#existential asthmatic

[khanger]

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@samiraayman is struggling to get any attention for her family campaign. Samira is asthmatic and 7 months pregnant, and the lack of medicines, immediate access to nebulizers, and the collapse of the medical health care system in Gaza are contributing to the spread of infectious diseases such as hepatitis and respiratory tract infections. As the supply of insulin and inhalers runs out, asthma has become fatal as malnutrition worsens. Please be the hope that samira needs to donate to her campaigns.

Vetted by 90-ghost

$4,532\$5,000 (19 December)

$468 Away from short-term goal

[arkofangels]

~Highways & Headaches~

Pairing: Bob Reynolds x Reader (implied) Cast: Bob, Yelena, John (U.S. Agent), Ava (Ghost), Alexei (Red Guardian)

Summary: When Valentina sends the Thunderbolts on a "simple" mission—lay low at a safehouse upstate and absolutely do not draw attention, she probably shouldn’t have handed them the keys to a barely-functional government van. What follows is fifteen chaotic hours of existential crises, GPS mishaps, emotional support raccoons, pickled egg warfare, and Bob trying (and failing) to bond with an alpaca. 

Word Count: 2.1k

It started with a van.

Specifically, a rust-colored government-issued behemoth that Valentina handed over with a smile that meant “Good luck, idiots.”

“The mission is simple,” she said. “Drive to the safehouse in upstate New York. Lay low. No powers. No attention. Just blend in.”

“Like a family vacation!” Alexei declared, slapping the roof of the van so hard the mirror fell off.

Everyone blinked.

“No,” Yelena said. “Absolutely not.”

But it was too late. The Thunderbolts were hitting the road.

Hour One:

You’d barely left the city when Bob, wearing sunglasses indoors and out, leaned over the front seat and whispered, “Can I drive?”

“No,” John said. “Absolutely not.”

Bob pouted. “I can fly faster than this thing idles.”

“That’s why you’re not driving,” you muttered.

Meanwhile, Ava phased through her seatbelt for the sixth time, causing the van’s warning beep to have a full-blown meltdown.

“Stop doing that,” John snapped.

“I am restrained,” she said, casually floating halfway into the floorboard.

Alexei drove one-handed while balancing a Tupperware container of pickled eggs on his knee, chomping away like the road was his personal picnic. The smell was chemical warfare, and no one in the van could escape it.

Yelena cracked a window and stuck her head out like a golden retriever. “If I jump out now, I’ll only get mild road rash.”

Hour Three:

You stopped at a gas station that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since the Cold War. Alexei, somehow, got into an argument with a raccoon over a discarded burrito.

Bob returned from the restroom pale and haunted. “I saw something in there,” he whispered. “Something… dark.”

“You looked in the mirror again, didn’t you?” Yelena joked.

“Maybe.”

Ava stole three bags of kettle chips without blinking. Bob paid for seventeen granola bars and a novelty mug that said World’s Okayest Hero.

Back in the van, John tried to input the safehouse coordinates into the GPS. The GPS promptly died, And so did everyone’s patience.

“Let me try,” Bob said, tapping the screen.

The GPS rebooted… in Spanish. And refused to switch back.

“¡Excelente! A la derecha en cien metros,” the robotic voice said with cheer.

“No one touch it,” you warned. “We’re committed now.”

Hour Five:

Yelena had created a playlist titled Murder Pop & Existential Bops. Bob added twenty-seven sad cowboy ballads. Alexei added Soviet war chants. Ava uploaded thirty minutes of white noise because she was “tired of feeling things.”

John tried to assert control and was promptly booed.

“This van is a lawless land,” Bob declared. “We live by vibes now.”

You were too tired to argue. You ate gas station gummy worms while Bob rested his head on your shoulder and muttered, “I think the Void’s in the glovebox.”

“Then close it gently,” you whispered. “We’ll feed it a cheese stick later.”

Hour Eight:

A wrong turn sent you three hours off-course into rural nowhere. The GPS was now offering unsolicited life advice in Spanish. Alexei insisted he remembered the way “by instinct.”

His instinct led you to an alpaca farm.

Yelena made friends with a creature she named “Greg.” Bob tried to telepathically bond with it. John threatened to turn the van around. Ava disappeared for twenty minutes and returned with hot cocoa she refused to explain.

“I’m not even mad,” you said. “I’m just confused.”

Hour Ten:

It started raining. Hard.

The windshield wipers wheezed like asthmatic pigeons. Bob pressed his hand to the window and whispered, “Do you think the rain’s judging us?”

“I hope it is,” Yelena said. “We deserve it.”

The van started making a noise like a blender full of nails. Everyone turned slowly to look at John.

“I didn’t do it,” he said.

The van then made a second noise, worse than the first. Something thudded beneath the floorboards.

“Void?” Ava asked.

“Possum,” said Alexei.

“Definitely one of you left the back door open again,” you sighed.

Bob pulled you closer. “If this is how I die, I want you to know—your playlists are bad, but your heart is good.”

You snorted. “Shut up and help me find the possum.”

Hour Thirteen:

The possum was, in fact, a raccoon stowaway from the gas station. Alexei named it Dmitri. Yelena tried to train it to fetch snacks. Bob offered it a granola bar and said, “We are the same, you and I.”

John tried to enforce order.

“No unauthorized wildlife in the van!”

“Then what do you call Alexei?” Ava asked.

Alexei growled. The raccoon growled back.

You intervened before a full-blown dominance war broke out in the back seat.

Bob handed you a thermos of lukewarm tea and said, “We’ll make it. Probably.”

You smiled, leaned into his side, and said, “This is the worst trip I’ve ever loved.”

Hour Fifteen:

The van broke down half a mile from the safehouse.

Everyone sat in silence as steam poured from the hood. It hissed like the entire vehicle had finally, finally had enough of your nonsense.

Bob patted the dashboard. “You did your best.”

John kicked the tire. “This whole team is cursed.”

Yelena tossed her backpack over her shoulder. “Well. Let’s walk.”

Ava phased through the side of the van to scout ahead.

Alexei insisted on carrying the raccoon.

You and Bob stayed at the back,

“Next time,” he said, “we fly.”

“Next time,” you agreed, “we bring snacks that aren’t war crimes.”

“And I drive.”

“Absolutely not.”

He laughed, softly. “Fine. But I’m choosing the playlist.”

“That might be worse.”

But still, you let your hand slip into his. Even with wet shoes, aching muscles, and a raccoon in the lead, it felt like something close to perfect.

Not because it went smoothly.

But because it went together.

[extraordinaryhistories]

#33 - 'All Delighted People' (early version) (non-album track, 2000)

Much like ‘love yourself’, the phrase ‘all delighted people’ was evergreen for Sufjan. We do not have the scores of demos to examine that are available for Sufjan’s most famous self-care anthem, but we do know that he first attached music to that phrase all the way back in the late nineties. That was to be all for a while – but some ideas simply refuse to die. At some point in the late 2000s, Sufjan decided to revisit those three words and construct around them a colossal, dizzying, earth-shattering monument to the apocalypse that announced to the world a dramatic change in style. But for a time, their significance was much smaller, and sweeter; their existence was only known to a handful of the most dedicated of Sufjan acolytes. And around them sat a veritable wrecking ball of synthesisers.

