Gaga's Hell Piano

A few weeks ago, my awesome friend Tinah Lai introduced me to the world of the NASA Datanauts. It's an amazing program that NASA is doing right now, to encourage girls to explore the data science frontier through classes, fellowships and apps. Tinah got a group of friends together to show us how to put together a keyboard using some foam core, circuit boards and a mobile app. When you connect it to your smart phone via Bluetooth, you can push the keys and sound FX will play on your phone. I'm talking sound FX...from space!! Everyone assured me that the sound FX were from NASA's vast archives, but I'm pretty sure that we made contact with extraterrestrial beings and now they're super excited to come to Earth and hang out with us.

We also got to decorate our keyboards, and mine of course ended up featuring one of my Post Modern Muses. And who better to communicate with space via keyboard than Lady Gaga?? I'm calling the device Gaga's Hell Piano

It's directly inspired by her extraordinary performance of "Paparazzi" on Saturday Night Live way back in 2009. With its fierce scarlet lighting, flames in the foreground, and Gaga and her backup dancers' red leather ensembles...I'm pretty sure this performance metaphorically takes place in hell. I have my theories about what this all means symbolically, but I'll spare you all from a 400+ paged dissertation.

 

Gaga Ooh La La

As if it were any surprise, my ultimate Post Modern Muse is my long lost fraternal twin sister Lady Gaga. The amount of creativity and boldness that bursts out of her on a daily basis is staggering. Madonna (dare I mention her name in this post) changes her image every couple of years, but Gaga does it every couple of hours. And it's more often than not with sharp wit, a hidden message and a ton of make-up. Her music videos are always an event, mini-movies that explode with high concept. Her live performances are a sight to behold, with enormous elaborate sets and relentless choreography. But when she sits at a piano (which is sometimes on fire, but still), all she needs is her full voice and musical genius to back her crazy sh*# up.

So with all that said (and seeing as how I've listened to each of her songs an almost unhealthy amount of times), it's clear that Lady Gaga is the Post Modern Muse answer to Euterpe, the Ancient Greek Muse of Music. I must admit choosing her outfit was daunting, but I had to go with my absolute favorite performance of hers...or anyone's who has ever performed ever. It's her remixed version of "Paparazzi" on SNL in 2009. Unfortunately, the video of it has been pulled from the interwebs for copyright reasons...but hopefully NBC releases it again somehow, because it is awe-inspiring! Here's an image of her costume at least: