DeadAgainst

Done
 
How did you lived the incomprehension facing your album Ultraviolence last year?
I inherited from my father's philosophical side: if things aren't too bad, then they go well. I feel privileged to be able to continue making what I adore. I don't care about critics of my records but they change the way people are going to listen to my music, so as well receive favourable echoes...
 
Did you then needed this lightness in your life, this nonchalance?
In a way, it was an antidote to what happened in my life. I needed to make an album that sounds exactly like what I had in head. It was the only way to preserve my vision. I always needed this kind of simplicity. I felt a real nonchalance in regards to the way the music was going to be received and at the same time I was totally obsessed by my craft, my songs. It is the best possible state of mind when you're making an album.
 
Around you, were there too many people to give their opinion, their advice?
There is constantly a lot of people and they all emit many opinions about my current album. It's not because I despise them all but... When it comes to produce, in particular the voice, I feel comfortable only if I remain faithful to what I hear in me. I did not recorded Ultraviolence in reaction to anybody or anything: it's just the record I wanted to write, and the way I wanted it to sound like.
 
Do you worry, in the name of expectations, in front of the blank page?
I feel very distant from these expectations, doubtless because the reaction from people to my music remains fundamentally different from mine. I just felt overwhelmed at a moment when everywhere everyone said that my music was only extreme sadness, even harmful. The best remedy was to close shutters and to continue to work.
 
You then thought of escaping?
Yes, that can be the real temptation, in several possible manners... My brain and my imagination tend to turn at top speed, my escapes are thus rather physical - to move out for example. I feel the need to live something different, neurologically or physically... I always found ways to escape. And without resorting to imaginary friends; I have never had some.
 
Can you sometimes just slam the door?
It is always possible to run away. The big problem, is that everywhere where I go, I leave with my own self. Thus it is complicated for me to escape as I would wish it. The two places were I succeed it are at the beach and while driving. For a long time, my own music was my most beautiful source of escape... When it became more concrete over the years, it became my reality, what I tried to escape. Nevertheless, I have a visceral relation to music, it is one of the most intimate and most natural things for me. In terms of pleasure, I place it on the same level as sex.
 
Why does music took such a place in your life?
Because I was intended to make some. I contented with making what I was supposed to make and that totally invaded my life. It is what arrives when we are on the right track. Until a few years ago, I considered certain musicians as an enormous inspiration. I felt a lot of love for them, but in a healthy way! I recently lost a little of this connection.
 
You sing a bit of a text from David Bowie on the album. Was he always in your pantheon?
Sometimes, when you sing and improvise, sentences appear from nowhere... I hope that he won't mind. But I am convinced that his words appeared for a reason, thus I never changed this line. He's such an exciting soul. He comes of an extraordinary period, with all this music, the art, the energy of the time. (We tell her about a photo gathering, in 1973, Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed) I would have adored living in this era, with incredible friends!
 
To what extent did your relationship to the craft of singing evolved since your beginnings?
Since a decade, I completely dived, with delight, into this craft. I remember with tenderness my first steps, even if it's very far... But recently, I less cared about structures, compositions, I let things create themselves, naturally. To be honest, this musical freedom is exciting, I feel blessed. It's as if you escaped from structures which until then defined you and that you evolved in another psychic dimension, that you pushed back the limits of your soul thanks to the words and to the melodies...
 
Are you technically very involved?
In terms of sounds, arrangement, production, it's fundamental for me to be very precise. On an album, the part dedicated to the mixing and to the mastering takes an enormous deal of time. With my producer and my engineer, I am totally involved in this work. With me, long after I stopped composing songs, the production evolves constantly, until the last minute. I am thus very fastidious on this aspect too, which takes me a lot of time. I however felt more fluid, more eloquent with the "language of the music" when I was younger... I have already said many things in my records and I had many experiences these last two years which eventually ended up parasiting the transmissions, the translations between the muse and me.
 
What did you change in your working methods for Honeymoon?
Not much, I contented this time with not looking for a second producer to disrupt the sound of the album as it had begun. Last year, I made everything with Rick Nowels before taking this album to Dan Auerbach. This time, I stayed in studio with Rick and we finished everything together. He is at the same time my partner and a dear friend.
 
Did a word, an idea defined the aesthetics of this new album?
The song Honeymoon defined the tone, with Music to Watch Boys to. I adore the idea of "honeymoon", it's the peak of a romantic relation... It's even supposed to be the most beautiful moment of the life of a woman... I probably tried to make my life more beautiful than it was. All the feelings, all the concerns which I feel, all the questions I ask myself about the future influence the words, of course, but also the melodies... Other than that, I did not feel outside influences for this album, if it is not for jazz and trap music, that marked the production of both songs.
 
Do you remember your first guitar?
My uncle Tim had lent me his, I did not kept it, it stayed at his home.
 
Where does your nostalgia comes from?
I'm thinking all the time, I'm rather contemplative, my passion for beautiful movies doubtless explains why my aesthetics can be thought of as nostalgia... I also am very romantic: the combination of all this is maybe called nostalgia. I prefer to think that I just have very good tastes! Will I one day compose my own soundtrack? Who knows, it's maybe written in my future...
 
What would you like to change in you?
I would want to live without concern, without fear.
 
This interview is so amazing, I really love her answers here

CINNAMON GIRL - A METAPHOR
 
 
 

I'm currently listening to a podcast (from March 2017) by a Swedish music journalist where he interviews Father John Misty at home. After 45 minutes, they play Lana's Freak and the journalist, Fredrik Strage, asks:
 
 
Sorry for any mistakes, English isn't my mother toungue.
 
Source:
https://www.acast.com/hemmahosstrage/father-john-misty-hemma-hos-strage
https://open.spotify.com/show/47sH1e0Ete7XWuwIEUWztv

"We wanted someone with the Blessed Mother on his hands."
 
 
It seems like there are a few possible interpretations:
People keep breaking into her house (simple) She found the keys to the gate that were dropped The monsters used the keys to open the gate she kept shut God knows.
 
Bish is over there reading Aleister Crowley and Hermes Trismegistus while y'all still think her favorite book is Lolita--
 
 
Every Lana interview is full of gems. For as obsessive as her fans are, they could do a better job of collating them all in one place:
 
 
 

This gives some good insight into how Lana was constructing her music around the time of BTD. There’s those two currents of the mundane and transcendent running through everything—or death and love, as she said elsewhere. People just could not believe how some kid obsessed with tropical kitsch could come out of nowhere with a conviction to not record "stupid music" and create this perfect pop album on the very first try, then decide she had done all she could in the genre and proceed to create the music she actually wanted to make, baroque neo-psychedelia. The whole thing was pure fucking witchcraft.
 
 
 

Courtney Love on opening for LDR:
 
“I didht even want to do it . I didht even want to be friends with her . I'd hide in my bud when she played . Embwrassed to open for someone so younger. But she wouldn't stop trying to be my friend . She's such a good , not psycho , truly nice egg . And sober . & she just dropped off keys to her Malibu High by the beach house . When I was in trouble . Tbh I wouldn't play a note tho until the audience dumped their flower crowns at my feet . They bug tf outta me . Then when I detoxed off Xanax , she drove Frances every single day for 90 days . Even when I was just drooling on couch . Then i started listening to her music & realized she was a genius . AND . Incredibly genuine . Nice . She also snuck me out of la away from the brithey mess, they want kc publishing so tried to put me in an illegal conservatorship . Too . & she ( & gwyneth ) offered to pay attorneys. So much stuff I owe thst woman. Then lots of stuff - she hooked me up with strong sober women . a real support group . Beyond rare for someone that genius to also be not insane narcissist kind and a true friend . I love her . And I boyght her a bunch of Joni Mitchell vinyl in Portland . Which changed her life . But she changed mine . So that's it in a nut shell . She's my first colleague friend since Billie joe / stipe . She sticks up for me . & I her . STORY TIME OVER ! next youll waht boys we nay have shared ! Lol lol .”
 
- from her secret account
 
i feel like this is rlly hard to read i might transcribe  it 

There are seven worlds in my eyes
 
I'm accessing all of them once
 
One to draw my words from and my muses
Another one I try and harness late at night that lies somewhere
Off of the right of Jupiter
 
Inside of my stomach, the cosmos are baking
The universe hung like a mobile
The alignments of these planets unique
In me the earth moves around the sun
No land all sea

Watching the old Born to Die interviews, Lana is extremely cagey about what is happening, as she is with everything on the record; she will either have some brusque explanation about "having fun before you die" or not say anything at all. Virtually everything she says in early 2012 publicly appears to be subterfuge; a blind of normality to hide that she's "fucking crazy." Even the title, Born to Die, was not meant as a nihilistic statement of "live fast, die young." As Lana later suggested, the title appears to have been chosen because of the realization that "we were born to die" in her childhood--
 
 
There is one frame that shows that Lana is actually showing something more:
 

 
 
Here is rather the "death" of Lizzy Grant as she crosses the threshold to the reveal of her heart; the Lovers an alchemical coniunctio (cigarettes always having the same alchemical fire symbolism for Lana).
 
Who, me?
Why?
 
She asks God why she was chosen bear a fragment of paradise not of this world.
 
Feet don't fail me now
Take me to the finish line
Oh, my heart, it breaks every step that I take
But I'm hoping at the gates, they'll tell me that you're mine
 
(Cf. Gargoyles standing at the front of your gate
Trying to tell me to wait, but I can’t wait to see you
So I run like I'm mad to Heaven’s door
I don’t wanna be bad, I won’t cheat you no more)
 
A double meaning; Lizzy walking the path of higher consciousness and an exhortation by the Lonely Queen to join her.
 

 
 

 
The image of the Lonely Queen seems to be a combination of two Tarot cards.
 
Come and take a walk on the wild side
Let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain
You like your girls insane, so
Choose your last words, this is the last time
'Cause you and I
We were born to die
 
Another exhortation by the Goddess to walk the path that leads from death to resurrection on the "wild side" across the abyss.
 
Lost, but now I am found
I can see, but once I was blind
I was so confused as a little child
Tried to take what I could get, scared that I couldn't find
All the answers, honey
 
Spoken by Lana recalling life as Lizzy, searching for answers—and finding them.
 
Lana seems to have had two actual goals for Born to Die, to tell her story and to turn people on, in the '60s sense. Her manifesto was fully encapsulated in "Bel Air," a directive to the listener--
 
Mon amour, sweet child of mine, you’re divine
Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s okay to shine?
 
Don’t be afraid of me
Don’t be ashamed
Walk in the way of my soft resurrection
 
Darling, I’m waiting to greet you
Come to me, baby
 
 
To that end, she lays within her traditional songs untraditional anamnesis triggers, usually sung in a higher register, meant to speak directly to the unconscious--
 
You just need to remember
I will love you till the end of time
I would wait a million years
Promise you'll remember that you're mine
Baby, can you see through the tears?
 
On Ultraviolence, she still considers this to be a worthy project; an invocation of "the freedom land of the '70s." But "Shades of Cool" expresses her frustration that she "can't break through your world." The lyrics take a more personal turn. She tries again on Honeymoon to gather the Freaks, but there is a sort of resignation—"God knows I tried."
 

 
 
You say that you wanna go
To a land that's far away
How are we supposed to get there
With the way that we're living today?
You talk lots about God
Freedom comes from the call
 

"We wanted someone with the Blessed Mother on his hands."
 
 
It seems like there are a few possible interpretations:
People keep breaking into her house (simple) She found the keys to the gate that were dropped The monsters used the keys to open the gate she kept shut God knows.
 
Bish is over there reading Aleister Crowley and Hermes Trismegistus while y'all still think her favorite book is Lolita--
 
 
Every Lana interview is full of gems. For as obsessive as her fans are, they could do a better job of collating them all in one place:
 
 
 

"We wanted someone with the Blessed Mother on his hands."
 
 
It seems like there are a few possible interpretations:
People keep breaking into her house (simple) She found the keys to the gate that were dropped The monsters used the keys to open the gate she kept shut God knows.
 
Bish is over there reading Aleister Crowley and Hermes Trismegistus while y'all still think her favorite book is Lolita--
 
 
Every Lana interview is full of gems. For as obsessive as her fans are, they could do a better job of collating them all in one place:
 
 
 

she also mentions a gate in off to the races
 
ready, set, the gate is down & now we’re going in
 
if this is in anyway interesting, it’s just a word but it seems like the way she uses it is kinda vague

"I can be smart when it's important. But most men don't like it."
(Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes)
 

 
 
You have to take me out of this strange trailer park life
 
In the first known performance of "Yayo" in 2006 (? Lanapedia is unreliable on this point), Lizzy stands shrouded in darkness, wearing black. The lyrics are different. Instead of "hello Heaven," we have only (if I hear right) "I think the stars are right about there, but it's gettin' there." She immediately segues into "Pawn Shop Blues". 
 

