#i have been incredibly insecure in my writing the last few weeks. this was cathartic. apologies if any of it is out of character. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rebelsofshield · 5 years

Text

Panels Far, Far Away: A Week in Star Wars Comics 9/18/19

Three of the most iconic Star Wars women of the decade highlight a solid week of Star Wars comics from Marvel.

Star Wars Age of Resistance: Rey #1 written by Tom Taylor and art by Ramon Rosanas

Next to Snoke, few Star Wars characters in the sequel trilogy are more shrouded in mystery than Rey. While Snoke was never able to define himself as a character outside of questions about his past, Rey has grown to be a great addition to the franchise through her compassion and inventiveness but also her fear and insecurity. Telling a story with Rey in the tight timeline given by the sequel trilogy is a difficulty though. With a post-Battle of Crait world off limits and her time as a scavenger already extensively covered in other media such as Star Wars Adventures and Forces of Destiny, writer Tom Taylor opts for the creative solution of finding an undiscovered story after the destruction of Starkiller Base and Rey’s arrival on Ach-To.

“Alone” follows Rey decompressing from the trials and trauma of her time on the snow covered First Order base and later through her trip and pit stops on her journey to see Luke Skywalker. The result is an issue that is split into two chapters, one focused on character and the other a new adventure showcasing her traits. Of these, Rey’s grappling with the death of Han and bonding with Leia over her future in the galaxy are easily the strongest moments. A particularly poignant sequence sees Rey and Leia discussing Han’s final moments with their faces functioning as frames for a beat by beat recreation of the tragedy. It’s a visually arresting depiction and represents the best artistic moment by Ramon Rosanas in this series.

The second half proves more disappointing particularly in that the limited page count prevents Taylor from fleshing out Rey’s adventure in adequate fashion. It plays well into her knowledge for machines and for her innate compassion for those in need, but it can’t help but feel both too rushed and too large in scale to organically fit into the narrative space that it is forced to occupy. That being said, Ramon Rosanas’s villain is a delightfully creepy design and I wish we got to see more of him.

Score: B

Star Wars Age of Resistance: Rose Tico #1 written by Tom Taylor and art by Ramon Rosanas

Tom Taylor said before the launch of Age of Resistance that Rose Tico’s chapter was his favorite. After reading this issue it is easy to see why. Of the eight Age of Resistance one shots, Rose Tico’s feels the most substantial and offers the most revelatory information into the character and her history. Unlike Snoke or Rey which have histories that are key to the franchise mythology or Finn or Poe who have been covered extensively, Rose Tico is a known character with also a lengthy history that is waiting to be explored. Taylor gets the opportunity here to dig deep into Rose and her sister Paige’s childhood and later their joining the Resistance. As a result, Taylor’s script feels substantial and important and required reading for any reader that wants to know more about the best mechanic in the fight against the First Order.

Unfortunately, it tends to be too much for the limited twenty four page length. Large portions of Rose and Paige’s life such as their early days of rebellion against the First Order, their time joining the Resistance, or even some of their familial tragedy are rushed through and feel like they could have been full issues of their own. Taylor’s script is at its best when he zeroes in on a single moment. The issue’s start showing a childhood flying lesson shared between both sisters is filled with enjoyable sibling rivalry and play and its concluding emotional conversation with Leia is a standout. (In general, Taylor writes a great Leia who manages to balance wisdom with that trademark sense of wit and snark.)

In general, after the abuse that Rose has suffered from rough patches of the fandom over the last two years, it’s a treat to read a comic, flawed as it is, that is filled with such obvious affection and attention for the character. We leave “My Hero” with an apprecation for Rose and for an involving story about family and fighting for causes we believe in.

Score: B

Star Wars: Doctor Aphra #36 written by Simon Spurrier and art by Wilton Santos and Cris Bolson

Simon Spurrier’s time on Doctor Aphra has been marked by complex plotting while keeping the series’ trademark character study and dark sense of humor. At its best, like in last year’s stellar “Catastrophe Con” arc, it makes for some of the best storytelling in Star Wars comics and can make for a rewarding piece of spinning plates and multilayered payoff. Taylor presents a new take on this here in “Unspeakable Rebel Superweapon” which unveils a deceptively complex narrative and is peppered with arc changing reveals.

With the masterplan of Minister Pitina Voor laid out, Aphra finds herself caught in the middle of a twisted galactic coup attempt. It becomes clear with each passing moment just how much Aphra has been used by every party around her and how much her own past deeds are responsible for her actions. However, in typical fashion, the good doctor is not one to be caged and her final act of resistance is about to show itself.

The conclusion to “Unspeakable Rebel Superweapon” is a complicated read. This isn’t just due to the staggering amount of double crosses and string pulling on display here, but also due to its message and execution. While Spurrier has managed to succeed in the past with these falling domino style finales, “Doctor Aphra #36” struggles.

On one level, it may just be the staging of the issue itself. So much of the pure plot of this comic comes down to two people explaining things to each other in a room while the action happens elsewhere. Wilton Santos, usual stylistic downsides aside, does his best to pepper these with intercut flashbacks, flash sidways, imaginations, etc., but Spurrier’s script can’t help but feel frustratingly static. It also doesn’t help that the plans laid out by Minister Voor are so convoluted that it stretches credibility to an incredible degree. So many independent forces had to work in purely specific ways for us to reach this point and the result robs the big reveals of much of their wait.

Thematically though, Spurrier’s story functions as an entertaining rebuttal and reversal of any familiarity the reader has developed for Aphra’s character. Voor’s masterstroke ultimately comes down to assuming that Aphra follows a predictable pattern and that her behavior follows formula. What Spurrier crafts instead is a fun inversion of this common criticism of her character and it leads to a great moment of personal independence and rebellion by the title character. The result proves incredibly cathartic and fun and makes for the best personal beat for Aphra in this arc and does just enough to keep this finale from being a dud.

Despite its promising features, “Unspeakable Rebel Superweapon” proves to be the weakest arc of Doctor Aphra’s long comic tenure. Between weak art and an oddly paced and structured story, Aphra sputtered here in a way we haven’t seen so far and as a result we enter into the next arc with mixed feelings. Bringing in a stellar artist like Caspar Wijngaard to tell the story of Darth Vader and Aphra’s long awaited reunion is an exciting choice, but we also learn this week that next arc is to be the series’ last. It’s disappointing to bid Aphra goodbye, but let’s hope that it leads to something equally exciting down the line. Besides, nothing’s better than a good ending.

Score: B-

#Star Wars #Star Wars comics #review #reviews #Age of Resistance #Doctor Aphra #Rey #Rose Tico #Simon Spurrier #Wilton Santos #Cris Bolson #Tom Taylor #Ramon Rosanas

7 notes · View notes

comeondowntosouthparkrpg-blog · 5 years

Text

Kyle Broflovski

I hope you learned something today.

Kyle has been accepted! Please send in your blog link.

out of character info Name/Alias: Samantha Pronouns: she/her Age: 26 Join Our Discord: I’m in it Timezone: EST Activity: 6 Triggers: Password: fast pass my ass jimbo Character that you’re applying for: Kyle Broflovski Favourite ships for your character: anything tbh

in character info

Full name: Kyle Edom Broflovski Birthday: May 26th, 2001 Sexuality, gender, pronouns: bisexual, out, he/him Age and grade: 17 & senior Face claim: Harry Smith Personality: Kyle’s personality is often all over the place. To say he’s temperamental is an understatement, considering how quick to violence and harsh words he is. Perhaps it has to do with his New Jersey heritage, or the stress from the work he puts in, or maybe something else entirely. But the anger is a defining characteristic. Often this leads Kyle to getting into some various fight, be it with his mother or a peer, his wall or a tree when he escapes to the mountains to get away from the irritating people of South Park and forget about shit. Therapy or a yoga class would likely do him good, though Kyle often prefers to take his rage out on something a little harder. Because of his, his slender fingers are crooked and covered in scars from where the skin and bones broke during a fit of punches at a tree or door or brick wall. Or, if he’s lucky, someone’s face. Though Kyle isn’t angry all the time. There are plenty of times where he’s rather calm, such as focused at his desk writing in his various journals, finishing his school work, or reading. Being alone is cathartic, and peaceful. Though Kyle is often content and relaxed when he’s around those he cares about, he has the capabilities of being sweet, though he isn’t really aware of it. He does try, but often when he tries he falls short and hopefully he’ll learn to go with the natural flow and feel his emotions freely without overthinking it.

