I used to think I had to make things sound smooth. Clean transitions, balanced frequencies, polished structures. But my anxiety doesn’t move like that.
When I have an episode, my body doesn’t “build tension and release.” It snaps. It cuts in and out. There’s breath, then silence. Noise, then numbness. If I tried to turn it into a melody, I’d be lying.
That’s why glitch makes sense to me. The pops, the skips, the distortions — they’re not just technical flaws. They’re emotional artifacts. Glitch is what happens when a system is overwhelmed. When a signal breaks down under pressure.
I’ve started thinking of my anxiety not just as a subject, but as a method. What if the way I edit sound — the abrupt cuts, the stereo stutters, the excessive reverb — isn’t just aesthetic, but biographical? What if that chaos is me?
There’s something freeing in rejecting sonic perfection. I don’t want to smooth out the noise. I want to amplify it until it says what I can’t.
This isn’t about broken sound. It’s about real sound. Because when I glitch, I’m not malfunctioning — I’m just finally matching how I feel inside.
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