The Rapid Onset | Kiri
@therapidonset.bsky.social
Songwriter | Guitarist | Vocalist | Producer |
#postpunk #womeninmusic #antifascist #transmusic
#postpunk #womeninmusic #antifascist #transmusic
I love you, Naomi 🫂
November 18, 2025 at 3:34 PM
I love you, Naomi 🫂
It's not a magical fix. Leaving home eases some pains, but awakens new ones. It's worth knowing what you may be in for if you are planning to migrate away.
If you can do it, & you want to, I am not trying to talk you out of it. Rather, I just hope to better equip you with my experience.
🖤🤎❤️🧡💛💚🩵🤍🩷🤍🩵💜
If you can do it, & you want to, I am not trying to talk you out of it. Rather, I just hope to better equip you with my experience.
🖤🤎❤️🧡💛💚🩵🤍🩷🤍🩵💜
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
It's not a magical fix. Leaving home eases some pains, but awakens new ones. It's worth knowing what you may be in for if you are planning to migrate away.
If you can do it, & you want to, I am not trying to talk you out of it. Rather, I just hope to better equip you with my experience.
🖤🤎❤️🧡💛💚🩵🤍🩷🤍🩵💜
If you can do it, & you want to, I am not trying to talk you out of it. Rather, I just hope to better equip you with my experience.
🖤🤎❤️🧡💛💚🩵🤍🩷🤍🩵💜
This makes it easy to feel resentment toward your new location. Even as much you want to be there, it's a decision made under duress, & that feels about as far from freedom & agency as you can imagine. The point is, immigrating is the dream of many, but it can be just as much a nightmare.
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
This makes it easy to feel resentment toward your new location. Even as much you want to be there, it's a decision made under duress, & that feels about as far from freedom & agency as you can imagine. The point is, immigrating is the dream of many, but it can be just as much a nightmare.
In the case of escaping an authoritarian government, even if you want to be in a new place, it feels tainted, more like you have to be here, like it was less of a choice & more of a necessity. Add on to that not having the security of safety to return whenever you want, & something has been stolen.
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
In the case of escaping an authoritarian government, even if you want to be in a new place, it feels tainted, more like you have to be here, like it was less of a choice & more of a necessity. Add on to that not having the security of safety to return whenever you want, & something has been stolen.
It is as rife with grief as it is with relief to arrive in a new place, away from everything you knew & built & established. It all begins again. As much as possibility opens before you, so does loneliness surround & envelope you, isolates you in a bubble of cultural confusion & unbelonging.
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
It is as rife with grief as it is with relief to arrive in a new place, away from everything you knew & built & established. It all begins again. As much as possibility opens before you, so does loneliness surround & envelope you, isolates you in a bubble of cultural confusion & unbelonging.
We know & love so many people who want to & wish they could. But similarly to the commonly dreamed & discoursed "let's buy a plot of land & live in community off-grid to escape the madness," there are considerations & complexities we fail to see when we dream of a better life somewhere else.
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
We know & love so many people who want to & wish they could. But similarly to the commonly dreamed & discoursed "let's buy a plot of land & live in community off-grid to escape the madness," there are considerations & complexities we fail to see when we dream of a better life somewhere else.
That's not to say that Berlin feels wrong. It doesn't. But we are here for a better life than is realistic in the US right now, even if it is perhaps not the best life we could imagine.
Perhaps I should have acknowledged this earlier: we are so privileged to have been able to leave.
Perhaps I should have acknowledged this earlier: we are so privileged to have been able to leave.
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
That's not to say that Berlin feels wrong. It doesn't. But we are here for a better life than is realistic in the US right now, even if it is perhaps not the best life we could imagine.
Perhaps I should have acknowledged this earlier: we are so privileged to have been able to leave.
Perhaps I should have acknowledged this earlier: we are so privileged to have been able to leave.
I was born in the US, & at 44 years old, am experiencing life away from it for the first time. Laura had only just arrived, & felt she had to leave far sooner than she was ready for. But for both of us, the reality is that we left home. Home in the soul sense of the word; where it feels right to be.
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
I was born in the US, & at 44 years old, am experiencing life away from it for the first time. Laura had only just arrived, & felt she had to leave far sooner than she was ready for. But for both of us, the reality is that we left home. Home in the soul sense of the word; where it feels right to be.
The US is such a complicated place forged by the vices of colonialism, slavery, & genocide, & yet...it is perhaps those evils which have been the crucible for the development of people who reach relentlessly for the extreme opposite virtues of justice, peace, community, diversity, & hope.
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
The US is such a complicated place forged by the vices of colonialism, slavery, & genocide, & yet...it is perhaps those evils which have been the crucible for the development of people who reach relentlessly for the extreme opposite virtues of justice, peace, community, diversity, & hope.
It's easy to hate the US for the sick racists, tyrants & tech bro fascists who are making it hell for the average person, but it is far easier to love the US for the resilience, generosity, idealism, multi-culturalism, & deep resourcefulness & creativity that comes with developing under pressure.
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
It's easy to hate the US for the sick racists, tyrants & tech bro fascists who are making it hell for the average person, but it is far easier to love the US for the resilience, generosity, idealism, multi-culturalism, & deep resourcefulness & creativity that comes with developing under pressure.
