This meme was created for the Art of Visual Story Telling:

Ever since high school, I’ve been Sylvia Plath’s biggest fan. I’d try to impress my friends by reciting bits of her dark poems. The Bell Jar is by far my favorite book on my shelf; I read it once a year, because I’ve been on pursuit of finding the magic in that book– discovering what makes it pulse and come alive. I’ve come to the conclusion that Plath’s writing is sharp, the figurative language is shocking, there’s strong use of onomatopoeia, and there’s humor stitched in all the pain with each of the twists in perspective; I’ve come to the most recent conclusion that Plath writes horror: her stories are unsettling and distorted. The more I read of Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, the more my observations ring true.

I’ve been having a touch of a crisis lately in relation to my love for the woman who, in so many ways, made me as a writer. I feel like my affection for Plath is fading. Just reading her more has helped me view her work within the horror genre, I feel the themes are repeated, the language seems to live in the same lexiconical and conceptual universe, the tricks I love from The Bell Jar are the same tactics that animate her short stories. I’m becoming heartbroken, perhaps; after all, she did only make it to 30; she barely had time to access the greatness she could have produced. In the story “Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams,” my heart was comforted to see a surge in creative energy and a new working on the page. I can not help but long for more. What if Plath could have followed the panic of dreams, but turned at an intersection at which she trudged forward? What mythology would she have made?

In the story that gives the book its title, Plath creates a dreamlike sequence for the reader as she explains the dreams of people who come through the hospital as well as her own. The entire piece has a surreal feel, uneasy, unhinged. We don’t know what’s real, what’s imagined, what happened, and what didn’t happen. The piece sits in, no pun intended, a bell jar in relation to time and space. Amidst the fear of repetition and mundane brilliance, this story stands out as a beacon of hope that I don’t have to give up on my idol yet. I think that processing my disappointment in her circumstances is and personal history is an important step in reaching heights beyond my personal writing hero. I want time to create. I want time to make connections.I want to divide imagery that’s out of this world.

A Journaled Word Bank for Plath

Refined, controlled, sharp, zap, twist, still, movement, eyes, babies, motherhood, family, fatherhood, money, society, divorce, pleasure, rural, desire, perfection, high, culture, undone, business, action, matters, informs, alive, connected, woman, empathy, communicative, horror, language, figurative, violent, virulent, volatile, bubbling, budding, new, fresh, shapes, perspective, world, shift, opens, caution, precision, crisp

A Poem for the Mother of my Poetry

I’ve bathed

in bird blood,

burnt myself–

ignit-cigarettes,

left butterflies

etched on arms

nursing this

broken heart–

swine

orgasm —

reconstructing

all ways always

Plath S. (2018) Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams. New York, NY: HarperCollins

Because I am a dedicated professional, I am determined to continue to build my knowledge and connections. Through this Personal Learning Network plan, I am taking steps to continue my growth and reach the next level.

Thanks for following my journey to mastery!

What I’m Reading…

I started reading the book thoughtRAVE: An interdimensional Conversation with Lady Gaga. So far, I am really liking the text. It’s putting ARTPOP in conversation with philosophic principles of communication. It’s a modern science fiction reality. I’ll be sure to post an update on more of the information in the book as I move more though it.

Right now, the form proves delicious. The book is set up as chats in a chat room like Google Hangouts between the author, Robert Craig Baum, and Lady Gaga. The epistemological bombs dropped and articulated seamlessly are enough to make the reader’s hairs stand on end. It’s giving me a great connection to music, which I never conceptualized before. I am a user of music, and it adapts my plastic brain.

