#and speaking of artists Blind Channel has had such a huge impact on my life

[itsinvisiblelocket91]

13 years of Taylor. (This is long. I’m sorry)

So I’ve decided to tell my story on how I found Taylor and the Impact she’s had one me, and what she’s helped me through the past 13 years. I figure it’s appropriate to do this during the Lover era and 13 years of Taylor!!

I’ll start with when I was 16 (almost 17) and sitting in the dark on my couch with a blanket wrapped around me. I was just skimming through the channels and landed on the ACM Awards. There was a tiny, tall, kinky ,curly, blonde headed girl in a black jacket and denim jeans and a guitar, sitting on a stool. All the sudden she tears it off and goes into dramatics of why this boy should have said no. Soon to go into a rain shower of “no’s”. I absolutely got chills and could not take my eyes off her. She sang in the rain, just drenched, soak and wet but singing her heart out about the boy who did her wrong. She ended the song and I was stunned! She was so happy after her performance. There was a standing ovation and she was so giddy and couldn’t believe the reaction she was getting. So genuine and honest. I replayed and watched it a couple times but at some point I HAD to stop and go to bed. I remember walking up the stairs to my room and decided that I was never gonna forget this girl and I needed to look her stuff up and soon.

Later on I had discovered her debut album “Taylor Swift” but didn’t go into a whole spiral of obsession like I am currently. I had her music on my laptop. I remember me and my friends making horrible remakes of “our song”, “tryin to find a place in this world”, and “Tim McGraw “ if only those video still existed. I started finding posters in magazines of her to hang up on my wall.

One day, my mom came home with the new “fearless” album for me only days after my birthday. I didn’t ask for it, she just got it but I’m so glad she did. The rest of that year, we played that CD to school and back in my moms Jeep. My school was 45 mins away so you can imagine I learned this album QUICK. I was 100% a hopeless romantic in high school and had crazy amount of crushes happening but also learning that they don’t have to like you or they can break up with you through a piece of paper at lunch. I remember wishing the song “15” came sooner for me, but greatful it was there cause even at 17-18 I didn’t know who I was. I felt Taylor was there to help me find that in myself. I was supper shy and definitely made fun of/ bullied in school. It was nice to know someone knew all about it and could let me know how to maybe handle it and all the other things high school came with.

January 13th 2010, my grandpa died of cancer. He had, had it for years at this point. I suddenly couldn’t listen to breathe anymore and still can’t to this day. For some reason it just hits different sense then. He was a father figure to me sense me, my brother and mom lived with my grandma and grandpa after her divorce. Not that my dad wasn’t around. It’s just he was always there to protect me and care for me as much as my mom was.

Soon it was time for me to graduate high school (I graduated early) and I remember being in like a limbo of “what now”. I watched the VMAS that year....2009. I remember watching it live. I burst into my moms room while she was sleeping to tell her what just happened to you. I was so angry. How dare he? You WORKED SO HARD! I laid in bed to mad that I couldn’t do anything. But what else could I do.

Speak Now was then released and I downloaded the album that night. Idky, but I listened to “last kiss” on repeat tell I fell asleep. (Weird I know). At the time I was talking to a certain someone that I never thought would have ever batted an eye in my direction from my high school. I had dated him for a week but it just wasn’t the right time for either of us. Clearly Speak Now said something to me. That night I was in the dark on the phone with him while the moonlight blazed through my blinds. He told me “I would always be of high importance to him and that he wanted to take me out on my birthday” At that moment, I new I needed to jump. I didn’t jump before because I was scared and with other boys I did the same thing before. Nothing.

Speak now told me to do this before you keep regretting not jumping.

I jumped.

I absolutely didn’t have my drivers licenses.

My mom was absolutely out of town

And I absolutely took my car that I would get when legal to drive to go see this boy who gave me a romantic conversation over the phone.

I felt like I was gonna throw up. 100% scared and blaring sparks fly in what was technically my car.

I met him at the park and we went to eat from there in his car.

I couldn’t believe what I was doing. This was jumping.

After that night, that was it. He was it.

I was 19 and 100% sure that this was it.

(Good thing I was right 🥰)

My mom was furious. I even moved out.

I listened to speak now that entire time. It was a huge part of my life. I would cry every time I left him and put on speak now and it would comfort me and I would be ok.

