lost a sister to sudden illness when I was 6, my aunt (my motherās twin) to suicide when I was 15, and lost my mother to suicide when I was 23.
iāve learned that life definitely keeps you on your toes, and that plans should all be held with an open palm. the best you can do is appreciate with upmost sincerity what you have in the moment, trust in your ability to weather what may come, and believe that wherever you might end up on the other side of things that you can still change the direction you choose to go.
nothing is permanent except for the memories of the experiences you share with loved ones and the consequences for yourself and others of the choices you make. also get yourself well mentally and emotionally, stay on that journey of healing. the scars of unhealthy grief run deep and transcend generations.
also tell your mamas you love em especially if they raised you right š«¶š«¶
Jul 18, 2024
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My dad passed earlier this year, so Iām still grieving. But the best advice I could give is to:
1. Feel your emotions. If youāre sad and want to cry about it, cry. If youāre missing them, thinking of the fun times you had together and do something in their remembrance.
2. Donāt look for comforting from people who donāt get it. Some people donāt get it until itās happened to them. Some people will never get it. No point in explaining your feelings to them while your in the middle of grieving.
3. Just keep going. Iām sure your uncle doesnāt want you to wallow and stand in place forever. Iām sure he would be more proud to see you continue your life and be great.
ā„ļø
Aug 18, 2024
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this is not in any order of importance
1. Have post death stuff sorted out - idk wills, burial plans etc. we didnāt have all of it figured it out and it caused a lot of arguing and strain during an already difficult time
2. Try to split certain responsibilities between you and your sister + anyone else who is helping
3. Ask people around you for help!!!! Fr!!! i Had friends that offered to help but I also Learned to ask for things especially when it came to something that was really traumatizing to me but like wouldnāt be to them like a friend picked up docs from the hospitals for me or another arranged for the medical equipment to be taken from the apartment
4. Find a grief / support group - I felt very crazy during and after she died like my old life was gone and I couldnāt relate to so many people in my life. Grief group helped me understand the universal parts of the grief experience and that I wasnāt like a bad person and shit
5. Ask all of the questions and have all of the hard conversations - you wonāt be able to and even small stuff I find myself upset that I didnāt ask and also had conversations about things that were like resentment filled idk
6. In like a literal sense idk what time of pain your mom is in but my mom loved those electric heating pads I also just listened and gave her whatever she wanted like idk she got really into blue jelly beans I went out and bought a bag and sorted out the blue ones for her
Iām very sorry youāre going through this!! If I can help with anything or answer anymore questions pls reach out š
be prepared for it to feel like youāre in a different parallel life idk it was like that for me and other people I know who went through similar things
May 25, 2024
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Play music, if she likes it. I second telling jokes. If possible, invite friends or other family to come say hi and tell stories. Don't be afraid to ask for help, people sometimes have a hard time knowing what to say and genuinely want to do something to feel useful. Something easy to ask for are homecooked meals for you and your sister. Ask the nurses for help and advice. Try your best to take care of yourself, especially when it comes to sleep.
And I second taking your time to feel the grief and leaning into honest and the weirdness. Speaking of weird, listening to Alan Watts lectures helped me, both in becoming more comfortable with death and thinking about how beautiful life is. I can't remember which ones, but maybe something to look up if you feel drawn to it.
I went through this with my dad and can honestly say while it was the hardest thing I've been through, I am ultimately grateful for the experience. I don't think I'll have a greater privilege than taking care of him and being there with him. I won't say it's harder or easier than a sudden death, because it's all pretty brutal. But not everyone gets the chance to be there. Sending lots of good thoughts your way Katrina
May 24, 2024
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6d ago
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I consume a lot of music regularly, and a huge part of keeping a fresh diet of new listens going is having enough sources of recommendations that arenāt an algorithm that either 1) reinforces your existing listening patterns, keeping you stagnant in your tastes, or 2) platforms whoever paid enough to push their product to the top, serving you something that may not inherently be of inferior quality, but may not align with your tastes, may not be exciting beyond just being a new release, and realigns your current listening habits to be more in line with what the average user on the platform is also listening to ā which socially might have benefits but which creates a homogeneity of consumption that can become bland since youāre listening to something really just because itās the next product on the assembly line to have its public moment and not because anything about the music actually captured your attention. the current landscape of streaming is designed to keep you at an all you can eat buffet where you take whatās served to you, and as a result a lot of us have forgotten how to look at a menu and order.
