phoebe bridgers and the music that blossomed my queerness (retrospective diary: 2021-2024)

phoebe, lucy, julien, clairo, haim, haley blais, olivia rodrigo, mannequin pussy, and more, including moon signs and tarot draws: art and magic are amazing windows into our true inner selves

Grace

:

I want to go to a concert & not be afraid of dying

lauren

:

teenage girls are taking over the world

---

phoebe bridgers in prospect park (winter 2021)

i am living in brooklyn where i have almost no friends, lockdown is still chugging along, i teach online so i have insane amounts of free time:

and i spend hours upon hours walking in prospect park listening to phoebe.

phoebe’s music and lyrics give me this sense that i am not in the world anymore.

i am inside of myself: i am me, beneath the fabricated layers, but:

what does that mean?

---

an icy morning listening to phoebe in brooklyn
(all photos my own)

---

phoebe bridgers lyrics that steadily destroy me (winter 2021)

---

jesus christ, i’m so blue all the time
and that's just how i feel
always have and i always will
i always have and always will

(phoebe bridgers, “funeral”)

---

whenever i hear this line as i walk through the snow, i face the reality of my past: i have always been depressed and i have routinely contemplated suicide. i have this sense that no matter what i do, i will always be sad. sadness seems intrinsic to my being. what am i sad about? there is this emptiness inside of me, this sense i am not me: but why? i actually hate myself even more for not simply appreciating what i have.

i have this sense i will never find fulfillment, and i hate that, because i love the people in my life, i love the things i have done in my life, i love the books i read and the music i listen to: there is so much in my life that so often makes me happy: yet even then i feel empty, like i’m nothing, and the emptiness is filled with sadness.

---

and i get this feeling
whenever i feel good
it'll be the last time

(phoebe bridgers, “icu”)

---

sadness feels like my foundation.

when i feel happy, i know my happiness will just melt into the sad foundation.

---

i don't wanna be stoned
i don't wanna be stoned anymore
i don't wanna be alone
don't wanna be alone anymore, mm

i've got a good feeling
i've got a good feeling
it doesn't happen very often

(phoebe bridgers, “demi moore”)

---

often when i’m walking through the park that winter i am totally stoned, and covid is chugging along.

i am high as fuck, listening to phoebe bridgers in the snow

---

girl music floodgates (2021-2022)

---

prospect park, brooklyn, winter 2022

---

i could be a pretty girl
i’ll wear a skirt for you

(clairo, “pretty girl”)

---

i quickly discover new music: julien baker, lucy dacus, boygenius, julia jacklin. over the course of the coming year my soul fans out on its own, spotify my soul’s virtual arena and recommendations pouring in from friends: big thief, beabadoobee, hailey blais, soccer mommy, wet leg, olivia rodrigo, clairo, beach bunny, momma, mxmtoon, hole, taylor swift, snail mail, arlo parks, bully, mazzy star, haim, princess nokia, laura stevenson, raveena, haley heynderickx, courtney barnett, faye webster…. by the end of 2021, i am completely and totally immersed in girl music.

i stop listen to the news; i stop reading the news; i consume dozens of romance novels and every sally rooney book: i am constantly watching romantic telenovelas in spanish.

all the while — whether through speakers in my home or headphones when i am out and about — girl music is endlessly streaming into my mind. girl music is streaming into my soul for a solid minimum of twelve hours every single day, and the only time i ever really like i am connected with myself is when i am inside of that vortex.

by the end of 2023 i have listened to over 1,100 hours of phoebe bridgers.

---

when you cut a hole into my skull
do you hate what you see?
like i do

(lucy dacus, boygenius: “souvenir”)

---

i listen to girl music while binge-reading romance novels

---

phoebe bridgers in detroit (september 2021)

i go to see phoebe in detroit with my friend

Alaina Rose

, the same person who introduced me to phoebe bridgers in december 2020.

A is truly herself: she is queer and she seems so happy.

i have known her for years but our friendship seems to appear and disappear in three-year cycles. i don’t want to lose her this time. i find myself leaving the gaze of the world repeatedly to go stand in line ordering drinks with A who has a much stronger sense of the meaning beneath the surface of art. she teaches me to be myself even when the external world is closing in on me.

the show is delayed for a couple hours by a storm. once they let phoebe start playing, the storm is still raging behind her across river in canada. lightning strikes in the backdrop: she later posts a picture of her singing with lighting behind her.

i want to tell the whole world how much phoebe’s music means to me. i listen to her all the time.

