Googoo Gaga

I've been willing to write about Lady Gaga for a little while, but it was incompatible with postdoc application time so I postponed. Also, I wasn't too sure, to be honest, what I could possibly write about her that would not be too obviously dumb. My attention was brought to her by this video (not exactly the official vid -- careful). Check out this video rather, viewed more than 300m times (I remember a time where a million views was amazing..) [I'm not saying there's nothing lame about the video btw]. I liked the fact that some of the lyrics are in French, or at least in some sort of French. Quite glam I thought, for an American pop song. Also there's a purer rave sound than you'd expect, stuff that was underground in the 90s but that still does the job OK. Then I realized that Lady Gaga is closer to a performance artist than a pop star, and a rather interesting one moreover. My first suspicion of her significance was confirmed when I learned that the young US officer that smuggled the 240,000 diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks did so by burning them on a Lady Gaga CD! This mixture of art and political revelations might appear coincidental but I like to imagine, a bit in the spirit of Wreck & Salvage, that there is some deeper connections, whose roots dive into the current American Zeitgeist. Whatever.

Gaga's first words in Bad Romance are something like

Rha rha a ah aha

Roma rromama a

Gaga oh lala a

Want your bad romance

[Just to mention, there are already two French elements in there: the rolled "r" and the "oh lala".]

And this is the kind of thing that will play in your head while you're cooking for instance. So at some point I asked myself but what is she saying for fuck's sake? There are words that I can recognize, specially the last bit, that's rather clear, and "Gaga" also makes an apparition, and there are bits that are clearly just sounds, like the "ohooho" of the introduction; but what I find puzzling is that there is also something that is between the two.

First, the "rha rha" are purely bestial (think MGM lion) and they degenerate, just like every line, to some simply musical sounds. Then comes the intriguing part: "Roma". This also appears as just a meaningless sound but it's far too close [sic] to the "romance" in the title of the song not to be related to it. Certainly it has to be some embryonic version of it. Something is taking shape here, from the bestiality of a prelinguistic realm towards some more advanced form of communication, namely language. Notice also that when the "roma" degenerates, one could hear "mama" [compare to "papa paparazzi"]. Just like what happens in the development of a child, the first thing that comes out of the undefined darkness is the figure of the mother. Then comes "Gaga", the ego. This also frequently a child's first sounds. And finally something resembling a sentence expressing a desire towards the other can be formulated.

So my verdict would be that this chorus illustrates the genetics of the artistic process, through which a raw emotion is sublimed into some creation that resort to a higher level language.

Now one could wonder if this emergence process was successfully performed in this case. After all, it all comes to wanting "your bad romance". Sounds more like a destructive drive to me. In addition, the ego/other or subject/object couple is not adequately articulated. Not only is the "I" still missing, but also it would seem more natural to want "our romance" instead of "yours". Similarly, later in the song one hears "And I want your revenge": what is that suppose to mean? Well, maybe this is intended as "I want my revenge on you". That would make more sense. Unless... Could the artist be skillfully using this me/you confusion to underline the fact that such a vicious spiral of projections and counter-projections often characterizes a "bad romance"? Stefani Germanotta: brava!

David Blaine

I watched this TeD video where the magician David Blaine explains how he broke the Guiness record of apnea by staying a little more than 17 minutes under water.

To me, this guy is more than a magician, and more than an athlete, he's a pure artist. His determination to push the human body beyond its clinical limits is of course very spectacular and impressive, but it also says something about what it means to live. How much can one deprave the body from resources (food, oxygen) and still survive? There is also a sense of askesis very similar to what one can find in several religious traditions (fast, meditation, etc.)...

However, what struck me particularly was the fact that after a failed attempt he finally broke the record (live on TV) when he was convinced that he had no chance to succeed since his heartbeat was unusually high during the immersion. I think there might be some universal truth in this: great things are often achieved just at the moment when a long chain of intense efforts oriented to a precise goal ultimately gives way to the disappearance of all hope.

Zen Zoe

If you wander around in one of Oxford's many parks, you might meet an old lady peacefully drawing on a huge sheet of paper. Well, it's Zoe Peterssen. The rest of the story has been told many times, for instance here---needless to say that I was quite disappointed to see that many people had experienced just the same intimacy with Zoe, and that I wasn't "special" at all, she opened up to pretty much everybody. Fuck you for that Zoe bitch!

Under such circumstances, I'll just restrain to a couple of remarks.

Firstly, about her technique. She's drawing on huge sheets of paper, I told that already. What's surprising then, is that the next step is to photocopy those sheets repeatedly, reducing the size by half every time, until the tree is small enough to hold on a little card that she gracefully gives to wanderers that she likes (who are welcomed to then also give her something, a few pounds will do). So from say 2 meters to 3 centimetres, she must photocopy a drawing six times. What a labour! This shrinking process is actually akin to bonsai growing.

