#i wrote this in a fevered state after walking through a storm so i doubt it's coherent but. it's the way they changed each other! the way

[the-judicial-assistants-notebook]

No, see, now I'm thinking about Iris teaching Phoenix how to plait hair and getting emotional about it because like. The first person who ever plaited her hair was probably her mother, right? And I think Morgan's the kind of mum who's rather strict with hair, meaning that it'd be drawn very tight and be a rather painful affair. After they leave Kurain, I'm guessing that Iris still may not have known how to braid her hair but Dahlia did, and so Dahlia was the one who used to do it for her before eventually teaching Iris to do it herself; and, while I don't think Dahlia was as rough as Morgan was, she did learn how to plait from her, and she has nails, so it still hurt a little. But that's how Iris learns to plait her hair: with a touch of force and an emphasis on bridled control. It's necessary, when you're working up in the mountains since it keeps strands out of the way.

But then she goes to Ivy-U and meets the kindest, gentlest man she's ever known, and he gets curious as to how she does her hair, so she shows him. It's the first time anyone's ever touched her hair and truly cared about not hurting her -- he's hesitant to even comb his fingers through it because he's afraid of tugging on her scalp -- and she has to change the way she moves as they slowly, carefully work their way through the two braids together. Yes, it takes longer than it normally would, and the braids are looser than she would usually wear them, but they stay, and it's the first she's ever tried plaiting them in a way that's different from her mother and sister -- the first she's ever considered it, even -- and it shows her, irrevocably, that kindness and gentleness can be just as effective as the harsh strength her family has always prided and possessed. It's the first time that Iris has used her hands in a way that feels truly natural to her and not been ashamed for her own weakness.

And she carries that with her for the rest of her life; just as he carries what her hands showed him as he brushes his fingers through her younger sister's fairer brown locks, while she sits in jail and does the same to her own long, dark hair, now black as it should be instead of red.

[multisfabulis]

Clairvoyant Rain

Word Count: 3038

TW: Implied self-harm, implied/referenced past child abuse

Can you believe it's been about a year since I last wrote these two? It's not that I don't have much to write about, I just haven't had the time to do so! Between working on Corona's Shadow, working on the backburner project you'll get to see after I post chapter 2 of "Love's Descent into Madness", and dealing with IRL stuff, RLD has kinda fallen to the wayside. I can't guarantee I'll work more on it but I'll try my best to!

By the way, the reason this fic exists is because I wanted to write soft Luce/Ravi and this song was my inspiration for it!

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     Ravi tiredly opened his eyes and immediately regretted it. He hoped it would be morning so this wouldn’t happen but alas… It was still dark, the neon lights outside pouring in from the window. He could hear rain pattering on the glass as he looked at the digital clock for the time. In bright red numbers read 2:52 AM. Yep, way too early to be up and he fucking hated it.

     All waking up in the middle in the night ever did was ruin his good night’s sleep and make the alarm he set even more unbearable than it already was. If only he could go back to the days before Eli came and fucked everything up. That’d be really nice but because he’s wishing for it, he’ll never get those days back. He turned over onto his side and closed his eyes, wanting to drift back asleep.

     It was a moment later he heard a thunderous roar. His heart hammered against his chest as he shot up in bed. It took him some time to realize it wasn’t stuff being thrown around but something falling on piano keys from a great height. Luce knew better than to be loud when people were sleeping. Something must be happening if he was banging on the piano with no consideration for others.

     Tossing the covers aside, he hurried over to the door and opened it. He found himself face to face with a sleepy Amelia. She had a minor case of bedhead going on as dark pinkish eyes widened upon seeing him. No doubt on why she was up.

     “You heard that, too, right?” he asked quietly.

     Giving him a nod for her answer, he stepped in front and whispered, “All right, I’m gonna go see what’s going on. Stay behind me and don’t make a single peep.”

