Lana Del ReyLACMA: Art and Film Gala, Los Angeles, USA - 03 Nov 2018

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Lana Del Rey's been dating Sean Larkin for at least a few months now, and as of this week the two have gone Instagram official.

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Larkin is a cop based in Tulsa who stars on the show PD Cam and works as an analyst for the series Live PD. Naturally, some fans have taken issues with Larkin's profession. Much of Del Rey's fanbase is comprised of people who understand that there's a huge problem with police brutality, the prison industrial complex, and systemic racism in this country.

When asked whether she was worried about the public's response to Larkin's career choice, Del Rey said, "Well, the thing is, he's a good cop. He gets it. He sees both sides of things."

But which "both sides of things" are we talking about? Are these the "both sides" that Donald Trump saw in the fine people in Charlottesville? Are these the "both sides" that Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden supporters are reaching out to and that Hillary Clinton allegedly appealed to? It would be nice to think that Del Rey was just referring to the "both sides" that Joni Mitchell has seen now, but as many of us know, there is no such thing as neutrality in a system built on oppression, and that wide-eyed centrist apolitical idealism very often hides apathy, which is essentially taking the side of the oppressor.

All that said, it would be tempting to think that Larkin may be aware of at least some of this, but that seems...doubtful. Apparently Larkin is very invested in defending his profession and exonerating his fellow policemen, and he's even working on a book about officers who were "falsely accused of misconduct or criminal activity."

All of Sean Larkin's actions reveal that he's probably very proud of being a police officer and has no interest in addressing the profession's racist, violent DNA. If being a cop wasn't enough, Larkin is literally the star of a cop reality TV show, which Vulturedescribed as "the distillation of a toxic combination of corporate interest and state propaganda." Criticisms of Live PD and its forefather Cops have often noted that these live cop shows target (and sensationalize the punishment of) poor people, people of color, and people with mental health issues, among other vulnerable groups. These are of course the same groups that wind up in prisons, stuck in self-fulfilling prophecies of suffering, and televising their crimes helps absolutely no one.

Some people have argued that live cop cam TV shows help hold the police accountable, but thus far this has not been the case. Since it began, Live PD has faced much negative press, including two lawsuits for police brutality, and one of its officers has been arrested for domestic violence—and it's hard to say how many cases have been swept under the rug, simply because the people that the police tend to victimize often don't have the ability to fight for their rights. According to The Appeal, "Police may like the ride-along TV arrangement, but they, and the city councils that ostensibly regulate them, work for residents, up to and including the disproportionately poor who are used by these programs as cheap entertainment fodder––to say nothing of the families of those whose murders and rapes are used to titillate the viewing public."

Remember that earlier this month, George Zimmerman—who literally killed Trayvon Martin—was not only exonerated. He is now suing Martin's family for over $100 million. Remember that in 2018, 1,164 civilians were killed by police; meanwhile, as police brutality continues, convictions for officers have plummeted by over 90%, with only 2% of officers who killed civilians that year facing criminal action. Meanwhile, though they make up 37% of the United States population, racial minorities made up 68% of people killed by the police in 2018, according to Vox. In 2019, theLos Angeles Postreported that 1 in 1,000 young black men can expect to die at the hands of police. The statistics go on and on.

In light of all this, Sean Larkin is calling himself a "full-time popo" and has decided that now is definitely the time to write a book about police officers who were falsely accused of misconduct or criminal activity. This is partly why it's disappointing to many fans that Lana Del Rey has chosen to date a cop without at least saying something in support of Black Lives Matter or showing some awareness of the implications of her new relationship. (There's also the fact that prisons in America are veritable hellscapes and mass incarceration is, as Michelle Alexander writes, "a massive system of racial and social control").

As a longtime Lana Del Rey fan, it does pain me to write this article. Then again, what did we expect? Though she is undeniably super-talented, Lana has never been exactly "woke" or far-left. She's open about this, calling herself a "simple singer" in defense of her decision to perform in Israel/Palestine (against the advice of the more anti-Palestine Roger Waters) and writing songs with titles like, "When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing."

