12/19/22

Plan the Trip, Little Monster!

SIDENOTE: I never finished this post that I started writing just after going to Los Angeles to see Lady Gaga.  So, it's a perfect bonus read for you! Happy reading.


 I don't know why, or maybe I do but I have been trying to write this post since September 11th.  Part of the delay is that I wanted to write something profound, something more like a serious non-fiction, article like piece.  But the past few months I have not been able to focus.  As I have mentioned before, grief is a very weird thing.  

I read or heard somewhere that planning a trip is actually really good for our brains and that this action actually helps our depression levels and anxiety levels go down.  I have been a bit depressed about my mom and her rapid decline with her memory.  It has felt like I have slowly lost her over and over again.  So, I thought I may just start planning the trip.  

I have become a bigger  Lady Gaga fan as I discovered and grew to love her album "Chromatica."  It actually has gotten me through a lot of the hard stuff with my mom.  You can read all about her album HERE.

When talking about Chromatica Ball, which is the tour for the album, Lady Gaga said "It documents like the many different stages of grief and the manic energy of grief that I feel like I have experienced in my life."

She also talked about the album itself and the ball on a recent Instagram post: "People ask me all the time what Chromatica was about and in Babylon I say "Battle for your life" and when I made Chromatica, I was really battling for my life and for anybody that is in a tough spot, I just want you to know that this show was created in the spirit of that battle to win yourself back. There's no greater prize than you! There's no thing more important that your own heart and your own ability to heal.  We don't heal on our own, I don't think, but I think it's possible to at some point have your own back and having your own back takes a lot of strength and time."

This journey through this album made me really want to see her concert live.  I had watched clips on YouTube when she was on the European leg of tour and I got more and more excited about it.  I started looking at dates and how much tickets were.  I also started to look into how much it would cost to fly to the cities.  Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, and Miami all were on my radar.  The only two of those cities that had weekend dates, were Los Angeles and Miami. School had started and it had to be on the weekend.  Miami would have been fun, and sunny and all the fun Florida things, but it was also more expensive to get there.  So, I started concentrating on LA.  I started to invite friends(mainly because Reub wasn't comfortable with me going solo, although he was okay if I stayed with my nephew and just drove to the concert!) but after a few friends saying they couldn't make it, I got a little worried and did make plans to couch surf at my nephew's in Irvine, CA. I also started looking more and more at single tickets, but didn't purchase any because it was 1. still a bit away and 2. up in the air if anybody would join me.  Luckily, I asked a co-worker, who was very interested in coming and eventually was my travel buddy.  The unfortunate thing was that I did have a bipolar midnight moment the evening before she told me she would come and I bought a single ticket because it was in a place I knew I would have a good view of the show.  But, I found her a ticket in the same section and she was totally cool with it. 

As I boarded the plane to L.A., I was giddy and thinking how truly blessed I was to be going.  I also was just so excited to be going to this concert because I had been dreaming about it.  Dreams really do come true.  

My sister had asked me if I was going and I said, "Of course, 'cause YOLO!"

The concert was amazing.  It was loud, you could feel the sound.  That feeling was accented by random burst of flames coming from the stage, and even up in the upper deck of Dodger Stadium, I could feel the heat.  The art of both Gaga's voice, her stage design, and the little interludes were captivating.

The brutalist architecture a background to shadow not only Gaga's struggles but also my own. The concert was divided into acts similar to a play.  The opening act, or prelude, brought us back to her chase for fame and featured a few of her first big hits, "Bad Romance," "Just Dance," and "Poker Face"

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