Which is another huge part of Kyle, thinking everything into oblivion until he’s lost in his own head and finding himself suffocated by his thoughts. Because of this he’s often insecure and paranoid, and desperate to forget about it. Which recently has gotten him into a bit of a sticky spot with someone else.

As well, if there’s one thing Kyle is that could be considered positive, it’s determined. When he knows what he wants, Kyle stops at nothing until he gets it. Case point for him is Yale, refusing to accept any other school that isn’t Ivy League. His classes are plentiful and filling his lunch breaks and several hours after class, leaving him with more than enough credits to have graduated. His determination has put him in various activities such as Student Council, DARE, Mathletes, Basketball and the debate team.

History: Kyle grew up in a fairly stereotypical Jewish household. Well, it was fairly stereotypical until he was ten and discovered his fathers very concerning internet hobby. But aside from that, it was Passover baskets, separate cooking utensils for meat and dairy. Absolutely no bacon. Or ham. Or mixing cheese and meat, which lead to a lot of envy over the other children who were able to eat cheeseburgers. But it wasn’t bad. The Christmas holidays often fell over Hanukkah, and even when they didn’t it was a few weeks off of school to bum around with his friends.

Everything with middle school was a preparation for high school, which was a preparation for college. Kyle worked to be top of every class, finding a taste for black coffee early on to stay up late and stay caffeinated for the school day. It began with sneaking instant coffee from the jar, to spending his allowance at Tweek Tweaks (by far the superior of the options, too). Cream didn’t agree with him, and he had to carefully monitor his diabetes.

As for family, Kyle’s current closest confidant is Ike, his adopted younger brother from the Great White North. Even though the kid was eleven, going on twelve, Kyle could tell he was going to far superior in intellect than he was. There was always the nagging jealousy over it, because Ike was a natural where Kyle just worked. Although Ike would often argue that it was worse, he felt like he had no passion. Kyle just chalked it up to preteen angst, although he wouldn’t doubt if it turned into strong teenage rebellion in a few years. He wouldn’t put it past his kid brother to dismantle governments before college. Now that Kyle was in high school himself, it was a whole new ball game. Or rather, the same game but what felt like a hundred times more stressful. He had no idea what he wanted to do in the future, no set career goal. Which meant Kyle needed to cover all options. The first semester of ninth grade had simply been used to assimilate him. Since the second semester of his first year, Kyle had worked with the guidance counsellor to get as many class credits as he could. Since then, he opted out of his lunch hour to fill it with more classes, and now in eleventh grade didn’t take the allotted study periods. Most used them to piss off school grounds and fuck around the city, but Kyle filled them with more classes. The workload was obscene, and Kyle spent every waking moment studying, working on projects. After school was used for extracurriculars, basketball, track. Kyle needed to cover all grounds. His goal was Yale, Harvard as a second. For what, he didn’t know, he simply knew he wanted to leave this shitty town and go Ivy League.

Anything less was unacceptable.

Headcanons: { 💥 } • Has clear anger issues, and attempts to manage them as best he can. Gives himself self-ratings from 1-5 in his head about it. One being general pissed offedness, three being angry as hell, five being blinding, inandescent black out rage. { 💥 } • Can forgive incredibly easily, but will rarely get over or forget wrongdoings. { 💥 } • Extra as fuck. This is the boy who went to commit murder, would have burnt down the school, and caused Canada to be nuked, after all. { 💥 } • While often portrayed as the logical one, Kyle’s most likely to react with passion as opposed to ration. He’s quick to violence, quick to make rash decsions, only to use reason after or when it doesn’t affect him. Kyle should practice what he preaches, but he tends to be a person that’s “do as I say, not as I do” type person { 💥 } • Always wanting to be bettering himself, which is a mountain he struggles to climb. But he always tries to go at least two steps forward one step back. { 💥 } • Absolutely hates when people put him into a box. He does not revolve around the fact he’s Jewish, he’s more than that, for instance. { 💥 } • Hates that his name means handsome redhead when he’s only one of those things. { 💥 } • Does not have freckles. At all. Do not even say he does. He does, however, have a strawberry shaped birth mark on his butt. { 💥 } • Started writing his anger down in notebooks in fifth grade when people (Eric) started pissing him off. Eventually it just became a good way to try to organize his life and now keeps them as a way to plan schedules, track lists, keep notes, things he’s learned, etc down. A lot of the ones from September have complex starbucks orders written down { 💥 } • Wears reading glasses. { 💥 } • Doesn’t stand for people blaming their actions on mental health problems. He tries to explain his actions as mistakes or poor judgement or decision making. Hates when people make excuses. Doesn’t blame his anger issues on his life, or his health issues, etc. Blames them on the fact he’s just stupid and makes mistakes. { 💥 } • Loves plants and trees. Is a nature freak. { 💥 } • Likely knows the woods better than anyone else in the town. Will be there most of the summers, and weekends in the warmer weather. Goes there to get away from people, and to calm himself down if upset. Has several favourite places. { 💥 } • Drives a 2017 Toyota Prius (White) { 💥 } • Will live and die eating Nutella { 💥 } • Is a fighter, obviously. Has no qualms throwing punches, and doesn’t intend to stop fighting until he’s physically removed from the situation. Kyle needs to have his eye contact actively broken, because he fights like a damn Rottweiler and sees eye contact as a challenge. { 💥 } • has probably the worst style known to man kind, if it’s ugly, he loves it. Specifically enjoys cable knit sweaters and corduroy pants.

Anything else: Family headcanons:

{ 🔥 } • Gerald has taken Sheila’s name. This is because Grandma Broflovski is Sheila’s mother, which means Gerald would have had to have taken Sheila’s last name. She’s a strong independent woman who needs no man but when she did she made him take her name. { 🔥 } • Got pregnant fairly young, and was unmarried, while living with her mother. Because her pregnancy helped Sheila realize she wanted to leave her jersey life, her and Gerald had a shotgun wedding before moving to South Park. { 🔥 } • Sheila had complications with her pregnancy with Kyle, and was no longer likely to have children after Kyle. { 🔥 } • Spent several years trying for another child with treatments before settling on adoption, ending up with a closed adoption and bringing Ike into the family. { 🔥 } • Gerald was once best friends with Stuart McCormick. Ended up resentful. Gerald moved to Jersey to continue his law degree. Gerald and Sheila chose South Park to move to from New Jersey because it was his hometown. { 🔥 } • Gerald, because of his fights with Stuart, thinks Kenny is a no good street rat and hates Kenny hanging around the house. Sheila, however, adores him. Gerald doesn’t complain about him while she’s around, but he has no issue with saying it around Kyle. { 🔥 } • Kyle, as mentioned, is a daddy’s boy. Because of how similar he is to his mother, they often butt heads. Gerald has dealt with this his whole life, and loves his angry wife and son and can handle them both just fine. { 🔥 } • However, Ike is similar to him in many ways, and this can cause Gerald and Ike to be distant to each other. { 🔥 } • Isn’t affectionate with Ike the same was he is Kyle. Sheila is far more affectionate with Ike, where Kyle pulls away. { 🔥 } • Sheila will believe Ike in every lie he says, without question. A lot of her favouritism of him stems from guilt from things like the Canusa War and forgetting his 13th birthday Photograph:

#kyle broflovski #Accepted #submission

6 notes · View notes

tgaoe · 6 years

Text

Andy’s 2017 Music Report

Favorite Albums, Favorite Songs, and other assorted temporally-specific ramblings.

