one identity crisis at a time, baby

The “It” I’m Getting Through right now is, y’know, our general cultural and political landscape? (See: may i offer you a bop in these trying times?)

But I am without a doubt always and forever getting through something, hence playlists like portrait of an existential crisis and if you need me i’ll be dissociating to doo-wop and frankie say relax and sick of dating apps, just gonna pygmalion myself a boyfriend, and… well, probably more, but those are the ones I made with such-or-other state of ennui in mind.

My latest repeats and recommendations, though, are as follows:

(And needless to say—but, baby, I’m sayin’ it anyway!—all of the following lyrics are Not Mine, don’t sue me, I have twelve dollars and a cherry Pepsi to my name, what could you possibly gain from legal action other than what’s left of my DIGNITY, and whatever that’s worth—

(Anyway. Enjoy, groove, “be excellent to each other and party on, dudes,” etc.)

nightshift

by: bruce springsteen (cover), original by the commodores

This wouldn’t be a Maj list of anything if Bruce Springsteen didn’t make an appearance, so here he is to open the show.

I remember the first time I heard this cover, and I just thought, “Jesus, he sounds good.” I remember hearing it live, and it sounded just as good then too (better, even, if you account for the religious experience of it all). Thus is one of the many magics of Springsteen—he’s just goddamn good, no autotune about it.

There’s something in those opening chords notes whatevers (I’m not a music theorist!) that settles in me, that makes me settle. It’s an instant balm, and the lyrics take that deeper.

Even though the song was written about, specifically, Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson, their contributions and legacy, and their friends’ grief over their passing, that overarching theme of hope resonates:

Gonna miss your sweet voice / That soulful noise / On the nightshift / We all remember you / Ooh, your songs are comin’ through

and

Gonna be a long night / It’s gonna be all right on the nightshift / You found another home / I know you’re not alone / On the nightshift

and

At the end of a long day / It’s gonna be okay

Nobody’s gotta go it alone, we all have something to give, we all have something in us that lasts. And I really do feel like it’s gonna be okay, every time I listen to this one.

beloved

by: ben barnes

I don’t know who asked Ben Barnes to write, “Your heart is beating to match mine / But I want who you already are,” but somebody’s paying for the consequences of that emotional punch and it’s not gonna be me (or, incidentally, my health insurance, which I’m pretty sure is mostly a great American scam anyway, but now is not the time for that kind-of conspiracy theory, so—)

That’s some of the most romantic shit I’ve ever heard, I legitimately think it’s making me crazy. I’m going to start biting people.

(Which I don’t say to be indelicate—”crazy,” I mean, the biting people thing is just standard hyperbole, like when you see a really good-looking person but instead of saying they’re good-looking you say, “I’d let them hit me with a Mack truck” because you’re a poet—but anyway—when we have words like bonkers and bananas at our disposal, insensitivities from the course of not-great mental health history like “crazy” just ain’t it. But! Regrettably, neither bonkers nor bananas appropriately convey what those lyrics do to my brain chemistry with every rewind and repeat.)

“I know you’re running on instinct” and “Fighting to be seen, be felt, be heard” and “I know your mind’s working overtime”—like, the call is coming from inside my therapy sessions.

There’s something here about loving your partner, your person, your people, through the worst ways they feel about themselves. I am absolutely not a proponent of the whole “You can’t love anyone until you love yourself” schtick, and this song, to me, speaks to the antithesis of that:

This song is “I’m going to love you so loud that you can’t hear anything else. I’m going to love you so much that you won’t be able to believe anybody couldn’t. I’m going to love you because I do, and I’m going to make you love yourself too.”

I’m a romantic, what’re ya gonna do. [shrug emoji]

If you wait around until you’re lovable by some made-up standards, to some imaginary person, you’ll miss the real people who already love you. You just have to let them.

(…okay, so maybe I’ll take that to my therapy sessions, too. Somebody needs to hold me accountable.)

song to myself

by: picture this

If the “I wish / I had a brain that was nice to me” doesn’t get you, we are living, just, fundamentally different lives. What’s the neurotypical side of the fence lookin’ like? Alex, what is ’emotional stability’?

