Blacken Me Blacken Me, Growled

Cassandra Troyan's Blacken Me Blacken Me, Growled is about failure. It's about ecstasy. It's about taking ecstasy and fucking. It's rap and emo and sharks. It's all the optimism and yearning of a Midwestern youth mixed with the pain of an intelligent and obsessive mind slowly realizing that language isn't enough. That touching isn't enough. That pain isn't enough. That nothing's enough. Troyan's voices are powerful voices. They are broken voices, climbing atop one another and splitting open. Equal parts disturbing and comforting, like a lullaby from the abyss, Blacken Me reminds us, "If we’d only stop flailing / we’d realize we float."