Horoscopes Based on Your Spotify Wrapped Top Artist

Alex G

Mellow, melancholy, introspective. You are a big softie with a big heart. You can be eccentric sometimes, even a bit cryptic, but people love you because you are earnest. People joke that you like to be sad, but that’s not quite the truth. You’ve loved and you’ve lost and when you’ve lost you just needed time to be alone, to hibernate, to heal. Finding a quiet space to be still and find peace doesn’t make you weak. The past haunts you but you’re trying to find the right outlets to bury those demons. You are trying to remind yourself that being soft isn’t a bad thing. Softness leaves room for others to feel comfortable, cozy, and loved, and you provide that to the ones that mean the most to you.

BTS

For someone who is a part of such a huge global community, you are so often misunderstood. To love BTS is to make a commitment, a promise. To listen to BTS, to appreciate them is an act of devotion. This love is often misinterpreted as fanaticism, but only by those that do not understand the transcendental euphoria of complete surrender. You are able to see the good in anything. You are resilient and you have healthy systems to fall back on when you are down. You are an optimist and have a resolute belief that things will get better. Joy is your church. Screaming in ecstasy is how you worship. Cut out all the criticism. Your 7 husbands got you.

Burial

Brooding, reclusive and esoteric. You probably prefer solitude, but this can be misunderstood as being antisocial. It’s not that you dislike people, in fact you have a tight circle of friends that you love dearly. It’s just that you feel like you’re living in a fog and you don’t want to let this haze bring down your loved ones, which is why you need to be alone sometimes. Through the daze, you are haunted by voices from the past. Little phrases here and there. Old memories that sneak in but have been distorted through time. Still, there is movement. A rhythm that you’ve found. You’re making peace with your demons, processing the past through your creative practices. There is immense beauty in confronting the past. There is euphoria in healing. And you don’t need anybody else to validate or understand this for you.

Carly Rae Jepsen

You love fun. You’re an outgoing, spunky go-getter. You like what you like and don’t care what other people think even if it might be considered “normie” or “mainstream.” You’re a lover and you don’t shy away from letting your emotions show. Some people might get turned off by this, but frankly, you couldn’t care less. You only stick with those who have the same vibe and positive outlook on life. You’re here for a good time not a long time and you want to experience the range of human emotion to the fullest while you’re here

Mitski

A yearner, an introvert, an emotional artist. You are at once both immensely private and desperate for human connection. You long for love almost as strongly as you are terrified of it because to love someone truly is to share all the ugly parts that you so meticulously hide away from the world. You have let love in with varying degrees of success, but it has never felt like enough. Maybe the reason you find yourself always wanting more is because you still have trouble showing your true self.  Maybe you bet on losing dogs to at least be prepared for the inevitable pain of losing them. Maybe you’ve just had bad luck. “What do you do with a loving feeling if a loving feeling leaves you all alone?” You keep trying.

Omar Apollo

Artistic, charismatic, and loving, it’s no wonder you often become a muse. You are an idealist and a lover. You give so much to the ones you love, perhaps at the cost of your own well-being, but you do it because you always see the good in people and can picture them in their fullest selves. For this reason, you have a tendency to mold yourself to fit your lovers, to make yourself smaller, to not advocate for your needs and your boundaries when deep down you wish that they would give more. You know this is something you need to work on, and trust me, I know you’re trying. And even if it hurts, you turn the pain into transcendent art. Which is probably why you keep becoming the muse of your lovers. And so the cycle begins again.

rEmPiT g0dDe$$

Mysterious, brooding, and a hint of hardcore. You understand there is immense power in the darker side of things. Harsher sounds keep you alert. Your eyes see more clearly when you’ve adjusted to the absence of light. You move swiftly and decisively through the world. You welcome discomfort and sadness because you know that to really embrace these things is to be alive. You’re the type that finds comfort in a pitch-black club, the fog surrounding you like a blanket, the hardcore kick drums and sharp synths propelling you forward. You are probably more of a lone wolf. This is something you embrace. The few that do understand you move in step with you with unspoken devotion.

Rosalía

Fun, flirty, and just a little mysterious. You’re social and love going out, but you prefer to keep things at a steady hum rather than an ecstatic scream of delight. A big part of the fun of going out for you is the people watching. You’re dancing at a laidback pace seeing how others move, wondering how the way their hips sway might provide insights into the way they move through the world. Going out isn’t your whole personality though. You need quality cozy time at home. You love unwinding with a hot drink or a glass of wine or a spliff and dancing in your bedroom with the lights down low. You feel hottest and at your best when nobody is watching.

SZA

You’re an aimless late night drive type of person. You are aware that you are flawed, aware that you are always growing. Lately, you’ve been Going Through It. There’s no shame in that. Maybe you’ve said goodbye to a relationship where you never felt fully appreciated or maybe you’re still fighting for one, giving too much of yourself again. When you love, you love hard. You give all of yourself because you expect the same. Unfortunately, not everyone can meet you at the same level. They have baggage. They have excuses. Often, they lack honesty and transparency, which is really all that you are asking for. Sometimes it can be so hard and you feel alone and you’re screaming out into the night asking why. But you know your self-worth. You know you’re a catch. You’re doing your best to Do The Work, to heal. And that’s really all you can do right now.