 
In 2017, “Pawn Shop Blues” became the second song from AKA to be resurrected by Lana Del Rey:
 
 
The video is highly symbolic. Lana appears as a bride, recalling the “Ultraviolence” video. Butterflies are traditionally a symbol of Psyche, the soul; her story is told in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, AKA The Golden Ass, a Platonic allegory wherein the protagonist undergoes “a long journey, literal and metaphorical… He finally finds salvation through the intervention of the goddess Isis”. Lana stands as a pregnant Goddess, Lizzy locked like Snow White in the coffin of the depths from which she must be raised. This is a slight inversion of the usual interpretation: Lana as Self as Goddess cannot be trapped, as she is eternal; she is beckoning her from a higher plane to free her limited self, as seen in Tropico. Cigarettes are the consuming fire in this hermetic vessel that cleanses a tar-black soul.
 
 
Now that we’ve established a rough chronology, it may be possible to read “Get Free” as “her story” depicting the important moments in her recent life:
 
No Kung Fu/The Ocean/Kill Kill/AKA
 
Finally
I'm crossing the threshold
From the ordinary world
To the reveal of my heart
Undoubtedly
That will for certain
Take the dead out of the sea
& the darkness from the arts
 
Born to Die

This is my commitment
My modern manifesto
I'm doing it for all of us
Who never got the chance
For Amy and for Whitney
& all my birds of paradise
Who never got to fly at night
'Cause they were caught up in the dance
 
Paradise

Sometimes it feels like I've got a war in my mind
I want to get off, but I keep riding the ride
I never really noticed that I had to decide
To play someone's game or live my own life
& now I do
I wanna move
Out of the black (out of the black!)
Into the blue (into the blue!)
 
Ultraviolence/Honeymoon

Finally
Gone is the burden
Of the Crowley way of being
That comes from energies combined
Like my part was I
Was not discerning
And you, as we found out
Were not in your right mind
 
Lust for Life
 
There's no more chasing rainbows
& hoping for an end to them
Their arches are illusions
Solid at first glance
But then you try to touch them
There's nothing to hold onto
The colors used to lure you in
& put you in a trance
 
With Lust for Life, she was, as said at the time, jolted back to reality by the Trump presidency. The songs get political, and when she sings of Lady Liberty, there is no hint of acknowledgement of her past usage. This marks the end of what could be considered her “classic” era. Now comes a desire to take off Crowley’s uniform of imagery, strip herself down and rebuild herself anew as one engaged with the world instead of sinking in the quicksand of her thoughts.
 
I go on trips with my friends to the beach who don’t know that I’m crazy.
I can do that.
I can do anything,
Even leave you…
The more I step into my poetry,
The less I will fall into being with you.
 
For the first time since boarding school (according to her), she had real friends; who cares if they’ll never truly know who you are?
 
You, in your madness
The satellite that's constellating my world
Mimicking the inner chaos that i've disowned
A mirror to my past life retribution
A reflection of my sadness...
My feet aren't on the ground
 
Repeatedly in Violet she contemplates grounding herself in the exoteric and turning away from the inner life, particularly in “Never to Heaven,” a sort of modern Ecclesiastes.
 
Norman Fucking Rockwell was a critical triumph, and it was precisely because she stripped herself of overt symbolism, instead relegating it to the lyrical margins and enigmatic images like “God in a burnt coffee pot” that she refused to explain when asked. But the message remains open on the cover and in "Mariners Apartment Complex," the medicine now sugared to go down easier:
 

 
I'm the bolt, the lightning, the thunder
Kind of girl who's gonna make you wonder
Who you are and who you've been...
Maybe I could save you from your sins
So, kiss the sky and whisper to Jesus
My, my, my, you found this, you need this
Take a deep breath, baby, let me in
You lose your way, just take my hand
You're lost at sea, then I'll command your boat to me again
Don't look too far, right where you are, that's where I am
I'm your man
 
Overwhelmingly, the critics finally understood what she was saying when discussing the mundane life, and heralded it as a new triumph in her songwriting when, in many important ways, it was a step back to May Jailer. By doing so, she lost contact with something vital, as she later confessed; suddenly the words did not flow and she turned to poetry as a form of loosening the binds of the unconscious.
 
I'm generally quite quiet
Quite a meditator, actually
I'll do very well down by Paramhansa Yogananda's realization center, I'm sure
 
 
Violet presents some insights into her inner life at this time; the old symbols had been cast away, and new symbols were being modeled. Her verses are on one page allegorical and on another literal, and one is always unsure where the lines are drawn. But when she talks directly to the city of Los Angeles or Kundalini itself, we know that those lines are often crossed. Witness where she flips the tables and refers to literal beings in allegorical terms, the without always being a reflection of the within, the archetypal role in which she is always trapped:
 
What will it take for me not to need you
so I can just have you for fun
and for who you really are
 
Not you as the savior
not me as Ophelia
not us putting our faith in the public's dark art
 
The savior needs no explanation. Ophelia—an image from Paradise, the Self submerged beneath the waters of the unconscious. The public, the dark alchemical art of criticism that tears them apart and puts them together again. ("I get a lot.")
 

 
(Source: Shirley Alvarez)
 
I acknowledged who you really were for the first time.
 
I didn’t call you by any other name, (Axl Rose? Jesus? Jim?)
I let you know that I knew the true nature of your heart.
That it was evil,
and that it convinced me that darkness was real,
That the devil is a real devil,
and that monsters don’t always know that they’re monsters.
 
But projection is an amazing thing.
After you left and burnt the house down,
You tried to convince me it was I who was holding the matches.
 
You told me I didn’t know who I was,
But I do.
 
So when we turn to these lines, is this a real person? Or is this addressed to her own Shadow Self as Dark Animus, that she rejects and yet continually falls into bed with? Is this not her husband from hell?
 
 
 
In a 2007 live rendition of “Pin-Up Galore,” she declares herself both a monster and a being not of this world. The performance is, in a word, strange; she is melancholic, but seems to possess a greater confidence.
 

 
 
The symbolism in "My Bedroom is a Sacred Place Now - There Are Children at the Foot of My Bed" would seem to actually follow that of the Tarot, where the Devil becomes the Tower, the House of Ego destroyed in that all-consuming fire. Elsewhere, she writes in one of her most overtly esoteric pieces, directly addressing the Kundalini serpent—
 
I think about the curse bestowed upon Eve
That fateful eve she took that bite of fruit from that fruitful tree.
And this summer night, you in front of me,
Makes me contemplate the origins of good and evil.
 
This recalls not the Biblical fall, but the awakening that came in the moment that Eve, obeying the serpent, plucked the fruit and attained Gnosis to both the nature of absolute darkness and absolute light (that Sparkle not of this world) in the Abyss. She contemplates if she is, in fact, cursed, having taken the Jump that changed the entire trajectory of her life. A familiar image from Paradise.
 
To shut the door on the past and step
blindly
into the abyss
no destination intact
 

 
 

 
 

 
You're only as happy as your least happy child
 
They don’t understand.
I’m a dreamer.
And I had big dreams for the country.
Not for what it could do, but how it could feel.
How it could think,
How it could dream.
 
I know.
Who am I to dream for you?
It’s just that in my own mind,
I was born with a little bit of paradise.
I was lucky in that way.
Not like my husband,
Who was born and raised in hell.
 
That bit of paradise was not necessarily Lizzy, but Lana Ray who was born on the day she died. Her husband is not strictly the devil of the outer church but akin to the Baphomet of Eliphas Levi.
 
Maybe an artist has to function a little bit above themselves
If they really want to transmit some heaven
 
 
Let me put on a show for you, tiger
 
Her work on Born to Die: The Paradise Edition is characterized by what one would almost call subliminal messages, encouraging the listener to follow her on the Path of Sylvia Plath, all the way from “Take a walk on the wild side” spoken by the Goddess through to “Come to me, baby,” the very last line of Paradise. In early interviews, she is evasive and constantly contradicts herself, as if she is hiding some big secret by claiming to have none--the source of the later backlash. She has the audacity to shave years off of her age and claim "Axl Rose Husband" was written at age 16, a bit of meaningless juvenilia, while striking every mention of that dead phantom known as Lizzy Grant; a creature produced by nature and not by Art. Damnatio memoriae. Is it vanity (years later, she did say, with perhaps some latent guilt, that she always forgets her birth year—but a woman can lie about that), or the realization that such earlier works gave away too much? She needn’t have worried, in the latter case.
 
She shrugs, putting on a ditzy Marilyn Monroe affectation, and says the songs on Born to Die are about nothing much at all, yet strangely gets upset when people treat them as meaningless. By November, the mask starts to slip, but not quite. By the time of Ultraviolence, after a year spent in cruel exile, she contradicts herself again: She doesn’t write pop songs, and never has. Those were psychological. In truth, Born to Die is a perfect and enduring pop record, camouflaged in its intent and designed to embed itself as a seed in the over-culture.
 
I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood
 
It’s apparent that she later came to view this as youthful folly, a naïveté for how little the world would understand her. Perhaps she originally planned to traffic in visions of money, power and glory as some great work of performance art that would be unveiled in Tropico, but that, too, went awry. That latent bitterness and resentment remained, and was behind her frustration that Twigs’ work was considered Art while Tropico was mocked as the work of a whore and not a poet.
 
But... lately I’ve been thinking that I wish
Someone had told me when I was younger
More about the inhabitants that thrive off of paradise.
 
That should they take too much,
There would be nothing left to give.
 
There's something in the water
I can taste it turning sour 
It's bitter
I'm coughing
But now it's in my blood
 
Lately I've been thinking 
It's just someone else's job to care 
Who am I to sympathize
When no one gave a damn
I've been thinking
It's just someone else's job to care
Who am I to want to try...
 
But my heart is very fragile,
and I have nothing left to give.
 
This rejection is what she wishes she had foreseen when younger. She grows tired of attempting to “transmit some heaven” to those who only parasitically consume. In 2019 live performances, her mind seems elsewhere, perhaps even bored. If only she had read the warning of Robert Graves that the Goddess “is hated by saints and sober men.”
 
She said, "You can't be a Muse and be happy, too
You can't blacken the pages with Russian poetry
And be happy"
And that scared me
 
 
This reads like a rather patriarchal and antiquated precept. But it also seems to have been Lana’s intent to embody the Goddess entirely; to be a living Muse. And now, this scares her, because her archetype is also a Goddess of Sorrows, and she stands in the way of happiness. The past years have seen her in seeming rebellion to this role as Muse, stripping away more and more layers of artifice, no longer even wearing makeup. There is a last idol to kill. The idyllic life in Arcadia where it's always 1962 under chemtrails comes to a crashing halt. She now flirts with not the Goddess in her youthful purity, but the Wild Woman, strange and free.
 
The power of youth is on my mind
Sunset, small town
I'm out of time
 
My time has run over, so the only time you'll
Ever see me is in your dreams in my black bathing suit
Lookin' at me lookin' over at you
Real cute, 'cause
He said I was bad, let me show you how bad girls do
 
Time weighs heavy. At her age, David Bowie had already released Tonight and would slide into artistic irrelevance for a decade; Kate Bush, shortly after releasing her Tropico-esque The Line, the Cross and the Curve, had already retired. The Goddess retreats to a land of dreams, but the Wild Woman carries on, and tries to have fun in the meantime.

I know some might find that interpretation of Born to Die to be a bit out there, but look at this very revealing quote from Lana:
 
 
There's a new revolution
A loud evolution
That I saw
 
Back in 2012, she was still trying to play dumb at being some Marilyn Monroe type. They ask her about metaphysics, and she starts dancing around the subject like it's on fire:
 
 
At the end of the Tropico film, you see them ascending to heaven and flying saucers appear. From what I can gather from the crumbs she's dropped, she wanted the world to attain a higher level of consciousness so they could finally go into space and make alien contact (itself a very New Age idea). "I'm more into SpaceX and Tesla, what's going to happen with our intergalactic possibilities."
 
On Born to Die's meaning, the only lie is one of omission:
 
 
I was so confused as a little child
 
Born of confusion 
And quiet collusion of which
Mostly I've known
 
On how she uses men from her past as archetypal figures in her work (2012):
 
 
On how particular she is about choosing everything in her videos to fit into her archetypal world (2014):
 
 
Cigarettes and Robitussin
Will I ever get to heaven?
 
I’m gentle.
I’m funny when I’m drunk,
But I haven’t been drunk for 14 years.
 
Lana points back to 2006 as being the pivotal year.
 
Hello it's the most famous woman you know on the iPad
Calling from beyond the grave, I just wanna say
"Hi dad"
 
Rob still knows her as Lizzy; does she call him from "beyond the grave" because Lizzy died on the day she saw palm trees in black and white?
 
On how nobody understands her music and she'd like to keep it that way:
 
 

 
Get out of my blood, salamander!...
And yet, everywhere I go, it seems there you are,
And there I am.
 
Before touching on Kundalini in a poem, Lana uses blatant alchemical symbolism with the salamander (called, like Jim, a fire-eater). The salamander being another fire emblem (not the Video Games); the Sulphur as all-consuming fire that is the source of true poetic insight. She would rather keep her inner life private, but the fire in her veins compels her. (Since this part of the board is indexed on Google, maybe I'm even giving away too much? Or maybe this is all just mad ravings.)
 
