all-american bitch

he said, “you have to stop doing that.”

“i know, i know,” because it’s even more embarrassing to be embarrassed about writing fanfic, considering how many posts i’ve reblogged in its defense.

but i misunderstood his original question: “fanfic is just the genre. i asked what you’re writing about.” 

i did the conversational equivalent of a spinning wheel cursor for at least a minute. i started peeling back the setting and the characters, the fic challenge and the specific episode the story jumps off from, and it was one of those slow-dawning light bulb moments. “i’m writing about loneliness, and who we are in the absence of purpose.”

as, i imagine, are a lot of people right now, who probably also don’t realize they’re writing an existential diary in the guise of getting television characters to fuck. 

“that’s what you’re writing. the rest is just how you get there, and how you get it out into the world. was richard iii really about richard the third? would shakespeare have gotten as many people to see it if it wasn’t a story they knew?”

Tomorrow I turn 20, and it’s all I’ve been able to think about for days. I walk around the city, up by the park and by the health food store and down into the subway, this new age hanging in front of my eyes like two of those Mylar balloons that never come down. Can people see it, I wonder, that I’m about to cross over? On the subway I stare at boys I want to kiss and girls I want to hug. Do you see me?

I’m eating raspberries sitting up in bed, thinking about watching The Crown, and I probably should have written something nicer ages ago but my head is so full of lyrics and drums these days that this is all I can manage. But it feels very important I write to you, for some reason.

I was 16 when most of us met. Can you believe it? I laugh thinking about that me now - that glossy idiot god, princess of her childhood streets, handmade and ugly and sure of herself. All my life I’ve been obsessed with adolescence, drunk on it. Even when I was little, I knew that teenagers sparkled. I knew they knew something children didn’t know, and adults ended up forgetting. Since 13 I’ve spent my life building this giant teenage museum, mausoleum maybe, dutifully wolfishly writing every moment down, and repeating it all back like folklore. And now there isn’t any more of it. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) (*insert that emoji that looks like it’s eating its own face with worry, and also the one with sunglasses, and maybe also the poo*)

And I know, I know! There’s different stuff. Stuff that’s just as good, maybe better, just in a different way. If I’m being real with myself, in some ways I stopped feeling like a teenager a while ago.

Sometime in the last year or so, part of me crossed over. For one thing, I made a very deliberate choice to withdraw for a little while from a public life. I haven’t had my hair or makeup done in a year, the free handbags dried up LONG ago, and the paparazzi at the airport are almost always for someone else. And let me tell you, as much as I love being full noise album cycle girl, it’s been a motherfucking joy. (every once in a while I am recognised on the street - one of you breathlessly clutches my hand, shaking and speaking quickly, and I feel this SHOCK of love.) I turned inwards to my friends, my family, towards this moment, so I could learn more about who I was, and so I could let this new project show itself to me. And oh my god, it was a colossal year! One for the ages. I maxed out every single emotion I have in the best possible way, the colours still aching behind my eyes like this weird blissful hangover.

My heart broke. I moved out of home and into the city and I made new friends and started to realize that no-one is just good or bad, that everyone is both. I started to discover in a profound, scary, blood-aching way who I was when I was alone, what I did when I did things only for myself. I was reckless and graceless and terrifying and tender. I threw sprawling parties and sat in restaurants until the early hours, learning what it’s like to be an adult, even talking like one sometimes, until I caught myself. All I wanted to do was dance. I whispered into ears and let my eyes blaze on high and for the first time I felt this intimate, empire-sized inner power.

And then I wrote a record about it, all of it, so much more than what I’ve written down here, and I’m in new york getting it done. And tomorrow, I’m not a kid any more, and more and more I’m realizing that the weirdness of those Mylar balloons is going to be okay. Writing Pure Heroine was my way of enshrining our teenage glory, putting it up in lights forever so that part of me never dies, and this record - well, this one is about what comes next.

I want nothing more than to spill my guts RIGHT NOW about the whole thing - I want you to see the album cover, pore over the lyrics (the best I’ve written in my life), touch the merch, experience the live show. I can hardly stop myself from typing out the name. I just need to keep working a while longer to make it as good as it can be. You’ll have to hold on. The big day is not tomorrow, or even next month realistically, but soon. I know you understand.

Oh my god it’s midnight now!!! I’m 20 fuck!!!!! And my perfect little brother Angelo is 15!! Happy birthday, kid. Sorry your sister is so weird and emotional in public all the time.

What i’m trying to say is: this is a special birthday. The party is about to start. I am about to show you the new world.

I love you forever. L

The myth of Judas is like every story in the Bible: it depends on how you read it.

There’s the first story, the one everyone knows, in which Jesus is divine and Judas is the betrayer and he is condemned for it. But what isn’t said is that there needs to be a betrayal; that the story hinges on it; the passion can’t play without it. And so the question becomes: if it’s all destined, if it’s fate, is Judas culpable? Was he lead to the betrayal - did he ever even have a choice? The question of Judas is the question of free will. This is why Jesus loves him most, keeps him close, never hates him - he’s part of the godhead. He knows that he’s not the only one who is sacrificed for salvation. And doesn’t Judas get the worst of it - reviled for all eternity, hated by all, written down in the book as The Betrayer? He doesn’t even get a legacy. He doesn’t get worshipped; he doesn’t even get to be forgotten. For someone to rise up, to ascend, someone else has to take the fall, and that’s exactly what Judas did.

The second story is the historical one, the one that says Jesus was just a man, and that he and Judas knew exactly what the fuck they were doing. In this story Jesus is the leader and Judas is his right hand, his zealot, the one who believes that the cause, the salvation of his people, is more important than anything else, more than anything Jesus might want, more important than any human bonds, any love or dedication. They’ve read the book. They know the stories. They know that the only way to make their revolution last is for Jesus to become a martyr. They make the myth because they are just men and the story, the story will last far beyond them. The story lasts forever. 

And so we come to the Gethsemane, only it’s under different lighting. There’s this idea, somehow, that Jesus is the innocent, that the betrayal is a blow - but he knows what’s coming. In every version, he always knows. And that changes things, it complicates things. It changes the two of them from good and evil, profane and divine, into what they were and what it was - two men giving up their lives in the hope that they could bring hope to all the people who came after them. The hero and the villain because they created themselves that way.