Interview with German magazine Musikexpress (09/17)

[PinUpCartoonBaby 1,017]

I hope my translation isn't too bad...
 

MUSIKEXPRESS

Aug./Sept. 2017 - Original text/interview by: Arno Frank

Translation by @PinUpCartoonBaby

 
Transcript:

HEIDEGGER, THE SEXY BOY

Boys, beach, borderline: We know Lana Del Rey as pouting sphinx of the America dream. And we know the continuously arising allegations of being a fake. Everything is a fake, that’s what might be said about her new album "Lust For Life“ too. But Schopenhauer, Heidegger, the sense of all being? She’s familiar with those as well. A chat about metaphysics, transhumanism and the sex appeal of modern science.

Nothing about her is real. That might be the most toxic thing one could say about a human being. Lana Del Rey has been confronted with this accusation since she first hit the scene in 2012 when she released her song "Video Games“. Nothing about her is real, that’s what has been said ever since.
Her name is not real. In actual fact she’s called Lizzy Grant.
Her music is not real. Just back in 2011 she stood on the stages of New York’s gloomiest pubs, timidly whispering some folk songs.
Her lips are not real because she’s got injections.
The endless sadness of her music: not real. Because it’s all meticulously planned by her clever managers.
Statements such as “I wish I was dead“: not real. Because it’s romanticizing nonsense. She. Is. Not. Real.
Of course she isn’t. Lana Del Rey is a fictional character. A figure like a promise in technicolor. A artificial hybrid of Nancy Sinatra and Peggy Sue. A nostalgic memory of everything that had been good and great about America. So American that even her "pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola“ as she once sang. Bigger than life and therefore lifeless, almost dead. A cold projection surface - that’s why she seems to always attract skepticism and hate. Simply a surface. Simply pop music.
It’s said that you can have really nice chats about dresses with her. Or about shopping in Los Angeles where she lives. About her love to Guns N’ Roses and older men and the older men of Guns N’ Roses. Why she never met Lady Gaga, even though they both were part of the same New York scene. Why she worships Cat Powers so much and why she’s friend with Juliette Lewi, a congenial legend.
All that are potential questions for a phone interview which has a scheduled length of exactly 18 minutes. And the answers would be perfectly perfumed - but you wouldn’t get even a millimeter closer to the actual human being. Instead we choose a rather courageous way and take a tiny biographical note as starting point. Because back when she still was Lizzy Grant she studied at university. Not design, not economics, not law, but the most absurd, maybe the most useless field of study: Philosophies, with bachelor degree in the most useless discipline: Metaphysics.
Metaphysics questions the sense and purpose of all being. A metaphysician searches for “first reasons“ (?) beyond the world’s supposedly natural quality. He wants to know what “real“ actually means and if “the real thing“ even exists. He wants to explore: “Why is there actual being and not more of nothing?“ “Haha, Heidegger, I can remember!“, Lana chuckles into her phone. She told us that we can call her what we want, Lana, Lizzy, she doesn’t care. So we stay with Lana. Well, Heidegger and Metaphysics. What’s so interesting about this discipline for a young girl from the provincial town of Lake Placid? “I think I went to Fordham University because I was looking for answers. I come from a very religious region and my family is pretty religious too.“
Wasn’t theology an option then? She hesitates. No, there was some kind of skepticism inside of her which felt rather strange to theology. We tell her about Schopenhauers definition which says that basically a philosopher is someone in a dark room, blindfolded and looking for a black cat. However a theologist is someone who is in dark room, blindfolded and looking for a black cat too but after a while screams "Hurrah, I found it!“. “Exactly!“, shouts Lana and laughs. “I was surrounded by people who thought that they had found the black cat. But I couldn’t see it, you know what I mean? So I wanted answers that only metaphysics could give. Because it’s science, logical and stringent…even if it’s a bit out of touch with the real world.“
She has been to church since she was 4 years old, she says. Church services and chants, the whole nine yards: “But I’ve always asked questions. What is out there? Why is it there? I actually expected more from metaphysics than it could give me. That’s why my attention turned more towards technology. Maybe I myself turned somehow“, she says in that very American way which lets a statement sound like a question.
