So she's 22 years old TODAY.
My baby. My love. One of THE greatest influences that formed me as a young person, the one that I've never, ever, ever stopped loving, not even when heartbreak was so all-consuming that I couldn't even think about listening to anything they put out for more than 3 years. I've never stopped loving her. She's my safe place now, the no.1. place my mind escapes to when life gets too much or too little or too mundane or too painful. I still think it's their best album, despite the almost religious reverence I feel about The Black Parade, Bullets is, in my world, the MCR-est of MCR ever to exist. She came at a very formative period of my life, and I'm pretty sure, even after all these years, that at least 30% of my personality is formed thanks to her. Sure, there were Thursday and Thrice and Lifetime and Midtown and Green Day and Oasis and Texas is the Reason before her, and I'd be a liar if I said those bands didn't play a huge role in making me as a teen and a young adult, yet she will always stand out. I couldn't even explain why.
I just... when I listen to Bullets, I always get right back to this place, not even in my own life, but an imagined place in THEIRS, trying to put myself in the shoes of an obscure band from the same scene where I found Thursday, a scene that, over the years since, became so legendary, so canonical, that it almost feels like either history or mythos. These beautiful, ungodly talents getting together in the weirdest ways of twisty, tangled life decisions, on the trails of tragedy and hopelessness and the inevitable change of our perspective on life and death and responsibility and safety and togetherness and apartness after said tragedy, to follow a calling coming inevitably from something higher, bigger, wiser than humanity as a whole at that point, to become something nobody, especially not those handful of mercurial boys, could have even imagined. They formed and transformed a decade after the turn of the millennium that needed transformation SO BAD and exactly in the form of a couple of young talents decidedly trying to make a difference for the better because they, as young as they were, saw all what was wrong with the world.
And She was the first stepping stone in that process. I'm so grateful for having been there, even if not exactly from day one but at least from the beginning of '03 when my cousin moved back home from NYC with a cassette case (among a few others) containing Bullets, for me. Because it finished the process of changing everything. And later, when they became big worldwide too, and my heart grew twice its size with pride that those guys, MY GUYS, made it, really made it, in even greater terms than Thursday did, I found this sense of... belonging. I didn't go to concerts, I was too much of a wuss and an agoraphobe even at 19-20, I only got the feeling of community in the world of lagging and unfortunately slow internet forums and the knowledge that what I felt, what these guys, miraculously, felt too, and somehow managed to channel and broadcast, was something thousands and thousands of young people across the globe felt too. It was my first experience in that sense and I will never forget what it all gave me. They made it this big because they are one of a kind, and explosive, and just what the world needed right then. What I needed right then. And, even counting the inevitable fallouts because life became very different in a very short time for me and not long after that, for them, too, what I still seem to kind of need at this point in my life.
Geoff Rickly, as always, was right. They did become the biggest band in the world and looking back now, even if we'll get nothing more than WWWY '24 and what we got in the past 3 years, all the heartbreak is gone and all I feel is gratitude. All I feel is warm fuzzies thinking about their days spent in basements and vans and rest stops and studios and VFW halls and then festivals and arenas, is that I want to go back in time and space and be a fly on the wall, to be with them, be them, be ALL of them at the same time, each time when all the magic happened, at every step of the way, through good times and bad, young, clueless them in the beginning, with a crappy van and a celestial dream, and also current, wise and experienced them having lived everything that happened and couldn't happen, all the beauty and tragedy and growth, but also wanting to relive everything again on the receiving end, knowing nothing about how integral their magic will be throughout my adult life, but also from the perspective of the now, the reunion, the rekindling of my love for them, the new hopes, the new shows, everything, while knowing that, even faking their death for years, it never stopped. I still love each and every one of them so much. The visionary with too much raw and exposed nerve endings for this not-OK world, the unstoppable creative machine and comfort blanket of a guy in one person, the gentle and humble genius that always preferred the background, the thoughtful quirky empath who didn't ever fit and didn't really believe in himself enough till almost the end. I love them. I love their music, all their songs, all their albums, but when I count my artistic experiences as one counts their blessings, I WILL ALWAYS, ALWAYS COUNT BULLETS TWICE.
Happy Birthday, you impossible magnificent thing.
dailybridgerton
andulkaphoto