Thaiboy Digital

You’re a baller. You’re a rockstar. You are often the life of the party with a crew that runs deep. You might be intimidating at first, but people will find they love you because you don’t take yourself too seriously and can laugh at yourself when you’re cringe. Deep down though you are a romantic and you have a lot of love to give. Lately, you may have experienced some heartbreak. But you’re not one to wallow in sadness or self-pity. You know your self-worth and when you’re feeling sad or lost you remind yourself: “I’m fresh! I’m fresh! I’m fresh!” Repetition can do wonders. A mantra to pull you up when you’ve been pushed down.

A Love Letter to Eternal Dragonz: On Asian Self-Love and the Possibilities of Cyber Community

Somewhere in the darkness, I found heaven. In the middle of a dark club, surrounded by people, I closed my eyes and held a private communion. Everything else fell away. Just the booming sound system and me. An acapella of Taeyang’s “Wedding Dress” floated above an instrumental loop of 4 Strings’ “Take Me Away (Into The Night)” and washed over me like holy water. My first experience of euphoria. A baptism. A moment eternal.

I experienced this euphoria when I discovered the Asian diasporic art collective Eternal Dragonz in April 2017. Through The Fader’s regular mix series, I found Eternal Dragonz’s contribution: a mix traversing club, RnB, and Kpop edits lovingly put together by Tzekin (formerly known as V Kim). What was most exciting to me was his blending of early 2000s Kpop vocals with old school trance anthems. Tzekin looped iconic trance synth lines, setting the stage for the Kpop acapellas to shine beautifully, like emotional karaoke performances held in dark rooms bathed in colored lights. These endless loops of trance kept building, rising towards a drop that would never come. The promise of euphoria, again and again. The anticipation ever expanding. With nowhere to go, it filled me until I was bursting at the seams. I hoped it would never end.

Eternal Dragonz is a cyber collective of visual artists, musicians, DJ’s, writers, and designers based throughout the Asian diaspora. Founded in 2015 by Jason Wong, Jenny Yoo, Justin Tam (Tzekin), and joined soon after by Eric Hu and Lucy Chinen, the collective initially came together in a Facebook group through bonding over shared memories of the late 1990s, early 2000s AZN Pride internet movement. They recalled the freedom found in building websites during the early days of the internet, reminiscing over curating and populating their pages with animated gifs, sparkly Maplestory-like sprites, an obsession with car culture, hip hop, visions of Dance Dance Revolution, Asian RnB, trance music, and rave culture.

But while the collective’s origins lie in a shared nostalgia for Asian self-love, the question became how to encapsulate past moments of Asian joy with a vision for the future. To create new formations of Asian diasporic identity. AZN Pride was by no means perfect. There was rampant use of the N-word and questions of cultural appropriation. But it was still a pivotal moment when Asians throughout the diaspora found connection, creating a safe space to celebrate their identity rather than distance themselves from it. For young Asians living in the West, treated as perpetual outsiders and often succumbing to assimilation to white culture, to embrace their Asian identity in a way that felt honest to their particular experience was a radical act of self-love.

In an interview with Dazed Magazine in 2016, Eric Hu reflects, “We’re not recreating AZN Pride, but we’re putting up a flag, and if this speaks to you in any way, this flag is asking you to come closer and engage with us.” This flag spoke to me, not because I had a personal nostalgia for AZN Pride, but because it felt like the first time I had seen the kind of experimental art and music I loved through the lens of celebrating Asian culture and identity. As an Asian American born in the latter half of the ‘90s and an only child with no older siblings to introduce me to pop culture, I missed out on AZN Pride. Witnessing the aesthetics and the sounds of that era remixed and placed within the modern context of club culture was revelatory. I heard vintage Kpop blended with nostalgic trance tracks and it was not only beautiful, it was beautiful because it felt so distinctly Asian.

In a lot of ways, Eternal Dragonz and the people that make up the collective feel like the older siblings I wished I had. The big brother that introduced me to BIGBANG and Initial D. The older sister that animatedly told me about the warehouse rave where she and her Asian friends danced to trance music until the sun’s morning rays peaked through broken windows. The older siblings that laughed hysterically, falling to the floor, as we attempted to practice dance choreography in our pajamas along to Kpop music videos played on grainy bootlegged VHS tapes in our living room. Siblings to play Dance Dance Revolution with at the arcade and get milk tea and popcorn chicken afterwards as a late-night treat.

Music has often acted as a form of time travel for me, a way to revisit different times and different memories. Sometimes, if I listen closely and I am lucky, I have found music that transports me to memories and times that do not belong to me. Discovering Eternal Dragonz and listening to mixes lovingly assembled by Asian diasporic DJ’s felt like I was given a key, one that unlocked cherished memories that were not my own but perhaps I could inherit just the same.

