There is a danger in believing that all of anxiety is somehow wrong or a problem which needs to be fixed. If Lana Del Rey doesn’t feel comfortable up there in front of everyone, if part of her yearns for the quiet life – she’s not alone, and I don’t think she needs to “fix” anything. What’s important is the creative world she wants to create. Having a vision, having that creative urge to realize something that is bubbling up from within, that’s what matters. Trying to unearth that, to get that out as intact as possible, to honor it, this is what creative types are meant to do. All of this farrago and scrutiny is not what it ought to be about; popularity is not the fruit of the artist’s labor – how the artist feels about the work and whether or not the vision has been achieved is the measure of fructification.
Source: tjbrearton.com
Here’s how the gossip goes: Is she an industry creation, her puppet’s strings pulled by some famous male producer, manager, or Svengali? Has she had plastic surgery? Is her father so rich that he is financing her entire career? Is she, dammit, sincere? Lana Del Ray is the lie we like to tell ourselves—that America has always been, and will always be, this gorgeous woman who can make all our dreams come true. So it doesn’t matter if she loves you or hates you because she is going to take all of your money and you are going to let her get away with it. That’s the reality of who she is. We are narcissistic and self-obsessed and so is Lana Del Ray. We are a country in decadent, navel-gazing decline—fading, intoxicated, and longing for the past, but still so beautiful, staring straight into the lens and smiling as we shoot an American tragedy.
from “The Problem With Lana Del Ray[sic]” by Amy Rebecca Klein from the band Titus Andronicus.
Man, this essay, wow. I’m not much interested in getting into a pissing contest, because it’s just a waste but, hell, I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I didn’t call out this blatant attempt at character assassination from someone who is very ignorant.
Number One: Lana’s father is a real estate agent from a town of roughly 3,000 people. So no Daddy Warbucks financing her career. 2) She’s never had plastic surgery as I see her at least once a year and I’ve known her since she was six. I’m 31 now. I think I would know if she changed anything, and I sure as shit would know better than someone who comes from a band named after Shakespeare’s poorly-regarded play that is based around revenge and violence which was once called by Harold Bloom: “A poetic atrocity” and “an explosion of rancid irony”. Pardon me a second while I get in my Psychology Easy-Boy, but you seem to encapsulate those ideas pretty readily with your violent antagonism towards a person who worked hard to get where she is.
Your display is unbelievable. If you had any idea how long she’s been working towards this you wouldn’t have this blind hatred towards her, but you are so blinded by your slanderous message you can’t even spell her stage name right.
So before you take to the Internet just like every other nameless, faceless, angry Internet person think for a second before you attack someone who you do not know. Liz [or Lana] has been working only on her music since graduating college and even during that time. Only recently did she go out to London where things began to work out. She is one of the kindest, warmest, and most beautiful people I’ve ever been privileged to know—she sang in church for years and she would never stoop to your level.
The bigger question is what does this tirade actually prove? Calling someone a lie, that they are going to take your money because they are narcissistic, self-obsessed, and all of that is because that is who she is. Jesus Christ. I mean: Why? Why be this angry? What purpose does it actually serve? I’m going to say this as kindly as possible: please remove yourself from the Internet. If you decide to actively subtract a person into a bed of lies please count to ten and think about what you are about to write, and consider the very base of human conscience: would you want to read these comments about yourself? I don’t even think that flashed before your eyes. Again: please count to ten before you start writing and then think about that other person. And seriously: what kind of thinking, creative person actually believes that the problems with America can be symbolized in one person? C’mon. Please, go fuck yourself. KTHXBYE.
[We now return to our regularly scheduled nerdery].
Source: amyrebeccaklein
[ This is “Video Games” by Lana Del Rey to give a bit of soundtrack to the fourteenth and final excerpt of The Worst Writer Ever. If you’d like, here are the previous installments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13. Thanks for reading, it’s been pretty great.]
As a Summer Person, I wanted more than anything else to belong wherever I was but having never spent a full amount of time in either Lake Placid, New Jersey or, later on, Connecticut meant I could not completely become a part of those societies.
My psychologist, when I had one in my late twenties, deemed this important because spending summers off somewhere else as a child rather than where I went to school meant I never really had a summer where I could bond with my classmates. And never spending the school year in Lake Placid meant a similar result. As classmates it created a bonding experience via the school system, but being whisked away as soon as school got out never allowed my peers to get to know me outside of school. Not just that but changing places like clockwork—the same time every year for eighteen years—meant I had to adjust my behaviors to become a part of that society and since I did not have that school bond with anyone in Lake Placid it created an air around me that said I didn’t quite belong.
A friend, probably just before high school ended said, “Well it must be summer because Dave Press is here.” He meant it in a good-natured way, but it stung me, because I knew that I wasn’t really a local like I wanted to be, but just a fair weather person. This situation created this hodge-podge of personality conflicts that I tried to assimilate to fit in creating—I don’t know—this non-person of conflicting identities. One identity did not mesh with the other and I was holding back on something else depending on location. I’m not explaining this well, but I tried latching onto identities I wanted to be and all that really did was create this fraudulent coat on the surface of my skin that was glaringly obvious. I was never truly myself; myself being this vessel of personalities brought on by a desire to belong in every plane I existed in. In other words, I was no real person, but a collection of people that don’t really like each other.
Source: SoundCloud / Shore-Fire-Media
This is my friend Lana’s music video “Blue Jeans”. Lana, or as I know her as Lizzy, is one of my oldest friends, going back as far as twenty years to both of us playing at the Lake Placid Club Beach. There’s something about knowing someone for so long, and seeing something really quite extraordinary come from them, it kind of feels like you’ve been standing near a vein of the world knowing that this person is amazing just when the rest of the world is starting to realize it as well. Her debut album comes out Oct. 11, you can pre-order it now.
