We sat in a circle, me on the beanbag chair that needs more beans, some on the floor, some on the couch. People called out songs one by one and I found them and added them to the steadily building queue, coming out tinnily from the shitty tv speakers. The game was to find a song that I would like. No one won.
I've been thinking about music a lot lately. I've especially been thinking about what I like in music. It's pretty easy for me to generate a list of commonalities between the songs I enjoy. I have a thing for high pitched powerful female vocals. I like a song that shifts a lot. I like fast music with a hint of chaos, that feels continually slightly out of control. I like a beautiful melody threaded through instead of pure chaotic noise. I like to have layers, obscene and complex. But for all of those, I can find exceptions. Does that define any of my favourite songs?
I think there must be more to it than that, because people don't seem to get my taste even given that much. Recently, I made a friend a playlist to communicate my taste and they said they loved how it had a "cohesive vibe" and that it suited me. I don't know if I could pick out the vibe.
Music is important to me in a way that I find hard to describe. Where words fail me, I find that songs can get me across. I'm not a woman, I'm Girls Made of Heavy Metal by Hysterica. I'm not a human, I'm the Queen of Hell by A Sound of Thunder. This was and continues to be important to me throughout my transition. A song is an idea, an emotion or concept made tangible. You can reach out and touch it, but only if you're willing to be touched back.
My transition goals and icons have always been songs and albums and bands and artists. Some trans people set out to be their favourite cartoon characters. But I know that there's Nothing Like Me by Nemesea. I'm unique and special and maybe if you let the hours pass by in the darkness of your bedroom, headphones clutched tight, curled up against the world, maybe then you could know. Maybe the only way to understand me is to have lived it, warding away the emptiness through FuckMyLife666 by Against Me! on loop while you walk to class.
Even when I thought I was a man, I treasured riot grrl and feminist rock, songs about womanhood that presented femininity as rough and tumble, more brass knuckles and spikes than flowers and love. My taste in metal has always been a little weird because the hard masculinity of the classics always turned me off. Break by Skarlett Riot spoke to me far more than anything by Metallica or Judas Priest. The way she mixed her voice amongst the layered guitar and spitfire drums, dull and crude, distinctly feminine and yet not in a familiar way to me, said more than words ever could. It was okay to want something different, so said I Sell My Kids For Rock'n'roll by Crucified Barbara. It doesn't matter if I'm a monster. The Monster I Am by Ankor proves that is an okay thing to be.
The interplay of desire and need especially fascinates me. At once, I am a desirable sex object and sexless, rejecting the act of classification but not of being. You may not perceive me, for that is a privilege I retain for myself. My sex is for me and I look pretty because I want to, not for your sake. I am not your Babydoll by Atomic Blonde.
But more than relating deeply to some music, I'm coming to think that I process and use music differently from most people. I mostly listen to music when I want to turn my brain off. Whenever I'm doing anything menial, cooking or cleaning or biking down that narrow canyon, Sail North by Sister Sin blaring until my eardrums burst. If I'm trying to think, I have to have absolute silence. But sometimes when I'm overwhelmed I want to lie in the darkness and lose myself in a familiar song, letting myself be carried by the music.
Because of that, while I see music as super important, I don't actually listen to that much of it compared to other people. See my last.fm for proof, where I have consistently ranked last on songs per week when compared to my peers. Sorry! I'm just too autistic!
Something else which I thought was common, but doesn't appear to be is that I only ever listen to music by album. While I have made playlists on occasion, I almost never use them. My preference is very much to pick a specific album and play it in order from the first song and I think that has huge implications on how I process and understand music.
For starters, it makes choosing a favourite song very hard because songs function more like episodes of a tv show. The best episode only works in context. It builds on that which came before it and foreshadows that which is to come. While you can process it outside of that context, it will never work quite as well on its own. In a Sweater Poorly Knit by mewithoutYou is a good song on its own, but an incredible capstone to the album, neatly closing out all the opened doors, echoing back the key lyrics and ideas. I find it very hard to get into other people's music tastes because they only ever send me loose songs. Send me a whole album, you coward! Let me get the big picture.
This also makes communicating my favourites difficult. Orb Weaver by A Sound of Thunder is one of my all time favourite songs, in large part because it beautifully foreshadows the coming themes and melodies of the album. The Krimson Kult is one of my all time favourite albums and Orb Weaver, being the first song, always carries with a shard of the excitement that I'm about to listen to the whole album. But it's difficult to explain these things to someone who hasn't heard the full album, who doesn't get it, who thinks it's too soft for my normal taste.
It also limits my taste. If an artist only hits 50% of their songs on me, I probably won't listen to them very much. I want consistent artists. An album should capture a mood, iterate upon a theme. A series of disjointed songs, two of them clearly single-bait, sucks. It should have layers and moods, pauses and climaxes. I claim to hate slow songs because stand alone slow songs bore me to death, but in their proper place I adore them. I want to see transformation. Bent Knee have made some gorgeous intricate songs. But they've also made a lot of slow boring ones and I ain't touching those.
I am a sucker for concept albums. I love them to death. Tell me a story with your music. Show me a progression. Take me on a journey. Let me live a different life for a few moments. I never want to see part of the picture. Give me the whole thing.
I love music so much. That is all.
Today's link of the day is my new friend lunabee!