Photoshoot: Bad Religion Jacket

Standing on the floor of a crowded concert, there is this moment when the world feels as if it has turned to black and white: when the room is dark and hung with smoke, and the crowd is moving like a many-limbed animal, and the lights of the stage are so bright that you can't keep your eyes open.

 

The floor and the air and your chest pulse with sound. The air is heavy with heat. And when the right notes hit, you can feel electricity humming through your skin.

 Afterwards, you walk outside into the night air, and the cold of it shocks your lungs. Noise still echoes in your ears like radio static, and color has settled on the world again: the golden backlit hot dog stand outside the venue, the shimmy cobalt dress and spindly black heels of the girl hailing a cab, the smeared red and blue and green of sirens and traffic lights on the wet pavement.

  

And in the ebb of darkness, your calves aching from dancing and the roots of your hair damp with sweat, you nod wordlessly to the mop-headed strangers ducking out of the venue door as you wait for your friends to appear. Their eyes are black with the recognition of that same feeling you're feeling, out here in the dark:

tonight we were here, you and I, and we were cool.

Details

Photography: Cory Ellen Boberg
Model: Marisa Rockett
Bad Religion Jacket: Designed & constructed by Marisa Rockett

Photoshoot: Melancholia Jacket

Fall is always a bittersweet time of year for me. Each year, the end of October marks the anniversary of the murder-suicide that changed the course of my life. (This year, it's eight.)



In fall, the days grow shorter, and the light of day is tempered by shadows. In some moments, it's easy to fall into darkness completely.

And yet, in marking this time, I feel a sense of comfort. Every October will be another October since the magnetism of my world shifted, just as every November ticks off the years since I refused to let that violence destroy me.



And as strange as it is, there is also comfort in recognizing others who have touched the rim of that same darkness, and chosen to turn their profound despair into beauty. My tremendously talented housemate and dear friend Melody Hirsch designed and constructed this jacket, inspired by the film Melancholia, to reach into the darkness and call it by its name.



So when she asked me to take her jacket into the woods on a hazy Thursday, and told me the story of its origin, of course I said yes.

Happy Friday.
<3
Cory