Take me to *PARADISE*

Where the girls are pretty and the muses no longer die

“I miss the smell of America, green palms green clovers. I can still feel it when I close my eyes, it comes right over"

The lyrics of Lana Del Rey in unreleased track "Pink Champagne" makes plain old words in any usual context, fly off of the page in which they are written and forces you to believe in them.

PREDATOR the Blog By Vivian V

// VIOLENCE// The Tragic Muse// Pop star Edition feat. Lana Del Rey// no.1

“You can’t be a muse and be happy too. You can’t blacken the pages with Russian poetry and be happy……..and that scared me.” - Blue Banisters

A compilation by a LANA DEL REY fan, of previously unheard Lana songs, put together from unreleased demos attained from somewhere…..Mayyyyybe somewhere that they weren’t supposed to be attained from and I don’t know if Lana likes this happening or not, but them the breaks and this is the world we live in right now. And if we were never meant to hear some of these tracks that is a tragedy and I’m glad we have had the pleasure. There are some really beautiful moments throughout this compilation and overall it’s a very strong body of work.

There are many of these compilations floating around YouTube, but this one in particular inspired me and I love the curation by this particular LDR fan, if you go into the Youtube version of the compilation you can subscribe to them. It’s really well thought out. The music is great of course too, classic dramatic and honest Lana and lyrics also by Lana that are very interesting, honest and beautiful.

She has a way with words, her lyrics are so simple, so real and so honest they can almost become a bit lame.

This is because the truth is not only hard to digest sometimes, but unusual to hear in this society because we have become accustomed to being fed bullshit by everyone so much that the truth has become weird sounding. Like a foreign language no longer understands anymore and can even be classed as “dangerous” by the masses. However, if you can see past the cynicism that corrupts you, you will just hear the truth which is Lana’s most important contribution to music and to people like me. I don’t know what I would have done in the last six years without her lyrics sung so familiarly to me…..for whatever reason that is.

I don't understand why Lana never gets the same validation as Amy Winehouse or Tori Amos. Well, I don't know about Amos, I would rather compare Lana to Leonard Cohen or Charles Bukowski, or in so many ways Courtney Love (the outsider and the oracle).

It’s hard to compare Lana to other artists though, she’s in a league of her own and I think that has worked against her unfortunately. However, this is also in testament to her unique way of evolving the idea of what a female is and not just a female of course, more accurately she reps what “the outsider &“the freak”(or the gay male) is.

Her art represents these ideas of this type of human being so well, and there is not much place in society for this type of human being.

People see this type of human being as dangerous and a entity like this will often get dismissed in society for being crazy, or stupid or gothic/emo even, unjustified labels happen to Lana quite a lot. However, there have been openings up in society where people have seen the light and actually understood it. That or her sex appeal and beauty has been enough to sell the product, but as Lana sings “I fucked my way too the top, this is my show.”

(My god, what would the community think? Especially, when it is coming from a beautiful American woman with a lot of sex appeal…..and just in case you didn’t understand the way the world works, because there is a lot of idiots out there that don’t, but if you got this far in the article reading this story about a beautiful American woman being important, than I assume you are NOT one of them. But, Lana having sex appeal, is funnily enough, NOT her fault (shocking, I know).

You learn to use what you got to get ahead in this reality and we all got to play the game sometimes don’t we? It’s do or die sometimes, you know? #zerosumbitches)

CONCLUDE BRACKETS and INBETWEENEY THOUGHT (I don’t know why I write like that, it’s obviously how I think. I’m on a few streams of consciousness at once lol. AT ALL TIMES.

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“…sometimes life is hard and the road gets tough…..idk why.” - Born to die

Is this happiness?Is this happiness?Is this happiness?Is this happiness? - Born to die

I always wonder why Lana still proclaims Video Games is a love song and why she never addressed the Weinstein situation. This was particularly weird because she took Cola out of her repertoire during the #metoo movement (a song in which she references her relationship with Weinstein very facetiously and hilariously). However, she was never apart of the movement, I don’t know why she even bothered to stop playing Cola in that case. Especially considering it’s quite obvious her first three albums have many songs about her Weinstein situation and infatuation scattered between them.

