So sorry to tell you that the YouTube seems to be crapping its self tonight. Unless, wait, we try this one more thing.
No, never mind. Apparently the whole damn internet is broken at the moment. Either that or unavailable on Android. Which increasingly is the same thing as far as I am concerned. Call me a cyborg call me what you will. Say I’m new fangled, won’t go over the hill. Those Apple products ain’t got the same soul. I like an Android computer to hold. (Thanks Bob Seeger!)
We are not here today to talk about technology really. We are only sort of here to talk about technology, and more about the culture of the “virtual” world and the “real” world. And what is the difference? There has been a virtual world in music for the last thirty or forty years since Buddy Holly and the Beatles started making multi-track recordings. Does that make their work any less authentic? And if not, what about Lana Del Ray?
Is Lana Del Ray a real person, or is she the fiction of Lizzie Grant? Has Ms. Grant somehow found expression for a certain aspect of myself by assuming an identity? If so, she will not have been the first, nor will she receive any condemnation whatsoever from this quarter. There are truths which can be explained only in fiction. Lana Del Ray is authentic not if she hews closely to the story of Lizzie Grant but if she is diligent in pursuing and expressing the truth.
So what does that make her Saturday Night Live performance? Did she deliver a very sensitive, intimate performance that could not be conveyed via television camera? Does she just suck completely? I kind of hope that she was telling both the masses and the hipsters to kiss off. I’d like to think that it was a show of defiance that was intended to avoid accolades as a show of defiance. In reality, it was probably on OK performance of a song that would not do very well on television at any point. Still, I’m a fan.