---

lost in the innards of prospect park,
listening to “this is the end” by phoebe bridgers

phoebe bridgers lyrics that steadily awaken me (2021 - 2024)

i quickly expand my listening to phoebe’s other work: better oblivion community center, boygenius.

---

there's flowers in the rubble
the weeds are gonna tumble
i'm lucid but I still can't think
i'm strapped into a corset
climbed into your corvette
i'm thirsty for another drink

(phoebe bridgers, better oblivion community center: “dylan thomas”)

---

this image of phoebe bridgers in a corset obsesses me: i listen to this song all the time and i imagine her getting into the corvette with her corset on.

but my image of her in a corset is strange, different, also familiar:

this is not a sexual fantasy.

this an aesthetic calling; a summoning; a conjuring: of me.

when i listen to “dylan thomas” i am steps away from imagining myself being the one wearing the corset and climbing into the corvette.

better oblivion community center is sort of a duet set-up. and when they are singing their duets, and i’m listening to them in my headphones while walking five miles around prospect park, i’m never singing along to conor: i’m only singing along to phoebe.

“smoke signals” (2021 - 2024)

---

you
you must've been lookin' for me
sendin' smoke signals
pelicans circling
burnin' trash out on the beach

(phoebe bridgers, “smoke signals”)

---

by the end of 2023 i have listened to “smoke signals” over 500 times.

why does this song keep calling to me? the music itself seems to put me in touch with myself. i know the lyrics have some specific meaning for phoebe, based probably on her personal life, but that is not what concerns me. what concerns me is: what do these lyrics mean to me? why did the universe bring this song into my life?

who is looking for me? who am i looking for?

---

i buried a hatchet, it's comin' up lavender
the future's unwritten, the past is a corridor
i'm at the exit, lookin' back through the hall
you are anonymous, i am a concrete wall

(phoebe bridgers, “smoke signals”)

---

these words stir something inside me to the point that i later get a tattoo of a sheet ghost with lavender behind her. i can envision myself in these words: burying my anger, growing flowers in my soul, looking to the future, heading for the exit.

the exit from what?

---

phoebe’s music guides me through prospect park for two autumns; all the while i am steadily reincarnating:
i am digging beneath my capricorn exterior;
i am moving the clouds away from the light of my moon sign.

discovering astrology (may 2022)

---

i don't forgive you
but please don't hold me to it
born under scorpio skies
i wanted to see the world
through your eyes until it happened
then i changed my mind

(phoebe bridgers, “kyoto”)

---

i always knew i was a capricorn: and i still know i’m a capricorn, at least in the sun. i work like a capricorn: i write like a capricorn, which is to say i write constantly. i set goals and steadily work toward them with the discipline of a capricorn.

i suppose in the name of work i appear to be able to suppress my own emotions, even as they stir constantly beneath the surface of my sometimes austere demeanor. my boss several years ago told me i had such a “steady hand,” i was known at work for having virtually no emotions whatsoever (i was constantly terrified of being fired and did my best to hide myself). my emotionless presentation came not from a steady heart but from a steady performance, from steady acting, which covered for deep anxiety:

many of my co-workers thought of me as an unfeeling and logical being.

i told someone at work, “i’m a capricorn.”

“doesn’t surprise me one bit,” she said.

and i have the fundamental fear of a capricorn: which is that i will underperform, fall short of my expectations. this is always a source of my anxiety: discontent with myself, a sense that i am not doing enough, not producing enough, not achieving enough.

within me there swirls a toxic fusion of capricorn and capitalist.

---

i buy this phoebe t at her show in prospect park, brooklyn

---

my moon sign is pisces (may 2022)

---

source

---

but capricorn was always missing something and finally i know what:

my moon sign.

i finally have my birth chart:

my moon sign is pisces.

i have such depths inside me beneath the surface of my capricorn work ethic.

i am not a machine: i am a soul. i am not a logical program: i am a swirling storm of crackling light, pleasant rain, and warm winds. i am neptune: i am a being coasting through the darkness at the bottom of the sea: my soul contains the ocean itself.

i am artistic and emotional; i am in touch with my own feelings and the feelings of others; but i do not show this. my pisces aspects remain buried inside.