Years go by and then low and be hold RED is debuting

(19 year old jumping from house to house just to be with him. I slept on peoples floors)

My mom had gotten married and moved to Kentucky so I went to visit her. Engaged and sitting in my moms car, my mom comes out of Walgreens with a RED T-shirt, and album for me cause I was begging. I remember hear IKYWT and thinking oh hell, we’re going into something new? I sat in my moms guest room and listened to RED and loved it. I remember thinking how sad I was for Taylor. That this is what love has become for her. Red. Something that will probably end at some point.

That was about the time that the honeymoon phase was fading out for me and my fiancé. It’s funny how that’s like a light switch and you don’t realize what kinda care you have to give and put into your love life until one day, reality hits and you want certain things. Maybe things you both don’t agree on. You start having to grow up and dealing with actual life problems you didn’t see when you were blinded by the infatuation you have for each other. That’s when RED started making sense to me. Fighting and hurting each other cause we’re 20-21 and have no idea what we’re doing. Engaged and love each other but have no clue about life and doing it. That year was my first Taylor Concert with nose bleed seats of course cause I made $7.25 an hour and a friend of mine paid for them. I screamed every word with my poster board and almost broke into tears during the entire thing. I had only wished I could get closer because I wanted to see her face to face for once. I still had the time of my life screaming and jumping around to 22!

(My sign for the red tour)

The RED era started to come to an end and me and my fiancé FINALLY got out first place together. A home that was falling apart, and illegally made into a duplex. No central a/c or heat. Insulation was probably 0% as well. This was the hardest year for us. It was Texas and Texas is brutal with heat. Shake it off debuted and I desperately tried, I promise. I was so excited for this step in Taylor’s Career and was so excited to see what the next step in my life would need to get through it. Another album to help me deal with unknowing in life and my relationship with my fiancé.

One night at midnight, I had no internet to buy an album not any money for album, let alone food in the house. I stayed up all night waiting for the album to download on YouTube that someone posted. I would buy the album which I did and still have but that night I just needed to hear it. I was up tell 5am. I didn’t know that a week later I was going to need this album more than anything.

We had a fight

The fight.

It was horrible. I sat in the dark in our broken home thinking “this can’t be it” I left to my grandmas house the next day in tears and for a week me and him argued, trying to work it out. I couldn’t understand it. I listened to All you had to do was stay like there wasn’t another song to exist. There was a night that I finally got angry. I formed my entire life around this man. How dare you give up on us so easily? I drove down scared and angry and ready to get my stuff while listening to 1989, trying to calm down but the adrenaline was crazy. I get there and that night we both break down and try to ACTUALLY work things out. I listened to Taylor so much that year. 1989 ended up being a staple. I finally got a job and we found a new apartment together. One where our electricity wasn’t $20 a day and I didn’t have to share my trash can with the neighbors. A completely new beginning and trying to heal after such a hard year. Still engaged after 3 years. We finally are getting on track. I even met some amazing people and finally a swiftie who GET ME! Shake it off came on and work and we looked at each other and I’ll never forget it. I made some great friends that I really needed that year. It’s amazing what can happen in 1 year. They ended up being a bridesmaid in my wedding and makeup artist.

YES I SAID MY WEDDING

06/25/16 we finally made it. I walked down the aisle to your in love.

I couldn’t breathe and the a/c in the church was broken in the summer. He was sweating, my dress hit a lantern twice, we joked at the alter with the crowd. It was personal and real and small. Hectic and stressful too.

You disappeared for awhile after this. I couldn’t believe the existent the media, and some reality stars/ rap singers were taking. I was very angry. I was a little confused even and wasn’t sure of what to think. I knew of all the battles at this point that you already were fighting and then this happened. Another limbo without you happened. I had all your music but you were gone. I’m thankful knowing what I do now and that you ended up ok. Better than ok.

You vented your feeling and brought out reputation!!! Naturally this ended up being the year I had to get rid of any toxic friends that I had. I had some actual good friends and I started to see the difference in what I deserved. It also could also do with my age and growing up but still. On top of that, things still ended up being hard for me and my husband that year. We were seeing each other a lot cause of work and we were becoming distant. There was a temptation I had that I didn’t give in to but it hurt. We ended up deciding that we needed to go. Get out of town and leave. We picked up our important belongings and left in 2 weeks tops.