     They tiptoed down the hallway and he peeked around the corner. He saw Luce hunched over his piano, running his hands through his hair while muttering nonsense under his breath. He seemed to be frustrated, which was a rare state to see him in. His exclamation of “Damn it!” before slamming his hands down on the keys was further proof of it. Hearing the sudden discordant boom from up close startled Amelia as she nearly blew her cover with a stifled gasp.

     Turning around, he crouched down and put a finger to his lips, whispering, “Go back to bed, I’ll talk to Luce and everything will be fine, all right?”

     She nodded and walked back to her room. He watched her go inside and shut the door before deciding on his next course of action. He had an idea as to what was going on and he didn’t want her listening in on them. A girl her age shouldn’t be exposed to such dark things.

     He carefully made his way across the living room, being as quiet as the wind. He glanced over to where Luce’s knife was and grew worried when he saw it. It was laying on top of its sheath, meaning he took it out for a reason. He hoped it wasn’t the reason he was thinking of but he had his doubts. He sat beside the other man on the piano seat, concerned.

     “Luce?” he called out quietly, searching for his eyes. “Is everything all right?”

     Ruby red eyes met his as he replied in a guilty voice, “Snowbird, I, I’m sorry if I woke you up, I just---”

     “No, it’s fine, I’m just--” he tentatively put a hand on his back in an attempt to comfort him-- “I’m just wondering if you’re okay.”

     “Well,” he began, letting out a scoff, “I thought that if I played music for a little bit, I would stop thinking about the bad memories that just popped up out of nowhere but because my hands are shaking so damn bad, I’m not hitting the right keys and that’s pissing me the fuck off.

     “If my hands could just stop shaking, I’d be able to play, because if I don’t play soon, I’m gonna do something I’ll end up regretting and I don’t wanna do that so…” he trailed off, his voice going from a fever pitch to sounding broken.

     He rubbed his hand over his back, hoping to soothe him. It was then he looked down and his worry deepened into alarm. Luce was vigorously scratching at his arm, which was a canvas full of faded scars over pale white skin. Oh, that was definitely not good.

     He couldn’t let his panic get the best of him. It’d only worsen Luce’s already bad state and it was the last thing the both of them needed. He had to stay calm and try to curb his urge to hurt himself. In a way, this was good, because it meant he hadn’t done it yet, if the lack of blood wasn’t an indicator. He could try and talk him out of it so, if it worked, it’d encourage him to resist the temptation in the future.

     Placing a hand atop his to stop his scratching, Ravi asked, “Why don’t we go back to my room and get your mind off this for a little bit, hmm? Would that be okay?”

     “Yeah, that…might be good,” Luce replied, his breathing shaky.

     He helped him up off the seat and led him through the hallway. He held on to his hand the whole time as a means of keeping him grounded. Even so, he kept a close eye on him to make sure Luce was still in the present. It was after he brought him inside his room he saw some improvement in his condition.

     A quiet calm had replaced whatever anger was left in him. His eyes were no longer glassy and his breathing had steadied some. He was still there, he could reach him and not be met with silence.

     Setting him down on the bed, Ravi knelt in front of him and asked, “Are you feeling better?”

     “A little bit,” he replied, letting out a sigh afterwards. “Snowbird, listen, I’m sorry for making you have to take care of me and---”

     “Hey, hey, hey, none of that, all right?” He reached up to cup his cheek. “You’re not a burden to me, Luce. I know this is a new thing for both of us but I’ll be there for you, okay? Whatever it is, I’ll be there so…remember that.”

     With the ghost of a smile, Luce took hold of his hand and kissed the back of his fingers. His lips curled into a small smile of his own at the display. At least it showed he meant what he said by feeling a bit better. He retracted his hand and stood up with a huff, sitting beside him on the bed.

     “So, do you wanna talk about it?” he asked, leaning forward to see his face.