Still, it's easy to see radical and visionary themes in her music and persona, especially after she came out strongly against Donald Trump wrote an entire song about ending gun violence (see: "Looking for America")—but she's never been entirely politically correct. Her music exists in a dream space outside of reality, in a world of all-consuming love and Americana illusions and, yes, a lot of very bad men with guns.



MUSIC

Kali Uchis Dances on Her Own with "Solita"

The singer's first new music since Isolation is also her first bilingual song.

Photo by: fpvmat / Unsplash

Though she has an impressive roster of collaborators, including Vince Staples, Steve Lacy, and Tyler, the Creator, being alone is kind of Kali Uchis' thing.

The Colombian-American singer made waves with her debut LP, last year's eclectic pop odyssey Isolation, and she's continuing to run with the theme of solitude. Her new single "Solita"—which translates to "alone"—sees the singer facing the strenuous task of peeling away from a toxic relationship, a romance that's better off terminated. She's happier dancing by herself (she insists over the Spanish-language chorus) than continuing with her "diablo" of a former lover. The track imparts the mixed feelings of leaving a negative relationship, but with a subtle sense of freedom instead of mourning. "Well I got a feeling these scars won't ever look like they're old news / If I let you keep on rubbing salt into all my open wounds," she croons, though with an air that suggests she's already healed from such a neglectful, reckless romance.

Kali Uchis – Solita (Official Audio)www.youtube.com

Backed by a smooth reggaetón groove and a delightful Latin romp, the sound of "Solita" boasts a cinematic quality that invokes slow-motion visions of a hazy, dim dance club, maybe one where such an ex conveniently happens to be across the room. You might lock eyes just for a moment, but only one of you has moved on, swaying gleefully to the beat—alone, but never, ever lonely. These portraits are where Uchis finds her strength, evidencing that she truly shines brightest by herself.

Follow Kali Uchis Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

Photo by: Matthias Wagner / Unsplash

Reigning weird white women Lana Del Rey, Grimes, and Brit Marling sat down to have a conversation for Interview Magazine, and the result was as futuristic and multidimensional as you might expect.

Grimes, who's in the midst of promoting her forthcoming album Miss_Anthropocene, spoke to Del Rey about everything from ancient religions to artificial intelligence and beyond. Their conversation revolved around artmaking, womanhood, and fame in the Internet age; and like their art, it was characteristically inscrutable. When Del Rey asked if Grimes' work was inspired by personal experience or "the overculture," Grimes launched into a discussion of ancient Egyptian gods and anthropomorphization. "If you think about it, god-making or god-designing just seems so fun. The idea of making the Goddess of Plastic seems so fun to me," she said.

Lana Del Rey and Grimes: Variations on Femininity, Faith, and Critics

Though they're both creative spirits who play with religious symbols and cultural iconography, Grimes and Del Rey are known for representing femininity in different ways (and for dating problematic men). While Del Rey has been linked to classic archetypes of femininity, Grimes' early work seemed to present a futuristic, androgynous image. "On my last record, I was in this gender-neutral mindset," Grimes told Del Rey. "I was an asexual person. F*ck my sexuality. F*ck femininity. F*ck being a girl. I was having this weird reaction to society where I just hated my femaleness. It was like, to be a producer, I felt like I had to be a man."

But Grimes' next album seems like it will lean deeper into feminine and goddess archetypes, while Del Rey's latest, Norman F**king Rockwell, found her comparing herself to great male artists and challenging those who labeled her work as artificial.

Both were full of surprises and were critical of the press, which have always viciously criticized each of them in turn. "In terms of what I'm writing, in my personal life I have to be really, really happy," said Del Rey, contradicting thousands of critics in one fell swoop. They also lamented outrage culture, with its tendency to pluck headlines from interviews and its preference for catchy misinformation at the price of nuance.

Grimes and Brit Marling: On Politics, Artificial Intelligence's Impending World Domination, Capitalism, and Hyperobjects

In the second part of the interview, Grimes spoke to Brit Marling, another futurist whose recently-canceled show, The OA, presented an alternative mode of storytelling and connected technology to environmentalism to the multiverse theory. Together, the two lamented how their work and visions sometimes wind up being incompatible with reality.

