noors-reflection

[noors-reflection]

it's literally my phone llockscreen they ask what it's from and i'm like oh it's a movie!

raise your hand if you remembered to show your straight siblings I Saw The TV Glow this thanksgiving 🙋‍♀️

[noors-reflection]

no one knows how many times you've rekindled your own spark after someone tried to dim it. be proud of that today! it's easy to get caught up in the messes of the present but just know that you'll get through it as you, & others have in the past

[noors-reflection]

pure love

[noors-reflection]

Pixels and Poetry: Yeule's Sonic World

What effects does it have on someone when their closest friends are usernames, and their happiest memories are bound to pixels and internet signals? Yeule's music has been a gateway for me to explore these niche themes: digital loneliness & also my own queerness; she expresses the emotional complexities of this digital era—a space where connection is abundant yet often feels hollow. 

Yeule's entire discography is an auditory experience that feels like both a cry for connection and a celebration of the freedom the virtual world can bring. It's music that is supposed to be listened to when you're sitting at your computer in the dark when nobody else is awake, with no one else to talk to. when your brain is tangled in its own thoughts. It feels like exiting a panic attack where everything seems more calm than it started. Issues still feel difficult but they're not as insurmountable as they were in the beginning.

Everything feels nice and comforting yet bittersweet (a word I'll be using a lot to describe her music.) It's exactly what I feel when I look back at all the friends I've made online, most I don't have contact with any longer, and the digital spaces that served as queer safe havens for almost all of my youth, a substitute for not being able to come out to my own family. It's really strange to have these intimate connections with people you've never seen. Despite how easy it is to be vulnerable and to open up online, those moments will most often exist only in that space, and oftentimes they'll disappear with time too.

Dream pop as a genre is introspective in this way too. It's something that's paradoxically synthetic yet real. Yeule encompasses these feelings in her music, how something artificial can somehow be more real than anything you've ever experienced.

In an interview with LE MILE magazine, she touches on the melancholy and emptiness conveyed in her music because of internet-induced solitude by sharing:

"The internet was a form of escape for me, but how I used it was wrong. I was creating this fake world by myself. It was inspiring, but I was in my head to the point where I was imagining things beyond comprehension. I’m a whole different person online, like a whole different persona. It’s not about being inauthentic but showing a part of myself that I repress. I see this anger and dark side to me sometimes when playing games."

In her album Serotonin II, she conveys not only the bittersweet nature of time spent on the internet but hopes for the future as well. It's almost as if she's letting you know personally that things are going to be okay, that is until the final track Veil of Darkness where the "veil" slips and you see the darkness in yeule's world: the confusion, the noise, the stress, the anger. It's something that's always been there but it just lurked under the surface. Once the distractions are gone, negativity is left with it. This is depicted in the music video for Pretty Bones where she best describes it herself in a comment under a reddit Q&A:

"pretty bones emanates a somber, dreary atmospheres that "loom" over the picturesque and aesthetically pleasing, evoking an anxiety that builds and distorts/ catches the viewer off guard as the video progresses. i wanted it to temporally shift to something quite disturbing , at first hinting at it and then fully revealing itself- just like when you grow up- from a child into the grown up world you are thrown forcefully into the corruptions and you fight and struggle to protect yourself from it, but some fall and some cannot handle the shift from "purities" or whatnot, in terms of mental health or people hurting you, environmental stressors that lead to a disintegration"

Yeule’s influences vary from the numerous aesthetics ranging from shoegaze to grunge, but namely Final Fantasy (which is where the name yeul comes from), a video game where you can get lost in an intricately crafted universe, yet feel the isolation of being the only one occupying it, is exactly what her music feels like to me—an immersive experience where everything is designed to captivate, but there’s always an underlying sense of solitude. She touches on this a bit by talking about her influences in the same interview by expressing:

"Dissociation was a huge hobby of mine in 2021. It got so bad that I’d dissociate while doing something important, and it would get dangerous. My body was shutting down because everything was too overwhelming. I didn’t have the tools to handle strong emotions"

Not relying solely on lyrics to convey this expression of self-discovery, fully embracing these influences, wearing them like a badge of honor in ways that are uniquely her own, she also uses sound effects, glitch, bitcrushing, and reverb to create feelings of fragmentation and digital decay, which perfectly embody the themes discussed earlier. She shares this in an interview, which I find so empowering, when discussing the difficulties of being an artist and being true to herself as a non-binary individual living in Singapore:

"Ugliness can be so beautiful, looking taboo, being unconventional — It’ll discriminate against you in some places, but you’ll find new people."

