The Power of Julien Baker's Music

For a brief time, I lived near a black gospel church on the southeast side of Columbus, Ohio. When I say I lived near it, I mean that I lived above it, and this is how I knew that it was a black gospel church. I would be awakened on Sunday mornings by a uniform trembling of the floor — the kind that comes only when people clap their hands in unison or stomp their feet in a chorus of sound, when the wave of praise hits every spirit at once and has to find a way out. My mattress was on the floor, and I was sometimes sprawled across it diagonally or sometimes sprawled across it with my clothes from the night before still on. When the floor trembles with something holy and the vibrations rise into a body that is unholy, it is easy to convince yourself that you are being saved.

“Claws in Your Back,” a song by Julien Baker, entered me the same way the vibrations from the church I lived above entered me, making me feel whole in a way I didn’t know I needed to.

From “Claws in Your Back” by Hanif Abdurraquib for the New York Times T Magazine; Photo by Eric Ryan Anderson (@ericryananderson) 

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