Birds Fear Death is the noise punk project and musical alias of Kelly Wilhite.

“pretty girl snuff film” is their most popular song, which introduced me to BFD. The song is about outside perspectives, an omniscient “they” begging the singer to commit suicide.

The song is a thrust of a knife wasting no time getting to the groaning, blasted-out vocals. At first, I couldn’t make out the lyrics outside of the last, repeating refrain:

I WRITE MY NOTE, WE'RE NOT ALONE
GO OUT COME HOME, AND THEY ALL SAY
KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF
KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF
KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF
KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF
KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF
KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF
KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF
KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF

I don’t listen to this song to psych myself up into doing something I wouldn’t be able to regret. This song is the deep exhalation of the sick feeling I keep in front of my liver. I’d mouth along this song as a mantra, to keep myself grounded. I’d let my tongue bump over the repeated lines and feel better.

I kept coming back to this song because it seemed to manifest thought, as if, rather than owning that voice and that impulse, I could project it onto the voice of Kelly Wilhite and claim it isn’t mine. It’s calming.

I don’t know Kelly. I’ll probably never know Kelly. I hope she doesn’t get to know me, because I’m not sure what I would say to her. There are so many things I think we would understand about each other, and so much more that we wouldn’t. I’m not a rockstar, I don’t know music, I’ve never been to a gig and quite frankly I don’t know what that would even look like.

Kelly speaks about some sort of experience which is alien to me:

They're laughing in the halls, whispering behind the stage
There lays my body, staring you in the face
Don’t blush when I rip apart my skin, you know I look better
When you have full view of my ribs

Kelly has experience with music, obviously, so I don’t really understand what it’s like to experience the laughter and whispering from people behind the stage. I understand this: truth is found in the space between hide and flesh where the fat lays bare, exposed to tingling cold air, as some voyeur seeks understanding while they stare dumbfounded, their breath coating and contaminating the meat.

My parents took me hunting when I was a kid. I remember all of us pulling triggers, aiming at animals through scopes. That part was fun, although not too distinguishable from shooting clay pigeons or static targets. After trigger-pulling came the search, where you look for little clues that would key you in on where to find meat. I loved finding little specks of blood on grass. Finding it pooled in one location, or, worse, splattered into chunks on the mountainside, would shock me.

I remember seeing the meat, the deer, in whatever position it would end in. I thanked the animal for its meat, in the way that I saw some video game protagonist once do. My parents would find this odd, treat the corpse callously, teach me to poke the eyes with sticks till they rupture. They would teach me to gut the deer, to rend organs from flesh, to leave it in neat piles for the coyotes. I’d always see ribs from the inside first. I remember, sometimes, my dad would pepper the flesh before the hide was even removed. I remember the warmth. I remember staring dumbfounded at the ribs.

My mother started drinking again after I came out as trans. She’d come into my room at midnight, keep me up until 3 in the morning asking questions, poking and prodding to find some vulnerabilities where she could try to talk me out of it, to get something to break.

I gave her everything, every little detail, trying to explain every single facet of my life in the hopes that, if only she could read my mind, she’d get it.

Here! This is my flesh, can you see it move? Do you understand how it works now? Am I real yet?

I remember the look on her face, could read her mind: “naked and rotten.”

I remember one year we killed an elk and found rotten flesh between the hide and bones of this living thing. We think it was caused by a gunshot wound that got infected and ruined the meat. We don’t know for sure, though. The whole family cleared out of the shop.

The last time I visited my family was for my brother’s graduation. I saw the looks on people’s faces, and I cast myself into the corners. I let my secret slip to another mother of mine, my god-mom, who adopted me before my parents died.

She asked a million questions, asked a million more a few days after. I showed my ribs again. This time I think she actually understood, but I’ll never know. It’s tiring.

I know the meat isn’t rotten, but I don’t know who I can convince. This dynamic is always so one-sided, why am I the only one forced to strip myself down to bone?

“fucking love song” by Birds Fear Death is another favorite of mine due to their other repeated refrain:

Taking off my clothes
Taking off my clothes
Taking off my clothes
Taking off my clothes

Another externalization. Always, always so sick of exposing my heart and soul to everyone who wasn’t going to believe me anyways. Repeating the same narratives and truths, exposing the same vulnerabilities, taking off my clothes, taking off my clothes…

I dress modestly. I feel naked in shorts. I feel naked in short sleeves.

The less of me that feels the open air, who feels the breath of strangers, the better.

I love jackets.

I love gloves.

I wear socks in my own home.

I rarely wear sweatpants.

My favorite piece of clothing is an old Greek greatcoat that probably weighs 10 pounds.

Showers are the roughest moments for me; I usually begin mental breakdowns in the ritualistic parts that occur before. When I’m taking off my clothes. Taking off my clothes.

I got used to it.

These songs provide some little voice to externalize all these small, mounting feelings. I hear another person who is the subject, the muse, while thousands of old fucks jerk off to the idea of murdering her.

I remember waking up hearing my dad talking with his friends about hanging the trannies. Did he mean me, too?

Kelly Wilhite sings frequently about her scars across a dozen different songs. I don’t have any, actually; no physical scars.

So many people who do love me, who know me, make frequent comments about my skin: How soft it is, how clean, no imperfections.