On fighting her Shadow and monsters:
 
Shaking my ass is the only thing that's
Got this black narcissist off my back
She couldn't care less
And I never cared more
 
In her "Money Power Glory" commentary, she mentions that it was inspired by Carl Jung and the concept of projection--but it also serves as an exorcism of her degenerate beauty queen persona (and let's face it, it was a persona).
 
Monsters still under my bed
That I could never fight off
A gatekeeper carelessly dropping the keys on my nights off
 
What gatekeeper? To what gate? The only one I can remember is from, again, "Bel Air"--
 
Gargoyles standing at the front of your gate
 
 

You guys, I wrote this article in 2014 for a website I participate and a few members asked me to share it here. The text was originally in portuguese and I used Google Translator to change it to english. I was reading it and found some errors in the translation, but I read just half of it and I really have to run right now. So, I'm gonna post it, and if anyone can do a better review than I did and send me, I would be beyond thankful. The text is very big and I tried to transmit into words some of my thoughts of the Paradise album (or EP, if you prefer) and how Tropico is complementary in its ideas. Reading it now, a few years later, I see I have so much more info to add, a lot of things I only realized later and that enriches a lot of what I said when I first wrote it.
 
Well, I hope you enjoy.
 
ANALYSIS | The real acquisition of freedom: an analysis of the album 'Paradise' and the short film 'Tropico'
 
 
The following article doesn’t have the intention to evaluate the sound specifications involving the production of the EP 'Paradise', but is focused in the real creation behind, in the understanding on what took Lana Del Rey to name this section of eight songs as “Paradise”; such a simple word, but whose imagistic power imagistic is capable of transporting us to another world.
Now that the text is ready I decided to go back to the beginning and write this introduction for you. It was imensenly significant to me to be able to transpor tinto words and paper everything that I think and reflect about the meaning of Paradise to Lana Del Rey and what she intended to convey when writing na álbum with this title. I know that I have extended more than I should in the writing, but I did not want to let certain details (and references, as you will see below) be forgotten, because it is those little things that transformed the album into the work of brilliant art that it is today. I timed the text reading time and it is about the same album time, starting in 'Ride' and ending in 'Burning Desire'. So before we start, I'd like you to put the EP to play. I hope you travel on reading as I traveled writing.
 
"I've been out on the open road ..."
 
The year 2012 was definitely one of the most striking in the life of  the - until then - unknown Elizabeth Woolridge Grant. A singer who already had an album of failure in her hstory, but which, after an unexpected virtual success, was pushed from the cliff of anonymity towards an obscure abyss of fame, power and, mainly, rejection and criticism. Her álbum, 'Born to Die' was born at the dawn of a presentation considered one of the worst in the history of American television show Saturday Night Live. Its name was massacred by critics all over the world in weeks and what seemed to be the realization of a dream gradually became a vivid nightmare.
Despite the attacks, the perseverance of Lana Del Rey on to establish herself as the true artist she is, led her to re-release her album - which despite little promotion, especially in the United States, became in a few months one of the biggest releases of the year -, including eight new tracks (nine counting 'Burning Desire', exclusively for the digital purchase of the album through iTunes Store ). Its name: “Paradise”.
he evolution and impact of the events of the year 2012 reflected not only in the sonority of the new album, but mainly in his writing and production. When we analyze the discography of Lana we can sense each álbum was led by a main theme, like a intense and reflective drawing, with the songs outlining the form, adding details and brushstrokes to what will, in the end, be a unique work of art. It is a road in which the sound is a curve, showing a little more of the way to go, with the songs interconnecting themselves and adding the missing pieces of the sumptuous puzzle that is the history and life of Lana Del Rey.
'Born to Die', as the title evokes, brings melancholy, death, loving supplication and utopian romanticizing of love as a feeling able to take humans to their most extreme antitheses: the fullness and emptiness, happiness and sadness, and above all, the fulfillment of life and possibly death. This game of paradoxes is one of the characteristics that make this album a poetry so deep that it even sharpens that inner restlessness that remains dormant, but that we all have in us. There is no doubt that love and all the dualities that it carries with it is the main theme of the album. Throughout the songs, the singer totally surrenders to a man, just to be abandoned by this man; she wants to be dead for loving him and smokes these constant conflicts with a sincerity so impressive that we really need to take a deep breath to be able to absorb the human overdose the album is capable of arousing. 'Born to Die' makes me feel nostalgic for things I've never lived.
 
Being a woman in love forever, 'Ultraviolence' could not be different and the loving madness Del Rey returns as (if not more) intensely as on the album that gave her fame. But more than that, compositions like "Fucked Up My Way to the Top ' and ' Money Power Glory ' are loaded with irony and the triumphant return over those who stigmatized her as a marketing product, a manufactured artist. Much more than proving its value and authenticity to the world, her new album builds a sound empire that is both scorching and yet so personal that it really gives us the certainty that she does not want to prove anything to anyone. She sings her life, her soul. Not infrequently I wonder if writing isn’t both a escape and a release, a way to externalize the emotional overdose that confuses and tortures Lana Del Rey.
And it is in this part of her life drowned in mental confusion and madness that we have the construction of 'Paradise'. Instead of speaking in a few lines my views about the album's themes, I invite you to go through the songs with me so that together we can understand and absorb that which is the true heaven of Lana Del Rey.
The sounds of falling falling rain fill our ears and it is with a deep breath that 'Ride' opens this new story. With the heavy breathing that opens her vocals, I have the impression that she is taking an impulse to take the road once again. It is the breath of anguish, of desistance. The breath we take when things are not well, but we have no other way but to move on. It is the inner strength that we must seek to simply not succumb to the difficulties of life that sometimes come so close to destroying who we are that we can almost feel emptiness invading our existence. After being hated by all, she takes a breath not to give up and continue to write her art to the world.
'Ride' by itself is a story within a story. The music video comes to be as important as the audio itself, mainly because of the existence of the monologue, which is an explosion in the dimensions the song already has. I could write pages and pages about the construction of this magic film, but I'd rather leave the details and deeper analysis of the song for a possible article that I would build especially for it.
You can not, however, examine 'Paradise' without taking into account that this first song is probably one of the most important compositions when we try to figure out the meaning behind the whole album. In 'Ride', Lana starts reporting she has been timelessly in a long road... You can think of many meanings for this road, but ... wouldn’t it be the road of life? The road that leads us along unknown and tortuous paths? Life is a game whose table is turned every day and no matter how hard we try to plan our destiny, events will always clash against our will in the moments we least expect.
 
"Life does not always work out, like we planned it. / They say 'make lemonade out of lemons', but I tried and I just can not understand it./ All this trying for no good reason / Man makes plans and God laughs ... Why do I even bother to ask? " 
- Starry Eyed, song leaked on the Internet in 2013
 
The magnificent chorus of the song is chanted by a singer absorbed by the conflicts that invade her personality. The verse "Been trying hard not to get into trouble, but I ... I've got a war in my mind", expresses - like a pain that can almost be touched - all this inner confusion that permeates the thoughts of the singer. How many times do we try to do things the right way, but find ourselves surrounded by situations and circumstances as larger and unrelated to our control that we just can not do it right?And in that context, what would be truly right?
The existing war inside of Lana Del Rey’s mind relies mainly, in her precise opposition to simply not accept what is imposed by society as right or wrong. It isn’t new to us that, in most of  her music videos, she engages romance with men whose physical appearance diverges completely from what is considered as 'beautiful' Or acceptable. In 'Ride', the motorcicle gang that accompanies the singer throughout the video is made up of men who would never be accepted within the standard of beauty valued by the normative society in which we live. And the singer, more than just sharing her company with them, shares her body, her soul, her inner truth. It is not uncommon to read in various online forums, people criticizing her choices for men and companions in her videos, attesting she should choose ‘more beautiful’ men to carry out the shooting.
 
And that is exactly where relies the whole truth of Lana Del Rey. What we have been imposed as 'correct' should never be our reality. But to fight it can become an impressively heavy burden, especially when we are alone in a world massacred by standards and exclusionary concepts which devalue all that’s different. In this song, she completely deconstructs this definition, but also exposes the obstacles and difficulties that this detachment can bring. A war so strong that it drives her crazy every day; she insists on fighting with one sole purpose: to be free.
The image where Lana points a gun to her head while singing 'I've got a war in my mind' can come to be frightening, especially because you can really see feelings of emptiness and despair simultaneously invading her gaze. Madness can sometimes be so intense and is able to overwhelm so much our thoughts that suicide is the only way out. The only road to peace.
 
And it is in this whirlwind of emotions that we begin to understand the real meaning behind the album 'Paradise'. The album is not open with a loving idealization, an utopian romanticism. 'Ride' fills the ears as a splendid cry - that amid such powerful conflicts - desperately screams out to one of the most forgotten feelings of mankind: freedom. It's emotioning to see the magnitude and various aspects Lana uses to shout to everyone that they need to let go of their mental chains, even if you need a a war to let it happen. Freedom is the only way to the true fullness of life.
 
Who are you? Are you touch with all your darkest fantasies? Have you created a life for yourself where you are free to experience them? I have. I am fucking crazy. 
But I am free . "- Ride
 
'American' begins as a calm to the storm that overwhelms the beginning of the album. As raised by the title, the song exalts Lana’s patriotism and all her love for the United States, a recurring theme in her songs. After all, 'Born to Die' is full of references to the country, since the singer embracing Bradley Soileau in front of the American flag until her pose as Jackie O' next to a black president in ' National Anthem ' .
 
"Be young, be dope, be proud 
Like an american "
 
The mentioning of Bruce Springsteen on the verse "Springsteen is the king, do not you think? I was like 'Hell, yeah, que guy can sing "reaffirms pride for the country, having the mentioned singer various compositions regarding the theme. But more than that and most important, Bruce is famous for preaching in his songs exaltation to everyday situations; he exales freedom as the human greatness; he praises the ideal of freedom which is the very essence of 'Paradise'.
 
By singing "I drive fast, I can almost taste it now" Lana returns to the idea of driving as an escape from reality. The wind, the speed, the thought that the road ahead can take you anywhere and that the whole world is within your reach. When driving fast, Lana can almost prove this unconditional freedom that is her greatest desire. The impression she creates when singing this gives us the image that, the greater the speed, the closer to that fullness she will be. The speed hallucinates and it is as if the road itself was leading towards freedom. And when she's going too fast, that feeling brings her so close to that ideal that she's almost able to catch it. But happiness is a bird that lands in front of us and in the blink of an eye takes flight to bless other souls.
In 'American' we have the return of Lana Del Rey’s known romanticism and the soft strings slide in an engaging rhythm creating an atmosphere that comes even to suggest an image of paradise.The quiet end is only a preparation for the strong beats of the next song, whose heavy hip-hop is a return to 'Off to the Races' , 'Blue Jeans' and 'Dark Paradise' , songs from her breakthrough album.
And so it begins, ' Cola ', a song that even before its release was already involved in controversial talks, because of the famous verse "My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola". The song adresses important issues to the singer, which would later be revived in songs like ' Sad Girl ' and ' Shades of Cool ' from her album' Ultraviolence '.
The breaking concepts and stratagems are more subtle in 'Cola' compared with the first two songs that open the album. Or perhaps the aspect of freedom addressed here is just different from those sung earlier. The verse "I know your wife, and she would not mind" is a shock to the monogamous layer of society that believes only in the existence of love relationships based on the maintaining of the other and exclusivity. Individuals who strive to preach and strongly condemn the meaning behind the word 'adultery', unable to see other forms of love. Precisely a chainless love, conceived in freedom.
It is amazing how a single verse is capable of bringing so many ideas and thoughts considered wrong in today's world. Lana considers herself a mistress and does not feel guilty about it. There are no judgments, no shame, and quite the opposite, there is a certain pride and exaltation in that position. The vocals come to chant some power and Lana feels extremely amazed to be in the outer position of the relationship.
External position?
It makes me wonder if it would not be the teachings of society recorded in my unconsciousness that make me think of the word 'external'. After all, the man's wife in the song is fully aware of the relationship he has with Lizzy and she does not care about that. Thus, they would be occupying equal positions in his life, without inferiority or priorities, something unbelievable for the great majority of the women of the current society. Are we able to really love multiple people?
It comes to my senses that freedom is something so inexistant and prohibited that we really need to work hard every day to make that word a reality in our lives.
And then in 'Body Electric', we are transported to the Garden of Eden. The foliage discover a John Wayne who plays God himself, the creator of heaven and earth. With a shotgun in hand and costumes typical of the films he produced, John is rounded by Jesus, Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe.
John Wayne was an American film producer, considered by many as one of the most influential personalities in the history of cinema. He worked for decades and is one of the biggest winners statuettes and awards, and is widely known to symbolize the defense of the ideals and American values. His film roles, for example, never compromised his external image. If he thought something was extremely degrading to the human figure in real life he would never do it in a movie. Lana Del Rey Wayne chooses to interpret the father of mankind in his short film 'Tropico' and it's amazing all the existing symbology behind it.
 
