THOUGHTS AND VVIBES: The Crown, Older Men and Humongous by Declan McKenna

 

I was watching this last season of The Crown, season 5, and I identified with Diana in some ways because her story is, I think, the story of many women. The older man, the rush, being young and "doing something right" by marrying the right person, feeling amazing and then being pulled down by reality, being humiliated by what they call “love” and being enraged.

I am still, 7 years later, not the age of the first man I fell in love with, and he used to demand maturity from me, I used to demand it from myself, I could not act childish or have childish impulses and demands, like answers and understanding and respect, or else I was unattractive, immature, annoying, not worthy of attention. He made me go from a beautiful, confident and charming 15-year old that had the world in her hands to an anxious, depressed, sad 18-year-old. Truth is, I was 15 and I was pretty much a child trying to walk in shoes too big for her feet. But it wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t even entirely his.

Plus older men will often talk about how us girls are not their age, and that we don’t understand and that it’s difficult, and it’s true, we are not their age, we don’t understand and at this point, I personally don’t want to nor do I have to. We are young and have never been their age, won’t be for a while, why should we understand them instead of them, who were once our age, understand us? Why do they expect us to take their condescending looks and stay? To say thank you for the crumbs they give us?

At 22 years of age, I will leave. I will leave with angry, dripping eyes, I will leave saying I love you but I love me more. I will leave and I’ll kick and scream my way out. 

One thing men, especially older men, don't understand is that I have all the right in the world to be childish, to be feral, to be savage. I have all the right in the world to spit and bite.

The world is mine. I am young, I am a woman and they cannot tame me.

People tend to underestimate young women greatly, say we are naive and weak but they don’t realize how angry we are, and that what they call naivety is hope, to finally be safe and finally be loved the way we want to. I can only speak for myself but I feel like we end up carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders and then sit through lectures by men about how our shoulders are tense and we should relax, loosen up, and then they hurt us, and when they do we realize men only want us to loosen up because they wanted to hurt us.

And I think like that because to me, to ask someone to wait while you decide if you want their love or not is simply the cruelest and egoistic thing you can do. To ask someone to prove themselves to you in order to have your love is ridiculous. To compare people and see if they compete for your attention is disgusting. So I look for people who will value others from the start, who respect and cherish their company with no conditions and no tests, only mutual respect and eventually love.

I am what some would call high maintenance, out of choice, you see, when I have my needs met I am sensible and flexible, I will go out of my way to settle and I will give my partner everything. When I feel safe and loved, I thrive and I shine, I am everything, but take those away and you discover I am ruthless and cold. And that’s what I look for, this feeling that I am bigger than everything, that I can close bullet wounds with kisses, but I am not willing to give it away for anything less than hazy, childish, drunk love. And I don’t think anyone should settle for less. And I think no one should love like this is healing and forgiving and it’s light like air and everybody should be able to live it.

VVIBE CHECKING: Imploding the Mirage by The Killers

There's a strong divine element on Imploding the Mirage and I vvibe deeply with it. I think Brandon Flowers finally overcame the commercial success that Battleborn was 

Sam’s Town feels like a prayer and so does The Desired Effect, I’m gonna be honest, despite being a huge The Killers’ fan, I haven’t listened to all of their albums, I feel like later on in life I’m gonna have a new The Killers phase, but at the moment I’m having a Declan McKenna phase. 

But I always feel like there are divine elements in their albums, Hot Fuss has a little bit of it in All These Things That I’ve Done, Sam’s Town is the champion, the whole album feels like prayer, and Imploding the Mirage is really close to it but I can’t tell if more or less of the vibe right now because it’s too recent. Battleborn has it in some songs like Flesh and Bone which gives me real chills and is the number one song that feels like a prayer on my “songs that feel like praying” playlist. 

From the first images they revealed, I felt this feeling could be coming back in the album, but when they released it, it was so much more than I had anticipated. Someone said to me that this album is depressing but I don’t agree. I think it’s inspiring, the same way Alex Turner made an entire album about decadence by embracing it, I think Brandon Flowers learned from it. Brandon’s lyrics sound and feel like a person who has found true glory would.