This right here is a proper deep cut. The release of the 2010 extended play All Delighted People condemned the 2000 song ‘All Delighted People’, released on the Eye of the Beholder various artists compilation, to the dustiest regions of Sufjan’s back catalogue. The fact that the dramatically updated and rewritten EP version of the song had its roots in a much smaller, hugely divergent embryo was not mentioned at all in Asthmatic Kitty’s press release for the song and went routinely unnoticed in contemporary reviews. 2000’s ‘All Delighted People’ was superseded and thus eventually forgotten. It was somewhat well-known among Sufjan obsessives during the 2000s, but was nearly entirely written out of history thereafter.

It is, in a sense, understandable. The final release of ‘All Delighted People’ is bigger, bolder, brasher, broader, more confident, more specific and more intentional. It is also only barely similar to its forefather. There is the lyric ‘All delighted people raise their hands’, which carries over unchanged, and there is the melody attached to that lyric, which is very similar in cadence and pitch to the final version and was clearly tweaked slightly for a new arrangement. Otherwise, though, there is not much else. It really is difficult to compare the sprawling, seemingly everlasting verses of 2010’s ‘All Delighted People’ to a song with a total of eight unique lines, one of which consists only of the words ‘all delighted’. For the most part, we must approach the first ‘All Delighted People’ as a work entirely unto itself.

The specifics are dramatically altered, but I would be remiss not to acknowledge that some of the broad thematic strokes stay the same. Most importantly, both songs stay committed to maximalist arrangements. One deduces that Sufjan saw a sort of spiritual and existential gravity in the line ‘All delighted people raise their hands’, and was resolute that whatever music eventually fell into place around it needed to be as dense as a neutron star. The final version would see Sufjan achieving that density with massive washes of orchestration; here he opts for synthesiser upon synthesiser upon synthesiser.

2000’s ‘All Delighted People’ likely originated from Sufjan’s experiments with the Roland VS880 EX digital workstation during his earliest days in New York City, which produced equally synthetic songs like the 1999 ‘Love Yourself’ and ‘Joy! Joy! Joy!’. The approach here is not much different to those productions – we have squawking, abrasive keyboard melodies, malformed drum samples, and tiny explosions of energy at odd points in the song (the piercing break before the final refrain, which ends not      fifteen seconds later.) Sufjan seemed to view the synthesiser as a tool of cyclonic destruction at this point in his career; destruction certainly abounds on ‘All Delighted People’, often to the detriment of its listenability. It even has a cute little glitched-out coda that exists for no reason beyond itself. He could, and he did, without much thought to whether he should – and that, to be clear, is perfectly valid for a young, tenacious musical inventor. It just doesn’t make for palatable relistens, especially compared to better-executed excursions like ‘Joy! Joy! Joy!’ or ‘The First Full Moon’ (or, hell, most of Enjoy Your Rabbit.)

Harmonically, melodrama abounds. We are presented with a simple four-chord loop over which floats one of the most sullen melodies that Sufjan has ever produced. There is not much light or hope in the songwriting here – it has a nearly operatic sadness to it, and it’s a sadness that shirks all ambiguity. Some of Sufjan’s best melodies have a paradoxical blend of simple harmony and a deceptively rich emotional profile, but on 2000’s ‘All Delighted People’ there is only forlornness to reckon with. You do not even have to pay attention to the lyrics to understand the atmosphere that Sufjan is establishing here. The effect is only compounded by a quivering vocal delivery that sounds as if it could be blown away by a strong gust of wind. In sharp contrast to the chaotic instrumental, here lies a tender, emotive, unapologetically downcast song.

I say you need not pay attention to the lyrics, but even if you did, you would register much the same emotions. The first six lines of 2000’s ‘All Delighted People’ speak of a society totally overcome by isolation and a pervasive, all-encompassing shame. Interestingly, the song begins on a variation of the title phrase: ‘All the lonely people put their hands / In the personal crocheted Afghan’ (‘Afghan’ in this instance referring to an Afghan blanket, made with a heavily textured crochet pattern.) Clunkiness of the phrase ‘personal crocheted Afghan’ aside, we have a solid evocation here of the behaviours that isolation forces us into. The more alone one feels, the more steps one takes to make that isolation imperishable – thus the covering of the body in this song, the locating of ‘a place / Where their hair cannot reveal their face’, under the assumption that to hide away is better than to hope, or to hurt. An ancient, but accurate, trope.

The song’s second verse – all two lines of it – focuses in on a single unnamed figure amidst the other ‘lonely people’: someone who ‘has happened to have pains’ (a line that, like much other early Sufjan writing, seems to overextend itself just to reach a syllabic quota), and who ‘will know enough to ache’. It is not unreasonable to interpret this song as an explicit psalm for Jesus after hearing these lines. The song’s themes fit such a reading precisely: God assuming the form of one of the ‘lonely people’ on Earth to bring about their collective salvation, a man who bears the weight of humanity’s trials, misdeeds and pains and will eventually die a righteous, but lonely, death. One might imagine the ‘delighted people [who] raise their hands’ at the end of the song to be the same lonely people at its start – this Messiah, this son of God, has cleansed them of their suffering. Free of sin, they now raise their hands in prayer.

‘All Delighted People’ beginning life as an overtly Christian song would not at all be unexpected, considering how dominated Sufjan’s early music was by his faith. It’s not as if the 2010 version was unabashedly secular, either. But the religion of the final ‘All Delighted People’ is complex, non-specific and surprisingly interpersonal; the religion of the first ‘All Delighted People’, if this interpretation does indeed hold water, is a simple invocation of Christ-the-Messiah. It is nothing that we have not seen from this songwriter before. The novelty of the 2000 ‘All Delighted People’ comes in its depiction of a world without Jesus. The presence of the Lord, but in silhouette; the misery we encounter in his absence.

God is never directly mentioned in the early ‘All Delighted People’, though. We are free to take it at face value if we wish: a sad song about the tribulations of loneliness. Maximalist though the arrangement is, it certainly sounds sad – you cannot escape the dourness of that melody, or those chords. Perhaps the electronic chaos is a little too suffocating for a melody this one-dimensional. But even though there may be no serious argument for calling 2000’s ‘All Delighted People’ a more impressive achievement than its successor, it is a vital baby step towards one of his career’s most lauded monoliths and a perfectly enjoyable listen on a miserable stormy day. Consider it another valid entry in the canon of Sufjan electronica.

Besides, the experience of making this must have been invaluable. That aforementioned electronica canon? With Sufjan’s second full-length project, it was to become a whole lot bigger.

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #552

It is Monday. This means it is next week.