The image of Jesus wearing the crown of thorns classic described in the Bible and suffering expression on his face is completely incongruous innocence represented by the images of the Garden of Eden. At the dawn of day, Marylin Monroe and Elvis Presley wake up and observe a couple who slowly approaches. Using foliations on her breasts and intimate parts, Lana first appears with a surprised smile on her face, an expression of joy and fulfillment. At his side we see a white boy whose features may differ from what we often mispronounce and consider as beautiful. Adam and Eve and all the innocence described in the book of Genesis.
 
Marilyn Monroe: prostitute and lover. In the Garden of Eden, the birthplace of humanity, which were created by God humans; The place of the purest innocence already described by the Western religion. The inversion of values is more a conceptual album break 'Paradise', especially when the dialogue stops and the song 'Body Electric' gradually preenc 
he silence with the verse "Elvis is my daddy, Marylin is my mother, Jesus is my bestest friend." Will Marylin, despite all 
Would your sins also have a place next to God and his son after death?
And then we fall into one of the main issues of the short film that stretches for about thirty minutes.
 
What is sin?
 
Sin is nothing more than the cruelest form of manipulation and obstruction of existing freedom. Through the word 'sin' the Church for centuries controlled the thoughts and actions of the people, creating a fearful thought in relation to the right / wrong paradigm and the idea of hell as a place of eternal suffering and penance. You must learn a predetermined pattern, suit yourself and follow it, regardless of your wishes or beliefs. Because otherwise, you will be sinning and, upon dying, will be judged by all your faults and sent to a place where you will never leave and where each pain has the temporal duration of infinity.
And so freedom was hunted down and destroyed. Marylin never fit these standards and if they were at least remotely correct, it would already be burning with a good 40 years. In 'Tropico', Lana puts in Monroe expression of pure innocence in the rise of humanity. It is interesting to note that so far the love theme so widely portrayed earlier by Del Rey, despite being present in all the songs on the album, it is moved to the background, while the release - and especially the breakdown of barriers necessary for us to To attain this state of mind - is sung and exalted in every way.
 
The imagistic construction of the first chapters of the Bible is an important factor in the chronology of the understanding of freedom as a form of expression, since it is the western origin of its imprisonment, especially when it comes to the figure of the woman. As 'Body Electric' vanishes and the serpent (metaphorising the devil, the source of all evil) is E 
va, the apple of knowledge - only forbidden fruit around the Garden of Eden - is offered to the woman who takes the hands, bites and is automatically transported to the world today: a world of sin, damnation and death.
More than the annulment of freedom, the inferiorization of women is also represented in this beginning of life according to the bible. The woman was made secondarily to the man and from one of his ribs, and thus, existing only thanks to him. The woman was seduced by the serpent, and by yielding to the impulsive desires of knowledge condemned humanity to an eternal state of depravity. Because she made the choice to have the knowledge of eternal life, the woman was guilty of all the suffering in the world.
 
The song 'Body Electric' is a direct reference to the poem "I Sing the Body Electric ', the author Walt Whitman. Whitman, one of the icons of American history, was revolutionary in the world of poetry by questioning society's standards and detaching himself from preexisting concepts by absurdly clearing themes that had hitherto been considered taboo, such as homosexuality and sexual relations Resulting from simple human contact. 
 Later, Whitman would be known as the father of the Beat Generation, a collection of writers and poets who also felt dissatisfied because they are subject to an absolutely arbitrary truth dictated by others, preventing them from following the human instinct for freedom. In later compositions such as "Brooklyn Baby ' , Lana will return to that time, reiterating his love for those who, like her, saw to be free is the acquisition of a life of happiness (Read a full report on the Beat Generation and influences that it has in the compositions of Lana Del Rey by clicking here ).
The biblical metaphors are materials always present in the works of Del Rey, but not before so intensely as in 'Paradise'. And this is where we get a glimpse of the singer's soul, with her intense art and extremely visionary thoughts. I believe that having graduated in philosophy and studied metaphysics has subsequently opened its horizons and lit up the darkness of its mental confusion. Despite this, I still wonder what religious beliefs of L  dwarf.
In 'Body Electric', she sings "Jesus is my bestest friend", intimating a close with what is one of the greatest religious figures of the last two thousand years. This relationship is possibly linked to innocence and suffering passed by Jesus in the New Testament. A man who has completely lost the freedom of his destiny by being sent by his father in order to save mankind from sins and perdition. Throughout history, this idea will be slightly modified as we shall see, but for now, let's take 'Tropico' to return to the original album tracklist.
'Blue Velvet' is a song that was not to be originally in the EP, being included after the invitation of the global company H & M Lana work in a publicity campaign singing the song. After recording in the studio the song was included in the relaunch of 'Born to Die' ranking fifth in the tracklist. I see the song as a true interlude 'Body Electric' and 'Gods and Monsters', as a break in the count this story gets to have a heavy aura at certain times. The information is so many and they clash so violently against what we have been taught that we need to blink and breathe to continue.
The apple of knowledge transports Adam and Eve into the world of today. A world of violence, sin, and amid images of scantily clad women dancing and entertaining men for money, Lana recites excerpts from the epic poem 'I Sing the Body Electric', written by Whitman and quoted above. The poem consists of nine parts and is interesting to analyze the passages that Lana has chosen especially to compose this part of his film 'Tropico'.
 
"Womanhood, and all that is woman - and the man that comes from woman 
The womb, the tits, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping, love-looks, love- 
[...] 
Oi say, these are not the parts and poems of the Body only, but of the Soul 
Oi say now these are the Soul! "
- I sing the Body Electric, Walt Whitman
 
Through this particular stretch, Lana Del Rey praises in every way the woman who was since the creation of mankind according to the Bible oppressed and whose freedom was murdered in every way. More than that, it exalts the female body in all its forms. See how Whitman puts the words 'body' and 'soul' in capital letters, treating them as true names. It is the exaltation of the body, source of sin, source of deprivation, source of desire. It is the exaltation of the soul, free spirit embedded in the body and dependent upon it for its satisfaction. Describing 'I Sing the Body Electric' in a world of torment, Lana again deconstructs the idea of sin, naturalizing the human instinct and trying to return our lives to the origins. There is no sin. There is no right / wrong. There is only the body. There is only the soul.
There is only freedom.
'Gods and Monsters', is for me the strongest song of the entire album. As well as 'Ride', the song is filled with the thought of madness and the inner conflicts that drive Lana Del Rey crazy daily.
 
"In the land of gods and monsters, I was an angel living in the Garden of Evil." The tormentors paradoxes are present from the verse that opens the song. In declaring herself an angel, Lana evokes the innocence and instinct of human beings ever erased by the rationality of society. The gods and monsters of this earth are those who try to destroy our ideals, which persevere In telling us who we should be and what we should do. The possibility of following our wills, of treading a path other than the standard simply ceased to exist. We are in the Garden of Evil(understand the game of "Garden of Eden" and "Garden of Evil." Expressions so close and yet so opposite) and the possibility of choosing a different reality was torn from our guts.
 
"Some poets called it [Los Angeles] the entrance to the Underworld, bun on some summer nights, if it could feel like Paradise, Paradise Lost" 
- Lana Del Rey Monologue in 'Tropico'
 
Then Lana reports that she and God do not get along. Later in the song she returns to it with the verse "God's dead, I said 'baby, that's alright with me," opposing "Jesus is my bestest friend" sung in' Body Electric '. She and God do not get along, because this God punished her for eating the apple of knowledge. This God blames her daily and condemns the beauties of her body and her sensuality. If God does not exist ... What is the force of sin? Without God there is no hell, without God there is no guilt. Without God there is not the daily torment of having to choose a way to be the right, the divine way.
God is dead and this is the purest acquisition of freedom.
It is important to point out that this God is not the true creator of the earth (independent of individual beliefs) but an instrument used by society to manipulate the choices of others and establish a lifestyle to be followed. For centuries (and even today) his name is used as a form of control.
God is dead, and everything is fine for me.
 
Soon after, Lana preaches the loss of innocence and uses the word 'fuck' over and over again in order to shock and enhance human contact, as well as stresses the Whitman poem excerpt little declaimed before the song 'Tropico'. The Church once again vulgarised sex and used the name of God to control that intimate contact that people should have. Sex ceased to be the contact of the body with the body and became an instrument of control. You should not have sex before marriage. You should not try different types of sex. What was meant to be the closest contact between two different worlds was cloaked in feelings of guilt, as something dirty. But what Lana wants is to get fucked, because this is paradise. What she really wants. It is innocence lost.
 
"Fuck, yeah, give it to me 
This is heaven, what I truly want 
It's innocence lost. "
- Gods and Monsters
 
Verses "I do not really wanna know what's good for me" and "No one's gonna take my soul away" express this quest for freedom in a world where it was taken from us. She does not want to know what's good for her, does not need someone telling her what to do. No one will take your soul away.
From the moment that freedom completely fills your being, that fear ceases to exist.
 
"You tell me 'life is not that hard'
- Gods and Monsters
 
Between taken with women symbolizing prostitution, drug use, physical violence by arms and Lana 
posing as a stripper and dancing surrounded by money in their underwear, the poem 'Howl' the author Allen Ginsberg begins to be declaimed. Ginsberg is significant figure Beat Generationabove and one of main faces of the construction of the literary poetry United States .
The poem has a thematic range covering exclusion and marginalizaç 
will of many ordinary people who were not able to develop their full potential as human beings and just driven to madness, or a dead end in society. It exposes, in fact, suffering from a generation in a confessional tone, bringing the 
demonstration of force against an oppressive society with regard to minorities. In portrayed marginal universe appear clearly libertarians and spiritual behaviors that form the basis of the counterculture Beat, which will soon turn into very behavior patterns worldwide.
Here some excerpts recited by Lana Del Rey in 'Tropico'.
 
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, 
hysterical Starving naked 
Dragging Themselves through the dark streets at dawn looking for an angry fix [...] 
Who Were Expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull [...] 
With dreams, with drugs, with walking nightmares. " 
-Howl [Howl], Allen Ginsberg
 
Then, physical violence is depicted through the use of women as object. To celebrate the birthday of a friend, a group of apparently successful individuals by their clothing hires women using the body as a living food. The film follows with a 'robbery' to this private club and psychological violence suffered by hostages reflects the whole reality of our world today. From there, the dark aura of the film will turn and, like the album, the furious tornado that destroyed the compositions goes and Lana seems to have finally achieved the much desired peace.
'Yayo' , is one of the most personal compositions Lizzy Grant , made exclusively for her, unlike other songs were composed with his producer, David Kahne , for their first studio album 'Lana Del Ray'.
 
During the years he sang in the night pubs of New York City , Lana recited the song in different ways and with various changes in the rhythms and verses of the song. The choice for the song integrate the EP 'Paradise' is probably due to the meaning which has for years in the life of Del Rey . In lyrical terms is the most romanticized song on the album and the soft instrumental incredibly harmony with the vocals that reveal a surrender body and soul to the appreciation of detail.
Lights come on and the atmosphere changes. Lana and Shaun Ross , Adam's 'Body Electric' and burglar 'Gods and Monsters' are dressed in white and follow in a Chevrolet Bel Air appointing the last chapter of our history. John Wayne reappears as God and recites most of his poem "America, why I love her ' (America because I love) , one of the greatest tributes ever composed for the United States .
 
"Have you ever seen a Kansas sunset or an Arizona rain? 
Have you ever drifted on the bayou down Louisiana way? 
Or watched a cold fog drifting in eating over San Francisco Bay? [...] 
You ask me why I love her? I've got a million Reasons Why: 
It's my beautiful America, beneath God's wide, wide sky. "
- America, why I love her - John Wayne
 
Lana and Shaun are cleansed of all their sins through the symbolism of baptism. John pours water over her forehead and then plunges his head into the river, eliminating the impurities of the soul. It is interesting that two forms of baptism are seen in the film, an explicit attempt to exclude the religious content of the act, which should be seen as a symbol of purification and not as the introduction to any religious sect. White colors Lana dress and grass field that stretches as far as the eye can contribute to the brightness and the feeling of peace that are transmitted to the viewer in contrast to the madness and the heavy atmosphere that prevailed a few seconds in the movie .
 
And that's how the laughter of angelic children fills the ears and we are introduced to the 'Bel Air' whose Lana vocals evoke paradise itself.
 
"Do not be afraid of me, do not be ashamed 
Walking away from my soft resurrection 
Idol of roses, iconic soul, I know your name 
Lead me to war with your brilliant direction"
- Bel Air
 
The above verse expresses the Resurrection will the spirit after the torment. When Lana sings that no one need be afraid of it, we have the impression that more than exteri orizar peace achieved so hard, she finally convinced herself of sanity that invades your being and eliminates his madness. The war that began in 'Ride' in his mind finally ceased and no longer even recall such events. After all, she has risen from the ashes like a phoenix and everything that happened before that no longer exists.
There is no memory, there is no fear. Because the suffering of the world is gone.
 