We moved to Kentucky which made me closer to my mom and helped a lot. My husband moved for us away from his family for us and that was everything in itself. I listened to all of her albums on my 14 hour drive from Texas to Kentucky. I was scared beyond belief and with some bumps in the road. We finally made it.

Fast forward to know and it’s been a year in Kentucky and Lover is out.

Me and my husband have decided to try and start a family. That’s how good this move has been for us. We have a 2 bedroom apartment and 2 fur babies. I love the fall here, and Lover has a special place in my heart just like the others. This year has been very good for me and my husband. I was putting up fall decorations a couple days ago and I teared up at the line “this is our place we make the call” I looked around and it WAS ours. I was decorating while he was laughing at his xbox game. We did it. This era is different. I can’t wait to see what this era will show me.

@taylorswift @taylornation

[outsidermagazine]

The danger of let yourself be carried by the entertainment industry

It's sunday night and sundays are made for us to take rest.

I made a pact with myself that I would take sundays off to do nothing but self-care routine and give myself rest, only.

Something quite fair and more than necessary in this time, times which we live now. One of the greatest acts of love we could ever do to ourselves. Well, not everyone thinks like that, too bad... 

Well, the fact is: not long ago I learned in the hard way that either I focus my attention on my physical, mental and spiritual body, or I won't survive alive this year, which led me to make very important and sensible decisions such as choosing well what to spend my time on and how well to use it.

Yeah, it took me many years to really understand (I'm still learning) that time is my most valuable resource. Our most valuable resource! It is given to use wisely but what do we do instead? Well, I'll get there later.

I wasn't tired but I still had that few hours left until I could consider my day over and go get my precious hours of sleep when I decided to watch a movie that was in the My List section on Netflix: Monsieur e Madame Aldeman.

I put it on my list for a pretty stupid reason.

I was still working at the distributor responsible for the film when I took notice about it and as a French cinema lover that I am and for up until then, at that time, giving a lot of importance to what others said about almost everything in this life, I ended up seeing some comments about it, from the  own team, and I ended up thinking: wow, it's a movie I can't miss someday! It seems to be one of those you can't miss seeing before you die or belong to the 'it will give you points in your cultured card with rich baggage by watching' s label. 

What a holy fool one I was…

Anyway, I didn't want to watch something complex, I wanted to watch something fine and relaxing since I was about to go to sleep, something like a romantic comedy, why not?

I decided to play this movie and here's the first mistake: going to Netflix, second one: having chosen to watch that movie and wasting 2 precious hours of my life consuming something abhorrent.

In fact, the biggest mistake I made of all the mistakes I could do was that I added him to my list without even seeing the trailer and taken my own conclusions. I just swimmed in the others opinions.

And that was one of the reasons that led me to write this article.

Monsieur e Madame Aldeman it's a terrible movie, C'est vrai!

Terribly good for those who are likely to this kind of movie, which on the outside appears to be an amusing love story of a couple who respect and love each other and as time goes by we'll follow their path, rejoicing and thrilling together whit their story.

A very interesting and fun one that really makes a comedy worthy of being documented on screen. It's like looking at a nice photo album when you actually end up realizing it's a terribly unhealthy relationship.

An abusive and toxic relationship in which the lady in question, poor one, was the lover blinded for a completely mediocre man, insecure about himself and his talents, immersed herself in an imposter syndrome but with a huge inflated ego. She ended up suffering in his hand several humiliations for being completely blinded by what she thought was her true love. But, in the other hand she knew that, and was just not thinking about letting go of him, as if pulled by a terrible magnetic force.

Not forgeting to mention that she was the one who wrote her husband's books.  She made him grow in his writing career, even taking (she) the awards, but he was the one who received it instead, and he reaped the laurels of his profession at the expense of his wife the woman behind his success whom he made a point of treating like rubbish, always showing himself superior.

He'd despised her from the very first day he saw her.

This movie caused me great discomfort especially because 1. I wore Sara's skin not so long ago in a relationship and I saw myself in several scenes as a reflection of her, in love with a completely despicable and insecure figure, but with a lot of arrogance of those generated by those who have an inflated ego like a gas station doll; and 2. I felt a deep agony and anger at the fact that she was the main head behind her husband's success. And yet, he died as The Great Writer (ohhh! genius).

It reminded me a lot of Big Eyes (2014), which is actually a real story painted on canvas in a very well executed way by Tim Burton. It's pretty much the same story, the changes are just the characters and location.

