Amethyst Shards from Fantasy by Gazing at the Stars

Amethyst Shards is something different. Inspired by songs off of Bath's album Romaplasm, the lyrical song on this album depicts a fantasy world with a crystal sea and two characters who travel across it in search of something. Originally, this song wasn't any deeper than that, but then I started tying it into Goodbye, with the purples and reds reference, and it became something else entirely.

While Goodbye depicts an apocalypse, this song is supposed to show the genesis of that. Of course, in Goodbye the apocalypse is all in my head, it's the feeling of suffocating in a gender storm after realizing my trans-ness. What this song shows is the birth of Stargazer.

Stargazer is a concept I've had for a long time. Back when I felt like I was suffocating, trapped in the present, unable to be the person I wanted to be, my only solace was hope for the future, a future where I could look like I wanted to, and people would see me that way too. To be frank, this is what Gazing at the Stars means to me. It's being stuck on the ground, but looking up to the sky knowing that some day, it will all be okay. Stargazer is the personification of that perfect future, the guiding light revealing where I need to go.

After I started to make my own reality better, I kind of lost sight of that future. I tried to be more realistic and ended up growing complacent. I wasn't miserable anymore, sure, but I wasn't happy. It took me until the end of my freshman year of college to realize this, to realize that I had lost hope.

Stargazer is born from the confluence of the pragmatic part of me meeting the emotional part of me. In this song they are represented as the ruby heart and the amethyst brain. As they come together they turn the blue blood of the crystal sea into "sparkling ruby clean," and watch as the claustrophobic blue walls in the sky fall away "revealing ever endless empty space." This transforms their world into one that fits. No more suffocating blue, in its place is a star filled sky and a shining sea. Purples and Reds align, and the events of Goodbye take place, but through it all Stargazer is there; That hope for the future.

I hope that one day I can be her, and that's what keeps me going.