"And God Shall wipe away all tears from Their Eyes; and there Shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither Shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. " 
- Revelation [Revelation] 21: 4 - The Bible
 
The best, however, remains in the final seconds of the movie. While it is raised embraced his man in the air, greenish lights invade and permeate the sky, while both are contemplated at sunset.The lights come on and go off and what appeared to be clouds are becoming increasingly clear to become flying saucers . Lana is raised, the image flickers, dims, rekindles and thus the fade out invades the screen while the sound decreases and 'Bel Air' falls into the void.
 
It is amazing how the spiritual evolution undergoes a change in the final seconds of this story. We were the Garden of Eden to Los Angeles and finished with Lana ascending to heaven initiating contact with larger creatures than us. We are always evolving, we are constantly changing. We can not and should not systematize our feelings.
No one has the power to dictate who we are.
No one will never understand the existing inner universe within each of us.
Lana Del Rey teaches us through eight tracks and about forty visual minutes (counting 'Ride' and 'Tropico' ) that freedom is extremely disturbing, maddening and able to take us a sanity Interstate complete madness .
But in the end, it's just absolute freedom the true road able to lead our soul to happiness.
And in the midst of sin, the land of gods and monsters, in the psychological prison and madness of the mind ...
... Freedom is the real paradise.
 
PS: For me the creation of 'Paradise' ends with the peace achieved in 'Bel Air' .
'Burning Desire' is an epilogue to the whole story, a little bit of what happened after all this journey. Well, I think I stretched me enough and I'd rather leave you with this image of 'Bel Air' in mind. The image that we can only achieve true freedom through the persecution of our stigmas.
question themselves about their prejudices. Ask yourself who you are. Work to change your reality. As the madness can fill them, persevere. And live the true paradise.
Beacuse the 'Paradise' is, above all, a true ode to freedom.
                
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

@DeadAgainst adding to your last point about the mentions of a “gate” in hope is a dangerous thing and bel air, she mentions “the gates” in the opening lines of the born to die title track

I know some might find that interpretation of Born to Die to be a bit out there, but look at this very revealing quote from Lana:
 
 
There's a new revolution
A loud evolution
That I saw
 
Back in 2012, she was still trying to play dumb at being some Marilyn Monroe type. They ask her about metaphysics, and she starts dancing around the subject like it's on fire:
 
 
At the end of the Tropico film, you see them ascending to heaven and flying saucers appear. From what I can gather from the crumbs she's dropped, she wanted the world to attain a higher level of consciousness so they could finally go into space and make alien contact (itself a very New Age idea). "I'm more into SpaceX and Tesla, what's going to happen with our intergalactic possibilities."
 
On Born to Die's meaning, the only lie is one of omission:
 
 
I was so confused as a little child
 
Born of confusion 
And quiet collusion of which
Mostly I've known
 
On how she uses men from her past as archetypal figures in her work (2012):
 
 
On how particular she is about choosing everything in her videos to fit into her archetypal world (2014):
 
 
Cigarettes and Robitussin
Will I ever get to heaven?
 
I’m gentle.
I’m funny when I’m drunk,
But I haven’t been drunk for 14 years.
 
Lana points back to 2006 as being the pivotal year.
 
Hello it's the most famous woman you know on the iPad
Calling from beyond the grave, I just wanna say
"Hi dad"
 
Rob still knows her as Lizzy; does she call him from "beyond the grave" because Lizzy died on the day she saw palm trees in black and white?
 
On how nobody understands her music and she'd like to keep it that way:
 
 

 
Get out of my blood, salamander!...
And yet, everywhere I go, it seems there you are,
And there I am.
 
Before touching on Kundalini in a poem, Lana uses blatant alchemical symbolism with the salamander (called, like Jim, a fire-eater). The salamander being another fire emblem (not the Video Games); the Sulphur as all-consuming fire that is the source of true poetic insight. She would rather keep her inner life private, but the fire in her veins compels her. (Since this part of the board is indexed on Google, maybe I'm even giving away too much? Or maybe this is all just mad ravings.)
 
On fighting her Shadow and monsters:
 
Shaking my ass is the only thing that's
Got this black narcissist off my back
She couldn't care less
And I never cared more
 
In her "Money Power Glory" commentary, she mentions that it was inspired by Carl Jung and the concept of projection--but it also serves as an exorcism of her degenerate beauty queen persona (and let's face it, it was a persona).
 
Monsters still under my bed
That I could never fight off
A gatekeeper carelessly dropping the keys on my nights off
 
What gatekeeper? To what gate? The only one I can remember is from, again, "Bel Air"--
 
Gargoyles standing at the front of your gate
 
 

I know some might find that interpretation of Born to Die to be a bit out there, but look at this very revealing quote from Lana:
 
 
There's a new revolution
A loud evolution
That I saw
 
Back in 2012, she was still trying to play dumb at being some Marilyn Monroe type. They ask her about metaphysics, and she starts dancing around the subject like it's on fire:
 
 
At the end of the Tropico film, you see them ascending to heaven and flying saucers appear. From what I can gather from the crumbs she's dropped, she wanted the world to attain a higher level of consciousness so they could finally go into space and make alien contact (itself a very New Age idea). "I'm more into SpaceX and Tesla, what's going to happen with our intergalactic possibilities."
 
On Born to Die's meaning, the only lie is one of omission:
 
 
I was so confused as a little child
 
Born of confusion 
And quiet collusion of which
Mostly I've known
 
On how she uses men from her past as archetypal figures in her work (2012):
 
 
On how particular she is about choosing everything in her videos to fit into her archetypal world (2014):
 
 
Cigarettes and Robitussin
Will I ever get to heaven?
 
I’m gentle.
I’m funny when I’m drunk,
But I haven’t been drunk for 14 years.
 
Lana points back to 2006 as being the pivotal year.
 
Hello it's the most famous woman you know on the iPad
Calling from beyond the grave, I just wanna say
"Hi dad"
 
Rob still knows her as Lizzy; does she call him from "beyond the grave" because Lizzy died on the day she saw palm trees in black and white?
 
On how nobody understands her music and she'd like to keep it that way:
 
 

 
Get out of my blood, salamander!...
And yet, everywhere I go, it seems there you are,
And there I am.
 
Before touching on Kundalini in a poem, Lana uses blatant alchemical symbolism with the salamander (called, like Jim, a fire-eater). The salamander being another fire emblem (not the Video Games); the Sulphur as all-consuming fire that is the source of true poetic insight. She would rather keep her inner life private, but the fire in her veins compels her. (Since this part of the board is indexed on Google, maybe I'm even giving away too much? Or maybe this is all just mad ravings.)
 
On fighting her Shadow and monsters:
 
Shaking my ass is the only thing that's
Got this black narcissist off my back
She couldn't care less
And I never cared more
 
In her "Money Power Glory" commentary, she mentions that it was inspired by Carl Jung and the concept of projection--but it also serves as an exorcism of her degenerate beauty queen persona (and let's face it, it was a persona).
 
Monsters still under my bed
That I could never fight off
A gatekeeper carelessly dropping the keys on my nights off
 
What gatekeeper? To what gate? The only one I can remember is from, again, "Bel Air"--
 
Gargoyles standing at the front of your gate
 
 

Watching the old Born to Die interviews, Lana is extremely cagey about what is happening, as she is with everything on the record; she will either have some brusque explanation about "having fun before you die" or not say anything at all. Virtually everything she says in early 2012 publicly appears to be subterfuge; a blind of normality to hide that she's "fucking crazy." Even the title, Born to Die, was not meant as a nihilistic statement of "live fast, die young." As Lana later suggested, the title appears to have been chosen because of the realization that "we were born to die" in her childhood--
 
 
There is one frame that shows that Lana is actually showing something more:
 

 
 
Here is rather the "death" of Lizzy Grant as she crosses the threshold to the reveal of her heart; the Lovers an alchemical coniunctio (cigarettes always having the same alchemical fire symbolism for Lana).
 
Who, me?
Why?
 
She asks God why she was chosen bear a fragment of paradise not of this world.
 
Feet don't fail me now
Take me to the finish line
Oh, my heart, it breaks every step that I take
But I'm hoping at the gates, they'll tell me that you're mine
 
(Cf. Gargoyles standing at the front of your gate
Trying to tell me to wait, but I can’t wait to see you
So I run like I'm mad to Heaven’s door
I don’t wanna be bad, I won’t cheat you no more)
 
A double meaning; Lizzy walking the path of higher consciousness and an exhortation by the Lonely Queen to join her.
 

 
 

 
The image of the Lonely Queen seems to be a combination of two Tarot cards.
 
Come and take a walk on the wild side
Let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain
You like your girls insane, so
Choose your last words, this is the last time
'Cause you and I
We were born to die
 
Another exhortation by the Goddess to walk the path that leads from death to resurrection on the "wild side" across the abyss.
 
Lost, but now I am found
I can see, but once I was blind
I was so confused as a little child
Tried to take what I could get, scared that I couldn't find
All the answers, honey
 
Spoken by Lana recalling life as Lizzy, searching for answers—and finding them.
 
Lana seems to have had two actual goals for Born to Die, to tell her story and to turn people on, in the '60s sense. Her manifesto was fully encapsulated in "Bel Air," a directive to the listener--
 
Mon amour, sweet child of mine, you’re divine
Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s okay to shine?
 
Don’t be afraid of me
Don’t be ashamed
Walk in the way of my soft resurrection
 
Darling, I’m waiting to greet you
Come to me, baby
 
 
To that end, she lays within her traditional songs untraditional anamnesis triggers, usually sung in a higher register, meant to speak directly to the unconscious--
 
You just need to remember
I will love you till the end of time
I would wait a million years
Promise you'll remember that you're mine
Baby, can you see through the tears?
 
On Ultraviolence, she still considers this to be a worthy project; an invocation of "the freedom land of the '70s." But "Shades of Cool" expresses her frustration that she "can't break through your world." The lyrics take a more personal turn. She tries again on Honeymoon to gather the Freaks, but there is a sort of resignation—"God knows I tried."
 

 
 
You say that you wanna go
To a land that's far away
How are we supposed to get there
With the way that we're living today?
You talk lots about God
Freedom comes from the call
 

Watching the old Born to Die interviews, Lana is extremely cagey about what is happening, as she is with everything on the record; she will either have some brusque explanation about "having fun before you die" or not say anything at all. Virtually everything she says in early 2012 publicly appears to be subterfuge; a blind of normality to hide that she's "fucking crazy." Even the title, Born to Die, was not meant as a nihilistic statement of "live fast, die young." As Lana later suggested, the title appears to have been chosen because of the realization that "we were born to die" in her childhood--
 
 
There is one frame that shows that Lana is actually showing something more:
 

 
 
Here is rather the "death" of Lizzy Grant as she crosses the threshold to the reveal of her heart; the Lovers an alchemical coniunctio (cigarettes always having the same alchemical fire symbolism for Lana).
 
Who, me?
Why?
 
She asks God why she was chosen bear a fragment of paradise not of this world.
 
Feet don't fail me now
Take me to the finish line
Oh, my heart, it breaks every step that I take
But I'm hoping at the gates, they'll tell me that you're mine
 
(Cf. Gargoyles standing at the front of your gate
Trying to tell me to wait, but I can’t wait to see you
So I run like I'm mad to Heaven’s door
I don’t wanna be bad, I won’t cheat you no more)
 
A double meaning; Lizzy walking the path of higher consciousness and an exhortation by the Lonely Queen to join her.
 

 
 

 
The image of the Lonely Queen seems to be a combination of two Tarot cards.
 
Come and take a walk on the wild side
Let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain
You like your girls insane, so
Choose your last words, this is the last time
'Cause you and I
We were born to die
 
Another exhortation by the Goddess to walk the path that leads from death to resurrection on the "wild side" across the abyss.
 
Lost, but now I am found
I can see, but once I was blind
I was so confused as a little child
Tried to take what I could get, scared that I couldn't find
All the answers, honey
 
Spoken by Lana recalling life as Lizzy, searching for answers—and finding them.
 
Lana seems to have had two actual goals for Born to Die, to tell her story and to turn people on, in the '60s sense. Her manifesto was fully encapsulated in "Bel Air," a directive to the listener--
 
Mon amour, sweet child of mine, you’re divine
Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s okay to shine?
 
Don’t be afraid of me
Don’t be ashamed
Walk in the way of my soft resurrection
 
Darling, I’m waiting to greet you
Come to me, baby
 
 
To that end, she lays within her traditional songs untraditional anamnesis triggers, usually sung in a higher register, meant to speak directly to the unconscious--
 
You just need to remember
I will love you till the end of time
I would wait a million years
Promise you'll remember that you're mine
Baby, can you see through the tears?
 
On Ultraviolence, she still considers this to be a worthy project; an invocation of "the freedom land of the '70s." But "Shades of Cool" expresses her frustration that she "can't break through your world." The lyrics take a more personal turn. She tries again on Honeymoon to gather the Freaks, but there is a sort of resignation—"God knows I tried."
 