It wasn’t going to be easy to write a masterpiece after the commercial success of Battleborn, that I consider to be a masterpiece album that is basically everything an album by them should be amped to the max, it’s romantic, it’s a little sad and it’s divine, but I feel like Imploding the Mirage is everything and a little bit more. It’s mature, it's something that has healed and it's celestial. It’s not Miss Atomic Bomb, it’s Dying Breed, Brandon is not talking about treason and regret, he’s fighting for real love, he is finally safe, secure, after years of anxious love songs, full of overthinking, deception and miscommunication.

It feels self-conscious in a good way, this has been a recurrent theme throughout their songs but this time it sounds more sincere, I mean: “but man I thought I could fly, and when I hit the ground, it made a messed up sound and it kept on rattling through my days” won me over 02:05 minutes into the album, it’s mature, it told me what this album was about and it was like hearing someone who finally got to the place they were supposed to be, like breathing deeply after holding your breath for a little too long. 

Neil Z. Yeung from ALLMUSIC said “feels like more than just one of their best albums, but a triumphant and invigorated rut-reversal that shines with a hard-won confidence.” and I couldn't agree more.

Wonderful Wonderful was a big flop, and I think now the band is back on track and ready to take on the world all over again, not with another Mr. Brightside, like everybody expects them to make, but with the ease and grace of a band who consciously found their voice and is never gonna lose it again.

A VVIBE: Arctic Monkeys live

I was thinking about it yesterday and I really wish I could see them live again. The way Alex Turner writes lyrics, it just charms me, because it’s so easy to feel them under your skin. I feel like the lyrics to Alex’s love songs melt in your mouth like chocolate when you sing them, they feel so good on your tongue. Actually, Alex’s songs, in general, feel good in the mouth, all of them, there’s a sensation that accompanies his lyrics that I can’t describe, it’s like saying the right thing at the right time maybe? Anyway, it feels good in your ears, when you hum them under your breath, and even better when you scream them in a crowd at the top of your lungs.

And I feel like they are personal to him, they are far from vague but in the vaguest way possible if that makes any sense. It’s like he knows how to talk about things in a way that’s vague enough to resonate with other people, yet the details he gives us are sometimes so specific that you can’t help but feel like this was part of his life? I was talking to a friend about it and it’s a little cringy when you think about the songs because of this, but when you are actually listening to them, it’s a completely different feeling.

Suck it and See is personally my favorite album by them, the second half is raw in a way that truly describes what heartbreak feels like and I just vvibe deeply with it. It also talks about love in a way that really pleases me, it feels real. From falling in love to falling apart, it’s a journey that I feel like Alex just knows too well, actually, I know he does because he writes about it in a way that only people who have truly been to heaven and hell know how.

That’s why I think an Arctic Monkeys concert is so personal, take The Killers for an example, their concert is a divine experience, it feels like your upper body is radiating light, to me most of the songs feel like a connection with God and divine energy that Brandon knows how to put in his songs, but in an Arctic Monkeys concert everybody sings 505 to a different person, everybody screams “I crumble completely when you cry” for a personal and particular reason and it’s about the crowd, it’s about you and the taste you feel in your mouth. I personally feel the taste of youth when I sing 505 because it reminds me of my teenage years and the way I wish someone had felt like about me back then.

These songs just hit different live, not that they weren’t already an experience in my earbuds but I remember thinking I had to listen to them live just to have this moment, just so I could scream the lyrics at the top of my lungs because they feel so right and they feel so good.

What concert would you like to see again? Why?

"no thoughts, head empty"- Alex Turner, 2018 alt. title: VVIBE WITH ME: a review of tranquility base hotel and casino in leopard print and shorts

vvibing to the Arctic Monkeys' The Ultracheese, I'm a firm believer that if you didn't like Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino you are just not really listening to it and letting it tell its story. It tells you everything you need to know to like it, from the moment Alex sings that he just wanted to be one of The Strokes at the beginning of the album to the moment he sings that he's probably not deep in thought, that's just his face.