Preamble

I. Dearth I listened to less music this year than I did last year, partly due to the immense amount of time required to finish my Master’s Degree, and also because I slept better. You may recall from last year’s treatise that I experienced something of a listening renaissance late in the year, turning to music during nights spent sleepless for work-related anxiety. 2017 marked my fourth year in my current job, and the first during which I began to feel confident in my own professional competence. Hence, less anxiety, fewer sleepless nights, less music. So it goes.

II. Duplicity, Disaffection Another reason. Prior to November 21st, I spent an inordinate amount of time listening to a single band, the band that made my #1 record from 2016. They were also my most-listened to band of 2017. I went deep into their back catalogue, full immersion, and I found such joy and pleasure in doing so. The band helped me through a fraught, life-altering personal ordeal. I traveled to see them play and it was cathartic. However, on 11/21 it was revealed that the leader of that band may have betrayed much of what he/they claimed to have stood for as steadfast advocates for kindness, equity, and empathy. The woman or women he hurt are the primary victims, but secondarily his hypocrisy destroyed a community of people who connected strongly with his music. I believe in rehabilitation. But I also doubt I’ll ever be able to listen to this band the same way again, if at all. I share this troubling information because it undoubtedly colors this list. For weeks after the revelation I only listened to songs sung by women, maybe to offset the damage somehow, maybe to avoid connecting with another secretly awful man.

III. Disappointment Last year I wrote extensively about how the absence of releases from legacy acts resulted in my exposure to an unusually large number of new/emerging artists. That trend of exposure continued this year, for unfortunate reasons. Most new releases by old favorites proved little more than pleasant. Though something like 20 albums from 2017 fall into that category, only five or six made my list of favorites, and even some of those did so despite caveats. I suspect this may have to do with the current circumstances of my life more than with the music itself, at least in some cases. For instance, Sleep Well Beast will not appear below, but I am the only National devotee I know who doesn’t love it as much as their previous records. Time will tell, I suppose.

IV. Derelict I devoted significantly less time to this project this year than I did to its previous iterations, probably 20 hours vs. the usual 40-60. I usually track favorites all year and begin writing in October. This year I was much less diligent, not commencing writing until mid-December. It shows, I’m afraid. I did not keep an actual Favorite Songs list, nor did I keep a running record of micro-moments.

Blame the Master’s. Over five months of work my research project ballooned to 18,415 words spanning 118 pages—characteristically about twice as long as it needed to be. It’s a mystery how I mustered the energy to eke out another 6000 words for this thing after all that.

V. Dingus As always, forgive my assumption that readers of this monstrosity possess a certain level of familiarity with prevailing music culture. The writing reads better that way. Also as always, please forgive the preposterous pretense that anyone would want to read this, the bloviations of yet another obsessive 30-something white man desperate for your attention.

My 19 Favorite Albums of 2017

19 favorites because 19 was how many favorites I had.

19 The World’s Best American Band White Reaper Big, stupid, shameless riff rock; a record as fun as its title is ridiculous. The band almost has the chops to live up to it too, blazing through ten hook-dense, hedonistic rockers with fatalistic abandon. No introspection here, folks. The only lesson White Reaper has to impart is, “If you make the girls dance, the boys will dance with ‘em.” Noted, dudes.

youtube

18 Cigarettes After Sex Cigarettes After Sex How to Make the Sexiest Music Ever, Apparently

1) Start with early Interpol. 2) Slow it down. 3) Tighten it up. 4) Strip away the fuzz. 5) Replace Paul Banks with Greg Gonzalez, a man whose smoky, sultry voice I mistook for a woman's until just now. 6) Drop the nonsense lyrics in favor of straightforward stories, proclamations, and invitations, all specific and intimate like the first xx record.

The result: a collection of variations on "Fade Into You" sans twang. Almost unfathomably sexy. The sexiest.

youtube

17 The Nashville Sound Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit I don’t love this album, but I do love all its songs. The Nashville Sound should have been a solo record with an accompanying full-band live release a few months later. The 400 Unit is so talented, so utterly professional that they can’t help but sound canned, over-produced, in a modern studio. Any old band off the street can be made to sound that way. What makes the Unit special is that this is how they sound live. They sound perfect. Perfection on record isn’t much fun.

Jason Isbell is the best songwriter of his generation. Case in point: Leonard Cohen’s “Chelsea Hotel No. 2,” his best song and a contender for best song by anyone, famously concludes with the couplet,

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel That's all, I don't think of you that often

Isbell manages to casually convey the same sentiment through implication on Sound’s “Molotov”:

Another life but I still remember A county fair in steamy September In the Year of the Tiger, nineteen-something

He remembers, but not that well, not the year. He doesn’t think of her that often.

youtube

16 Need Your Love Sheer Mag The opening salvo of “Meet Me in the Street” and the sort-of title track tells you everything you need to know about Need Your Love, the surprising segue of anthemic nails-hard rebel rock into heartfelt, slinky soul-funk. Sheer Mag is everything 70s rock, all facets, plain and simple, in timbre, tone, and demeanor, fitted to modern pop structure and sensibility. Massive riffs, throaty hollers, cavernous sonics, never not danceable. The last 40 years never happened.

youtube

15 Something to Tell You Haim Four years ago I passionately engaged in a pointless internet debate on the false premise of the superiority of Haim vs. Lorde. Of course this was less about the actual artists than it was the debaters’ desperation for validation of our own tastes and preferences at the expense of others’, which is a stupid thing insecure young white men do for some reason. However, looking back now and comparing the two entities’ work and public personas does reveal fascinating differences in their approaches and cultural placements, especially considering the rollouts and receptions of both artists’ follow-up records. I’ll write more about Lorde later (spoiler), but she crafts songs that achieve timelessness and universality seemingly unintentionally, through trope subversion and highly specific and personal writing. Haim achieves the same through something like the opposite approach.

Every Haim song feels like a glossy new product behind a high-end shop window, displayed uniformly, calculated and designed for maximum value and mass appeal. I’ve said this before, but Haim recordings sound like money, sound expensive. Because they are. Haim recordings are light, airy, sleek, tight, and huge. The lyrics strive for universality by exploring standard romantic emotional states in the most vague, impersonal, situationally unspecific possible manner. We do not know the identity of the “you” in these songs. Hell, we don’t really who the “I” is. We can project whoever we want. These songs are perfect manufactured products. That may read as negative criticism, but it is not. The total orderliness of Haim songs forces order on anarchy. Haim songs make the world simple, make it make sense. Every question has an answer, every problem a solution.

There is an exception that proves the rule here, a more experimental Haim song that towers above the others by subverting those established expectations of order, transcends them to depict in actuality the true messiness of love. That song is “Right Now,” and it is a monster jam, likely the best song Haim has ever written. The structure is confounding, the melodies don’t time out naturally, nothing musically makes sense, is rational, in the same way feelings don’t and aren’t. There is a call-and-response with which it is almost impossible to sing along because the response comes in like half a beat later than every other pop song has trained us to expect. Feedback blares, clicks click, hums hum. “Right Now” is imperfect, and in that it is the most perfect Haim song. It came not from an assembly line, it came from a soul. Or souls. “Right Now” even allows a single reference to an actual specific event, a quiet conversation overheard through a window, which, even though still somewhat vague, gives the song a level of personal meaning to the narrator missing from, you know, every other Haim song. More like this please.

youtube

By the way, this short PTA-directed performance film is incredible, and suggests that everything I wrote in that second paragraph may be negated when the band plays live.

