Keep dancing and call it love a.k.a. P4W Top 5, in no particular order:
1. What Other People Say - Demi Lovato x Sam Fischer
But now I’m all fucked up and my heart’s changed
Child, this is a gospel song and nobody can convince me otherwise.
Was listening to the entire album on repeat for give or take 48 hours a few weeks ago, and mareng Demi has definitely earned her spot next to kuya Mackie as my go-to for my bad-brain-days. More on this on the next episode, or more on this maybe never.
And that home she built won’t open, any guest will bleed her dry
Please listen to Oh Wonder’s latest album 22 Break. I had it on repeat maybe three or five days straight after it was released and damn it, something this good should be considered illegal.
Says he made the big mistake of dancing in my storm, says it was poison
Unlocked a new level of emotera-ness a couple of nights ago as I was folding fresh laundry whilst lip syncing to this song after it showed its tear-stained face on a random Apple Music playlist. It felt like a friend you haven’t talked to for quite some time but is still ever-ready to gently pat on you on the head and say there, there, it’s okay to feel unwanted and full of shit and stay until you both run out of things to say. I finished folding and putting everything away around 2:30 AM.
I had good intentions and the highest hopes
Of course, kakosa Adele decides to pay a visit in the middle of this October’s mercury retrograde. Kelzo was the first person to message me about it, saying it doesn’t feel angsty enough and no I won’t go easy on her. But that’s exactly what I love about it: the classic Adele Brand of Sad, but this time, resigned rather than resentful. Not asking for reprieve but tenderness, for whatever tenderness is worth.
Also: There ain’t no gold in this river that I’ve been washing my hands in forever. I mean siiiiis (*insert mindblown emoji or GIF here*).
5. Brown Skin Girl - Beyoncé, SAINt JHN, Wizkid & Blue Ivy Carter
Same skin that was broken be the same skin takin’ over
As a child, I grew up believing I was ugly. Not saying that I was or am or will ever be in a position to give Helen of Troy a run for her money, but of course I was still far too young back then to know that you can feel and be ugly in a myriad of other ways apart from what you see in the mirror.
My mother, bless her soul, was lovely and loved everything about me except the color of my skin. (So maybe there really isn’t such a thing as unconditional love, no matter how strongly we feel and believe that we are capable of giving it. Maybe there’s really just the in-spite-of kind of love.) And it wasn’t like she or my father were genetically light-skinned either. Among the few moments from my very short time with my parents that I am certain happened was when she told me how happy she was when she first saw infant me and saw that I had really light skin (thinking about it now, I kinda wonder why she wasn’t alarmed instead).
Fast forward to a few years later on a normal swimming-at-the-pool-Saturday with my cousins, her trophy - a daughter with very light skin in spite of having very brown parents - was snatched away from her, simply because I forgot to put on sunblock. The melanin hath emerged with a vengeance, and it declared sovereignty on the tiny territory that was my body. No matter how hard my mother scrubbed my skin with loofah and whitening soap and grease every inch of me with whitening lotion with extra Vitamin E every morning and every damn night, she couldn’t erase my darkness. She blamed the sun because she needed something or someone else to blame, as we humans naturally do when things clearly are not and will never be going our way.
Eventually, she gave up, and - again this is one of the handful of moments I am certain happened or perhaps didn’t happen but this is how she made me feel - told me that I could have been pretty, beautiful even, if only my skin was of a lighter shade and oh what a shame.
It wasn’t until high school and as I was easing into early adulthood when I started getting comfortable with my color, mainly due to compliments I would receive for my complexion. That’s when I started thinking hey, maybe my mother was wrong, or maybe she just didn’t live long enough to watch how I would grow into my skin, in the same manner that some people grow into their ears or noses. Strange sometimes how you learn to love parts and parcels of yourself only after others have done it for you.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Queen Bey says I’m beautiful. That should be enough to end this part of my story.
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