The Void Looked Back - Blog Posts

I’m not trying to be an ad on main, but Oh My God

If you’ve ever thought about getting Loops earplugs, but figured “how much could they really help?”

The terrible hell that is living in city traffic? Suddenly it’s not bad to stand next to the street.

The 4 kids next door in the 3 bedroom apartment? I can only hear screaming if more than 3 chime in.

I can still listen to music and engage in conversation with them. Only downside is I’m very aware of the sound of my own breathing, voice, and my tinnitus.

Obsessed with the way this ad is popping up in the Bruce Wayne tag

It is fucking devastating when you realize how little women, particularly queer women, mean to anyone.

My city had 20 Pride Month events last year. Six were explicitly for gay men. Five more centered gay men, and happened in gay men’s bars.

Two were for WLW. One got canceled, the other got turned into a “Ladies Night” so more straight women felt welcome.

None of the posters had women on them.

I live in one of the gayest cities in the country.

Here’s the thing- you need to take care of yourself. When you don’t want to, when you don’t feel like it, when you don’t feel worth it.

Take care of yourself so you can take care of others. Take care of yourself to take care of others. Take care of yourself because no one else can, or will.

Maybe nothing is awful, but you feel kind of bummed, even if you can’t think of a reason you feel like this? Ask yourself:

Have I eaten lately? In the last 5 hours? Did I eat enough? It doesn’t matter if you’re not hungry, eat anyway.

When’s the last time I saw the sun for more than the time it takes to get to work/school/the mail? These things are shockingly important. It’s not just about vitamin D. You need to remember the outside world exists.

When did I last breathe fresh air? Open a window. Go sit on the sidewalk. Scream in the yard. Fresh air, even polluted city air, is necessary.

When was the last time I moved? Go for a walk. Dance in your living room. Sit upside down, or stomp your feet while sitting on your bed. It’s not about exercise. It’s reminding yourself you have a body. It’s grounding.

Now Accepting Friendship Applications:

I need more Queer Creatives in my life. I am seeking:

Life long companions.

Weird Art Exchanges.

Rivals.

Enemies.

Freelance coworkers.

Lovers.

Haters.

Besties.

Pen-Pals.

Critics.

Contemporaries.

I am…

twenty four years of age, nearly twenty five.

a writer of poetry, fiction, essays, philosophy, music, art analysis, and otherwise unrelated articles.

someone who identifies as a witch. I read tarot, study magic, and hold rituals.

skeptical as fuck.

a bit of a pretentious snob.

ideologically punk, and involved with my community.

a supporter of body mods.

unabashedly queer. Nonbinary and a lover of women.

passionate beyond words. Everything I do is with my whole soul. I care about everything all of the time.

contradictory. For every rule there’s an exception. It keeps you on your toes.

Requirements for application…

21+

An intelligent and engaging conversationalist.

Queer, Creative, and believe you’re worth knowing.

Leave a comment, reblog, or DM telling me why we should become acquainted.

I looked at the news for 20 minutes and I feel like I died and was reanimated by lightning

Pedestrian: What are you doing?

Me, mid panic attack, holding on to a tree for dear life: just chillin’.

I manic pixie dreamed too close to the sun and all I got out of it was this panic disorder.

Best Advice I’ve Ever Gotten

Are you a stayer or a goer? Figure it out.

There’s no wrong choice, but it is a choice. Don’t waffle in the moment whether you should stick something out, or bail at the first chance.

My friend Cat stays. She likes the stability, likes working things out.

I’m a runner. First whiff of something wrong and I’m gone.

I’ve wished I didn’t have to run away from things. Work, friends, school. I was running away from home long before I recognized that’s what I was doing.

I’ve never regretted running away, though. I’ve always regretting staying too long.

Many times in my life I have come across music, stories, art, and thought…not yet. I’ll love you, eventually, one day. I’ll come back when I’m ready. You’ll find me again when I need it.

I loved singing as a kid. I grew up with a mom who kept Songs About Jane by Maroon 5 in the CD player, and a Grandmother dancing along to Patsy Cline any chance she got. My Aunt got an iTunes account just to download Carly Simon’s and Adele. My grandfather sobbing hymns.

Eventually, I got scared of sharing the music I love. I was told it was too melancholy, too angry, too overwhelming. That I was those things too. Friends would say I had terrible taste, like it was a joke, like it was obvious, like I was obtuse for not noticing.

Over the last year I’ve been trying to change that. Making music recommendations, playing Passenger DJ, singing by the sea.

I am honored by your response. Thank you.

