Current listening: “Apt.” (Rosé and Bruno Mars), “Dana-Dan” (Bloodywood), “First Light” (Lindsey Stirling).
Have you ever felt like everyone around you is trapped in a time loop, functionally rendering all conversation impossible? No? Just me? Hope you get out of the time loop soon.
I’ve had time on my mind for two reasons: One, I read Sacred Bodies, a short comic that has nothing to do with time. Two, I’ve a month-long backburner project to record a cassette for each season. And the third, secret reason that I didn’t tell you I had at the beginning of this paragraph: March is already here and kicking my teeth in, even though January was only five minutes ago. But let’s loop back around.
Sacred Bodies is a top-down slice-of-life story of a woman and a bird creature who have just been married. The setting is idyllic, wicker-and-flowers, faintly-Midsommar-flavored fantasy. The narrative is about unlearning societally reinforced shame.
But all that’s not important—the narrative I like but remain conflicted on; I haven’t yet decided if it’s exquisitely understated or just a bit weak. But the art—by god, the art! I’d sell my firstborn for that art. I’d sell your firstborn for that art. The religion of this world venerates light, and every single panel wants you to know it.
Sacred Bodies is not about time—but light is about nothing but time. Bounce light, highlight, halftones, shadow: Visual vocabulary, all of it, for describing where the sun is. Objectively, I’d say the art style most closely matches Stand Still, Stay Silent—also an excellent webcomic, abrupt mid-story end due to the author becoming a born-again Christian notwithstanding (no, I have no idea what happened there either). But subjectively: For reasons that I cannot defend rationally, even to myself, all works that deal with light can only bring to mind the soundtrack of “Marielda,” from the podcast Friends at the Table.
Time takes on qualities not its own. I listened to that album obsessively one summer in Beijing, and something about sunlight muffled behind heavy yellow window curtains has burned itself into my mind. But that’s a little bit of a lie: It’s always summer when I’m in Beijing, so my memories of the entire city are just one long, rolling, endless summer. I couldn’t tell you what happened in one summer versus another if you held a gun to my head. The time has lost all contour and definition.
Summer is a lying season, and I’ve been very interested in lies recently.
I know a lot of people who tell me they’re good at lying, who are proud of their own skill at lying. These people are wrong. They’re not good at lying; they’re good at being unquestioned. Trust me, from the outside looking in: You aren’t as good a liar as you think you are. There is technique involved—you need to stay within bounds of probability, keep your story straight, think on the spot, balance reputation. But don’t underestimate how much is carried by the collective, unspoken social agreement not to press too hard when your friend’s story doesn’t add up, out of respect to their privacy. And either way: It’s still not the same as being good at lying.
I’ve only ever known one person who was actually good at lying. Could truly, genuinely fake sincerity. He had the uncanny ability to know exactly what you wanted to hear, exactly when you needed to hear it. And vitally: He could say it in your language, in a way that you would actually listen to. I found myself believing the things he said despite myself, despite the fact that I’d personally seen him shuffling through opinions like a deck of cards on the daily.
Our opening song is “chikichikibanban,” from Ya Boy Kongming!, an anime that I have never watched. It is, inexplicably, a cover of the Hungarian Eurobeat song “Bulikirály,” by Jolly & Suzy. The cassette cover is set at high noon. Keywords include: mirage, heat wave, and molten.
An old friend sent me their copy of Sacred Bodies; that’s how I read it. For years we’d stopped speaking to each other, and not because we drifted apart. We’ve been unsynced for a while, in the way that you are when you’re not used to someone’s particular conversational rhythms and stylistic flourishes anymore. But a shared story was enough to put us back onto the same beat, in the same tongue, even if only for a little while. And for that, I’ll begrudgingly be grateful.
Fall, to me, is a callous season. Doesn’t care about your dreams, only reality; a harvest season, a death season, concerned with material things. The numbers in your bank account. The amount of apples left in the fridge drawer. Reality, immutable, unnegotiable.
I don’t know if I’ll speak to that friend again.
“Die Anywhere Else,” from Night in the Woods, leads the tape. For the cover: the burnished light of sunset, only accidentally blinding.
Here’s a riddle for you: What’s the difference between a maze and a labyrinth? Chew on that for a second. Then answer: A maze has an exit. A labyrinth has a center.
I got stuck in a bit of an ant death spiral for a series of months last year, trying to figure out if I was looping toward an exit or merely the terrible heart of the labyrinth. In other words: I was in my twenties. The answer came to me—as I’m sure it comes to everyone in their own time—while walking in my endless circles in the marshlands by the sea.
It was that blue hour just after dusk. Time and light take on qualities not their own, and in that moment the entire world had softened just for me. Fog and endless dim, while seabirds wheeled overhead. The park closed soon, but I wanted to walk further, and for a moment, with startling conviction not my own—I knew that I had enough time.
Winter has always been a kind season to me. A deeply blue period; the end of the line. But a forgiving one.
Our ending begins with “I’ll Need You,” by LuQus, the only ambient/lofi song where you can hear the soul. “I’ll Need You” was written in honor of the composer’s friend who took his own life, and you can tell. The song has captured, abstractly but exactly, the breathing rhythm of sobbing.
The cover for this tape is lit by moonlight. The light of the full moon is startlingly bright, especially in the desert.
Spring is indelibly the season of revolution in my mind. A raging season. A season of tipping points and I-can’t-fucking-take-this-anymore and wind. But mostly just a season of wind.
I wish I could say I picked something classy to start us off and end this on, but honesty is in my nature and the first song on the cassette is “My Soul, Your Beats!” from the anime Angel Beats!. I promise you there’s two different covers of “Bella ciao” on the tape too to rep for revolutionary fervor, but this song embodies moving air and beginning to me like none other.
The cover’s set at morning. Dawn should smash in your windows and always be cold.
But that’s enough from me. Somewhere, outside of all our little time loops and death spirals, there is a long dirt path winding through the marshlands just after dusk. I’ll meet you there.
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