denpa is...a weird thing to describe. the cacophony of high-pitched voices mixed with the sound influenced by j-pop and eurobeat with a subject matter i knew nothing about is an uncanny combination of things that has led me back over and over again. it is no secret then that i like cute accelerationism, for the radio signals of denpa still exist inside me. i used to be ashamed of it for so long, and now i can't help but stare longingly at the songs when i listen to them once again. child of abyss, a loss of any sense of home except for this temporary refuge where i get to let go of things i found shameful. the disorganization of the senses is so fun, but it's so hard to deal with.
"we're stronger than we believed. stronger than we ever wanted to be." so these thoughts keep replaying in my head. i'm not sure what it means, nor do i think i even believe this fully anymore. the vulnerability of my heart continues to send the signals of my ever despairing love, a lost innocence that can't be recovered because the mind is unable to come to stability again. this is melancholic, for sure, but not pessimistic. my love for fluff and denpa hopefully show that i am anything but pessimistic. but the mania produced by this gets me charged with being "inauthentic." as if that can be such a thing for those who have no other option but to be a record player for the thoughts created via the interaction between me and the art i love. of course, the art tends to go in the direction of fluffy cuteness or the ghostly figure of yearning. in any case, the "authentic" is a romance, one that'll never be achieved and is nonetheless created for the sake of being a bludgeoning device. perhaps my love with denpa is partly because it ends the worry of being "real" for me, which always was associated with cynicism. perhaps i still believe that quote from before, and perhaps it doesn't need to mean anything. high-pitched squeals we're the motif of my heart's signal, one that i hide until the time is right to channel it into either therapeutic (but unhelpful) esoterica or the art-philosophy that i think is my chief concern. it was perhaps denpa that started my search for a new form, a new presentation, a new face, and a new hope. alongside yuri, a detour from the path of the heterosexual-ridden rituals of whatever they called masculinity they fed me with. or perhaps that already happened, though the question on when it began eludes me. yuri was my weapon to wield, however unwieldly it may be. if only i realized earlier.
the recording was playing again. this time, i am now listening to pommetto, a collective consisting of nanahira, koko, and momobako, and their album called apprism. reminiscing on the times that i wasn't as philosophically inclined, i sometimes think about how i was at the mercy of forces i didn't knew and didn't notice. i loved them of course, even if i didn't know them. that's why i was at the mercy of them. i didn't want to be lost, even if i knew that at some point it would happen again. "in the end, the writer is not even allowed to live in [her] writing." so the search begins again.
it was an unsurprising affair. i came out online. never offline. anyone who knew me wasn't surprised. i repeated things: my love for yuri, an ambivalence or likeness for the thought of being a woman, a refusal of the rituals that characterize a form of cis masculinity (or atleast the filipino-american version of it). perhaps it's also the beginning of an untimely philosophical journey, one that derailed a journey of medicine, and one that had precedent in how i derailed a christian journey. it's funny, is it not? the future wasn't there at all. the cycle grows smaller. i fear that's what my life has become, so you are free to leave at this point. there's perhaps nothing more shameful than having nothing new to say, nothing more useless than being unable to contribute to the conversation. then again, that's precisely the point. the act of strangling for the sake of communication.
i feel ashamed whenever i stumble on my words. i never get to say what i think, for my thoughts get scrambled as soon as my mouth opens up. it's easier to type or write things up, for the threshold of the vocal word is no longer there. or more accurately, i become keenly aware of the scrambled signals of my mind, the virtual vocals that perhaps make them up. perhaps this is why i'm so enamored by the online sphere, even as i slowly grew to be more critical of it. a reprieve, then a reprieve of the reprieve. there was no content to be found for me, no deeper meaning other than the ever growing chaos of emotions i couldn't process correctly. it's scary for a thing to be a surprise—it's even scarier to know that it was the path you walked on without your knowledge, as if a gentle hand was slowly guiding you so that you were never surprised. perhaps that's why i can only laugh when i go back: how have i not realized it? how could i have not, when it was so obvious? it was there, so how have i not said it until now?