when i go out in public i am terrified. i do not feel like myself. i am silent, withdrawn, shy, afraid, recoiled. i appear as a robot who hardly speaks, only acts. i hate this. i work and work and work, always in the sun of my capricorn sign, always craving the night but never once daring to step out and stand beneath the moon.

i come across as rude. i come across cold. people laugh at the thought i might be artistic. even i find myself wondering: could my birth chart be mistaken?

could astrology be bullshit?

no, i tell myself, over and over again.

everything is connected: gravity from the most distant stars entangles me right now: i am an expression of the universe itself.

my moon sign is pisces:

and i am the moon.

phoebe bridgers in prospect park (june 2022)

---

waiting for phoebe to take the stage; muna opens

---

my friend and i go to see phoebe in prospect park.

we wait in a long line wrapping around the park on the south end. soon we are sitting on the grassy slope listening to muna open. muna singer katie gavin starts talking about how difficult it is to think about your own identity, and i sense a train of thought developing in my mind, which for some reason i avoid.

---

i've spent way too, too, too many years not knowing what
what i wanted, how to get it, how to live it and now
i'm gonna make up for it all at once
'cause that's, that's just what I want

i want the full effects, i wanna hit it hard
i wanna dance in the middle of a gay bar
ooh oh oh, that's what i want
there's nothing wrong with what I want
yeah, yeah

(muna, “what i want”)

---

there are queer people all around us being themselves, dancing and singing when phoebe steps on, and my whole soul is on fire when she’s playing. by now i’ve heard all these songs more than two hundred times a piece: i know every word by heart and sometimes, when i leave the room in the middle of a phoebe song, i can still hear every little instrument proceeding in my mind as if the speaker were right by my face: when i step back into the room, the song is just where she’s singing in my mind.

but i don’t sing really. i whisper-sing. i stand there in my dark flannel and jeans: i still have fairly short hair: i hate my clothes, i hate my hair, and i hate that i won’t sing.

even so: i am seeing phoebe bridgers in the middle of the park where i have spent the past year and a half relentlessly consuming her music.

my soul is erupting when phoebe starts “smoke signals.” the sky is dark and i can see phoebe singing: on the other side of the tree branches between me and the stage.

---

above: phoebe bridgers in prospect park, brooklyn
below: haim at madison square garden

i see haim at madison square garden (may 2022)
I buy a women in music pt. iii shirt
I buy a buffy t-shirt

---

matching “true blue” tattoos with a girl who loves me? (spring 2023)

---

i don't want to die
that's a lie
but I'm afraid to get sick
i don't know what that is

(phoebe bridgers, boygenius: “revolution o”)

---

i am constantly listening to boygenius in prospect park
i am always myself when i am listening to boygenius

boygenius released a new album this year and i have been listening to them constantly.

---

and it feels good
to be known so well
i can't hide from you
like i hide from myself

i remember who I am
when i'm with you
your love is tough
your love is tried and true blue

(lucy dacus, boygenius: “true blue”)

---

this song is always haunting me.

i am dreaming of a friend with whom I can get these lyrics: “and it feels good to be known so well.”

i keep telling myself i don’t want lyrics: not my vibe.

but that’s not actually a position i have, and also it’s not the truth.

the truth is: the idea behind the tattoo rings false until I’ve found the love of my life.

---

i am my father's son
his shadow weighs a tonne
…..
i don't want to be
your man
your man
i don't want to be
your man
your man

(idles, “colossus”)

---

cover for “the record” by boygenius

---

constructing myself into someone else (2022-2023)

---

'cause if I didn't have a mean bone in my body
i'd find some other way to cause you pain
i won't bother telling you I'm sorry
for something that I'm gonna do again

when I could spend the weekend out on a bender
do I get callous or do I stay tender
which of these is worse
and which is better?
dying to myself virtually, a massacre
a character of somebody's invention
a martyr in another passion play
i guess i don't mind losing my conviction
if it's all relative fiction anyway

(julien baker, “relative fiction”)

---

emily, i'm sorry i just
make it up as i go along
and i can feel myself becoming
someone only you could want

(phoebe bridgers, boygenius: “emily i’m sorry”)

---

sometimes i feel like i must construct myself into someone only certain people could want.

sometimes i convince myself that this is only because i am anxious and i hate myself and i project that hate onto others. my self-hatred leaves me confused: i never know when my skepticism of others is valid, i never know when i can and can’t “trust my own gut.”

i want to follow my dad’s advice and trust my gut: so many of the people in your life do not know you.

i start going to more shows: haim, a few smaller acts.

and i realize that for some reason, even when i am at these shows, i cannot fully experience the art.

i am always repressing myself. there is some voice in my mind telling me, “you are a man; you are old; you cannot act this way.”

i want to shout back: i am not a man and i am not old:

i am a butterfly.

i am a goddess.

listening to phoebe makes me feel that way.