Like their work, their conversations spiraled through various dimensions, though one could only imagine what they'd speak about off the record. "We're always negotiating the cost versus the craziness, which is why we always end up editing ourselves," said Marling, hinting at dimensions left unseen.

Both expressed appreciation for the mind-bending nature of each other's work, and Grimes quickly dove back into history and archetypes. "In the medieval times, when literacy was at its lowest, everything got really symbolic, like the cross. Nuance got lost," said Grimes. "I feel like we're going back to a time like that, where everything is symbolic. No one reads past a headline because our attention spans are so short. The same symbols are being fed to people, and they're gathering completely opposite meanings from them, and it's creating chaos."

Marling pulled things towards the politics of the present. "The American flag means one thing to one group of people, and one thing to another," she said. "To one, it's a metaphor for freedom. To another, it's an image of oppression. That duality of symbolism applies to so many things. But we live in an increasingly complex time where it's hard to grasp things in symbols. We're having to deal with all of these hyperobjects. Climate change is a hyperobject that people cannot wrap their minds around, because, among other things, it involves a contemplation of time that is off the scope of the human body. We're at a moment when we need nuanced, layered thinking more than ever, and somehow the moment is being met with a real shrinking away from context or depth."

They also discussed artificial intelligence and its impending world domination, a favorite topic of Grimes'. "There will eventually be a sentient technology that is smart enough and strong enough and has access to take everyone's sh*t, and then can make anyone do whatever it wants," said Grimes. "I might be wrong, and I might be aggrandizing here, but I feel like this might be one of the most important times in history. Especially in the last two years, it feels like we've walked right up to the edge between the old world and the new world. It's like before the pyramids and after the pyramids. We're at a 'pyramids got built' moment. We're going to be digitizing reality and colonizing space simultaneously, which may be two of the craziest things that will have occurred in the history of humanity. It's going to happen while we're alive and while we're young, which is nuts."

Marling has previously written about the need for a better story, one that unifies the scattered threads of our era and critiques hero worship, but the idea that artificial intelligence might write this story is definitely a threat to all of this. She replied, "If the objective of art has often been to be a lighthouse in the dark, to say, 'Hey, come this way,' or to expose fraudulent things for what they actually are, what does it mean if something other than human beings is authoring that force of rebellion?" A valid point—though on the other hand, what if artificial intelligence could improve upon some of the flaws that define the human condition, such as our general inability to understand what asexuality actually is?

Grimes returned to a topic she'd addressed with Del Rey. "We're always looking for our maker: 'Who is our god? Who created us?' What's interesting is, for AI, we are their god," she said. "That will be the first intelligent being that knows its creator, and knows everything about us."

Marling proposed that maybe AI isn't our worst fear—maybe something else is already controlling us. "Capitalism, even if there wasn't corruption, is a model that doesn't work for most people, because its only goal is the increase of profit, which means that there's somebody at the top of the pyramid and most people at the bottom who get paid less than their work is worth for profit to be extracted," she said. "I think part of the reason there's been so much climate change denial is that if you acknowledge that this economic system leads to ecological ruin, you have to acknowledge in the same breath that it's broken. Right now, we put value in growth, and everything is just endless, ridiculous growth, even though we're on a finite planet with dwindling resources and more people every day. Let's say, just for a moment, you put the value on caregiving."

"I was just thinking the other day how much I didn't appreciate my mom growing up," said Grimes. "I remember thinking, 'Why did you wake me up for school? This b*tch. F*ck.'"

There's only one conclusion to be drawn here. Lana Del Rey, Grimes, and Brit Marling should collaborate on a visual concept album with an interactive artificial intelligence component that crafts a new story outside the bounds of capitalism and neoliberalism and that motivates everyone to fight climate change, promote ethics in Silicon Valley, and call their mom.

Press Photo

Lana Del Rey's music is whatever you want it to be.

For some, it's a collection of repetitive, glossy pop songs told from a subservient female perspective. For others, it's gospel for the modern era, an encapsulation of all the dread and wonder that comes from living in a world on the brink of the apocalypse. For others, it's transcendent and empowering, some of the best music of the modern era.

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