(This is sort of long, sort of overdue, and sort of inspired by a snapchat one of my good friends sent me.)
As teenagers, we're often caught saying things like we're "down with death" and we often act like death can't touch us. A sense of invincibility? This is almost innate to us. But our out and out fascination with decay when our lives have barely begun? This is something a lot harder to define.
I understand there are many points of view on an issue like this. Some of my friends are close to death, they have seen it firsthand, and as a result, are perhaps less afraid. Others, view death as a destination, or as a way out of their struggles. The truth is that death is extraordinarily personal and that none of us are untouched by death. I have dead friends, dead family, and events in my past that I characterize as personal deaths. But it's hard for me to say that I'm down with death.
After suffering from severe illness in December 2013, the concept of death has become extremely less palatable. While in all reality there wasn't a real likelihood of me dying, the experience was terrifying all the same. I had developed an adverse reaction to the penicillin based drug I was taking to clear out a respiratory infection. On day one I had an itching rash that I blamed on the bug killer the county uses on football fields and other grassy areas. Then on day two I had a searing pain and the inability to move my hands or arms. Knowing it was something less trivial, I went to the doctor and got something to stop the symptoms (of what would amount to be a drug allergy) before more adverse symptoms could crop up. Routine enough, right? Not really. The second drug triggered more reactions. I lost some of my cognitive abilities, including the ability to comprehend words. I had problems knowing what day it was (it was my birthday, and I sometimes had no clue). The passing of time slowed or sped up. I remember being excessively paranoid on the drive to the hospital, my blood pressure soared, I was considered for stroke watch at one point, I think. I remember my chest tightening and pain and crying a lot.
I felt like and thought that I was dying.
In my perceived last bits of life, nothing flashed before my eyes. I had to recall it back for myself. And I didn't like what I saw. I saw all the shitty things I'd done, I saw all the missed opportunities, and I saw all the self segregation and self isolation that had compromised my life. (((There were good bits of course, I've got a pretty good life with a pretty great family, but that's not the point.))) Faced with death, I didn't feel sorry for myself, I didn't have a sensation of my life being complete, I didn't see the destination - instead I was angered by how I had squandered what time I had been given. And in those seconds I thought, "I've got to fight this, it isn't right, this isn't who I'm supposed to be, this is NOT what I had planned"
While I could credit this to the drug's effects wearing off, I don't want to. Sure, I still have weak moments and I stumble off the path I want to have. Sure, it took a while to get the courage to even start fresh. And sure, I'm still a teenager with the occasional macabre thought. But those things are no longer the basis of my life. Because, damn, I've got a whole lot more living to do. I don't want to be back on that hospital bed thinking about a life I shot down the drain. I can't. I've got so much to capture and capitalize. There's no sunlight in sadness. Me, sitting at home, resisting change and fearing the unknown consequences of putting myself out there, well.. it's not going to make for an exciting slideshow for when I really do face death.
So for right now, I'm not down with death. I respect those of you who are, just know I won't be applying for entry into your club. I still have too many what if's left to sort out; I can't go gently into that good night in good faith at this point in my timeline.
Do I accept and understand death as a part of life? Completely. My old rabbi even had my age group watch a vhs outlining our last rites in Judaism and how to properly treat the recently deceased. Growing up with death punctuating here and there has left me with an education that tells me it's not something that's supposed to be scary. The scary part is not living enough.
When my time's up for real I don't want to want more. And right now I want more of everything, more friends, more school dances, more laughs, more parties, more dumb crushes, more scrapes and bruises and testimonies to my LIVING than I could imagine.
So that's my life plan. To do more and to be more. I hope you guys will help keep me on that path. I want to have some great adventures, and they're a little overdue, so let's get to living.
As far as horror movies go, I can't honestly endorse this one as a modern horror film, but it sure is scary.
Starring Caleb Landry Jones as the Lucas Clinic lab technician Syd March and Sarah Gadon as the celebrity icon Hannah Geist, this film will make you question how healthy it is for you to idolize celebrities.
This film takes place in an alternate version of the present day where companies have capitalized on the celebrity mania, allowing patients to infect themselves with diseases harvested from ill icons. With her blond hair and deep red lips, Hannah Geist is obviously symbolic for Marilyn Monroe, a celebrity still idolized and famous 50 years after her death in the 1960's.
The film's usual subdued color scheme allows for the creation of stunning scenes of bright color, vivid whites against deep reds and blacks are common in the latter half of the movie (which gets gory for those who desire to know). The extreme changes in color help the viewer navigate through the tangled life of Syd March.
March, an employee at the leading Lucas Clinic is a mousy and grimy character who warrants no real sympathy for his actions. We are intorduced to March as a snake oil salesman, preying on the deranged patients and convincing them to purchase more expensive, longer lasting infections (in the first scene he convinces a young man to purchase an expensive herpes infection). Later in the film when it is revealed that March is a back alley lab rat, infecting himself and using is illegal (and creepy) ReadyFace console to removed the copy protection and sell his version to the highest bidder. It's this process that introduces us to the next slimy character.
