Today I was watching this performance of You and I at the MTV VMAs 2011 and the speech that Joe/Gaga gave was mindblowing. Everyone was looking at her amazed and couldn't believe what was happening. They were all thinking that she was doing a performance and they were shocked by her presence and acting skills. When I first saw this on TV I felt and had the same thoughts. I watched this with a different perspective this time and I noticed and thought about a lot of things. I noticed that she is not just giving a performance, she is talking about herself in a way that not a lot of people are willing to. She changed her perspective and tried to understand what men see in her, why her past relationships didn't work out and how she is when she is in a relationship. She is a very strong and powerful woman and as Joe says men feel intimidated by her. He says: "I think it's really f---ing great that she's such a star, a big beautiful star in the sky, but how am I supposed to shine?" Men grow up knowing that they are the ones in charge of providing for the family, as the father usually says to his boys in Italy: be the men of the house (sii l'uomo di casa). So it is not hard for me to believe that when a men has a very strong woman near him, he can feel threatened by her. Then Joe continues saying "I mean, I think I'd be okay with it, you know, if I felt like she really was being herself with me. And maybe she is. I'm starting to think she is, 'cause when she gets on the stage, she holds nothing back". Here she addresses how a lot of people and sometimes even her loved ones think she is not being real, they're confused. But then he says something interesting, "when she gets on the stage, she holds nothing back". And here we can appreciate the fact that when she performs, she is always being herself and sharing a part of her heart with us. To finish Joe says: "When she f---s, it's like she covers her face 'cause she doesn't want me to see, that she can't stand to have one honest moment where nobody's watching". This sentence really touched me because it makes me think about how lonely and misunderstood she must feel to think that she can't show face to her partner when making love. Making love with your partner should be a very intimate and true moment, instead to her it is a moment where she has to hide because she feels that she can be herself only on stage. It is as if she was so committed to her performances, to us that she wants to show who she is only to us. This reminded me also of something she said in another interview. She said that when she started out she went home to her parent's house and she couldn't take off the wigs, the makeup, the clothes because she felt that if she did she was somehow breaking the trust that we have in her. I hope that now she knows that she doesn't need to be strong all the time or wear her art all the time for us to be connected with her. Going back to Joe's speech he ended it saying: "I want her to be real, but she says, 'Jo, I'm not real. I'm theater and you and I...This is just rehearsal. I got to get in there." This just shows me how much she loves what she does and how her mind processes things, how performing and becoming theater helps her understanding herself. After this, I also thought about myself and the relationship I have with my boyfriend. I thought about who I am as a woman and how I behave when I am in love with someone. It is just amazing how a speech of 5 minutes (maybe less) can make me think about all these things. I am not here to analyze and dissect an art performance or to enter inside her life and pretend like I know what she feels. I am just putting on "paper" my thoughts on an art performance that touched me deeply. Thank you all for reading and thank you @LadyGaga for this performance, Carlotta.