Since Lady Gaga assembled her own Haus, I’m claiming mine

Curation of Rare Spaces

[Okay, Google– Play “Haunted Heart” by Christina Aguilera]

Poltergeist pumping cobweb heart,

Door held tracks railroad shake, creek

while wind rocks, foliage scratch hello…

My own horror show rabbit hole– Alice

takes both distillations. I wish they gave

me just the gummy bears, yet instead…

I swept into my HAUS, taped walls

bear-less with artifacts vintage set

rainbows, records, tickets from shows

inside this architectural monstrosity

I call forever home

Always pain all ways

Venus fly trap cyclically

Image from the archives

“Of course, I see no rules or limits when it comes to love, but I see love as separate from sex” 

Lady Gaga

Written by Adam James Zahren

Introduction 

“I don’t need to be   ognition of Lady Gaga’s ten-year career anniversary. I started my piece by asserting,“What began as an uncertain voyage into an unknown abyss shaped by hiccups and metamorphosis has undeniably resulted in an unprecedented, record-shattering, music-industry-shaping, pop-culture-creating, queer-movement-paving, celebrity-status-exceeding, award-collecting Star,” and the sentiment still stands (2018 Zahren). Through the past, present, current, and future trajectory of her career conception, Lady Gaga manages shape shifting, chameleon based, Frankenstein inspired feats. Her movements (micro and macro) enhance the power of the LGBTQIA+ movement, create a community of “little monsters” united by pop culture, and break silences in relation to held fast American values and imagery.Lady Gaga, as a performance artist,  positions herself as a queer, trans* body that blurs the distinctions between private and public spaces; her album ARTPOP took her modus operandi too far and jolted the bond she created with her (mainstream) audience, because pop culture wasn’t ready to hold this Gaga bedazzled hand mirror up to itself and reflect on the monster it became, Gaga suffered a public, private, and personal setback although still thrived and flourished in the private realm of her super fandom and managed to make a metamorphosis of a comeback.

Lady Gaga has a rich history, but for the purposes of this paper, I will use the comic book LADY GAGA: Fame written by CW Cooke to disseminate a quick narrative of Lady Gaga’s rise to fame: “She was born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta on March 28, 1986 to parents Cynthia Bissett and Joseph Germanotta;” “She learned piano at age four;” “She wrote her first   at open mike nights while still very young…” “At s17, she was admitted to NYU and the Tisch School of the Arts… but school stopped appealing to her and she withdrew;” “At 19years old, she signed with def Jam Records… It didn’t last, and in 3 months she was dropped, but managed to get together with producer RedOne;” “Soon she became Lady Gaga;” “She and Starlight [Lady Starlight] played Lollapalooza in 2007 and the crowd went wild;” “Lady Gaga had arrived;” “Her first single, “Just Dance,” became not only a chart topper, but a hit music video phenomenon of its own;” “She dropped her album The Fame Monsterand went on tour in its support, and even released another hit single, ‘Bad Romance’; “She took the world by storm… and the news media follows her everywhere;” “It’s all part of the Lady Gaga persona” (Cooke 2012). Through her careful formation and strategic implementation, Lady Gaga rose to the title of Master in the world of marketing and Pop Culture.   

Creative Task

“Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you.”

Fredrich Nietzsche quoted in The Rise of the Fame Monsterby Michael Troy (2012)

According to Mastery, when it comes to becoming a Master in the realm of creativity, Greene (2012) says, “You must begin altering your very concept of creativity by trying to see it from a new angle” (p. 179). This multidimensional mindset finds itself situated in the heart Gaga persona. From the start of her journey, Gaga has acted to collect and curate her creative flair through music, fashion, makeup, and performance art. “Etymologically, curation is related to the Latin ‘curatio,’ which means ‘top manage, to administrate, to take care of…Curation therefore encompasses practices of sorting, classifying, and labeling for the purposes of organization and display” (2015 Lui p. 130). This display becomes radically political because in order to advance her art, Lady Gaga literally places her body on the market for commodification. The messages she sends that fan her fanatics, although they occur within the realm of a normalized— capitalistic celebrity economy— are anything but mundane or ordinary.         

