Blank Screen

Before I dive in, it's important for me to acknowledge that this was originally written when I was going through it. If suicide or the thought patterns that go into suicidal ideation are triggering to you, please proceed with caution.

 

On that note, the US government is fucked up and wants to take away funding from the National Suicide Hotline’s LGBTQ+ Youth Specialized Services. We can only imagine the repercussions of this decision. It only furthers the incoherent narrative that non-cisgender people aren't valid and worthy of equality and love. Reach out to your LGBTQ+ friends in these times. Your quick “hi, I’m think of you” might be the little thing they need to get through their day.

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LCD Soundsystem will be the only band ever to upstage my favorite band of all time (at least in my 18 years of life at that time). I had the privilege of listening to their swooping soundscapes under a crystal disco ball that swirled across a grass field in Louisville, Kentucky in 2007 when they were the opener for Arcade Fire. I loved the band before I saw them live - I felt a deep layer of connection after. 

 

Black Screen was a song that came well after this night in Louisville. My obsession started in watching the credits of one of the most viscerally deep limited series tv shows of my futile existence, the HBO series, Sharp Objects. Never have I related more to a main character in my life. Amy Adams plays a writer who is commissioned to write a piece on a series of murders in her hometown. Beyond the ephemeral part of her being a writer, she’s deeply depressed, has patterns of self-sabotage both in her abuse of substances and self harm, and she genuinely struggles to find genuine connection to the people she feels should love her most. She leans into the darkest parts of herself in an effort to feel something when everyone and everything around her either abandons her or acts in ways that triggers her protective patterns related to childhood trauma.

 

Black Screen doesn’t have ethereally deep lyrics. It doesn’t try to make a point in the chaos of existence. It simply makes commentary towards the truths we face in this modern day: that people are inundated with information and as a result they wait in anticipation to their devices to know what to expect from the world and their others to keep moving forward. For those of us that are deep feelers, in this type of world the only way we know how to exist is to shove our hands in our pockets and pretend like nothing really matters as much as we feel it should. We learn to give up on our expectations that the people closest to us could possibly notice we aren’t okay. To think any differently feels like suicide.

 

These are my hard truths. Something about the ever-present bass line in Black Screen takes me to a headspace that sits between the peace in knowing that I’m not the only person who feels misunderstood but also the pain in knowing I feel very lonely when I have to navigate through the darkest corners of my soul. For me, the only way through my darkest nights is leaning into my darkest thoughts - Because only there do I have a chance seeing the light. 

 

I don’t always find the light. But perhaps living in the darkness, in expecting nothing from my blank screens… in expecting nothing from anyone - I can find the little bit of hope left in me to make this seemingly pointless life worth living.