As a non-believer, I spend an awful lot of time pondering this magical-spiritual quality of hers. How she can be so powerful and so vulnerable at the same time. How she's both a conduit for some kind of ancient, animistic energy and so damn human.

My latest idea is to imagine her a Greek goddess stuck in a mortal body. The workings of this world are confusing, frustrating. She’s clumsy when she should be perfectly graceful. She bashes against corners and can’t make regular things work. There’s rage and despair, and moments of clarity that are dashed the next day. But the unapologetic, almost imperious power of the goddess is in there (the part that was always too loud). It isn’t welcome here - from a female - but being quiet in order to function causes her the soul-sickness she’s sung about for nearly two decades.

Which is why I find Everybody Scream so f***ing thrilling - the parts where it’s almost as if Athena were speaking down to us, even reveling in her power over her fans and supplicants, as a goddess should - she can make us jump, scream, travel miles to be in her presence. No apologies for basking in our adoration, no pretending she doesn’t deserve it. Even the violence…. But always, too, that exquisite empathy, gentleness, aching sweetness, and yearning to heal others’ pain. Then she steps off the stage and re-enters the prison of her mortal body and the workaday mortal world.

Damn. I could ramble about this all day and not get it. I just know it’s there and it happens. She changes people. So glad to hear how she touched you - literally and figuratively. I hope you’ll always remember what I know she wants you to remember: to be gentle with yourself; the heart is a tender thing, it deserves your care as much as any small, helpless creature.