---

---

dreams to be a witch (2022-2024)

---

but if you seek me out,
i’m the coolest fucking bitch in town

(haley blais, “coolest fucking bitch in town”)

---

will you be a satanist with me?
mortgage off your soul to buy your dream
vacation home in florida
the collateral the devil's repossessing from me
trying to score some off-brand ecstasy

(julien baker, boygenius: “satanist”)

will you be an anarchist with me?
sleep in cars and kill the bourgeoisie
at least until you find out what a fake i am
spray-paint my initials on an atm
i'd burn my cash and smash my old tv

(phoebe bridgers, boygenius: “satanist”)

---

i like to talk about being a satanist.

i want to start a coven in the woods! but whom can i recruit???

i am often reading tarot alone, unless i am with certain friends like joe.

i read tarot cards for others sometimes:

they want a mechanical prediction. i am trying to help them look inward. they want me to tell them what will happen, exactly: they do not recognize that tarot is a magical tool for looking inward, at the true reality, but slowly i do realize that, and so i keep reading tarot alone, in the basement, by candlelight — i am turning into the witch i want to be! i am turning into the satanist of my dreams! i am a nihilist now, i think —

listening to boygenius makes me feel that way.

i stand beneath this tree at full blossom,
almost every day at the height of springtime,
listening to boygenius and phoebe,
i think: “i am this tree; this tree is me”

---

tarot draw: the high priestess (spring 2023)

---

my cherished buffy poster (spring 2023)

---

almost every day i draw the high priestess. sometimes i draw the hermit.

i am alone: i am afraid, but i am constantly immersed in art, constantly reading, constantly writing. i am struggling to see beneath the surface of things.

i know the surface is not real, but i do not yet know what lies beneath.

i only use my buffy the vampire slayer deck.

i have a massive buffy poster on my wall.

tara is the high priestess: for so many months i have felt this affinity for tara.

tara is a witch; tara is willow’s lover; tara’s family taught her that she is a demon.

i sink down into my girl music: this is the means by which i go beneath the surface.

i walk through prospect park while listening to an interview in which phoebe bridgers says she considers herself to be a hedge witch. i wonder: could i be a hedge witch?

---

tara is the high priestess (from my buffy deck)

---

boygenius and clairo in queens (june 2023)

---

clairo is on the stage and i am going pre-supernova

---

i am on the floor and i am here alone.

clairo is playing first and i am dancing in the rain. the drizzle is pouring down on me: everyone around me is dancing and singing: people look at me and smile.

something has been holding me back from embracing my obsession with clairo.

but nothing is now, and neither is anything when boygenius comes on.

i am here alone and i am on the fucking floor.

just six months later, i write the following of the experience:

never in my life, not even as an adolescent, have i had that kind of spiritual experience at a concert. wearing my phoebe bridgers astrology t-shirt and showing off my ghost tattoo (a reference to stranger in the alps), i was on the floor with the teens, hanging out in the back with the elder emos, and i was singing, dancing, screaming along to the lyrics. i sang, swayed, and smiled more at that show than at any show in my life. my phone stayed in my pocket on “do not disturb,” and i only looked at the screen three or four times. i didn’t take a single picture.

the performance absorbed me until i was falling in love with the same songs all over again. when lucy dacus was singing “true blue,” my soul disintegrated into little heart emojis that bounced around in my chest. and when phoebe bridgers played “revolution o” and “a letter to an old poet,” i was floating.

the energy, the joy, the love in the crowd for this beautiful music swept me into raptures. the sound of thousands of people singing along to the same songs i’d mostly listened to alone for so many hours made me feel like we were all there to praise, worship, commune. the music, sometimes with queer and satanic undertones, was giving us the kind of meaning that no organized religion ever could. true, at 16 i was baptized in the name of the father, the son, and the holy ghost, but boygenius was the holy trinity that made me know what it really means to be born again.

