All I Want to Do Is Dance

(Lady Gaga photo via)

I expect I’ve written here before about how important music is to me when I’m writing. Each story has two soundtracks: the one that fits the plot and tone of the story, and the one I listen to as I write. Sometimes they’re the same, mostly they’re different. But, really, would you want to listen to the same Beethoven adagio on a loop for two hours straight because I said it works with the novel? Didn’t think so!

A few years back, P taught me the term “diegetic music.” It refers to music in a film that occurs within the action of the film, i.e. the characters hear it coming from a radio, band, inside their heads, etc. and the audience hears it as well. Non-diegetic would be the opposite–think of the sweeping score of a classic like Gone With the Wind, or the Star Wars Theme.

Books have diegetic music, as well.

So, I was looking for music to be playing at a strip club in my work-in-progress. (Let’s not go into the whole strip club thing right now–more on it later.) Those dancers needed something contemporary, something very motivating, very compelling and sexual.

Enter Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga is the new pop IT girl. (Think 23 year-old Madonna with a sense of irony) Her album, The Fame, came out in October. I first heard of her on Perez Hilton (where I get all my most relevant celebrity gossip news). She’s apparently kind of a big deal. Plus, Kid Rock just wasn’t cutting it for the strip club job. (What is it about his 2008 All Summer Long song that makes me really angry?! No, I know what it is, and if you were there when “Werewolves of London” and “Sweet Home Alabama” were new, you know what it is, too.)

When I told Pom that I’d downloaded The Fame, she made fun of me. But I don’t care. There’s something in this girl’s music that speaks to the girl inside me that is desperate to dance–all the time. The first time I knew that music had a profound effect on me was at a Mac Davis concert my parents took me to a hundred years ago. I’m not sure, but I think Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton opened for Mac. I remember standing at my seat wanting to dance all night. Soon after, I was the girl at the school dances who just wanted to dance. Mostly we danced in large groups of girls–the boys were never quite so uninhibited. Later, I went to clubs. All the time. I didn’t care much for the drinking. I was there for the dancing.

I thought this song was written just for me!

Pom didn’t get the I-have-to-dance gene. Bengal did, thank goodness. And he was there in the kitchen with me, dancing to Lady Gaga’s Papparazzi and Just Dance (3 mixes) and Summerboy. Bengal wandered off and dinner was late because I couldn’t stop dancing.

Here’s the link for “Just Dance,” the Lady Gaga song my girls at the Pink Pony will be dancing to! (Embed disabled on official video, but check it out anyway.)