Nothing encapsulates this feeling more than x/o’s mix for Eternal Dragonz’s Radar Radio show in May 2017. In just an hour, x/o navigates deftly through multiple moments of Asian cultural discovery in their life. It is a sprawling mix, traversing the late ‘90s Azn Pride era, early 2000s Jpop and Kpop, video game and anime soundtracks, Asian karaoke covers of American pop music, experimental Asian diasporic club, Asian cinema, and big trance rave energy. The beginning of the mix is an Easter egg hunt of Asian aesthetics, like flipping quickly through channels on the television but every program is celebrating Asian culture. A glimpse of Jay Chou, then BoA, then the classic “Hadouken!” from Street Fighter. Flashes of Final Fantasy X and Parappa The Rapper and Dance Dance Revolution. Underneath it all, x/o weaves in an ominous experimental drone track by Geng, a current Asian American electronic artist, creating a new language in this merging of past and present.

I have been thinking about these two mixes—Tzekin’s mix for The Fader and x/o’s mix for Radar Radio—for a while now. And yet, when I try to unpack my feelings on Asian American identity, try to say something that feels significant, I find myself stuck. Another Asian Pacific American Heritage Month came and went in May and Asia America’s obsession with representation continues to dominate our conversations on identity. I recognize my natural inclination towards it. We all need our roles models, the people that show us what is possible and give us the courage to dream for ourselves. In recent years, our visibility has grown, from Crazy Rich Asians to Bling Empire. And while I know these narratives may resonate for some, I hesitate to rejoice fully because it feels like they leave little room for other stories to be told.

In her essay, “The Turn to Diaspora,” cultural critic Lily Cho remarks, “To turn to diaspora is to turn to restless specters of sorrow bound by that which is lost and to obscure miracles of connection marked by that which is found.” Despite growing up in California surrounded by Asian Americans, it took a turn towards diaspora—towards Eternal Dragonz—for me to find the deeper connections I craved. To turn to diaspora was to find a space that felt less confining. To escape the boundaries of Asian American discourse, whose focal point has shifted in recent years away from its origins of organizing within a larger movement for Third World Liberation and instead towards the near-impossible task of defining who we are. Within a framework of Asian diaspora, there is no false hope of defining one unifying identity because it is simply impossible to synthesize such a wide range of experiences. To turn to diaspora, then, is to celebrate both points of shared experience and points of difference.

Eternal Dragonz put up a flag and those that saw it in the distance recognized something that called out their name. Something that signaled that they might find their people. Though there was no physical space to come together, this didn’t stop us from connecting. The internet became the space that allowed us to find each other across borders, across time zones, mostly on Instagram or WhatsApp in the late hours of the night or at the first signs of dawn. We spoke intimately and honestly, sharing music, film, and art recommendations, learning about each other’s family histories, and reminiscing over memories of Asian identity. Despite the physical distance, I felt a closeness that had eluded me for so long. An obscure miracle of connection, a surprise bond found in some special corner of the internet. A home not tied to a single place but one that expanded across space and time. A love eternal.

For more information on Eternal Dragonz, you can check out their Bandcamp (which has links to all their socials as well) below.

On Remembering: Or, Liner Notes for 3 Objects of Emotional Significance

I. The frying pan’s too wide

At first glance, the indigo cover simply says “Joni Mitchell.” The title of the album, Blue, nearly the same shade as the cover, blends in. When the light catches on the glossy cardboard just right, the title disappears completely. Joni’s face, too, is only partially visible. Dark shadows cast over her hair, cheekbones, and the entire left side of her face. Her eyes are either closed or looking down, but it is impossible to know, the graininess of the photo overwhelming. Her face fades into shadow. On the reverse, simply, that beautiful shade of indigo, and in tiny font in the bottom left corner, the tracklist. Ten songs that brought you solace, sadness, joy. Ten songs that now bring me some combination of all these emotions.

I remove the plastic vinyl outer sleeve. Run my hands over the cover. I can see you holding it up to the light in our living room. I can see you placing the record on the turntable, then placing the needle on the record, then turning the volume knob up. A record you returned to so often in my childhood that the songs made a permanent residence in my mind. I remove the record from the inner sleeve. Listen to Joni now. Think about what you saw of yourself in Joni’s soaring voice. I listen to you through her. Listen to your sadness, your grief.

There is a photo of you playing guitar in the living room. I can’t remember how your playing sounded, so I listen to the gentle fingerpicking on “Little Green,” and pretend it is you. Hear Joni lament her lost child. Hear Joni remember her child. For us, the roles are reversed, so I must be the one to write to remember you. To keep you here. And sometimes there’ll be sorrow. Her sadness was your sadness. Is now my sadness. Little green, have a happy ending.

