Of Glitter & Nudity

Now if THAT blog post title doesn't get you to read this post, I just don't know what I'm doing. ;)

First things first: You HAVE TO watch this video. I mean, you could just not, but everything I'm talking about today relates to it, AND it has a great song on it, AND Pink is mostly naked for over half of it. (You can also read the lyrics here.)



Originally, I was just going to post this song as a Music Monday selection, and leave it at that. There's not an official music video of the song, though, but there is this live version of Pink singing at the Grammy's.

And while I was watching, I was...shocked. Surprised. At first because Pink basically took off her dress and sang on national TV wearing nothing but some ribbon and some glitter. Then she got on that swing thing, and I thought "cool." And she kept pushing it and pushing it to the next level. After just being on the swing, she started spinning faster--then dunked herself in water and spun out from the pool--then she slipped the swing off and up, and hung upside down with nothing keeping her in the air except for luck (as far as I could see).

The song's beautiful. She could have worn a pretty dress and sat on top a piano and sung, and everyone would have stood up and clapped.

But she pushed it. She literally got naked in front of the world and did something that--if it failed--would have failed EPICALLY.

But it didn't fail. It became something beautiful and elegant and breathtaking because she risked it all.

In a way, there were two levels of danger to Pink's performance. First, the internal danger to one's self by exposure--by getting (mostly) naked, Pink opened herself up to criticism. Writers do that with their art, too--just by sharing our work with others, we're opening ourselves up to criticism that has the potential to do us harm. There is danger in revealing our work to others.

But there was external, physical danger involved in Pink's performance. No safety nets. One swath of cloth to hold her over the heads of all her peers. One slip--and I'm sure it was a bit slippery, given how it was wet--and she could come tumbling down. This reminded me of writers in the process of publication--be it querying agents or debuting a novel or writing their tenth book for pub.

Maybe I'm just reading too much into this song. Still, don't these lines remind you of writing and waiting to be published?

Have you ever hated yourself for staring at the phone?
You're whole life waiting on the ring to prove you're not alone

And, I'll be honest--lately I've been feeling a lot like this:

Have you ever held your breath and asked yourself will it ever get better than tonight?

But I think the most important thing to take away from this song is simply this:

Have you ever looked fear in the face and said, "I just don't care"?

...and can I have a round of applause for turning a post about glitter and nudity into a writing lesson? ;)