     Watching the small trace of relief fade away, he quickly added, “It doesn’t have to be about that! It could be about anything you want! Anything that’ll get your mind off that…”

     A huge clap of thunder sounded off in that instant, rattling the whole apartment. The loud boom caused his heart to stop for a split second before resuming. He turned to face the window to see if the power had gone out from that. Nope, the stupid neon signs from across the street were still on so that’s that.

     “Jesus Christ, that was loud. You okay after hearing that, Lu---”

     He turned around to check on him and fell silent. Luce was leaning back on the bed, his eyes closed as if he were listening to the downpour outside. What really stunned him was the expression on his face. He looked…content, no signs of stress or detachment present. Just peace and serenity, things he never thought he’d ever see on him, at least not for a long time.

     “Luce?”

     As if he just remembered he wasn’t alone, Luce straightened up and said, “Sorry, I just got…entranced listening to the rain.”

     “You actually like this shitty weather?” he asked incredulously. No normal person would like this kind of weather. Then again, he’s forgetting that Luce isn’t normal by any stretch of the imagination.

     “I love it, it’s very special to me,” he replied. “Have I not told you this?”

     “No, and we’ve been going out for how long?”

     “Do you wanna know why, then? I think you’ll have somewhat of an idea when I tell you I began to love the rain on that night.”

     It took him longer than it should’ve to realize what he meant. The night he became truly free from his shackles, the night he… That already told him just a hint of the significance rain carried for Luce. He may not have understood why it was so special but it was cruel of him to mock that which he clearly loved so…

     “That night, after I did what I did,” Luce began, a tone of reminiscence held in his voice, “I went outside. I looked up and there were dark storm clouds coming in and before I knew it, it started pouring down rain. The moment I felt those raindrops hit me, I knew…I’d be okay.

     “I had been so numb, numb to everything that touched me. The beatings my father would give me, the kisses my mother would give me, I felt none of it for so long. That rain was the first thing I felt in such a long time and…I cried. I could finally feel something and I was happy, I was…alive. I think, in that moment, the rain washed away not only the blood but my ‘self’. That was when I became Luce.”

     “When you say that, do you mean you weren’t called Luce before?” Ravi asked, confused by his wording.

     “You really think my parents gave enough of a shit about me to give me a name?” he replied with a sardonic smile. “I was called either some of the worst things you’d ever say to a kid or fake pet names. I found the name Lucian when I was 11 or 12 but I only really embraced it when I was 15.

     “Anyway, ever since then, I’ve always taken rain as a sign of good luck.” He laid back on the bed, his arms folded under his head. “If it rains, that means something good will happen.”

     No wonder why Luce liked rain so much. It represented freedom, it made him feel alive when death wanted to take him, it gave him a life. It was hard to say whether it played a role in the two of them crossing paths but the universe was funny like that. Whatever it may be, Luce was here now and maybe it was fate that he woke up to help him through a bad time.

     “So what’s the best thing the rain’s ever brought you?” he asked, curious to know his answer.

     “Hmm…” Luce looked as if he was deep in thought before replying, “I’d say it was meeting you. It was raining the day we met.”

     Feeling heat rush to his cheeks, he attempted to deflect that by saying, “Maybe you should go up to the roof and soak in the rain for a little while because I highly doubt that I’m the best thing rain’s brought you.”

     Without missing a beat, he countered that with, “It was raining the day I realized I loved you, too.”

     “Oh, come on, that’s not even fucking fair!” he exclaimed, his whole face now warm to the touch. “What the hell do I say to argue against that?!”

     Luce’s laughter at his expense made him turn away from him. He really should’ve known better than to degrade himself around Luce. He refused to allow him to believe there was nothing good about him and it annoyed the fuck out of him. He knew it was because he loved him and wanted to prove him wrong but still. It was rather touching to know how far he’d go but he’d never admit that out loud.

     After catching his breath, Luce took hold of Ravi’s wrist and, in a tender voice, said, “I love you.”

