Offering

In a lot of the horror movies I like, which are mostly of the supernatural variety, there is a spirit that haunts places and people, that terrifies them and kills them in nasty ways. It attaches itself to specific situations and objects--the ring of the telephone, a mirror, a song. And there is a protagonist who has to figure out what that spirit needs, what it can't let go of, how to bring it peace. It's more a riddle to be solved than a villain to be defeated. Solving it requires empathizing with a grotesque, disembodied entity that is terrorizing them.

Certain situations call up a version of my former self which takes over my body and has me feel its feelings, think its thoughts. It's bewildering and excruciating and terrifying. I don't see it coming, and I feel powerless against it. This has gone on for all of my adult life. As a young adult, I thought I was possessed by something that would eventually kill me.

However, lately I feel like I'm in the part of the ghost story where the protagonist begins to see the patterns, is putting together the pieces and clues in order to set the monster free, to help it transform into its benign self, while learning a piece of history from it, often some hidden injustice. I'm learning to love my shrieking nightmare selves and ask them what happened, what they need.

In every horror movie, the cast thins out, falling one by one to the terror, leaving the hero to face the thing alone in the end. I've seen a lot of people come and go in my life, but in these last few years I've felt less alone than ever. I'm supported by a whole cast of characters who help me identify and listen to the ghosts, gather clues, stay alive. Like all the best ghost stories, mine is also a love story.

Also I'm really excited to see Loone next week.

"Every place I've ever lived is full of ghosts / Every time I leave I make another one / Everyone I've ever loved is full of ghosts / Every time they leave they make another one"

OK I guess this might not qualify as a pop song. Note the first two tags on bandcamp are "devotional" and "emo." LOL yep.

Friday, I'm In Love

Let's face it, I'm always in love. At least, when I feel like myself, when I am the person I want to be, I am falling in love constantly. With the moon, a song, a tree, my friends, a poem, someone I just met, someone I've never met.

It's been a very long time since I was falling in love with someone who was also falling in love with me. And it's magical and precious and devastating and raw. It feels like there is a constellation of stars in my chest expanding in all directions. It reminds me of every love I've had and lost, and it makes me feel like nothing is ever really lost, it just breaks apart and comes back in another form, each one more beautiful.

At the same time, I have a heartbreaking job, and my workload and the intensity of my work have ramped up lately to the point where I'm just barely keeping it together. I know it won't stay at this pitch forever, but for now it's taking all I have.

It's Friday, and there are people out there who I'm working with who are in really tough situations and will wait until Monday until the professionals in their lives--including me--can offer support.

It's Friday, I'm in love.

Holding all these things at the same time is making me think and feel a lot of things about work, capitalism, romance, individualism, privilege, magic, and beauty. You're smart, you can probably guess what a lot of those things are.

Anyway, here's a cover of The Cure by Yo La Tengo, whom I'm seeing in April. It features Georgia Hubley walking expressionless around some really white-looking neighborhoods, oblivious to the twee, hipster apocalypse she has somehow wrought.

96 Tears

I became aware of an interesting phenomenon through my conversations with other trans people taking testosterone. Many of the people I talked to had all but lost their ability to cry after starting hormone replacement therapy. I was pretty baffled, even more so when it eventually happened to me.

In our conversations, some described "cheating" by slicing onions in order to achieve tears. The photographer who took the following pictures may have ruined that method for everyone by showing how the chemistry of the tears might not be the same when tricked out of the eyes by pungent vegetables.

basal tears

tears of grief

onion tears

tears of laughing til i'm crying

Since learning that tears can vary so vastly, I decided to put some of my own tears under a microscope to really understand the subtle chemical differences among the following circumstances:

tears of feeling moody in november

tears of a robot

tears of an ice queen

tears of waving from such great heights

tears of this song is fucking everything right now

tears of gagging while giving head

tears of glitter

If you made it this far, here is your reward for all your scrolling.