Do we have a "better" life in Germany than we could have in the US right now? Probably inarguably yes? Is that the same as the life we want to have, or the place we want to be? Especially under the circumstances of the US's oppression of immigrants & trans people, that's not as easy to answer.
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
Do we have a "better" life in Germany than we could have in the US right now? Probably inarguably yes? Is that the same as the life we want to have, or the place we want to be? Especially under the circumstances of the US's oppression of immigrants & trans people, that's not as easy to answer.
But everywhere must be home. The places we can't be are brought with us in memories, traditions, recipes, the ways we have been shaped by the cultures & people of those places. Longing for the past must be tempered with living in the present, always leaving something behind we may never reclaim.
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
But everywhere must be home. The places we can't be are brought with us in memories, traditions, recipes, the ways we have been shaped by the cultures & people of those places. Longing for the past must be tempered with living in the present, always leaving something behind we may never reclaim.
The point is, I think both of us left our hearts in places far more arid & open than the rainy, concrete streets of Berlin. That is not to say that we are not striving to make this place home as well; that's one thing I am learning as a newly minted person with migration experience. Nowhere is home.
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
The point is, I think both of us left our hearts in places far more arid & open than the rainy, concrete streets of Berlin. That is not to say that we are not striving to make this place home as well; that's one thing I am learning as a newly minted person with migration experience. Nowhere is home.
Will we be among the diverse people of the US again, in all their complexity, their down-to-earth kindness & openness, their willingness to help & strive together for community, security, & the space to be free? When we do get to return, will it be a place & a people unrecognizable to us?
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
Will we be among the diverse people of the US again, in all their complexity, their down-to-earth kindness & openness, their willingness to help & strive together for community, security, & the space to be free? When we do get to return, will it be a place & a people unrecognizable to us?
But there is still the question. The wondering, & longing. Did we make the right choice? How long will this unwelcome & exile last? Will fascism & decline persist for 3 more years? 8 years? Longer? Will we ever get back to the desert, where we both feel so warm in our souls?
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
But there is still the question. The wondering, & longing. Did we make the right choice? How long will this unwelcome & exile last? Will fascism & decline persist for 3 more years? 8 years? Longer? Will we ever get back to the desert, where we both feel so warm in our souls?
We have a wonderful therapist, & MUCH greater options & access to gender surgeries. We have friends, amazing things to do & see, delicious & affordable multi-cultural food options (though I miss US food so much 🥲). In less than a year here, it feels like we are already not just treading water.
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
We have a wonderful therapist, & MUCH greater options & access to gender surgeries. We have friends, amazing things to do & see, delicious & affordable multi-cultural food options (though I miss US food so much 🥲). In less than a year here, it feels like we are already not just treading water.
But here in Germany, we are not struggling financially. We don't fear catastrophically expensive car repairs, or ambulance rides, ER visits or hospitalization. We have hormones, arthritis treatment, affordable medications that don't require thou$and$ in pharmaceutical company subsidies per month.
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
But here in Germany, we are not struggling financially. We don't fear catastrophically expensive car repairs, or ambulance rides, ER visits or hospitalization. We have hormones, arthritis treatment, affordable medications that don't require thou$and$ in pharmaceutical company subsidies per month.
But then, we see other people, including immigrants, even if they are just surviving, continuing to live in the US, doing their best to go about their lives. Some of them even arrived in the midst of the rise of fascism during the 2nd Trump administration. Truthfully, we wish we could have stayed.
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
But then, we see other people, including immigrants, even if they are just surviving, continuing to live in the US, doing their best to go about their lives. Some of them even arrived in the midst of the rise of fascism during the 2nd Trump administration. Truthfully, we wish we could have stayed.
Sure, Laura missed home & family, so coming to Germany is not in the same class of displacement as the Ukrainian refugees she works with. But the hard truth is that we are not welcome there, & the resources available for us to sustain a healthy, stable life are dwindling rapidly & predictably.
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
Sure, Laura missed home & family, so coming to Germany is not in the same class of displacement as the Ukrainian refugees she works with. But the hard truth is that we are not welcome there, & the resources available for us to sustain a healthy, stable life are dwindling rapidly & predictably.
Because of my chronic illness & constantly living on the precipice of severe disability, we lived in the anxiety of persistent financial insecurity. My quality of life completely depended on insurance coverage, without which I would become disabled & suffer permanent joint damage. We had to leave.
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
Because of my chronic illness & constantly living on the precipice of severe disability, we lived in the anxiety of persistent financial insecurity. My quality of life completely depended on insurance coverage, without which I would become disabled & suffer permanent joint damage. We had to leave.
That's why we made a plan to leave, & she wasn't wrong. Living in the US has gotten concretely & noticeably worse & more difficult. Every day, there is active movement against immigrants & trans people. Both identities are inextricable from our lives & being. Jobs were so difficult for her to find.
November 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
That's why we made a plan to leave, & she wasn't wrong. Living in the US has gotten concretely & noticeably worse & more difficult. Every day, there is active movement against immigrants & trans people. Both identities are inextricable from our lives & being. Jobs were so difficult for her to find.