litewave

Profound and cute at the same time.

Excuse me but what is the number for this hotline? I'd like to add it to speed dial. To be announced soon. By Lana.

April 1st - next year.

Even though these times can feel a little bit crazy, they are not so very different from what other generations have experienced at one time or another before.

That peace sign did look kinda sinister... Turns out that besides representing the letters N and D (for "nuclear disarmament") in the semaphore alphabet, the sign is also a runic symbol for death of man and the circle represents the unborn child. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_symbols#The_peace_symbol Doesn't help to resolve the ambiguity of the video. The message seems to be a mixture of joy and the need for vigilance.

Yeah, false prophets trying to predict the date of the Queen's coming. That day will come like a thief in the night, so pray, fast, drink cherry cola and be ready!

The Queen is not slow in keeping her promise, as some understand slowness. Instead she is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance!

I smell a present-past, West-East theme.

Blanche in black.

Indeed, it just got knocked out of top 5 by Croatia.

https://www.oddschecker.com/tv/eurovision/winner

So in addition to Italy, this is another song that explicitely takes a swipe at Western civilization. Italy's song is more fun though

Belgium's entry is so Lana... the music, the lyrics, and also the performance lol

I just saw The Weeknd's video for his song I Feel It Coming. It came out a few weeks after Lana's Love video and has similar cosmic, otherwordly visuals with eclipses/syzygies. The Weeknd is alone on some dark planet when a being of light arrives, turns into a woman and they start dancing together. However, a parallel visual of a progressing eclipse shows the light body being gradually "eaten up" by the dark body and at the moment of total eclipse the woman turns into stone. Then The Weeknd starts turning into stone too, as a snake appears crawling on the ground. In the past times an eclipse was viewed as a dramatic bad omen, a herald of a disaster. It is one of the apocalyptic signs in the New Testament too. The term "eclipse" is derived from an ancient Greek word that means "the abandonment", "the downfall", or "the darkening of a heavenly body". But from a more neutral perspective the phenomenon can also be seen as a symbol for a union of opposites (an alignment of a light body and a dark body) that creates a grander reality.

Wow, very interesting post, Stargirl. This is a nice expression of how I view Lana too. I have not read Childhood's End but from the plot summary on Wikipedia it seems that the unification of the children eventually reached an extreme stage where their individual identities merged and stopped existing. I don't think this is what Lana would desire though, as she does care about human individuality (ego). Individuality and diversity are important, for creativity, consciousness and true fulfilment, but so is unity. Without sufficient unity the society as well as individual minds would fall apart. So the goal is some sort of healthy balance between the individual and the collective. Unity in diversity, like in the Gaia hypothesis. There is something both wise and adorable about Lovelock's Daisyworld model!

Oh... I didn't think of it this way, but I imagine a robot/logician might interpret her words like that lol. To me she seemed surprised. Assuming that she genuinely didn't know about Peg's suicide, I can imagine that guided by her aesthetic and spirituality she took the H as a symbol for a ladder to heaven and she was aware that despite its promise something might go wrong there, something regarding spiritual corruption (perhaps inspired by the Led Zeppelin classic Stairway to Heaven). Lyrics like "we are the masters of our own fate" or "boy we're gold" might be innocent or they might indicate a somewhat overblown ego. "Dancing on the H till we run out of breath/till we die" might suggest a gentle warning. She might have been unaware that Peg's suicide on the H dramatically underlined the darker element of the song.

Lana has just denied knowing of the Peg Entwistle story: If she really didn't know about it then this looks like an example of synchronicity, a meaningful coincidence that Carl Jung posited is mediated by the collective unconscious or a deeper order of the world.

