Between the age of 10 and 30, I was a huge Celine Dion fan. In this period of time I was also a fan of Mylène Farmer (still am) and Lady Gaga (2009 – 2015).
As a child I hyperfixated on Sailor Moon, and even created a fan club in Romania through which I was corresponding by mail with other fans.
After reading “White fag” by Jack London, I became obsessed with wolves and read a lot about them. When I was 10, I wrote a novel about wolf-people, which unfortunately I do not have anymore, but that is where my imaginary world took root. This imaginary world combined wolves, sailon moon crystal magic and music, so all my special interests at the time.
While wolves and Sailor Moon were my own interests (though White fag was a book gifted by a teacher? I liked), the love for Celine Dion’s and Mylene’s music, generally french stuff, and affinity for chemistry were my ways of getting closer to my mother, who’s loves and approval I was craving, but lacking. It felt like I had to prove I was worthy of being acknowledged by her.
I realize that later in life my way of getting close to people I care for is to take interest in their interests, so much so, that in the begining or even during a romantic relationship, I would loose who I was, what actually interested me, and felt eventually controlled and/ or abused, because their interest in who I was and what I liked wasn’t reciprocated. What makes it worst is that I even had “partners” who accused me of not taking interest in them because I wasn’t asking them questions about their interest. However I observed them and took their interests as my own. This only confused me, because I was doing more than they were asking for and it felt like they couldn’t see it. Later I realized those accusations came when I was voicing a need for them to take an interest in something I liked, and the way they were controlling me was to accuse me of not doing myself what I was asking of them, though I was. This summer, during the worst conflict I ever had with my mother, I realized she was doing the very same thing to me, and has done this my whole life. So, when this happened in a relationship, instead of being a red flag of narcissism and cause me to walk away, I was confusing that with the way people show love because mothers love their children, right?
I don’t remember* how I ended up a Lady Gaga fan, because the first time I saw the video for Just dance I thought it was a crappy video from a crappy Romanian artist (the dislike for anything Romanian was high back then, though if you look at main stream stuff even today… 🤷🏼♀️).
When people asked me what’s the link between Celine Dion and Lady Gaga, my answer was “me 😎😄”. The actual answer was Mylène Farmer.
The reason I mentioned this, is because in 2013 I became obsessed with Marina Abramovic(‘s work) though when I first heard of her while at the arts university I didn’t like what she did, didn’t think that was art. The reason I felt that way towards her and anything contemporary was that I haven’t been previously exposed to anything similar and couldn’t connect this type of art with anything I knew to make sense of it, so I disliked it.
Why the change of heart? Lady Gaga. Not because of anything Gaga did or said refering Marina, but just because her esthetics crated a crossing between what I knew and the whole contemporary art scene.
I was so taken by everything Marina Abramovic did, that I followed her method from full fasting, to slow drinking water, slow walking, counting rice, everything. I continue to be fascinated by her, but less so nowadays.
When I first tried full fasting, in 2015, it was a life changing experience because I figured “If I can do this, what else can I do?” and anything I thought of as unreachable became a little bit more real. I started traveling more, getting better jobs, focusing on who I want to be and what I want to create.
It took me nine years of work to finally figure out who I am and why everything is so damn hard for me. This is freeing in a whole other sense. The most important thing I am free of is desires, particularly those desires that aren’t mine. I am still learning to question what I really want, but that is hard. A want will almost always be tied to a circumstance or person, not fully internal. And that is good. I need connection to the world outside of me. What I want to do next is figure out what I need and prioritise the wants that serve the needs or at least do not go against them. Though the needs sometimes might go one against another in some contexts. That’s a whole other bridge to cross.
I’m currently a fan of María Pelàe 💃🏼🎉
*this performance of Paparazzi from 2009 made me a Lady Gaga fan. I still love it 💖
The joy of creating 