All My CDs, pt 33: Born to Die

Born to Die - Lana Del Rey

I bought this album a few years ago because two songs showed up on my Pandora station, and I thought they were pretty rad. I had never heard of Lana Del Rey before, probably because I live a very sheltered life of listening to classical radio and watching no television except for Doctor Who. (The motive for this self-insulation is onefold: I hate ads.) Later, I learned that there is a bit of a controversy about whether Lana Del Rey counts as a real person and therefore worthy of any respect or attention as a musician. I have no thoughts of my own on the subject, but if you’re craving such discussion I refer you to this video and this article.

I'm not sure what originally attracted me to Lana Del Rey. Perhaps it was the generous use of stringed accompaniment combined with fascinatingly versatile vocals (deep and disaffected one moment, high and girlish the next). The lyrics may have played a role as well. They present an almost charicaturistic picture of the crassest and most problematic version of girlhood and femininity: conflating performance and appearance with sexuality, sexuality with love, and all three with wealth and luxury, all wrapped up in a mindset that one's well-being depends entirely on a man. But the sadness that permeates even the happiest-seeming lyrics belies the truth that this is all the twisted fantasy of a deeply damaged soul: “Carmen, Carmen doesn't have a problem / Lyin' to herself 'cause her liquor's top-shelf"”

The whole album could be interpreted as a brutal take-down of pop culture's destructive objectification of women, so sickeningly pervasive that girls grow up thinking of themselves as mere objects whose lives are meaningless and miserable if they are not appealing to men in a very superficial way. This sort of outlook makes it excruciatingly important to obtain and maintain male affection and love, even at the expense of personal health and other relationships.

The "nothing is more important than pleasing my man" attitude pervades every song on the album. Video Games's sweet refrain goes "It's you, it's you, it's all for you / everything I do." Dark Paradise illustrates the devastation that occurs when such an all-consuming relationship ends. One song, This Is What Makes Us Girls, explicitly links the problematic values system to gender: "This is what makes us girls / we don't stick together 'cause we put love first." The same song somewhat self-consciously underlines some of the tragic consequences, but fatalistically fails to recognize that it is not inevitable, that girls can follow another path, one where self-worth is not tied to sexual objectification.

Contrasting and complimenting the dark and gender-dystopian lyrics, the instrumentation is sumptuously orchestral, with bowed stringed instruments accompanying the sultry vocal strains. The combination of music and tragic words makes each song, at least for me, deeply saddening. I have at times found myself switching to another CD to avoid flinging myself into a melancholic funk just before a work shift or important dinner. It is certainly not music I would play all the time, but I could not imagine removing it from my collection. It's just too interesting.

Next: Buckminster

All My CDs, pt 32: All One

All One - Krishna Das

Several years after falling in love with the album Pilgrim Heart, I decided to see if the same artist had any other interesting albums, and on that basis I bought All One. I did not think much about the title, assuming it to be a reference to the monism of Hindu philosophy - the belief that all beings are one being, all different identities of the same all-encompassing divine spirit. This belief encourages compassion and nonviolence, since it’s hard to be cruel or uncaring to a fellow being when you believe that he is you, and that his pain is yours as well.

 When I first put it on, my impression of the first track that it was a bit slow-moving and monotonous, even compared to the repetitiveness I had appreciated in Pilgrim Heart. I found myself advancing to the next track before hearing all eighteen minutes of the first, and found it similarly boring. I took the CD out and don’t remember picking it back up again until now.

When I started listening this time, I committed to listening to the whole thing nonjudgmentally, even at the risk of some boredom. My reward was something of a revelation. Yes, the first track is even more repetitive and less variable than Pilgrim Heart. And yes, all the other tracks are just like it. In fact, the entire fifty-three minutes is all one song. The moment I realized that, I found myself murmering “I see what you did there.”

The song consists of four lines known as the Mahamantra, or “great mantra”:

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare

Even within the lines of the mantra there is simply a repetition of names of God, nothing more intricate than that. The music alternates between a very slow melody with minimal accompaniment and a more upbeat segment with more instruments and more energy. The instruments themselves are a combination of Eastern and Western, modern and traditional, including flutes and guitars and violins and mixed percussion, played in a variety of styles. The whole thing has a very improvised, spontaneous feel to it, and I cannot now think of any of it as boring.

And nor is the worldview that all beings are one being, that all things are expression of one divine love. Hinduism believes in oneness, but is also a massively polytheistic faith - the one contains many, varied and exciting and infinitely complex. Just as our world contains billions of unique and interesting people and hundreds of unique and beautiful cultures, but we all share one world and a common identity as human beings.

Peace.

Next: Born to Die