Notes on survival
Finding sanctuary in headphones during desolate times

Dear friends, how is your heart? It’s a question worth asking often, as every week takes us into a deeper darkness. And honestly, if I had to answer, no words could properly measure the weight of this heavy heart. It has been a desolating time lately, continually bearing witness to genocide, climate change disasters and the grim spectacle of a U.S. presidential election. We are complicit in new war crimes every day. Children in Gaza are crying for help through our phones, and they’re fleeing from bombs our government is sending. And both presidential candidates appear indifferent to the bloodshed. I hold all this, and sometimes I am rendered speechless. 

Sometimes I find a brief sanctuary through headphones. And, since these are unspeakable times, lately I’ve been listening to post-rock, a mostly instrumental music genre built around ambient, dramatic songwriting. In particular, I’ve been listening to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, a Canadian post-rock band and legends in the genre. In October they urgently released a new album, titled, “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024, 28,340 DEAD.”

The aforementioned death toll refers to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In a press release that reads more like a poem, the band addresses the album title: “NO TITLE = what gestures make sense while tiny bodies fall? what context? what broken melody? and then a tally and a date to mark a point on the line.” The band drew a point on a line that keeps heart-wrenchingly moving. The death toll in Gaza has now surpassed 40,000 Palestinians.

My heart keeps making room for those growing numbers. My heart places roses on the martyred people and children behind those numbers.

I wake up on a Sunday morning, days before a bleak presidential election, and I’m doomscrolling through more U.S.-sponsored war crimes. I am speechless again. I need to be rooted in the transcendent, so I reach for headphones and press play on the new Godspeed album. The first track, “SUN IS A HOLE SUN IS VAPORS,” is anchored by guitars ringing out like somber war trumpets. Light percussion and strings keep a weary army of survivors moving along. I think the song is saying: war is coming, how is your heart? I look outside my windows, and the sun is burned out, the sky is grey, and these snow showers look like falling angels. Through this song, I’m hearing what I’m seeing.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor turns an album into a cinematic experience. Imagine the first track as the opening credits. This story of war, mourning and resistance is set in motion with the second song, titled “BABYS IN A THUNDERCLOUD.” It’s a 13-minute epic, and four minutes in, there’s this gradual build up where every note is reaching toward hope. And when each note rings out and lingers, it sounds like when people embrace for hugs, and they hold that moment of joy together. Six minutes into “THUNDERCLOUD,” the band is staying in this hopeful zone. With every note, it is building rooms devoted to hope. Every layered instrument is carving out a better world. I look outside again, and I see blue sky breaking through the grey. For a fleeting moment, the sun kisses the earth. 

The album clocks in at nearly an hour. If the first half offers scenes of hope, then the second is a long, one-shot on suffering and grief. There’s a haunting atmosphere to the fifth track, “PALE SPECTATOR TAKES PHOTOGRAPHS.” The song could be commentary on white Western media’s detached reporting on Gaza. The song could also refer to the more than 130 journalists killed in Gaza. In any case, “PALE SPECTATOR” is an elegy for the martyred. I hear the instruments reaching out, crying: So much has been taken, yet we are still here, and who is your heart beating for?

When the album ends, the grey has returned, and it bleeds into an early darkness. Like a nourishing meal, this session will carry me through a little longer. And by the time you read this, another election will have passed. It’s tempting to say, “I don’t know what this country will look like by the time you read this,” but that wouldn’t be true. By the time you read this, I know we’ll still be complicit in genocide while people in America struggle to live. I know the climate crisis will continue unabated. And the rich elite will continue profiting off suffering and exploitation with bipartisan support. 

I don’t place any hope in the managers of empire. Instead, I store my hope in people on the ground resisting empire. And, after the election, I know people with outsized hearts will continue organizing against injustice. I know we’ll still be figuring how to survive better as a collective. 

My dear friends, if you are reading this in dark times and you still believe in beautiful things, I am reaching out with two open palms and asking, “Will you walk with me on this journey?” Because we will need each other tomorrow.