Tightrope

When I told a couple of friends I was starting a song-a-day-style blog, they both independently came to the conclusion that I would be posting original tunes. Which is a fabulous idea and maybe a bit ambitious for me right now. However.

"Tightrope" happened over the summer, on a rainy day when I was feeling pretty destroyed and sat in my bed in the dark for most of the afternoon, playing guitar. This song basically just bled out of me, and I recorded it on my crappy Android phone. It's pretty rough--cracking voice and wrong notes and all--but it evokes the shit out of my mood that day.


Today I was feeling so many things at once, I thought my body might explode, so I sat down and played through this one a few times (as well as Sia's "Chandelier," which might have to be its own post at some point). And then I went on a glorious bike ride with no coat on in mid-December because climate change.

I’m walking on a rope
It disappears in black
I can’t see the other side
And there’s no going back

A spotlight shines on my face
1,000 people stare
I thought I saw your arm outstretched
But it must’ve been the glare

There’s no way down but to fall
No net, nobody at all

There’s no way down but to fall
No net, nobody at all

Crazy Little Thing Called Love

On Sunday I went with a friend to the old abandoned train bridge. Visiting this bridge has been a longtime dream of mine, and I decided to go on a whim. It was a foggy late afternoon that made everything look surreal and mystical.

I'm terrified of heights, but I fucking love train bridges. Walking out onto the old wooden ties above the Connecticut River was so scary I didn't know if I could do it. I thought I might get halfway out and freeze, unable to get back. But I wanted it really bad.

Of course,  this is all a metaphor for my life right now. I'm walking through a gorgeous, disorienting fog toward something huge and high that I hope can hold me. And sometimes I panic.

Then today I heard this on the radio:

I gotta be cool, relax, get hip
And get on my tracks

Me too, Freddie, me too! But how? How can I be cool like you?


Evidently it involves riding a motorcycle in full leather gear plus some great big knee pads.

Car Song

Cars are terrible.

Having to rely on this expensive, giant, heavy machine that burns fossil fuels just to get around? Why is this still a thing?

I mean, unless you're going to fill it up with your friends and drive around Tokyo doing some red vinyl ghostbuster shit while listening to crunchy 90s Britpop. A car is great for that.




I'm just grumpy because my car's been in and out of the shop for the last six weeks, and it's currently broken down, and I can't get to the laundromat to wash my towels, and I've had to dry off with tiny hand towels after showering.

So if anyone is going to the laundromat--or Tokyo--swing by and pick me up. I'll be wearing vinyl and packing my ray gun.

Let's Go Crazy

For my job, I do peer support and advocacy on inpatient psych units. Some days it is heartbreaking and exhausting. And some days I feel like I have been allowed into a sacred, mystical space full of magical beings. Not to romanticize extreme states or crises. But some people do experience these times as spiritual or intellectual awakenings, a break from consensus reality that is an opportunity to see into alternative spaces.

My visit yesterday was one of the times when I feel honored to share or just witness the beauty and resiliency of people coping with being in a difficult place. In particular, this one old dude was just soliloquizing nonstop at whoever would listen. For a moment the room got quiet, and he gestured toward one of the strange, heavy lumps of furniture that make up the seating options. He said:

The chair is full of sand
The sand is full of stars
The stars are full of the sea
The safest place is here next to me

Internally (which is where I do most of my crying), I was weeping with joy in this moment. Later he also said, "How long does it take to build the world?"

Historically, crazy is a pejorative label that has been used to discredit and oppress people. It's also been reclaimed by mad communities who are redefining these experiences in our own terms and pushing back against being medicalized and institutionalized.

It is in that spirit that I offer you today's pop song. Prince is notoriously protective of his work, so I can't embed an online clip of his 1984 release "Let's Go Crazy" from the Purple Rain soundtrack. You will have to figure out how to hear this song if it's not already so familiar you can just call it up in the jukebox of your brain.

Because seriously, "we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life ... and if the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy, punch a higher floor."