Depressford Spaghetford

The other night gave me hella feelings, and I decided to write them out and process it a bit? Stay if you will; but don't expect this post to be a treatise on gay sociocultural issues in the 2010s (nor should you expect this post to be even marginally coherent). Consider this as close to a stream-of-consciousness that you might expect from me writing this at 500a.

One of the bars had a Lana tribute drag show; the moment I saw the bar post the flyer on its insta, I knew I wanted to go. When I got there, they were doing what so many clubs do—playing 'club' remixes of her songs (the remixes weren't terrible, surprisingly). There was one remix that was shockingly good—kudos to whoever made it.

The actual show starts and the very first performance was "Born to Die" and I swear to God… there were so many memories of high school that flooded back. The astute reader will infer that I was still in high school when Lana released Born to Die; as a homosexual male in a very large urban high school, Born to Die was actually such a major connecting factor between the different gays, lesbians, and allies at my school. (Of course, not exclusively at school; but the overwhelming majority of my social interactions at that time were either at school or on Tumblr, so—for this post's purposes—consider high school as a representative microcosm of my social circles at the time.)

High school felt so isolating. Not necessarily in a negative way; isolation can occasionally be good, particularly when overstimulated. But it was the 'cold' kind of isolating; it always felt like I was looking at other people (particularly other gays) from the other side of a glass wall. I use no hyperbole when I say that Born to Die actually played a major part in removing that glass wall. There was some sense of community…? Perhaps that's too strong a word, but it was a connector between the various cliques—gays, hipsters, theater kids, artsy kids, etc. I would stay up almost all night listening to the album on repeat and the next day my friends and I would discuss the lyrics during lunch or when we were walking to class.

Bringing it back to the homosexual night club at which the drag queen was performing… I felt that odd sense of connection again. At this point, I've probably been to about hundred or so drag shows; it was only this show at which almost every single person in the audience was mouthing the song along with the performer. It was just a weird isolating, yet validating experience? It made me wonder how many other gay kids, or artistic kids, etc., also had either Born to Die or another sort of artistic connector to others.