14 Graveyard of Good Times Brandon Can’t Dance Brandon Ayers's collection of mom's basement DIY songs plays as much like a friend's great mix cd as it does a solo artist's album, intuitively-sequenced and formally experimental in the sense that the dude seemingly tries any musical idea that occurs to him, and there are so many here: stoned weirdo neo disco, 80s soft rock, wall-of-sound shoegaze, earnest folk, synthy dance rock, 90s industrial and more, all effortless, catchy and united aesthetically by competent use of limited production resources. Ayers's lyrics are always either smart or hilariously, knowingly dumb as he explores a kind of mundanity inherent to a life of low-budget hedonism, as well as how much he loves his dogs, mom, sister, and grandma. Can't go wrong with that.

youtube

13 Villains Queens of the Stone Age Josh Homme and Britt Daniel have much in common culturally, both mid-40s men who have spent nearly two decades each as highly unlikely sex symbols, sustaining multi-decade rock careers, stalking stages with maniacal, borderline-predatory confidence. But musically they’ve shared few qualities until now. Villians has airless, precise grooves similar to some Spoon records, but, you know, with that Queens menace and evil. The QoTSA has always been a band about perfect playing, but this time Homme brought in preeminent funk racketeer Mark Ronson to help shape Villains. The result is the shortest, most accessible record the band has ever made. Actually, it is not the shortest—it just feels that way. Villians cooks, showcasing the same old Queens, aggressively showy and prone to extended digressions, but with arrangements more focused, lightweight, and compressed than ever before.

youtube

Make sure you stick around for the entire song. Trust me.

12 I Love You Like a Brother Alex Lahey What is happening in Australian that the country keeps producing these witty, confident female punk singer/songwriters? Alex Lahey’s style certainly mines a similar humorous vain to Courtney Barnett, but her approach is more energetic and less erudite. I always feel held at a distance by Barnett’s music; listening to it is almost a purely intellectual exercise. Lahey’s, however, has a casual immediacy that makes me want to smile and laugh and dance.

The title track is both punk as hell and sticky-sweet, a genuine love song from a sister to a brother, insanely catchy and refreshingly sincere. I am no one’s sister, and my brother and I, though we love each other, have never had a connection quite like the one Lahey documents here. Still, I so feel this jam. It follows the album’s opener, “Every Day’s the Weekend,” an actual love song, albeit one about having fallen for a broke, emotionally elusive charmer. “Fuck work, you’re here, every day’s the weekend,” is lyric of such powerful brevity, so effectively conveying the feeling during those times when someone exciting has unexpectedly exploded into your life. The hilarious “Perth Traumatic Stress Disorder,” another gatestormer, follows, and then the album starts to mutate into something more complex and interesting.

I Love You Like a Brother begins as an aggressive punk record, but slowly warps into atmospheric, radio-ready stadium rock. On a couple occasions this may be to its detriment, but as a whole the album serves as a solid testament to Lahey’s versatility as a writer. The lyrics of “Awkward Exchange” are comparatively anonymous to the earlier tracks, but the open sound, dynamic structure, and wordless chants beg for massive festival singalongs. It might happen. It should happen. The two approaches combine on “Lotto in Reverse,” perhaps Lahey’s greatest triumph here, an inward-focused dirge grafted onto a massive, hooky rock song that more than earns its prominent placement on Spotify’s Badass Women playlist.

youtube

11 Go Farther in Lightness Gang of Youths Christian music is terrible, almost all of it. Not just because it all still sounds like U2, but because none of it deigns to explore actual life as a flawed human who happens to be Christian. This is so intentionally. The Christian music industry is insidiously Randian; cynical and deplorable. Gang of Youths is fighting back, hard.

Singer/songwriter David Le'aupepe is a vulgar spiritualist, kind of a like an Australian David Bazan or Sufjan Stevens in the way he publicly struggles to reconcile his faith with his human proclivities. His studious lyrics often recall very early Bruce Springsteen, with their expansive vocabulary and wide-ranging cultural literacy. The band met in church (like U2!), yet the man swears with relish and documents his perceived failings as well as his issues with the spirtual institution to which he belongs. Get a load of this, from “Perservere,” which is actually my least favorite song on the album:

But God is full of grace and his faithfulness is vast There is safety in the moments when the shit has hit the fan Not some vindictive motherfucker, nor is he shitty at his job What words to hear, and I’m a mess by now 'Cause nothing tuned me in to my failure as fast As grieving for a friend with more belief than I possessed

Imagine that at Sunday service! If all Christian music was this nuanced and genuinely introspective then, well, Christian music wouldn’t be a ghetto. It would just be more music.

This album is long, almost feature-length, most of its 16 songs stretching beyond five minutes. Fortunately, the wealth of ideas and arrangements sustain the length, if only just barely. Gang of Youths are adventurously egalitarian in their consummate unoriginality, adamantly subscribing to the notion of Ecclesiastes 1:9, content to let Le’aupepe’s compelling narratives give the band identity as their arrangements freely pillage ideas from the most successful indie rock bands of the last decade, mostly those who can now fill arenas; the Killers, the National, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, LCD Soundsystemm Bloc Party. My favorite songs here pound forward relentlessly like Titus Andronicus. On some songs Le’aupepe’s words tumble out uncontrollably like Gareth Campesinos, on others his voice could be mistaken for Matt Berninger’s low growl.

Also, I’d be remiss to not mention how appealing I find it that there are no white people in this band. It’s rare and refreshing to hear this kind of massive music from a cultural perspective so different then my own.

youtube

10 Hot Thoughts Spoon Spoon is a band of consummate constants and variables. The band knows exactly what defines it, what listeners like, and they always deliver while also changing just enough to surprise. Every record, every song, reliably has three particular elements: an airtight hard rhythm groove, simple, catchy, repetitive; a masterful command of pop structure; and Britt Daniel’s enigmatic brand of ultracool, vaguely sexual vocal swagger. The other sounds around those elements, the atmospheres and tones, change with each record. Hot Thoughts delves deeper into the psychedelic G-funk timbres the band played with some on They Want My Soul, as Daniel continues to explore nonthreatening, acceptable ways to express desire. In short, it’s another Spoon record, and it rules.

youtube

9 Strangers in the Alps Phoebe Bridgers I keep coming back to lyrics. Lyrics draw me in like nothing else, the more smart, personal, and specific the better. Lyrics don’t come more specific and personal and smart than Phoebe Bridgers’s. She tells vivd stories, recounts memories of events and emotions by conjuring indelible, detailed settings and images with devastating depths of feeling, mostly over quiet, close-miced acoustic guitars underlaid with noninvasive strings and other atmospherics. Prepare to be haunted.

Though she sometimes doesn’t bother and the songs don’t suffer for it, as on the incredible “Smoke Signals,” Bridgers can also write the hell out of a chorus. Try not to get “Motion Sickness” stuck in your mind.

Strangers in the Alps does take a production risk I would understand some finding off-putting. Sometimes sound effects supplement and/or match lyrical events; a plane flying overhead, a boot crunching leaves, the kind of thing. It’s strange at first, but ultimately sets the album apart from others by similarly earnest stool-seated strummers.

youtube

8 Near to the Wild Heart of Life - year’s best title Japandroids I’ve seen this band play three times. The third was this year. Those previous had been with friends, and before the shows we drank and goofed around, celebrating our affection for each other and getting just the right level of lit up. This year I took a vacation day from my professional job, drove to St. Louis alone, and waited in line alone while reading a screenplay by one of the guys I used to go to shows with, eventually watching the show alone while nursing a single beer. It wasn’t the same. But it was still good.

