existential crisis dance party!!!
$7.00
Existential Crisis Dance Party!!! is a zine where I reflect on how music has shaped my life from early childhood to the present. I look at the running themes in each stage in my life and how the music I was listening to at the time reflected those themes. From being a baby queer obsessed with the Spice Girls to being an isolated high school student scouring for deep cuts on the Internet to being a 20-something trying to figure how to exist outside academia, my life has always been soundtracked.
The zine also spotlights specific "life-defining songs" and includes playlists I curated to reflect each musical stage in my life. How fun!
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Excerpts:
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"But beyond their music, I loved the Spice Girls because I adored all of them as people. Like everyone else, I obviously had favourites (I was Team Posh and to some extent Team Ginger), but I could identify with all five in some way or another. They embodied a kind of femininity that I found incredibly fascinating, and I felt empowered by their "girl power" message. I wanted to be them, or be close to them. I was incredibly attached to those five British girls who had no idea I even existed.
I didn't have the words to describe my feelings for the Spice Girls at the time, but little baby gay me was INTO them."
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"Because I was a teenage girl, I experienced a lot of musical gatekeeping. In order to prove my worth as a music fan, I felt the need to become a walking encyclopedia about artist I enjoyed; to have heard everything in their discographies; to have the "Objectively Correct" meanings of all of their songs.
But even when I did all of this, I was still often questioned about my dedication to certain artists, or to music in general. After all, I WAS a teenage girl, and teen girls are apparently incapable of liking music for any reason besides being attracted to the people who make that music."
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"Okovi came out at the same time that my academic dreams were actively crumbling before my eyes. The album has been the soundtrack of my efforts to rebuild my sense of self, and "Veka" specifically has been the soundtrack to my desperate attempts to find a way to make some kind of positive contribution to the world outside of academia. I found "Veka" at a time when I'm actively wondering about what kind of legacy I'll leave behind."