Arvid, played by Joe Pingue, is a back alley infectious disease provider and one of March's contacts. Arvid runs a legitimate celebrity meat market, where people can buy meat made from constantly replicating muscle cells harvested from celebrities . Arvid also has a hobby garden - made of growing celebrity stem cells of course.
As the movie progresses the coloring and landscape become more grotesque and hostile, especially after March is sent on a house call to collect Ms. Geist's most recent illness and subsequently injects himself with it in the hotel bathroom.
Obviously it all goes downhill from there. The movie world becomes high contrast with frightening hallucinations and enough cinema blood to drown in. I don't want to give away too much and ruin your experience, so I'll just say that this movie will make you question your behavior towards your celebrity idols and your expectations of Canadian films.
In my first two years of high school I was very into cheesy notebook paper drawings and comic books/graphic novels/illustrated anthologies I stole borrowed from my local library. Often times I tried to imitate the styles from pieces I liked (The Umbrella Academy, Squirrel Mother, a thing a friend of mine wrote called How to Kill 1000 Men in 30 seconds Flat). Drawing was a great escape and a favorite pass time .
As school go harder and my social life became more crowded with extracurriculars I found that all my drawings and art got pushed into a folder in the top of my closet and never really looked at again. As I was cleaning I found the folder and took a nice trip down memory lane to the times when everything seemed so much simpler. That's tacky and cliche to say, but it's not wrong. At the time I was very active into art and writing, I had no boyfriend, I didn't really have to worry about college applications or ACT/SAT scores. Maybe that's why I've started a new journey into art, looking back into what I was and trying to become that again.
Since the ultimate end of the band My Chemical Romance, some people have felt lost about the new career directions the members are taking. As a fan, these are my feelings.
It feels almost unfair of me to say that I'd always felt that Toro was the most human member of the band. While it's true he wasn't as caught up in the theatrics as Gerard Way or Frank Iero was, he was still a part of the glorious clusterfuck of music and emotion and god knows what. When I really became a fan around 2008-2009 I knew very little about the real history of the band, I just knew the fantastical (and often extremely hyperbolic) things the internet and my friends told me, and they never told me anything about Ray Toro. As lead guitarists went, he was fairly invisible and calm. In fact, until I looked up their wiki post Danger Days release, I wasn't even sure what his name was. My friends and I all knew Gerard and Frank and the weird Mikey, (Bob sometimes), but he was just the other guitarist. Which was great, and part of the reason he was my favorite member of My Chemical Romance.
Ray Toro wasn't a crazy figure like Gerard or Frank, he was a human being. He felt so real to me; he held a kind of reality that felt separated from the antics of the rest of the band. He was real and he was passionate, extremely so. He was he quiet giant, the almost big brother figure that reassured the kids that things would be okay.
Gerard provided the power and gritty voice that you could yell out to and not be lost. Frank provided the fun and infusion of happiness that could knock a smile out of you any day. Mikey provided the shelter for the quiet kids and the proof that you can learn to do anything. But Ray, he was the resilient guy, a literal pillar of protection. You could look at him and see that things were going to be fine, you would survive, you would conquer, and that you could do it. His eyes and soft smile were necessary among a group of celebrities held aloft by scared teenagers.
Gerard, Frank, and Mikey were the kite that carried you away and inspired you; Ray was the string tethering you to the ground, empowering you, and reminding you that you could be strong and conquer.
Since the ultimate end of the band My Chemical Romance, some people have felt lost about the new career directions the members are taking. As a fan, these are my feelings.
After spending years as the bloody mouthed, theatrically grotesque, completely destructive, casually vicious voice of my generation, it's difficult for some to picture him in the blue suit regular haired Hesitant Alien garb. But as someone late to the party of rabid fandom I understand, kind of.
It's true that he's source of the dark aesthetic of my early teenage years, and the inspiration of most of my artwork from that time too, and I lifted him onto an inhuman celebrity pedestal. I have close to (probably) 150 pictures and .gifs of him saved on my computer. I bought all the cd's, downloaded music, bought shirts, and I was completely caught up in this idea band for several years. As the frontman I was under the spell that this was orchestrated by him and that he was gothic fantastical. He seemed to me so completely larger than life that I would make up lies about him that fit completely to the image I had of him in my head. I was a crazy fangirl.
As the years went by and the more educated disillusioned I became with the fantastical personalities and faux lives of music's famous, I began to see him as a human being, tired and little disgusted with himself, almost. Danger Days felt like a salute to the cheap grandeur of the crazed hero that many pictured him being. In interviews he admits to have slipped back into destructive behaviors, which is saddening. I feel like we (the fans) used this man as a machine to satiate our hunger for the bizarre, somber, extraordinary act he started with the first albums. As he tried to pull his life in the direction he desired we pulled back, and it got exhaustive.
With his new act tentatively titled Gerard Way and the Hormones, his sound is nearly a complete 180, he appears more genuine, more human. While it's not a sound I prefer, I'm curious about where my teenage idol is going.
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