It’s also what allows me to adore these songs to tiny little pieces. In all this, these songs never seemed to have the context of romantic-sexual relationships – looking back on your history, I see why. The strength in admitting to being hurt, vulnerable, angry and the strength of continuing despite these things. Songs about being betrayed by someone close to you or marginalized by society at large. Third, I was coming to the sneaking suspicion that the heterosexual norm for a woman my age – marriage, two point five children and a white picket fence – were neither what I wanted from life nor was it something that I would actively be able to stomach, on account of me probably not being heterosexual.Īll these insecurities, regrets, vulnerabilies and also the anger (how dare people tell me I’m less because I don’t conform) seemed poured into Minutes to Midnight and into any other Linkin Park album I’ve listened to since then. I’d like to think I’ve made a few lives better or richer, so, there.

(But: I’ve had people find words like asexuality, aromanticism, genderqueerness.

Second, I’d just decided that I would sacrifice a considerable part of my income for my dream, some might say pipe dream, of working on a writing career that is, at the moment, still not what most people would consider a career. (I will likely never get rid of these issues.) Also, I’d lost all my remaining grandparents without standing up to my Nazi grandmother, without asking what my grandfathers had seen and done in WWII. One whom I wished I had asked questions, much like, ironically, people will now wish they asked you the right questions. One were ten year old regrets – there were dead people. I bought Minutes to Midnight, listened closely, then decided Linkin Park was my new favorite band, because that album resonated with me in a way that my old faves hadn’t managed in a while.Īt the time, I had a few things going on. It’s almost exactly ten years that Linkin Park and your lyrics became a part of my life, when I saw Transformers and was totally captivated by What I’ve Done. Also in retrospect, I could see where the big black dog of depression reared its ugly head in the lyrics.

The album felt, in retrospect, like a farewell note combined with a „last lecture“ type of thing. I don’t know and don’t care if anyone noticed. When I drafted this piece, I was crying on a train after listening to One More Light the first time after learning about your death.

Die A-Karte by Carmilla DeWinter