Different strokes for different folks.

But I mean, prison for bitches. Pussy wagon. Gaga dressed as a pussy (cat) dancing around in front of the pussy wagon. Dykes everywhere. Oh, and this bitch and her huge fucking hairbow.

I'd say it was a success.

Each day, something new

So I decided recently that I'm going to make something everyday. Whether it's a piece of writing, a photo or series of photos, something I create in InDesign and/or Photoshop, a mini-collage, a shitty little drawing, whatever - I just want to create something every single day that didn't exist in the world before. That probably sounds a) a little pretentious and b) like a shit ton of work; but the thing is that it's actually more natural than anything, and shouldn't be considered work at all. When you're a little kid, all you do is create. You create all the time, every single day. You make up little stories, you draw things, you build a house out of blocks (or, in my case, playing cards), you create entire worlds in your bedroom - and you do all these things just because it's fun. You don't even think about it, you just do it.

So when does that stop? When does the creative mind take a backseat to the mind our parents and teachers - with the best of intentions - want to foster in us more than anything? The mind that makes us smart, makes us capable, and makes us, above all, productive members of a civilized economy/society? There's some unknowable point when most of us stop making art and start learning the quadratic equation and the history of the Byzantine Empire and something about the cotton gin. All that stuff is good information to have, but I reject the notion that there isn't enough room in my brain (or in my life) for practical knowledge and creative efforts. And this is my form of active rejection.

Day One. I made this.

What? It's a start! And blog posts count, too. So now I've made two things. Bam. Have a good (creative!) weekend, y'all.

The Haus of Meghan

It's no secret at this point that I am obsessed with Lady Gaga more than I've ever been obsessed with any artist in my life. I dressed as her for Halloween, and spent a good six hours bedazzling my bra for the occasion. I have purchased not one but two hair bows from the Internet to wear on two separate occasions. I am getting my Gaga-inspired hair bow tattoo on March 6. Whether it's right or not, in my eyes, Gaga can do no wrong. She represents, for me, everything I want to be and achieve artistically in my life. And this is all due in no small part to what she calls her Haus of Gaga.

The Haus of Gaga is basically Gaga's closest group of friends. They are all creative types and they assist her with everything she does - making her outfits, designing her stage, deciding what element of performance art to play with next, and generally inspiring her music and art - but Gaga emphasizes that these are her closest friends, from back in the day when she was just little ole Stefani Germanotta. Here's a clip of her explaining it in an interview.

MTV Shows

The most elusive truth about artists is that no artist can work alone. Every artist over the course of history - whether a poet, playwright, painter, dancer, musician - has had a group of people around her who inspired her work and helped her be the best artist she could be. While I have only recently realized that I would like to think of myself as an artist - for a long time I found the term "writer" sufficient, but lately I've been wanting to devote my entire life to creation and art - I've had a Haus for a long time. I haven't been fully aware of it the whole time, but I started building it more than five years ago. Or, more accurately, the universe started building it for me, and now that I have a clearer idea of the things I want to do with my life, I could not feel more fucking blessed. I want to introduce them to you.

Christine

Christine is my BFFFFFF. She came into my world five and a half years ago - which is really hard to believe - when we lived next door to each other in the dorms freshman year. We seemed like polar opposites - I was really girly and wore a lot of pink and big hoop earrings and my blonde hair in stupid ponytails - and she was sort of punky and loud, with a really short haircut and a rather unique sense of style. But we were drawn to each other for some reason - I had never met anyone like her - and we quickly became really good friends. She's easily the most amazing person I know. She's unique and creative - she writes haikus and designs pillows and decorations for her house and stuff - but she also has one of the biggest hearts I've ever encountered. She's a social worker, so she spends all her time trying to improve the lives of those less fortunate than her - which is obviously very inspiring in itself - but beyond that, she treats every person she comes into contact with with an incredible amount of respect and love. She's the least judgmental person I know. She inspires me because she reminds me of the best parts of myself, even during the rough times.

Zachary

Zac has been my BFF for almost three years now. For the longest time, we worked together at the student newspaper in college but were not friends; I never really talked to him because I was shy and weird, resulting in him thinking I was a huge bitch. But once I broke the seal by coming to his birthday party in August 2006, we slowly became friends, gradually building until the spring of 2007, when we became really good friends and I started to realize that we probably had the same brain. We would finish each other's sentences and sometimes say the same thing at the same time, and in the fall of 2008, after an epic dance night at a trashy gay club in Jackson, Mississippi, we realized we were dance soulmates and our relationship was basically cemented. He inspired the original name for Hautey Toddy, as well as being my co-conspirator on the Bloglossary, which (BTW) was born way before this blog in the fall of 2008. (It's still a work in progress, of course.) He continues to inspire me every single day with his biting sense of humor, incredible intelligence, and fearless pursuit of his goals. He reminds me all the time of why I'm in New York.

