Panic! in the living room

Anxiety and anthems

Substack sends me very professional analytics every month, and I don’t know how to be like, Thank you for tracking this utter disaster of a blog, but if I was relying on this thing professionally, I’d be so fucked.¹

I’m having a really bad time with my anxiety right now, and I need you to go watch this² to understand how big it is that I just admitted that. I am definitely a person who would have a harpoon sticking out of my leg and tell you I was fine. In fact, the past eight years of my life were a long string of major crises that I didn’t tell people about.³

It me.

So with this extremely low-stakes generalized anxiety disorder, I am trying something new called “complaining.”

If you know me in person, are in a Discord with me, or have actually gotten Twitter to work recently, you have probably heard from me about how much this whole thing sucks ass. I have headaches, shortness of breath, nausea, and insomnia for no apparent reason. Everything in my life is perfectly fine right now!

I remember several times when I was really in the weeds thinking, I don’t know why I’m not having a breakdown, and it turns out it’s because my brain is stupid.

No, there is actually science⁴ that says your brain can delay things like fear and anxiety until you’re safe and have the time and space to process them. I would like to ask my brain why we can’t just skip them altogether. I feel like that would be a much better system for everyone.

Subject change!

So while I’m safe, stable, and miserable, I’ve been listening to lots of music. I wish I could give you some pithy description of my musical taste, but the best I’ve got is “algorithm-defying.”

No, Spotify, I do not want to hear from any of the dozen ‘similar’ artists you’ve picked out for me. In fact, I hate them all. Fuck off and let me hoard middling pop, obscure girl rock, gay shit, and 1990s one-hit-wonders in peace.

For a taste of what I’m listening to right now, I give you Angry 90s Girls, Angry 20s Girls,⁵ The Three Months in 1997 I Was Cool, and my catch-all playlist, currently named Marlena.⁶

There’s a lot of overlap between those playlists because 1) I am picky and 2) I am neurodiverse—so when I find a song I like, I want to hear it everywhere, all the time.⁷

This week’s on-repeat is Hozier’s Unknown. I loved Hozier’s first two albums, but the first three songs he released ahead of his latest album (Unreal/Unearth) were just ok to me. I liked them, and I could see where he was stretching and growing as an artist, but none of them grabbed me by the throat the way In A Week or Sunlight did. Until this:

You called me angel for the first time, my heart leapt from me
You smile now, I can see its pieces still stuck in your teeth

Excuse me. I need to go walk into the sea.

This motherfucker really heard “if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known” and wrote this.

Anyway, the title of the following YT video is “Hozier’s Insane Explanation of His New Song ‘Unknown’,” and it’s just…Andrew describing a bit of Dante’s Inferno. Should we start marketing the Inferno to teens as insane? Would that make it seem cooler?

More music? More music!

The Glastonbury music festival was last weekend, and the BBC uploaded songs from many performances. Here are some of my favorites:

We must start with Rick Astley, who had the time of his life, both during a set of his own songs and one devoted to Smiths covers. Listen to the crowd singing with him here and just try not to smile:

Immediately following Rick was the band my husband refers to as “your babies”: Måneskin. Yeah, the Eurovision band. I love them; they are phenomenal live; and this is not their best song, ok?

And a couple of small-but-mighty acts:

Sudan Archives-Selfish Soul

The Hu-Eseerin Vasahina

(The Hu are a Mongolian throat-singing metal band.)

OK, that’s it from me this week. Let me know what you’re listening to now!

1. Hilariously, the analytics at my actual paying job are much harder to parse.

2. Can you watch it? Has Twitter unfucked itself yet?

3. You can ask, but I will probably still respond, Oh, I’m fine! HOWAREYOU?

4. Not gonna look it up, sorry.

5. I’m taking suggestions for this one.

6. And if you get that reference…IDK, come sit in the trash heap with me.

7. If you happen to look through the rest of my public playlists, you will discover that many of them seem to have been made by an 8- to 12-year-old. This is because I share my Spotify account with my daughter (mostly for algorithm-fuckery purposes).