Everything yeule puts out together (which you can listen to here) evokes a bittersweet comfort out of people, like the calm after a storm, which resonates to many in the youtube comments of her music videos, where the beauty of vulnerability and imperfections are laid bare for you to experience. Such an important artist for this generation, with music so enchanting I actually want it injected directly into my veins.

[noors-reflection]

should we be afraid of it? Or should we just accept its existence and live with it.

no, you could go your whole life without ever experiencing it once. but don't you want to know?

[noors-reflection]

—This image is SO powerful.

[noors-reflection]

"this is it" by the greeting committee - album review

i want to give some, what i believe is, much needed attention to this album by this band called the greeting committee because the exposure therapy it's giving me is genuinely amazing & i always love it when i am able to recreate the intense emotions i feel out of a piece of media especially music when i find something that truly captivates me.

i started listening to them around 2 yrs ago & i have vivid memories of myself having a couple of their songs on my playlist but never really understanding or taking much care to the lyrics, and even though it's not been that long of a time, i've gone through so many different challenges, met so many different people, experienced new romantic relationships, been to new places, and i cannot help but sob when i listen to them.

the vibes are immaculate. a lot of the songs like my two favorites 'flint' & 'odds of forever' i believe have themes having to do with coming of age, in your late teens & being introduced to adulthood, i personally relate it a lot to my senses of fear of making really big life decisions and the anxieties of what doors i'm opening or leaving behind constantly draining me down.

i also really like the song 'gold star' especially since it was the reason i found out about the band, where i found it on a queer kid struggles recommendation list.

besides actual lyricism & finding meaning or poetry in music i think it's a great recommendation for any indieheads!! addie's vocals r so raw and the drums tickle my brain idk how to describe it lol

[noors-reflection]

note to self

sometimes your feelings of yearning or apathy isn't exactly realistic to the actuality of the situation. sometimes humans overthink too much and it misleads us to create an idea in our head of what we believe is going on as a result of of some already existing insecurities or past experiences. i use the pronoun 'we' and 'humans' because we all suffer. you aren't alone <3

[noors-reflection]

i finished about half of it, i tend to be really slow with reading books esp if it's not something i'm that interested in because of school & lack of proper time management D::: It's really fun though I like victor's character flaws everything seems very well written i don't usually read books in this scifi-y genre

thoughts on frankenstein the novel by mary shelley ??? i'm supposed to be reading it for my book club because that's what the majority wanted but i've been procrastinating starting it tbh. i might talk about my thoughts on the volumes as i go through it on here

[noors-reflection]

exposure therapy is such a good way to describe my feelings towards this omfg

˙𓆩♪⛧₊˚🎧 ﾟ₊⛧♪ 𓆪˙

this song is like exposure therapy for me

˙𓆩♪⛧₊˚🎧 ﾟ₊⛧♪ 𓆪˙

[noors-reflection]

reblog if you consider friends you've met online real friends

(no pressure obviously)

[noors-reflection]

perhaps this could be used as a learning moment for everyone of both sides to understand the realities of being transgender in Algeria and elsewhere in the world, the hardships and difficulties faced by Algerian trans people, including criminalization, lack of access to gender-affirming healthcare, and lack of legal recognition. none of us are free until all of us are free!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Cairo52 (@cairo52org)

The fact that there are hundreds of thousands - possibly millions of people who are convinced Imane Khelif, an Algerian born & raised athlete got her gender reassigned & affirmed by the Algerian government goes to show the lack of awareness regarding queer rights in the middle east worldwide!! this feels so dystopian to me, It's difficult to describe it, really.

[noors-reflection]

i wanted to be an inventor.. collected scraps to make a portalll,,

Real House - Adrianne Lenker

[noors-reflection]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Cairo52 (@cairo52org)

The fact that there are hundreds of thousands - possibly millions of people who are convinced Imane Khelif, an Algerian born & raised athlete got her gender reassigned & affirmed by the Algerian government goes to show the lack of awareness regarding queer rights in the middle east worldwide!! this feels so dystopian to me, It's difficult to describe it, really.

[noors-reflection]

Spoilers for I Saw the TV Glow

song: jennifer lopez by xui xui

[noors-reflection]

thoughts on frankenstein the novel by mary shelley ??? i'm supposed to be reading it for my book club because that's what the majority wanted but i've been procrastinating starting it tbh. i might talk about my thoughts on the volumes as i go through it on here

[noors-reflection]

if you were to ask me about my favorite music artists i'd tell you they make really good music, but if you were to ask me on a deeper level i would say they introduced me to how much music and art in general can be helpful to my mental health and that they saved my life by letting me regain meaning and passion through their lyrics