By Mike Sain't Louis ·
Beat My Post-Traumatic Stress: dancing what the body remembers
The body has a memory even when the mind tries to forget. There are scares that stay in your chest, noises that make you jump years later, silences that weigh more than any scream. That's what Beat My Post-Traumatic Stress is about, with an English title that's almost an order: give that a rhythm, beat it with a beat.
What interests me about this song is that it doesn't stay in the wound. It goes through fear, through anxiety, through those days when the words won't come, and instead of sitting down to cry in a corner, it heads for the dance floor. Every synth has something of a scar and every drum hit works like a heartbeat that seemed lost and comes back.
It's always been said that healing is a matter of silence, of calm, of speaking softly. Here the opposite is defended. Sometimes healing is moving, sweating, shining under a club light and letting the body release what it had stored away.
A survival song
It's a personal story turned into music, and that's why it doesn't need big explanations: it's a way of raising your hand and saying I'm still here. That what happened, happened, but it didn't win.
It belongs to the album Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado Gayfolk, and within that universe it plays a different role from the cheekier or more copla-style songs. It's the electronic, nocturnal side, the club as a refuge, which for many queer people has literally been that: the place where you can finally breathe.
When to listen? When your body is tense for no apparent reason. When you need to remember that anxiety doesn't get the last word. Or simply on a Saturday night, with headphones on and a desire to shake something off.
I'd dedicate it to anyone who has survived something that doesn't show up in photos. Which is many more people than we think.