Anyway, she actually is sure about her own turnaround, her shift towards the future: “Science and technology are the areas where answers originate. Today we simply have more answers than ten, twenty or hundred years ago. In my opinion it’s a fundamental principle of life - of all life - to orient towards what brings the most energy. And something which has been scientifically proven, it’s simply true. It’s a fact, not a speculation. I think that’s really sexy.“
Ok, this is worth a critical further question. You would rather believe that someone like Lana Del Rey thinks that expensive shoes by Vivienne Westwood, tanned surfers in Venice Beach or a old Camaro are sexy. But no, she likes to be specific and addresses topics like the mysteries of gravity, dark matter, quasars and quanta - “this kind of stuff“. Again this apologizing giggle as if a young woman wasn’t allowed to be interested in those things. We argue that many physical questions have nowadays become pure metaphysics in terms of: beyond traditional physics, not readily accessible for the human mind anymore. “True“, says Lana. “And you know what? All the questions are still being asked today. But asked by people who expect answers and who do actually get them. Those are the true pioneers of mankind. Only think about transhumanism and the idea of separating the human mind from the body and to make it immortal. We are just at the threshold of this era.“
Pioneers, mind, body, technology - now it’s getting hard not to sound like a generic people magazine but we just have to: Lana Del Rey is pretty good friends with the visionary meta-entrepreneur Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and thanks to SpaceX already on his way to Mars. “It’s really inspiring talking to him“, says Lana. “Also from a metaphysical point of view. He asks himself the same questions like we all do, like I do at least. Recently he said we might all live in a computer simulation. He and his friends are having serious and controversial discussions about it. I thought it is funny, our life - just a video game…“
It doesn’t happen very often to talk to someone who has regular chats with Elon Musk about the “Matrix“, pneumatic transportation systems (?) between San Francisco and Los Angeles or manned Mars missions. Thus the following question: From your personal opinion, wouldn’t Elon Musk be the ideal James-Bond-villain? Does he occasionally pet his Persian cat? Lana bursts into laughter but after a short while returns to the question: “He is very clever. He is very rich. And he has many crazy ideas. But devilish and evil - no, he doesn’t seem like that to me at all. He’s rather a person who is really, really confident about himself and about what he’s doing. Well however…if he was a Bond-villain I’d be the Bond girl I guess. And we both know that there’s not very often a happy ending for those women.“
To be on the safe side we return to classical metaphysics which we cleverly combine with Lana Del Rey’s actual profession. Aristoteles, one of the founders of metaphysics, called music a medicine against religious feelings. So with this in mind, is your music a kind of self-therapy? “In some way it is. I have an inclination to the mystical. And I’ve been raised catholic, a religion of the script and I still think that the written word is the last relict of true magic. It holds this power just like music does. It doesn’t have to be Debussy. It could also be a good Rapper who reflects his personal experiences in a bigger and more general context. This would be a kind of transcendence. I hope, no, I believe, that I’ve been able to do so too: to have your finger on the pulse of what is so to say happening in the ether/air (?).“
“Okay, last question!“, we suddenly hear another voice from the other side of the phone line. The 18 minutes are almost over.
Well, so here’s our last question: Isn’t there a risk of always telling the same about this pulse or unchangeable ether? Lana replies immediately: “Some time ago I was afraid that I would soon have to repeat myself. But there’s no reason why repetition would be a bad thing. There’s a lot of beauty in opinions that don’t change over the years. This is also true for art. That’s also why I like reducing the US right to it’s core, Hollywood, the colors of the flag.“
After she hung up we rewatch her overly kitschy music video for "Lust For Life“. How Lana Del Rey climbs up the Hollywood sign at night and how she sings the soulful duet with The Weeknd, right there over the lights of L.A., before she slides down the D into a wide nothing while the camera gradually zooms away until you only see the lonely earth in space, looking like a cosmic peace sign. After this conversation all this seems damn real.

 
 

 
 
I've mixed feelings about this interview, it seems so random and most of it is the interviewer name-dropping some famous philosophers to seem intellectual or idk.

