This Is So Dumb But There Was That Interview Andrew Garfield Did With Stephen Colbert Where He Said Grief

I think what really GETS me about Miss Americana is that the lyrics do really have double meaning.

If you’re not paying attention, you’d be like, ‘oh, yeah, it’s about high school love’... but then you listen closer with the context of her singing about AMERICA, or rather, TO AMERICA and it’s politics. “You know I adore you, I’m crazier for you, than I was at 16, lost a film scene.” This is really obviously symbolism of, ‘I was so caught up in my own life and being distracted by my career I didn’t really notice you, American politics, needed my attention.’

I now kind of read the chorus in two ways, too. She could so easily just be singing to the Heartbreak Prince as a love interest, saying, “It’s you and me,” and that the rest of the world doesn’t approve of her being with him... but the chorus is so much more layered when you approach it from the singing about her society / her country angle. It’s like she’s saying to America, ‘remember when I was known for my 4th of July parties? You were my whole world’, but then the Republicans claimed her for their own in her silence, and people were bullying her and talking about her, so ‘they whisper in the hallway she’s a bad bad girl.’

So when she says, “the whole school is rolling fake dice”, (which is !!!!!) This is her saying she realises the new America she lives in is run by those who manipulate the system, (just like she said in that Guardian interview as well??!). Then she’s like taking a dig, like, if ‘you’re doing to play stupid games with power, then your prize isn’t a real prize, either’.

This analogy is made even more clear and easier to see in the second verse with, “my team is losing / batteries and bruising / I see the high fives between the bad guys,” and “American stories, burning before me / boys will be boys then, where are the wise men?’ Because guess who said, ‘boys will be boys’ famously???? A certain President.

The whole analogy is genius when it’s then mixed with the American high school symbolism as well? Because to anyone who isn’t American, the MOST American thing is movie vision of ‘high school’, of cliques, of cheerleaders and bleachers.

And there ain’t nothing more cliquey and high school than two party politics at the moment, huh?

when youre writing but you forget a word that was in your head milliseconds ago so you just die for the next 93 years

I'm not sure if anyone has shared this yet, but it's phenomenal, and such a transcendent, emotional journey through her music.

the video is also spectacularly gorgeous, I'm in awe of the impressive talent, dedication, and time that must've gone into creating this and capturing the highs, lows, and connective tissue of these (230!!!) songs. it's like a magic distillation of why so many of us are impacted by and love her art the way we do:

when i was a kid i used to respond to the "glass half full/half empty" question by asking how the liquid in the glass got there in the first place. nobody ever gave me a chance to explain my reasoning so i'm doing it now

if you have a glass and it has some liquid in it, up to the halfway line, whether it is empty or full depends on what happened before the question was asked. if you started with a full glass and poured half out until only half remained, the glass is half empty, because if you continued pouring it would be fully empty. however, if you started with an empty glass and poured liquid from another container into the glass up to the halfway line, the glass is half full because if you continued pouring it would be all the way full. logical, no?

i was 13 years old when somebody finally told me it was supposed to be some kind of optimism/pessimism thing. i always thought it was a riddle that nobody let me solve

I need everyone’s best character advice. STAT.

i just have this persistent feeling of “i’m not doing enough” combined with “i don’t have the energy to do anything” and it just really fucking sucks

so i’ve seen a few running lists of the surprise songs from each show but i thought it’d be nice to keep one with links to the surprise song audios! all audios come from the lovely @hope-ur-ok everyone say thank you rachel <3

3/17 Glendale, AZ: mirrorball + Tim McGraw

3/18 Glendale, AZ: this is me trying + State of Grace

3/24 Las Vegas, NV: Our Song + Snow on the Beach 

3/25 Las Vegas, NV: cowboy like me + White Horse

3/31 Arlington, TX: Sad Beautiful Tragic + Ours

4/1 Arlington, TX: Death By A Thousand Cuts + Clean

4/2 Arlington, TX: Jump Then Fall + The Lucky One

4/13 Tampa, FL: Speak Now + Treacherous

4/14 Tampa, FL: The Great War + You’re On Your Own, Kid

4/15 Tampa, FL: mad woman + Mean

4/21 Houston, TX: Wonderland + You’re Not Sorry

4/22 Houston, TX: A Place In This World + Today Was A Fairytale

4/23 Houston, TX: Begin Again + Cold As You

Finding joy again in things you used to love is one of the miracles of life

I've been obsessed with how the first ten Hunger Games were in an actual arena, like with seats and an event floor and turnstiles and everything. Something that was so clearly human-made, without so much as a weed growing inside of it.

Then Coriolanus goes off to Twelve and has his own private Hunger Games with Lucy Gray in the middle of the woods and comes to the conclusion that humanity is violent, and it must be contained by the Hunger Games. Some point after that, the arenas are still human-made, but mimic nature like Snow's own Hunger Games with Lucy Gray. Some are deserts or tundras or jungles, but all are made to appear like a natural environment. Only they're nature that's been constructed and manicured by humans, just like the Games are.

Fitting, then, that the first hit against this arena is made by a boy from District Twelve. Then a quarter century later, this arena is destroyed by a girl from District Twelve who learned to shoot arrows in the very trees that saw the future dictator of Panem emerge from it with his worldview now set against the natural world.