...I didn't make those calls to reschedule physical therapy yet. Maybe tomorrow.

…

It's ridiculously hot outside today. And humid, too. Like... “dangerous for my asthmatic ass to go outside” type of hot and humid. Nonetheless, I went to work. Though, I asked J to bring me so that I could transition immediately from the car through the front door. Being outside in this, even during the morning, and for only a few minutes at that, was almost enough to make my lungs close up like the whiny little bitches that they are.

...Sigh. ...That kind of self-deprecation isn't helpful. My lungs did not chose to be born to a genetically defective body, prematurely (they were missing surfactant when I popped out), and to a house full of heavy smokers (who did not care enough to heed the doctors when they said the tissues were still sensitive and shouldn't be exposed to tobacco or other pollutants). They're doing the best they can; I'm just really frustrated at all the limitations that my flesh-vessel comes with.

...I probably wouldn't even survive a week on your planet. I'm sure the dangerous wildlife pretty much weeds out anyone who can't swing a sword around, and... given all my defects, that's not something I can do. Not anymore, anyway. So I'd probably get eaten by something ridiculous, like a Hedgehog Pie. Or else abducted by a Tonberry or some shit.

Well. Let me try again. Being outside this morning, even for a few minutes, was almost enough to make my lungs close up. It was very annoying, and I really dislike that my body struggles with things that other people don't struggle with. But... what can we do other than accept and heed our limits? When we push ourselves beyond what's feasible, we suffer, and the people who love us suffer, and even innocent bystanders sometimes suffer.

...You learned that the hard way in pretty much the most horrifying way possible. I hope you won't make a mistake like that again anytime soon. You gotta take care of your body, all right...? Please. Don't push yourself until you break. Not just because you get really weird when that happens, but... just because it hurts to see you suffering. So don't do it, okay? Promise me.

...Anyhoot. Lots to do at work today. But I had a couple seconds to take a nice picture of all the yummies I boxed up:

Ra is still out. She will be out until the 6th of next month. So we're a little short-staffed. I'm getting pretty good at getting the bake list done quickly, but... there's still only so much I can do in 4 hours. I had fun, though; Ka and Tr are delightful to be around. Though our respective tasks left us unable to talk to each other very much. I kept the existential dread out of my mind by singing to myself.

...I wonder which songs you sing. At this point, do any of them come from anything I've shown you...?

M picked me up directly from the front doors after my shift ended, which was good because it was even hotter and more humid then than it was this morning. Utterly ridiculous. We went to have lunch at that one place that has cheeseburger eggrolls and buffalo chicken eggrolls, though! Here, I got some pictures:

Despite the heat and humidity, I got a couple of pictures of the plants, because I thought you might like them. That said, I couldn't get too terribly good pictures of them; my lungs were closing up, and so I had to hurry:

...They were so cute, though...

I... was pretty tired when I got home. Too tired to do much other than derp around on the internet and message a couple people. There was so much I wanted to do, like dishes and laundry and vacuuming, but... I kinda just deflated as soon as I got in. It was kinda lame.

I wasn't too deflated to breathe a couple wishes to life for you, though:

...Slowly making my way to 1000...

…

...Still kinda deflated. Guess recovering from the pool took a bit more out of me than I thought. Still, I feel a little better today than I thought I would. J points out, accurately, that that's encouraging; before, it would take days and days for me to recover.

...Just in time for me to mess myself up again tomorrow, though, haha! Atr is visiting tomorrow, and we will go to the pool and make chicken tikka masala. It'll challenge the limits of my body, but... I should be okay as long as I don't push it too hard.

...Wish me luck, okay...?

…

At the moment... I'm trying to decide between working more on the tune I wanna break down, and... playing some Salt and Sanctuary. Given that the rest of this week is gonna be busy with either visitors, appointments, or work, part of me thinks that I should sink into something familiar in order to recharge, but... this song is stuck in my head, pressing insistently against the inside of my skull.

...I wonder if you might know what that's like.

Well. If I do end up going with Salt and Sanctuary (fat chance; I'll probably succumb to decision paralysis or do the dishes instead or some shit), you'll find me in the usual spot:

...I guess I'll stop writing for now. I feel like if I keep going, I'm just gonna prattle.

I love you. I hope you see it. I hope you know it. Make good decisions in light of it, okay? Kind and gentle ones, towards yourself and towards others.

I'll write again soon. Stay safe in the meantime.

Your friend, Lumine

[hubear]

My headache VS my current existential dread about the current state of the world VS my asthmatic lungs VS a good night's sleep....

[meowww-ffxiv]

Estinien used to be extremely irritated about Theodore and his tendency to fake incompetence in order to avoid taking on any kind of expectations.

Then he got the field trip with him in EW and he watched the same guy who pretended to trip over his spear or drop it when Estinien was observing him in Coerthas... look after every one of the huffy Miqo'te's asthmatic and achey bones needs? And Theodore did it with a quiet, consummate attentiveness, a fraction of this devotion which he also afforded to Ysayle and Alphinaud.

Estinien didn't mind him anymore. They weren't close, and frankly, he didn't care for Theodore's aristocratic fuckboyism and upper class existential sorrows. But Estinien understood that Theodore wasn't a dragoon in philosophy, but rather a knight.

Even as a knight, he was quirky and rather disappointing, but, nonetheless.

"You belonged to a lesser house subordinate to House Fortemps?" Estinien asked him once.

"No, we were subordinate to House Dzemael," Theodore replied. "My father was, at least. My mother's family served House de Borel."

An entire lineage of prestigious and capable retainers, Aymeric would have said. Estinien didn't know much about that and paid it no mind. He only saw Theodore as the man he was; following Mordred like his shadow, and in the times they were apart, acted in service of their shared belief.

Theodore had little drive and not an ounce of ambition. What he believed in and fiercely protected, he likely inherited from his chosen company. Devotion in every aspect of the word was, and always would be, Theodore's greatest gift to impart.

So really, Estinien was among the unsurprised to hear that he and Mordred were married. It sounded perfectly logical to him, knowing what he did of the money-minded cat. Mordred would surely view marriage as a contract, sacred above all other (he did) because it joined two individuals' assets. So it followed that he entered into that contract as a reply of equal value to Theodore's dedication to him.

Estinien liked Mordred more for it. He wasn't blind to how much Mordred preferred the red-haired Miqo'te who recently joined the Scions. But he had put that aside to answer what Estinien understood to be his obligation to someone who had, in every way, given his all for him.

Then Meowdred said, "You read way too deep into this stuff. Even if you're right."

