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RetroBlog: A Night With Lady Gaga - Post MonsterBall Reflections
Date: 10/04/10
Last night was the final show for Australian fans to get a glimpse of the self-dubbed ‘Mother Monster’ in the last show of the Australian leg of her Monster Ball tour.
Let me try to give you a visual here. As the lights dimmed, a white screen unraveled, portraying a short film containing various shots of GaGa posing while her dress fluttered about at various speeds, all to Vandalism’s remix of Ce Ce Penistons hit ‘Finally’.
After the film finished, the opening notes to ‘Dance in the Dark’ struck up, & a silhouette of the real GaGa (presumably) was revealed to the audience. The atmosphere was electric: every time GaGa changed poses, the crowd only seemed to scream louder (if that was possible). The entire song was performed behind the white canvas, which when finally lifted the Monster Ball officially begun.
But why am I giving you a play-by-play of the introduction to this incredible show? I need to show you what I saw, so I can tell you how I feel now – the day after.
You would think I would be ecstatic that I saw one of my biggest idols right in front of my eyes, hearing her voice resounding about the room as it was launched from within her, jumping with excitement at every jerk and twitch in her incredible choreography. And I am, but there is also something else.
After the film Avatar was released, there was a spate of online reports that fans from all over the world had become depressed, even suicidal, due to the beauty of the planet Pandora where the film was set. An online forum was set up for fans to deal with the separation anxiety they felt, which received over 1,000 separate posts.
Now I’m not feeling suicidal, but I definitely understand the sense of sadness after being immersed in a brilliant and romanticised reality. I think for me, it’s the sense that I’m returning to my casual job, to my broken car, to my unclear career that appears now as grey and undefined in comparison to the spectacular I witnessed last night.
GaGa said last night that she “created the Monster Ball as a place for (her) fans to go, a place where (they) can be anything (they) want to be.” Coming back to my reality, there are things such as my job, my financial situation, cultural pressures & other things that prevent me from truly expressing myself. I think it’s this sense that the world that Lady GaGa presented, a world where I can truly express myself in the purest form, in comparison with my relatively gray, restrained life, that is the source of my sadness.
This notion is mirrored in the sentiments posed up on the Avatar forums by depressed fans:
“When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed … gray. It was like my whole life, everything I’ve done and worked for, lost its meaning,” – Ivar Hill.
Another source coins the term ‘Post-Concert Depression’, on Evanescence fan site ‘Evthreads’.
User ‘Whiteforest’ defines PCD as:
PCDS can evolve from these different stages:
1. Days/weeks/months before the concert, you may feel completely normal. You look forward to the concert and know it is approaching and you are excited, but you feel nothing special
2. The morning/day of the concert, you may experience what is known as PCE, or Pre-Concert Excitement (also known as pre-high) – you may become surged with adrenaline.
3. Moments before the concert, you may appear calm on the surface but underneath your heart beats faster and faster, and soon the PCE will erupt from within you.
4. During the concert, you are in a place of complete bliss. You smile excessively and pump the metal-horns constantly while singing/screaming the lyrics along with the singer. You become filled with extreme emotion from seeing the band just a few feet in front of you, and you are absorbed into the “concert atmosphere” – the music pulses through your entire body and you forget about everything else in the world.
5. Immediately after the concert, you are excessively high (in terms of Evanescence, Evhigh) in a natural and wonderful way. You may run around completely hyper, still reciting songs from the band, acting goofy with your friends. You appear strange to non-concertgoers. (However, if you do meet the band, you do not exhibit any of these symptoms so as not to weird them out).
6. The day after the concert, you may still be trembling with excitement and happiness. You tell of your awesome experience to anyone who would listen, although most of them don’t care. If you have autographs and/or pictures, you most definitely show them off. (Note: for some, PCDS may begin to set in).
7. Days or weeks after the concert, you experience PCDS…
Now there are many factors that could trigger PCDS: such as fulfilling your life purpose of seeing and/or meeting your favorite band, having such an awesome time that you are dreading going back to the tedious flow of everyday life, or (in our case) it was the last time you would see that band for a while.
Symptoms include: sadness, an increase in obsession with the band that you are missing (such as listening to nothing but their music), partial amnesia (the inability to remember every little thing that happened at the concert or even remembering things that never happened), and regret (for not seizing every available opportunity such as staying after get autographs or meet the band). Regret can also set in for no apparent reason.
For some, PCDS can start almost immediately after the concert while others it can start hours afterwards. However, PCDS does affect almost everyone who attends a concert for a band they really love. PCDS can last anywhere from only a few days to weeks or months, or until the band you are missing emerges again. PCDS is not known to be permanent and while it does fade away for most, for some it only worsens.
I think once I return to the normal swing of everyday life, & as time moves further away from the event, I’ll feel better. Right now I think instead of feeling depressed about my life, I need to be thinking positive, taking inspiration from GaGa, rather than feeling sad that I’m not part of the free world that she lives in. In fact, it’s the opposite – and that’s what GaGa is trying to tell her fans. By being apart of the Monster Ball, even if we aren’t still there, we can take that liberation she has demonstrated within herself & apply it to our own lives. It’s that liberation which is an extension of my own ideas, so maybe in order to make my life less bland in comparison I should start making some changes.
Maybe that’s what I need to take from my state of PCD: instead of wishing I were back at the Monster Ball, perhaps I should be making my life more like the Monster Ball. I need to take Lady GaGa’s inspirational message, & use it to reaffirm my own. Strive for that pure individual form that I envisage in a world where the problems that affect me now become even more diluted than I currently try to make them. Yes, I think some changes are on the horizon. Thank you, Lady GaGa.
~ DkD.
