AsterTracks will return this Wednesday, October 12 2022

The day “Entropy” dropped was kind of a dark one. I had recently split with my partner of fourteen years, though she didn’t accept it yet and that was the day we were to meet and talk things out. She wanted me to get space and my therapist's perspective and then come together and hopefully make it work. Thing is though, I knew this would never be enough time, and I had already made a decision of my own.

I’ll get over it if you let me breathe from my skin cause my lungs tend to keep it within.

This was a recurring issue in the entire relationship. I didn't get time to breathe, I barely got any time to myself and although I loved, love her, more than anyone and anything it wasn’t a healthy way for either of us to exist. So I needed to breathe, I needed space, I wasn’t going to get that here. I don’t just mean here as in the relationship, I mean here, where I am. There are a lot of stressors in my hometown and my day to day and I recognize that some of the influence those have over me are my own fault. So, I need to get away from them and become my own person.

I can’t release, but I can’t hold in all the smiles like life is just beginning.

That’s what those first few days felt like. Sure, I was sad about all that we had built together sort of falling apart but at the same time? I was more comfortable, I was being reached out to by a lot of friends, I had made up with someone I never thought I would ever speak to again and although I was terrified I finally saw a future for myself.

You’ll get over it in a few months, see the way that I blush when our lips start to touch and I’m emotional thinking about why I had any doubt from the words from my mouth.

My dearest friend, someone who I’ve called my sister for about a year, offered me a chance to do something she once did; Move my entire life to the other side of the country and stay with her while I figured out this new scary chapter of my life. I thought about that a lot, of course I wanted to take it but I was also scared, was that the right call? Would I be okay? Would I run out of money? I took a walk to clear my head. Not a fifteen minute walk from my own apartment that I had shared with this person I love there was a clearing in a field with a single bench built from a log. I had no idea this was here. I sat down and just took in the air for a while. Then I started to walk back and…

Running away from the rain makes your socks wet, splitting your heart and your brain makes you feel uncertain if thoughts were the same even back then. I feel ashamed.

… It started raining. Just like the song by my favorite band predicted, it started raining. I laughed and just walked back in shorts and a T-shirt. It stopped raining the second the song ended. I was scared out of my mind to announce my plan. Well, still am, maybe months later to you but to me it’s an hour and a half before.

Somebody’s gonna figure me out, it’s what I am, it’s what I was, it’s what I wanna become.

Somebody’s gonna figure us out and I hope that they do ‘cause I’m falling for you.

Somebody is going to figure me out. That someone is me. By the time you’re reading this I hope to be right there. Living with my found family and finally learning who I am, not what I am in relation to someone else and finally falling for myself for once. Learn to love whoever that is.

And so, with the release of my review of Emotional Creature, an announcement.

From this day forth I am no longer an anime bird, I am no longer a faceless entity reviewing music and going by a username I came up with while playing Yu-Gi-Oh in high school.

My name is Claudia, I am a trans woman and I started transitioning, albeit slowly, in January of 2021, the same month I did my first ever formal record review, which was the last Beach Bunny EP. I have kept my identity secret on this account to safeguard my identity from people in my real life and have always felt that it creates a certain disconnect from me and a real connection to any of you. Any artist I’ve bantered back and forth with in replies, any possible good thing this could come to. I’m here now, as myself.

It’s nice to meet you.