When I was writing the Fortnight music video, I wanted to show you the worlds I saw in my head that served as the backdrop for making this music. Pretty much everything in it is a metaphor or a reference to one corner of the album or another. For me, this video turned out to be the perfect visual representation of this record and the stories I tell in it. Post Malone blew me away on set as our tortured tragic hero and I’m so grateful to him for everything he put into this collaboration. I’m still laughing from getting to work with the coolest guys on earth, Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles (tortured poets, meet your colleagues from down the hall, the dead poets). I still can’t believe I get to work with the unfathomably brilliant Rodrigo Prieto on cinematography and my team of dream collaborators: Ethan Tobman (production design), Chancler Haynes (editor), Anthony Dimino (1st AD), Jil Hardin (producer) and Dom Thomas (executive producer). Parliament aced the VFX as always. Joseph Cassell, Lorrie Turk and Jemma Muradian made these tortured looks come to life. The entire crew made this a dream to shoot. Thank you to everyone involved and everyone who has watched it!!
I have too many thoughts and, as always, I can only let them out here.
The Tortured Poets Department. In my opinion, the reason this album is so divisive is because you need to be at least 25 to understand the complexity of it. As a 33 year-old woman myself, I know all too well what it feels like to have given your entire youth to someone only to realize they were stringing you along for the ride. Feeling so close to ever after only for it to be called off when you almost taste it. Then you deal with being a spectacle for everyone in your life, their faux concerns, clutching their pearls “how did it happen? Trust me I won’t tell anyone!” But you know they’ll turn around and whisper behind your back to their spouses or cousins or friends, “poor thing lord help her,” shaking their heads with the superiority of having what you don’t.
Meanwhile, you desperately try to find someone to replace your “groom” with so the first person that comes along offering what the ex didn’t is the one you feel was sent by the universe to save you. So you ignore your friends and well wishers who are trying to warn you. He’s bad news. You shouldn’t dive head first. But you pay them no heed because he wants to marry you!
It doesn’t matter if your parents approve or not. It doesn’t matter if your best friends think it’s right or not. It doesn’t matter if you know it’s wrong. What matters is that this is your last chance and must cease it. So you lash out at anyone who dares to question you. Apparently no decent man is able to stay with you so maybe you’re the problem and this is the kind of man you deserve anyway. The clock is ticking and you still want marriage and children. For all intents and purposes, this is your last chance.
You start to look back on your life, your childhood, your relationships, your decisions, everything that brought here. Is it because you always bolt from a relationship at the first sign of toxicity? Maybe if you try to make this work no matter what, it’ll happen for you this time. Maybe he’ll choose you and he’ll stay and he’ll marry you like he said he would. You just need to focus on him.
Looking back, you try to pinpoint the exact moment your life fell apart. You decide to pin it on your biggest bully. While they did wrong you, they didn’t actually force you into your current predicament but you feel like they were the trigger that sparked the ripple effect that brought you here today. If they didn’t edit that phone call, you wouldn’t have been canceled, and you wouldn’t have been forced into exile, and you wouldn’t have ran to him, and you wouldn’t have stayed with him, and you wouldn’t have left him, and you wouldn’t have ended up with the worst man on earth right now. It’s their fault really.
Is life even worth living anymore? Perhaps if you got busy? Maybe you can force yourself to get up and go to work everyday. Maybe then things will get better. But now you feel like a circus monkey putting on a show. And people seem to believe you’re happy when you’re dead inside. And now you feel even more isolated. You spent your whole life performing for their entertainment and they can’t even see you struggle? They can’t even understand that you can’t do more? You feel like crazy and alone.
Somehow, even the worst man on earth, who you fought everyone for, doesn’t want you anymore. How does this happen every time?! How come even when you decided to settle for the worst, the worst still doesn’t want you? Can it ever be me? Is there anyone who’d ever choose me?
Then the universe sends someone. And you feel 16 again. Your chance at a do-over.