The entire chorus—fuck it, the entire song—is just, like, this rallying cry against your own depression: you get out of it for you, because you’re enough.

Don’t let yourself down
Make sure that sad little kid back then would be proud

and

You know you started all this, so finish it out
Don’t even care if anyone’s listening now

Something in me cracks open, every time, and it kind of… I don’t know? It’s totally nuts, it’s like I break apart and it’s lightning (I swear I’m not high right now, but you know how there’s just music that makes you feel like that, sometimes? I know you know).

I think those positivity sentiments get bandied about a lot now, and I think that’s a good thing, but from my own depressive episode perspective, I get kind of numb to it too. “You’re enough” and all its variations don’t do anything for me when that sick part of my brain’s convinced me I’m not.

But that’s the thing about music, is that it makes you really hear the things people try to tell you, when the telling goes flying over your head. You feel it, in a song; and you Get It, and it makes you crack open and spill your light all over the place so you know it’s been inside you this whole time, even when you’ve felt empty.

But you’re not empty—that’s how this song makes me feel, like I’ve got an endless well of light inside me, so I can break apart as many times as I need to and it’ll still be there.

reasons to stay alive

by: emily kinney

I love the simplicity of this song; there’s no grand gestures or sweeping statements about how it gets better, or how you have so much to live for—sometimes your reasons to stay alive are, simply put, just because.

I think that’s what gets you through, more than anything else, because life on the whole isn’t about grand gestures and sweeping statements: It just is, and the best thing you can do is feel it.

If you find yourself crying at the start of the day
You gotta touch one toe to the cold wood floor
You gotta try a few steps though your legs are sore

There’s something visceral, in that. The way we get through our various mental health crises is different for everyone, but for me? My suicidal ideation doesn’t stop for sunsets or the next family party or my unrealized ambitions—but it fades every time I tell myself, “Okay, you’ve gotta get up now” and I actually do it, out of bed and brush my teeth and finally eat something substantial after a week or so of picking at Fruit-by-the-Foot and tortilla chips and leftovers that don’t taste like anything anymore.

This song captures the everyday trudge through depression better than anything else I’ve ever heard. And it’s an incredible, heart-mending kind of validation.

Sometimes things suck. And you gotta get through it anyway, because you just do. That’s it! Because You Do. Because you have a caffeine headache and you need to wash your hair, and when you take care of those things everything else doesn’t feel so heavy anymore.

When you start picking up all the little things that are good, you don’t have room to carry just the bad things; you have to put some of those down. You’re allowed to put them down. And you’re allowed to take every little good thing that comes your way.

damage gets done

by: hozier + brandi carlile

This song does in fact fuck me up to the same tune as Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”—there’s something reminiscent about it, something about being young and knowing nothing but somehow you know everything, most notably that you know nothing, and so the cycle goes, on and on.

But you’re young, and you try to figure it out along the way—and then it turns out you don’t know all that much more when you’re older, either, except that it wasn’t your fault.

Wish I’d known it was just our turn (we just got by)
Being blamed for a world we had no power in (but we tried)

and

I know that being reckless and young
Is not how the damage gets done

Yeah, I’m starting to get that, now.

I’m thirty-five and only now am I starting to forgive myself for all the things I didn’t know, and all the ways that messed me up. If I could do it all over again… Well, I don’t know how different it’d be.

What I do know, is that thirty-five doesn’t feel all that different from twenty-five (so miss me with the quarter-life crises, please), except I’m definitely hotter and I’ve found vegetables I like to eat and I don’t wear my anger like a shield, because I don’t blame myself for the bad things other people have done to me; and I’ve made peace with the things I wish I hadn’t done, and I make an effort to do better, be better, whenever I can. And I still mess it up, and then I try harder.

That’s what everybody can do—we can all try. No matter how big, insurmountable, the world around us feels, we can carve out our corner of it, and we can make it good.

I think, ultimately, that’s what I get out of every one of these songs: The will to try, because there’s a little bit of hope in everything. Sometimes you just have to crack yourself open and let it out, and show the people you love that, if nothing else, you can all share this.

And that’s not nothing, not at all.