My boygenius Barometer

I think I've been having revelations!

I fucking love boygenius.

Since the record came out, I’ve listened to it at least once a week, almost every week. Some weeks, more like once a day. It is, in my opinion, an (almost) objectively perfect album. (Sorry, “Emily I’m Sorry,” you’re just not for me.) The album is an ode to queer, platonic love—some of the most fulfilling love I’ve given and received in my life.

Zoe and I like to joke about our boygenius star signs. I’m a Phoebe sun, Julien moon, Lucy rising; Zoe is a Lucy sun, Julien moon, Phoebe rising. (I’d love to know any of yours, too.)

I’ve listened to Phoebe Bridgers for a long time, much longer than I’ve been consistently listening to boygenius. Her music informs how I write my poetry: the relentless propulsion of lyrics, one verse after another, rich with metaphor and strong scenic description. The sadness.

For years, I’ve struggled with anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Phoebe Bridgers was the soundtrack of my college years. Whether I was walking to class or staring at my ceiling after [insert roommate name here] fell asleep, you could be sure Phoebe was playing. On the surface, it must seem like not much has changed since then—which would make sense; I only graduated a year and a half ago.

But dig deeper, and you’ll find that things are shifting.

Image Description: A blurry photograph from a boygenius concert. The stage is lit red, and the screen behind the band shows a closeup of Phoebe Bridgers.

A month ago, Zoe and I started working through Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, following along with the book study being hosted by Mar at

Monday Monday

. I’ll be the first to admit I was skeptical. A “creative recovery”? Who needs that? And what does my artist-self have to do with my real self?

Apparently, I need a creative recovery. And my artist-self—surprise, surprise—is my real self.

Central to the artist’s way are the morning pages: three pages of stream-of-consciousness scribbling written every morning. Zoe and I write ours over coffee. They’re completely private—we don’t share them with each other, and we don’t reread them after we finish writing them each day. We do talk about things we wrote in the morning pages, though, because they tend to provide clarity for what’s been on our minds.

Phoebe Bridgers and boygenius have been coming up in my morning pages again and again. More specifically, I’ve been thinking about “Me and My Dog” and “Letter to an Old Poet.”

From the former:

I wanna be emaciated
I wanna hear one song without thinking of you
I wish I was on a spaceship
Just me and my dog and an impossible view

And from the latter:

I wanna be happy
I'm ready
To walk into my room without looking for you
I'll go up to the top of our building
And remember my dog when I see the full moon

So, this is my boygenius barometer: the emaciated-happy spectrum.

The more I write my morning pages, the more I find myself feeling closer to happy than emaciated. I don’t know if it’s just the effect of having a place to put my thoughts and feelings each morning, to carry that weight for me so I can go about the rest of my day. Maybe it’s my creativity coming unblocked, helping me feel more engaged with the world around me and the art within it. I’m not sure I really care what the reason is.

When I was in college, I was so far on the emaciated side of the spectrum that, had I had the barometer back then, I wouldn’t have been able to conceive of happy. For a couple years, I was very literally emaciated—I’ve always struggled with my relationship with food, but after I was sexually assaulted, my anxiety was so bad that leaving my dorm to get food was often unthinkable. But eating habits aside, I wanted to get smaller—to disappear.

That feeling profoundly affected my art. I believed in my own smallness and thought something big—and terrible—had to happen to me if I wanted to make art. I returned to traumatic memories to mine them for metaphors, tapped into unresolved rage and grief.

So, as I started to shift on the boygenius barometer, my first feeling was not relief at my newfound close-to-happiness. It was fear.

I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to continue creating art unless I continued to feel like shit and have bad things happen to me. And I was so sure of my desire to be an artist that I decided to resist the shift in myself. I put off reevaluating my psychiatric medication. I stuck with a therapist who wasn’t helping me the way I needed and left every session feeling drained. I closed myself off in conversations with family, friends, and most of all, Zoe.

For the record? It worked. I felt fucking terrible. And I had a frenzied period of making: knitting, writing, collaging, painting. It was art that lashed out, a manifestation of pain and frustration. And it was so different from the poem I’m proudest of, a meditation on (self-)creation published by Carve Magazine.

Sure, all that work felt good to make—because everything else felt so terrible, and the work was my only outlet.