The crackle of needle running over the grooves. Running running. Oh I wish I had a river so long / I would teach my feet to fly. Joni’s voice soars while her fingers run over the keys. A sense of freedom in her timing, the way piano lines speed up and slow down, ebb and flow, a river finding release when it finally thaws over. Her voice flying, reaching high notes with ease. Must have filled your heart just as it fills my heart now. Made you feel light, buoyant. Made you feel like you could be free.

You wanted to get away from it all. The heartache that never seems to dissipate. You wanted to run away from anything that reminded you that your brother and your father were gone. I want to do the same. Want to run, run, run away. Follow the river out to sea. Find open expanse. Let my grief rush out to sea. I don’t want it to be mine anymore. Can’t hold it in any longer. Part of you pours out of me / In these lines from time to time. So bitter. So sweet. If I go to the ocean and reach into my soul and scream as loud as I can, I hope you will hear me.

II. Baby can I hold you tonight

This time a beige cover. A woman sits front and center. Along the left edge, it reads: “Tracy Chapman.” Only now do I realize how similar this cover is to Blue. Just like Joni, Tracy looks down with a somber expression, shadows casting over the side of her face, her skin nearly the same color as the background. But she is more present than Joni, not fading away into the background. When I pull out the inner sleeve, a nearly identical photograph appears. But this time she is smiling. The truth is only revealed when you dig deeper, get to the root, the heart of things, she told you. She now tells me.

I look at the date and learn that this record is 33 years old. I breathe in the aging paper and smell a different time. I try to understand what you were going through. You didn’t tell me explicitly, so I have to dig, hunt for the clues in these songs. The needle moves from the first groove to the second. “Fast Car” comes on and I think I understand now. You heard Tracy sing about her mother leaving and staying with her father to take care of him and you remembered it all. Your mother leaving for Alaska. Living with your father. Going for a drive just to cruise and feel the wind on your faces and watch the sun slowly set. So I remember we were driving, driving in your car. It felt good to listen to Tracy and remember those tender moments. And your arm felt nice wrapped ’round my shoulder.

You got a fast car. After he passed away, you took the driver’s seat and I took your place. You used to drive us to the cemetery. Maybe together we can get somewhere. We brought Cheez-Its for your father. Flowers for your brother. Both gone too soon. Loss was not something I could fully comprehend as a toddler. But I hope that I was able to bring you some comfort. Just by being there with you, your arm wrapped around my shoulder as we sat in silence by their grave. When we would get back in the car to head home, that weight of grief would be just a little bit lighter on your shoulders. You got a fast car / Is it fast enough so we can fly away?

In Tracy, you found what you needed. Her voice, shaking yet resonant. Strong in its vulnerability. Hearing it gave you strength. Or rather, reminded you of your inner strength. On bad days, you would forget this fact, so you put on Tracy to remember again. When the needle hit wax and “Baby Can I Hold You” came on, you’d dance. You learned that grief makes a home in the body as tension and that movement helps release the pain. You would sway slowly from side to side, holding yourself silently, trying to heal. Years gone by and still / Words don’t come easily.

The clouds hang heavily in the sky. You’ve been gone for awhile now. I am lost in this record, trying to find you. “Baby Can I Hold You” comes on and all I can do is cry. The kind of crying where everything else falls away. In this elevated state, acoustic guitar, bass, and drums wash over me. Tracy’s voice pierces through our speakers. Then mine joins hers. Cries out to you. Baby can I hold you tonight. And I feel you put your arms around me and I sob in your warm embrace.

III. Tears say more than words explain

This time a CD. The plastic case is weathered, the hinges loose, easily swinging open, close, open close. The three members of The Chicks are captured in profile, midstride, smiling. There is the promise of sunshine in their smiles. The blur of their arms in motion as they walk reminds you of the importance of movement. Gives you the courage to keep moving forward. On the reverse, Natalie Maines, Emily Erwin, and Martie Seidel sit at a table laughing. Their joy is their strength. Is your strength. And now, perhaps, mine.

The date on the back reads 1998. Wide Open Spaces was released at the end of January. Two months before I turned three. Your father and brother had been gone for a few years at that point. In your grieving—a process I now understand unfolds slowly and in waves and feels endless—you discovered this album and found solace in its country twang, its tales of heartbreak and loss, and ultimately, its push towards inner strength.

In some strange way, when I pop in the CD, press play on our stereo, and hear Natalie Maines’ clear, bright voice, I feel so strongly that it is yours. No album was played as frequently and as loudly as this one during my childhood. The melodies buried themselves deep into my memories, and I find myself singing along now just as you once did all the time. I struggle and strain, trying to remember exactly how your voice sounded as I listen to Maines now. Tears of joy and tears of pain / Tears say more than words explain. I am searching for you, desperate to remember, desperate to keep you here.

The next song comes on. Maines’ voice rings out alone. Then, bass, guitar, and violins burst in, swinging with such gusto that I can’t help but bounce along despite the tears that have been flowing freely since I put on the CD. Perhaps this is what spoke to you. If the pain of losing your brother and father did not seem like it would dissipate, then perhaps you could find a way to at least dance and sing and holler through the tears. Bartender pour the wine ‘cause the hurting’s all mine / Tonight the heartache’s on me.