Greene discusses how our minds are essentially plastic, capable of transforming, making new connections, and transforming into a new shape. The same stands for Gaga.“‘Plastic’ in the sense of malleable also describes how Gaga performs her body” (Switaj 2012 p. 38). Gaga’s persona and body become high fashion, high culture, and high-performance habits for the world to gawk at, photograph, categorize, and generate a surplus of images. These images bolster and support celebrity culture, although Gaga’s passion for music, clothing, and cosmetics (in conjunction to her connection with her fanbase) continue to propel her into the depths of stardom. “This is The Primary Law of the Creative Dynamicthat you must engrave deeply in your mind and never forget: your emotional commitment to what you are doing will be translated directly into your work (Greene p. 179). Gaga’s bodily agency blurs the lines between public and private: even her most intimate moments become stages for her to spread her music and message; the public sphere becomes a stage for her to inhabit with absurdist fashion surrealism. Every action performed by Gaga in turn gets categorized, labeled, organized, consumed and digested by fans who create their own edits of the images, spread the message of kindness or rumors of new music through the universe by way of hashtags and social media accounts. The lines quickly blur when it comes to focusing on official content curated and fans generating scrapbook worthy posts. 

Since her debut onto the scene, Gaga queers our reality. Through her performance art, American culture has been forced to look into the proverbial hand mirror and confront their stance, perception, and understandings in spatial relation gender and sexuality. “It is as if an ogling public feels compelled to conjure up freakish physical attributes to stars they find especially compelling, perhaps in an attempt to categorize them as ‘not like us’ (Torrusio 2012 p. 162). One of the biggest moments early on in Gaga’s career was when she was perceived to be sporting a penis under her dress. There are videos online available with the simple search that reveal this footage as well as show fan theory and criticism. Her performance generated an entire conversation about gentiles and money, honey. Our culture’s history proves rich in silences such narratives, specifically around discourse about sex and genitals—after all, we are other Victorians. “Identities framed within a medicalized border [of transgeography] efficiently negated individual identity and erased those whose histories, identities, bodies, and sexualities did not fit within the critical boundaries of ‘true transsexual’” (Cromwell 2006 p. 511). In a moment, Lady Gaga reopened this conversation, but did so in a way that it wasn’t under a medical scope; the muffled discourse became pop culture; it became art; it became a conversation, and she was its single, stacked handed epicenter. 

The task of the Gaga persona is to constantly reinvent itself. In order to be Gaga, one must take the biggest chance with the faith for the biggest pay off; one needs to pull out all the stops and think in terms of what is absent; to be Gaga is to be connected with the past, present, and future simultaneously; it is mythology: cyborgs, zombies, vampires, and mermaids; it’s about making a scene that becomes a public memory; it’s about collecting with the knowledge that eventually you’ll have your own Haüs to display the favorite hidden objects in your closet. Madonna proves baseline, and Gaga is a peak, an apex. The challenge that Gaga creates herself is constant innovation, bigger transformation, and a constant state of becoming; she is always in motion and the camera never stops rolling—better have back up batteries.

Creative Strategies 

“I can see every monster as they come in.”

Truman Capote quoted in The Rise of the Fame Monsterby Michael Troy (2012)

It’s about vision: “The world around us, he [Keats] wrote, is far more complex than we could possibly imagine” (Greene p. 180). When we swap out our traditional prescription with kaleidoscopes, the world becomes a far more fascinating place. When we look for symbolism and meaning, the world begins to take on a new form. There is something intrinsically essential about noticing details, but so often, we are pulled away from specifics only to indulge in the big picture. When we adjust our eyes, we see the world in a new light: there is more to perceive than meets the retina or cornea. One important element in our sight is the ability not to look away when the world catches on fire. We need to be able to occupy absence; we need to be able to state at the gore around us in order to invert it and make it beautiful again. “This ability to endure and even embrace mysteries and uncertainties is what Keats called negative capability (Greene p. 181). When it comes to Gaga ARTPOP stands out as a negative image in a lineup of polished photographs. Gaga said herself on Twitter that she didn’t remember ARTPOP (although there’s a lot to take in; I always said that ARTPOP was bigger than anything Gaga herself was conscious of creating)—resounds like a Warhol, POPART, move to me. 