Ready, Set, Go…

What’s your favorite Hozier song? Why? No, you can’t say all of them. And don’t choose something stupid like cherry wine (there’s nothing wrong with cherry wine. Obviously. But gods man, have an actual opinion).

You are, however, perfectly welcome to list a handful in no particular order. Here, I’ll start,

Wildflower and Barley ft. Allison Russell

“(I feel as) useful as dirt, put my body to work.”

If this song does not fill you with the incredible longing to fall in love with life, and love, and dirt, you are listening to music wrong. I am sorry, you are beyond redemption.

To Noise Making (Sing)

“Your head tilt back, your funny mouth to the clouds. I couldn’t hope to know that song and all it’s words wouldn’t claim to feel the same it felt the first time it was heard.”

“Was it that or just the act of making noise that brought you joy?”

Enjoy the moment because it will not last, but rejoice in the knowledge that more are coming, as similarly meaningful and unique and impossible to duplicate to the one you are currently living!

Make music. Make bad music. Make music for the sake of exaltation. Make art because if you don’t then what is the point in living! Make art because one of the first things a child learns is to take marker to a wall, or pudding to a carpet. Make art because it is an expression of self. Make art because it is proof of life. Live.

Too Sweet

“Don’t you just want to wake up, dark as a lake? Smelling like a bonfire, lost in a haze?”

Get drunk with your friends and skinny dip off a pier. Ignore the rules, what are they for anyway? Find meaning in how you see it. Confront the wild beast in the woods and let it merry meet the one in you.

Those church bells in the background- Are they ringing in a wedding, or a funeral? A simple Sunday Service, or acknowledging the hour? Life goes on, always. It’s the one continuity. It never stops. So what are you doing with it?

Moment’s Silence (Common Tongue)

“A cure I know that soothes the soul, does so impossibly. A moment’s silence when my baby puts the mouth on me.”

“When the meaning’s gone, there is clarity, and the reason comes on the common tongue of your loving me. And it’s easy done, our little remedy…”

Hot.

What, I can’t like music with an…oral focus? Too low brow? The beat and flow of the music takes you on a sensual journey as much as the lyrics.

Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene by Hozier, Fiachra Kinder, and Rory Doyle

“Jarring of judgement and reasons defeat, the sweet heat of her breath in my mouth, I’m alive.”

“With her sweetened breath, and her tongue so mean…”

“With her straw blonde hair, her arms hard and lean, she’s the angle of death and the codeine scene.”

I’m gay. Extraordinarily queer. Do I need to elaborate? This sound sounds like a death march. It sounds like the echo in your ears as you dance yourself to death. Years passing away in the span of a single dance and you don’t care, as long as she is your partner. You can’t manage to rip your eyes off her to save your life. You won’t.

Almost (Sweet Music)

“I’m almost me again…she’s almost you.”

It was Almost Sweet Music. We were Almost something. I’m Almost able to be normal about this song. Seperated by a pair of parenthesis, kept apart and yet part of the whole.

Foreigner’s God

“Her eyes look sharp and steady into the empty parts of me. But still my heart is heavy with the hate of some other man’s beliefs.”

“I’ve no language left to say it, but all I do is quake to her. Break it if I try to convey it, the broken love I make to her.”

If you, somehow, have missed the message that Hozier’s music is incredibly political- If you have ignored Nobody’s Soldier, Eat Your Young, and oh, I don’t know, just about 70% of his discography… What do you think this song is about?

It’s also just a really fucking good song.

I don’t care for vampire vegetarianism. It feels like an awfully strange thing to desire demons just to defang them.

A Discovery of Witches, Season One, Episode One

If you haven’t seen it yet, try to make it at least half an hour in.

The dialogue gets better.

Also:

This is one of those times something get’s compared to Twilight and it’s not lying. This has strong Twilight-isms, for better or worse.

A terrible secret

I hear a lot, about people young and old, scared they’ll never find someone who loves them.

I’m scared I’ll never find someone I love. I don’t…like most people. I’m good at socializing, I enjoy being in groups. I love talking to people I disagree with, or find distasteful. There is joy in meeting people who are nothing like you, and finding ways to coexist.

I think I’m broken sometimes. I like “Someone New” by Hozier, because I relate to finding awed love in strangers. I am equally disgusted, appalled, or bored by them. I hate how this sounds. I hate how it looks, staring back at me, pretentious words on paper or screen.

‘Poor little genius can’t get along with people.’

‘God, could you be more of a dick?’

‘What a fucking try-hard.’

I know what I sound like, I do. It doesn’t change it.

I’m tired. I’m lonely. I hope it gets better.