If I turn the volume knob on the stereo up. If I listen carefully. If I close my eyes and search for you. I can almost feel your loving arms again. I can hear your love. Just to spend a moment longer with you. Just to occupy the same space. I play with Legos and you play with K’Nex. I feel the sun shining through the windows. I know you appreciate the warmth because it reminds you that you are still here. That despite it all, you still have me and dad and your sisters and your nieces and nephews and your friends. To feel the sun on your skin while Maines sings of joy and pain grounds you in the present. All you have to do is enjoy the moment. The Chicks help you remember that.

You would grab my hands and pull me to the living room to dance. Because movement is medicine. Because you needed to remember what joy felt like again. I came reluctantly because in my selfish adolescence, I detested that country twang that you loved so much. If I could just go back, I would dance with my whole heart. If I could just go back, I would lend you my shoulder to cry on. Just for a while, turn back the hands of time / If I could only hold you now.

I tell myself that if I could go back and do these things, maybe you would still be here to do them for me. I tell myself that if I listen to this album enough, I’ll hear your voice singing along, and I’ll turn to see your radiant smile. It feels like wishful thinking. I do not know when or if the pain of your loss will dissipate, but all I can ask for are small pockets of joy where I can remember your laughter, your smile, your nurturing love.

Questions I Never Asked, Answers You Never Gave

Exposition

When Ryuichi Sakamoto released async in 2017, it was his first full-length solo album in eight years. He also believed it would be his last. In the summer of 2014, Sakamoto was diagnosed with throat cancer. After years of struggling to produce solo work, he had finally begun writing a new album that year. Everything had to be put on hold with his diagnosis.

One year later, Sakamoto released a statement detailing that he had recovered from his cancer. In his statement, he said, “Right now I’m good. I feel better. Much, much better. I feel energy inside, but you never know. The cancer might come back in three years, five years, maybe 10 years.”

In April of 2016, he began working on async. He scrapped the ideas he had begun sketching in 2014 to begin anew, to create something fresh. In a 2017 interview for Criterion, Sakamoto reflected, “For a long time, I felt like a painter looking at a big blank canvas and not knowing how to paint.” Finally, he made the first brush stroke.

async is a collection of music composed by a man reflecting on his close encounter with death. Sakamoto stared into that great abyss and witnessed its wonder, its vastness, perhaps, even, its beauty. A glimpse into eternity. He was, of course, shaken to the core. Yet, a reckoning with death is also inextricably tied with a contemplation of life. When one is faced with the possibility of death in the near future, when the noise of daily life, the anxieties, the mundane, fall away, what are the most compelling, essential, and beautiful parts of life?

In the liner notes, Sakamoto reflects, “In making async, my first solo album in 8 years, I made the ‘sounds/music’ that I wanted to hear. What kind of ‘sounds/music’ do I want to listen to?” In this regard, async is Sakamoto’s love letter to life. It is the stripping away of everything non-essential. It is a special kind of focus unlike any other. A sense of urgency paired with the desire for indulgence. The almost desperate need to record and piece together all the sounds that evoke joy or melancholy or pain. The sounds/music that evoke deep feeling.

async begins with the only piece that Sakamoto retained from before his diagnosis. “andata” opens with a solitary piano. It is a melancholic funeral march. I listen to it and I think about death and I think about you. An atmospheric fog flows in and an organ takes over the melody. I imagine the fog filling the space around me. Holding me. I imagine a space somewhere between life and death. A meeting place. I find you. I have so much to say: things I didn’t or couldn’t or wouldn’t say then. Questions left unasked. I am desperate to hear your voice again.

Development

As I listen to async again and again, different images appear before me. On “tri,” a metallic chime is struck. I observe the sound decay. A pause. Then another chime. The cadence picks up. A climax is reached. Then it fades. It reminded me of something. There is a tree near your grave. Someone hung a wind chime from its branches. Whenever a breeze blows, it rings out beautifully, following the rhythm of the wind. I listen closely because it feels like you are trying to tell me something.

I spoke to you, but I realized I was only speaking to myself. You were no longer there, were no longer here. Sometimes the sun is shining and it is you. Sometimes it rains and it is also you. I am trying to find a way to write around death. To say, but not speak. To not utter it loudly, but whisper it with grace. To hold and try to understand. The abruptness. The finality.

Question: Mother, are you scared?

Answer: It’s hard. I get scared. Sometimes I wish I could just go to the ocean and sit there. To hear the waves crash against the beach. To see the clouds pass overhead, turning my face towards the sun. To sit with you and enjoy the quiet of the day. To find my happy place. I know it will bring me peace.

Q: Mother, do you miss them? Do you miss your brother and your father?

A: Yes, I do. We still had lots to do. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I wish I could go back and hold them and just tell them that I love them and that it was okay to just be. I cry when I’m by myself.