ARTPOP was The Fame on steroids. The electronic beats convulse one’s body and crack one’s bones when the bass rests cranked too high. There was one time I danced in an “empty” fraternity house to “Swine” at full volume. I became my own Gaga repetition with a difference. ARTPOP took the hyperbole of femininity, whiteness, capitalism, sex, gender, and sexuality to the next level, and society wasn’t ready. Culturally, ARTPOP was rejected from the music world. Although recently, the album did achieve platinum status, according to Gaga Daily circa 2017. Like Lady Gaga sing-says in “Judas,” “But in the cultural sense, I just speak in future tense” (2011). Gaga’s performance materializes as futuristic from inception. “When Lady Gaga wears video glasses or dances robotically, she comes across as a beautiful woman who plays the cyborg rather than someone who is a cyborg or who hides her beauty behind technological apparati (Switaj p. 39). What ARTPOP managed to disseminate into the mainstream culminated as a multitude of images it did not want to consume, and Gaga was essentially rejected for her hyperbole of capitalism, gender, sex, and fame. The example to highlight is the song “Do What You Want With My Body” featuring R. Kelly, this is not the space for such a discussion, but one should certainly be had. 

Cultivate negative capability

“If you don’t have any shadows, you’re not standing in the light”

Lady Gaga

After ARTPOP(Or ARTFLOPas I dubbed it from the start –a little tip of the hat) Lady Gaga in (re)invented herself, forgetting her past identity, as a jazz singer and teamed up with Tony Bennet. This album, which I (re)listen to regularly with my grandmother (who loves when Gaga sings jazz to her but not pop). “Another lesson that can be learned from the Cheek to Cheek episode in Gaga’s career is that to stay competitive, it is sometimes necessary to join forces” (Simões et. All 2019 p. 390). Gaga uncovered a new style of voice, (re)revealing an entirely new aesthetic. According to Cromwell, under a trans* methodology, “As they find their tongues, they subvert the concept of identity and the binary construction of bodies, sexes, genders, and sexualities” (2006 p. 512). Gaga’s persona and body represent that of a trans* body; it is constantly reinvented and always under (re)construction.

Negativa and Spiritual Creativity: A Space for Inquiry

I had the opportunity to attend a conference (for the second year in a row) this past summer at Oberlin College centered around Creativity. The keynote speaker, Patricia Plude, created conversationabout creative spirituality; this is a very rich source of epistemology, and I would like the time to explore this in more detail, but for now I will summarize what I already know. What stuck out to me the most was her discussion on the Negativa element of the process. This space represents all the heartbreak, all the contradictions, all the pain that influence the creative process. I feel like this is the place where I perpetually mind-reside; I hold competing thoughts in my head, I see and feel all the pain and heart break, everything means so much more when coming from a broken heart. ARTPOP manifested from this negative space, this rejection of the invisible. ARTPOP became the artistic representation of the fall of the Pop Star; we all got to watch ‘Princess Die” and sing all the words together.

Creative Breakthrough

“Anger is the enemy of non-violence and pride is a monster that swallows it up.”

Mohandas Gandhi quoted in The Rise of the Fame Monsterby Michael Troy (2012)

I think Greene articulated it best in Masterywhen he stated,“They have been through this before, and on an unconscious level they understand that they must plow forward, and that the frustration, or the feeling of being blocked, has a purpose (2012 p. 199). This is the exact trait Gaga embodied after the immediate failure of ARTPOP as a persona. Instead of staying down, she got right back up and changed her sound to jazz. This parallels the exposition of her career when she was dropped from her label. She broke free from the constraints of the pop genre she worked so hard to exploit and hyperbolize. She outgrew her spot in the popular light. “The mounting frustration and tightness that comes from single-minded devotion to one problem or idea will naturally lead to a breaking point” (Greene p. 200). The stage became too small; she needed an arena. Gaga had been working on the image of The Fame from beginning (2008) to ARTPOP (2013); enough was enough. “A metaphor is a creative way of creating meanings that broaden the understanding of what is meant to be described” (Simões et. All 2019 p. 385). Gaga expanded her brand and living metaphor trudging forward from ARTPOP’s shadow. Grandiosity

“In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.”

