I have been trying to write something since late November, when I first discovered Rosalia’s LUX album. Fuck.

Music that strips your soul and then re-implants it. The saints. The rage. For those who haven’t listened, it is an album, sung in many languages, about the lives of female saints and the subsequent female rage, centuries later. The refrain of Berghain is ‘I’ll fuck you till you love me’ essentially the offer every pagan prince makes to every Christian female child…spoiler, she always chooses death. Hideous torture first, and then a beheading.

I am a great lover of saints. I know their stories…but for those of you new to the genre, female saints are mostly, at least for the first 1000 years, very young beautiful girls who are desired by older powerful men (does any of this sound familiar???). They refuse, saying they would prefer to retain their virginity and devote their lives to adoring Christ. It doesn’t end well. They are all horrifically tortured, then killed.

Male saints, save Sebastian, a gay icon…hmmm, more maybe on that later, are killed efficiently (he took two goes), if grotesquely (Bartholomew and Lawrence come to mind, google them). But there is something particularly drawn out and revolting about the way the girls are killed. There is something extra angry and personal.

Joan, my confirmation name and my childhood crush till Anne Frank took over (yes, I have a type), early 15^th c, rallied her French compatriots to fight the English invaders. She was burnt at the stake on wet wood…takes so much longer. Another fav, Margaret 4^th c, was beaten, whipped, raked, thrown into boiling water, eaten by a dragon and when all that failed, beheaded. Because, as Rosalia sings, she didn’t want to be fucked into love. She is, by the way, the patron saint of childbirth. I will leave that with you.

I had to stop listening to the LUX album, as gorgeous as it is, because that level of rage doesn’t make me a functional person. I think I am mostly kind. And not very prone to acts of anger. Someone told me recently that she has never known me to yell. That is true. I don’t. But wow. It is there.

Shortly before Christmas the 50 Cent documentary about P Diddy dropped. I was shocked at how much joy I got from the pettiness of 50’s delight. Yes, yes, I know. 50 has his own issues with women, but to see a man call out, so publicly and in so much detail, the wrongness of another man, I couldn’t watch that smirk enough. And then when it beat (boring) Stranger Things as the Netflix darling; it made me so happy.

Then British (my second and so appreciated citizenship) Anthony Joshua (he is so adorable on Graham Norton!), pounded that MAGA piece  of shit Jake Paul and at the same time Andrew Tate fell to his knees in front of whoever it was he thought he would fight….I was surprised, shocked really, at how much rage and anger and schadenfreude I have in my little body. So much. So much it scares me.

And yes, the last two sentences are quotes from Heated Rivalry. The show that has pulled me back from the brink of utter despair. For those of you wonderful people who know, those words are expressed as a desire to spend a life together. The same words, in my mouth, were just about the fear. The fear that I am going to become so angry and so filled with rage I can no longer love.

It was a false alarm. Turns out, I have a lot of love for fictional romantic boys, and even more for the flesh and blood of my own family and friends. This isn’t to say I am ok with the apparent lack of interest in the Epstein files. And the free pass that Trump still seems to get. Don’t even start me on the evil that is Vance (see above on the wet wood burning…).

Does the fact that men have been destroying girls from the start of time, and it is now expressed in gorgeous song, make me less anxious? I don’t know. Does the sight of good men smashing the face of bad men make me feel hope? Does a beautiful fantasy, boy on boy romance, where everyone is kind to each other, and super super sexy make the real world less ugly?

I don’t know. But I am asking for what I want (another HR quote), and what I want is for us to do better.

Love. xxx