Q: How do you locate grief in the body?

A: Breathe light into the body. Alternating nostril. Breathe in. Breathe out. Sit still, still enough to notice the aches. Sit with this pain in silence. Give it the time and attention it needs. Breathe and visualize the safe place.

Q: I listen to “ubi” and it feels so familiar. It opens with a bell. It rings out consistently. It reminds me of the sound of a heart monitor, a sound I detested because it reminded me of your mortality. And yet, it was a sound I so desperately needed to keep pinging. Then Sakamoto’s melancholy piano enters. I recall a Chopin prelude I played in a piano recital. I read your journal and it says that when you had your radiation chemotherapy, you listened to recordings of my piano playing. Mother, did it bring you peace?

A: It did. It helped me endure. Your playing was always so beautiful.

Q: When you are gone, where will you go?

A: No need for a date: I was, I am, and I will be. I live on in your memories. I am the hummingbird that greets you in our backyard. I am the sunshine. I live on in you.

Q: Sometimes you would ask with a smile, “Do we look related?” Now, I look in the mirror and ask myself the same question. I investigate my face, taking stock of my nose, my mouth, my eyes, my dimples. When I smile, letting my eyes squint, I think I look like you. But I am not sure.

A: We look related. You have my smile. A beautiful smile. My happy boy.

Q: Does it ever get easier?

A: I try to live day to day. I have good days and bad. On bad days, I would take you to visit them at the cemetery. We’d bring Cap’n Crunch and Cheez-Its. We’d bring flowers. Sometimes you just need to sit in the grass in silence. Sometimes you just need a quiet place to cry.

Q: Mother, how do you heal?

A: Here is a passage from Deepak Chopra’s Quantam Healing that reflects on how I am healing myself: 

Every person is an infinite being, unlimited by time and space. To reach beyond the physical body, we extend the influence of intelligence. As you sit in your chair, every thought you are thinking creates a wave in the unified field. It ripples through all the layers of ego, intellect, mind, sense, and matter, spreading out in wider and wider circles. You are like a light radiating not photons but consciousness.

Q: Mother, why can’t I stop crying?

A:

Recapitulation

How do we memorialize a person? In Coda, a 2018 documentary film that follows Sakamoto through his battle with cancer and the making of async, Sakamoto muses, “I’m fascinated by the notion of a perpetual sound: one that won’t dissipate over time.” He calls it a metaphor for eternity. Whereas the string of a piano will always inevitably cease to vibrate, the atmospheric fog we first hear on “andata” does not dissipate. This fog eventually finds its way back to us at the end of async on “garden.” But while the fog on “andata” feels somber, even ominous, it resolves itself on “garden,” finding peace and beauty in the eternal.

Sakamoto found this perpetual sound, this sense of the eternal, in this fog, a way to let his sound and his presence live on. If, as Deepak Chopra says, every person is an infinite being, unlimited by time and space, then I am trying to find you here. In this fog. I am trying to build you a home. A place for you to live on. A place to hear your voice again. Your laugh. A place to witness your smile. Here. Now.

Sometimes to remember directly is too painful. I think I understand now what you meant when you saw a hummingbird and said, “There’s grandpa,” or when we had beautiful weather and you said it was because of your brother. We want to remember. We never want to forget. And so we seek those we’ve lost in the everyday. We see sunlight and we say it is our loved one shining down on us. We eat Cheez-Its and we recall how it was their favorite snack.

Death, in that regard, is an unfolding of the self. It is merging with the universe. It is freedom. The ability to be anywhere, to be everywhere. It is the persistence. It is the simple and resounding fact that devotion is forever. That love is forever.

I do not intend to celebrate death. But I am trying to find strength. I am trying to find a way. I am reaching. It is a tricky thing. To both try to face and yet not face fully. To speak sideways. To speak around. To speak in code. To speak in poetry.

What I really mean when I say you are sunshine is that you are eternal. The way stars were once suns. The way they continue to shine on for so long even after their death. The way they reach so many and reach so far. What I really mean is that I miss you.

At the end of the liner notes for async, Sakamoto reflects, “There is no ‘correct’ way to make music like async. So, the answer to my initial impulse is 100% arbitrary. It is similar to climbing a pathless mountain without a map. Once you get over one peak, another one looms above, and there is no end in sight.” So, I keep climbing. With a heavy heart, I look ahead. In this fog, I keep writing. I keep searching. Searching for you. Searching for the sun.

For more information on async, you can visit Milan Records’ website at the link below. The album can be purchased in physical formats (CD, vinyl, and blu-ray) secondhand on Discogs and can be found on most streaming platforms for your listening convenience.

async

On Slowness: Or, Love Is Forever Even If It Ends

“I was only dreaming.”

Her voice, her laugh, the summer twilight breaking through redwoods.

“A familiar gesture / misplaced in time.”

To remember these things so vividly.

“I was only dreaming / of something I left behind.”

To work through grief, slowly, slowly.

To take a deep breath and pause.