My dad taught me how to trap bobcats.

If you don’t already know, the way you kill a bobcat in a trap is to lower a little noose over its neck and strangle it. You don’t want bullet holes in the fur.

I remember hesitating and not keeping the noose pulled tight enough, long enough, so the cat would wake up almost immediately and thrash in her cage. I remember how many times I fucked up tying my belt so it let loose from the ceiling fan. I remember how, when I came out to my parents, I tried to push my dad out of the way so I could reach for his gun. I remember washing the fur, shampooing it, conditioning it, so that way when the hide was sold it would sell for a high value.

I have not been in a snuff film. I have no scars. I know my dad would prefer to hang me, to preserve the skin and forget the flesh.

Scars are these tiny calcified masses, these numb little balls that rub against the rest of the hide and flesh. My lover has scars in her back from a past passion that I’ll rub almost daily to calm the surrounding tissue.

“bodies” is a favorite that doesn’t talk about scars:

I'm not scared to die
I've seen it in my dreams
And every time I get a little bit more used to the feeling

It's kinda funny now
Whenever I wake up I feel like
Something should be missing

So many of my memories flood over me, these little torrents of blood gushing out of the arteries. I try not to remember anymore, and in some ways I can’t realize just how much I forget.

I try not to remember the bobcats, the deer, the elk, and I also forget important dates. I forget to start dinner, I forget to schedule my doctor appointments, I forget birthdays, I forget who’s turn it is to do what chore. I try to calcify my memories and stop them from flowing. I don’t know how to calm the surrounding tissue.

“Anorexia song” speaks about the space between the scars:

The angel that watches over me
Gave me every chance
I can't leave the bathroom
I can't wash the blood off of my hands
Is this what you expected
When you held me in your arms?
For me to be filled with ibuprofen
And all covered in scars?

I met my lover before I knew I was trans. I’ve turned into a completely different person several times over the course of our relationship. I don’t know what she was expecting, but she has been with me ever since. In the time my lover’s been with me, I’ve learned myself. I’ve shown my ribs to others in front of her, and, lately, I’ve grown numb, and it’s hurt her.

I’ve felt numb to life, even lately, with the stability and comfort that comes with adulthood and a decent job. I’ve slowed myself down, and only recently started to move faster. I have finally started taking hormones to further my transition.

You take off your clothes long enough, and the cold seeps in. You don’t want to leave a gutted deer out in the elements long enough or the meat will spoil. You either take the meat off the bone quick or you don’t pull the trigger.

I’ve almost died more than a few times since I met my lover. Not all of them were entirely my fault, but most of them were. I fantasized quite openly in the same way Kelly writes about suicide. I’ve written bad poems in the same vein, glorifying and trying to find some beautiful value in my own death to the concern of everyone who knows me.

Kelly and I share something else in that we’ve both tried to share that value with someone.

From “bodies”:

We can watch ourselves on the news from the comfort of the carpet floor
We can choose the pictures that they show of us and who we wanted to be
So let's pick our favorite flowers like they'll say we did before
And even in death, your gasping breath is beautiful to me

You and I could change this town
No, fuck it, you and I could change this world
Let's mark our graves with our new names
And from the inside out we'll watch our bodies burn

I’m not sure what dynamic Kelly has with this other figure, but I know it’s something I would have liked to hear this at my worst. I like this acceptance, this embrace of agency. My lover didn’t.

I wanted permission to go and was denied. I wanted to spoil, to stop showing my ribs, to let the meat rot, and was denied. I asked for permission.

Kelly expressed something similar in “do you still believe in god?”:

Will you still love me when I come back to haunt you?
Will you text me back when you watch my body fall?
Will you draw hearts in my yearbook memorial?
Do you still believe in god?

These are bids, these are little requests of reassurance, these are all the same statement and question.

“I’m going to leave soon, how badly will this hurt you?”

I don’t know how to soothe the people around me. I don’t know how to stop this calcified mass of self from hurting others. I didn’t know how to stop taking off my clothes, from showing my ribs, from making another snuff film of myself.

Birds Fear Death is eponymous, from the album “Birds Fear Death”, from the song “Birds Fear Death”:

Would there still be makeup on your dead body?
Would there be hope left in your eyes?
Would there be flowers placed on your gravestone?
Would anybody be surprised?

Birds
Fear
Death
But I don't

I am not Kelly Wilhite, but I understand this passive suicidality absolutely.

I understand how animals jump when they hear gas escape from the muzzle.

I understand that I just wouldn’t react the same.

I would merely lie down and wait to be gutted.

That was how I lived every day. I don’t live that way now.

Scars do not go away, but the flesh learns to move with and around the scars. My memory is still bad.

I still feel suicidal even if I’m not making plans and poems about it anymore. I still feel a little numb to life, but I’ve regained some feeling.

My skin seems to cling tighter to me, my clothes fit me.

My lover has seen hope in my eyes again. I stopped dying.

I stopped trying to explain myself to everyone. I showed my ribs less, I started running and thrashing.

Don’t explain yourself, don’t show them your ribs.

Run from the muzzle flash.

Thrash against the bars of your fucking cage.

Never let them put the noose over you.

Birds fear death and so do I.

Birds fear death and so should you.