"Oh my God. Would you just look at that?"

  Apple's sharp nudge against my arm was a punctuation mark in her ongoing, one-sided commentary on every male specimen who had the misfortune to cross her field of vision. We were perched on absurdly uncomfortable wrought-iron chairs at a café called The Grind, an establishment that took its mediocre coffee and its parade of undergraduate masculinity far too seriously for a place whose signature drink was called the "Caffeine Contradiction" and tasted exactly like you'd expect.

  I pulled one earbud out, the distorted guitars and Chester Bennington's raw, anguished voice still bleeding through the remaining bud. "Lost" by Linkin Park. Apple rolled her eyes when she saw the name on my phone screen.

  "Still brooding to that angsty stuff?" she asked, but there was no real judgment in it. She'd long ago accepted my " angsty music taste," as she called it.

  She didn't know the half of it. She couldn't know that I'd watched music evolve over millennia—from tribal drums around fire pits to Gregorian chants echoing through stone cathedrals, from the birth of opera in Florence to the jazz clubs of Harlem, from the raw energy of rock and roll shaking the fifties to the birth of hip-hop in the Bronx. I'd heard it all, witnessed it all, and somewhere in the late nineties, when the first waves of nu-metal started crashing through the airwaves, I'd felt something I hadn't expected.

  Ecstasy.

  There was something about the fusion—the heavy guitars, the hip-hop beats, the raw, unpolished emotion of men screaming about pain and anger and loss. It felt familiar. Not in the way of memory, but in the way of recognition. Here were mortals, channelling something primal, something ancient, into sound. Here were artists giving voice to the very feelings I'd been carrying for centuries. The rage. The grief. The desperate, clawing hope that somehow, somewhere, things would be different.

  Linkin Park had become a favourite, not just for the music but for the way Chester's voice could break your heart and set it on fire at the same time. Every time I heard him sing about being lost, about searching for something just out of reach, I thought of all the lifetimes I'd spent looking. All the faces. All the goodbyes. All the moments of arriving too late.

  But it wasn't just Linkin Park. The whole nu-metal explosion had caught me off guard. I'd found myself at a Limp Bizkit concert in the late nineties, surrounded by kids in baggy jeans screaming about doing it all for the nookie, and somehow, I understood. It was ridiculous and aggressive and completely lacking in subtlety—and that was exactly the point. "My Generation" became an anthem I loved immediately—kids screaming because no one was listening, and I understood that on a level they couldn't imagine.

  Korn hit differently. Jonathan Davis's voice—that strange, keening wail that could shift from a whisper to a roar—spoke to something deeper. When he sang about abandonment and pain, I heard echoes of every version of him I'd lost. I'd seen them live in 2002, standing at the back of a crowded arena while thousands screamed along, and for the first time in decades, I felt like I wasn't alone in my rage.

  And then there was System of a Down—chaotic, polyphonic madness that felt almost ancient. Serj Tankian's voice could go from operatic to guttural in a single line, and the political fury behind their songs reminded me of every revolution I'd witnessed, every empire crumbled under its own corruption. It wasn't just music; it was something ancient given voice.

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  When I listened to them, I felt that same visceral recognition that ran through all the best music—the sense that here were mortals, channelling something primal, something ancient, into sound. Here were artists giving voice to the very feelings I'd been carrying for centuries. The rage. The grief. The desperate, clawing hope that somehow, somewhere, things would be different. Their music didn't just speak to me; it reached into the deepest parts of my immortal soul and pulled out echoes of every life, every loss, every moment of fury at a world that kept spinning while my heart kept breaking.

  Apple called it my "angsty phase," which had been going on for decades now, apparently. She didn't understand, and I couldn't explain. How could I tell her that this music, this loud, aggressive, gloriously messy music, was one of the few things in this century that made me feel seen? That when Chester screamed about being lost, when Jonathan wailed about pain, when Serj's voice soared over those chaotic, twisting instrumentals, I heard my own story reflected back at me. They were mortals, living their brief, bright lives, and they'd somehow reached into the same darkness I'd been navigating for millennia and pulled out something beautiful.

  Nu-metal wasn't just music to me. It was proof that even in this fractured, chaotic world, there were still people willing to scream the truth.

  But it wasn't only the heavy stuff that got to me. When I wanted to breathe, to remember that the world could be soft, I turned to something else entirely.

  Nelly Furtado's voice drifted through my speakers on lazy afternoons, and there was something effortlessly hopeful about it—a lightness I'd forgotten I could feel. Snoop Dogg's laid-back flow could unknot decades of tension; the groove reminded me that life didn't always have to be a battle. Nelly's "Dilemma" wrapped around me like a familiar blanket—a song about wanting someone you couldn't have, about the ache of proximity without possession. I knew that feeling. I'd lived it across centuries. But hearing it set to that beat made it feel less lonely, like the whole world understood.

  Ja Rule's collaborations with Ashanti—"Always on Time," "Mesmerize"—those were the ones that really got me. The push and pull of his rough voice with her silky vocals, the aching longing in every line. I'd listen at night, staring at the ceiling, and every time I heard "All I do is think about you, baby," I thought of him. All of him. Every version, every face, every lifetime.

  Apple had zero patience for any of it.

  "You and your ancient music," she'd groan when she caught me humming along. We were driving upstate for a Saturday picnic by the lake—windows down, breeze tangling through our hair—and she'd commandeered the aux cord, as always. "G, this isn't even old. This is just... not new. Nelly Furtado? That's what my mom listens to during yoga."

  "It's called having taste."

  "It's called being a grandma trapped in a hot girl's body." She'd change the station to whatever pop atrocity was currently charting. "There. Now you're listening to music from this decade. You're welcome."

  "Ja Rule is timeless."

  "Ja Rule is Ja-RUINED, G. Let it go."

  But sometimes, when she thought I wasn't looking, I'd catch her tapping her finger to the beat. A subtle bounce of her pink-tipped nail against the table. A quiet hum under her breath when a familiar melody drifted through the apartment, quickly silenced if she noticed me listening.

  She'd never admit it. That wasn't how Apple operated. But I'd find evidence—my entire Ja Rule playlist somehow migrated onto her Spotify ("Research purposes," she claimed), or catch her singing along to "I'm Like a Bird" at full volume while making breakfast, spatula in hand during an overnight at my apartment. When spotted, she'd go crimson and claim she was "just clearing her throat."

  By then, I'd stopped calling her out. It had become our unspoken ritual: she'd raid my music library, I'd pretend not to notice, and occasionally I'd get a text: "This one's not terrible, I guess. For your weird old taste."