“I never, ever hid who I was and I never stopped correcting people”
September 13, 2021 8:02 AM   Subscribe

That time Rae Spoon cancelled their tours due to COVID-19 and then found out they had cancer I only met Rae Spoon once, when they were just starting to tour superioryouareinferior. That 2008 album is a lot of things, and haunting is one of them. If there was ever a perfect encapsulation of what it feels like to live in a place where the whole culture of resource extraction and boom/bust had/has defined generations of people, then "My Heart is a Piece of Garbage Fight Seagulls! Fight!" is it. Fight, Rae. Fight.

Previously

and previouslyier (WARNING: all kinds of opinions on pronouns in the comments and a few that seem.. especially reactionary, in an almost-10-years-ago kind of way)
posted by elkevelvet (6 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
I love Rae Spoon and their music. I remember seeing news of their cancer diagnosis earlier in the pandemic and am delighted to see that it appears they are in recovery. Thanks for posting this.
posted by hepta at 8:12 AM on September 13, 2021 [3 favorites]


Can't imagine how exhausting it must be to have to endlessly correct people on your pronouns while doing chemo. I'm cis, but I've more than once thought that if I must get cancer, I hope it's not a heavily gendered one (to use the term in the article), because the hyperfeminization in the support communities (pink pink PINK) makes me uncomfortable, and must make it crazy difficult for trans men.
posted by praemunire at 9:10 AM on September 13, 2021 [7 favorites]


I'm with you on that, praemunire. A lifetime ago I played my first Rae Spoon tune on a late-night campus radio show, must have been around 2006 or so, and I'm ashamed to say I was really confused at the time.. trying to share a bit of info about the tune to the listeners, stumbling on pronouns, it's such a vivid memory. Not my finest moment, but I use myself as proof that people can learn and change. I'm cis and much closer to 50 than to 40, for what it's worth.
posted by elkevelvet at 10:12 AM on September 13, 2021 [2 favorites]


What a good album! Thanks for this.

Also, speaking as a bit of a Great Lakes nerd...this is a song after my own heart.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:09 PM on September 14, 2021 [1 favorite]


a handful of artists and albums hit me like a revelation and Rae Spoon's superioryouareinferior is one of them
posted by elkevelvet at 2:35 PM on September 14, 2021


Rae's song Wrestles with Death is very important to me.
posted by Lexica at 2:54 PM on September 14, 2021 [2 favorites]


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