I can live in the light like a maniac
What I did for the summer solstice
The title for this post is a lyric from Lana Del Rey’s unreleased song, “Melancholia.”
When my partner surprised me with tickets to see Lana Del Rey in Boston for the Summer Solstice, I realized the next day was also Lana’s birthday and the full moon in Capricorn. This made for a truly magickal event. It would be my third time seeing her live. The first time I saw her perform was in 2012. I had been surfing UrbanOutfitters.com as I used to shop there like every day and in the records section I came across Born to Die. I fluttered toward the word die like I usually do, and was then led to YouTube to watch her video for the song itself. That video changed my life and all her music thereafter would greatly influence my own creative work.
To start I already knew I wanted to do a mock photo shoot of her album, Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd. I would do this before the concert. The year prior I had planned to get tickets to see her in Maryland but it didn’t work out. At that time I had the same idea for the shoot so I was really excited to get back to it. I talked to my partner and she was on board. The weekend before we had a great time executing everything. It took very long to get the filtering right but my partner has great photo editing skills. Below is the result of our collaboration.
Now it was time to get into character for the concert. In 2012, the first time I saw her at Irving Plaza in NYC, I wore an American flag dress and created a rose headpiece from scratch. I used real roses and made sure it was real big and high. These pics are old so bear with me lol.
In 2019, when I saw her at Jones Beach, I wore a dress similar to the dresses she was wearing on stage at the time, and had the salon braid ribbon into my hair - a look she had been sporting frequently on stage as well.
This time since she had most recently completed a SKIMS campaign, it was a no-brainer to go with that idea. I checked out all the looks and wondered if I should go with the black one but thought that’s too me, I wanted to go with something I would never wear so I went with the opposite which is pink.
I chose a heart shaped furry bag to represent the Valentine’s Day campaign and red fur blanket used in the shoot. It came with a gold chain strap but I removed it and tied a satin ribbon through the loops. She was barefoot for this part of the shoot so I picked out a clear/white heel as well.
Needless to say all this effort and the Sagittarius moon came in with its chaos and wreaked havoc on our magickal Thursday lol. Doors were at 6pm, concert at 730pm but Lana was not supposed to come on until 9pm. Skies were clear from the time we woke up until around 830pm that day, but then the wind picked up, everything went dark and we were suddenly told to evacuate (our seats were on the field of Fenway Park). Shortly after it began to rain, then pour. My hair was soaked after being perfectly straightened lol.
My clothes, our seats, my furry bag. Everything was sort of destroyed but in a really funny way - at least I thought it was funny I couldn’t help but laugh at how ridiculous things were turning out. My partner pointed out that it was a Sag moon and I suddenly put it all together. The shadow/lower expression of Sagittarius is busy-busy, chaos, on the go-always needing to be doing something/producing something, and with the moon being in Sagittarius the day before the moon was 100% full, it meant that that night the moon was a couple percentages away from being full yet not in Capricorn yet, instead Sagittarius. I attribute all the craziness to this fact. Also a side note, the reason why full moons can be turbulent in general is because the sun and moon are in direct opposite signs when the moon is full, whereas when the moon is new the sun and moon are in alignment (in the same sign), which is why everyone affirms it is best to start new things during this time - new business, relationship, project, etc.
As the moon rose, that is when Lana came out to perform-so we saw her at 1030pm, she had to cut the concert short and it was so stressful for everyone. She only played a few songs because she also made time for the people she brought as guests, among them Quavo. At the end we all sang happy birthday to her, which was amazing.
After the concert we ended the night at a speakeasy called Hecate.
Jennifer Diane is a witch scholar, writer and model based out of New Jersey. She’s authored Folk Horror, Rural Horror, Devil’s Manifesto, Emotional Horrorshow, and Salvation. Book a one on one session, shop her books and zines, or find her on Instagram.