Japandroids write what they know. Seven years ago what they knew resulted in a masterpiece, an album more relatable to me at the time than any other. Indeed, Celebration Rock remains my all-time favorite record, its ragged, propulsive riffage and emotional narratives of kinetic nights with close friends still have the power to take me back to that time, when I had more energy and a will to wildness. However, over the long interim between albums, the Japandroids’ lives and mine ceased to resemble each other. My closest friends moved. I have bills and a career and a generally pleasant, stable life—one distinctly not wild. Meanwhile, those dudes are evidently still globetrotting, every night out there swilling top-shelf tequila to nurse the heartache of intercontinental romance, living hard and loving harder. I no longer relate. As a listener I’m an observer now when I was once a participant. However, while I don’t connect with latter day Japandroids experientially, in a way the fact that Wild Heart still plays great for me despite that suggests that Japandroids is a legitimately great band on a musical level, rather than one just great for its ability to bash out messy, meaningful feelings..

These dudes are not shy about their laziness as songwriters, at least in terms of prolificacy. They release music as soon as they’ve reached the requisite minimum quantity of great songs, and it takes them forever to do so. Like the two previous Japandroids records, Wild Heart has only eight tracks, and they cheat even to amass that many. While Celebration Rock included a (totally awesome, raucous, thematically-appropriate) cover song, this time one Wild Heart track is an interlude, barely a song (“I’m Sorry [for Not Finding You Sooner]”), and another is just bad, sounding like a high school garage band trying hard to write a Japandroids song (“Midnight to Morning”). They really shouldn’t have let that one through. But man, the other six songs still kill with the same ferocity as before, some with an increased sense of melody and hook, and they all sound great live and feel great to shout along with, which, let’s be honest, is mainly what this band is for, and has always been for. The shouting just means a little less to me now.

youtube

7 Don’t Be a Stranger Nervous Dater Rachel Lightner has the gift, my favorite gift. She expels what she considers her worst qualities, and she does it through great songs; extremely catchy, smart, driving, dynamic punk songs. She does it publicly, with casual confidence. She makes it look easy and, most importantly, normal. Feeling how she feels is not unique. Sharing those feelings legitimizes them, creates a community around them. I mean, look at these lines:

Cause when things get quiet I feel uneasy I need my friends or at least just the sound of the TV To keep these things in my head from screaming “You’re inadequate! You’re a piece of shit! You could run forever but you’d never get away with it! And if people really knew who you were, They’d probably cover up the ground that you walk on with spit!”

If you can’t relate, then I envy you. If you can, and if you like punk, you need this band.

The players behind Lightner are also great, building arrangements that match incidental turns in the lyrics. The lines above are from the title track. Listen for how the song bends and nearly breaks as the narrative does the same, then recovers before almost breaking again. The band follows a formula, each instrument doing a specific job. Drums, bass, and one guitar lock into rhythm, while a lead guitar incessantly plays highly-involved tasto solo hooks. The band rarely veers from its set aesthetic, and when it does, it does so with purpose.

Occasionally a male member of the band will cameo, supplementing Lightner’s self-excoriations with early-2000s emo-screaming in the background. It’s a signifier that, intentionally or not, effectively ties Lightner’s music back to that era, an era that very intentionally excluded and delegitimized women’s voices. As has been proven time and time again in recent years, that was stupid. Women do it better. The contemporary women making emotional, personal punk music are doing it so well that nobody’s come up with a term like “emo” to dismiss it. I love being alive right now.

youtube

6 Big Fish Theory Vince Staples For when people ask what kind of music I like, that impossible question almost only asked by those who do not share the obsession, I have developed a stock answer of surprising accuracy. The smartest versions of punk, rap, and country. Country is a fudge, designed to open up a conversation about what “smart” country is. Dorks call it “alt-country.” Anyway. That’s a separate essay. You may have noticed that Big Fish Theory is the first rap record on this list. I am not tapped in to most contemporary rap. The slow, repetitive codeine scene doesn’t do it for me, and rap is more about single songs and premium playlist placement than it is about albums now. The album-focused rappers are dinosaurs. Four fossil-rap acts made solid records this year, and three made my list. Ranking them was difficult, and I am not at all confident in my final assessments. Vince Staples could have ranked highest another day.

Some days I like Big Fish Theory more than DAMN. Vince Staples’ world is less complicated, more concentrated and angry. Some days unnuanced anger is what I want. For fuel. Case in point, compare the two’s thoughts on the President and the country. First, Kendrick, hinting and contemplative:

Homicidal thoughts; Donald Trump's in office We lost Barack and promised to never doubt him again But is America honest, or do we bask in sin?

And Vince:

Tell the President to suck a dick, because we on now Tell the one percent to suck a dick, because we on now Tell the government to suck a dick, because we on now

And, of course, both men appear on “Yeah Right,” every bit as glorious a linguistic whirlwind as could be expected.

Also, I don’t know another rapper more musically experimental, forward-thinking, and adventurous than Vince Staples, including Kendrick. Vince is admirably without ego here (humble!); often letting the music overtake his voice, having faith in listeners to look up his words if they so desire. Much of Big Fish Theory is essentially modernized Chicago house with rapping, while also proudly West Coast. And it bangs, hard.

youtube

5 Melodrama Lorde This one took time. It took reading younger people’s perspectives to appreciate, grow to love. The first listen felt cold, staid. Pure Herione had been an instant rush, a loud announcement of a new, exciting pop personality, fully steeped in enthusiastically appropriated pop tropes of the time and letting Ella Yelich-O'Connor’s novel personality shine atop it all. Melodrama is different. She doesn’t shine, she seethes and writhes. She’s growing up in front of us, with surprising, precocious wisdom and emotional maturity.

There is nothing particularly contemporary about the sound of Melodrama. It’s less jokey, more earnest than Pure Heroine. And ultimately, despite that it does not provide the same sugary pleasure rush of its predecessor, Melodrama is far superior. It doesn’t sound like a time period, it sounds like first love and first heartbreak, because it is the manifestation of those. It sounds timeless, orchestral without an orchestra, because it is those things.

One track is a notable exception to the timelessness, and that makes it almost impossibly special. I will elucidate later in the Favorite Songs section.

youtube

4 DAMN. Kendrick Lamar Has there ever been an artist so deft at balancing/blending pure creative expression with commercialism? Until DAMN., Kendrick had achieved that balance through compartmentalization, by creating knotty, esoteric records, masterpieces, while also featuring on the most crass chart-bait singles imaginable. Another case in point: Kendrick made “For Free?” and appeared on the “Shake it Off” remix the same year. DAMN. inextricably fuses the two compartments without compromise. Almost every second of the album is both at once. Every song has earworm hooks and brain-breaking lyrical density. The record is jammed with potential singles, yet still works as a whole… even when listening to the tracks in reverse order. All hail. DAMN. is unquestionably the best album of the year, but even so, and even though I flew 1500 miles to see him play it live his hometown… it is not my favorite this year. DAMN. somehow isn’t even my favorite rap record, a late-breaking change-of-heart that took me by surprise.

youtube

3 RTJ3 Run the Jewels It’s too long. Let’s get that out of the way. But it’s all essential. For months I said that cutting “Hey Kids” and “Thieves!” would have made a better record. I was wrong. “Hey Kids” is the weakest track, for sure, but Killer Mike’s verse is straight up canonical, despite the relative frivolity of El-P’s bars and the idiocy of Danny Brown’s feature. “Thieves!,” on the other hand, after some close-listening and Genius deep-diving, is one of RTJ3’s best tracks, a massively ambitious dystopian sci-fi narrative that subtly riffs on Hamlet. Part of that ambition is manifested in a structure quite different from the straightforward presentations we’re used to from these guys; listening without the proper context doesn’t provide the furious pleasure typically associated with Run the Jewels.