The evolution from AM to Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino is delightful to see, AM being the top, the maximum fame that Arctic Monkeys has ever had with the catchy songs and the construction of Alex's character during that period; You know,  going from the whole bad boy look of the 50s, the way AM talks about parties and bars and people to TBHC being the opposite of it, talking about the illusion of fame with a debauched tone but at the same time with a touch of loneliness, like a drunk person who makes fun of the situation he is in but knows that in the background there’s a little bit of truth to the jokes. The way it talks about dressing up like a fictional character from a place he calls America seems to me like a perfect response to the life he lived back in the AM era.

AM is a peak album, an album dazzled by a surreal American world and perfect to conquer American youth and TBHC is a deep dive in this tattered illusion, a beautiful album about decadence. In a way I feel like AM has an adolescent energy, perhaps because I listened to it a lot during my teenage years, but also because of the way Alex Turner describes things in such a dramatic way, full of life or death, love or hate, in the lyrics and sounds like someone who's drunk on teenage power. The disappointment of AM is not the same as that of TBHC, the disappointment of the former is singular, it’s a person; while in TBHC it’s the world, it’s the creative scene, it is the industry. I feel like the band but mostly Alex, understood that trying to make another AM was simply ridiculous so even if unconsciously they embraced the idea that the thing after that was decadence and they built an entire reality around it, like what would decadence feel like? How does it sound? How does it look? And to them it looked like the vacation spot on the moon, far away from humanity but still human, being treated like a god and then being forgotten.

The criticism towards society is also so on point in this one, while AM was quite empty in this subject, a thing that pops up every now and then in Arctic Monkeys’ songs, see Teddy Picker for an example, Tranquility Base just goes deep into it, from technology to politics and not in a forceful way, I mean it’s clearly there, but it’s also not just about it and it’s not a political album like the openly critical about the government American Idiot by Green Day. Alex sings very delicately about the way social habits have changed in the era of social media in The Ultracheese, talking about freaking out from a knock at the door when you haven’t been expecting one, and satirizes advertising in Four Out of Five with the idea of selling people things in the verge of an apocalypse.

The way he does not demonize any of these things, but just kind of brings it up, makes me feel like there’s a bright future for the band even after the great success of AM and the popular hate on TBHC. It feels contemporary, I feel that in a personal level Alex is aware he’s aging and he doesn’t try to stop it, he embraces it, he collaborates with new younger artists and he is not the young and wild rockstar anymore, and I am talking about the way I read it, but he feels secure in his age and it shows so much that it feels like to the outside world he is perceived as cooler than he has ever been because Alex writes about this part of probably his career without making us listeners feel like it’s just an old man's complaint.

One other thing I really like in this album is this dark and golden vibe it has, the '70s inspired aesthetic, I think it ties well to the idea of decay and rejection of modernity right now since the '70s were an era of embracing modernity and rejecting tradition, people who didn't agree with the technological advances of the time or failed to open their minds to a new moment in history were left to decay and be forgotten. I think the fastest way to decay is to not accept and embrace modernity like I can see this in my own generation in the way people reject Tik Tok just because it’s new, it’s young and dumb when in reality it being young and dumb is what makes it so amazing. Being open-minded and getting in touch with another generation and at least partially understanding them is a blessing and I think the band understands this so although people hated the album back in 2018, I feel like it’s on the way to becoming a modern classic.

vibing in leopard print shirt from Zara (R$119, 2018), running shorts, that I bought because "make some noise" is written on them and I just really like MCR, from Renner (R$69, 2018), sunglasses (R$40), old ass picture of NYC that is around 11 years old (R$??????)

What did you think of Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino? How are you feeling about the end of the world?

VVIBING IN: Alphets to scandalize my mother

 This was the very start of this blog, 22nd of October? November? I don’t remember exactly but I remember I said a big "fuck this".

