Two years of Sublimation
Today, March 10, 2025, marks two years since my album Sublimation was released. What a sentence in and of itself: separate from the craziness that surrounded me at the time, the idea that I am the same girl as below AND that I released an album (????) that got pressed to vinyl (???) and came out on the hero-label that released Rilo Kiley’s The Execution of All Things (?!??!?!?!)—it’s a lot to contend with. This week, I hope to share a few essays marking the occasion. Starting today with Happenstance as Prophecy. Thank you for being here, and thank you always for listening.
Happenstance as Prophecy
I wrote Happenstance in June of 2021, the summer before I moved to New York. It felt special then because it was the first song I had made at The Garden (the name of the show house). If you had asked me then, I would have told you that it’s a song about being embarrassed about wanting to be part of the thing despite knowing you’re not part of it.
If you had asked me that December, after inking my deal with Saddle Creek and playing my first-ever show (just me and my bass), I would have told you how excited I was to go live band mode and how excited I am to have all my friends with me when I do. In the summer of 2022, I would have told you the same & followed up my statement with the above music video featuring said friends.
A year later, everything was different. If you had asked me what Happenstance was about in 2023, I would probably have looked pained, remembering the video. I would answer you but not remember what I said back to you. I felt like a ghost: hollow from hurt, transparent about my feelings, but still being treated like I didn’t exist. I don’t know that I’ve ever hurt so badly. The portal that closed in June 2024 allowed me to apply self-compassion as a salve, and two years removed from album release day, I am happy to tell you what Happenstance is about. I am so grateful I stayed alive to figure it out.
The video for Happenstance was written & directed by Alex Free, a friend and excellent human who also shot the cover for my second single DTAP/True Love. Looking back at the video is like looking back at most of my life, where the jokes write themselves. Alex wrote this video, though, which makes the prophecy all the more curious. We find ourselves in a Prospect Park translation of my bedroom with two sides separated by a door. On my side of the door, I’m visibly frustrated with myself. On the other side, a party with people who I am invisible to. Three people on the party side of the door are played by people who were once my closest friends but are now gone (from my life) but not forgotten (play Dead to Me by Kali Uchis).
Throughout the video, I am trying. In the first chorus, my attempt to connect with the Party Side People isn’t received at all: I am ignored and return to my room more frustrated than before. The Party Side People continue to dance. They enjoy the sun, their best friend’s music video hype, and being part of something bigger. They ignore me. The video painted an eerily accurate picture of what was awaiting me as I prepared to leave NYC and what I would return to in the U.S: struggling to pack and leave the country alone while watching Instagram stories of the Party Side People two miles away, laughing in what was my bedroom until one of them decided it wasn’t. It continued to play out in (unbeknownst to me) final texts I sent like “I’m so excited I will be back in the U.S. for your wedding!!!” and the response of… not being invited. It hurt my head more than my heart, honestly. How could it be that the girls I had individual relationships with, and introduced to each other because I loved them all, ALL cut me out like a wound? After bearing witness to the hell I had endured? After dancing in my music video, enjoying the ease of the guest list being Shalom +3, playing in my band? It didn’t make sense, the ease with which I was discarded. It was as if even the memory of me was wiped clean, along with their consciences and any hint of accountability.
By the time the second chorus comes around, I am dancing in my room, frustration be damned. I’d say the above still is the fulcrum: I realize that actually, this is my music video shoot for a song my album. The music is good, the grass is green! The Saturday we shot this video, I had to ask someone to rush my work laptop to the park and hotspot myself from my phone for some healthcare PR social media emergency. The boss bitchness could not be understated: I was at what felt like the top of my game, I knew I was different, and it was working. So I kept dancing! I held the friendships that have since perished up to the sky and denied my eyes what I was seeing. October rolled around, and the 18-month pit opened its mouth. I was pretty faithless at that point. Any faith I had was funneled into my relationships, and then they evaporated, and then nothing made sense anymore.
I’ve been studying astrology for nearly two years now, and I get quite emotional looking at the transits during that time. Things were RUFF (if astrology isn’t for you, feel free to scoot past this):
Halloween coincided with my lease ending and my best friend abandoning two days before we were to move because it was “too much exposure” for her parents to sign as her guarantor (after she had assured me they would sign as her guarantor). Then, she moved into my bedroom while I scrambled for a place… and helped her move into my bedroom. None of this made sense to me: how could she do that and say “I would have done anything to keep you safe” instead of “sorry”? How could she do that and tell me I wasn’t being compassionate because “moving all [her] stuff into the basement wasn’t easy for [her]”? How could any of that line up?