[nursingwriter]

Hearing Voices, Patients/Therapists In an issue that aimed to reconsider the contributions that phenomenology offers to the practice of clinical psychology, Davidson outlined the ways in which transcendental psychology reconceptualized both research and clinical practice. One of the things he attempted to do in his investigation was to bring 'suspicious' events, such as hearing voices (auditory hallucinations) into a more mainstream setting, one in which a "phenomenology of respect" held the high ground. Davidson was not attempting to convince anyone that the heard voices were real; rather, "by virtue of the phenomenological reduction, to suggest that people who hallucinate actually ("really") do have experiences of hallucinations. Hearing a voice when no one else is around is an actual experience just like any other" (2004, p. 149+). Using the language of pop psychologists, Davidson suggested that the experiences of hearing voices "are what they are" and that "The question for us is how this changes our approach to psychological research and treatment" (Davidson, 2004, p. 149+). Davidson traced phenomenology into clinical psychological and psychiatric practice through Karl Jaspers, a follower of the philosopher Heidegger's work. He notes, too, that while the existential and empirical approaches to clinical practice that were based on this work were nonetheless heavily influenced by Freud, with various schools regarding phenomenology having been developed by Freud's students (Davidson, 2004, p. 149+). It is by way of this path that Davidson legitimizes phenomenology as an appropriate means of dealing with auditory hallucinations. While Davidson is a purist regarding phenomenology, he also posits the fact that Jung, Ferenzi and Erickson also offered views of events such as auditory hallucination that were seductive to phenomenologists. "In this respect, phenomenology and psychoanalysis make, at best, curious bedfellows" (Davidson, 2004, p. 149+). Still, the insistence on articulation of the obvious would clearly have something to impart to a clinician dealing with 'voices,' if only in the fact that the therapist would necessarily need, then, to determine the 'reality' of the issue, perhaps indeed lending respect to the work with the patient. Freud, of course, would have been "highly skeptical" of any such approach both because of the nature of subjectivity (which is clearly what the therapist would be dealing with, from any angle) and because of what he considered the latent content of experience that could not be drawn forth by reflection alone: The vast majority of psychic life is considered by psychoanalysis to lie outside of the person's awareness, at various levels of the unconscious. And even for Freud, the only access to this unconscious was through the (further) indirect means of interpretation" (Davidson, 2004, p. 149+). Clearly, then, to Freud and his followers, a phenomenological approach to auditory hallucination would be anathema. Davidson does, however, offer a cogent way for therapists to look at the experience of auditory hallucinations. He asks what it means for phenomenologists to insist that auditory hallucinations are legitimate experiences. He suggests it is similar to asthma; not everyone who gasps for breath under various circumstances is asthmatic; likewise, he suggests, not everyone who hears voices from time to time is experiencing psychosis. He argues, finally, that auditory hallucinations mean nothing in themselves, just as gasping for breath means nothing, until it is viewed in a constellation of other events/behaviors that, in the aggregate, add up to a problematical issue (Davidson, 2004, p. 149+). Earlier work by Davidson (2002) noted " Through an exploration of the constitution of sense of self in the experiences of two people with schizophrenia, we see how cognitive disruptions, auditory hallucinations, and delusional ideation may be related to funda- mental peculiarities in a person's experiences of intentionality and his/her resulting sense of agency and identity" (p. 39+). While he did not claim phenomenology could provide complete explanations of psychosis, he asserted that it can shed light on that transcend single disciplines, such as auditory hallucinations, which are of interest to therapists, anthropologists, and even clergy. Thalbourne & Delin tried even harder to make auditory hallucination fit into the parameters of recognized psychosis, contending that religious luminaries such as Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross may have been, as they put it, 'manic depressives,' manifesting various abnormal states such as the hearing of voices (1994, p. 3+). Moreover, they note: To anticipate our results, we believe that we have serendipitously made something of a breakthrough in our understanding of the findings in this area by discovering significant linkages between the topic of paranormal belief and other psychological phenomena, including mystical experience, creative personality, and a number of variables of psychiatric interest (Thalbourne & Delin, 1994, p. 3+). Thalbourne (1991) had examined the psychological aspects of mystical experience and had concluded that understanding the phenomena involved, including auditory hallucination, would require reports by normal individuals rather than by manic-depressives and schizophrenics. "Because mystical experience is usually considered a benign and even valuable phenomenon, it was of great theoretical interest to see whether in a statistical study -- as opposed to case study ... --there would be any association with mental illness, especially mania, which involves a type of elation that seems to have much in common with religious ecstasy" and often includes hearing voices (Thalbourne & Delin, 1994, p. 3+). One of their most interesting conclusions, particularly for therapists, is the correlation they found between creativity and mystical experienced. They noted that Auerbach (1987) had also found that "the voices and visions of mystics are often an artistic expression of a creative mind. One also of such persons as William Blake, in whom there were combined the talents of poet, painter, and mystic, and closer to our time, the poet Anne Sexton, whose final opus was deeply mystical (Shurr, 1985)" (Thalbourne & Delin, 1994, p. 3+). Thalbourne & Delin studied "transliminal" people -- those who are prone to transcending the thresholds of consciousness in more significant ways than most (Thalbourne & Delin, 1994, p. 3+) -- and found that they: .Tend to a greater extent to be willing to undertake psychological experimentation, to regard dreams as meaningful and containing guidance, to report experiences of ESP (of the present and of the future), visions of the dead, healing powers, and contact from the Divinity. They report hearing voices and seeing more hallucinations; they experience more paranoid ideation, and are probably more likely to have consulted a psychiatrist (Thalbourne & Delin, 1994, p. 3+). While the Thalbourne & Delin work may be at the outer edge of credible scientific investigation, work by Bemak & Epp concerning the mind-body dichotomy in schizophrenia is much closer to being a standard medical study. Indeed, they propose that, voices or no voices, psychotherapeutic interventions are "indispensable to the treatment of schizophrenia" (Bemak & Epp, 2002, p. 14+). Some of their report, however, seems to echo some of the thoughts of the phenomenologists; they note that others who have observed schizophrenia describe the "glass wall" effect, which is characterized by flat affect, glazed eyes and agitation form stimuli only the schizophrenic individual is experiencing. All this, they say, seems to indicate a "private psychological experience more magnetic and absorbing than the questions of the clinical interviewer attempting to unravel the meaning of the visions and voices reported by these clients" (Bemak & Epp, 2002, p. 14+). (One effort to provide information that provides nothing but a medical rubric, in the form of clozepine, a psychoactive drug costing almost $10,000 per year to administer to schizophrenics, also cited auditory hallucinations as one of the symptoms it would stop (Higgins, 1995, p. 124+).) Laing also had theories concerning the voices heard by schizophrenics. Laing, too, seems to acknowledge some truth to the phenomenologists' viewpoint, noting that in addition to seeing illusions and hearing voices, the schizophrenic can also be 'real' "Among these (normal) attributes are the ability to see and think clearly, to experience inner tranquility, to relate to others meaningfully, to approach the world with trust, and to love others without deluding the true nature of their character (Laing, 1969). Bemak & Epp, again acknowledging phenomenology as important to states in which hallucinations are present, wrote that "The phenomenology of schizophrenia may be compared to living within the imagery of Salvador Dali's surrealistic painting ...." (2002, p. 14+). Bemak & Epp, despite providing a wealth of medical/scientific information geared toward the therapists' understanding of how to manage schizophrenics, conclude by agreeing more than disagreeing with the phenomenologists about the character of the condition that produces auditory hallucinations. They admit that "The prevalence of schizophrenia in creative individuals is a troubling thorn in psychiatry's disease model" (2002, p. 14+). And they also provide a 'laundry list' of those historical figures believed to have heard voices and yet who were not only considered normal (if eccentric or brilliant), but made major contributions to human knowledge. Their list includes "Kant, Swift, Shelley, Faraday, Newton, Copernicus, Linnaeus, Pascal, Socrates, Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, Kafka, Michelangelo, Poe, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Van Gogh ...." (Bemak & Epp, 2002, 0-. 