so what does taking a more active role in your own music curation look like? for me, itās meant not using streaming as a primary listening platform. I mostly use my local Apple Music library on my phone that I curate with the vestigial iTunes Library framework thatās still a part of Apple Music on my laptop. probably going to find an alternative soon since apple seems to be cutting integration progressively. I like this method because it forces me to choose what to sync to the limited storage space I have, forcing me to take inventory of what I actually listen to and what I can offload. the files I get are mostly from Bandcamp or Soulseek depending on whether itās available for purchase or entirely unavailable online (as is the case for a lot of electronic music that was on vinyl only, which is where soulseek comes in clutch). I also have freedom here to change the ID3 tags to better sort and organize, rate, change track info, and track my own listening data.
Bandcamp and other music purchasing platforms are great because 1) it reshapes my relationship to music away from consumerism and back towards curation. I have to pay actual money for this thing now if I want to use it, so iām forced to consider its value (usually iāll stream a release first to gauge my interest). 2) having to spend money helps me to course out my meals so to speak, as iāll buy a few releases iāve accumulated in my cart over the month and cash out on Bandcamp Friday when 100% of my money is actually getting to the artist (TOMORROW IS BANDCAMP FRIDAY BTW!!!), and between purchases I can actually chew and savor and digest my last orders, they donāt get swept up in the deluge of new releases. my plate is full until iām done and then I order more. also for the times of the year like now when new music isnāt coming out as regularly I take time to find older music that I would normally overlook while keeping up with new drops. currently very into early 80s/late 70s music with early digital production, kinda stuff that would evolve into synthpop and dance music.
so how do you know what to order? for me, Iām getting recs through trusted curation platforms. whether itās bandcamp daily, yāall lovely folks here on PI.FYI, friends, or most importantly musicians who I follow on socials that share their tastes through posts, stories, playlists on steaming, interviews, etc. I like this last one especially because itās kind of like a musical game of telephone. if I like an artist and they share their interests and influences itās like every layer in this process is stretching my palate further from the sound that I was originally interested in and into a new territory that has some shared DNA but would never have been recommended to me by an algo because thereās no shared category or label between them, only the musical influence and interpretation of it made by the artist. as an example, I was a huge Skrillex stan, he signed KOAN Sound to his label, they collab with Asa who collabs with Sorrow, Sorrow takes huge influence from Burial, Burial makes some ambient adjacent stuff and takes huge influence from 90s rave music and drum and bass and 2000s rnb, now iām listening to Brandy - All in Me, William Basinski, Aphex Twin, none on whom would get recommended by Spotify to me from Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites.
LAST thing iāll say ā because in yappin about this iām realizing how actually passionate about this subject I am: MAKE LISTS! playlists are cool, but they can flatten your music into vague categories of āvibesā and āaestheticsā and encourage picking one-off songs from artists that you never form an active audience relationship with. I make a practice of making my own year end lists of top 25 albums (plus some honorable recs and top individual songs) and keeping them in a notes doc that I regularly update and rearrange over the course of the year. this forces me to consider the actual relationship iām forming with what iāve ordered for myself. did I like it in the moment but it didnāt have staying power? is it slowly growing on me? it also encourages taking albums as a whole. maybe I liked one or two tracks a lot but the rest wasn't resonating. thatās ok! maybe I rank it lower but now iāve actually taken time to consider it, itās in my library, and maybe (quite a few cases for me) something I ranked like bottom 5 albums becomes a retroactive favorite from that year as my tastes evolve. also 25 albums to take with me from each year is really more than you'd think, i struggle sometimes to even find 25 that I formed a true connection with. I think the biggest thing the itunes era ruined that led into now is the single-ification of music, the ability to separate the hits from the deep cuts. albums are meant to be taken as a whole, and then once you've really sat with the whole you can find what actually stuck. even then I like to keep the whole around because soooo often iāll write off a track that yeeeears later I come to love. trust the artist, they made it like they did for a reason.
aaannyyyywayy TLDR: get recs organically, be more active in deciding your listening patterns, fr*cken pay artists yall, trust the artist embrace the album, really consider what you consume
Feb 29, 2024
4d ago