4th of july - Fragment 11,5 - The Kindness Of Strangers

… ja, ja, du anonyme smædeskribent, jeg er ikke rigtig klog, what else is new, og sæsonens vanvid har omsat sig i interesse for Lana Del Rey. Men tro mig, jeg har prøvet meget værre vanvid, meget mere besværligt vanvid, og så er der jo altid en mening med galskaben.

For nogen tid siden, men især også altid, var jeg endt i en nogenlunde stoisk resignation. Der dog alligevel netop slet ikke længere var en fattet, men en fuldkommen modløst bitter verdensforkastelse. Indtil Lana virkede på mig. Hun forekom mig ædel, umiddelbar og ikkekrænkende, en sådan person var kommet til udtryk, brudt i gennem, hende kunne jeg omfatte med dyb sympati. En lettelse. Skønt jeg ikke kunne forstå, hvorfor jeg ligefrem følte, at hun var en helt.

Nu går det op for mig, at hun i KILL KILL (indspillet 2007) synger don’t trust anyone – ligesom teksten på en af hendes ældste tatoveringer lyder Trust No One – men i KINDA OUTTA LUCK (oploaded 2011) synger hun, time to give in to the kindness of strangers og i videoen RIDE (indspillet 2012) siger hun, my motto is the same as ever: I believe in the kindness of strangers. Og sådan har jeg jo også altid haft det. Også altid været. Alligevel. Tak for at minde mig om det. Jeg bevidner hermed frelsen gennem troen på Lana Del Rey, døber mig på ny i hendes lyd osv osv. Art works in mysterious ways.

Nå, jeg har lyst til at sakse fra et interview, det tyske netmagasin Electronic Beats publicerede den 19 juni, men først lige en tidlig video med noget Chet Baker+heroin collage.

 ... I spent the last ten years in community service and writing folk songs. I don’t give a fuck about what I look like. Saying I came from billions of dollars is crazy. We never had any money. I feel, as a person who grew up reading about and being inspired by other figures with integrity, to kind of be turned into the antithesis of that is not what I planned. It’s the way it’s going right now, but I deal with it as it comes.

Let’s go back to what you said about doing community work. {...}
... I’ve been sober for ten years, so it was drug and alcohol rehabilitation. It was more traditional twelve-step call stuff. Just people who can’t get it together, me and groups of other people who have been based in New York for a long time working with people who need help and reached out. It was about building communities around sobriety and staying clean and stuff like that. That was my focus since I moved to the Bronx when I was eighteen. I liked music, but I considered it to be a luxury. It wasn’t my primary focus: the other stuff was really my life. But no one ever - it’s not interesting.
No, it’s really interesting. So your social work was based on your own experiences?
Yeah, because I was an addict who got clean.
As a teenager?
Yeah.
So obviously it must have informed your music.
Yeah, it’s been my main influence, I would say.

Well, I watched the video for “Ride”, and I was truly fascinated. To me, it felt so ‘wrong’ on so many levels, but that also made it truly transgressive because mere hedonism or being rebellious is no longer transgressive.
Yeah. Like, I remember it was the San Francisco Chronicle or whatever who wrote this huge thing about me being an anti-feminist. But the thing is, I don’t really have any commentary on the female’s role in society. It was the same with my first song that got big, “Video Games”. People had criticisms about it being submissive and whatever, but nothing I ever wrote had a message. It was just my own personal experience, and it’s the same with “Ride”. I believe in free love and that’s just how I feel. It’s just my experience of being with different kinds of men and being born without a preference for a certain type of person. For me, that is my story in finding love in lots of different people, and that’s been the second biggest influence in my music.

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