How a song by Lana Del Rey changed my life forever.

When I’m at war with myself, I ride, I just ride.

Still from the ‘Ride’ video.

I remember it so vividly — the first time I’d come across the music video for the absolutely hypnotizing ballad ‘Ride’ by Lana Del Rey. It was a gloomy late December night in the year of 2012 and I was just wallowing around in bed, aimlessly scrolling on YouTube to not let the daunting reality of my life take me into a spiral I had found myself in far too many times. That’s when I saw the ‘Ride’ music video suggested to me and I was instantly drawn to Lana Del Rey’s intense melancholic gaze in the thumbnail in which she stands against the microphone. It is also a 10 minute long video — unusually long for a music video, which further added to my curiosity to click on it.

It starts with Lana swinging from a tire swing that seems to be just hanging from the sky in a very dreary landscape. Now something I really want to mention here is that during that period of my life, I felt like I was stuck- in a place I wanted to run away from. That ‘no one understands me’ feeling was like a permanent state and I was always daydreaming about a certain kind of freedom. So this visual of her was enough to get my adrenaline rushing. And then- she starts talking. I believe it really is a monologue that encapsulates how she became Lana Del Rey, even though parts of it don’t really apply to who she is…