LA Who Am I To Love You

[Chemtrail 3,137]

10 hours ago, RormanNockwell said:

The book version is slightly different to the spoken version (again, spoiler, because I know most people don't have it yet)

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Instead of:

The city not quite awake, the city not quite asleep
The city that's still deciding how good it can be

It's:

The city not quite awake

The city not quite asleep

The city that's something else - something in between

The city that's still deciding

How good it should be

 

And instead of:

Not you at your worst
Totally on fire, unlivable, unbreathable, I need you
You see, I have no mother

It's:

Not you at your worst-

Totally on fire, unlivable, unbreathable

I don't deserve you at all

You see - you have a mother

 

 

 

Those last two lines are so sad

[Ultradealerence 5,312]

The song was taken down from Spotify?

[past the bushes 30,940]

2 minutes ago, May Fucking Jailer said:

The song was taken down from Spotify?

Audiobook surprise releasing on Spotify tonight 

[Formation 4,205]

22 minutes ago, May Fucking Jailer said:

The song was taken down from Spotify?

the fact that this type of mess does not surprise me at all

[99centlips 8,526]

after watching the Paris Hilton documentary the "can I come home now?" in this poem make me so sad..

 

(if it really is about her boarding school trauma)

[rhubysyrup 4,502]

“Took a freeride off a billionaire's jet“

https://images.app.goo.gl/aZP6LgHDGTnbR3Pa9

The guy in the middle is a famous billionaire who was friends w her dad and they took a ride on his private jet. May be a reference to it! 
 

[wildflowerwildfire 6,860]

anyone know why VBBOTG was released on spotify at first but then after a while it was taken down? 

[Distantly 3,931]

34 minutes ago, wildflowerwildfire said:

anyone know why VBBOTG was released on spotify at first but then after a while it was taken down? 

I’m assuming promo for the project. Then once it released they must’ve had contacts with audio book companies that only allowed it on their platforms since it is indeed an audio book so they removed it. 

[Yosemite 23,788]

Fuck the New York Post

[ImenaOphelia 9,663]

tbh this poem on vinyl>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.this poem on cd/readen. Idk, it gives a vibe of vinyl

[cherryblossoms 10,432]

Note: edited for clarity.

I haven’t heard anyone talk about this line:

“Back home to the Tudor house that borned a thousand murder plots”

 

maybe it’s obvious to the point that there wasn’t really a need to really analyze it but-

The way ‘plots’ is used in this line reads to me as plots of land. ‘Murder plots’ and the picture is pretty clear.

It’s possible that the house in question may just be built on top of land that has some negative historical significance unrelated to Lana.

But the way Lana mentioned looking more into her family tree, the concept of karmic lineage and her commitment to projects acting as sort of reparations to Native American communities makes me wonder if there’s an underlying motivation based on more personal factors.

I mean, we know Lana comes from a pretty WASP-y background so it’s not hard to imagine she might’ve discovered possible ancestry that may have been involved in something like slavery or some other unjust events that took place in the US’ distant past.

So the idea of her having negative karmic lineage as mentioned in Black Bathing Suit for example and in this context would make a lot of sense.

Anyways, it’s a semi controversial take and want to reiterate its purely speculative and not based on any public information we know of, at least at the moment.

[The Sun Also Rises 5,863]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this before, but I read "America" by Allen Ginsberg for the first time today and it became clear to me that LA Who Am I to Love You is a reference to it: 

You can read America here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49305/america-56d22b41f119f 
WARNING, the poem has some ethnic slurs mentioned, proceed with caution 

 

Or here: 

Spoiler

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.

America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.   

I can’t stand my own mind.

America when will we end the human war?

Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.

I don’t feel good don’t bother me.

I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.

America when will you be angelic?

When will you take off your clothes?

When will you look at yourself through the grave?

When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?

America why are your libraries full of tears?

America when will you send your eggs to India?

I’m sick of your insane demands.

When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?

America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.   

Your machinery is too much for me.

You made me want to be a saint.

There must be some other way to settle this argument.   

Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister.   

Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?   

I’m trying to come to the point.

I refuse to give up my obsession.

America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.

America the plum blossoms are falling.

I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder.

America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.

America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I’m not sorry.   

I smoke marijuana every chance I get.

I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.   

When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.   

My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.

You should have seen me reading Marx.

My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.

I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer.

I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.

America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.

I’m addressing you.

Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?   

I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.

I read it every week.

Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.   

I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.

It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.   

It occurs to me that I am America.

I am talking to myself again.

 

Asia is rising against me.

I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance.

I’d better consider my national resources.

My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that jetplanes 1400 miles an hour and twentyfive-thousand mental institutions.

I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.

I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.

My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I’m a Catholic.

 

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?

I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they’re all different sexes.

America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe

America free Tom Mooney

America save the Spanish Loyalists

America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die

America I am the Scottsboro boys.

America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor the Silk-strikers’ Ewig-Weibliche made me cry I once saw the Yiddish orator Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy.

America you don’t really want to go to war.

America its them bad Russians.

Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.   

The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages.

Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.

That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.   

America this is quite serious.

America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.   

America is this correct?

I’d better get right down to the job.

It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.

America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

 

We know Allen Ginsberg is one of Lana's favorite poets, but the connections are undeniable here even without any references she had previously made to his work. Knowing this just enriches this poem even more for me now! 

Edited January 11 by The Sun Also Rises
Edit: Added a warning about ethnic slurs in the poem

[duemyeu 10]

On 7/27/2020 at 7:50 PM, Beautiful Loser said:

Omg what is this, I-

 

I did not expect this. "I'm an orphan" If she really means it, she must have felt really alone and unimportant to her family or her parents sometime, or maybe it's just her mom. I can hear the sadness, confusion and frustration when I'm reading this. And even thought I can never understand what she's feeling, she somehow makes it very easy to understand what she's trying to say.

I really like this poem!

I think maybe Lana meaning that her is down from sky, so "I'm an orphan"