the flowers started blooming again, despite the desert that was my heart until this point. however, deserts are full of life still. even if one doesn't notice it usually, the desert is always alive. it's a matter of a small reconfiguration, for me at least. it was the first time i felt anything beyond the sheer nothingness and despair that clouded the whole of life, which was lovely. but it was also horrifying. it meant that i was going to be more vulnerable than i ever thought or wanted to be. for the first time, i knew what it meant to be alive and all the horror and love and sorrow and joy and ambivalence that it entailed. it was the first time i felt outside myself, which was something that i realized that happened before and will continue to happen. how shameful: to never realize until it's too late. to be unable to articulate until the moment passes.
it was too late when i realized how badly ruined i have become. at some point, i knew that i couldn't fool myself any longer. whatever thought i have felt like a dead end, with nothing to alleviate this inarticulable exhaustion that has been the result of one break after another, one stressor after another. all i had to do was pass my semester for my summer break in 2025, and luckily it happened. but the cost? an unbearably exhausted mind and body, which i've never been able to recover from. it didn't begin in the summer, of course, it happened in the beginning of the year. but again: it was too late when i realized it.
lately, i've been obsessed with the concept of burnout and exhaustion. it's hard to articulate what exhaustion "means" to me, which is precisely the problem i've been trying to solve for so long. i'm trying to find an impossible expression for this thing that has utterly consumed my life. i can't deceive myself with a narrative about how "it's just a bad moment for me" or "i just need to work harder" because now the moment is forever and i'm too broken to even work "hard" at all. however, the termination of that explanation didn't give way to a new one. i'm now at a period where i'm starting to think that perhaps i'll never find this expression, even though i will still act like there is. even if a gentle hand is guiding me, a hand that i can't express properly but is nonetheless felt, i'm still scared of falling into a state that will completely destroy me further. in fact, it still sometimes happens.
i've realized now that i can't fool you. i've made myself vulnerable and at the mercy of someone who expects value out of me for some reason. i'm scared that i'll stumble over my words again, and that you'll make me ashamed of myself. i wish being useless wasn't so shameful.
"the only philosophy which would still be accountable in the face of despair, would be the attempt to consider all things, as they would be portrayed from the standpoint of redemption," writes theodor adorno at the end of minima moralia. my heart clings to this one small message, no matter how frail or fragmented it has become. there is no consoling in this utterly hopeless world, but the heart still years for a hope nonetheless. a hope, as simple and impossible it may be, that there will be a way out of this. i say this, but i've already said this before. exploring exhaustion has given me more questions than answers, and in the end...
i can't help but make things harder for myself. i'm always trying to find a new way to give this philosophy made from scraps and ruins a form that'll help it: a new tool, a limitation, an experiment, a different medium, a different way of writing or recording or whatever else. disorganized as ever, i try to trace back these stylistic flourishes to a conceivable origin point and see if i can mess with one configuration that'll help me. it's as if i'm going through various recordings and slowly editing them to make them packagable, in hopes that this will be the day that something else happens. this project will always remain incomplete, however. maybe that's fine.
i'll always be squealing, but i'll forever remain suspicious. a mixture of mania and yearning has now influenced my thought and the moments in between. perhaps one day, i'll look at this and want to destroy it. i'm at the mercy of love and everything—from the radiance to the darkness, from the mountains of despair to the valleys of bliss—that it may entail. a trace, a diagram. inspirations worn on sleeves, a compulsion to reference yuri in each and every work. in the end, i step into the phantasmagoria of the middle. a gentle figure guides me, and i hope i don't lose her once again. it's so scary, it's all so scary. and yet...
2:22 am, by alice lai: https://umbrella-isle.itch.io/222am
minima moralia, by theodor adorno: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1951/mm/ch01.htm
exhaustion, by haweya: https://haweya.substack.com/p/exhaustion-45e
no archive will restore you, by julietta singh: https://books.punctumbooks.com/10.21983/P3.0231.1.00.pdf
love's work, by gillian rose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=equXOiOghjE (audiobook)
theses on need, by theodor adorno: https://isr.press/Adorno_Theses_on_Need/index.html