clue-finding for self concept

It’s June 20th, the last day before the summer solstice occurs and the first zodiacal season of the year that is ruled by a water sign rears its heavy head. Or mystical. Today is also the day I am going to my first concert of Lana del Rey, a musician/singer whose words, songs, poetry, and even way of living have seeped their way into my veins. As I’d always hoped since I was 14 and bleary eyed, looking at Tumblr on my desktop on a school night, her vibrato emanating from the hot speaker on its last lets, her way of being would somehow make a mark on my own essence. Make a lasting impression that showed. I’m 23 now, so it’s been long enough since I first wanted that, and maybe now people would say in some diluted and digestible way that I give off “Lana vibes”, but I don’t know how much the intention matters anymore. Of course because I’m not 14 anymore and searching for solace in media for the first time, but also because Lana was just always going to inject me with her way of seeing the world — she’s just that kind of artist and I’m just that kind of girl. “And just what kind of girl is that?”, I asked myself as I meditated on the culmination of my obsession with this woman. Well… she has first and foremost been a recurring motif across years, never just a snapshot but more of a soundtrack for multiple narratives and personas I’d carried with me. The first inception is the girl I described above: About to start high school, and even somewhat daunted by Lana as a presence, even just as a figure through my screen because there was nothing and no one like her. Plus, she presented a sexual maturity that I just couldn’t envision for myself at the time. Then, driving licenses were acquired. Driving provided an expansion of my world, and of course is just a necessary aspect of becoming an agent for oneself… in Los Angeles. There I was driving with my best friend, Ava, through the valley into Beverly Hills into West Hollywood through the canyons that made us feel like little crawling ants in a world of starlets, with Lana blaring from the car speakers and carrying us through dry days and nights. The summer before we all went off to college, Norman Fucking Rockwell! dropped on August 30, 2019 and it colored us all blue and red with nostalgia. It definitely stuck. I had no choice but to take her influence with me to Chicago. There, my music tastes were expanded as I followed my intrigue with the world of warehouses and smoke machines and noisy, aggro techno — which all the boys I met listened to — but somehow it became alive for me too. Lana waned, but then waxed heavily (yes, like the moon), as COVID sent me back to LA and her song, “Ride” came on into my ears on one of my first “quarantine walks” up Doheny Drive. That time specifically was when I finally took her fully with me, and perhaps is what led to this association between me and her music amongst my college peers for the next few years. I made myself “a Lana girl”. She hasn’t left me still and probably never will.

I wanted to get more intel though, and look to the first iteration of my Lana listening for a glimpse at my roots, these pieces of lore I’m always hinting at to friends to give some credence to my tastes. I turned to Instagram. I sifted through my archived posts and became… disillusioned. This was not what stuck with me through all these years, for this old image of myself was bordered in white in these posts and came off as more… normal. Desaturated. Less eccentric. Let’s think. Of course, I know that my middle school identity was partially eschewed by my own volition, as I’ve erased many bits and pieces of that time from my devices and thus my brain. I chose to preserve the core elements: my discovery of Tumblr, discovering new music and musicians with Ava, living in the Valley, going to the Urban Outfitters surplus outlet on Ventura, and trying to emulate American Apparel aesthetics — as in sneaking off after school to “shop” there, but really just to take in its vibe and hope some osmosis would happen to me. This whole image was soundtracked by Marina and the Diamonds, Ms. Del Rey, and Lorde. Then there was Wilco on the side, and yes, Twenty One Pilots. And other boy bands I fawned over — something that brought me some belonging.

In my mind especially, I’ve worked at constructing a pristine amalgamation of what made me who I was even all the way back then. More accurately, I didn’t need to work so much on it, for there were certain images that just naturally stuck around, such as the ones I just mentioned. Others got thrown away, also in a natural way. But to see an array of those previously discarded elements show up where I thought I would find something totally different, was jarring. I’ll admit I felt slightly embarrassed at myself. Had I been lying..?

The truth is that I did have my very “me” interests. At the same time, I wanted so badly to fit in. It happens. We can’t discard the LA-girls-school-in-Larchmont-Villageness of it all. The isolation it breeds, especially if you’re a 13 year old in Encino who thinks her music taste is “pretty cool”… but everyone I saw around me somehow had a connection or an in with at least two other girls, who knew another niche of girls who all live in the same neighborhood, and somehow they all decide to sit in the center of the courtyard in a circle for every lunch period. Now I see they were all just clinging to each other, trying to fit in too. They just seemed so natural to my eyes back then. I wasn’t one of them, evidently, but it seemed like the only option for an actual friend group. So I flailed about, which meant even slightly trying to be like them. With their white bordered photos on Instagram and liking of Jeff Koons (or the equivalent of that in a middle school context). While this isn’t really the desirable image to me today, even once I turned 15 or so, I had new obsessions. I suppose depending on ones environment, the pull towards certain desires is augmented — above all, for the impressionable seventh grader who came into an environment with no people to call her home. She thanks the universe for growing up and making friends.