When I think of the month May and music I think of Justin Timberlake’s “interesting pronunciation of the word me” which sounds like he said “It’s gonna be may.”
Have I mentioned I unironically like boy band era Justin Timberlake? N-sync was something special. Not to mention Backstreet Boys, Westlife and arguably the best boyband: Blink182.
But we’re not here today to talk about boy bands.
I’ve added a few types of music to this month’s playlist, and it’s quite short. As some of you might have read in my update post a while back, I’ve been dealing with some health issues. I’ll talk about that a bit more at the end of this post, but let’s do the music first.
I’ve added a lot of somewhat indie music to this playlist. I don’t know if Lil Nas X is still considered indie with how extremely popular he is, but it’s definitely a more interesting style than a lot of mainstream music. I knew about Montero already, including the music video and the controversies it caused. I just think the scene of his belly being licked by the weird demon is kind of uncomfortable, but besides that it looks amazing aesthetically.
I also found the song build a bitch to be one of the highlights of this month. I found the video through Valkyrae’s behind the scenes vlog. She’s one of the women in the video and she does an amazing job. It was also really funny to hear Bretman yell run bitch, run. At the end. It’s like music and the streamers I watch coming together. It’s a crossover episode.
Lastly in this category is the song Pom Pom by Lilypichu. I just love her voice. It’s so soothing. That is all.
For Japanese music I’ve only added two songs. I’ve added One Ok Rock’s song Renegades which was co-written by Ed Sheeran. I think Ed is a contender for most talented musician of this generation, and One Ok Rock made an awesome song out of it.
The second one is Everybody, Everybody, which functions as the opening song to the second season of how not to summon a demon lord. This anime isn’t particularly interesting but it is kind of funny in places, and I just think the opening theme to it is so upbeat that I had to include it.
Then let’s get to more mainstream music. I added some Bruno Mars songs that I knew about before, but hadn’t really added. Both are great songs and I highly recommend them. And then I added two songs from the latest Twenty One Pilots album. Choker and Shy Away both feel a lot more mellow and poppy compared to some of their other music that I’m familiar with. I love their songs, but I’m not a hardcore fan that knows a lot about them. I mainly listened to the more mainstream songs they had. Regardless, both of these songs feel very nostalgic and the lyrics of Choker hit quite close to home at times.
Like a little splinter buried in your skin,
Someone else can carve it out, but when you’ve got the pin.
It hurts a little less and you can even push it further in,
When your body’s screaming out, trust your mind’s listening.
These lyrics really remind me of a line in the song Heavy by Linkin Park and Kiiara. It goes:
I don’t like my mind right now, stacking up problems that are so unnecessary.
Wishing I could slow things down, trying to let go but there’s comfort in the panic.
I feel like I strongly interpret both of these passages to be about the comfort in controlled sadness. It’s scary to actively try to improve when you’re in a mentally tough situation. Sure, you want to feel better, but the idea of giving over that control to someone or something else can be terrifying. As long as you’re in control of the sadness there’s a little bit of comfort in that. It hurts a little less and you can even push it further in. But what do I know?
And that brings us to the more personal part of this post. I considered doing a separate post for this, but it felt like a bit of overkill. I have been dealing with a bunch of health issues lately. One of which has turned out to be keratoconus. This is an eye disease that I’m quite familiar with since my little brother also has it (albeit in a way more advanced form). To summarize it, your cornea is misshapen in a way that normal glasses or lenses can’t fix. This can get worse over time and turn into blindness in certain scenarios. Fortunately for me, it seems to only be in my right eye so far, and not in a super advanced state. Glasses make me able to see more or less fine, and there are options if it gets worse. Having said that, it’s still kind of scary that I have this and it could get worse over time.
If that wasn’t stressful enough, there’s something wrong with my groin. Get all the childish jokes out of the way, I’ve heard them all already. Bottom line is that I’ve gone to a few professionals already and we’re still not really sure what it is. The current idea is a muscle issue near the top of my leg, but the exercises for that don’t seem to be helping too much yet. I’m still trying to get it looked at some more (luckily health care is mostly fine in my country, although I’m not covered for physical therapy so that sucks). But this has caused me a ton of stress and several sleepless nights due to pain. It seems to be a little bit better now, but that could also be the mountains of painkillers I’m taking (mostly paracetamol, so nothing serious). This has caused me to write a lot less, and I finally gave up on writing 1000 words a day. I took an entire week off in which I didn’t write at all. Assuming I keep feeling better like I have, I can definitely get back on track. You can at the very least expect three posts a week for the next two weeks, and hopefully one of those is a new chapter.
Thank you all for your patience and it makes me really happy that there’s a regular stream of viewers now. Thanks <3.
Opal Kaharis 