freedom (90)

There’s this lyric on Street Rat by Blondshell, where she sings: “I don’t really wanna leave this to God, maybe that’s part of the problem.” That’s my problem. I don’t trust anything other than me. I don’t like leaving things, because as we’ve observed the world is full of fools, and I can’t leave it to them. And you know it’s my choice to take an active role in our survival against existential threat. That’s my choice I guess, and I am willing the consequences upon myself. And in my diminished capacity in which I am hanging on by a thread, I seem to have lost the ability to relate to anyone who isn’t as traumatized as me by the events of the last seven months. In these shitty and shittier days then, I’ll switch gears…

Music saved my life. Every time that is true. And I don’t mean that in the way that people do when they’re talking about how they had a come to Dave Matthews moment during their adolescence (mine was Incubus, actually). I mean that when the panic attack refuses to leave the body, if I remember that I can put on a song then that can change anything. Someone messaged me the other day (I think a reader here, forgive me I am inundated with messages) and said that the last seven months has felt like living inside a panic attack. I felt that. Whoever you are thank you. You hit the rusty nail on my ready-to-explode head.

I may not be good for much these days but I know how to play a record. I know what song to play at what time. I should have been one of those music supervisors who dictates which Snow Patrol/Coldplay song plays during whichever key character’s tragic death/wedding/awakening from a coma. I think that 2000s band The Fray and perhaps also Gavin DeGraw only existed for this purpose. The beauty about losing more than you could fathom is that you don’t give a shit any more about what people know. So I’ll tell you a secret. Every time I have been unable to breathe in the last few months, I’ve put George Michael’s Freedom ‘90 on a loop, and I have strutted around wherever it may be with that drum pattern in my cans until I feel empowered to be me again. Freedom ‘90 has pulled me out of puddles of tears and desperation time and again. Try it next time. I promise it’s better than Xanax or a stiff drink.

I think George Michael has got me through more than I would ever have anticipated in my 37 years. He is a tragic character, who ultimately succumbed to his demons, but he dedicated his life to transmitting the jagged edges of his soul onto songs that are at once uplifting, bloody and unifying. He bridged so many gaps, but in the end couldn’t make it to the other side himself. His legacy is to encourage people to be exactly who they are, no compromise, and to entertain people exquisitely while doing it.

A couple of months ago I found this video of George Michael performing Freedom ‘90 in 1991. It’s completely delicious, and I insist that you take five minutes out of whatever you’re doing to just enjoy it:

George promises not to let everyone down while insisting that “the sound” is “the one good thing that I’ve got”. Well I know how he feels, because I too wonder if I have anything good to give beyond this, but no. No George, you’re wrong. This guy has more than just good songs. He has everything. George makes confidence look like a breeze. He looks like the coolest person in a room full of outstanding performers who are jamming out of their own skin, and he leads them with seamless humility.

I have always said that there is no surer hit in music than when you’re watching someone do what they love to do well. Even the way he bobs his head is superior. Simple, direct, infectious. How can’t you feel saved? He sings every word with celebration despite confessing that he’s ripping up the rule book and starting again from scratch. “Sometimes the clothes do not make the man,” he cries, recounting the first decade of his career in Wham! as a teenage sensation, and how far his reality is from the man everyone fell in love with and propelled to extraordinary success (“well it looks like the road to heaven, but it feels like the road to hell”). Trapped in the purgatory of having to perform as someone he wasn’t, George tore it all apart, and promised to show the world who he was: independent, unafraid, serious, and 100% gay. And he became more successful than he ever was before.

The essence of George Michael’s version of what he defines as “freedom” is in the first line of the pre-chorus: “All we have to do now is take these lies and make them true somehow.” He’s right. Freedom is not about denying the past, but making the past make sense in the present. I’ve been thinking about that so much. You can’t change what’s been, and you can’t be tethered by it either. You have to take stock, and seek an upgrade. We can’t lie trapped in the version of ourselves that we used to be. This has changed us, fundamentally, and the veil of untruths that we lived in before October 7 to make sense of our assimilated lives can no longer work for us while the people around us show us who they really are.

The joy George is experiencing in this performance comes from someone who is proud of that evolution. He doesn’t give a monkey’s that other people haven’t woken up yet. He knows who he wants to be now. That’s how I feel about this. I feel more in tune with who I’m supposed to be than ever, and as terrifying as it is to be in that sort of transition, it’s also comforting to be so awake to your reality, and so aware of who understands that reality and who is too removed to see.

Last week I shared a playlist of music with you all, and I decided to do it again. There is always so much to be gleaned in art, especially now. I saw the cover of the new and superlative St Vincent record All Born Screaming in which she’s bent over and on fire (above), and thought - yup, she gets it. I’ll let you pick over them yourselves. Some notes: I don’t endorse Jack White, because he’s a maniac, but the breakdown that occurs in the final third of this song is the one upshot of giving psychopaths a foot in the door. I would also like to add a few words about the song Tenderness by General Public, which I first fell in love with on the closing credits of the 1995 film Clueless. Again, you cannot listen to Tenderness and feel sorry for yourself, no matter the amount of antisemitic bullshit you’ve been exposed to today. Even if General Public themselves are flaming Nazis, and I doubt they are, I will forever need this song. I can’t do life without those cascading drums.

Recently I cried for the first time to a Dua Lipa song, here included (yes I know she’s been quite antisemitic in the past but we all get to choose one antisemite, and she’s extremely hot and she’s my antisemite, so please allow it). I also cried for the first time at a Beyonce song, also included:

Here's to hoping I'll fall fast asleep tonight
And I'll just need to get through this
Born in the darkness, who brings the light?
And I just, I need to get through this
Or just get used to it

Yeah how couldn’t that make me weep? We get used to it.