awake and unafraid

[mary]

Do you wanna know how bandom saved my life? No, it wasn't that video with the vampires. It was this ridiculous article, of all things.

Because suddenly it was fucking normal and okay to have a mental illness, it was something that rock stars did. Medication was something talked about in a frank, snarky, joking way by Pete.

And now this article about MCR. Where they talk about how they wanted to be againt the "that super-safe, clean, take-your-medication type of world". Where they talk about how the song "vampire money" is about shitty sellouts who write vampire novels.

I don't feel like I fit anymore. People can say "oh, but they don't mean people like you" but I don't want to have to justify, specify, prove myself.

I'm not saying I'm burning bridges or that I don't love bands anymore -- I fucking love bands, you'd have to pry me away with a crowbar, I will be the last guest still dancing when the lights go out at the bandon party. But I'm so fucking tired right now. I'm tired of swimming upstream.

Or, as I once wrote in my shitty sellout vampire novels,

Lily bends one leg up so her foot rests on her chair, her chin resting on the knee of her jeans, and reties her shoelaces. She keeps her eyes on what she's doing, not looking at Michelle as she speaks.

"Years ago," Lily says, picking at the edge of the sole of her sneaker with a thumbnail. "I tried to kill myself. Did you know that?"

“Yeah,” Michelle says. It'd been mentioned in some of the interviews she'd read when Remember the Stars were first on her radar. She's always wondered if maybe it was part of why she'd become so invested in the band.

She knows for sure that it had been a comfort to be able to listen to songs on her mp3 player and know that the voice in her ears was a kindred spirit, that Michelle wasn't the only fucked-up brown girl all full of sadness and despair and music in the world.

Lily's not really brown anymore. She was always a few shades lighter than Michelle; light enough to pass for Caucasian. Now she's sickly-pale like all vampires, with only a little more color shading her than Will or Ash.

Of all the things Lily's lost, that's the one which makes Michelle ache most.

--

I miss putting my earphones in and hearing kindred spirits sing out to me.

Comments

[sinatra]

If it's any consolation, the article was horrible and unclear about everything (Geeway sounds like he could just be talking about people capitalizing on Twilight, in general - or musicians capitalizing on the vampire trend, or any other number of things about people who haven't loved toothy immortal sorts for decades without any real monetary compensation for it), I can't even tell whether he said the part about being 'safe' and 'clean' or whether that was just more of the journalist's rambling. So, you know, maybe he didn't mean it quite that way and the journalist is just terrible at his job.

Or maybe Gerard's just being a dick. Maybe he's been hanging out with Morrison too much.