I wasn’t seeking a spiritual experience with music. But transformative music often has an uncanny way of finding you at the right time and place. I stumbled upon Ana Roxanne’s album “~~~” in December of 2018. About two years before this, my mom was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer that affects the bone marrow. When I heard Ana’s music for the first time, my mom was staying at UCSF hospital. She had undergone a stem cell transplant and had attained remission the month before, but her cancer had returned. When I needed to take breaks from the hospital, I would go for walks. It was a cold winter and I felt alone. Ana’s music felt like a lifeline. Through heavy fog and cold wind, I found warmth in her album. Moments to myself, while before felt brief, seemed to expand. It felt like I had time to breathe, to meditate on heavy feelings, to hold space for both sadness and beauty, or maybe even beauty in that sadness.

Perhaps what I’ve learned the most from listening to “~~~” is the comfort you can find when you allow yourself to fully receive the present. How you can get so lost in a single note, like on “Nocturne.” The way each word stretches so far that you forget what came before, where you lose track of the lyrics themselves and get lost in the beauty of their utterance. Ana’s music is never in a hurry. It ebbs and flows, starting softly and building ever so gently, expanding and expanding until it fills your heart completely. It is sweet and it is tender and it captures your attention in its slowness. With care, Ana invites us to take pleasure in these moments. To get lost in the warmth of bubbling analog synthesizers. To find a home in the hiss of cassette tape, sounding like rain cascading off an umbrella. To breathe in time with the sound of ocean waves lapping up against the shore.

On “Slowness,” a voice recites a quote by Milan Kundera: “Why has the pleasure of slowness disappeared?” This album is a meditation on this sentiment, an exploration of the expansive possibilities of the spaces in between, of the beauty that inhabits each of these spaces, and how, if we slow down and listen, we can notice them. In some ways, I had been holding these ideas close to my heart even before listening to Ana Roxanne. With the future being so unknown and so scary, I tried to ground myself in the present. I tried to cherish each moment I had with my mom. On our slow walks around the neighborhood, I would look differently, listen differently, noticing the way sunlight seemed to shimmer on leaves, listening to the wind, or even being content with silence. To slow down felt like a necessity. To take one day at a time and to be grateful for that time I had with my mom. To try to look for the beauty in small moments. When I finally encountered Ana’s music, it was a powerful moment of identification. I listened to “~~~” and it felt like coming home.

I saw Ana perform live for the first time about a week after my mom passed. On stage, her set up is sparse. A table holds a sampler and a vocal loop pedal, which she adjusts from time to time. She does not move much, as if each action is measured with the utmost care. Mostly she sings, usually with her eyes closed, one hand lying on her chest as the other hand gently sways. As rolling synthesizer arpeggios build in the background, her voice grows and then soars. Her eyes remain closed and her head gently tilts up, as if connecting to a higher state. It is a joy to be there, to be mostly still and close your eyes and let the sound wash over you like rain. It is a joy to be welcomed into this space and find pleasure in its slowness. To let the sorrows of yesterday and the anxieties of tomorrow slip away and find a home in the present, if only for a moment. When we say “only for a moment,” it implies that a moment is brief. But sometimes, a moment can feel like it stretches on for an eternity. When we are fully present, we can experience moments like this. There is clarity in this experience. It is the understanding that there has never been and there will never be another moment quite like it. To be able to witness this unique moment, then, is a gift.

When I try to recall memories with my mom, the ones that come to mind are often small fragments. The view of our dogwood tree in the courtyard, rustling lazily in the summer breeze, as my mom lay in bed and told me she loved me, again and again. The sound of the pepper tree swaying in our backyard at dusk, as I sat in silence with her, the night before she passed. The closing piece to Ana’s album, “In A Small Valley,” is a collage of moments like these. The sound of wind chimes, a breeze, intimate snippets of conversation and laughter, water ever so gently lapping against the shore, a choir, a child’s voice. These fragments fade in and out, memories merging with each other. Ana’s music shows us that there is a special kind of sweetness that can be found in these small moments, that there is beauty in being still and allowing yourself to receive the world. And that what will remain, forever after, is love.

To buy/listen to ~~~ by Ana Roxanne, click on the link below.

Too Black, Too Strong: Music for the Movement

It begins with a jolt. Pauline Henry belts a long, jubilant cry. Then the shuffle of snare breaks over rave chord stabs come in and AceMo’s euphoric remix of The Chimes 1990 hit “Heaven” is off and running at full speed. Haus of Altr’s 10th release begins with a flurry, an offering of Black joy. At a time of immense instability, of heavy feelings of grief, anger, emptiness, of mourning, of protesting for Black Lives Matter, Haus of Altr delivers right on time. 27 brilliant tracks by 27 brilliant Black electronic artists.

It is perhaps an indication of our times, of the work that still needs to be done, that for a genre created and pioneered by Black artists, a compilation of techno with an all Black roster feels like a bold statement. Haus of Altr’s message is simple: “In these trying times, we come together to stake claim on the roots of techno and its potential future.” HOA010 is an exploration of different modalities of presence, through rhythm and movement, through history and its relevance today, and through the crucial work of imagining a more just future. Haus of Altr firmly asserts that techno was Black, techno is Black, and techno will be Black.