Andy Warhol quoted in The Rise of the Fame Monsterby Michael Troy (2012)

It is common knowledge that the road to ARTPOP was one filled with physical pain and fall out on Gaga’s professional end.  Even Elton Johndidn’t think it stood as an album up to snuff. The common theme from this stage of narrative proved time and time again that Gaga did not listen to the advice of those around her while making this album: it became her personal pop monster endeavor to sever. There was even a videoreleased for the promo that insisted “Lady Gaga is Over” and told viewers to “Not buy ARTPOP.” The video, by the end, insists that we ‘Stop the drama” and “Start the music,” but the video is grotesque and unappealing (Gaga 2013). Who would watch the whole thing—even if it is less than 50 seconds. The video comes off frightening in ways; it transmits as a fear of criticism: “If we learn to handle criticism well, it can strengthen us and help us become aware of the flows in our work (Greene p. 203). What is Gaga saying about her audience in this short clip? By following through with this project, Gaga was able to actualize her initial project The Fame, but as nickname ARTFLOPmight beg the question, at what cost?

Greene (2012) reminds us, “Once the ego inflates it will only come back to earth through some jarring failure, which will equally scar us” (p. 203). In following her pipe dream, Gaga wedged something between and slightly severed, like a dangling dismembered eye, her relationship with the public sphere. In more ways than one ARTPOP manifested as repulsive. The performance of “Swine” live at SXSW comes to mind where a fellow performance artist literally vomits on her and she rides a mechanical bull piano caused a huge controversy in the main stream ensued about sexual assault and the glorification of eating disorders—“F*ck you pop music; this is ARTPOP” [cue Millie Brown barfing black whole Gaga just lays back and takes it] (Kanetsu 2016). Gaga’s split fractured the industry itself. This fracture reminds me of Mozart, who slit his ties with his father in order to make the music he’d always dreamed of. Through his bold chance, he became one of the greatest music makers of our time; he’s influenced, broken, and rearranged genre; he used his unique perspective to alter the landscape of music entirely. The difference between Gaga and Mozart, then, is obvious: Gaga’s passion for music hasn’t killed her yet.  

What makes the gaga persona life giving and transformative is its ability to shift in the ebb and flow of the currents of Gaga’s personal life and the ever changing market. Joannewas an album that explored the country-side of things, and took on an entirely different sound than anything she’d dropped previously in her career. “Not by chance, Gaga’s latest work, the album Joanne, kept the distance from the electronic beats that made her famous” (Simões et. All 2019 p. 386). Through this album, she collected bits of her family history in order to curate them. “Private acts of collecting things are simultaneously public acts of display” (2015 Lui p. 139). The private life of Gaga became public; her fans (as well as the masses) got to know her in a fresh way—specifically with the help of the release of the NetflixdocumentaryFive Foot Two. Gaga stripped away the things that positioned her in a Dada fashion and became human. She  Littlemonsters.com. “Seen in this light, the activity of creating these scrapbooks might be understood as a political practice” (2015 Lui p. 132). We follow Gaga, obsessed with her image and in turn her body, which we consume like honey in the music video “Telephone.” Through her body, fashion, and music, she intimately connects herself to tightly held American values like The American Dream, memory, love, celebrity culture, and fame itself. Through this connection, she guys the values, turns them into cyborgs, werewolves, and vampires, bedazzles their scars, and parades them through the streets for all eyes to meet, dissect, consume, and reproduce.