Jenny

My friendship with Jenny was born a little later than mine and Zac's. Zac and Jenny come as a pair, basically, but right after the three of us got close she moved to New York and left Zac and me to fend for ourselves in Oxford (bitch). She and I didn't talk that much (or at least not nearly enough) the year I was at Ole Miss with Zac, but after I moved up we swiftly became BFF again. She is easily the most successful of the Haus. While in college she was the photo editor at the student newspaper, and she shot all the production shots for the theater department. Since then she has worked her way up to photo editor at Broadway.com, where she regularly shoots lots of broadway shows and famous people on red carpets. She also shoots a lot of stuff on the side, always working to create beautiful new images and improve her craft. In addition to being an incredibly talented photographer, she is one of the sweetest people I know. I have recently decided she is like my mom in New York, because she always hugs me and kisses me and makes me delicious food. She honestly doesn't have a mean bone in her body, which is something you can't genuinely say about many (most) people.

Una

Una LaMarche is literally the singular reason this blog is what it is now (um, sort of good? or all right at least?). I met her through work, and discovered she had a blog after we became friends on Facebook. I can remember last September, sitting at work on slow days and reading every single post she had ever written. That is not an exaggeration. I saw myself in her, and quickly realized that she's the person I want to be when I'm 29. Her amazing voice - hilarious, truthful, nerdy, at times awkward - helped me to find mine, and was the catalyst for taking BtoA from a journal-y type personal blog to a broader conveyor belt for the human experience, at least as I encounter it in New York. She is a brilliant writer. Remember her name: U-n-a L-a-M-a-r-c-h-e. She also writes for the Huff Po. You will see her name again, if not on the next big sitcom or semi-reality-mocumentary-but-it's-actually-fake television series then on the cover of a bestselling book over a somewhat awkward photo of a child with a unibrow.

Jessie

Jessie is without a doubt the most go-get-'em writer I know. She's the creator and writer of 20-Nothings, a blog dedicated to the sometimes-funny-sometimes-really-fucking-sad trials and tribulations of single/dating 20somethings in Manhattan. Since I've known her, she's written several plays, penned at least 12 monologues, and published a book based on her blog. So she's a blogger, a playwright, and a published author. What the fuck? Oh, and she's 26. Oh, and she also got her blog optioned to be turned into a television show at some point. Oh, and she has an "agent." I don't even really know what that means. Bottom line: the girl can write, and not only that, but she knows how to make shit happen. She is one of the main reasons I was inspired to write a play based on one of my blog posts, the production of which (PS) is still TBD.

Hannah

Hannah Miet is my blog soulmate. I discovered her blog randomly last August, clicking on it from another random blogger's list of favorites. I quickly realized this discovery was not random at all, but something along the lines of fate: the first things I learned about her were that she lives in New York, she's attracted to women in addition to men, and she loves Beyoncé. Um, duh. I stayed late at work one day and read through post after post after post, and realized we had too many uncanny things in common. I e-mailed her that we should meet for drinks, and we did, and we got drunk, and we talked about love and life and writing. Since then we've met for drinks an additional time, and kept in touch via twitter and e-mail and all that. She inspires me because she openly dabbles in the darker sides of life and New York, and because, of course, she's a brilliant writer. She's inspired me to explore parts of myself and my writing that I probably would not have otherwise, and to be open about my feelings on my blog. Her words also helped me through a tough emotional time, and I still sometimes recite them to myself when I'm having a hard time of things (true story, Hannah). Remember her name too. You will see it in black and red someday.

Brittany Bell

Brittany is another fellow Ole Miss graduate, but we weren't really good friends in college since she was a year above me and I didn't really run with most of the theater kids. But we've gotten close since I moved to NYC, and I feel confident saying she's a total, hilarious, crazy mess. An amazing actress, she can distort her face like no one else I've met in my entire life. You scoff, but it's really fucking impressive. Oh, and she can rap. Like legitimately, she could have a rap career if she really wanted to. She has also been known to cry whenever Empire State of Mind comes on in the bar, which just means she has a huge heart and she loves this city just as much as I do, if not more. She wholeheartedly believes in her dreams and in her craft, and for these reasons she is truly inspirational.

Susan

 

Last but most definitely not least is Susan, the amazing lady who gave me my first-ever paying magazine job (read: internship) in the city last March. We worked together for a few months before I got hired full-time in June, and now she's moved on to bigger and better things with a kick-ass job at The Knot. Since she left my company, we've gotten closer as friends (weird how that happens) and I've grown to like her more and more as I get to know her better - an extremely rare and therefore meaningful experience for me - and I learn that she is hilarious, quirky and painfully honest. Yesterday, she sent me the following text message: "I just bought two trays of Vday cupcakes because they were BOGO. New low??" To which I responded: "Girlllllll. You are seriously my soulmate." And anyone who knows me knows how true that statement is. I kind of owe her everything about my life in New York, because if it weren't for her I may still be - shudder - unemployed. And if I were unemployed, I would be spending all my time on Craigslist instead of writing blog posts and plays and going to staged readings of my friends' monologues and posing for photos and shooting video and generally living an amazing art-filled life. So thanks, Suz.

Love and art,

2.16.2010,

Lady Meghan

Nothing says TGIF like a pair of my very own razorblade glasses

Oh my fucking jesus, I found this today. Naturally, I immediately whipped out my scissors and my super glue (which I always keep handy?!?) and got to work. Have a great weekend, y'all.