This comparison came to me because when I said that I was doing particle physics she mentioned a book she'd read about it, The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capa (1975). I'd like to re-read this book.

She also mentioned bows and told the story of a man who wanted to learn archery and spent many years at it until finally he shot an arrow without feeling any shot, to which his Zen master said that he now knew how to shoot an arrow. I'd like to know how to shot an arrow.

La religion comme mise en abîme de soi-même

Je suis tombé sur la reproduction d'un tableau très étonnant:

Ce qui a d'abord attiré mon attention est que je n'avais jamais vu un autoportrait de femme aussi ancien. Sofonisba Anguissola [Cremona, c. 1532-Palermo, 1625] l'a peint en 1556 -- seulement huit ans après le probable premier autoportrait féminin par Caterina von Hemessen, lequel est également le premier autoportrait (tous sexes confondus!) à représenter l'artiste devant son trépied.

J'ai d'abord hésité quant au sexe de Sofonisba, étant donné que ce prénom est en soi déjà tellement étrange qu'il pourrait tout aussi bien être celui d'un homme, que son corset rigide ne laisse pas entrevoir sa morphologie, et que son visage pourrait être celui d'un jeune apprenti aux traits efféminés. Mon réflexe en cas de telles incertitudes est de lire quelques phrase du texte accompagnateur jusqu'au premier pronom "il/elle". Ca m'a pris un peu plus de temps que d'habitude: l'image issue du catalogue de l'exposition El retrato del Renacimiento au Musée du Prado était accompagnée d'un texte en espagnol, langue moins portée sur les pronoms sexués que le Français (mais heureusement plus encline que lui à spécifier le sexe d'une profession: "la artista", "la pintora", etc.). Bref, Sofonisba est bel et bien une femme.

Je me suis mis ensuite à admirer sa simple féminité sans artifices. Bien qu'elle ait embrassé une carrière habituellement réservée aux hommes, elle a su conserver une sensibilité de femme, enfantine et délicate. La grâce de ses mains et de son visage émerge de l'habit sévère qui cache ses formes.

Je note en passant (franchement, excusations pour toutes ces digressions!) qu'il était inacceptable à l'époque pour les artistes femmes de s'exercer au dessin anatomique, qu'il était pourtant nécessaire de maîtriser pour pouvoir prétendre composer des oeuvres de larges envergures impliquant de nombreux personnages. Ca explique en partie qu'elles se soient rabattues sur les portraits, et en particulier les autoportraits.

(Une tache vive de couleur magenta sur sa palette m'a fait sourire, parce que j'ai une théorie selon laquelle les adolescentes d'Oxford portent des vêtements de cette couleur le soir pour indiquer leur disponibilité sexuelle...)

Mais mon enthousiasme a vraiment pété le plafond lorsque je me suis posé la question "mais que peint-elle?" Naïvement, le tableau nous montre Sofonisba peignant une scène religieuse , sans doute à usage dévotionel, représentant la Vierge et le Christ (ou, peut-être, à cause de l'attitude sensuelle des personnages, Aphrodite et Cupidon?). Mais à la réflexion, ce n'était pas une scène religieuse qu'était en train de peindre Sofonisba lorsqu'elle peignait son autoportrait (et pour cause), mais sa propre image: je crie à la supercherie!

Si Sofonisba avait voulu peindre fidèlement ce qu'elle voyait, c'est-à-dire sa propre réflexion dans le miroir, ce qu'elle aurait peint sur son canevas aurait été une seconde reproduction d'elle-même en train d'en peindre une troisième et ainsi de suite jusqu'à l'infini. Ce procédé d'incrustation répétée ad libitum dans une image d'une réplique d'elle-même au format réduit est une mise en abîme. Mais Sofonisba a choisi de remplacer ce puits sans fond s'ouvrant sur elle-même par une image pieuse. J'y vois un enseignement sur la religion:

La religion se substitue à la limite infinie

de l'auto-représentation.

Je trouve ça très intéressant. (On pourrait presque pousser jusqu'à y voir une manifestation du principe holographique...)

Une interprétation alternative serait que Sofonisba, par le remplacement de sa propre reproduction par l'image religieuse, essaie d'exprimer qu'elle s'identifie à la Vierge -- un peu à la manière dont un bon chrétien est censé s'identifier au Christ et tâcher d'imiter sa vie. La croix que forment son pinceau et son bâton d'appui (comment appelle-t-on cet outil?) confirment cette lecture. Mais il faut admettre que c'est forcément plus compliqué, puisque le tableau que peint Sofonisba ne représente pas seulement la Vierge, mais aussi son enfant (voire même Aphrodite et Cupidon). S'il y a identification, ce n'est donc pas avec un seul, mais deux personnages bibliques (mythologiques). Elle s'identifierait avec quelque chose de plus abstrait, du genre de l'amour maternel (ou de la sensualité amoureuse).