The power of this compilation is in the visceral way that it brings you to the present. From the beginning, the rhythm compels you to move and in doing so brings awareness to your body. It is a reminder to move, by instinct, in ways you may have neglected to do during a time of quarantine and protest. To dance, to close your eyes and sweat in the summer heat. To experience shivers throughout the body at the sound of the thumping bass drum kicks and jittery synth arpeggios in Akua’s incredible debut track “Lucid Dreams.” To experience tension listening to Escaflowne’s “The Blenda” and become fully aware of where these tensions manifest in your body. To be grounded in the rhythm and in your body, to stretch and break up scar tissue, to relieve that tension that has built up as you dance to DJ SWISHA’s ecstatic track “New Luv.”

HOA010 is a guide for practicing presence, drawing you in with its expansive rhythms, each track compelling you to move in different ways. And as you dance, your mind wanders, images of sitting on front stoops, head bobbing in the summer humidity as the sun lazily sets. HOA010 shows us that presence can be an awareness of your breathing or a releasing of tension in the body through movement or a relaxation of the mind that lets you wander freely.

The compilation is a snapshot of our present moment. In the wake of mass protests for Black Lives Matter, in the wake of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, Riah Milton, Oluwatoyin Salau, and many, many more, the release of HOA010 on June 19, 2020, Juneteenth, a day for celebrating and honoring the resilience of Black people in America, is an offering of Black excellence and resistance. Haus of Altr shows us that presence can also be experienced as a reflection on history, an awareness of the ways in which the past informs the present. Presence is remembering Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Rodney King. Presence is the Ferguson Uprisings. Presence is the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Presence is remembering 2015 and 1992 and understanding that things haven’t changed.

Presence, then, is the power of remembering these histories, or perhaps, the insistence to never forget them. On Speaker Music’s track “The Stamp of Color,” Salenta says, “See, knowledge really is power, and if people learned about the history of my people, they would see that, ‘Oh snap, we are all benefitting from slavery still.’” To be present, then, is to understand the history of anti-Black racism in America and how white supremacy has evolved in insidious ways. To understand how the past carries on into the present.

In the case of electronic music, to place history within our understanding of presence means to assert the roots of techno. Because much of that history has been not only forgotten but actively erased and whitewashed. The music scene is so heavily dominated by white DJs that many associate techno with Europe and with whiteness. In reality, Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson, three Black teenagers living in Detroit, created techno. In reality, techno was pioneered by the likes of Underground Resistance, by Jeff Mills, Mike Banks, and Robert Hood. By K-HAND, Jana Rush, and Akilah Bryant. By Black people. To forget this history today, to forget that techno’s roots lie in Detroit, to willfully neglect to recognize the political nature of techno, to ignore that it was born out of struggle and out of resistance and out of innovation is an act of violent appropriation, of white capitalist exploitation.

So when you listen to Max Watts’ relentless track “Hesitancy” and are reminded of Jeff Mills’ militant techno sounds, or hear the influence of Mike Banks in DONIS’ “Dreamscape,” you are experiencing the past in the present. Presence, then, is to know history, to honor the legacies of those before you, and to build your own world, to claim your own space and your own voice in the present moment. Presence is Haus of Altr releasing a compilation of all Black artists that is so hot, the electronic music community has to acknowledge the very central place that Black electronic artists should have in dance music. Russell E. L. Butler’s track title makes this very clear: “You Think We Ain’t Have To Go This Hard, But We Really Do.”

Being present can also be a look towards the future. If the world as it is in the current moment is unjust, to resist and to fight for change is to inevitably imagine the future. When Akua repeats, “I’m looking for lucid dreams,” she evokes this search for authentic agency. Dreams can be a powerful space for processing, a space for play and imagination, and to be lucid means to be able to build and create freely. The power of art and of the artist is in imagination and creation. The DJ can build a world within sound. What does a world without the prison industrial complex feel like? What does a world where Black trans women are safe sound like? What does an inclusive dance floor look like? To sustain the movement, to truly work towards change is to both understand the present and envision the future. Haus of Altr’s showcase of 27 Black electronic artists offers a vision, a sound, a world.

As I am writing this, Haus of Altr has already released a follow up compilation. The speed at which this label, specifically AceMo and Moma Ready, releases music is dizzying, a testament to the power of movement. It is a statement to keep it moving forward. Keep up the energy. Keep fighting. With technical precision. With soul. Staying true to the roots of techno. Just as Juan Atkins, The Originator said when asked what makes Detroit techno unique in a 1994 interview for Wired Magazine, “It’s always been about insight and forward thinking.” So Haus of Altr keeps it moving, the bass pumping, drums swinging with speed, propelling us towards a more just future.

To buy/listen to the compilation, check out the link below.