Just to remind ya'll that these interpretations don't deny the obvious or literal ones but rather parallel them... Here goes another one. Lust for Life Lana revisits the Hollywood theme, which metaphorically refers to time (movies/stories) and fame, all this set in a larger, timeless whole (the name of the A-ha song "Minor Earth Major Sky" comes to mind). Lust for Life is a brisk and optimistic song but it also has an implicit darker side. Although it celebrates life, passion and self confidence, it also hints at a tragedy connected with the H of the Hollywood sign - the actress Peg Entwistle, who committed suicide by jumping from the H. The notion of a ladder has been pointed out as significant by the director of the album trailer and besides there being a ladder attached to the H (as well as to the other letters of the Hollywood sign), the letter H itself looks like a section of a ladder, with the horizontal piece in the middle as a rung. Towering above the earthly West Coast "city of angels" (associated with the "entrance to the underworld" in Tropico), the ladder may symbolize a connection between the earth and heaven known as Jacob's Ladder, which appeared in a dream of the biblical figure Jacob, with angels ascending and descending on it. Lana also referred to this notion a day before the release of Lust for Life when she posted a short clip on Instagram of a little song of hers in which she sings that she would trade everything for a stairway to heaven and take her time as she climbed up to top of it. But when you are on a ladder and you are not vigilant there is the danger of falling. According to Abrahamic religions as well as esoteric accounts of man's origin there was a major spiritual fall at some point in the past, when man lost contact with heaven/God and got mired on earth. His consciousness closed, as the narrowly focused ego became separated from the heaven-oriented soul. What followed is the human history as we know it. Through the arc of long and often arduous history, the fallen ego was gradually revived and lifted from the caves to the age of space flights and the internet. And so the soul's partner is back, Stargirl and Starboy reunited. But watch out, Lana is hanging out on top of the H with a self-proclaimed "King of the Fall". The word "fall" has a double meaning. One meaning is the season of the fall (autumn), as evidenced in The Weeknd's fall tours. After his first international tour in spring 2012 followed the fall tours: The Weeknd Fall Tour (2012), The Weeknd Kiss Land Fall Tour (2013), King of the Fall (2014), and The Madness Fall Tour (2015). In the song Starboy he aptly mentions: "I come alive in the fall time". His latest tour is titled Starboy: Legend of the Fall Tour, even though it is scheduled to last from February to July 2017, so it refers either to his already established status as the "legend" from the past seasonal fall tours, or to the second meaning of the word "fall". The second meaning of "the fall" is spiritual and is reflected in the general content of his songs: fame and decadence. In the song The Fall, he sings about falling to the ground, and in Starboy he also refers to the Brad Pitt movie Legends of the Fall. The title of this movie seems ambiguous: imdb says that it refers to the biblical fall from innocence, although "the Fall" part was translated as the season (autumn) in countries such as Sweden and France, while in Germany and Spain it was translated as "Passion". Anyway, even in the season of the fall we can find a spiritual meaning: the season is connected with harvest, which in a New Testament parable signifies the end of the age when the righteous are "ripe" for entering heaven and the "wheat" is separated from the "chaff". With man's individuality and consciousness revived, his capacity for self-destruction is restored too. Although we now have a history to learn from, will it be sufficient to prevent another fall?

As long as no one falls from the H.

I generally recommend not taking commercials too seriously. No one is seriously suggesting that Pepsi or Kendall Jenner will solve social problems. It's just a Pepsi ad coupled with the idea of a bridge between people and the transformation of a self-absorbed model into an active citizen, with a bit of playfulness.

The ladder might be another reference to Peg Entwistle - the girl had to climb the ladder attached to the H before jumping to her death. There might be some more general symbolism about the danger of falling after climbing to a top... The ladder may also symbolize Jacob's ladder, a connection between heaven and earth. Lana's ghostly appearance and position above the city indicate she is in the heavenly realm.

The sand in the hourglass has almost run out, indicating the end of an "era". The symmetric shape of an hourglass may also symbolize a duality (feminine/masculine, heaven/earth...), with emphasis shifting between the two orientations with the passage of time. The chalice is used in both Wiccan and Christian rites. In Wicca it is the Great Rite, which Wikipedia says is performed "when the coven is in need of powerful spiritual intervention to help them through a difficult time". In Christianity it is the Eucharist, which invokes the presence of Christ. The chalice may also represent the Holy Grail from medieval legends, the goal of spiritual quests.

Lana is holding a spinning globe and the hourglass says the time is almost up. The chalice is used in Christian and Wiccan rituals to invoke divine presence or energy (Eucharist and Great Rite).

New singer from Belgium. This is her first song - Belgium's entry for Eurovision 2017. Nice Lanaesque synthpop.