            Because of her constant invention or inversion in direct conjunction with the fluidity of her corporal body and image, Lady Gaga remains a Pop Culture Monster through each implemented action. The Gaga persona functions inherently as a kaleidoscope. As a myriad of mirrors, Gaga turns the reflection back on her audience and they see themselves in her image. People always see what they want to see. Lady Gaga operates in the normalcy of celebrity, encouraging the myth that anyone can be famous like her if they work hard enough. As an icon she is normal, but everything she does as an icon incites instances of the abnormal. She queers us, like they shriek in Maggie: Girl of The Streets— shameless like Camila Cabello. “Today, Gaga is able to recognize her own capabilities and anticipate market opportunities to exploit them,” but when we look back, hasn’t she always been recognizing and realizing them (Simões et. All 2019 p. 392). Lady Gaga proves a Master of Marketing as well as a Master Musician and Performance Artist with an unparalleled capacity to maximize her public and private moments. Her relationship with her superfans expedites her rising fame, because everyone believes that one day, they will be able to reunite with their symbolic mother and make magic happen like a Disney movie without a budget. 

“I can’t help myself I’m addicted to a life of material. It’s some kind of joke…”

Lady Gaga “The Fame” (2009)

Works Cited

Cromwell J. (2006). Queering the Binaries: Transituated Identities, Bodies and Sexualities.New 

York: Routledge. 

Cooke C.(2012). LADY GAGA: Fame. Canada: Bluewater Comics.

Gaga L. (2013 12 August). Lady Gaga is Over: A Film By Haus of Gaga.[Video File]. 

Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g4XAyESHos

Gaga. L (2011). Born This Way. New York: Interscope Records 

Greene R. (2012). Mastery. New York, NY: Viking Adult.

Lui, D. (2015). Public Curation and Private Collection: The Production of Knowledge on 

            Pinterest.com. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 32(2), 128–142. https://doi-

org.oclc.fullsail.edu/10.1080/15295036.2015.1023329

Kanetsu S. (2016 18 February). Lady Gaga Swine Live at SXSW FestivalHD.[Video File]. 

Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWJMrs9odcI

Simões, I. B., Gonçalves, C. A., Gonçalves, M. A., da Conceição Domingos Silva, S., & Melo, 

E. S. (2019). Between the Fame and Joanne: Parallels of Lady Gaga’s Career with 

Business Strategies in Competitive Environments. Brazilian Journal of Management /

 Revista de Administração Da UFSM, 12(2), 384–401. https://doi-

org.oclc.fullsail.edu/10.5902/19834659

Switaj E. (2012)Lady Gaga’s Bodies: Buying and Selling The Fame Monster. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Troy M. (2012). Rise of The Fame Monster. Canada: Bluewater Comics.

Torrusio A. (2012) The Fame Monster: The Monstrous Construction of Lady Gaga. Jefferson,

NC: McFarland.

Zahren A. (2018) 10 Years of Gaga. Retrieved from  http://gagadaily.com/10

As it may or may not come to surprise you, Lady Gaga serves as the epicenter of my inspiration. Her chameleon transformative abilities astound even her most avid fans when she makes any sort of appearance. In celebration of her ten year career anniversary, I was asked to write a piece for GagaDaily, her biggest fan site– the site that claims Lady Gaga visits the site to hear the latest gossip and the remarks her fans are making. I wrote that piece a few years ago, but the main article still serves for the homepage– all you have to do is click “Read More”. If you click on the song reviews, you’ll find pieces of me scattered throughout the post. Lady Gaga has been giving me life since 2009– with her blessing I married Emily Dickinson under the pale moonlight one alcohol injected spring break in Cleveland circa 2014– and I see no signs of our transfusion ceasing any time soon. Especially not after our “Applause” Joanne World Tour moment in Cleveland, OH.

I’ve come to submerge myself in what I call Gaga Epistemology. This is a next level version of Gaga Feminism as expanded upon my J. Jack Halberstam. “Gaga feminism is a politics that brings together meditations on fame and disability with a lashing critique of the fixity of roles for males and females (2012, p. 5). We take the feminist sense and expand it to the level of an epistemology when we engage in the desperate “need to teach and learn about are all the fringe sexualities that become targets for homophobic and transphobic policies and attitudes (2012, p. 11). Gaga knowledge is the knowledge of the freak, the monster, the rebel, and the ostracized. It’s gender, sex, race, bodies, and celebrity studies mashed into a paste. When we look at the excluded, we find answers to what it means to be part of an inner circle. I am currently reading The Performance Identities of Lady Gaga as well as pieces about sexuality, gender, and monstrosity as well as an article on how the site Pinterest functions as a factory for knowledge production in order to produce my next essay.

