“However Mean Your Life Is, Meet It And Live It; Do Not Shun It And Call It Hard Names. It Is Not So

The year I went to the movies

“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)

Miller's Girl (2024)

i smell so good you gonna moan a little when u hug me

Janelle Monáe in GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY, Dir. Rian Johnson

something else i've been thinking about lately is how much more alive houses are to people who experience domestic abuse. some things in the house are protectors - the door to your room that swings shut behind you without you pushing it, the stairs that always creak loud enough to let you know that someone's coming before they get there... whereas other things are alive with malice - the cabinets that slam and the dishes that break, the vacuum cleaner that always manages to sound angry and accusing. the whole house listens, and the whole house remembers, and everything takes sides.

“I want you to do this with me for one month. One month. Write 10 observations a week and by the end of four weeks, you will have an answer. Because when someone writes about the rustic gutter and the water pouring through it onto the muddy grass, the real pours into the room. And it’s thrilling. We’re all enlivened by it. We don’t have to find more than the rustic gutter and the muddy grass and the pouring cold water.”

— Marie Howe, Boston University’s 2016 Theopoetics Conference  (via mothersofmyheart)

April 6, 1963

succession is a great show