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ENTRY #1: PIERCING THE VEIL. I hadn't listened to Pierce the Veil since... 2021? 2022? When when I found out that Mike left the band after it came out that he had been sleeping with underage fans. That information broke my heart a bit. One of the walls of my childhood bedroom is still a shrine to PTV, every inch of it covered in magazine cutouts and tumblr edits I printed out and taped up. On that wall is the photo of my mom and I at one of their meet-and-greets when I was 15. I made my first therapist listen to one of their songs mid-session once, to try to understand how I felt. Every song from their first four albums has millions of memories baked into it, of listening to it on the bus or in the back of the car to desperately shut out the sound of my family fighting. I downloaded tumblr in the first place to blog about PTV. So I had this profound, revelatory relationship with this band and their music and the kind of freedom that in my mind was emblemized by their concerts, and this is what sees me through my adolescence as I become the person I am, and then I turn around and see that for at least 1/4th of the band their relationship back with fans like me—young girls—is just straightforward shallow exploitation. Like I said, it broke my heart. It felt like this betrayal of all of the meaning I had given the band in my life. So I stopped listening, because it felt like all those years of my life so interwoven with PTV songs were all tainted now. But I was on a long bus ride the other day, going through my iTunes catalogue and marvelling at the memories encoded within it, when I thought 'fuck it, I'm an adult now with enough of a nuanced understanding of art vs artist that I can listen to PTV again (besides, Mike left the band)'. And then I was instantly almost crying one song in; like, it really is that serious. That emo phase shit stays with you for life. Or maybe I am, in fact, the same person as my 13-year-old self. |