Killer Mike & El-P were in an unenviable position prior to releasing this album. RTJ1 surprised everyone, even its makers; a no-stakes lark that happened to be much better and more special than that due simply to the sheer volume of talent involved. Expectations for RTJ2 had been high as a result, and they were exceeded as the band chose to treat the project with seriousness and gravity, leveraging their newfound fame and cultural relevance/reverence for conscientious advocacy. The result, RTJ2, is an unimpeachable classic, one I will listen to for the rest of my life. How could they top it, or even match it, without repeating themselves? By ratcheting up the ambition even further, and with it the risk.

Run the Jewels had been many things on their first two records; angry, funny, aggressive, stoned. Introspective was rarely one of those things. On RTJ3, the duo turn their focus inward, exploring feelings, emotions, and motivations as they apply to the external world in a manner they had never done previously. They also continue to make hilarious dick jokes.

The first and last four tracks are the best work they’ve ever done, the bookends especially. I didn’t appreciate just how great “Down” is until seeing the group close a couple live sets with it. The friends with whom I saw those shows and I were confused by that choice, but it caused us, or me at least, to listen to the song differently, to consider it as the type of song to close a set. Turns out, the choice was a great one. This band has become a band about hope manifested as anger and action, and no track conveys that notion better than “Down,” no RTJ album does it better than their third.

youtube

2 Turn Out the Lights Julien Baker Julien Baker creates stadium soundscapes using only a clean electric guitar and/or piano filtered through looping pedals. Many artists try this and fail. Especially in a live setting, it’s a cynical trick often deployed to impress perceived plebes, as I’ve seen Ed Sheerhan and, sadly, Elvis Costello, do in person. But for Julien Baker it is not a trick. It is seamless, unnoticeable; technical mastery not for its own sake, for impressing an audience, but for empowering expressions of deep feeling.

Turn Out the Lights is so much more than its production and arrangements, however. Baker is one of the most talented living writers, singers, and performers. Her percussion-less, entirely solo arrangements exist only to serve the themes of her songs. She’s one woman, onstage or on record, alone with the power of a full orchestra as she looses her interior on the world, her battles with addiction and depression, her fight to square an existence as a Christian and queer person, and her longing search for love and meaning through it all, the constant quest to hurt less.

youtube

1 After the Party The Menzingers If this were a list of “best” rather than “favorite” albums of the year, After the Party would be much lower, possibly not even included. There’s nothing innovative or original happening here, nothing generation-defining, no new ideas or calls to revolution. But there is an endless well of energy, feeling, and hyper-competent rock musicianship. The Menzingers have one of the most able rhythm sections working, serving the songs of two extraordinary writers, who seem incapable of picking up guitars without creating stadium punk hooks as indelibly catchy as they are heavy. This is smart, pure, meat-and-potatoes rock music, the meatiest and starchiest.

Beyond the wholly satisfying drive and force of the band on a primal musical level, these dudes have a real working-class, post-religious Midwestern mentality, despite hailing a little too far east to fully qualify. Many of these songs deal with how to gracefully age and settle while maintaining an uncommon resistance to traditional values. It should come as no surprise how strongly I relate. Earlier I mentioned Japandroids, how their initial records depicted the romance of early-20s debauchery and intense friendship. The true triumph of After the Party is how the The Menzingers manage to write about moving forward, building lives with partners, embracing careers and domesticity while also looking back fondly at bygone wild days without romanticizing them, fully owning that a calmer life is a better one, but allowing that the past was pretty damn fun.

After the Party may not become a timeless classic like other records on this list might, but this year it was the album to which I connected most. It was, and is, mine.

youtube

A Few of My Favorite Songs of 2017

8/7 “Truth Hurts”/“Water Me” Lizzo Lizzo should be a huge star. She’s like André 3000 good. She’s my Beyoncé.

Including these songs here is like an honorary Favorite Album spot. I listened to the two singles back-to-back more times than I did most albums this year. Lizzo has talent in excess of her excess of confidence and swagger.

Music journalists could not shut up about the two times Rihanna rapped on record this year, a little on the Kendrick album and on the only good 45 seconds of the N.E.R.D. album. Both instances earned effusive and universal praise. It bothers me that Lizzo doesn’t get that type of attention. She raps, sings, and writes far better than Rihanna, better than most pop stars working, really, and she often does it all in the same song, the same line.

“Truth Hurts” is a total kiss-off rap banger, insidiously catchy as it deconstructs and rebuilds the chorus of “Black Beatles” into something much better and exponentially more driving than its lugubrious origin. “Water Me” is an aggressive funk jam that Lizzo goes nuts over, showing off the full range of her voice, trying about a hundred different modulations and weird ideas. They all work, and together form some truly transcendent pop.

Check out her older stuff too, including a couple unlikely collaborations with Sadie Dupois from Speedy Ortiz (!) for my punk friends.

youtube

7 “What Can I Do If the Fire Goes Out?” Gang of Youths This isn’t another “Younger Us,” a song that so fully represents a period of my life that the opening chords still sometimes have the power to make me tear up. But it does take me be back to another time, and moves me in a similar way to the Japandroids classic. I haven’t told many people about this, but though I didn’t openly quit the church until a few months after graduating high school, I had struggled to maintain faith for a few years, even while playing in a devoutly evangelical Christian rock band.

“What Can I Do If the Fire Goes Out?” takes me back to a specific morning, a bone-cold, see-your-breath morning, driving to school my sophomore or junior year, listening to the first song from the second Spoken album and weeping at the lyrics’ longing prayer for help and guidance. In hindsight, Spoken made objectively bad music; comically derivative and poorly-structured. Throughout the Gang of Youths album, and especially on “Fire,” similar sentiments are explored and depicted more articulately, with far superior musical acumen. I’ll never believe again, but it’s nice to be made to have those feelings again, to experience unforced sympathy for another’s spiritual struggle.

youtube

6 “Right Now” Haim See the last paragraph of the Haim album entry above.

5 “Even” Julien Baker Julien at her most simple, most distilled, uncharacteristically just 4/4 quarter-note strumming an acoustic guitar, showing us that her layered productions would be nothing without the powerful songs beneath them. And what a song, karmic allusions and memories of conflicts.

It's not that I think I'm good I know that I'm evil I guess I was trying to even it out

Yeesh.

4 “Supercut” Lorde That word, and its power. Until recently no expression or single word existed to describe that wistful wash of isolated, curated romantic memories, warm-tinted flashes of the loveliest tiny moments of a lost relationship, ignoring fights and infidelities, only seeing sunshine. The good parts. And knowing its nature, indulging it with caution, recalling fondly and reliving without desire to return or recreate. “Supercut” could not have existed at any other time, on any other album, by any other artist. Lorde took the most modern of language and forged a work of art of crushing emotional truth; timeless, indelible, perfect.

youtube

3 “HUMBLE.” Kendrick Lamar I saw Kendrick play his first ever solo headlining arena show in his hometown. When it came time for “HUMBLE.”, the music dropped out after the initial “Hyeuh, hyeuh!,” and Kendrick let the crowd rap the entire song acapella while he just gazed around, observing in awe. The moment was magic.

youtube

2 “If We Were Vampires” Jason Isbell I’ll be honest. I don’t know how to write about this one without getting inappropriately personal. It’s been a hard year for me in certain relevant ways, and this incredible song has not helped matters.

youtube

1 “God in Chicago” Craig Finn The adjective “cinematic” doesn’t do justice to “God in Chicago,” which, despite lasting a mere four minutes and forty-five seconds, and not being cinema, is one of the best films of the year, a devastating, seedy road trip romance with a tight plot, loveable flawed characters, and an ambiguous ending. Craig Finn fronts my favorite band of over a decade, and yet this is the best thing he’s ever done. Every detail matters, every word and phrase considered and intentional. It’s Craig’s “Chelsea Hotel No 2,” a quiet meditation towering over an oeuvre of louder, more sensational and populist work. I love this man.