When I got tired of feeling like shit, I decided I would try to lean into the happiness, art be damned. I put down my pencil and paintbrushes and knitting needles. I thought that was the price I had to pay. No, not the copays on my prescriptions or the time it took to find a new therapist or the long, vulnerable, tear-filled conversations—sacrificing art was what it would take to feel good.

Then, two things happened at the same time. Zoe and I started practicing the artist’s way, and I started participating in Transchool’s narrative writing program. I was writing daily, even if it was just stream-of-consciousness scribbling, and I was in a virtual classroom with fellow trans writers—who were all happy to be there. I was happy to be there, too. And, for the first time, instead of resisting the meeting of my happiness and my art, I let them come into contact with each other.

Oh, how glad I am that I did.

For the first time, my artistic practice was consistent. Rather than alternating periods of droughts and floods, I had a river that flowed relatively evenly every day. My art itself was more balanced, too. I found myself able to write poems about emotionally-charged experiences in a way that respected my own journey—that no longer exploited my life for the sake of sharing my truth.

I’m so grateful for this shift, slow as it is. To finish the quote from “Letter from an Old Poet,” I can’t feel it yet, but I am waiting.

Bringing Hollywood to a halt. SAG-AFTRA has joined WGA on the picket line, and I couldn’t be happier. And if you didn’t know, SAG-AFTRA’s president is certified icon Fran Drescher, who gave a wonderful, angry, hopeful speech announcing the strike: “We stand in solidarity in unprecedented unity, our union and our sister unions, and the unions around the world are standing by us as well as other labor unions. Because at some point, the jig is up.” The jig is up, indeed! The Nanny wants us all to fight corporate greed, and I am right there with her.

It’s Barbie, bitch (and Ken). This is just to say that Zoe and I are going to be seeing Barbie next weekend, and we are Very Excited. I’ve been loving every random burst of Kenergy that Ryan Gosling put out during the press tour, especially:

Image Description: a tweet from @DiscussingFilm. The text reads, “Ryan Gosling on the difficulty of leaving Ken behind after filming Barbie. ‘It’s a bit like that Cinnabon mix, once you open that cannister, it’s very hard to… once you open it, you’re making cinnabons and you’re loving it.’ (Source: @BuzzFeedCeleb).” Beneath the text, there is a photo of Gosling as Ken in Barbie and a photo of a Pillsbury cinnamon roll dough package.

(Also, I don’t use Twitter—I just fish some memes from screenshots on Instagram! If Elon Musk has a billion haters, I’m one of them. If Elon Musk has one hater, it’s me. If Elon Musk has no haters, I’m no longer on this Earth.)

Because they can. A NYT Style post on Instagram asked the question, “Why are more men wearing crop tops?” For some reason (we all know the reason), the official NYT account felt the need to cross-post it, so there’s plenty of homophobia and transphobia in the comment section (read: in the NYT audience, in NYT’s editorials, etc. etc.). But, like, what a weird question? I mean, A Nightmare on Elm Street came out in 1984, and…

Image Description: A screenshot from 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. Glen Lantz (played by Johnny Depp) is reclining on a bed wearing large headphones and a white crop top with the number 10 on the front.

Yes, I could go on about how clothing isn’t gendered—which is true—but that’s what NYT is after; they want us to be hotly debating gender presentation and sexuality because it’s how they stay relevant. They’re adding fuel to the fire of fascism and consistently failing trans and queer people. And it’s not the first time. NYT has an egregious history of reporting on any topics related to queerness, including their own admittedly shitty reporting on HIV/AIDS.

So, NYT, to your question I say: have you seen me in a crop top?

1. When I went in for my GAHT appointment, my doctor had my deadname. Weird coincidence, but not the first time that’s happened to me! Then, she told me that she loves the name Emory and has been trying to convince her friend to name her baby Emory. That sounds like the universe sending signs to me, and I heard them loud and clear—this is the doc for me.

2. I’m officially an art therapy convert. I was skeptical at first, but in just two sessions, I feel like I’ve made huge progress. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to therapy, of course. The lesson I learned from my therapy journey that I’d like to impart on you, though, is that if you feel like your sessions aren’t serving you anymore, finding a new style of therapy might be exactly what you need.

3. Speaking of boygenius, I did order a pair of the always an angel, never a god shorts. I expect when they come in, I’ll never take them off.

4. Does anyone know if it’s normal for a person to smell like crab rangoon? Asking for a friend (a partner) (my partner) (my spouse) (Zoe) (a person who might need to try a new deodorant). I guess it’s a good thing I like crab rangoon?