"Klimt gold, this fleeting grasp/Hold to each other"
It's end of year music list season. Well, it's EOY list season everywhere, but music's where the lists are the most fun, IMO, and not just because I wrote a bunch of them in a past life. I'd take a few days off from work just to crank out a few thousand words over a couple Starbucks-fueled blog posts about favorite albums, worst pop songs, and whatever else the year needed to close out. Putting my work life on stasis for a couple days seems no longer feasible, but dammit if I don't still see the allure.
Even in all that time, though, the question that always kicked my ass was "What's your favorite song of the year?" The question always felt too big to me, since trying to distill a whole year down to 3 to 6 minutes of music felt impossible. Hell, I couldn't even decide between criteria like "what song did I listen to most?" or "what was the most emblematic song of the year?" or "what did I love that someone else didn't?" I always punted by doing an alphabetical list of 50 songs; if it isn't one of those, it's another.
I'll do the list again, but right now it's probably somewhere between:
"Everyone Won the Lotto" by Home Is Where (my favorite song from my favorite album)
"Trunks" by A$AP Rocky (song I reached for the most--I got a lot of miles out of A$AP doing light Playboi Carti cosplay)
FKA twigs - "Sushi" (late-breaking hipster pick, Pop Edition)
Wednesday - "Wound Up Here (By Holding On)" (late-breaking hipster pick, Indie Edition)
"Eko" by yeule (Apple Music most-played song of the year, tied with)
"I Steal What I Want" by The Armed
The Armed's new record THE FUTURE IS HERE AND EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE DESTROYED is quite good--a "return to form" for people put off by Perfect Saviors (even though I sneakily thought that album had the juice). Which is to say it's unafraid to sound like The Armed dropping an entire band on your head, it keeps the songs short, there's more yelling, and there's no Julien Baker backing vocals. It's just good ripshit punk. And among those rippers comes "I Steal What I Want," a two-minute blast of furious guitars and bass that careen into the album's catchiest hook ("Slow motion getaway/Lives in a bubble"), where the whole thing sounds like having the wind in your hair as you drive a stolen car down the highway in a future dystopia. Talking to AppleMusic, singer Tony Wolski said, "Lyrically, it's about trying to enjoy the end of the world and holding on to what you love as everything else falls apart. That idea might be super well-trodden and not particularly original, but holy shit, does it feel authentic to me right now."
Around the same mid-20s ages where the "what's your favorite song of the year?" question would beat my ass, so would "where do you see yourself in five years?" While I imagine that question had a difficulty multiplier for anyone turning 25 or 26, far enough away from college that life was no longer on graduated rails of academia, but before the rest of your life cohered into an appreciative shape, it filled me with the unspoken trepidation and sublimated, unarticulated horror of there being at least five more years of this. And why was the idea of life as constructed continuing for another five years scary? I didn't want to know that.
While it's less than five years, today is my third-year anniversary of being on HRT, and I'm feeling reflective. Three years, even with my fucky timeline*, feels different from how things felt at one or two in the way that rounding 3 on anything does. I have less "please take me seriously" imposter syndrome around strangers or family, my sense of style is redeveloping into what's fun instead of what's available, and I feel like I have to squint less to see physical results. And, for me at least, it's easier to feel like I'm part of the community since I'm secure in my identity.
(*I started on low-dose HRT 3 years ago, bumped my dosage up the following August, and then switched to injections the last year. I know HRT efficacy studies are one half part a handful of journal articles, one part DIY sisters circulating info through zines and pdfs, and two parts old wives' tales and vibes, but injections really as the way to do it.)
On top of the additional security and belonging (not to get Maslow with it), I just feel like a fuller person. While I sometimes feel like I was ~doing more earlier in life in terms of hobby output, my hobbies, voice, and perspective now feel more like my own. I wanted to write this tonight, so I did. I can think about my career and instead of "idk, grad school maybe?" I have ideas for what schools to go to and for what. I'd really like to be a therapist. I get to be a bride next year.
This, too, is what it means when it is said that HRT and gender affirming care are lifesaving. Yes, there are those whose lives could end shortly without access to care, and my heart weeps for them. There are also those who are living, but not alive without the ability to be who they are, the true self lost in a haze of waking sleepwalking or trapped in the gauzy isolation of failing mental health or substance misuse. HRT can give them their lives, as well.
Of course, this personal flourish has to take place against the backdrop of a modern America that is increasingly pushing for a genteel, frictionless existence– ChatGPT for solving whatever challenge you face at work, throw $40 away for a lukewarm DoorDash order with the wrong side and no cutlery, and queue up whichever of 8 streamers owned by 3 companies you want so you can two-screen it until you're ready for bed. This type of cozy, consumptive static can blind the eyes, rendering them unable to see five years, three years, or even one year into the future. I think about that, and then I think about how far I've come in three years just by desiring change for myself. Yes, the world kind of sucks, yes, my foot has hurt for like 3 weeks, and yes, our kitchen flooded last night. But I know there's still life out there worth holding out for with people I love in places I love to be, and I know that's true for you, too. Grab it, take it. Steal what you want.