youtube

Appendices

I. Albums I enjoyed and/or listened to often but did not become favorites for whatever reasons Allison Crutchfield, Tourist in this Town Arcade Fire, Everything Now Big Thief, Capacity Broken Social Scene, Hug of Thunder Bully, Losing Charly Bliss, Guppy Cloud Nothings, Life Without Sound The Dirty Nil, Minimum R&B Drake, More Life Fat Joe/Remy Ma, Plata O Plomo Father John Misty, Pure Comedy Feist, Pleasure Craig Finn, We All Want the Same Things Japanese Breakfast, Soft Sounds from Another Planet Jay-Z, 4:44 Jens Lenkman, Life Will See You Now LCD Soundsystem, American Dream Migos, Culture The National, Sleep Well Beast Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, The French Press Ryan Adams, Prisoner Sampha, Process Sylvan Esso, What Now Tigers Jaw, spin The War on Drugs, A Deeper Understanding Waxahatchee, Out of the Storm Wolf Parade, Cry Cry Cry Worriers, Survival Pop Yaeji, EP2 Yr Poetry, One Night Alive

II. Albums with which I was simply unable to spend enough time So many. Basically any album on any list covered on this site—the ultimate resource for end-of-year music dorkery--that I didn’t mention in my document I would have at least given a cursory try. That’s my normal process. There just wasn’t time.

III. A vain attempt to string together some final thoughts I’m exhausted, too exhausted to force a cute unified narrative onto my experiences with music this year beyond what I already have. As for the future… I’m excited, in a different way than normal. I don’t know what’s coming out next year. I haven’t done the requisite research. I’m into the idea of just letting it happen, letting New Music Fridays reveal themselves week-to-week.

Haha, just kidding. As soon as I post this I’m jumping in headfirst, making a 2018 Most Anticipated List. Sayonara suckers.

0 notes

letlhogonolotakesuclalaw · 7 years

Text

Away, but living in home

For my grandmother who raised 5 children on a domestic salary

For my mother who raised me with money from her tuckshop and shebeen

For my aunt who raised me and her children on a nurse salary

For the womxn in my family, who raised communities on nothing

For the womxn in my family.

For the womxn in my life.

Your magic is enough to keep me going.

- Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane

It has already been month in AMERICA. Can you believe it? I can’t. Wait, I think I can. I have so many mixed feelings about this whole experience. A lot has happened in this month. I have moved into my place, I started classes, I have partied and I am meeting Black people and having some SOUL FOOD. But things haven’t also been so easy and filled with sunshine. My time in LA has forcefully allowed me the opportunity and the space to do a lot of reflection, and this isn’t always great. You know why? I spend a lot of time in my head and the things that I come up with scare the living day lights out of me. And I am not even been dramatic, just real.

My time is LA has been largely a good experience – I haven’t cried as often as I thought I would and sometimes the crying was cathartic. I really miss the familiarity of home. It sounds crazy but try coming to another country, where you don’t really understand the value of money and you can really use the exchange rate to determine the value of the dollar, where the products are unfamiliar to you and you spend most of your time in the stores trying to figure out whether this is a good brand for a reasonable price? I have no idea hey. I still don’t. Hopefully, in a few months, I will be an expert at determining the value of money in this country. But you know what it’s not all bad. I have made friends here. We went to Walmart, the other day, and it was amazing. Three floors of amazingly cheap things, lol, everything is cheaper here. Praise the Lord with me! Oooh, Glory Hallelujah!

I have also experienced immerse loneliness here and it is not the lack of people. I think it comes with moving to a different country and feeling like an outsider, in the literal sense of the word. I’ve got people saying: “ You’ve got a cute accent” and such a beautiful name, even though they don’t know what my name means. Last week was an incredibly difficult week for me. I felt inadequate and all the adjectives that can describe the feeling of unworthiness. I am not too certain where all these feelings come from and its sucks, but I am feeling better today and that counts for something, right? Why am I feeling better? Perhaps it is because it is getting easier, it’s really not. I’ve tapped into my support structure, my tribe. I have had a few conversations and crying session with my friends. I have asked them questions like: What am I doing here? Why did I think I could do this? Who am I to think that I am capable of doing this? And other depressing questions. But I received no answer. I am the only one who can answer these questions. It really sucks. Growing up is not as fun as I thought it would be, to be honest. However, I am glad that I have people who have allowed me the space to feel. I think that sometimes when people are doing what others may consider amazing things, a lot is expected from these people – a common expectation is that these people must always live their best life, because you know it is such a great opportunity, you have no space or time to feel anything that is akin to sadness. You can’t be. I want to tell you that this a huge lie. A fallacy really. While I am very grateful for this amazing opportunity. I am also mindful of the fact that I’ve left the country of my birth – where I’ve lived for all my life – to take up temporary residence in another country. Another continent really. This move and transition is hardly easy, it will be filled with moments of sadness, homesickness and loneliness. So, if you are reading this and you’ve felt that you aren’t allowed to feel sad because it may come across as ungrateful. I would like you to remind this: you are a humxn being who is allowed to feel the full spectrum of feelings, but don’t let them consume you. I know it is easier said than done. Last week, I found myself having to will myself out of bed because I wasn’t feeling deserving enough to be here. This is always hard for me, feeling deserving of things. It is hard to accept words that affirm me and remind me that I have worked hard to be here. I have been so familiar with rejection, self-loathing and other horrors – that those things have become my truth. But I am learning to speaking a new language – a language that says I am deserving, capable and worthy. I need to repeat these to myself every now and then until it is not only head knowledge but it becomes truth that permeates into my heart. Okay, enough about all these somber talk. All I want to say is allow yourself to feel but don’t let it rob you of your joy, too many things do that already.

I started classes two weeks ago. It has been glorious. The courses that I am taking this fall include (1) Critical Race Theory taught by Professor Cheryl Harris (a slaying Kween). She is absolutely amazing. I must admit that I may be a little obsessed with her. Her mind is incredible. Not that I am trying to justify my obsession but I think it comes from never being taught by a Black womxn before. And this Black womxn is a serving intellectual Kween. In 1993, she wrote a journal article entitled: Whiteness as Property, which is still be quoted today. Just last week, she was used as a reference in an article in the New York Times. My other courses are (2) Race Conscious Remedies (She teaches this as well. Ya’ll need to praise the Lord for me!), (3) Human Rights and Sexual Politics and (3) Problem Solving in the Public Interest.

(First day with Prof Cheryl Harris, I promise to take a Seflie with her soon)

While I am talking about Black womxn, I have found myself an amazing cohort of slaying and serving Kweens, who are enrolled in the J.D Program (American law degree). These womxn have given me such life. There are all from different parts of the country. It has been amazing to connect and get to know them. They are smart, funny, beautiful and vibrant.

I have also joined Black Law Student Association (BLSA). It has been an interesting learning experience. Blackness in America and South Africa are very different. But one thing, I have learnt from hanging out in this circle and connecting with my people (yes, my people. You heard me right, lol) is that black love – in any context – is political, radical, and necessary. In some ways, it can also be freeing. I am excited to learn more from the people who make up this association.

Some of my highlights include going to Inglewood (a predominately Black neighbourhood) and seeing black people in their numbers. We went to Sweet pies – a famous restaurant that sells Southern Food aka “SOUL FOOD”. The food was great – it reminded me of home. I think for my survival I will need to go there once a month, to connect, try every dish and enjoy blackness in its fullness. I am yet to go and find the apartment block that Issa lives in in INSECURE, don’t worry, I will take pictures - you know how extra I am. Hopefully soon I will be writing about all the celebrities that I have seen, but for now we live in home.

