Cold Hart & BONES - "Light Headed" / cleanse. - "delicate"

Listen here and here.

I was mutuals with Zubin on an account that no longer exists, and that was how I first heard about Working on Dying, long before I knew the names Lucki or Lil Uzi Vert.

At that time, working on dying was all I ever felt good at; I only recently started wanting to actually live life, and that is the first time I became so aware of how many have tried to take it from me, and how many times I almost took it myself, and how I have endured in spite of that.

I have never been able to tell Zubin how many songs graced with his beautiful voice, from "Overdose" to "ICU," have helped me endure.

I met Nedarb in what was a past life for both of us, before he even made beats; he is one of a few people who belongs to an exclusive club of souls who saw the one rap show I ever played myself, under the name "MC Vague," a retired moniker I know some people remember but have not said out loud in years, like the dead name they will also carry to their grave on my behalf.

That rap name never really fit right. I chose it because it was vague. Because I wanted to exist as a blur. Because I did not want to commit to any bits. 

I have never been able to tell Ned how many nights I spent walking around New York crying to "Beamer Boy."

And every time it comes on in the club, or when Anvil drops it before a Haunted Mound show, I also cry, and I feel the spirits of a beautiful boy I once knew, and a beautiful boy I never got to know, because of how so many tried to exploit that beauty: who saw it as only a commodity, and not a natural resource, like water from the earth or a mother's love, which should only ever be given freely.

I can finally say without imposter syndrome in public light of day that I knew I was your mother the whole time and I was actually fucking right about that instinct too, in the same way my instincts have been right about so many artists dating back a decade to when I was playing blog rap into the terrestrial abyss of college radio.

Somehow, that all makes it easier to scream "Beamer Boy" harder than ever. Because now I see that I'm not the beamer boy—I'm the girl that don't even fucking need a boy, and that is where the true strength lies, which is why you love us, but also why you try to drain that strength from us and claim it as your own.

The stories with Cold Hart and SESH have yet to be told, but they are entwined in this too.

Because all these beautiful angels you tried to brainwash me into believing were trolls are some of the only men in this fucked-up underground world that I love who I have actually known I would be safe with.

Some of the only men who I was able to see something of myself in as a woman, because they let themselves see something in people like me, and have made themselves more vulnerable, as they have survived to live life and bring children into this world. 

We almost lost all of them so many more times than you even know, and then maybe even they know. More than I know too.

But we didn't. A decade later, all of them are still here. I still am too, even if I’m only listening.

For that last decade, I have seen Zubin and Nedarb living their lives to the fullest from afar. They made beautiful art that many people felt and some people did not understand. They succeeded, but they have also suffered in ways they never deserved too; because like I feel too much in public now, they also felt too much in public, and made other people feel too much in public too.

Ned is a dad now, and outside of his bands, he almost exclusively makes beats for women like HOOK and Myaap. I don't think I have ever seen anyone point this out. I have never even seen him point this out. That’s real allyship.

Because Ned is a fucking head, and a human being, and on both counts I think he knows that women just often make better shit and have more to say and more to feel, in the way so few men ever have, except for the men who he has felt comfortable enough to make his art with. 

This whole time, I felt like a kid sibling looking up to these men. Now I feel like the whole time, maybe I was actually a guardian angel, keeping them in my thoughts and prayers and in my heart, when they did not even think they deserved any love at all.

I hope they know that I feel a genuine pride in them like only a mother can feel. I am so glad they are still here.

I just want them to know that they deserve the world, a world I tried to give them for five years by begging corporate outlets like The Fader and Pitchfork not to hear what I hear, but to feel what I feel, when they have never felt like GBC feels, or like I feel, or like Peep felt. 

If they do, they will never let us know, and that is why they will never get it: that just letting yourself feel the fire is the only way through it.

I'm still not over it, or over you.

Lately I realize that's my power: that I will always remember.

I will never forget you. The archive of my memory no longer feels like a curse, but a gift to share with the world. What I thought were ghosts haunting me have been spirits guiding me to where I needed to be: right here, wherever that is; right now, whenever that is.

So many people that felt forgotten are people I remember, and that I think of almost every day, even if we only spoke a few words out loud to each other in another time, and even if we never got to share a moment of our time at all. 

And lately, I realize that some of them remember me too, when I also thought I had been forgotten.

They were always the purpose I had to find. Maybe I had to lose my mind to get there. But I finally gained a soul. And now I know I will never die.

Because my body may fail or be taken from me, but I am sure like never before now that at least one of you will still remember the sound of my true voice, and will carry it with you, as I carry the sound of Gus' voice with me everywhere I go, as he watches over me. 

Even if I don't know if he really watches over me, or where he watches from if he does, I know that's what it feels like for me, and that has helped me endure through so much that I never even told you about.

I feel like Gus is with me, in the way that Gus' mother now watches over him, when it should not be a mother who has to grieve her son and make a memorial to his music: because the body she gave him should have been enough of a temple to begin with.

It should not be him watching over me; it should be us together, looking at each other, and me thanking him for saving my life, and him thanking me for my vulnerability, and that being all either of us needs.

Because so many times—in so many moments you never saw, with so many people you have only heard and never actually spoken to—that is all it was: we were real, and we were present, when so few ever are.

And that was what both of us needed, and I see so many more who need it too.

Maybe it’s just that I need it. But I’ve learned thanks to these boys that if you put your feelings out there, someone will respond in the way that you need, and will let you know you’re not alone, as they have done for so much of my life.

The gratitude I feel is something I can never possibly articulate with my words, because their music was beyond words for me, which is why I tried and failed to do it through my work. 

Now I see I failed not because of me, but because I thought I had to do that work alone, and shoulder some burden that I thought was such a dignified cross to bear, when I could have let it go so much earlier in the journey.

I was working on dying for so many years, simply because the only way to actually work on living was to work on it together, which is all I'm trying to do now, with anyone at all who will see why I need to do that.