I looked at Mark Foster's outfit for the cover of Foster The People's latest album, aka Sacred Hearts Club, and I thought “Mark Foster doesn't think about what he wears with the cheetah print coat”, like I did, always with an all-black outfit and heels, “he is a star, he just wears whatever he wants and no one questions it.” and that was the energy I wanted in my life.

vibing in a leopard print fur coat from c&a (R$ 99, 2016), iron man t-shirt from renner (R$39), running shorts from renner (R$69), ironing board (R$????)

So I started flirting with the idea of testing the limits of ridiculous, unusual, eccentric and all the outfits in this blog are part of this, I see it as a year-long exercise, let’s see how weird I can get till October next year. I haven’t worn most of them out because… well, because of the pandemic, but I am so excited to wear them.

Dressing up has never been more fun than this, and scandalizing my mother has always been fun, so no news on that front, she thinks everything I wear is hideous, she has always been very classic, like Chanel perfumes, she was an executive secretary when she was younger.

Back to the point, I want to make fun of myself at this point, and of my degree, what’s the fun in graduating in Fashion Design if you can’t wear what you want, right?

Give me suggestions on things to test! Color combinations, print combinations, anything, if I have it available to wear I will make an outfit and tag you! Maybe challenge you to wear something different too! Could be fun, what do you think?

HALLOWEEN VVIBES

 This is a Halloween special and I am sorry for having no legs as a skeleton, it’s not my fault, Renner hasn’t made skeleton pants yet.

I love Halloween, like any other alternative bitch. I think it’s a vibe. Me and my college friends have been celebrating together for the last 2 years but this year we won’t be able to because of the pandemic.

The pandemic hasn’t been easy, it’s weird to think I haven’t seen my friends in months. I miss them a lot, and our shenanigans the most, going to haunted thrift shops and eating Arab food, drinking soda at the bar, and complaining...

There was this one time we went to a thrift shop so haunted that it seems to me, now that I remember it, that we were actually stuck in another dimension for a couple of hours. I swear to you, that shop was infinite, the more we walked through it the bigger and weirder it got, there were used bed frames and baby cradles, industrial sinks, couches, as well as used books, CDs and clothes, but everything, especially the room full of old bed frames and cradles, was so haunted, even remembering it gives me the creeps, 0/10, would not go back there. Tina went there the other day and found a really cute dress.

vvibing in a skeleton sweater from (R$ 99, sale price, 2019), skeleton gloves (R$?, 2014), skeleton socks (R$12, 2019), a lobster cap (R$30max, 2018), all from renner, vintage-inspired combination shorts (R$ I made them, 2018), and sunglasses (R$40, 2019)

There was this other shop, which seemed to be run by gnomes dressed as tiny old ladies, it’s so humid and hot in there, the light is fluorescent and weirdly weak amid all the stuff they have as if there’s so much water in the air, so much clothing and shoes and toys that the light barely touches the floor. The clothes hang in parallel metal racks and you can easily open up space and walk through the clothes, or make a window to have weird chats.

To me, that shop is the definition of a faery portal. The shoes stay on shelves or on the floor, under the clothes that are near a wall, and to buy things you have to hand them to an old lady (possibly fae) who will write the prices on a piece of paper that you take to the front desk to pay for. While you are paying, the things you bought are brought to you by another lady, and you are left waiting for your friends, sitting on the sidewalk.

The weirdest thing is that we have no pictures of this shop. We took pictures in all of the other shops we went to that day, but none there.

Sometimes I wonder, if I say my name to one of the old ladies, will I be trapped there? If I tell them my name will I turn into an old lady and be forced to work there forever?

Have you ever been to places that seemed normal at first but something was off?

HALLOWEEN, SKELETON COSTUME, SKELETON, SKELETON MEMES, SPOOKY, LOJAS RENNER, SUÉTER DE ESQUELETO, SKELETON SWEATER

VVIBE CHECKING: Why is this show so hard on teenagers? (A rant about Euphoria)

 [Spoiler Alert]

I stopped watching Euphoria in episode four. I am sorry but I won’t be able to write a full review.