0 notes

livingunderthefigtree · 7 years

Text

Anxiety, depression and euphoria: what the contraceptive implant did to me

I was always pretty much one of the only women and girls I knew who loved having a period. Well not having it per se, which could be far from ideal, but maybe the fact that it happened; my body had its own cycle, its own silent process of birth and regeneration, like the moon, or a tree. It made me feel like my physical substance was in some fundamental way connected to the world around me. The unfortunate attending possibility was of course, obviously, childbirth. (I still haven’t got my head round this. A BABY CAN SPRING FROM MY LOINS? WTF!) And clearly, when one gets to a certain age, and is, ahem, lucky enough to have sex sometimes, this becomes a mind-blowing and terrifying possibility. Like many people, the thought of having a baby at 21 fills me first overwhelmingly with bafflement and then, very quickly, with worry. I still sometimes cry when I’m hungry, and if there were two of us crying, what would I do?!

In short, at a certain point when these worries (temporarily) came scarily and rudely to a head I decided I needed to take on the responsibility of preventing pregnancy from happening. Or not even that; it was as much about relieving myself of the anxiety of potential pregnancy as the possibility itself.

So I got the contraceptive implant. This is a matchstick shaped device that sits in your arm and releases progestogen into your bloodstream, preventing you from having a child. (Don’t ask me how, I’m a Classicist.) I was told that I might bleed erratically for a while, but that this would settle down; I was told that I might experience minor mood swings, but that they too would settle down, within a few months. That night I had a dream that I was alone at my home in London when four or five female sixteen year old thieves broke in through the front door and seized everything in sight, in spite of my attempts to empathetically reason with them. With some tentativeness, (again, I’m a Classicist not a psychologist) I was initially and remain tempted to view the symbolism at work here as pointing up anxiety about an intrusion into my place of safety (the home often symbolises the body or the self in dreams) by an alien external force, which I would try and fail to reason with. At the time I dismissed the anxieties the dream was trying to communicate, and my subsequent experience seemed to confirm the impulse to reject it; for quite a long time after the implant was inserted I did feel completely myself, noticing no changes to my mood at all.

However I thought something was a bit weird when, five weeks later, I was sitting in my room waiting for my parents to arrive so they could take me out to lunch for my 21st birthday, listening to music and writing my diary (as one does) and little by little I was seized with emotion. My mum and dad loved me so much that they were coming to see me on my birthday! Even though I’m bad at tidying my room and I always always leave the lights on and occassionally I am rude! I felt the force of their love and the gratitude took physical root in my body; I dissolved into tears, and wrote them a letter thanking them for bringing me into the world. I was crying but it was a wonderful feeling. The more I wrote, the more I broke down into tears. When they arrived, they were touched but bemused. On some level, I do tentatively sense that I am more emotional than your average Joe, but it’s not like I cry every time they come round. I do often feel this way for a couple of days before my period starts though – aha! I thought. My period is coming despite the implant.

Only the feeling did not stop. But it did stop being cathartic, no longer representing a much-needed release, but over the next few days identifying itself as sadness, as worry, as anxiety, as fear, not as gratitude. The familiar PMS-feeling – endurable for its transience, even welcome sometimes as it was part of my body’s reassuring cycle – just would not go away. It lasted for about three weeks. In those three weeks I would cry pretty much every day, at no provocation or at the slightest provocation (the bare fact that I don’t currently hold a gym membership being the most laughable of my perceived crosses to bear.) For the first week I was okay; I clung on to the knowledge that underneath all the noise, I was happy; but it became harder and harder to persuade myself that I was crying every day for no reason at all. I couldn’t prevent myself from focusing on all the faults and worries in my life and it took all my energy to separate the emotion I felt from the reality I knew was safe and happy. I worried that there were only so many times the people closest to me would be able to hold me while I cried without being able to do anything because the emotion came from a small plastic rod and not from any problems they could support me while I solved. Emotions are contagious. The most insecure part of me worriedly whispered that there would come a time when they would run out of the love or energy to be close to me. They had their own shit to deal with. I resented myself for even feeling like I needed looking after at all.

After a particularly bad episode involving one ‘seen’ Facebook messenger notification, two hours of physically uncontrollable sobbing, and an essay I could not write because crying was taking up all of my time, I decided to have the implant taken out. I called my GP, tentatively telling her I felt like what I was experiencing was ‘a bit of a mental health emergency’, and expecting her to give me an appointment in the next couple of days. I was told that as I had had sex in the last two weeks there was a risk of pregnancy if it was taken out, so I would have to wait another two weeks for any existing sperm to bugger off. Hearing this, my eyes filled (yes, you guessed it!) with tears. It seemed like the end of the world. As it turned out, due to the risk of pregnancy the only way my doctor would allow me to have it taken out quickly was if I allowed them to first fit my womb with the (blissfully hormone free) copper coil, which is immediately effective as contraception, and then have the implant taken out. I accepted this advice, and although the memory of having the coil placed inside my womb and the ensuing last day of being bed ridden with tears pouring down my face has been promptly filed away by my subconscious into the file titled ‘REPRESSED THINGS’, it is a choice I am proud I made. Three days after having the implant removed the clouds have cleared and I am happy again, with all the other great benefits that come with being happy: I am more self- confident, more creative, take a great deal of pleasure in my alone time, studying is a joy rather than a struggle, I am more lucid, more compassionate, the list goes on. I am so grateful for all these things. I am so grateful that it is gone.

The worst thing about the effect the implant had on me (which for the uninitiated contains the same hormones as the ‘mini’ or progestogen-only contraceptive pill) was that I risked becoming my own worst enemy. Increasingly I felt that I was no longer able to trust my own thoughts and feelings. Were my emotional reaction to things and corresponding behavioural responses rational? Every time an event made me cripplingly, cripplingly sad the sadness was accompanied by a quiet suspicion that I was blowing everything out of proportion. I was left with the alternatives of swallowing my feelings, which had served me badly in the past, or communicating them to the people I loved and risking scaring or overwhelming them. In my opinion, things get dangerous when you become alienated from the sad, scared, angry parts of yourself, because exasperated and exhausted you reject them, unable to give them your love, attention, and acceptance. I am incredibly lucky to know myself well enough to always have been able to hold on to the fact that the feelings weren’t mine, to have had this happen to me during a period of my life that I am positive I am happy, because during a tougher patch it would have been much harder to distinguish the ‘real’ sadness from the ‘synthetic’ sadness.

Because so many women use hormonal contraception and a large proportion of those women don’t suffer such debilitating side effects it is easy to feel like you are making a massive fuss about nothing, to assume that other women feel the same way as you do in their heads but you are too weak to deal with it, especially when the tone of every healthcare professional you speak to on the phone is coloured with skepticism even when the words themselves aren’t. If this sounds like you, have faith in your conviction that you aren’t making a big fuss about nothing, and if hormonal contraception is making you sad, don’t feel embarassed or weak in making the decision to come off it. My doctor (who, for the record, is lovely and whom I don’t really blame) told me to wait six months for the side effects to subside. Six months – especially when those six months coincide with an already impossibly volatile Cambridge term – is a very, very long time. The burden of responsibility for contraception is, for now, entirely placed on women. I could wax lyrical about how fucking unfair this is, but instead I will say: it will be okay, you have every right to stop and put your mental health first, and the amount of time you choose to wait before implementing any decision to do so is entirely for you to determine, and not for anyone else.

***

This piece has been published on my Wordpress blog, which can be found here:

https://variumetmutabilesemperfemina.wordpress.com/

#feminism #sexism #patriarchy #contraceptive implant #contraception #anxiety #depression #euphoria

0 notes