But this post isn’t about finding the answers to those questions or really going into much detail on what it means when we apply the concepts of gaga to our perception, experience, and mundane living. The key take away from this nerdy rift is that Gaga theories of knowledge are what propel me– the surreal, absurdist, dada echos of reality.

My most recent discovery in this realm of epistemology was the book 3 Word Rebellion by Dr. Michelle A. Mazur Ph.D. “At it’s core, the 3 Word Rebellion encapsulates the change you want to create in the world with your message” (2019, p. 11). The challenge of the rebellion is to minimize the length of your message to pack the biggest punch. Lady Gaga does this with her album Born This Way where she validates and affirms her moniker as Mother Monster; she has a place in her paradigm for all her misfit fans. Her 3 word rebellion functions as it should. It gives a name for her mission and more importantly, it includes her audience in the heart of the message. That’s the real secret of the rebellion: you’ve got to make room for your audience to come along on the journey with you.

Pop culture is filled with these three word quips that capture the eye of the beholder and transfix their mind to a meta message: something that’s bigger than the initial message itself. The 3 word rebellion is bigger than the company who creates it. Born To Die, for me, stands out as an exceptional sound in this movement. The 3 word rebellion becomes and provides the frame the business or public figure uses in order to position themselves in the conversation that’s didactically already in motion around them. These three words carve a space for the person using them. The words give the rebel a chance in a market that proves already saturated with sound; a 3 word rebellion echos and warps glass faster than a diamond can slice it.

Moving through the text, the book poses theoretical context and frames as well as real world examples of 3 word rebellions in action. Once you start looking, you begin to notice these little mantras everywhere in the advertising realm. The book doubles as a workbook so that you can create your own 3 word rebellion. After performing the exercises and spending the energy percolating over the concepts before me, I chose a 3 word rebellion of my own:

We wear kaleidoscopes #WWKS

I picked this phrase because I believe the world is more complicated than our typical prescriptions allow us to see. There is intersectionality of inter-dimensional proportions everywhere, if only we would choose to perceive it. Forget rose colored glasses. Try wearing kaleidoscopes and watch how much your world changes in the link of an eye. When we were these devices, when we enhance our cyborg form with this technology, we begin to see the world differently. The answer to social justice and equity is a shift in perspective, a glance at what could be, but not not yet exist generally. When we wear kaleidoscopes, we make the fantastic more. We make what was once mundane, phantasmagoric.

Works Cited

Halberstam, J. Jack. (2012) Gaga Feminism. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Mazur, A. M. (2019) 3 Word Rebellion. Seattle, WA: Communication Rebel Press.

We Wear Kaleidoscopes

“Mommy… Why Did All Those people have to die?”

— #WWKS Quote

OR Anywhere You Go, Let Me Go Too

Written by Adam James Zahren

Inspired by Andrew Lloyd Webber and music at large

“Even if you can not hear my voice, I’ll be right beside you, Dear.

Light up, light up as if you have a choice.

Louder, louder.. I can hardly speak; I understand why you can’t raise your voice to sing.”

— “Run” Josh Groban and Sarah Mclachlan

I ran a karaoke event sponsored by Lake Erie Ink, a creative writing space for young people with an interest in writing and other creative arts, in Cleveland last summer. Kids from around the neighborhood were encouraged to come to the literary lot, which was playground straight out of a scifi book (but because of the rumors of apathy and violence, the artist rarely left his giant robot on the property for fear that it would be incinerated, so the kids never really got the promise of the premise when it came to the lot, which turns out to be a recurring theme in the majority of their narrative paradigms) where they could grab the microphone, tell a joke, or sing a song; kids would rap, groups of students would perform choreography, some kids would try their skill set at stand up comedy. In these instances, I witnessed young people, many of whom I worked with for two years, like butterflies, become empowered by using their voices while the adults around them in the fenced in area stood shocked as these “kids” of the neighborhood used their mouths and bodies to express their beautiful, burning hearts– they’d flutter, and my heart would swell. 

