“The Truth Is, Unless You Let Go, Unless You Forgive Yourself, Unless You Forgive The Situation, Unless

clippings from “women seeking women” personal ads in the baltimore sun, 1995

can you even tell this is one of my favourite poems

Hieu Minh Nguyen, from “Outbound”

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) dir. Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert

wheres that quote from a letter melville wrote to hawthrone that always manages to makes me insane

“I want to infect you with the tremendous excitement of living, because I believe that you have the strength to bear it.”

— Tennessee Williams, The Selected Letters: 1920-1945

Grown men preying on young women:

‘If I was some paint did I splatter on a promising grown man? If I was a child did it matter that you got to wash your hands?’ - Taylor Swift, Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve

Alicent Hightower and Viserys Targaryen, House of the Dragon // Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber // Sansa Stark and Petyr Baelish, Game of Thrones // Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran.

Inspired by this post.

“The role of the artist is exactly the same role, I think, as the role of the lover. If you love somebody, you honor at least two necessities at once. One of them is to recognize something very dangerous, or very difficult. Many people cannot recognize it at all, that you may also be loved; love is like a mirror. In any case, if you do love somebody, you honor the necessity endlessly, and being at the mercy of that love, you try to correct the person whom you love. Now, that’s a two-way street. You’ve also got to be corrected. As I said, the people produce the artist, and it’s true. The artist also produces the people. And that’s a very violent and terrifying act of love. The role of the artist and the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see. Insofar as that is true, in that effort, I become conscious of the things that I don’t see. And I will not see without you, and vice versa, you will not see without me. No one wants to see more than he sees. You have to be driven to see what you see. The only way you can get through it is to accept that two-way street which I call love. You can call it a poem, you can call it whatever you like. That’s how people grow up. An artist is here not to give you answers but to ask you questions.”

— James Baldwin, “The Black Scholar Interviews James Baldwin,” Conversations with James Baldwin (edited by Fred L. Standley and Louis H. Pratt)

Megan talking about the reaction to W.A.P in her documentary