Blue Sky” Helped Me Imagine A World Where People See Me Isn’t it beautiful?Ĭheck out the other essays in this series: TXT’s “CROWN” is a window through which the light can shine, where I am illuminated in all of my glory, in every shade of humanity. But those games are over, I’m done playing them now. I surrendered to the games of others who toyed with my feelings and left me scarred. Little me lost the game many times, but grown-up me has lost even more. If not for their lyrics ( “ I won’t be able to get into heaven, I don’t belong there ”), or their reference to the late queer icon Leslie Cheung, then for the space they create for my vicarious experience of a youth I never had. Though TXT are younger than I am, and their music documents the growing pains of adolescence, I have always felt at home with how they reckon with adulthood and maturity. It reminds me of something my friend JËVA calls the “ teenage 20s.” It’s the phenomenon where, because you grew up queer and could never celebrate yourself openly, you were denied your firsts - crush, kiss, love - so you experience those things later in life. Fantasy runs wild in my mind as I connect their words to moments I remember, or scenes plucked from somebody else’s stories because mine are too traumatic to recall. There’s no signposting confirming what the lyrics represent, but that’s the point. TXT’s music is not necessarily inherently queer. These days, whenever I need reminding of who I am, what I stand for, and who I want to become, there is no better tonic than Tomorrow X Together’s “CROWN.” Rewiring the part of my brain responsible for creating that game was no small feat, but I did it. It was a psychological war I waged against myself, the self I never wanted to be. The rules were simple: when crossing the street, if I reached the other side before the approaching car passed a certain landmark, I was safe. In this essay, writer K-Ci Williams honors the music of TXT. To celebrate Pride Month, four writers paid homage to the songs that invite curiosity, discovery, and fantasy in their lives. Fantasies, of course, come with soundtracks.

When you’re discovering who you are and don’t see an outlet for expressing your gender or sexuality, you imagine it - you craft elaborate scenarios where you can feel fully yourself.

Queerness and fantasy have long been inextricably tied.

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