At one of the events, there were two brothers who proved total hams. They must have been seven and five. For the entire evening they were present, and for the duration of that hot summer night, they controlled the music, the microphone, and the stage. It’s an upcoming emcee’s dream; it’s a social justice eurika. We played Marshmello and jumped up and down on the freshly built wooden stage. One brother told jokes and had the audience in stitches. (There were five adults fully present, and they were family– no matter) The younger brother built up his confidence using the microphone and speaking publicly as he shared stories from his experience. At one point, the younger brother plummeted in energy, and he curled up onto his mom’s chest as she held him. 

The music bumped. The bass blared– antithesis. He told me he wanted to hear the song from the Titanic. I thought to myself, kid, it’s not that kind of party, and also thought it was a passing fancy; what kid wants to hear a slow love song at a block party? There’s only one song with words in that tragic movie… But after he asked more than twice (*sung* I can’t say no!) I played “My Heart Will Go On” by Celeine Dion. The energy in the lot slowed down; the atmosphere came back to orbit; suddenly we were all rocking in freezing water without any life jacket– frying under the blazing sun. 

As the music began and the first few notes boomed from my borrowed bluetooth speaker, this young boy’s energy perked up, and he reached his little hand out for the big microphone. I can’t deny kids speaking opportunities. He held onto the technology as his mom’s body swayed with the instruments. We heard, “Every night in my dreams,I see you– I feel you,” and people had their hands on their chests with their fingers tapping. “Mommy,” he said quietly with his voice still booming, “Why did all those people have to die,” and his mom, obviously taken back on a multitude of levels, sort of laughed and held him tighter.

There was a pause until she said, “They didn’t have enough lifeboats, honey,” “But why,” he immediately retorted a little louder with a whine into the amplification device. “Oh, honey I don’t know,” she sort of sniffed and caught her composure, and you could hear her sinuses echo across the block, “It wasn’t fair to all those poor people,” as she ran her fingers through her son’s short, blonde hair– “It wasn’t fair,” he said a few times as he rocked and swayed to the music like a self actualized cuckoo clock, “It wasn’t fair,” and all the while Celeine kept singing, and everyone in the lot moved from side to side with the slight breeze in synch with the music on our hot summer day. “Near, far, wherever you are…” His grandmother put her hands up to the sun and closed her eyes; her legs became of the sea, and she floated to another place.  

Young people perceive so much of the world we deliberately turn away from, and they know the answers to problems we haven’t even batted a lash at. Working intensely with kids for the last four years, I am perpetually surprised at their insight, empathy, honesty, and perceptions. We, as adults or roll models, desperately need to listen. We need to hear the words ricocheting off the walls of our world, because the situation is dire; don’t you know and see that everything is on fire physically and epistemically? 

I facilitated this magic in Cleveland– in Slavic Village specifically. This is the very same neighborhood a former student was murdered in a hit and run, friends, family, and members of the community gathered together by the looming, tattered telephone pole where he took his last breaths– alone– and Ms. Leonard was brave enough to sing in front of there crowd off crying people; his name is David, and he just graduated 8th grade. 

No one would have set fire to that robot; no one would have touched it– it would have been a modern marvel. Kids deserve to engage in surreal, phantasmagorical experiences where they gain the space to grow, discover,and transform into a new version of themselves. Kids need a chrysalis. Kids deserve their wings. 

“No more talk of darkness. Forget these wide eyed fears.”

“Turn my head with talk of summertime.”

“Love me; that’s all I ask of you.”

— “All I Ask of You” from The Phantom of the Opera

[Cue “You’ll Be In My Heart” by Phil Collins; percussion and other instruments flare and refute fade; it persists]