     “...I love you too,” he answered back, defeated. Luce knew exactly what to say to put an end to his self-loathing. It was so rare of him to say “I love you” first so of course he’d say it. “Can I kiss you?”

     He sat up, leaned in close, and replied, “Yes.”

     Ravi closed his eyes and bridged the gap between them. Luce parted his lips just a fraction, kissing him back with chasteness. It was a simple kiss that only lasted a few seconds before they pulled away, Ravi exhaling out a breath. He quickly stood up as he shoved down the urge to go in for a second kiss.

     “All right, get the fuck off the bed, I gotta sleep,” he said, stretching his arms up above him. Then he remembered what happened earlier. “You gonna be okay?”

     “Yeah, I’ll be fine,” he replied, standing up as well.

     “You sure? If you want, I can---”

     Luce cut him off with a kiss to the forehead. He pulled away with a fond smile on his face and whispered, “I’ll be okay. Go to bed, Snowbird.”

     Guess that was as good an answer as any. He reluctantly crawled under the covers and looked at the clock for the time. 3:43 AM in dull red numbers. God, did they really spend almost an hour just talking about the rain? There went his full night’s sleep but he’d learn to deal with it.

     His eyes wandered over to Luce. He wasn’t sure if it’d really be okay for him to sleep while he might still be in need of help. He seemed to be getting on now but it had only been an hour since everything and there was no telling of the future. In the end, he had to trust Luce to come to him if he needed him. Exhaustion swept over him like a wave and he struggled to stay awake.

     “Goodnight, Luce.”

     “Goodnight, Snowbird.”

     And he was out like a light.

     It was morning when he woke up next. He must’ve overslept because he could hear the sounds of rush hour outside his apartment. His alarm didn’t go off so it must’ve been switched off at some point last night. Good thing Luce did it on the weekend; otherwise, he’d be in a panic, trying to make up for lost time. He attempted to turn over but was stopped by an arm around his waist.

     It was then he found Luce curled up next to him, soundly asleep. He was taken aback by this display. Him being asleep was a rare enough sight on its own but him sleeping beside him on the bed was virtually unheard of. The only other time they were like this was the first night they slept together. He wasn’t able to do it before, due to the circumstances, but he could do it now.

     He brushed strands of hair away from Luce’s face, admiring his beauty. He looked so peaceful, so…vulnerable, an impossibility made real. It’s not like he hadn’t seen other sides of Luce. There was the crooked smile and glint in his eyes when he was playful and the furrowed brow and emotionless voice when he was serious. Yet the tranquil and unguarded Luce before him was like a secret he was finally let in on.

     Was his trust in him so deep, he felt like he could do this with him? It had to be if this was happening and Ravi was…happy. Knowing the kind of life Luce had before meeting him, before he knew what freedom was, he was so glad that Luce was letting himself be like this around him. He wondered if maybe, just maybe, he felt safe while in his presence. If so, then…

     He carded his fingers through dark locks, bringing him in close. He decided to bask in the morning sun with him in the little time he had before needing to get up. He softly kissed Luce’s temple and brought him even closer. Their faces were mere inches apart as he shut his eyes. The last thing he could’ve swore he saw was the corner of his mouth curve up into a small smile.

[oneweekoneband]

DON’T STOP

It would be easy to assume that everything not only true but even possible to articulate has already been said. Or, alternately, that there is no reason to discuss it because it belongs to the past—the ugly, false past—and we are here to discuss the sparkling, honest present. Certainly in the seven years since, this song has been tackled from almost every conceivable angle in the various avenues where opinions collect themselves like rainwater in a gutter. And certainly we hear it differently now, knowing what we know; the darkness that always simmered thrillingly under the surface has slunk closer to center stage. Certainly that incongruously gorgeous, haunting bridge will never sound the same. You build me up, you break me down.