Some of my poems got accepted for the first issue of a lit magazine. I haven’t told anyone but my sister. I’m scared they’ll change their minds by the time the issue comes out, and I’ll have looked silly for thinking my work was worthy of publishing.

It’s mornings like this I wish I was a smoker.

Alas, another plot of indulgence spoiled by shit lungs.

There’s a sorority named Omega Psi Phi.

Not usually what I think of when I hear someone say Omega Sci-Fi, but alright.

Boy Clothes by Nxdia does what most people think white guys wearing eyeliner does for gender revolution

Billie Piper if you’re out there please know it’s been over a decade and I am still deeply infatuated.

Me at 9 years old, riveted, watching Christine Baranski tie a towel around a young man’s waist in the shape of a diaper while singing Does Your Mother Know:

I just think she’s neat.

Me at 12 years old watching X-Men cartoons unable to break my gaze from Emma Frost’s chest:

I just think she’s cool.

Me at 15 years old, utterly obsessed with Billie Piper’s portrayal of Rose Tyler in hit Science Fiction show, Doctor Who:

No you don’t understand she’s the Actress of Our Time-.

Me at 19, pondering if perhaps there was any signs I was gay that I should have noticed sooner:

…huh.

Me at 9 years old, riveted, watching Christine Baranski tie a towel around a young man’s waist in the shape of a diaper while singing Does Your Mother Know:

I just think she’s neat.

Me at 12 years old watching X-Men cartoons unable to break my gaze from Emma Frost’s chest:

I just think she’s cool.

Me at 15 years old, utterly obsessed with Billie Piper’s portrayal of Rose Tyler in hit Science Fiction show, Doctor Who:

No you don’t understand she’s the Actress of Our Time-.

Me at 19, pondering if perhaps there was any signs I was gay that I should have noticed sooner:

…huh.

Thank you for your participation in this survey, you may find a virtual cookie on the desk on your way out.

Why did no one bother to tell me the climax of Limitless (2011) is Bradley Cooper going through withdrawals as he drinks a loan sharks blood for a hit?

Can’t talk I’m busy pursuing the homosexual agenda

Reason 2 to finish your manuscript:

Because you want to read it.

Paul Atreides is canonically nonbinary.

Seriously.

The first time I read Dune I thought-

“Frank Herbert is doing a great job explaining gender variance in science fiction in a time when they did not have the modern vocabulary for gender expression.”

Paul is his father’s son and his mother’s daughter. He’s quite literally bred to have access to knowledge and power only accessible to men or women.

RIP Paul you would have loved ‘I am not a woman, I’m a god’ by Halsey.

100 Letters by Halsey holds my entire heart.

Things my grandma thinks “made me” a homosexual:

#2 My best friend had a “lesbian” haircut.

She had the same haircut.

My vocalization of this thought was not appreciated.

Things my grandma thinks “made me” a homosexual:

#1 Disturbia by Rihanna was the first ringtone I ever got on my flip phone.

Reason 1 to finish your manuscript:

You can’t read fanfiction of your work unless you, actually, y’know, finish and publish it.

An Essay on Nihilism and Ennui

Maybe the world is doomed. Maybe you can’t do anything about it. Maybe you were born on a train that had run of our track, long after we shot the engineers and burned the plans to lay track anew. The conductors barricaded the engine room where they hold hostage generations of coal miners who are forced to keep full steam ahead lest they be shoved into the incinerators themselves.

Maybe we can’t change any of that. I’d like to hope we can. Unfortunately hope isn’t the thing that drags your ass out of the cave you’ve collapsed into constructed of pizza boxes and soiled sheets. Drive is. Action is. Curiosity is.

Suppose we’re stuck on this train. It will crash. We will all die in a horrible fiery explosion, or succumb to the fumes first. What are you going to do in the meantime?

Here’s the thing: Life sucks and we’re all going to die. We don’t know when, we don’t know how. It feels impossible to plan for a future we have little data to prove will exist. What we do have is the interim. We can sit around and doom-scroll on our phones, or we can live life while we have it.

Plant a garden out of old coffee cans. Invite your friends over to fingerpaint on cardboard. Kiss the people you think about when you lay in bed at night. Chase an unrealistic dream, not because you believe it is possible, but because you can’t live with yourself if you never try.

That’s what you’re doing when you ingest endless content. You are simultaneously looking for the thing that will complete you, and desperately running from the voice inside that asks “what if there’s more?”

Stop. Running. Turn around. Look at the voice headlong. Dare to ask it back: “What more do I want there to be?”

Then go find it.

I’m a simple person (that is a lie.), I put on a suit jacket, and suddenly I’m possessed by the spirit of Narcissus