at that show, i adored music more than ever. i was connecting with art in a way i never had before; surges of happiness and love rushed through me relentlessly until i was screeching “I WANNA BE EMACIATED” with all the fans around me while the boys (that’s their group gender) performed “me & my dog.”

the boys always say they have a “group gender.”

and the boys always make me think, “gender is nothing.”

but i follow the thought no further: i cannot yet fully see myself, only cracks of light.

before i leave brooklyn, i often stand here listening to phoebe. then i move to michigan and after the winter the feelings are surging. i am blossoming: i cannot stop it. this is a mid-life reincarnation: there is nothing to be done.

an aesthetic calling: new merch (january 2024)

---

i order this shirt because i am desperate to wear it:
i want to feel like an angel:
i want to feel like a butterfly

---

i know what i am craving: new merch, right?

i order a pink shirt from the boygenius store:

“always an angel” with butterflies and stars fluttering on either side.

it’s so girly and i just love it. i want to wear it. i want people to see me.

but i am too afraid of people who might judge me.

i put my pink shirt in a drawer and i lose track of its location.

i want other things, badly: pink hair ties, purple hair clips, women’s shirts, phoebe’s custom charms, pink boygenius tank tops, purple olivia rodrigo shoes.

i am holding myself inside with everything i have.

mannequin (may 2024)

a few months after i hide my boygenius shirt, i go see mannequin pussy.

the music is aggressive and high energy.

mannequin pussy is all about defying authority and being authentic.

“fuck your parents,” screams the singer, marisa dabice.

“fuck the police,” shouts the bassist, colin regisford.

i’m wearing my purple beanie and my hair is just flowing in beautiful locks.

a girl looks at me and says, “oh wow he is pretty, maybe i should be talking to him.”

the girl beside her says, “yes i think you should be.”

“pretty” — the word activates something in me.

i am struggling to contain myself.

marisa dabice says those of us who came alone should feel good about ourselves! that means we like the shit we like and don’t need external validation!

mannequin pussy is playing the song “aching,”

and i feel the words chilling down my spine:

i was aching with desire
i felt bit of rush (i got to be)
i just wanted to feel human
i was starving for some touch
i got to, i got to, i got to, i got to be free

i wanna feel it from the top
so what?
i wanna feel it from the top
i got to, i got to, i got to, i got to be free

(mannequin pussy, “aching”)

all week long marisa’s voice blares in my mind:

i got to, i got to, i got to, i got to be free

my heart is thumping every second with marisa’s words.

above: cover of “charm”

“charm” by clairo (july 2024)

---

i’d rather be alone than a stranger

(clairo, “nomad”)

---

clairo’s new album is out and i can no longer contain myself.

i have found the exit from “smoke signals” now: i have discovered the path through the corridor. no longer do i feel the compulsive need to listen to that song every single day. i can feel the lavender springing up in my soul. i am burying my anger; i am burying my self-hatred; i am falling utterly in love with myself.

i do not need “smoke signals” to be in touch with myself.

i am letting myself come out.

i’m going to be known now.

i’m going to be seen.

i’m going to go supernova.

---

i don't even try
i don't have to think
with you, there's no pretending

you know me, you know me
and I just might know you too, know you
come to me ready

go dancing
(you make me wanna) try on feminine
(you make me wanna) go buy a new dress
(you make me wanna) slip off a new dress

(clairo, “juna”)

---

i start a substack at the beginning of august, “charm” playing constantly as i write.

my first paragraph:

when i am feeling angry, i like to stroke my butterflies with my fingertips and i like to feel how the pink one rests upon my chest. my butterflies are all over: dangling from the brightly colored bracelets on my wrists, jingling together as i walk down the street, fluttering freely while i run my hands through my hair.

to those who question me, i say:

“i'm a teenage girl in her 30s, and that is exactly how i am going to live.”

cover for “punisher” by phoebe bridgers

---

she could do anything she wants to
she could do whatever she wants to do

(phoebe bridgers, “graceland too”)

---

---

thank you so much for reading!

my choice at 16: stop masturbating or burn in hell (salvation chronicles 1)

venice: the emptiness of C and me; without V, no hope for me; inside the sky with E (memory collage 2009)

i was a supernova and he was a black hole: end of a friendship