I've been watching and re-watching Janelle Monáe's video for ArchAndroid first single "Tightrope" for a few months now, and though I've come up with lots of other music-related stuff to talk and think about since, it's stuck with me. Firmly. Not for Gaga reasons, either--it's not nine minutes long or laden with haute couture and mind-numbing identity politics--the "Tightrope" clip is weird and memorable primarily for pulling from much more easily identifiable source material. More crucially, however, it's the ever-so-gently-strange way that Monae and her asylum of tights-and-tux-wearing tightrope walkers present this song, and its attendant mythology. Because pop concepts are most often inherently batshit chimeras--and that's what makes them brilliant and fun to explore--I want to try and figure out exactly what's going on here. Wish me luck.