I just finished reading another book, nestled comfortably on the couch at home, occasionally looking up to watch as my ming aralia gets ruffled by the pivoting floor fan circulating air throughout my living room. This time it was Alexis Hall’s Boyfriend Material, a queer romance novel that’s too British for its own good and that pings that slow burn part of my brain that I cultivated by reading too much Harry Potter fanfiction when I was a teenager.
At the same time, I had my headphones on and was listening to music. I have a Spotify playlist that I associate with writing — not music, just words — and I stopped on one particularly song: Here (In Your Arms), by Hellogoodbye. I remember loving that song in high school, in the time between when my first relationship had disastrously imploded and I had been dragged, kicking and screaming, from the safety of the closet. It still makes me feel that first heartache in waves — first little torrents that tickle my ankles with the chill of the Pacific and then tsunami upon tsunami — and I can always rely on it immersing me in those feelings when I was young and still figuring myself out.
Spotify is kind of magical. Yeah, sure, they’ve made it impossible for musicians to collect any reasonable residuals from recordings of our works, but there’s one feature, Enhance, that takes an existing collection of songs and suggests similar songs. That algorithm is powerful, and today it kept suggesting banger after banger, each one reinforcing the feeling of reading Boyfriend Material and reliving the nostalgia I have for an earlier, less complicated version of me.
And, for the first time in years, my brain didn’t just immediately start analyzing the music. I got to enjoy songs I’d never heard before mixed in with very familiar songs without having to be an active listener as part of the work of being a professional composer. It was another breath of fresh air.
For composers, there is a danger of letting music become only work. You can lose the joy in listening to it. It happens to a lot of us. And for a long time, I did lose that joy. But, somehow, miraculously, I am finding a surprising enjoyment of music in that same place in which I enjoy reading and writing queer stories.
I’ve neglected my safe spaces for too long. Somewhere in all the degrees and commissions and consortiums and projects and goals, I forgot about the safe place in which I can thrive. What a cruelty I have inflicted upon myself. I am so lucky to be able to reclaim this part of me.
I have two more unread queer novels before I have to go back to my local queer-owned-and-operated romance bookstore for more.
As for listening music? Adventure is out there.