 
 
You say that you wanna go
To a land that's far away
How are we supposed to get there
With the way that we're living today?
You talk lots about God
Freedom comes from the call
 

Watching the old Born to Die interviews, Lana is extremely cagey about what is happening, as she is with everything on the record; she will either have some brusque explanation about "having fun before you die" or not say anything at all. Virtually everything she says in early 2012 publicly appears to be subterfuge; a blind of normality to hide that she's "fucking crazy." Even the title, Born to Die, was not meant as a nihilistic statement of "live fast, die young." As Lana later suggested, the title appears to have been chosen because of the realization that "we were born to die" in her childhood--
 
 
There is one frame that shows that Lana is actually showing something more:
 

 
 
Here is rather the "death" of Lizzy Grant as she crosses the threshold to the reveal of her heart; the Lovers an alchemical coniunctio (cigarettes always having the same alchemical fire symbolism for Lana).
 
Who, me?
Why?
 
She asks God why she was chosen bear a fragment of paradise not of this world.
 
Feet don't fail me now
Take me to the finish line
Oh, my heart, it breaks every step that I take
But I'm hoping at the gates, they'll tell me that you're mine
 
(Cf. Gargoyles standing at the front of your gate
Trying to tell me to wait, but I can’t wait to see you
So I run like I'm mad to Heaven’s door
I don’t wanna be bad, I won’t cheat you no more)
 
A double meaning; Lizzy walking the path of higher consciousness and an exhortation by the Lonely Queen to join her.
 

 
 

 
The image of the Lonely Queen seems to be a combination of two Tarot cards.
 
Come and take a walk on the wild side
Let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain
You like your girls insane, so
Choose your last words, this is the last time
'Cause you and I
We were born to die
 
Another exhortation by the Goddess to walk the path that leads from death to resurrection on the "wild side" across the abyss.
 
Lost, but now I am found
I can see, but once I was blind
I was so confused as a little child
Tried to take what I could get, scared that I couldn't find
All the answers, honey
 
Spoken by Lana recalling life as Lizzy, searching for answers—and finding them.
 
Lana seems to have had two actual goals for Born to Die, to tell her story and to turn people on, in the '60s sense. Her manifesto was fully encapsulated in "Bel Air," a directive to the listener--
 
Mon amour, sweet child of mine, you’re divine
Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s okay to shine?
 
Don’t be afraid of me
Don’t be ashamed
Walk in the way of my soft resurrection
 
Darling, I’m waiting to greet you
Come to me, baby
 
 
To that end, she lays within her traditional songs untraditional anamnesis triggers, usually sung in a higher register, meant to speak directly to the unconscious--
 
You just need to remember
I will love you till the end of time
I would wait a million years
Promise you'll remember that you're mine
Baby, can you see through the tears?
 
On Ultraviolence, she still considers this to be a worthy project; an invocation of "the freedom land of the '70s." But "Shades of Cool" expresses her frustration that she "can't break through your world." The lyrics take a more personal turn. She tries again on Honeymoon to gather the Freaks, but there is a sort of resignation—"God knows I tried."
 

 
 
You say that you wanna go
To a land that's far away
How are we supposed to get there
With the way that we're living today?
You talk lots about God
Freedom comes from the call
 

@DeadAgainst i just wanted to say, it makes me so, so happy to see somebody making contributions to this amazing, spellbinding thread, even if sometimes it’s difficult to keep up with it all lol!
 
do you have any thoughts about the track “born to die”? it’s a song i’ve been quite into lately, it feels significant to me, at this moment, somehow, spiritually? subconsciously? psychologically? it could be anything, but i definitely feel like there’s a lot to be said about that song, it just feels so subtle, abstract, as she said in “joshy & i” so hard to reel in

"I can be smart when it's important. But most men don't like it."
(Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes)
 

 
 
You have to take me out of this strange trailer park life
 
In the first known performance of "Yayo" in 2006 (? Lanapedia is unreliable on this point), Lizzy stands shrouded in darkness, wearing black. The lyrics are different. Instead of "hello Heaven," we have only (if I hear right) "I think the stars are right about there, but it's gettin' there." She immediately segues into "Pawn Shop Blues". 
 

 
In 2017, “Pawn Shop Blues” became the second song from AKA to be resurrected by Lana Del Rey:
 
 
The video is highly symbolic. Lana appears as a bride, recalling the “Ultraviolence” video. Butterflies are traditionally a symbol of Psyche, the soul; her story is told in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, AKA The Golden Ass, a Platonic allegory wherein the protagonist undergoes “a long journey, literal and metaphorical… He finally finds salvation through the intervention of the goddess Isis”. Lana stands as a pregnant Goddess, Lizzy locked like Snow White in the coffin of the depths from which she must be raised. This is a slight inversion of the usual interpretation: Lana as Self as Goddess cannot be trapped, as she is eternal; she is beckoning her from a higher plane to free her limited self, as seen in Tropico. Cigarettes are the consuming fire in this hermetic vessel that cleanses a tar-black soul.
 
 
Now that we’ve established a rough chronology, it may be possible to read “Get Free” as “her story” depicting the important moments in her recent life:
 
No Kung Fu/The Ocean/Kill Kill/AKA
 
Finally
I'm crossing the threshold
From the ordinary world
To the reveal of my heart
Undoubtedly
That will for certain
Take the dead out of the sea
& the darkness from the arts
 
Born to Die

This is my commitment
My modern manifesto
I'm doing it for all of us
Who never got the chance
For Amy and for Whitney
& all my birds of paradise
Who never got to fly at night
'Cause they were caught up in the dance
 
Paradise

Sometimes it feels like I've got a war in my mind
I want to get off, but I keep riding the ride
I never really noticed that I had to decide
To play someone's game or live my own life
& now I do
I wanna move
Out of the black (out of the black!)
Into the blue (into the blue!)
 
Ultraviolence/Honeymoon

Finally
Gone is the burden
Of the Crowley way of being
That comes from energies combined
Like my part was I
Was not discerning
And you, as we found out
Were not in your right mind
 
Lust for Life
 
There's no more chasing rainbows
& hoping for an end to them
Their arches are illusions
Solid at first glance
But then you try to touch them
There's nothing to hold onto
The colors used to lure you in
& put you in a trance
 
With Lust for Life, she was, as said at the time, jolted back to reality by the Trump presidency. The songs get political, and when she sings of Lady Liberty, there is no hint of acknowledgement of her past usage. This marks the end of what could be considered her “classic” era. Now comes a desire to take off Crowley’s uniform of imagery, strip herself down and rebuild herself anew as one engaged with the world instead of sinking in the quicksand of her thoughts.
 
I go on trips with my friends to the beach who don’t know that I’m crazy.
I can do that.
I can do anything,
Even leave you…
The more I step into my poetry,
The less I will fall into being with you.
 
For the first time since boarding school (according to her), she had real friends; who cares if they’ll never truly know who you are?
 
You, in your madness
The satellite that's constellating my world
Mimicking the inner chaos that i've disowned
A mirror to my past life retribution
A reflection of my sadness...
My feet aren't on the ground
 
Repeatedly in Violet she contemplates grounding herself in the exoteric and turning away from the inner life, particularly in “Never to Heaven,” a sort of modern Ecclesiastes.
 
Norman Fucking Rockwell was a critical triumph, and it was precisely because she stripped herself of overt symbolism, instead relegating it to the lyrical margins and enigmatic images like “God in a burnt coffee pot” that she refused to explain when asked. But the message remains open on the cover and in "Mariners Apartment Complex," the medicine now sugared to go down easier:
 

 
I'm the bolt, the lightning, the thunder
Kind of girl who's gonna make you wonder
Who you are and who you've been...
Maybe I could save you from your sins
So, kiss the sky and whisper to Jesus
My, my, my, you found this, you need this
Take a deep breath, baby, let me in
You lose your way, just take my hand
You're lost at sea, then I'll command your boat to me again
Don't look too far, right where you are, that's where I am
I'm your man
 
Overwhelmingly, the critics finally understood what she was saying when discussing the mundane life, and heralded it as a new triumph in her songwriting when, in many important ways, it was a step back to May Jailer. By doing so, she lost contact with something vital, as she later confessed; suddenly the words did not flow and she turned to poetry as a form of loosening the binds of the unconscious.
 
I'm generally quite quiet
Quite a meditator, actually
I'll do very well down by Paramhansa Yogananda's realization center, I'm sure
 
 
Violet presents some insights into her inner life at this time; the old symbols had been cast away, and new symbols were being modeled. Her verses are on one page allegorical and on another literal, and one is always unsure where the lines are drawn. But when she talks directly to the city of Los Angeles or Kundalini itself, we know that those lines are often crossed. Witness where she flips the tables and refers to literal beings in allegorical terms, the without always being a reflection of the within, the archetypal role in which she is always trapped:
 
What will it take for me not to need you
so I can just have you for fun
and for who you really are
 
Not you as the savior
not me as Ophelia
not us putting our faith in the public's dark art
 
The savior needs no explanation. Ophelia—an image from Paradise, the Self submerged beneath the waters of the unconscious. The public, the dark alchemical art of criticism that tears them apart and puts them together again. ("I get a lot.")
 

 
(Source: Shirley Alvarez)
 
I acknowledged who you really were for the first time.
 
I didn’t call you by any other name, (Axl Rose? Jesus? Jim?)
I let you know that I knew the true nature of your heart.
That it was evil,
and that it convinced me that darkness was real,
That the devil is a real devil,
and that monsters don’t always know that they’re monsters.
 
But projection is an amazing thing.
After you left and burnt the house down,
You tried to convince me it was I who was holding the matches.
 
You told me I didn’t know who I was,
But I do.
 
So when we turn to these lines, is this a real person? Or is this addressed to her own Shadow Self as Dark Animus, that she rejects and yet continually falls into bed with? Is this not her husband from hell?
 
 
 
In a 2007 live rendition of “Pin-Up Galore,” she declares herself both a monster and a being not of this world. The performance is, in a word, strange; she is melancholic, but seems to possess a greater confidence.
 

 
 
The symbolism in "My Bedroom is a Sacred Place Now - There Are Children at the Foot of My Bed" would seem to actually follow that of the Tarot, where the Devil becomes the Tower, the House of Ego destroyed in that all-consuming fire. Elsewhere, she writes in one of her most overtly esoteric pieces, directly addressing the Kundalini serpent—
 
I think about the curse bestowed upon Eve
That fateful eve she took that bite of fruit from that fruitful tree.
And this summer night, you in front of me,
Makes me contemplate the origins of good and evil.
 
This recalls not the Biblical fall, but the awakening that came in the moment that Eve, obeying the serpent, plucked the fruit and attained Gnosis to both the nature of absolute darkness and absolute light (that Sparkle not of this world) in the Abyss. She contemplates if she is, in fact, cursed, having taken the Jump that changed the entire trajectory of her life. A familiar image from Paradise.
 
To shut the door on the past and step
blindly
into the abyss
no destination intact
 

 
 

 
 

 
You're only as happy as your least happy child
 
They don’t understand.
I’m a dreamer.
And I had big dreams for the country.
Not for what it could do, but how it could feel.
How it could think,
How it could dream.
 
I know.
Who am I to dream for you?
It’s just that in my own mind,
I was born with a little bit of paradise.
I was lucky in that way.
Not like my husband,
Who was born and raised in hell.
 
That bit of paradise was not necessarily Lizzy, but Lana Ray who was born on the day she died. Her husband is not strictly the devil of the outer church but akin to the Baphomet of Eliphas Levi.
 
Maybe an artist has to function a little bit above themselves
If they really want to transmit some heaven
 
 
Let me put on a show for you, tiger
 
Her work on Born to Die: The Paradise Edition is characterized by what one would almost call subliminal messages, encouraging the listener to follow her on the Path of Sylvia Plath, all the way from “Take a walk on the wild side” spoken by the Goddess through to “Come to me, baby,” the very last line of Paradise. In early interviews, she is evasive and constantly contradicts herself, as if she is hiding some big secret by claiming to have none--the source of the later backlash. She has the audacity to shave years off of her age and claim "Axl Rose Husband" was written at age 16, a bit of meaningless juvenilia, while striking every mention of that dead phantom known as Lizzy Grant; a creature produced by nature and not by Art. Damnatio memoriae. Is it vanity (years later, she did say, with perhaps some latent guilt, that she always forgets her birth year—but a woman can lie about that), or the realization that such earlier works gave away too much? She needn’t have worried, in the latter case.
 
She shrugs, putting on a ditzy Marilyn Monroe affectation, and says the songs on Born to Die are about nothing much at all, yet strangely gets upset when people treat them as meaningless. By November, the mask starts to slip, but not quite. By the time of Ultraviolence, after a year spent in cruel exile, she contradicts herself again: She doesn’t write pop songs, and never has. Those were psychological. In truth, Born to Die is a perfect and enduring pop record, camouflaged in its intent and designed to embed itself as a seed in the over-culture.
 
I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood
 
It’s apparent that she later came to view this as youthful folly, a naïveté for how little the world would understand her. Perhaps she originally planned to traffic in visions of money, power and glory as some great work of performance art that would be unveiled in Tropico, but that, too, went awry. That latent bitterness and resentment remained, and was behind her frustration that Twigs’ work was considered Art while Tropico was mocked as the work of a whore and not a poet.
 