Astrologically speaking, I am an Aries rising, ruled by Mars. My Mars sits in Gemini in my third house of praxis & daily life. Mars stationed retrograde in Gemini on October 30, 2022. Here’s a bang-on Mars Rx horoscope from astrologer Adam Elenbaas:
This Mars Retrograde is eventually going to hit a Saturn that’s just turned direct in your, in your 11th house. And so, to me that that also would suggest that the potential for this shift to coincide with some harder or more difficult or challenging changes around friends, groups, allies, and communities would be at play. It’s critical; it’s like your mind is changing, which could change your friendships or could change work relationships and could shift how you’re looking at friends, groups, and communities of people. I wonder about that quite a bit. I also wonder about how your mind is changing as you are looking more deeply at who or what you are obligated to, with eclipse just happening in your eighth house. And another Eclipse coming up in your second house of money, finances, debts, and obligations [as] a part of the changing landscape right now [could be] a factor that could contribute to whatever Mars Retrograde is bringing up, you know, mentally, emotionally, in the environment, how your mind is thinking is changing, how groups or friendships or sort of communal life is changing for you, financial considerations, who and what I’m obligated to… I see all those things sort of working together right now.
Adam Elenbaas, Nightlight Astrology
It is so validating when the astrology lines up. I could write an entire astrology-focused letter, but I’ve been trying to get this one done for a while.
The last chorus of the video calls for a scene change, or several. I’m in my room, on the subway, on the steps outside my apartment, and things are changing fast around me. It reminds me of the dizziness of masking, of how blurry things can be when I’m waiting to walk away from the bullshit. When I do so in the video, more than a year before I could start actualizing it in 3D, I cross through the door to the Party Side of the video and barely scooch in. I’m right on the outskirts, but I’m dancing and (actually) having a good time. Look at my music video! Look at my friends! Look at these SHOES MOMO HAS STYLED ME IN!!!
After avoiding the song, the video, and almost anything Sublimation-related for a full year, I saw this comment in July 2024. For a long time, it hurt too much to watch the video; to look at the people in it and reconcile the love I held for them then with the heart I was mending alone. In July, the portal closed, and I moved to Baltimore and started molting. I unlocked self-compassion, which changed the way I see the world and how I move through it daily. The way is dancing. I am dancing through it, and everywhere online, the girls are dancing, too.
IT IS TIME FOR CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. The girls are dancing.
THERE IS NO ROOM FOR THOSE WHO DISMISS YOUR NEEDS. The girls are dancing.
IT HAS NEVER BEEN MORE IMPORTANT TO SUCK SWEETNESS FROM THE MUNDANE. The girls are dancing.
HEAL OUT LOUD BECAUSE WE ALMOST LOST YOU IN THE SILENCE. The girls are dancing.
WE HAVE NOT SEEN REVOLUTION IN OUR LIFETIME YET AND WE ARE READY TO BECOME IT. The girls are dancing.
EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING WE NEED TO PROTECT BENEFITS FROM OUR REST, RELAXATION, AND RECUPERATION. The girls are dancing.
NOBODY CARES, AND EVEN IF THEY DO, WHAT ABOUT IT? The girls are dancing.
THROWING ASS AFTER THROWING SASS AND PROTECTING OUR NEIGHBORS. The girls are dancing.
The prophecy fulfilled, I am dancing alone, and for the first time, I am not lonely. It’s a combination of time and addressing the fact that I have CPTSD from betrayal trauma. It’s revisiting my communications degree and remembering that my brain is different because of it. It’s loving the absolute worst version of myself because she was also doing her best.
Mars stationed direct on February 23, 2025, after retrograding through Leo and Cancer since December 6, 2024. I am so lucky to have grown up. I am so lucky to be hurt and to heal. I am so lucky to know myself deeply and to keep doing it: to know that the bullshit of in-groups, status, labels are part and parcel of this life thing. A girl working in GarageBand on her bedroom floor might even call it Happenstance.
Take good care,
Shalom
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