the stevens is silent

im luke skywalker who the hell are you

late for uni but looking good

lookin good freak

Yuka Mannami by Zhi Wei

‘The Ghetto Tarot’ - Haitian artist group, Atis Rezistans, re-creates the classic tarot deck into scenes, people and locations from their native Haiti. 

(Source)

snnnnzzzz

i’m not saying i’m thinking about witch aus but like .. pls consider montparnasse as your friendly neighbourhood alley witch 

AND IF THEY GET ME AND THE SUN GOES DOWN INTO THE GROUND

Gerard is, at his core, a storyteller. Narratives, as Kayla mentioned in her post on “Skylines and Turnstiles,” are a tool which he has continuously applied to his life in order to make sense of it. Significance applied where it might never have existed, aspects downplayed (or even omitted) in order to focus on the story that is trying to be told. From the beginning, Gerard has been preoccupied with intention and creating the most purposeful body of work possible. This aspect of the band ran congruently with Gerard’s other fixation: fantasy and the abstract.

Shrouded in the gothic imagery that would come to define MCR’s aesthetic for the majority of their career, “Vampires Will Never Hurt You” was the first single off their first album and first true excursion into building worlds with their music. Gerard’s use of fantasy in this song highlights a pivotal facet of his personality: his relationship with wanting recognition versus his continuous self isolation and introversion. Having felt constantly dissociated throughout his life, fantasy gave Gerard a space to develop his narrative while also cultivating a careful distance between himself and the audience.  None of the band members ever felt extremely comfortable in the limelight; in their discography, abstraction removed them from the situation while still retaining intimacy. Through allegory, the band, and Gerard in particular as our storyteller, were able to perform their narrative(s), acting through their emotions to catharsis without revealing all of their weaknesses.

“Vampires” is about the early signs of Gerard’s alcoholism and how he felt like he was wasting his life. It’s a desperate plea for absolution, Someone save my soul tonight, but also the cry of someone who feels caged by an inevitability. “Vampires” represents the turning point of what would become the origin story of the band: rather than waste away in idleness, he would either change his life, or die. It’s marked by a desperate anger, a dog gnawing at its leg to remove itself from a trap when it’s so close to safety, struck down before our prime, he screams while asking us, the listeners, if we are prepared to take his life. The song hinges itself not on the concept of being saved but rather in asking us to evaluate what we’re doing there. Can you stake my heart? he asks the audience, forcing them to consider their role in this narrative. It’s a precursor to sentiments like “Desert Song”’s Did you come to stare or wash away the blood?. He wants us to question the reasons why this music resonates with us and what we plan to do with the emotions it raises. It’s lines like these which began to take the project from simply being a mode of catharsis, to becoming a rallying cry for the broken, the beaten and the damned.

With all this in mind, I find it important to mention that My Chemical Romance, despite being famous for saving lives, doesn’t actually feature many songs about helping people until very late in their discography. I would argue that, with the exception of maybe three songs, there aren’t really any songs about them saving you. My Chemical Romance is a band that definitely wants to better your life, but they want you to be the one to do it. At the end of the day, My Chemical Romance (as a concept) was a personal project of Gerard’s, and was in a lot of ways for himself because that’s what he needed at the time. He felt as if he wasn’t doing anything meaningful; it wasn’t enough to create stories, he had to embody them, and for someone obsessed with superheroes and Joan of Arc that meant turning his pain into a tool. It meant martyrdom and performance, and all of that came together through this band.

Finally, “Vampires” is probably my favorite song on Bullets. Frank and Ray’s guitars create an atmosphere that feels simultaneously like desperation crawling its way up my throat and like lightening in my veins; Gerard’s voice, which he uses as if he’s never been taught to hold back, is fear personified – a thunder crack of “I am trapped, I am dangerous and I am oh so afraid”.  If the intention was for me to feel the need to do something, anything, in order to change my situation, then it succeeded. “Vampires” makes me want to run and never look back, but also entrap myself in limitless possibility. It’s energizing and terrifying, and it’s no wonder why labels contacted them almost immediately – it was new and thought provoking, and quite honestly a really damn good song.

- Kelly

“Blushes” - Wolfgang Tillmans

miss depression: *releases me for a quarter of a second*

me: wow. i feel so goo–

depression: Time’s Up Bitch.