14+). While phenomenology constitutes one major thrust in understanding auditory hallucinations, being very loosely allied with Freudian concepts, and Laing's work as well, another viewpoint is held by the Jungians. Jung and auditory hallucinations Meyer (2003), in a discussion of Jungian symbolism in the movie, Spider-Man, notes that both masks and voices are essential to the movement of heroic characters through the plotline. Meyer is not, however, a psychologist, nor even an anthropologist; rather, she is a write about communications. Still, her work on Spider-Man tied several of the movie's themes to Jungian thought. Halifax's work goes farther in bringing Jungian thought into the mainstream of psychological study. His work with shamans and shamanic ritual, important subjects to Jungians, posited aspects of schizophrenia in the initiatory journey of the shaman. Halifax cited Julian Silverman's conclusions in which schizophrenia was characterized as a disorder in which the "individual withdraws form society and the outer world and becomes preoccupied by internal processes with a resulting disintegration of the personality. The symptoms, broadly described, include autism and unreal ideation, disturbed perception and thinking, emotional liability and volatility, and bizarre behavior" (Halifax, 1990, pp. 53-58). Likewise, "The initiatic crisis of the shaman in many ways resembles what is called schizophrenia. It also has features that are comparable to the journey of mythic heroes, to death-rebirth experiences in rites of passage, to the posthumous journey of the soul, to clinical death experiences and LSD experiences," according to Halifax (1990, pp. 53-58). Halifax claims that studying shamanism from a psychological viewpoint has helped in understanding the nature of what Halifax is careful to call "so-called mental disorders in Western culture" (Halifax, 1990, pp. 53-58). In addition, and relevant for this investigation of the experience of hearing voices for both patient and therapist, "There are usually auditory and tactile hallucinations and distortions of the body image; individuals often suffer from an experience of dismemberment or dying, hearing voices, ritualistic behavior, fusion of higher and lower referential processes, and the individual can cognitively reorganize, including the reintegration of the personality and the assimilation of unconscious content into the sphere of consciousness" (Halifax, 1990, pp. 53-58.) It is interesting to note that Halifax mentions the idea of cognitive reorganization; it is possible, then, that cognitive therapies can work for schizophrenics hearing voices, despite the fact that this seems to hint at a greater role for phenomenology as well. It is equally interesting to note that Halifax contends that shamans are 'wounded healers,' or those who can help others because they have experienced various disease and/or abnormal states themselves and have transcended them. Although Halifax does not make a direct connection, it seems that this points, also, to a role for phenomenology. Jungian psychiatrist John Weir Perry, too, has outlined the roles found by Halifax, describing the schizophrenic process as a "Renewal of the Self," in which case, auditory hallucinations might be seen -- at least in a phenomenological perspective, as no more than 'self-talk' or a version of the "Dr. Phil" treatment by, for and about schizophrenics inhabiting their own phenomenological universe. In another wave at cognitive therapy, Halifax also proposes that both schizophrenics in Western society and novice shamans can use their altered perception to good advantage "in the process of cognitive reorganization. That shamanism (with its voices) and schizophrenia (with its auditory hallucinations, to use more medically oriented terminology) simply reflect each other was also a belief held by the famous mythologist, Joseph Campbell, who once commented that "the schizophrenic is drowning in the same water in which the mystic is swimming with delight" (Halifax, 1990, pp. 53-58). Pettid also investigated shamanic cultures and their alliance with hearing voices; his viewpoint was that such cultures were normal, if secondary, to the main culture (2003, p. 113+). In this viewpoint, too, auditory hallucinations can be seen as normal, although 'alternative'. Others, too, have made the connection in their own rubrics. Anthropologist Anthony Wallace referred to "mazeway synthesis" in which the world is restructured by an individual in response to an overwhelming crisis and anxiety. Gregory Bateson felt that an acute psychotic event, such as hearing voices, could be a means to solving a pathological situation so that the individual could return to normal life with new insight. Anthropologist Victor Turner called such episodes a means for "transforming the obligatory into the desirable" (quoted by Halifax, 1990, pp. 53-58.) Shamanic traditions and psychotherapy It is clear that auditory hallucinations are often studied as part of a mystical complex, and not as unwanted mental/emotional aberrations per se. In a combination religious/historical/anthropological study, Ardery suggested that auditory hallucinations not only date to the start of what we now recognize as civilization, but in fact probably had something to do with humans becoming civilized to begin with. If Ardery is right, then hearing voices may not be the proper province of psychologists and psychiatrists. Ardery contends that the best hypothesis to explain verbal hallucinations is that they were "a side effect of language comprehension which evolved by natural selection as a method of behavioral control.... " (Ardery, 2004, p. 83+). Ardery's viewpoint is that of semantics, so it is not surprising that he creates a sort of vignette of an early society to explain the usefulness of auditory hallucinations: n fashioning a tool, the hallucinated verbal command of 'sharper' enables nonconscious early man to keep at his task alone. Or an hallucinated term meaning 'finer' for an individual grinding seeds on a stone quern into flour. It was indeed at this point in human history that I believe articulate speech, under the selective pressure of enduring tasks, began to become unilateral in the brain, to leave the other side free for these hallucinated voices that could maintain such behavior ....(Ardery, 2004, p. 83+). He also maintains it was the invention of names that allowed auditory hallucinations to be recognized. At this point, Ardery appears to have joined the phenomenologists and others who actually see little to correct in the case of hearing voices. Ardery notes: But once a specific hallucination is recognized with a name, as a voice originating from a particular person, a significantly different thing is occurring. The hallucination is now a social interaction with a much greater role in individual behavior...." (Ardery, 2004, p. 83+). It almost seems as if Ardery is using the 'tree falling in the forest' analogy. Does it make a noise? Likewise, are auditory hallucinations anything even worth dealing with? He seems to go beyond phenomenology on this score, suggesting that the only reason that we have any phenomena -- hearing voices or otherwise -- is because we have named them, bringing them to that side of the brain that must be conscious to see/feel/hear, etc. Ardery also proposes that auditory hallucinations are essential to keep humans evolving, or even 'on task.' He compares them to simply individuals speaking to themselves from the subconscious about what needs to be done (Ardery, 2004, p. 83+). Ardery suggests some highly unusual origins for auditory hallucinations, certainly. However, he also constructs plausible reasons that in the far reaches of pre-recorded history, the "stress threshold" for hallucinations was much lower than in either normal people or schizophrenics today. He also makes the point that a voice, any voice, is difficult for humans to ignore. He asks: Why should such voices have such authority... Sound is a very special modality. We cannot handle it. We cannot push it away. We cannot turn our backs to it.... Sound is the least controllable of the sense modalities.... Consider what it is to listen and understand someone speaking to us. In a certain sense we have to become the other person; or, rather, we let him become part of us for a brief second. We suspend our own identities, after which we come back to ourselves and accept or reject what he has said. However, that brief second of dawdling identity is the nature of understanding language; and if that language is a command, the identification of understanding becomes the obedience. To hear is actually a kind of obedience (Ardery, 2004, p. 83+). Religious viewpoint of hearing voices, vis-a-vis therapeutic issues As is obvious, there are thinkers from many disciplines who have studied hearing voices. Not surprisingly, especially in view of the proposition that some of its own saints heard voices, the Episcopal Church has something to say concerning auditory hallucinations, or at least, concerning the traditions in which hearing voices seems to have found some acceptance irrespective of their position as indicators of mental illness. In explaining the basic beliefs of that church, Temple noted, "many Episcopalians find the psychology of C.G. Jung to be especially attractive. The Episcopal Church embraces among its members any number of skillful lay analysts whose attraction to Jung expresses the same interest others confine to spiritual direction (2002, p. 303+). In addition, church leaders in that denomination today have studied other traditions in which 'hearing voices' is much more acceptable than in Western society. Many Episcopal Church spiritual directors, according to Temple, are familiar with and embrace the Sufi tradition within Islam, as well as Zen, Taoist and Kabbalist traditions. Read the full article

