An Abbreviated Edition
In which I simply need to make a bad post to clear the way for better posts to come
This edition of my newsletter will not contain the usual essay that makes up the main body of the post. For this, I apologize. I have been in the grip of a heavy depression for some months now (predating the creation of Trauma Angel, if I’m being honest) and over the holidays and into the new year, it’s grown into something too large to set aside. I stare at the screen and all my thoughts veer into artless negativity. I’ve always thought that it’s important to convey myself honestly, but to do so without a constructive purpose only feeds my own mental illness. Like many people with formally diagnosed depression, I find it more of a weight and a blur than a direct feeling of sadness. I do find myself frequently sad or frustrated, but that’s usually a direct response to how much of my agency and inertia is lost to this force that visits me with no apparent reason or known cure. We just sit with each other until something changes. Sometimes it’s a couple days. Sometimes it’s a couple months. I think in my twenties I spent a couple consecutive years in a standstill with these feelings.
I am, by nature, a tidy person who enjoys routine and enjoys small acts of care for myself and my living space. When my depression visits I lose the ability to keep normal hours and daily tasks such as doing dishes or brushing my teeth become challenging obstacles, which leave me drained once they’re behind me. Typing it into such a public forum makes it seem pathetic. Conventional wisdom is to “just keep going,” which I do often follow, but when my entire mind becomes an empty space, it’s hard to define forward motion or progress. Sometimes I do not know if the emptiness is the depression that visits me or if it is what I see when I examine my truest self after a lifetime of defining my experience and “self” through outside things which I elevate. It is easy for me to feel as though I am mostly a conduit for others’ work, as I’ve lived most of my life in a field adjacent to the arts but not actually contributing my own art to the world. Sometimes I wonder if my admiration for others is all I have, and that I am just a small undefined thing that props up others instead of taking its own shape. Not quite a coattail rider, but not exactly a trailblazing force of my own artistic worth.
I do remember, at times, that I am usually a decent person whose values are rooted in compassion, liberation, and equality. Not just the cute memeable versions of these concepts, but actual difficult and humbling values. I have made my own life more challenging many times over the years because I have refused to let myself “get ahead” in the world when it means compromising the things that matter most to me. It is a small comfort when one is quite poor and relatively lonely or lacking in self-esteem, but integrity and a sense of direction in the world can help at times.
I am also fortunate enough that the negativity I do hold for myself prevents me from fully neglecting my place in the world. The pets in my house will never want for food, drink, or affection even if I will regularly skip meals and ignore my own health when I’m in the lowest places. When I show up to my job, I am the most professional and charismatic version of myself that I can be, which is rather important working in the service industry. I do know that this will eventually subside and I will once again be able to take the many beautiful and interesting ideas out from my head and turn them into writing, but today I just need to prove to myself that I can assemble the structure of this newsletter and publish it for you all. Knowing that I did this will serve as the springboard to my next post, which will contain a proper essay on the intersection of music and the human experience of it, I should hope.
I am publishing this all, raw and ill-formed as it may be, as an acknowledgment of my accountability and to accurately document the state of things. Sometimes the discomfort of knowing I’ve done a job I’m not proud of is enough to snap me back into form. And, as I said, maybe just seeing that I did this anyway will help me to get back to a routine. It doesn’t push away my largest inner obstacles, but it forces me to continue on in spite of them. I also hope that, on some level, Trauma Angel continues to grow as a more author-forward writing experience than my past efforts as someone who wrote solely about music. We live in the age of the influencer. The YouTuber. The TikTok celebrity. I am none of these things, but I long for connection the same as anyone else. Our world is more digital than ever and I am about as isolated as I’ve ever been. So my once-detached digital existence is now becoming a place where I try to bring human warmth. The internet’s approximations of connection have never felt less genuine to me than they do now. Perhaps this is my small appeal for us to just be ourselves in whatever way we need to be on here. I’m not much for putting up a front anyway. I can only ever be me, ugly and honest and as vulnerable as I am. Thank you for being here.
