Lady Gaga and Mozart

I've heard that Lady Gaga made more money than Oprah last year. Lady Gaga???That cartoonish singer-dancer-performer who'll do anything to get our attention...words fail me...entertainer????

Well, there it is. Like it or not, the woman has become an icon of our age.

Before you dismiss this bit of information as frivolous, picture Mozart ambling along the streets of Europe and overhearing some one whistling one of his melodies from a newly launched opera. During his day, you see, for many people Mozart's music was the music of the day. His gorgeous, unforgettable melodies, his divinely inspired creations were the material of the contemporary music world.

His brilliant creations reflect his time on earth. As the world learned in the movie Amadeus, he had a deeply complex relationship with his stern  sometimes standoffish father.

Mozart, however, when he wasn't composing, loved to be out and about. Though the movie may have exaggerated Mozart's buffoonery, if you read the composer's letters and biographies, you soon learn he was a very fun loving and earthy man. A man who loved his wife and children, enjoyed the banter of his fellow artists, a good drink and a good time.

Mozart was very much a part of his society at every level. Having performed before the royal courts from a very young age, he had no illusions about the very real human nature of the nobility. He was as familiar with the high and mighty as he was with the common man, and his creations reflect his profound understanding of the human condition.  Though he died at thirty five, he was indeed more than an eighteenth century icon. His greatness extends to our present times.

Dare I, at 80, evaluate Lady Gaga as an icon and a mirror of our present society? Well, why not? At the risk of incurring the snickers of the young, I'm going to plunge my pc keys into her bizarre persona and try to shed some light on her mind bending success.

Yes, this old lady admits to being shocked to my Berkenstocks by the publicity antics of  Lady Gaga. The Lady's dressing in raw meat fillets and wearing turquoise wigs of varying design has me doing a doubletake of disbelief. "Huh," I say to myself, "What is this world coming to?"

Why does such weird behavior appeal to so many fans? I guess I should know by now that the whippersnappers of today love to invert the perceptions and language of the past. A dress they like is said to be "crazy hot" or simply "insane".

"Cool" is one of those long lived superlatives that continues to be meaningful, but such carryovers from the past are pretty rare. Those whippersnappers want to make it clear that it's a new world we're living in. The language of the past isn't capable of conveying the truth of the present.

One of the obstacles that I have to overcome is my strong tendency toward romanticism. I loved Doris Day and even liked to think I was  a little like her. While I was on my honeymoon, I stopped in the hotel gift shop in search of something for  a knickknack shelf. To my delight I spied a couple of loving ceramic bunnies with four itsy bitsy baby bunnies and was overcome with a need to have them.

I identified the shiny white bunny with pink ears with myself and I identified my husband with the affectionate brown bunny. Two of the teeny ceramic baby bunnies were white and two of them were brown. What a perfect treasure to display in our living room!

Over the years of raising four children,( two boys and two girls), those ceramic bunnies lost some of their ears and tails, but I still have the tiny, partially broken  statues. They are sweet symbols of our romantic dreams. Throughout our marriage my husband and I would call each other brown bunny and white bunny respectively when we were feeling especially romantic, and we signed any cards we exchanged by our bunny names. If this is too saccharin for you, you may leave the room!

The music of our  youth included many styles, but most had lyrics that you could understand just by listening to the song itself. Even our  novelty pop songs like "Two Little Fishies in an Itty Bitty Pool" could be learned by listening to the singer. We knew what we were singing about. Today this is rarely true. Could this possibly be because life now seems so hard to figure out??

Lady Gaga's songs, when I look up the lyrics, seem to me to usually reflect an ironic look at life and love, a look  which, in turn, appears to express the prevailing attitude of the public. As such her music is  art. Art is the artist's mirror held up to life, and life is partially molded by art. Yes, this lady fuddy duddy understands the success of Lady Gaga. Yet I worry about this old world that seems in many cases to laugh at romantic love.

Mozart's incredibly glorious works are worlds away from the pop creations of Lady Gaga. However, to me, Mozart expresses the perfect balance of romance and harsh reality. That is why I chose him as a foil for this comparison.

He began to create his art at a very young age, but he only lived to be 35. Lady Gaga is 25. It should be interesting to see if she veers away from the super sensational. She tells her fans that she is currently hard at work on her next creations.  I'll be on the lookout.