Live Show Messages
Below are the messages delviered from the band to the fans during live shows. These are typically delivered via a voice-to-text or a proxy reading the message, rather than being delivered directly from Vessel and the band.
2021 Download Pilot Festival
Source 1 Source 2
Let’s not deceive ourselves.
There is a reason we are here.
It follows us wherever we go.
We were in love.
We. Are. In. Love.
It is what floats above us as we try to sleep.
It is what stands beside us as we gaze into nothingness.
It is drowning us.
It is eating us alive.
A million outstretched palms in complete darkness.
They. Will. Reach. Forever. Remind me.
We’re both dying to find out what happens when we die.
We’re both scared of being.
We’re both stolen pieces of each other.
We’re both exploring our own frontiers of grief.
We’re both just strangers.
We’re both just particles.
We’re both so lost in what it means to be lost.
We’re both a house that remained unoccupied for too long.
Let’s not deceive ourselves.
2022 Lafayette The Room Below
Source
Some time ago, I was given a message. It was a message that originated from one among you. Someone possessed by a strong desire to tell me something. The message read very simply: ‘You saved me’. I have thought about this message a great deal since. It left me with the feeling that I have somehow been mistaken for someone else. I did not save anyone. I do not believe I have the capacity to save anyone. All I have ever given anyone was a small window into the emotional waiting room of my mind. I do so whilst doing everything in my power to minimize my own vulnerability. In this way, I am selfish. I choose not to give what others can. And yet, I am the benefactor of this thankful praise. I experience a great deal of pain in my life. However, I do not believe I have suffered as you have suffered. Perhaps that is another reason why we are here. At the very least, we have all suffered. I would also like to take this chance to tell you something. To love ones self - is not the easy task we are sometimes told it is. We are all limited by something. We are all guilty of something. My own path towards a place of greater self acceptance is paved with the art that I create. It is a path that I continue to stumble down. At the expense of everything else… I am nothing without this music. I am nothing without this mask. So in this sense, the message I received was true… but only in an inverse sense. The truth is, I did not save anybody. YOU. SAVED. ME.
2023 US Tour
Source
(This message was delivered as a conversation, which is speculated--but was never confirmed--to be between Vessel and the mask.
First Message
Mask: They think you fake it.
Vessel: What do you mean?
Mask: When you cry on stage, they don’t think it’s real.
Vessel : That’s a reasonable assumption
Mask : Do you fake it?
Vessel : No, I don’t. But it is something I do consistently, so if I was a member of the audience I would probably assume that it wasn’t real.
Mask : Do you ever see them crying?
Vessel : No, I can only ever see them smiling. That’s good, I want them to smile.
Mask : Do you think they want you to cry? Do you think they like it?
Vessel : Not as such, I think they just want to know that I am feeling something, feeling what they are feeling, perhaps.
Mask : Do you think that this amount of crying is healthy for you?
Vessel: I don’t know. But at least I feel something, if I don’t feel anything than why would I even do this?
Second Message
Mask: Why am I here? What is my purpose in all of this?
Vessel: Your purpose is twofold. You protect me, from them, and you also protect them from me.
Mask: How is it that I serve to protect anyone from anything, that makes no sense.
Vessel: In order for all of this to work there has to be a certain boundary in place. They need to be able to project themselves onto this, without anyone else’s identity getting in the way. In turn, I need to be able to show my true self to them in a way that does not compromise their ability to connect.
Mask: So that’s what I am? A boundary?
Vessel: Yes.
Mask: I don’t believe you. I believe there is more to it than that. I believe you are afraid of something.
Vessel: We are all afraid of something, are we not?
Mask: What is it you are so afraid they will see?
Vessel: That I am exactly like everyone else.
Third Message
Mask: Are you afraid of me?
Vessel: Sometimes…
Mask: Why?
Vessel: I think I am afraid of becoming you.
Mask: What does that even mean?
Vessel: My life is becoming gradually consumed by you. Before long, all that I am will be contained within you. Then, one day, when I no longer wish to wear you, there will be nothing else left.
Mask: It seems you have forgotten who you are. Before you had me you were nothing. All of this artifice, all this pathetic conjecture about your identity, it is nothing but a manifestation of how short-sighted and solipsistic you have become. I lifted you from misery and obscurity. You would be better to become me. You are nothing without me. You always were nothing without me.
Last Message
Vessel: You. Are. Wrong. In the end, my fractured sense of self was only another piece of fuel for the fire that burns in the eyes of these people before us. They too are pained. They too not know who they truly are. They are each stood alone on a stage of their own. And yet, they are here. United by that sense of never truly belonging. They see something beyond their own bleak horizons. And they reach for it. Together. So let us join now. to reflect their joy and to serve as a conduit for their anguish. To swallow their fear. To Worship.
2024 Teeth of God Tour
Source
Truth is merely a conclusion that can reliably be derived from some observable phenomenon.
We forget that truth is a tool.
It is the hook upon which we hang our deeds and the bed from which we rise each day.
To assume that death is the end is to assume that our being extends no further than the physical substrate that carries us.
This assumption does not account for the way in which we experience being alive.
Nor does it sit comfortably aside the fact that we are not yet able to comprehend the way in which our being manifests itself.
From the flesh and bone that binds us, I believe that those gaps in our understanding are still wide enough to cast doubt on such conclusions.
I believe that those gaps are yet wide enough, for our souls to fit through and drift onwards into some new realm.
To argue the existence of anything beyond death is to reject the idea of death itself.
Death is not the opening of some eternal door.
Death does not confer transcendence of any kind.
To make such assertions is to act as though we do not know death.
As though we do not spend our lives trying to drag forth some semblance of meaning from beneath death’s thick dark shadow.
As though we have not also inflicted it.
No less that we sometimes revel in it.
It is only the certainty of death that provides us with the darkness against which we all glow defiantly.
Life without death knows no form, no boundary.
Without death and our finite nature it would be stripped of all meaning.
Left to wander as little more than endlessly rotating gears in the quiet engine of a cold hell.
But we do not die because it gives our lives meaning.
We die because this is the way of all things and in the end is that not all we are?!
[DOUBLE CHECK THIS SENTENCE]
It is not simply some kind of existential threshold we are all fated to cross.
It is far more than these small notions.
One does not need to look as far as the end of their own life to be confounded with the unknowable.
One does not even need to look that far to be confronted with death.
Look around you
About what can you be truly certain?
Death is a color.
It soaks a part of every canvas.
Death is a fabric.
It can clothe the living.
Death is merely another weapon we all define a great adversary,
Another cadence in this terrible and beautiful symphony we are listening to, helplessly.
Let it bring me hope in one hand and fear in the other.
It is asking you to dance with death after all.