[dropsofjupitcr]

MIDNIGHT MUSINGS

The digital alarm clock's harsh red numbers blinked mockingly as Hunter stared at them through bleary eyes: 2:37 AM. Beside him, Ophelia let out a soft snuffling noise and shifted positions, burrowing deeper beneath the mound of blankets cocooning them both in blessed warmth. Away from the chill December night air seeping through the old dorm's leaky window frames.

Even in the shadowy dimness of their shoebox apartment, Hunter couldn't help but be transfixed by the way Ophelia's features seemed to almost glow, backlit by those faint crimson numerals. The normally bright constellations of freckles dusting the bridge of her nose and cheekbones were smudged into a burnt sienna palette in this half-light. Loose tendrils of chestnut hair fanned out in a haphazard halo across the pillowcase. In that bleary, exhausted state of half-wakefulness clinging to Hunter's consciousness, he marveled at just how damn beautiful his girlfriend - no, his partner, his other half, his everything - could manage to be even like this. Wrapped up in bunny-printed pajamas and drooling slightly, mouth-agape in the throes of a deep sleep.

God, he was so bloody lucky to be the one who got to share this view. This private, perfect, peaceful vision of the woman who had turned his entire world upside down the moment she had first stepped onto that scuffed-up frozen pond back in elementary school all those years ago. Before Hunter could reign himself in, those swirling thoughts of adoration started escaping their confines as half-mumbled verbal musings.

"Hey Ophs...you awake?"

A noncommittal hum answered him, her shapely back shifting beneath the quilted blankets.

"Do you ever wonder...I mean, just think about if things had been different for us?" Hunter continued in a hushed ramble, his voice cracking slightly from fatigue and the weight of his meandering theories. "Like, if we'd grown up in some alternate world instead of as skating partners? Do you think we'd still...you know, be a couple? Wind up together no matter what?"

A sleepy tousle of red hair appeared from the fabric nest as Ophelia turned to regard him with one bleary emerald eye cracked open, brow furrowed in a mixture of confusion and exasperation.

"Are you having those dumb midnight existential asthmatic thoughts again?" she groaned, clearly only half-registering his rambling queries through her haze of drowsiness.

Hunter shrugged sheepishly, draping one thick arm around her narrow waist and tugging her plush form flush against his larger physique. The soft scents of lavender shampoo and crisp, clean linen washed over him as he nuzzled the crown of her head reverently. "Maybe..." he admitted, voice pitched lower against the delicate whorl of her ear. "Just can't seem to make my brain shut off at night sometimes, you know?"

Ophelia let out a contented sigh as she allowed herself to be enfolded into the warm cocoon of his embrace, her eyelids already fluttering closed once more. "Well, keep those racing thoughts away from my end of things, West," she purred in a drowsy murmur. "Let me at least get some damn sleep."

Hunter hummed an affirmative reply, nosing aside a few loose tresses so he could brush a feather-light kiss against her temple. He felt the tension seep out of his girlfriend's slender frame at the tender gesture as Ophelia sagged fully into his sinewy arms. For a few tranquil moments, the only sounds filling their shoebox apartment were the steady in-out cadences of their mingled breathing patterns, slipping in seamless sync with one another. One heartbeat melding effortlessly into the next. As it had since the first time they cautiously intertwined their gangly teenage limbs all those years ago.

Hunter traced abstract, soothing patterns along the sliver of exposed skin peeking from between Ophelia's tank top and pajama bottoms. Allowing the hushed peace surrounding them to settle into his very marrow.

Until...

"You don't think we'd already be married by now?" he pondered aloud before he could censor his wandering thoughts. "With like...five kids at least? Or maybe an entire hockey team's worth of little ankle-biters running around, knowing us?"

Ophelia groaned, cracking one emerald eye open again to shoot her boyfriend an exaggerated glower from the depths of her blanket nest. "For the sake of avoiding the very real possibility of smothering you with a pillow right now?" She settled the full force of her drowsy glare on the sheepish Hunter, pursing her lips in displeasure. "Go. To. Bed."

Hunter couldn't help the low chuckle rumbling up unbidden from his broad chest as Ophelia swatted him half-heartedly. His smile only widened further as he pressed another teasing peck to the tip of her adorably upturned nose, eliciting a fresh disgruntled grumble. "Roger that, babe. Going to sleep now, just like you asked."

As Ophelia harrumphed and shifted to get more comfortable against the solid wall of Hunter's torso, one last drowsy murmur reached his ears. "If we did have five kids, I'm telling you right now that potty training duty is ALL on you, pal."

Hunter simply hummed a wordless note of wry acknowledgment, resisting the urge to rumple her tangled hair in playful retribution. He knew better than to push his luck tonight. So instead, Hunter cradled Ophelia tighter and welcomed the waves of exhaustion already dragging him back under into peaceful slumber, perfectly content to pick up their silly late-night musing at a later date. Perhaps in some future reality where five squirming little bundles did indeed call them Mom and Dad, and these quiet, intimate moments would ultimately seem like some long lost fever dream.

