"Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident."

I like stimulation. Of all kinds. Physical stimulation should've been the natural priority but emotional stimulation is an easy escape for a child living in a house full of siblings and parents who wouldn't talk about where his brothers and sisters have come from. Sex is is hush hush, treated like a guilt trip taken once in a while. Masturbation becomes second nature.

Sounds like a selfish philosophy...

See life as a series of short stories. The experiences and people who have a big impact on your life must  especially be absolutely separate from each other. The end of every chapter must bring a sense of closure but must at the same time fill your eyes with the wonder and possibility of a new beginning. Each day will then become a white canvas for you to draw your vision and also a pit in which you could throw away all your years.

                           You usually try to remain oblivious to the strangeness around you.

                            Because when you take notice, it tends to create a revolting picture.

                           But strangeness grins at you and makes you think again.

                                              It hovers around you, persists a little.

1.                                                                      So you make some room for it and become somewhat like it.

The Terrible Beauty of Lady Gaga

“With Art Pop (her latest album) I wanted to put art in the front to show that being a student is okay. I feel that the knowledge that you’ve gained, every dancer that you’ve danced with, every paint brush that you’v touched, every book that you’ve read, every music bit that you’ve heard-if you channel that entire history into the thing that you’re creating, there is an intention of the work that runs to the centre of the earth.”

She is something else. Not very palatable to everyone, but brilliant nevertheless.

In all the Quentin Tarantino movies like Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, the audience is almost immediately introduced to the hyper-violent slaughter of characters; the viewer’s reaction is seen transforming from absolute disgust, to desensitization, to slow but sure realization of the utter ridiculousness of it all. This is also the riding theory of Postmodernism, and, to an extent, the theory that the pop sensation Lady Gaga has come to represent.

One of the characteristic moves of Postmodern Theory, by the virtue of the prefix “post”, suggests that there is a totalizing of history in which the postmodern is both a stage in teleological progression, but also a final containment of history into a null state. This null state has absorbed the past, present and future into itself. (Johnathan Bignell, Postmodern Media Culture, Introduction, Pg. 5). There is a determined resistance to the totalizing grand narratives of history, which will mean the set ideals of all epics like The Iliad, The Mahabharata and Paradise Lost no longer exist in the new world which has survived two World Wars. This is a world that doubts, questions and reconsiders everything. So the Postmodern Theory is both a grand narrative and a means to claim that such grand narratives have lost their legitimacy. The consequence of this is that the theory is marked by a sense of self-refrentiality (which takes the form of narcissism in Lady Gaga) and the power of theoretical discourse to produce it. The “centre” is now shifted to the “self”. 

What sets her apart from the others is the fact that she’s a “Performance Artist”. Performance art is nothing like traditional theatre- it rejects a clear narrative, makes use of chance based structures and makes a direct appeal to the audience. Like Tarantino movies, again, it forces its audience to pay attention to the absurdities and idiosyncrasies of human behavior by making an appeal to the physical and psychological needs for food, shelter, sex, and human interaction; our very personal secrets and fears and our concern about the world we live in. ‘Historically, performance art has been a medium that challenges and violates borders between disciplines and genders, between private and public, and between everyday life and art, and that follows no rules’. (RoseLee Goldberg. Performance: Live art since the 60s, New York: Thames & Hudson).

The biggest aim of Postmodernism, Performance Art and undeniably that of Lady Gaga is “Deconstruction.” The term was first introduced by Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, and others, but now as a result of the popularity of these techniques, the word “deconstruct” is often used widely to criticize or demonstrate the incoherence of a position. (Jack M. Balkin, Deconstruction) Lady Gaga aims to deconstruct the very pop culture that has created her and now worships her.

Skeptic's Crystal Gazing

16th century poet Sir Philip Sidney in his Defense of Poetry said that in order to search for true knowledge, to purify wit, to enrich memory and enable effective judgment men took various courses. Some believed that this knowledge could be obtained by studying the general fundamental problems and became natural and supernatural philosophers. The delight of music drew some and the certainty of mathematics others. Some thought this knowledge could be obtained by the high and heavenly knowledge of stars. But, by the balance of experience it was found that the astronomer and the astrologer, looking at the stars, might fall into a ditch; that the inquiring philosopher might be blind himself and the mathematician may draw a straight line with a crooked heart. Hence he proved that all these are serving sciences that serve as a mistress to poetry.

The point of this reference is not to show that poetry wins over everything, but that faith can be instilled by assertion. Astrology lies on that thin line where since science doesn’t have evidence to show how it works physically and it can easily be perceived as blind faith. The closest science has come to explaining works behind astrology is with the help of the sub-atomic particle known as the neutrino, which was proved to exist in the year 1930 on purely theoretical grounds. Later in 1987 its existence was proven to show that neutrinos passed on some changes in our DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). According to the superstring theory despite the fact that neutrinos are astonishingly small, their vibrations create all of the energy that makes the universe, without us even realizing it.  

There are billions of neutrinos travelling through space at the speed of light, they pass through everything. So imagine them racing in and out of you all the time, with the force of a waterfall, except they’re attacking wildly from every direction. According to Human Design, vibrating superstrings contain these neutrinos and the properties are shaped by the stars that have created them. On the passing of neutrinos from the body of the object, the properties are modified. Thus large objects like planets have a great impact on the neutrinos that pass through them. Now think how the neutrinos that are passing through us have already passed through the moon or one of the planets and aping its properties. At the time of our birth we’re extra sensitive to their influence, hence we’re assigned our stars according to their proximity to the earth.

The Sun and the moon constitute a very important part of astrology because the sun is the largest body we know and the biggest producer of neutrinos and the moon is the closest to our earth. This way the earth becomes the most important body affecting us, which makes sense even without the scientific jargon attached to it.      

The question then comes of belief, the very lack of which could be considered a fallacy in the world of science. Most arguments against astrology insist that refusing to understand it is just plain common sense.  This is the fallacy of opinion without knowledge. With the passage of time, all the things that were initially considered became science after discovering the mechanism. Even the metaphysical concepts needed to explain the ideas that escaped the human range of understanding till metaphysics slowly changed to physics.

So to deviate a little from what Sir Philip Sidney had to say in his defense of poetry, beautiful words written on fresh parchment may not be very different from science. He has been known as one of the greatest metaphysical poets of all time after all!