I have several points to talk about this depressing movie, as it raises very serious issues, like the ones I mentioned above, issues that deserves to be put on panel, in all channels and vehicles and increasingly, repeatedly, so that it becomes something absorbed in our society as much as we accept that 1+1 equals 2 without even questioning.

We need to talk more about this to re-educate ourselves.

Also, why I don't see articles or comments about this film that bring this perspective?

Why is no one commenting on this?

Why there's no texts about this?

See? This fact in itself is a separate study already.

The fact is that after having a disturbed night's sleep caused by this movie, I made another important decision: take care of what I watch and of what i consume mainly for being a fervent lover of cultural products (and that includes movies, series, books, music)...

I decided to look more carefully at what I've been consuming and consciously consume. From all the discomfort and reflection, I started to do an investigation and realized that there was a lot that I used to put my hands up, cherryng, glorifying and deified but that are actually part of the others opinions.

Not because I really and genuinely liked it or it was something that added me and encouraged me to grown with a rich and relevant impact, considering my trajectory, my history, my essence, my tastes and my life/work purpose. But that comes after a great self-knowledge work, it's a fact.

That's why I ask you: How is your relationship with you?

Are you taking care of yourself?

Have you ever stopped to think that there's a lot you still watch because of others talk, the media talks, newspapers talk, magazines (ah! hello!)... You saw it on your Instagram, you saw it on the famous website for posting lists of cool events and content to get to know, you saw your friend or your friend's friend who even isn't your real friend talking…

You're still consuming these movies, series, songs, clips, because you were told it was good but based on what?

And about you? Is this really for you?

Does that fit with your essence?

Is it worth give your time for this?

What pleases you?

What adds you?

If you think of yourself as a body that came to this planet with a purpose and that is your most precious asset along with the time you have that is all your treasure (you can read: money) that you have, would you waste it or use it self-consciously?

Based on that, what is really worthy of your attention?

And then I ask you more questions: Do you really have the need to consume these products every day? Every second?

Have you been giving yourself time to digest?

What do you think about that?

We've reached a point in capitalism where the only major weapon of domination is through the entertainment industry and that's where you see the monetization of things that were purely educational until then or didn't have a purpose to be commercialized, like the contents for example.

Video content, text and even music have lost their purpose in itself as today's mindset has been: it has to have views! Attract leads. It has to have streaming! Streaming it! Watch NOW!

And so the artists are becoming more and more hostages or little robots of this terrible industry and as depressing as Monsieur and Madame Aldeman.

I could name a lot of artists from the music industry itself who have sold themselves to her and act like her puppies, worrying with nothing but releasing singles one after another to be hits and earn I don't know how many millions of streamings, and have their clips seen by I don't know how many millions of users (tsc, tsc), and they suffer from the worst kind of anxiety you can have: this anxiety to the non-stop publish and publish, to be always ahead, to launch and release compulsively… 

No wonder that since the beginning of the internet age this has been the main topic of songs by many other artists some well consecrated and whose are the ones who happily remain faithful in their own lyrics in nowdays.

When quality loses space to quantity we have a very serious problem because the thing loses its purpose, and let's face it, art is to inspire but also to make people think and evoke transformations, discussions…

How are we going to think or develop a critical sense being bombarded with new releases every week, every day?

Releases on the Netflix every day — i feel nostalgia when Netflix was just a new thing that few people signed to because we still had a bit of dignity.

Now it's completely sick,  and it's creepy to get on the platform and every day have something new!

The logic of cultural production literally turned itself in the dynamics of frying fish at a fair.

And so I ask you again, do you really think it's worth it?

Are you taking care of yourself?

Paying attention to what you watch, read and listen to is just as important as how often you digest this information. And why do I say this? For the simple reason that our communication has become increasingly outdated, deteriorating slowly and in a completely frightening way.

It's scary to see the creature we've become, collectively speaking, by when we communicate with each other.

We don't have time to listen our voices anymore, to swim in deep conversations, we don't have more time for long audios, acctualy, it's not that we have no time, we just don't want to know. We want everything for yesterday and the more the better. 

And whoever is in this cat's bed, dancing to this song, is probably more sick and in danger than whoever caught covid-19, because this is indeed the most lethal virus in humanity, the culture of immediacy.