[surrexi]

i am begging critical role fandom (and the d&d community, and fuck it, fandom in general (but specifically CR fandom right now)) to learn to allow complexity to exist in both narrative and in life

like, i can hope that bell's hells manage to convince someone to attempt to resurrect laudna and that said attempt is successful while also acknowledging that, to quote doctor who, death gives us size.

i can also acknowledge that death gives us size and that death at least sometimes being permanent in stories is important for both in-universe and meta reasons while also acknowledging that sometimes people don't enjoy that kind of narrative or might be going through some shit that makes it difficult or impossible for them to enjoy it at a particular point in their life.

a person can enjoy narratives that explore death and grief and moving on sometimes or in some cases and not in others, and that's okay. that's normal.

personally, i started playing d&d during the panini because i needed/wanted an escape from all the bad shit going on in real life, so if one of my DMs killed my character i would not handle it well, because my asthmatic lungs are giving me enough existential anxiety and dread. as i explained to my sister, if it came to a point where one of my characters would have permanently died i'd rather have my DM say "okay, you don't die but now your magic isn't working right/you lost a limb/you are multiclassing as a paladin for a death deity or a warlock for a necromancer/etc." because for me as a player that would be a better way for me to continue enjoying playing d&d while also allowing there to be consequences that a long rest can't fix than having to make a new character. but there are plenty of people out there who prefer to play d&d with the knowledge that their DM could kill their character at any time if the dice happen to fall that way, because that's the kind of stakes they want from their game. hell, i know for a fact that at least a couple of the players in games i'm currently playing in have backup characters ready to go.

ALL OF THAT IS OKAY. BOTH THINGS CAN BE TRUE.

cognitive dissonance is not always bad. sometimes cognitive dissonance is just true. in the words of john green, "truth resists simplicity."

in the specific case of critical role it's also important to remember that although the cast is streaming their game for the audience, they're not playing the game for the audience. it's their game, for which they established their own safety tools and guardrails off-screen. if a character dies it's because everyone at that table agreed from the beginning that they were all okay with that happening if the dice happened to fall that way. we can all see them texting each other, whispering to each other, and scribbling notes to each other in the margins of their notebooks throughout every episode. they are constantly communicating. they are fine, they are operating within limits they established before they ever started filming each campaign. they have told us that, matt in particular reminded everyone of it on twitter in the middle of all this, but they're not required to go over the personal aspects of that in detail. we just need to trust them that they know and respect each other's limits.

in the case of d&d/ttrpgs in general, it's no better to say permanent death has to always be on the table than it is to say it should never be on the table. what matters is that the DM/GM and the players have discussed it, and that everyone knows and respects everyone else's limits.

and jesus christ on a pogo stick, we really need to move away from this idea that all fandom opinions must be justified as morally correct or morally incorrect. if you don't like something, that's fine, you don't have to justify your dislike of something by arguing that the thing you dislike is morally wrong. you're allowed to just not vibe with it. likewise, if someone else likes a thing you dislike, they're not automatically morally deficient because they like a thing you dislike. you just like different stuff! it's fine! it takes all kinds to make a world!

people who are really upset about laudna being dead can and should be able to coexist in the same fandom with people who think it could lead to interesting narrative exploration of death/grief/survivor's guilt/etc. people in one camp don't need to establish moral superiority over the other and then attack them over it, because both reactions to the story are equally valid. and it should go without saying, but neither side should attack the cast about it, because again, it's their game and also because fans shouldn't attack creators.

(critique/media analysis is not an attack, but by its very nature requires extensive thought/citation/etc., and should never be comprised entirely by saying "[creator] is a bad person because [thing they made] is morally wrong because i said so")

tl;dr: omg stop casting aspersions on the moral character of people who disagree with you about a ttrpg some nerdy-ass voice actors are playing on twitch, ffs people

[annoyangle]

HEY KIDS! I SEE YOU OUT THERE POKING YOUR LITTLE FINGERS AT MY LIKE BUTTONS. IT TICKLES, BUT IT AIN’T GETTING ME THERE! HOW ABOUT ASKING ME A QUESTION?  DON’T BE SHY.  I DON’T BITE AT FIRST.

NO TOPIC OFF LIMITS! I’M A BEING OF PURE ENERGY WITH NO SENSE OF SHAME! SERIOUSLY I’M STUCK ALONE WITH ONLY KRYPTOS FOR COMPANY AND HIS IDEA OF FUN IS REORGANIZING ALL OUR WEIRDNESS BATTLE/PARTY SUPPLIES BY COLOR, SPECIES, AND TAX VALUE. HE’S CURRENTLY HAVING AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS ABOUT WHETHER THE LEFT LEG OF VALDRISTA THE ASTHMATIC COWARD BELONGS UNDER V FOR VALDRISTA, OR SHOULD BE FILED ALONG WITH THE REMAINS OF THE REST OF DIMENSION 65DASH8B, OR IF WE SHOULD KEEP IT IN A DIRTY SHOEBOX WITH THE OTHER BANNED EXTRADIMENSIONAL YU-GI-OH CARDS WE’RE STILL TRYING TO GET FULL SETS OF. CONFUSING - AND NOT IN A FUN, CHAOS KINDA WAY!! 

[milkhater3000]

One of my biggest existential crises in life is whether I'm actually asthmatic or just really out of shape

[angelnumber27]

Existential asthmatic

[extraordinaryhistories]

#27 - 'I Can't Even Lift My Head' (non-album track, 2001)

When the Lord casts down His fury on Judgement Day, where will you be? When the time comes for every man to stare straight into the eyes of God and reckon with a lifetime of pain, regret, transgression and lies, will you be brave enough to speak your case? Will you be bold and confident, knowing that your heart is true? Will you be tremulous, hoping that the best of your intentions will be able to cure the worst of your deeds? Or will the Lord find you hidden, lain prostrate on the cold, dead earth, weeping, unable to face the true gravity of your sin? We would all like to think we embody grace, truth and tenderness; but in that final hour, will we bet our eternities on it? Sufjan can only speak for himself. But in ‘I Can’t Even Lift My Head’, he arrives on his firm, tragic answer.

Or, alternatively –

‘The Upper Peninsula’ at home:

Musical archaeologists will get quite the kick out of this one. We have discussed how the period between A Sun Came and Michigan – Enjoy Your Rabbit notwithstanding – operated as a sort of creative sandbox for Sufjan. It was probably the single most important time of his entire career. The wild experiments of A Sun Came are still here, but they are fewer in number, largely replaced by embryonic songs in the style he would soon become famous for. ‘I Can’t Even Lift My Head’, however, is different. ‘I Can’t Even Lift My Head’ is not a song in the style he would soon become famous for – it is a song he would soon become famous for, more or less. Look at the relaxed tempo; look at the boomy, lightly-played drums; look at those intertwining helices of banjo and electric guitar; feel the feeling it inspires in you, that strangest mix of quivering intensity and panoramic wideness. This is ‘The Upper Peninsula’ in a different coat of paint.

