Right now, I’m immersed in BleakHeart‘s enthralling doom folk. Today we’re premiering their video for “Where I’m Disease,” and as someone who was raised by a mother with chronic illness, witnessing her medicalization and the way she was consistently under- and mis-diagnosed and treated like a guinea pig, the concept behind this song really resonates with me. I recently learned about the acronym “WW,” too often used by medical professionals to describe their older female patients with complaints they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, properly diagnose: “Whining Woman.” It makes me think about the many times doctors dismissed my mom’s pain, only to later — and at the end of her life, too late — discover it was “real” and not her imagination. Too many women are left to suffer alone in their experience of disease by our medical system, and sometimes by their families and communities. “Where I’m Disease” explores the inner experience of illness and medicalization, what I imagine can be the loneliness and isolation of navigating one’s personal struggle with health, and the triumph of acceptance and self love in the face of it. BleakHeart invite us into this world with crushing riffs and ethereal vocals, twinkling melodies and slow, melancholic percussion.
“Where I’m Disease” is the debut single off their upcoming record Silver Pulse, coming out via Seeing Red Records on May 24th — pre-order it here or here. Check out our premiere of “Where I’m Disease” below.
First, it takes surrender in naming, recognizing and honoring the truth that your body holds in disease. It’s both a relief and a deep despair to know what’s happening in having multiple complex, mostly misunderstood and under treated diagnoses. Having to participate and manage your own care when almost every step of it is uncomfortable and hard. Coming up against the same trauma over and over again and knowing the wheel won’t stop. Moving slowly into hollow tubes with contrast or meds, flowing through your vascular system or other body spaces. A magical, complex weaving that is a portal to a very real human experience of authentic decay.