RECENT JOYS
LISTENING
Meshuggah- Catch Thirtythree
Meshuggah is a band I’ve known about and been listening to for nearly a quarter of a century, yet I’ve found myself entirely disinterested in following their career or recorded output for the majority of that time. Why? Because I’d always enjoyed them well enough, but seldom listened to a full album at a time. When Catch Thirtythree landed, I knew I’d found something special that would likely remain unmatched. Maybe I’m wrong. It’s hard to say, since I admit that I’ve not heard anything since then. Simply put, I loved the longform approach they took here. So many of the little strands of ideas that would appear briefly in another song became fully fleshed out ambient sections. The churning mechanical nature of their harsher moments was only made more poignant by the freeness and looseness of the structure, knowing these “songs” were just sections of a larger single piece. It felt like being stalked by something alien. It felt peaceful and ominous all at once. I cannot imagine they’ve released anything awful since then, but it’s hard for me to engage with Meshuggah as a song-band when I see just how magnificent it is when they’re allowed to blossom and explore at great length. I revisited this album about a month ago for the first time in years and it felt even more incredible than when I was 17 and pretending I understood what the band was doing. Now I truly know how little I understand, and it’s wonderful.
David Bowie’s entire catalogue
Lately I find myself increasingly interested in context. This isn’t exclusive to the arts, but as my life is heavily focused on those, context in art is a priority to me. On January 8th, David Bowie would’ve been 78. I decided to spend a couple days listening to his entire body of work, at least in the sense of full studio albums. His decades-long arc from young folk musician to art-rock legend had plenty of detours along the way, but in listening sequentially it became clearer how Bowie’s greatest strength was his passion for music and a refusal to close himself off to new experiences. This might become part of a longer essay one day, as I’m just enchanted by how many different people he was, not because there was something uniquely adaptive about David Bowie as a person, but because he was willing to follow his curiosity even if it led him to places he was not as well experienced.
Wordless music
As I’ve been quite depressed, I’ve spent a lot of time wanting “sound” but not feeling so much in the mood for songs to sing along to. I’ve been less in the mood for rock music or pop music or anything that comes and goes in just a couple minutes. I had considered saying I’ve been listening to “instrumental music” or “ambient music” but neither of those is specifically where I’ve been spending my time. I’ve listened extensively to the EPs Ulver released in the early ‘00s, around the time of their landmark Perdition City. While there’s a couple songs among them with actual words, the wordless vocalizations are what I’m drawn to the most. It’s far too busy and wandering to be ambient, and when I think of “instrumental music,” perhaps as a function of being a millennial who grew up with post-rock, I often think of bands like Pelican or Explosions in the Sky before I think of cold soundscapes in the vein of Coil or FSOL. As with my thoughts on Bowie’s catalogue, there may be a longer piece of writing on some of these albums soon, as it’s interesting to me as someone who grew up with a heavy focus on rock music and its offshoots.
PLAYING
Balatro (Steam)
I have never had an interest in poker. I used to play Solitaire on my parents’ computer in like 1993 just as something cool to do because I was a bored kid and it kept me occupied while adults did adult things. Otherwise, standard playing cards have never held my interest. Something about Balatro compels me. It’s rooted in poker, but it has many odd modifiers you can unlock as you go that make it a healthy balance of strategy and luck. It ends up using poker as a format rather than an end goal, with the game feeling more like a standard deckbuilding roguelike. I don’t think I have the bug the way some people do and I can’t even say if it’s necessarily fun for me, but I do find it fascinating and I like the challenges it provides. I am notoriously bad at math and spend a lot of time opening the calculator in my phone to see which hand may play out better for me. I could try to explain the mechanics or appeal, but I’d do poorly anyway and the most rabid fans online seem to insist that the experience of discovery is best left to new players, so I’ll spoil as little as I can.