It is likely that Sufjan slightly rewrote and updated this very song for the Michigan classic – many elements, like the drum part, are practically identical. Aiding this comparison is the fact that Sufjan’s vocal delivery on ‘I Can’t Even Lift My Head’ is indistinguishable to how it would soon be on Michigan, which is one of the few elements of Sufjan’s style that had not hitherto fallen into place. Pre-millennial Sufjan has a distinctly thin, strained affection to his voice, likely inspired by Elliott Smith and other classic folkies like Nick Drake who he was enamoured with. You can hear it most obviously on his earliest material, like ‘Julia’ or ‘Rake’. It took years for Sufjan to adopt the fuller sound that would lend his greatest songs their unrivalled intimacy, and for my money, 2001’s ‘I Can’t Even Lift My Head’ – released on an Asthmatic Kitty compilation that featured three other Sufjan songs – this is its first true instance. In hushed, buttery, closely mic-ed tones, Sufjan steps into the confessional booth and crumbles right in front of you.

Because not all of this song is 1:1 to ‘The Upper Peninsula’. Call it modesty or call it maturity, but as Sufjan aged, his subjects counterintuitively decreased in scope. ‘The Upper Peninsula’ is a very small-scale song that speaks of American ennui by way of one protagonist, one town, one story. ‘I Can’t Even Lift My Head’ tells one story too, in a way, but this one is staggeringly existential. It is just as American as ‘The Upper Peninsula’ insofar as the devastating Christian guilt on display here is the cornerstone of Western morality. In the country of capitalism and Jimmy Swaggart, every person sees themselves a sinner by nature. Guilt keeps people working; guilt keeps people spending; guilt keeps people praying. Guilt is American. No less so than the man who sees his wife at the K-Mart.

In ‘I Can’t Even Lift My Head’, Sufjan experiences a guilt nearly heavy enough to crush the song’s tender arrangement. He imagines himself coming quite literally face-to-face with God – clearly invoking a Revelations-like rapture – and suddenly feeling the entire weight of his sin in one great impact. ‘Oh, I can't even lift my head / To say a word / To say a word to you’, he repeats in refrain, trembling. Though few in number, the verses in this song carry a multiplicity of meanings. Here, Sufjan both acknowledges that he is not worthy of sharing the same space-time as God and  implies that the extent of his sin is so great that it cannot be fully expressed in words. Wanting to explain his life’s choices away in the end times, Sufjan finds that he cannot give voice to them, and instead communicates something more true with a different type of language – he bows his head and resigns in shame. ‘I can't even recognize / What I did wrong’, similarly, is many things at once: genuine inability to qualify his sin, self-soothing by denying the existence of that sin (I cannot consider my mistakes lest I erode my perception of self) and an instinctual apology to his creator for all those bad things he observes in himself, plus the many more that he doesn’t.

The most crucial line in this song – the one that makes it the most explicitly Christian and the most inexplicably Sufjan – is ‘If I had seen the Father / What would his face do / What would his face to do me?’ This points to something very fundamental about this particular faith. Christianity derives some of its strange power from the notion that shame cannot be separated from punishment. An intrinsic sense of rightness and wrongness must be at least fortified (or, less charitably, replaced) by empirical consequence. In other words, it is not enough to believe that sinning is wrong – we must also believe that sinning will send away from God and into Hell. Does this not seem to disentangle divinity from sensory experience and let immediate sensations – the kind that make up, well, everything we experience on Earth – be reclaimed by the Devil? I dunno; take it up with the theologians, not me. It’s there in ‘I Can’t Even Lift My Head’ either way, wherein God appears on Judgement Day and Sufjan is quite literally faced with his condemnation. Asking ‘what would his face do to me?’ is a very understandable question from any sinner in the Apocalypse. How will He punish me? And perhaps worse, how will the disappointment on His face make me feel?

‘I Can’t Even Lift My Head’ is best read as yet another important stage in Sufjan’s artistic maturity. Smooth and considered though it may be, it is ultimately a reasonably sophisticated, very listenable trial run for a better composition. But at least there is a universality to this subject matter that isn’t as present in ‘The Upper Peninsula’. Not everyone can understand how it feels to struggle in America; everyone can absolutely understand what it means to feel guilt. Self-hating sinners, this one is for you.

[thegeminisage]

have reached the pity party/existential dread portion of this thing, which at first i thought was really embarrassing - even while crying/hyperventilating i had enough self-awareness to go “ugh, cringe” - but as it turns out that’s actually a great way to clear my sinuses and get my daily lung exercise in! highly recommended to all asthmatic covid patients, no matter how cringe you find it. my oxygen didn’t change but i FEEL like i’m having a slightly easier time with those deep breaths, anyway. gonna schedule another 30-minute mental breakdown for tomorrow

[dustedmagazine]

Sufjan Stevens — The Ascension (Asthmatic Kitty)

The Ascension by Sufjan Stevens

On the basis of The Ascension, it’s safe to assume that Sufjan Stevens is not having a fun time. The suggestion of an existential crisis is writ large in 12-minute single “America,” yet such patient expansiveness is seldom found among the rest of The Ascension’s lengthy track list. There’s a desperation to many of these songs that feels like the panicked rush of anxiety. Eighty minutes of ricocheting drum machines and soul-scouring synths makes for a listening experience more in common with 2010’s chaotic The Age of Adz, yet updated to reflect the harsh reality of life in Trump’s America, compared to previous album Carrie & Lowell’s delicate, reflective folk.

On “Lamentations,” frenetic vocal cut-ups and over-driven drum machines share a musical lineage with The Flaming Lips’ harsh existential treatise The Terror, while “Death Star” sounds like a 21st-century The Art of Noise, the rhythm section pushed hard into the red. “Die Happy” repeats the refrain “I wanna die happy” over and over for the first half, circling ominously, until drum machine hits and squeaky de-tuned synth lines start falling like acid rain. The whining, breakneck “Ativan” (the brand name of a drug used to treat anxiety disorders) sounds like — you guessed it — an anxiety attack (it also features the charming lyric “I shit my pants and wet the bed”). On the dejected “Goodbye To All That,” Stevens sings, “Here I am alone in my car / Hopelessness Incorporated,” and on “Ursa Major,” the refrain “I wanna love you” is pitch-shifted to sound needling and pitiful.  

There’s a distinct contrast between this confrontational mode of panic-attack electro and the softer, down-tempo synth-pop cuts. “Run Away With Me” is an early standout, its gorgeous synth, pedal steel and echoing guitars creating a pillowy refuge. “Tell Me You Love Me” is similarly dreamy, its confessional lyrics reflected in the drifting dissolution of the musical backing. And “Sugar” is a late highlight, Stevens reining in the drum machines to focus on layering beautiful synths and guitars into an immersive, melancholy epic.  

The Ascension is a lot to take in, both in terms of its intense sound palette and extensive runtime. If you like your Sufjan Stevens in neon electronic mode, armed to the teeth with abrasive drum sounds, dive right in — and keep swimming. For anyone more enamored with his folk and chamber-pop records, it may feel like a rude assault to the senses.  

Tim Clarke