But... lately I’ve been thinking that I wish
Someone had told me when I was younger
More about the inhabitants that thrive off of paradise.
 
That should they take too much,
There would be nothing left to give.
 
There's something in the water
I can taste it turning sour 
It's bitter
I'm coughing
But now it's in my blood
 
Lately I've been thinking 
It's just someone else's job to care 
Who am I to sympathize
When no one gave a damn
I've been thinking
It's just someone else's job to care
Who am I to want to try...
 
But my heart is very fragile,
and I have nothing left to give.
 
This rejection is what she wishes she had foreseen when younger. She grows tired of attempting to “transmit some heaven” to those who only parasitically consume. In 2019 live performances, her mind seems elsewhere, perhaps even bored. If only she had read the warning of Robert Graves that the Goddess “is hated by saints and sober men.”
 
She said, "You can't be a Muse and be happy, too
You can't blacken the pages with Russian poetry
And be happy"
And that scared me
 
 
This reads like a rather patriarchal and antiquated precept. But it also seems to have been Lana’s intent to embody the Goddess entirely; to be a living Muse. And now, this scares her, because her archetype is also a Goddess of Sorrows, and she stands in the way of happiness. The past years have seen her in seeming rebellion to this role as Muse, stripping away more and more layers of artifice, no longer even wearing makeup. There is a last idol to kill. The idyllic life in Arcadia where it's always 1962 under chemtrails comes to a crashing halt. She now flirts with not the Goddess in her youthful purity, but the Wild Woman, strange and free.
 
The power of youth is on my mind
Sunset, small town
I'm out of time
 
My time has run over, so the only time you'll
Ever see me is in your dreams in my black bathing suit
Lookin' at me lookin' over at you
Real cute, 'cause
He said I was bad, let me show you how bad girls do
 
Time weighs heavy. At her age, David Bowie had already released Tonight and would slide into artistic irrelevance for a decade; Kate Bush, shortly after releasing her Tropico-esque The Line, the Cross and the Curve, had already retired. The Goddess retreats to a land of dreams, but the Wild Woman carries on, and tries to have fun in the meantime.

"I can be smart when it's important. But most men don't like it."
(Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes)
 

 
 
You have to take me out of this strange trailer park life
 
In the first known performance of "Yayo" in 2006 (? Lanapedia is unreliable on this point), Lizzy stands shrouded in darkness, wearing black. The lyrics are different. Instead of "hello Heaven," we have only (if I hear right) "I think the stars are right about there, but it's gettin' there." She immediately segues into "Pawn Shop Blues". 
 

 
In 2017, “Pawn Shop Blues” became the second song from AKA to be resurrected by Lana Del Rey:
 
 
The video is highly symbolic. Lana appears as a bride, recalling the “Ultraviolence” video. Butterflies are traditionally a symbol of Psyche, the soul; her story is told in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, AKA The Golden Ass, a Platonic allegory wherein the protagonist undergoes “a long journey, literal and metaphorical… He finally finds salvation through the intervention of the goddess Isis”. Lana stands as a pregnant Goddess, Lizzy locked like Snow White in the coffin of the depths from which she must be raised. This is a slight inversion of the usual interpretation: Lana as Self as Goddess cannot be trapped, as she is eternal; she is beckoning her from a higher plane to free her limited self, as seen in Tropico. Cigarettes are the consuming fire in this hermetic vessel that cleanses a tar-black soul.
 
 
Now that we’ve established a rough chronology, it may be possible to read “Get Free” as “her story” depicting the important moments in her recent life:
 
No Kung Fu/The Ocean/Kill Kill/AKA
 
Finally
I'm crossing the threshold
From the ordinary world
To the reveal of my heart
Undoubtedly
That will for certain
Take the dead out of the sea
& the darkness from the arts
 
Born to Die

This is my commitment
My modern manifesto
I'm doing it for all of us
Who never got the chance
For Amy and for Whitney
& all my birds of paradise
Who never got to fly at night
'Cause they were caught up in the dance
 
Paradise

Sometimes it feels like I've got a war in my mind
I want to get off, but I keep riding the ride
I never really noticed that I had to decide
To play someone's game or live my own life
& now I do
I wanna move
Out of the black (out of the black!)
Into the blue (into the blue!)
 
Ultraviolence/Honeymoon

Finally
Gone is the burden
Of the Crowley way of being
That comes from energies combined
Like my part was I
Was not discerning
And you, as we found out
Were not in your right mind
 
Lust for Life
 
There's no more chasing rainbows
& hoping for an end to them
Their arches are illusions
Solid at first glance
But then you try to touch them
There's nothing to hold onto
The colors used to lure you in
& put you in a trance
 
With Lust for Life, she was, as said at the time, jolted back to reality by the Trump presidency. The songs get political, and when she sings of Lady Liberty, there is no hint of acknowledgement of her past usage. This marks the end of what could be considered her “classic” era. Now comes a desire to take off Crowley’s uniform of imagery, strip herself down and rebuild herself anew as one engaged with the world instead of sinking in the quicksand of her thoughts.
 
I go on trips with my friends to the beach who don’t know that I’m crazy.
I can do that.
I can do anything,
Even leave you…
The more I step into my poetry,
The less I will fall into being with you.
 
For the first time since boarding school (according to her), she had real friends; who cares if they’ll never truly know who you are?
 
You, in your madness
The satellite that's constellating my world
Mimicking the inner chaos that i've disowned
A mirror to my past life retribution
A reflection of my sadness...
My feet aren't on the ground
 
Repeatedly in Violet she contemplates grounding herself in the exoteric and turning away from the inner life, particularly in “Never to Heaven,” a sort of modern Ecclesiastes.
 
Norman Fucking Rockwell was a critical triumph, and it was precisely because she stripped herself of overt symbolism, instead relegating it to the lyrical margins and enigmatic images like “God in a burnt coffee pot” that she refused to explain when asked. But the message remains open on the cover and in "Mariners Apartment Complex," the medicine now sugared to go down easier:
 

 
I'm the bolt, the lightning, the thunder
Kind of girl who's gonna make you wonder
Who you are and who you've been...
Maybe I could save you from your sins
So, kiss the sky and whisper to Jesus
My, my, my, you found this, you need this
Take a deep breath, baby, let me in
You lose your way, just take my hand
You're lost at sea, then I'll command your boat to me again
Don't look too far, right where you are, that's where I am
I'm your man
 
Overwhelmingly, the critics finally understood what she was saying when discussing the mundane life, and heralded it as a new triumph in her songwriting when, in many important ways, it was a step back to May Jailer. By doing so, she lost contact with something vital, as she later confessed; suddenly the words did not flow and she turned to poetry as a form of loosening the binds of the unconscious.
 
I'm generally quite quiet
Quite a meditator, actually
I'll do very well down by Paramhansa Yogananda's realization center, I'm sure
 
 
Violet presents some insights into her inner life at this time; the old symbols had been cast away, and new symbols were being modeled. Her verses are on one page allegorical and on another literal, and one is always unsure where the lines are drawn. But when she talks directly to the city of Los Angeles or Kundalini itself, we know that those lines are often crossed. Witness where she flips the tables and refers to literal beings in allegorical terms, the without always being a reflection of the within, the archetypal role in which she is always trapped:
 
What will it take for me not to need you
so I can just have you for fun
and for who you really are
 
Not you as the savior
not me as Ophelia
not us putting our faith in the public's dark art
 
The savior needs no explanation. Ophelia—an image from Paradise, the Self submerged beneath the waters of the unconscious. The public, the dark alchemical art of criticism that tears them apart and puts them together again. ("I get a lot.")
 

 
(Source: Shirley Alvarez)
 
I acknowledged who you really were for the first time.
 
I didn’t call you by any other name, (Axl Rose? Jesus? Jim?)
I let you know that I knew the true nature of your heart.
That it was evil,
and that it convinced me that darkness was real,
That the devil is a real devil,
and that monsters don’t always know that they’re monsters.
 
But projection is an amazing thing.
After you left and burnt the house down,
You tried to convince me it was I who was holding the matches.
 
You told me I didn’t know who I was,
But I do.
 
So when we turn to these lines, is this a real person? Or is this addressed to her own Shadow Self as Dark Animus, that she rejects and yet continually falls into bed with? Is this not her husband from hell?
 
 
 
In a 2007 live rendition of “Pin-Up Galore,” she declares herself both a monster and a being not of this world. The performance is, in a word, strange; she is melancholic, but seems to possess a greater confidence.
 

 
 
The symbolism in "My Bedroom is a Sacred Place Now - There Are Children at the Foot of My Bed" would seem to actually follow that of the Tarot, where the Devil becomes the Tower, the House of Ego destroyed in that all-consuming fire. Elsewhere, she writes in one of her most overtly esoteric pieces, directly addressing the Kundalini serpent—
 
I think about the curse bestowed upon Eve
That fateful eve she took that bite of fruit from that fruitful tree.
And this summer night, you in front of me,
Makes me contemplate the origins of good and evil.
 
This recalls not the Biblical fall, but the awakening that came in the moment that Eve, obeying the serpent, plucked the fruit and attained Gnosis to both the nature of absolute darkness and absolute light (that Sparkle not of this world) in the Abyss. She contemplates if she is, in fact, cursed, having taken the Jump that changed the entire trajectory of her life. A familiar image from Paradise.
 
To shut the door on the past and step
blindly
into the abyss
no destination intact
 

 
 

 
 

 
You're only as happy as your least happy child
 
They don’t understand.
I’m a dreamer.
And I had big dreams for the country.
Not for what it could do, but how it could feel.
How it could think,
How it could dream.
 
I know.
Who am I to dream for you?
It’s just that in my own mind,
I was born with a little bit of paradise.
I was lucky in that way.
Not like my husband,
Who was born and raised in hell.
 
That bit of paradise was not necessarily Lizzy, but Lana Ray who was born on the day she died. Her husband is not strictly the devil of the outer church but akin to the Baphomet of Eliphas Levi.
 
Maybe an artist has to function a little bit above themselves
If they really want to transmit some heaven
 
 
Let me put on a show for you, tiger
 
Her work on Born to Die: The Paradise Edition is characterized by what one would almost call subliminal messages, encouraging the listener to follow her on the Path of Sylvia Plath, all the way from “Take a walk on the wild side” spoken by the Goddess through to “Come to me, baby,” the very last line of Paradise. In early interviews, she is evasive and constantly contradicts herself, as if she is hiding some big secret by claiming to have none--the source of the later backlash. She has the audacity to shave years off of her age and claim "Axl Rose Husband" was written at age 16, a bit of meaningless juvenilia, while striking every mention of that dead phantom known as Lizzy Grant; a creature produced by nature and not by Art. Damnatio memoriae. Is it vanity (years later, she did say, with perhaps some latent guilt, that she always forgets her birth year—but a woman can lie about that), or the realization that such earlier works gave away too much? She needn’t have worried, in the latter case.
 
She shrugs, putting on a ditzy Marilyn Monroe affectation, and says the songs on Born to Die are about nothing much at all, yet strangely gets upset when people treat them as meaningless. By November, the mask starts to slip, but not quite. By the time of Ultraviolence, after a year spent in cruel exile, she contradicts herself again: She doesn’t write pop songs, and never has. Those were psychological. In truth, Born to Die is a perfect and enduring pop record, camouflaged in its intent and designed to embed itself as a seed in the over-culture.
 
I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood
 
It’s apparent that she later came to view this as youthful folly, a naïveté for how little the world would understand her. Perhaps she originally planned to traffic in visions of money, power and glory as some great work of performance art that would be unveiled in Tropico, but that, too, went awry. That latent bitterness and resentment remained, and was behind her frustration that Twigs’ work was considered Art while Tropico was mocked as the work of a whore and not a poet.
 
But... lately I’ve been thinking that I wish
Someone had told me when I was younger
More about the inhabitants that thrive off of paradise.
 
That should they take too much,
There would be nothing left to give.
 
There's something in the water
I can taste it turning sour 
It's bitter
I'm coughing
But now it's in my blood
 
Lately I've been thinking 
It's just someone else's job to care 
Who am I to sympathize
When no one gave a damn
I've been thinking
It's just someone else's job to care
Who am I to want to try...
 
But my heart is very fragile,
and I have nothing left to give.
 
This rejection is what she wishes she had foreseen when younger. She grows tired of attempting to “transmit some heaven” to those who only parasitically consume. In 2019 live performances, her mind seems elsewhere, perhaps even bored. If only she had read the warning of Robert Graves that the Goddess “is hated by saints and sober men.”
 
She said, "You can't be a Muse and be happy, too
You can't blacken the pages with Russian poetry
And be happy"
And that scared me
 
 
This reads like a rather patriarchal and antiquated precept. But it also seems to have been Lana’s intent to embody the Goddess entirely; to be a living Muse. And now, this scares her, because her archetype is also a Goddess of Sorrows, and she stands in the way of happiness. The past years have seen her in seeming rebellion to this role as Muse, stripping away more and more layers of artifice, no longer even wearing makeup. There is a last idol to kill. The idyllic life in Arcadia where it's always 1962 under chemtrails comes to a crashing halt. She now flirts with not the Goddess in her youthful purity, but the Wild Woman, strange and free.
 
