Hi again!! Congrats on climbing the hyped ranks so quickly btw <3 but unlike last time (like 20 minutes ago) I have an actual question lol
I know it has queer relevance, but my brain is confused on what exactly Haunt You is about. Im probably missing something very important and obvious- but I realized I could just ask the goat herself!!!! And even if i don't fully understand its still catchy as hell so 🤷♀️ /pos
Anyways HAVE A GOOD NIGHT/DAY/EVENING/MORNING/??????????? :DD
the song is about looking at the current state of the conversation surrounding trans and generally queer folks, and wondering if i will be alive in 2 years - a year which coincides with a particular changing of hands that will also be the year i turn 27 (an age that a lot of musicians famously join the "27 club", dying at a tragically young age).
i have struggled a lot with suicidal ideation in the past, and have made peace with it. not overcome it, because it's something that lays dormant within us, but gotten to a point where we know how to handle it and where we have conversely also found the will to keep our life going. we've talked about this a lot in the past. we see every continued day past our attempt in high-school as time that defies the fate our mental health and abusive conditions almost sealed us into. we have liberated ourselves of that mentality, and carry on every day with intention to keep going. not having shaken off the burden, but having learned how to carry it.
for the past few years (especially when writing Songbird) we have been filled with a lot of anger and vitriol in regards to the wider conversation surrounding trans and queer folks. many of our songs reflect that, but we have recently taken a shift in our perspective to realize that we simply don't want to be living in that anger anymore. or, at least, want to put that anger into a more refined place. it's hard to look out at so many people being led into a horrifying future and think that *every last one* of them is an evil, terrible person with no redemption. the conversation surrounding "change" has repeated for years and years and while i agree that it is a constant effort, it's hard to feel like *real* change is happening when we just are following the same cycle to try and change people's minds. it feels more sisyphean than progressive. i can't really help but feel bad for *everyone* involved getting caught up in either rocking the boat or steadying the coarse when neither will matter if we all go over the waterfall we're headed towards.
as such, i choose a different option - living my life by hope. things really do seem dire, and the future i see is grim. there's no point in trying to ignore the reality of what is happening, that won't get us anywhere. things kinda suck and the future i see is grim. there are people in power who want people like me dead. i liberated myself from death at my own hands years ago, but it could very well be the case soon that someone else strips me of that liberty to my own happy life. that reality i am faced with is a window into a grim future further down the line for everyone else too. so in the little time i may have left, i'd rather live by example. not bothering with debating whether i have a right to live this way, because i know i do. im gonna actually get my hands dirty and correct course *now*. and this song is my infraction point. it is me choosing hope. a hope that the future i see coming is wrong, and that when all is said and done, it won't be the haunting words of a dead woman and what she saw coming for all of us because she was one of the first.
i hope this song won't haunt you. i hope we can sing it all together in celebration years down the road. i hope i'm wrong. about the future i see, about whether there is a life beyond this one if that future is true, about what little complacency i have left to delude myself. i hope it helps others see a perspective that allows them to live as their best selves too, because we may not have that liberty for long - what little of it we already have left. and i carry all that hope forwards, because now that i've put it out into the world, and people have shown that they love it, it proves true. this song already will haunt me, because when i sang it for all of you, you heard it and resonated with it because it held truth.
jacobvanloon
stormborns
gummygunk
dededos
annaxmalina
pixelskylines