You can be the boss - “he has a white corvette like I want it. Fire in his eyes, no I saw it. He’s bleeding from his brain and his wallet. He’s sick and he’s taken but honest! The liquor on your lips makes you dangerous. As close as I’ll get to the darkness, he tells me to “shut up, I got this.”

Shades of cool - “…he lives for love and women too and one of many of them is blue and when he calls, he calls for me and not for you. He lives for love, he loves his drugs he loves his baby too. But I can’t help him, I can’t make him better, and i can’t do nothing about his strange weather. Because you are un-fixable and i can’t break through your world.”

Cola - “Harvey’s in the sky and it’s making me crazy, all he wants to do is party with his pretty baby. You got a wife and she wouldn’t mind, we can escape to the great sunshine.”

Without you - “Hello, hello, can you hear me? I can be your china doll if you want to see me fall. Boy you so dope, your love in deadly.”

24 - “There’s only 24 hours in a day, and half of those you lay between the sheets with me my lying love. Theres only 24 hours and that’s not enough, to lie like you lie and to love like you love.”

Blackest day - “I’m looking for love in all the wrong places, oh my god.”

I fucked my way to the top - “Im dragon, you’re a whore, don’t even know what you’re good for, mimicking me is a fucking bore to me. Lay be down tonight, I’m your favourite girl. I fucked my way to the top, this is my show.”

Money Power Glory - “You say that you want to go to a land, that’s far away. How are we supposed to get there with the way, that we living today. You talk lots about God, freedom comes from the book but, that’s not what this bitch wants, not what I want at all I want money power glory, hallelujah, I’m going to to take you for all that you got.”

Million dollar man - “You are screwed up and brilliant look like a million dollar man, so why is my heart broke.”

Honeymoon - “We both know, that it’s not fashionable to love me. But you don’t go, because truly there’s no body for you but me.”

Textbook - “I guess you could call it textbook, I was looking for the father I wanted back. And I thought I found him, in Brentwood.”

And then there was that issue of her, I didn’t even like myself or love the life I had. And there you were a shining star, standing blue with open arms. You touch the detriemnt most of the friends I knew already had.

You got a thunder bird, my daddy had one too, lets re-write history, i’ll do this dance with you. You know Im not that girl you know I’ll never be. Maybe just the way we are different will set me free. There we were screaming Black Lives Matter, and I saw you saw who Iam. God I wish I was with my father he couold see us in all our splender all the things I couldn’t want from him….I screamed for them.” (that was a long one and it goes on but you can listen to it. I think that was the last song about him.”

So Lana has got some lucky breaks in society where something has happened and people have actually finally understood the message (or they thought she was hot, I really don’t know what happened, but for whatever reason Lana got through to the other oracles and the other oracles make up approximately just under 50% of the population, but for a large portion of society our voice is largely under represented).

When we are represented, it’s by people like Lana, Cohen, Love, Plath, Irigaray, Freud ect. These are quite hated figures in society.

“I’ll wait for you babe, it’s all I do. You won’t come through though, because that’s just what you do.” - Pretty when I cry

These figures are usually pushed to the side in favour of a more digestible public character. They are definitely under-represented artists in our culture at the very least, considering their large and important contributions made and evolution of the whole in which they represent. Which, give or take, is usually a similar whole across the board.

A good example of these artists under-representation, is that people still think Hallelujah was a Jeff Buckley written track.

On another point, there is this insight I once had about Lana and the rest of the freak leaders, but especially Lana, that people like Lana Del Rey are born to be the voice of a population of freaks, because some people are just born honest. No matter what happens, they never lose that inner child truth which is a truth that is of another world or dimension and then to have the ability to know yourself well enough to be able to put this truth into words, well this equals a very unique yet dangerous experience of a life. It usually produces some sort of muse maybe too.