[Dominikx4 25,015]

Wtf this is so random. And the interviewer sounds so full of himself idk. What's the point of this?

[Thunder Revenant 20,654]

I think it's actually a pretty nice interview, especially this little text that introduces it. It's weird but honestly - which questions are left to ask about LfL at this point?

[Limelight 4,694]

Messy interview

[reputation 6,314]

Bad writing. I see what they were doing in the beginning but jeez that is some weak writing. It's 2017, the LDR hate wave is over

[MahaMaha 1,110]

I feel like the interviewer was quite interested in philosophy himself and tried to get a bit more from her than the usual superficial answers she gives about her interests. I don't want to come for our girl but she's probably not as educated as she makes herself seem lmao and therefore she isn't even able to get deeper into abstract subjects or comment on different philosophers.

[Thunder Revenant 20,654]

I feel like the interviewer was quite interested in philosophy himself and tried to get a bit more from her than the usual superficial answers she gives about her interests. I don't want to come for our girl but she's probably not as educated as she makes herself seem lmao and therefore she isn't even able to get deeper into abstract subjects or comment on different philosophers.

Probably. But to be fair, it's been quite a while since she studied and it's not like her career has a lot to do with staying in touch with philosophy as a science. Plus it was a 18 minutes interview and she probably was not expecting them to focus it on that subject

[CatchTheBreeze 1,681]

Bad writing. I see what they were doing in the beginning but jeez that is some weak writing. It's 2017, the LDR hate wave is over

 

Yes – why should I read an entire page of "she's fake" in 2017 when all of this was already crappy journalism back in 2011/2012 and has been proven wrong ever since by Lana doing what she does... Even though the MusikExpress guy didn't think that Lana is fake but that's a really annoying way to start an article with.

[CatchTheBreeze 1,681]

I feel like the interviewer was quite interested in philosophy himself and tried to get a bit more from her than the usual superficial answers she gives about her interests. I don't want to come for our girl but she's probably not as educated as she makes herself seem lmao and therefore she isn't even able to get deeper into abstract subjects or comment on different philosophers.

 

Actually I think Lana did quite well in this interview and came across as a woman who is interested in a lot of things like metaphyics and modern technology – something a lot of people probably wouldn't expect from her if they only know Lana's image, videos etc.

[WhiteHydrangea 4,200]

18 minutes, damn.

[evilentity 13,303]

And something which has been scientifically proven, it’s simply true. It’s a fact, not a speculation. I think that’s really sexy.“

Given her difficulty with facts, Lana must not think she's very sexy.

 

Lana Del Rey is pretty good friends with the visionary meta-entrepreneur Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and thanks to SpaceX already on his way to Mars. “It’s really inspiring talking to him“, says Lana. “Also from a metaphysical point of view. He asks himself the same questions like we all do, like I do at least. Recently he said we might all live in a computer simulation. He and his friends are having serious and controversial discussions about it.

http://lanaboards.com/index.php?/statuses/user/2970-bekim/?status_id=131864

 

I thought it is funny, our life - just a video game…“[/i]

Lana in "Video Games" as the submissive girlfriend fetching ale for the sadist pulling all our strings

[litewave 519]

 

“Okay, last question!“, we suddenly hear another voice from the other side of the phone line.

 

What kind of dick was that? Just as she was talking about transcendence. She needs to get asked these philosophical questions more often.

[Tragic Rabbit 3,355]

I'm not ashamed to admit that half of the stuff they were talking about went over my head.

[MahaMaha 1,110]

Transhumanism is so interesting considering Lana's repeating themes of death and afterlife. Especially because she previously talked about how the thought of death or morality scared her even as a young child. 

[Stargirl 13,348]

"And something which has been scientifically proven, it’s simply true. It’s a fact, not a speculation. I think that’s really sexy"  bitch me too

 

also 

 

"He’s rather a person who is really, really confident about himself and about what he’s doing. Well however…if he was a Bond-villain I’d be the Bond girl I guess. And we both know that there’s not very often a happy ending for those women.“

if she's the bond girl....are they fucking???

[Hanna 2,490]

I saw "Interview" and "German" in the same title and had a small stroke but that was followed by disappointment