Transformation. I love that word. I find the very act of speaking it a cleansing one. And not cleanse-lite-Insta-smoothie-wellness-shake. Cleansing like with fire. The cauterising of medieval wounds. Bushfire, flat-ironing the Earth, melting waxy wattle pods, now ready to flower at first rain. For so often transformation requires intense pressure or great pain.
Some people will always want to be remade. And understandably so. Transformation is an opportunity to be rescued from difficult circumstances.
People also crave transformation for reasons of self-actualisation. To start living to their fullest potential, using all their creativity to become their best self.
At 18, I went to drama school where I was lucky to learn some fundamental things about transformation for creating and performing characters. I became an actor because I craved transformation. I wanted the moments of self-abandon where your spirit leaves your body and you feel like someone or something else. I wanted to be glorious, radiant, despicable, formidable, shy, glamorous, Holy.
So art engenders transformation. It's a fact established since Ancient Greece. But while any old novel/play/painting has this capability, I have found that for soul-transmuting catharsis nothing holds a candle watching rockstars rock and popstars pop.
Rock stars. Popstars. From now on I’ll use those words interchangeably. Because while there’s a bunch of things that qualify a “Rockstar”, their style of music is not one of them. It has to do with other things.
Firstly, while their sound style is irrelevant, all rock/pop stars do need catchy tunes. But musically that is the only requirement. They don’t need to possess great voices or virtuosic playing. Their melodies just need to be memorable and to have a distinctive personality. Lou Reed, an exceptional, underground balladeer wasn’t known for his mellifluous tones but who cares?! His band was the godfather of punk and a major player in one of pop culture's most influential scenes.
They need a striking look...that doesn’t mean thin nor does it mean most beautiful, it may be as simple as the angle of their hat, there just needs to be something that sticks out to make them visually noticeable.
It's also good if they can read the world, the way the rest of us "read a room". When Lana Del Ray mooched into cultural consciousness with Video Games, all lips and Vaseline lenses. Even though I still can't quite articulate why...it just all made sense. Aesthetically, thematically, musically, persona wise...she had perfectly intuited what the world wanted in a pop star at that exact, hipster moment in time.
For me, as a performing artist...rockstaring would be the pinnacle of artistic success. There are obvious parallels between rockstarring and acting, dancing and even modelling. But rockstars are somehow ALL of these at once. They have more power to experiment than the rest of us. Although still subject to the prejudice permeating all society, there’s more room to move around oppressive ideas in rock-stardom and actually, breaking boundaries and challenging perceptions of identity is something all the greatest rock stars do (artists like Peaches who play with gender are particularly great in my book). Identity is actually the central tool in the rockstar kit.
A rockstar plants themselves before an ocean of literal facelessness and struts like they are all that matters in creation. It’s this flagrant act of total self-celebration that in the convention of theatre transfixes an audience. Because that audience is made of people and all people to greater and lesser degrees (of intensity and of deserving) feel repressed, discounted, unheard, unrepresented and woefully, forgettable, irrelevant.
When we look at rockstars, these unfettered birds of ego, the total, shameless, boldness of such a display is invigorating, inspiring and releasing. Rockstars transform us by way of catharsis like all art does.
But unlike the hero in a quest, the rockstar is a creature who presents as already fully transformed. The curtain rises on a creature, fully self-created. A creature of dangerous authenticity, volatile spontaneity, bold sexuality and fervent self-love. When we witness the gravity of these fully actualised egos, swaggering across the stage, screaming their hooky anthems. We picture the freer, less faceless version of ourselves. Someone bound forever to the moment, someone who no longer self-questions...someone who has lost the need to transform and it gives us a thrill.
Above, I listed some things that qualify a rockstar. I also mentioned some incredible artists who earned their place in the rock and pop pantheon. But I left a certain special group 'til last. The ones who understand their medium so well that they've surpassed the actualised ego and slipped into chameleon territory. These beautiful changelings have removed all the pain from transformation, as they slip from hero to villain, from now to antiquity, from culture creator to rabble-rouser. They play with identity so thoroughly that they often have several names, and fans can tell when they "split" into these alter egos. You know who they are; Eminem who was also Slim Shady, Nicki Minaj with Roman Polanski, Bjork was also a swan, a monster, an android and of course Bowie; Davey Jones, Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke and Jareth.
But there is one changeling whose birth name was so big, she didn't need another; bringing it back to Catholicism was Madonna, the Holy Virgin's evil twin who went from street urchin to Metropolis mogul, to Yoga Goddess, to Grammy winner in a cowboy hat. Her stage presence was so electric, her voice, demeanour and way of moving so idiosyncratic that all her transformations did was prove how instantly recognisable she was. How absolutely and authentically she.
These bona fide rockstars, these cultural shape-shifters ...these song and dance people who entrance us with whatever "it" is they have...remind us that everything is temporary, the universe is always in motion and that transformation is ... inevitable.
It’s an excellent thing that we are not all rockstars. It’s also an excellent thing that the stars who rock us are just artists who are more or less pretending up there (think of Beyonce’s Sacha Fierce and when Bob Dylan said he was “just a song and dance man”). Because personally, I wouldn’t want anyone that arrogant as my friend. But rockstars perform a vital service to humanity. They make us feel powerful, understood, and transformed. Maybe The Beatles aren’t so different from Christ, after all.
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