crvshvelv3t - Tumblr blog

crvshvelv3t · 27 days ago

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YANNA UPDATE

been meaning to add to the CV tumblr archive. it is 00:54 28/07/2025 as I write this.

I'm in what used to be my sister and I's room. It's just hers now since I moved to Brum for uni. I sleep on a mattress on the floor, it's not very comfortable, but I'll live. I'm watching Twin Peaks, got a fan blowing. It reminds me of being 14, staying up talking to random people in groupchats.

I've been doing well, despite the first half of the year being so difficult. To be fair, it's been difficult for everyone. I remember in my first year at uni writing 'to love life and to be happy are not the same thing' in my notes during Virginia Woolf week - it still resonates, even as I'm on the border of third year. Rewriting it again, I can say that, although they aren't the same - love and happiness - I feel them both inside of me. That's huge. I am proud of myself for that. And very grateful. 7 months into 2025, we have managed to do so much.

June 3rd was our last live performance, our next is on Aug 9th. two months and a bit. the versions of ourselves that play both gigs couldn't be further from each other. but it is interesting to see the ways in which we haven't really changed at all. well, we are down a full-time drummer - long story short, it just didn't work out. It was for the best, mutually agreed and amicable.

With these internal changes, I've been thinking a lot and writing in the same fat red book I've been lugging around with me everywhere since CV was only an idea. And yeah, reading old pages, I'm pretty much the same. Same inconclusive musings and theories on the same 3 subjects, one of them being this band.

CV was all about having fun, acknowledging what is expected of you, but doing exactly whatever you want anyway. There's no reason for us to care so much or try so hard, but we do anyway. Just because. She stands on the shoulders of the people we love and are loved by, who believed in whatever this is and still do. Just because.

I'll tell you the story behind the name, Crush Velvet, and the original form that it took, one day. Or not. Sometimes, it feels reductive to put things into language and explanations.

For now, I'll just say this:

After every milestone, every setback, all the gaps in between, I always think about my parents. I don't think that will ever stop. They're the coolest people in the world.

I always think about travelling back in time and saying to either of them: you'll have three kids with your neighbour from down/up the road... even though they're from a different religion, yes... but only when you've moved to Europe... also, your children will have British accents.

How weird is that? So many tiny things had to have aligned for any of this to exist. It's not special or specific to us, same goes for literally anything and everything. It is just weird to think about how impossible things are, but their very existence makes you believe it was all inevitable.

When I think about heritage or culture that feels native to me, it's the space my parents accidentally engineered for us. It's all archival or imported. It's burned CDs of Irish rock bands, old photos from the Philippines, 90s British Romance films, a crucifix on the windowsill, saying 'Alhumdulilah' after returning from a long journey. The things they kept from their experiences and growing up, it's passed to us. What they have loved, we get to love too. Contrapuntally... Am I using that word correctly? Their context, the context of the artist, my own context. Everything that has ever happened to get to these three separate contexts, they all collapse together into an identity, into the same feelings. We are living in the future!!!! Culturally, we are the luckiest and richest generation to exist so far!!!!!!!!!!!! (also the most tragic, that's an essay for another day.)

Whenever I come home from uni, we drink and watch music videos, and t's always the same: Guns 'n' Roses, The Cranberries, Aerosmith, Gin Blossoms, Matchbox Twenty, etc. It never gets old. It's been that way since you could first put YouTube up on a television. Before that, it was MTV and Kerrang. My dad always wanted to learn how to play guitar. I remember him saying on long drives back home in the Philippines, it'd be Hysteria by Def Leppard on the stereo over and over. Rockstars felt far away.

Not to say I am one by any means. The emphasis is more on the 'far away' part than the rockstar part, I just say that to generalise the intersection between his interests and what I try to do. But it was never far away. There's something about accessibility and opportunity that is really important. Knowing what you like and honouring that. You had no idea you were crafting an identity, a culture, this entire time. It was never a conscious effort; you don't know why you return to these things or these people, you just do. To explain it would reduce it. But if I had to try, all that comes to mind is love.

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Our next gig, Grrrls in the Pit - accessibility and engineering a space for equal opportunity, celebrating femininity and non-conformity, pushing the boundaries of what identity CAN be - will be very special.

We might be very out of practice but being on stage, sharing the night with everyone, that's more than enough for me. What the event stands for, what we value, the timing (it being my birth month!), the venue itself (where I saw my first gig having moved out to Brum for uni), all these elements enmeshed together. I don't know. All so apt.

There is so much uncertainty, sometimes it feels like we are back at square one. Sometimes, I write and I write but it feels like nothing but a shout into the void. When my friends ask me for advice, I say 'if it feels right, it feels right'. Maybe things aren't necessarily 'right', but they don't feel 'wrong' by any means. It was never about being good or doing it 'right' but doing it and trying it, take what you want, leave what you don't, honouring that, having fun with the people you love, and generating even more love by extension.

Well, it's a good thing we aren't actually that bad. It is all fitting together somehow, just from doing it at all. I still haven't paid rent that was due in June. After every rehearsal, every gig, I found it funny how I returned back to the same messy 20 year old uni student room. At home, two goldfish that we bought in 2016 are still swimming. They've seen every version of us since I was 11 years old. I'm 21 in August. Nothing is real and everything is inevitable. And the opposite of love isn't hate, it's apathy. What a comfort.

#crush velvet #crushvelvet #music #alternative rock #thoughts #feelings #yanna update

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crvshvelv3t · 28 days ago

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