The power of youth is on my mind
Sunset, small town
I'm out of time
 
My time has run over, so the only time you'll
Ever see me is in your dreams in my black bathing suit
Lookin' at me lookin' over at you
Real cute, 'cause
He said I was bad, let me show you how bad girls do
 
Time weighs heavy. At her age, David Bowie had already released Tonight and would slide into artistic irrelevance for a decade; Kate Bush, shortly after releasing her Tropico-esque The Line, the Cross and the Curve, had already retired. The Goddess retreats to a land of dreams, but the Wild Woman carries on, and tries to have fun in the meantime.

I really have no idea what I was saying on the previous pages; I'll try to simplify a bit.
 
 
I think she is rather speaking of obeying the intuitive promptings of the Self, or, as she said elsewhere, "channeling angels in the New Age..." 
 
'Cause my body is my temple, my heart is one, too...
I wish you could see to my soul through this black bathing suit
You don't know me any better than they do, baby
'Cause I sing like an angel, my heart's like one, too
 
Some other choice quotes from that interview--
 
 
She references this in quite a few places and has mentioned multiple times her fascination with Carl Jung. Her music, by her own words, is depicting the interior landscape of the Self. Her songs and poems seem to flit in and out of exotericism and esotericism; witness "Paradise is Very Fragile":
 
Who am I to dream for you?
It’s just that in my own mind,
I was born with a little bit of paradise.
I was lucky in that way.
Not like my husband,
Who was born and raised in hell.
 
I always had something gentle to give.
All of me, in fact.
It’s one of the beautiful things about me.
It’s one of the beautiful things about nature....
 
Paradise is very fragile,
and it’s only getting worse.
 
And every time I think of that,
I think about the curse bestowed upon Eve
That fateful eve she took that bite of fruit from that fruitful tree.
And this summer night, you in front of me,
Makes me contemplate the origins of good and evil.
 
Because you take, and you take, and take, and you take,
But you taste like the beach and a kiss.
Candy from my eyes,
in my veins you run citrus.
 
Watercolour images of serpents on orange trees arise in my midst.
Kundalini, you breathe me.
I could do this forever.
 
But my heart is very fragile,
and I have nothing left to give.
 
What is she talking about here? She starts with a concrete picture of the Woolsey Fire; but the end is quite different. Who is her "husband"? Well, wasn't Jesus her boyfriend? Is this her Animus, in the Jungian sense? Why do serpents on orange trees arise in her "midst"? Isn't that the "heart girt with a serpent," representing the risen Kundalini? Or is it the Guns and Roses of her Axl Rose Husband? The following lines make the connection explicit. Compare to the poem by Aleister Crowley:
 
I am the Heart; and the Snake is entwined
About the invisible core of the mind.
Rise, O my snake! It is now is the hour
Of the hooded and holy ineffable flower.
Rise, O my snake, into brilliance of bloom
On the corpse of Osiris afloat in the tomb!
O heart of my mother, my sister, mine own,
Thou art given to Nile, to the terror Typhon!
Ah me! but the glory of ravening storm
Enswathes thee and wraps thee in frenzy of form.
Be still, O my soul! that the spell may dissolve
As the wands are upraised, and the æons revolve.
Behold! in my beauty how joyous Thou art,
O Snake that caresses the crown of mine heart!
 
Some sources on Yoga will claim that the Kundalini must rise to the top of the head, but this is a bit of a misconception; it is rather the vehicle of awakening the Self in the heart.
 
"The fire of Kundalini is at the base of all existence. It is the raw foundational energy that the spiritual seeker wants to cultivate, develop, or awaken, depending on which tradition or terms they use."
 
I'm on fire, baby, I'm on fire
He's got the fire and he walks with it
He's got the fire and he talks with it
His Bonnie on the side, Bonnie on the side
Makes me a sad, sad girl
 
Who is "he"? Her unseen husband? But why does it make her a sad girl? Because awakening the Kundalini is accompanied by a profound Melancholy; the Dark Night of the Soul.
 
"This is the beginning of the Nigredo process, whereby the initiate is pulverised, disintegrated, burnt to blackness. Nigredo is ‘Melancholia’; the saturnine mood is sober, sardonic, grave or sullen. This is the lead of the Alchemists. The beginning of the spiritual process."
 
Well, wasn't "Melancholia the original" "Ultraviolence" title from the Queen of Alchemy wedded to the heavy-hitting King, who once proclaimed SOLVE ET COAGULA? A song like "The Blackest Day" is about journeying into the depths of the Unconscious.
 
"For the Alchemist, the first stage of the 'Great Work' is the Nigredo, the stage of Blackness, disintegration, chaos, where the material (metal, the soul of Man, or what have you) is reduced to the 'prima materia' or formless original stuff, before it can proceed to the second stage, the Albedo (whiteness), where the material may be unified once again. The Alchemical process is circular, alternating between Solve and Coagula on its path towards perfection." (John R. Stahl)
 
The next step of the alchemical process is Albedo--the title of an interlude in 2016. And indeed, Ultraviolence finds her cooking up snow on her alchemical stove; comprehend her sure white lines. (Why is "Yayo" such a significant song for her? Why did she sell heart-shaped coke spoon necklaces?) Now compare the subject of the title track to this stage of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey:
 
"Ultraviolence" is a study in Initiation by the archetypal Father where the initiate is "pulverised, disintegrated, burnt." "Jim takes me down, he's a fire eater..." 
 
I could have died right there
'Cause he was right beside me
Jim raised me up [Mississippi South]
He hurt me but it felt like true love
Jim taught me that
Loving him was never enough
With his ultraviolence
 
Now turn to her explanation of "Get Free":
 
 
And her explanation on World Café, this is the key to getting free:
 
"I think going deeper, you know? Knowing that you're your own doorway to the answers and not looking for answers in other people."
And now I do, I wanna move
Out of the black (out of the black)
Into the blue (into the blue)
Finally, gone is the burden of the Crowley way of being
That comes from energies combined (2017)
"The Great Work is the uniting of opposites. It may mean the uniting of the soul with God, of the microcosm with the macrocosm, of the female with the male, of the ego with the non-ego." (Crowley)
Crowley's works were based on the western tradition of Hermetic alchemy...among other things.
I'm crossing the threshold
From the ordinary world
To the reveal of my heart
Undoubtedly
That will for certain
Take the dead out of the sea
And the darkness from the arts
"For as thy blood is mingled in the cup of BABALON, so is thine heart the universal heart." (Crowley)
The "threshold" is in Crowley's system a crossing of the Abyss; the "energies combined" are the alchemical King and Queen, or Fire and Water, Animus and Anima. The arts are, of course, the Hermetic arts; in one live performance, she replaces "arts" with heart, where the transformation takes place in the core of being.
After 2017, it seems like she made a deliberate decision, as stated in "Get Free," to focus more on the realities of her day-to-day life and less on mysticism (out of the black, into the blue). Her songs since then seem to lack the overt symbolism of her previous work, trying to find paradise in the mundane. "Life is beautiful, but you don't have a clue."

"I am certainly of opinion that genius can be acquired" (Crowley)
 
Listening to Lana's early work, there is a marked transformation that occurs around 2007. On Sirens ca. 2005-2006, we have "diaristic" songs about life as it is; it is rightly called juvenilia. It is interesting to chart her development with her lyrics. One of the earliest tracks to show her new development is, appropriately, "Pawn Shop Blues"—its first performance was in May, 2006:
 
In the name of higher consciousness
I let the best man I knew go
'Cause it's nice to love and be loved
But it's better to know all you can know
Said it's nice to love and be loved
But I'd rather know what God knows

Oh-no, oh-no, oh-no, oh-no, oh-no
I can't do this once more
No man can keep me together
Been broken since I was born
 
So her mindset in this period is clear. She has entered a sort of seclusion to "know" God, in the Gnostic sense. 
 
Then in early 2007:
 
It's the voodoo Mississippi south
Sixty-nine million stars
Birds are comin' out of my mouth
Spirits creepin' in my yard
Oh, my head, it's tiltin' back
Something's dancin' me around
Puttin' crystals on my neck
Liftin' my toes off the ground, ah-ah-ahh, ground, ah-ha-ah-ah
Rai-rai-rai-raise me up
 
A great change in her lyrics is already seen; the imagery is rich and figurative. The Melancholia of "Pawn Shop Blues" is followed by a sort of resurrection—"Jim raised me up". Then a theme emerges:

I am my only God now
 
Baby, I have become someone
A monster, hey, yeah, yeah
Baby, I've become someone
Not of this world, hey, yeah, yeah (cf. "Maha Maha")
 
I remember we came in May
And we changed our names to Lana and Ray
 
Lizzy has become Lana Ray, someone not of this world; the truest expression of who she is "on the inside." Somewhere in this time period, she writes "Yayo," which she has said depicts a pivotal moment in her life. Its first performance is June 14, 2007, appropriately before a performance of "Pawn Shop Blues". When she re-records the song for Paradise, it is the connecting link between "Gods and Monsters" and "Bel Air"—the necessary transition from hell to heaven.
 
You have to take me right now
From this dark trailer park life now...
Hello, Heaven, you are a tunnel lined
With yellow lights on a dark night
 
Palm trees in black and white
Was the last thing I saw before I died
Bright light, right man
Right mixture of cocaine and heroin

All that's real to me is Marilyn and Jesus
Jumpin' off'a bridges, sparklers and streamers, honey
I wanna die (fly), I wanna die (fly), I wanna die (fly)
 
A death and rebirth. A jump into the Abyss. Visions of a tropical Paradise. The alchemical mixture of elements ("energies combined"); figuratively cocaine (white) and heroin (black?). Marilyn and Jesus, archetypal forms from an eternal reality.

You my Axl Rose husband
Blue hydrangea
White Pontiac Heaven
Me, your red, white, and blue girl
Star-spangled danger
 
Now a richly-textured archetypal interior world emerges, entirely her own: the white car in heaven (seen in the "West Coast" video). Lana as the embodiment of America. The pun of "heavy metal" and alchemical metals. The men she most adores now become figures of her Animus that represent the alchemical King in the coniunctio. "At night I fell asleep with visions of myself dancing and laughing and crying with them..."

You, my heavy metal king, king
I said, "Daddy, I need you" (Yes)
Greenwich, I need you
Strangled up in ivy
I'm the garden of Eden
Lady Liberty
Teal with flame I'm shinin'
Queen, queen
You're my one king, daddy
I'm your little queen, red, white, and blue
 
(Cf. 2009: You can be my higher power, baby
I can be your empress USA)
 
I can be your 4th of July
Gimme that, gimme that, gimme that crystal meth, love
Because
Feels like sugar in me
 
Lana, or the temple that is her body and heart, becomes America and the Garden of Eden as the fertile earth (an image repeated in "Arcadia") in which Paradise is revealed, figuratively impregnated by a deity or Animus figure. Says Crowley, the Empress "is fitted to represent one of the three alchemical forms of energy, Salt. Salt is the inactive principle of Nature; Salt is matter which must be energized by Sulphur to maintain the whirling equilibrium of the Universe." Crystal meth as the alchemical Elixir: "This liquor is the Amrita of the Indian philosophers, the Nepenthe and Ambrosia of the Greeks, the Alkahest and Universal Medicine of the Alchemists, the Blood of the Grail; or, rather, the nectar which is the mother of that blood" (Crowley). Refer again to "Paradise is Very Fragile":
 
But you taste like the beach and a kiss.
Candy from my eyes,
in my veins you run citrus.
Watercolor images of serpents on orange trees arise in my midst.
Kundalini, you breathe me.

Fast forward to 2009:
 
I got that magical trance potion
Gotta leave, I can't wait 'til I'm older
 
2012:
 
Gargoyles standing at the front of your gate (= "Spirits creepin' in my yard")
Trying to tell me to wait, but I can’t wait to see you
So I run like I'm mad to Heaven’s door
I don’t wanna be bad, I won’t cheat you no more
Roses, Bel Air
Take me there
I’ve been waiting to meet you
Palm trees in the light
I can see late at night
Darling, I’m waiting to greet you
Come to me, baby
Spotlight, bad baby, you’ve got a flair
For the violentest kind of love anywhere out there
 
A summation of her Work so far; the great reveal at the end of Paradise that the fallen girl in "Gods and Monsters" has already been redeemed, and asks others to follow her. Ultraviolence is foreshadowed. Violent love that offers resurrection. 
 
2014:
 
They say I'm too young to love you
I don't know what I need
They think I don't understand
The freedom land of the 70s
 
At about the age of 21, almost unheard of in someone so young, something happened to Elizabeth Grant; something that she will not discuss openly even now, as it is impossible to describe in straightforward words—"an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn't even talk about it." This something changed the whole of her life to such an extent that she changed her name, changed her hair to suit the truth of her new interior reality ("the mood of your soul"), and transformed her songwriting into allegorical poetry. I hope this provides some insight into the true depth of her art, even in the earliest material.
 
You never liked the way I said it
If you don't get it, then forget it
'Cause I don't have to fucking explain it