And yet. And yet I find myself coming back to it, and coming back, and coming back. There were days in the summer where I would decide to listen to the new album and instead, or first, play it through not once or twice but over and over, an album’s work of Tik Tok, insistently pressing itself upon me the way it did on all of us that year, our initial confusion over how to hear it giving way to understanding and joyful surrender. I had to reabsorb it, to give myself not a blank slate but context into which to understand the new. Hours and hours, like I hadn’t since that first fall, listening and listening: for what was different, sometimes, but often for what remained. Eventually, listening for what, after everything, I had to say—listening in fact for why I kept hitting play, just one more time.

DJ

I so badly wanted—we all wanted—to be able to say this year: look at what Kesha made now that she is free. And I still hope, one day, to say that—to shout it from the tops of fucking skyscrapers from a bullhorn, raining glitter on the streets below, to paint it across my arms, to throw a party in celebration and toast a Jello shot in honor of Kesha and her hard-won freedom.

But we can’t, yet. Her legal battle against the man who both abused her and produced this song churns forward unresolved; although specifics have not been made public, it seems incontestable from the available facts that he continues to financially profit from her artistic output. Delineating yet again the painful history of exploitation and injustice that has been revealed across headlines for the past several years would at this point be both redundant and contrary to Kesha’s own current public stance; we all know this awful, too-familiar story, and if she’s not going to speak further on the matter, neither am I.

Still it’s worth stating: Rainbow is not the album Kesha made once she was free. It’s the album she chose to make in spite of the fact that she isn’t. It’s an album of celebration that exists inextricably entangled with that from which it is breaking away. The physics of a rainbow reflect this: they appear to us not across cloudless blue skies but when we stand between the sun and rain.

Listening to Tik Tok now—a song I love, forged under a series of circumstances I would erase from time if I could—in an infinitesimal way, it feels like this too.

I’M ALREADY HERE

There’s a narrative that has emerged since the release of the album’s first single if not before, one succinctly encapsulated by Katherine St. Asaph: “that what Kesha escaped was not abuse but electro-pop, that in the minds of more people than would admit it, “Tik Tok” was as much of a sin as anything else [he] did.” You can hear this beneath Facebook threads and casual conversations about the album, the fact of her exploitation serving as absolution for her failures of old: look at what she can do now that she’s not being forced to make that Autotune bullshit, a retroactive forgiveness that rests on assuming Kesha herself, suddenly and newly revealed as both a victim and an artist, would never have made such trash on purpose.

And it’s true that she’s distanced herself from some songs, and complicated her relationship with others. In a New York Times Magazine profile last year, she said of the writing process for this one:

“I remember specifically him saying: ‘Make it more dumb. Make it more stupid. Make it more simple, just dumb.’ ” She tried, joking around with some lyrics she found silly. “I was like, O.K., ‘Boys try to touch my junk. Going to get crunk. Everybody getting drunk,’ or whatever, and he was like, ‘Perfect.’”

But even though no one could blame her, even though she’s shared her story such that her fans would more than understand, Kesha hasn’t renounced her previous work at large. She still performs Tik Tok live; three weeks ago, when that discordant riff filled Hammerstein Ballroom, we lost our fucking minds. And no one could have been there, with all of us shrieking along, watching her strut and dance and jump across the stage, watching her keep us at fever pitch, and still believed what was so often said about this song back when it first appeared—that all its magic stemmed from the clever manipulations of a savvy producer. No one could have witnessed her and still doubted what she told us from the very start: the party don’t start till I walk in. It was always her party, her world. Her voice even when it was splintered and caught, her words even when she wasn’t the only one writing them: these things belong to Kesha. This song is hers as much as anyone else’s; it always was. To act otherwise is essentially to recreate in part one of the conditions of her exploitation: the lie that her success always rested squarely on someone else’s shoulders.

It matters that we’re clear on this: Kesha has always been an artist. If you couldn’t hear that in Tik Tok—separate from personal experience, speaking solely of the recognition of deliberation and craft, the awareness of performance—that’s on you.

