Fan Letters: Lana del Rey

Hey Lanita,

It’s been a while we’ve been together. When do we count our anniversary from – when I first saw you? When I first fell in love? We were together for the first time in Birmingham, 2013 – very early days. There were 3000 people there then, and I came by myself. I was 19, making plans to move to London. I took the day off work and sat outside the venue – all the other people queuing outside wanted you to play your new song but I was trying to tell them about your vault of unreleased songs; they thought I was a lunatic. After the gig I waited again, and you were so cute when you came out to meet us. You signed the Moleskine diary that I wrote my little poems in, noticed I was wearing your H&M sweater and liked my sparkly leggings. I wonder if you remember.

There were just under 15k people there next time, in Glasgow 2017. I wore heart shaped sunglasses and a flower crown, but it was summer, and too hot for knits, so I wore my thrifted Fordham sweater, the one I thought only real fans would clock, around my waist. I was seated, so I didn’t get there early, and this time I had a much better experience of your fans – less rude jostling and main character syndrome, more ‘oh my god I love your outfit’. Seated is definitely the best way to experience your concerts. My insta from the time prefigures the criticism of your later tours – that I wish you’d played for longer – but it also shows my appreciation of the lush vocals and look into your songwriting. The base for my weekend’s holiday was a hotel room without windows – so cheap – and I treated myself to the night train home, which felt glamorous and Hitchcockian until I was sat in a reclining seat next to somebody sleeping all night, my mind racing.

It took 8 years for me to join you again, this time at the national stadium, with 90,000 people. You wore alligator clips and Gucci; I wore an M&S sundress. Chuck was there, and the closest thing to a celebrity was another singer I like. I was sat far enough away that I couldn’t see Jeremy or Rob, but it didn’t stop me craning my neck and trying to spot them among the security. Addison was a great support choice; I’d bought her album on pre-order and I think she did a stellar job stretching her shoestring budget to showcase the best of her abilities to a stadium. I was there with another fan friend, to whom I’m eternally grateful for her ticket-catching prowess, and spent the night explaining lore to my other friend and watching her enjoy how beautiful it was. I don’t sing along, but I do mouth the words and dance in time in a trance when I enter the world you live in. I always tell people that you live entirely in your own world when you play live, and sometimes it’s transcendental. I think we were pretty lucky in Wembley.

People talk about ‘the tumblr days’ and although I wasn’t a user that was my heyday. I was too indie rock ‘n’ roll back then to dress like a little Lolita, but I married my t-shirts referencing cult British TV with designer heels I bought myself with Saturday job money. The echoes of the tumblr days can still be heard in my life, even if I don’t own band t-shirts any more: I’ve followed Anna Biller’s career and always loved the music ‘scene’ of those girls. I connected with people on socials who have the same sort of taste and am still known among my friends as a stan, somebody intense, somebody who takes pop culture much too seriously. I was posting pics of Lana or using Lana lyrics as captions in the wild west days of instagram, when clout wasn’t yet quite real. I even got stolen and reposted without credit by a stan account in 2017 when I went through a phase of posting magazines as a way to de-pretentious my bookstagram whilst keeping my brand and aesthetic. Your star-image matched my own poetry-laced London see-it-all lifestyle from back then, even if such a reductive Self was as real on me as it was on you. You will never know how many north London convenience stores I had to go to in order to find the can of diet, Pepsi, cherry cola to match the lyrics and the look for that picture in April, but it matched the vibe for a glamourpuss who did seem like she’d be comfortable shopping in a Hackney all-night supermarket.

My Lana collection is enviable. I think I got rid of some of the magazines, but I have the serious boxed sets of all your albums, I have the necklace (and the other necklace besides), poetry and comics and fiction inspired by Lana, and I also have a lot of the vault. It’s a hobby of mine, finding tracks I didn’t have before, and preserving things like Burning Desire that never got a physical release. There’s still a copy of Tropico on my hard drive, 4 computers later, and I still wish I’d got to see it in the cinema. I’d go today, if you made it happen (may I recommend The Castle in Hackney? I think you’d like it there). I appreciate you making your own book available more widely. I was ready to pay a lot of money to one of the mom & pop stores you wanted to distribute through, and I really respected that decision, as somebody who chooses not to shop at Amazon, to preference independent and ethical retailers, but I also appreciated you responding to calls (including mine!) to make it more widely available. I don’t just read your own poetry or listen to your songs, I read the poetry and listen to the music you recommend, like I do for all artists I respect. I subscribe to a philosophy that acknowledges influence and exchange, that sees beauty in the strangeness of the thought process, that finds poetry in the grimy as much as the lofty, and I have, for many years, Mrs Lizzy Grant, thought this perspective could be found in your work, too. I see it in the monologues, in  the poets that you that you idolise and share with your fans, in the single-take mumbled vocals contrasted with the multi-layered, cinematic production and lush sound chased since the debut album.

Why do I follow artists? Because I like the way they think, or because they produce art that looks like I would make it, or because they draw from influences I find interesting. Art is inherently a conversation between creator and listener, if you engage actively, and I want to be active in your music. Not active in a fandom sense, but active in the sense of being engaged with the totality of your art and allowing the resulting conversation to influence how I see artistic ideas like beauty, selfhood, and structure.

On This Topic:

• I know I linked her before, but April deserves more love.
• The podcast that has a giant influence on Lana and somehow none of the stans talk about?
• Films referenced: The Love Witch and A Single Man. Both are for the aesthetes.

To-Do:

• Write up today’s meeting to send to J as an email
• Plan and pack lunches
• Tell C about August!!

Today’s Culture:

• I acquired a hand fan and it is saving me in the summer
• Order stamps and barcodes
• Oh, just give my Lana playlist a spin.