Mirror’s Edge & Mirror’s Edge Catalyst (Steam)
I played the first Mirror’s Edge in 2010 or 2011. It made me think for about three months that I should consider taking up parkour. Fortunately, I was too busy trying not to die in the Floridian heat around that time and never took up any serious form of exercise. The fast-paced gameplay and minimalist art style were endearing to me and I was always sad that I couldn’t find any games like it. When the sequel landed in 2016, I was relatively checked out from the world of video games and didn’t know it existed. About two months ago I learned of it, and I finally sat down to play both back to back. I didn’t account for the fact that my motion sickness is far more of a liability these days than it used to be, but I made it through both games over the course of a few weeks by playing in hour-long bursts. While the second game’s more open-world approach makes it overwhelming at first, I was delighted at how well the gameplay scaled to the environment and how lovingly designed each area was. The growth is organic and while the game rewards fast motion, it’s also filled with so many places that are fun to just stop and explore slowly. Pair that with a story rooted in capitalism and surveillance business overtaking government, and it felt oddly appropriate to sit with it right now (or really any time in post-9/11 America but increasingly so with each passing year). I don’t imagine I’ll revisit them too soon, for the sake of my nausea, but I had a lot of fun letting both games unfold before me and taking them in at a more deliberate pace.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Switch)
My partner got me the newest Legend of Zelda game for the holidays and while I’ve just barely begun playing, I’m already sure I’ll grow to love it dearly. In this game, you play as Princess Zelda herself and mostly use summoned monsters and items to solve puzzles instead of playing through the game with sword in hand and charging ahead in a combat-focused world. I’m far less skilled with puzzles than I am with just blindly running around slashing at things with a sword, but in true Zelda fashion the game provides many ways for even the most clueless players to accidentally find their way forward. The art direction is far cuter than the last few games, and there’s a real charm to every interaction. While this clearly is more niche and less massive than a game like Breath of the Wild, it’s really hitting a nice spot for me already as someone who grew up with A Link to the Past as my introduction to the series.
EATING
Discounted Christmas Candies
Somehow a week into January, tucked into a corner beneath some Valentine’s themed chocolates, I found a display of Reese’s products selling for 75% off their standard price simply because they were wrapped in red and green foil. There is a strong likelihood that I need a harsh, cold turkey stop to my Reese’s consumption, but with a price this good I really had to buy a couple bags and throw them in my freezer so that I’d have a few sweet treats on hand in case of emergency, or even just a daily craving.
I Found A New Bodega
This is more of a broad concept than a specific food item, but going to a new store and finding new foods is such a small but fun thing for me. I can’t name the bodega lest I broadcast my address to the whole internet, but I found a bodega just a block from my apartment that I’d previously overlooked and it is stocked with so many interesting foods that I’ve never had. It’s not at all a Korean store, but they have a large number of Korean products and I know almost nothing about Korean food, so I like to go in and just glance at things to satisfy my curiosity. Buldak noodles are a rather universal and familiar treat at this point, but they’ve also got about four varieties of tteokbokki, which I’m doing my best to avoid purchasing for now. I’ve never had the real deal and I feel like my first experience probably shouldn’t be from a package that I purchase and make for myself at home. They’ve also got more flavors of international chip than I’m used to seeing outside of specialty markets, so I’m in heaven just walking the aisles. I’d like to imagine that even if I were wealthy and had the whole world at my fingertips, I’d still take great joy in small excitements like these.
IN CLOSING
Today’s newsletter is considerably shorter than others because I simply can’t think of much to say about anything outside of my head right now. I hope you will understand. In a couple weeks, more or less, I will return with a newsletter that far more closely resembles the essays and “magazine” style format I’ve sought to build. In the meantime, I am finalizing a playlist and short piece of writing for the folks who’ve so graciously elected to pay to support Trauma Angel. It’s not there to gatekeep anything interesting or fun from the world at large, but rather to thank folks who’ve gone above and beyond to help me keep this project in motion. Thanks for being here.
If you’re waiting for a “best of the year” type post, that’ll be two posts from now. I could lazily throw together a listicle in a day or two, but we all know I’m too flowery to do that and I don’t want to publish my list and think “oh shit, I left out this vital record” five days later. I mean, I’ll probably do that anyway, but by starting now and giving myself a full month to assemble my lists and thoughts, it’s less likely that I’ll look back with great regret and more likely that I’ll just say too much for anyone to read it from start to finish. That’s a problem I can live with. Happy new year to all. See you with something positive and art-forward in the near future.