I had notions of doing something more intellectual with this post but life is what it is and as such I have delayed my effortpost about The Indigenously Produced Unmagnified Gunsights of Cuba once again. I’m going to talk about music again this time.
Oceanlab was a side project of Above & Beyond and vocalist Justine Suissa, who was also the primary songwriter. Sirens of the Sea was their sole album and it is very, very important to me.
Ok so it’s EDM okay? To be precise it’s some particular style of vocal trance but its singer-songwriter vocal trance. Above & Beyond does this really cool thing where they tend to actually collaborate with their vocalists by getting them involved with the creative process, writing lyrics, production and all that. Now, the lyrics aren’t particularly complex and they won’t impress any pretentious nerds but they resonate with me and that’s what it’s about yeah? Oh yeah and they do acoustic versions sometimes??? which is wild??
I was lucky enough to discover this group twice, the first time was on some lonely night when I was a teen. I came across Clear Blue Water (a single) on Grooveshark (rip), checked out the rest of their discography, thought it was pretty, and proceeded to forget about it for a decade and a half.
I am almost embarrassed to admit just how much Sirens of the Sea affected me when I rediscovered it in the autumn of ‘23. It was like a hug, a cup of coffee, and a sit-down with the Jungian archetype of the kind of woman I admired the most and wanted so dearly to become. The kind of woman who carried empathy, knew failure, was capable of struggle, yet always embraced the love and joy of life. I can’t really articulate how, but this album helped me lay down my grieving for the years I spent otherwise.
My favorite track is “On a Good Day”, and I consider it to be the theme song of my post-transition life. I just cried listening to it, like actually right now, as I write this I still got a little bit of tears drying on my cheek. “If I Could Fly” is a total bop and they did something to the rhythms towards the end of that one and it does really good shit to my brain. “Miracle” is about climate change, it slaughters me HARD because it came out over two decades ago and nothing has changed.
Under this spoiler there are the lyrics of “On a Good Day” because I thought I should include them.
a little bit lost and
a little bit lonely
little bit cold here
a little bit of fear
but I hold on and I feel strong
and I know that I can
I’m getting used to it
lit the fuse to it
like to know who I am
I’ve been talking to myself forever
and how I wish I knew me better
still sitting on a shelf and never
never seen the sun shine brighter
and it feels like me on a good day
I’m a little bit hemmed in
a little bit isolated
a little bit hopeful
a little bit calm
but I hold on and I feel strong
and I know that I can
I’m getting used to it
lit the fuse to it
like to know who I am
I’ve been talking to myself forever,
and how I wish I knew me better,
still sitting on a shelf and never
never seen the sun shine brighter
and it feels like me
on a good day
This is the end of this post. Take care of yourselves. Tomorrow needs you, as does the next day, and every day after.
Join our public Matrix server!
https://rentry.co/tracha#tracha-rooms
As a reminder, please do not discuss current struggle sessions in the mega. We want this to be a little oasis for all of us and the best way to do that is not to feed into existing conflict on the site.
Also, be sure to properly give content warnings and put sensitive subjects behind proper spoiler tags. It’s for the mental health of not just your comrades, but yourself as well.
Here is a screenshot of where to find the spoiler button.
spoiler
i wish i could be more openly masc-leaning but there is a Lot of transphobia in my home environment
also have been thinking of a name + pronoun change (he/they) and while many of my friends are extremely supportive if not trans themselves its still scary !
im also super indecisive about the name LOLhow did you guys land on a name? ive tried baby name websites but nothing has really clicked so far
My first name is a twist on my childhood nickname so I suppose I cheated a bit, but my middle name? I chose it from pop culture instead of any baby name book. It’s James, queer icon from the Pokemon anime and my favorite character in the whole series. Maybe looking around at pop culture things you’re interested in would help? Also you can choose something you just think is cool and just call yourself by it for awhile and see if you jell with it or not.
I wanted no middle name but they didn’t let me. So I picked one of the baby girl names I liked when I had considered children with my ex, but we agreed it would actually be kinda unfair to saddle anyone with it (think like Chastity lol)
I ended up picking what I would have had if I’d been born a cis girl
But I actually looked through baby name meaning websites and thought I found a cool one, also I went to high-school with a girl with that name and I thought she was very strong. Anyway it turned out to be a common-ish name when I was born and I had reasons I liked it, so that’s what I picked!
Lots of trans people go through multiple names. You don’t have to get it perfect or like the one you pick in one go.
I jumped around a lot from name to name. Eventually i found a word root/stem that i really liked and and was meaningful for me, and added an ending that to me sounded feminine. It took me like 3 months of considering the stem and endings together.
I have like 15 names and I started using one of them bc that’s what I named my d&d character (also an elf)
Such as : names from folklore/mythology, spices, ancestry, names that arent usually considered “names” (famously I can think of Blue Ivy but she’s called Blue,) names that invoke nature or aspects of it (including space / stars)