The weekend of the Gaga

So remember like a month ago when I posted that embarrassing photo of myself from my 13th birthday party? You know: bangs, bad jewelry, Backstreet Boys cake. I wrote then that screenprinting on a pastry was "awesome" and that I would love to have a cake with Lady Gaga on it for my 24th birthday.

Well, my friend M came through with fucking cupcakes with Lady fucking Gaga fucking screenprinted on them. Here's a side-by-side, as promised.

Um, weird, right? The saddest thing about this comparison is that my hair only looks marginally better in the left photo.  I need a haircut, y'all. Here's a closeup of the cupcake since you probs can't see it that well.

Bam, motherfuckers. My friends rock.

A few life updates, more for my benefit than yours.

1. The Gaga concert was transcendent. So transcendent that I'm having great difficulty writing about it. Suffice it to say: I laughed, I cried, I jumped up and down, I closed my eyes and felt the energy of the room pumping in my blood, I danced, and my boobs almost fell out of my strapless dress. And when I walked out of Radio City, I felt like myself for the first time in months and months.*

2. The hair bow tattoo is a definite go. I went with J on Saturday to a consultation at Brooklyn Adorned and we are both getting tats on the same day in March. It's going on the inside of my left wrist. I'm very excited.

3. On the way back to Manhattan after my tattoo consult, I saw Rich, the writer of FourFour, on the L train!!!! It was my first (semi)celebrity sighting that I actually cared about enough to try to talk to the person. He was very nice and took my blogging card (yes, I have those). I was (too) nerdily excited. I of course told him how much I love Winston.

4. Last night was my co-birthday blowout bash with my friend B. She turned 25 on Jan. 15, and my 24th birfday was last week, so we just decided to mash 'em together for a big blowout night at Solas in the East Village. It was amazing. I counted, and all together, about 23 people came out to celebrate with us. It was such an amazing New York night; I was surrounded by people I love, and when Bad Romance played, I got to re-live a bit of the concert energy from a couple nights before. Pokerface also played, and Z and I danced up and down the stairs. Natch.

*If you want to see video clips (spoiler alert!) of some of my favorite segments from The Monster Ball, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Throwback Thursday: Lady Gaga Edition

Today is my birthday. I'm twenty four. TWENTY FUCKING FOUR. As many hours as there are in one day, I've lived that many years. You may recall that I announced a couple months ago that Lady Gaga is performing at Radio City Music Hall tonight. I am already prepared: brown hair bow, fishnets, new dress, Art Deco necklace, studded boots and eye liner await my gracious donning.

In honor of my first live Gaga experience, today's Throwback Thursday goes allllll the way back to April 2008, when Gaga released her first single as a solo artist: Just Dance. I didn't like Gaga at this point - in fact, I don't think I had even heard of her - and she didn't really start growing on me until last summer, more than a year after the song came out. But listening to it now, it seems like old school Gaga, or something, which is ridiculous since she's such a new artist. But compared to her tracks on The Fame Monster, it somehow seems like a really old song.

It's definitely not my favorite song on The Fame, but I decided on it because it was the first one released, and it was a huge, ginormous hit. Instead of posting the official music video - which, BTW, I feel doesn't do the song any justice because her inspiration for writing the song was her crazy nights going out in NYC, and the video takes place at, like, some lame house party in LA - I am posting her live performance of the song on So You Think You Can Dance? from fall 2008. I was living in Alabama at the time, and I watched this show religiously every week with Schmom B., so I saw this performance as it happened. I remember actually saying to my mom, "What the fuck?? Who is this bitch? She's not a good dancer and her singing is just sub-par."*

Oh, how things have changed.

This barely even seems like the same person performing. True, her budget was much smaller back then, but even her face looks different. Her body looks a bit stouter. I mean, this was almost two years ago so it's definitely possible that her look has changed. But that's no defense for those shoes. I mean what the hell? Neon highlighter wedge sandals? Hell. To the naw.

*Yes, I used those actual words, because Schmom and I are tight like that.

Lady Gaga inspires an entire city to deny the importance of pants

At least, that's what I choose to believe. Lady Gaga has been going without pants for more than a year now, and this weekend, hundreds of New Yorkers realized she's probably onto something. Of course I had to be there.

There you have it, ladies and gents. Yours truly, without pants - fear not, the undergarments are there, you just can't see them in this photo - in the New York City subway. Also, take note of the police officer immediately behind me to my left. They were all just kind of standing around, stunned. There were just too many of us. What were they going to do? We were a lovey dovey pantsless mob.

Yeah, it was a little cold or whatever, but don't you remember HLLWN? I'm basically old hat at NYC pantslessness at this point. Oh, don't act like you've forgotten.

In all fairness, Improv Everywhere has been doing the No Pants Subway Ride for about nine years. They started it in NYC, so it's entirely possible that a 14-year-old Stefani Germanotta saw the inaugural pantsless subway ride and thought, "Yes. How brilliant! When I become famous, I will thank these geniuses forever for making me lots and lots of money."

Inspiration begets inspiration. Down with pants.