The tragic muse, but the days of the tragic “Edie Sedgwick style” muse are over and we now have the Lana’s who WILL play the game.

“…..but i wish i was dead (dead, like you)”

And Lana doesn’t feel shame about playing the game, which is just a necessary evil of life that everyone has to conform to (despite the shame thrown her way in every direction, especially at the beginning of Lana’s career), and most importantly, she hasn’t died.

The new tragic muses, also aren’t relying on the muse status anymore, which is usually a curse put on them by a male that has pressured them to have to live up to some feminine ideal that has been conjured up in his mind, manifested from the time when he was first struck by her beauty. Thankfully, this element of the tragic muse is a thing of the past (even though its always going to be a tempting path to take and if we do take it, we barely do make it out alive. We don’t blame Sedgwick for dying, that is for sure).

Instead, the new and improved tragic muse, is using her muse status to continue to forge ahead and get what she wants, whatever that is.

The difference between Lana and the idea of a muse or the old tragic muse, besides not dying, is she’s also a woman born with the desire to carry the word forward to find some justice behind all the hate she would have had to face while smiling (or sometimes crying). She knows she has a whole she needs to contribute to and this is something that is very endearing about a human, the ability to understand your whole. It’s also nothing short of a miracle these days also, it’s not a hot topic of discussion so I don’t blame people for not knowing this information. None the less, its important information to know about yourself.

I have found most people struggle with the idea of what they are doing on this planet, but personally my whole became apparent to me around six years ago which means I have spent most of my life lost in the meaning of it all as well, so I understand. Finding my whole, was like finding my soul. I recommend it if you don’t understand what yours is yet and to find it sooner rather than later, life becomes a lot more interesting once you do.

And my whole was very obvious once I thought about it consciously and it’s pretty much the same as Lana’s seems to be. That’s because, as a woman there is always going to be an obvious whole that needs our contribution and our honesty and our love.

And that love, at some point a few times in the last six years, has been received by the people. Like a heavenly opening up in our society from above and at that, for a tiny quiet moment in history, there has been a lift in all human vulnerability, which has cut through this incessant yet ignorant hate or conceit for a beautiful woman telling her story and telling her life just the way it is. Which is never going to be ideal, but she’s not worried about the consequences of her truth or whether it will be seen as the right thing for a woman to do or say or not. This is because, she knows as long as she is honest, she can never be doing wrong by herself or by those around her.

She may tell you she has nostalgic thoughts about her abusive relationship sometimes, not all fantasies are so perfect either. But for the most part she has not enjoyed any abuse she has been through and she will tell you all about that too, in all its beautiful brutality. And she will tell these stories with love as much as she will tell you her stories of being in love.

However, she never victimises herself in any situation and that might be some people's problem with her, because that might be confronting for some people.

These people are usually quite inexperienced and unable to understand abstract ideas in the world.

In any case, because she’s not a victim this usually makes her a fighter, and she will fight for the whole that she represents and knows so well, because she loves everything about her whole, the good the bad and the violent.

She will fight for what she wants and will never compromise or sell out her principles to the patriarchy, no matter how hard they come down on her for this. The patriarchy are a dangerous force to come up against and most just follow suit in knowing this, but she never will if their actions don’t align with her truth. The patriarchy exists for her, but they are not seen as a barrier they are just seen by her as ignorant and tired maybe.

She will always empathise with her haters, and understand and see their bruises more than she see’s the bruises they are trying to cause her, which they may achieve, but what did they achieve really?

Because every morning she will wake up and face them once again, they will never see her die until she’s dead. She can’t die, she must live, for the whole, for the music and for herself.

Anyway, the “victim” is just a state of mind isn’t it? It doesn’t exist unless they want it too. But they have less power than you think and sometimes I think they have none at all.

Vivian V

No longer a predator x

Copyright Danica Conwell 2023 All Rights Reserved

EXCEPT

Pictures are not mine and I did not take them. They are chosen from a public forum on a website.