SEE THE SUNLIGHT

There’s an interview from that first round of persona-establishing press that I can never find when I need it. Kesha was asked about her relationship with her fans, one of those really standard softball questions on pop sites, and in talking about being overwhelmed by the response, she mentioned being approach by a girl who said that her boyfriend had died and Tik Tok was the only thing making her happy.

I think about that all the time. Partly it’s because it such a sharp and poignant expression of that John Darnielle quote that makes the rounds every now and then, about how some of the value of pop music lies in its ability to remind us of our own potential for joy. Partly it’s because at the time that I read it, it resonated so specifically with me. Kesha, like many of the things we love most dearly, came into my life exactly when I needed her: an autumn I remember always in darkness, shuttering into a winter I only saw from inside of my room. I hadn’t lost anyone, except myself; I wasn’t alone except that I believed myself to be. I was left tracing circles in the dust. And into this came Kesha, loud and like nothing I’d heard, thumping and slurring in a way that bypassed entirely my defunct brain and reminded me that I was still a body. It wasn’t that she showed me the way out but that listening to Animal on the train, in my room, first thing in the morning, at night when I couldn’t sleep—it made me feel temporarily like the kind of person who could find a way out.

I’m telling you this because Rainbow is an album, through its context and in its text, about surviving, about what it looks like on the other side of something that needed to be survived and what it took to get there; a rainbow, after all, is a symbol of survival, the promise that the storm has been weathered and soon we will step into something new. But for a lot of us, loving Kesha has always been in part about survival. And some of that is the pop-music-joy thing, the miracle of feeling for three and a half minutes at a stretch something other than whatever it is we are living through or with, and some of it is about the fact that loving anything with your whole self is a way of reminding yourself of the fact of your heart.

But there’s also always been something about Kesha that gave her that magic, for those of us who needed it. It’s almost funny, because Animal isn’t and has no ambition to be an album that inspires. It’s concerned with our titular creaturely selves, the hulking id that stalks through the night careening through desires and bad ideas, which is to say, yeah, it’s an album about going and getting shitfaced. I read arguments that it was glorifying a self-destructive party culture and rolled my eyes, thinking, she doesn’t even sing about, like, weed; I read, later, the idea that it was all some big ironic display actually highlighting the depressing nature of whatever I literally don’t care, and thought, that’s not right either; it didn’t at all align with what it felt like to actually listen to the album, to experience its gleeful crassness, its visceral thrills, the explosions of delight and pockets of laughter.

There are ways to be in on the joke without being above the joke. And that was the thing about her: she seemed to see things as they were. She said once that she wrote songs the way people talk over a drink, and that always rang accurate to me; damn, Jeannie, why you gotta tell the secrets ‘bout my sex life? still makes me laugh. Her hedonistic playground was by many standards really quite tame (dancing while wasted is practically the national pastime of twenty-three-year-olds); it came to vibrant life in her snarling, smirking delivery and in her affectionate details. One of my favorite lines is when she rhymes and I’m gonna get laid / and I’m not the designat/ed driver, because it’s funny but also because it meant that Kesha’s world was one like ours, with things like designated drivers and overpriced club drinks you were too broke to buy, and the distinguishing feature was attitude. It was fantastic, but not fantastical; it was intoxicatingly glorious precisely because she wasn’t pretending it was anything it wasn’t. On the title track she sang I am in love with what we are, not what we should be, and it always sounded to me like she was talking about our teeming human mess: in love, sincerely, not with an imagined perfection but with the tangibly imperfect—the puke in a garbage can, the drunk texts sent, the glitter on the sticky, filthy floor.

There is always power in honesty, in looking at the truth of things and plunging right in. There’s power in seeing the ugliness of life and deciding to love it anyway. When she said tonight I’mma fight till we see the sunlight, you could believe she knew what it might take, some nights, to make it through.

KICK ‘EM TO THE CURB

There’s one more thing, and then we will, I promise, get to the good stuff. When Kesha burst onto the scene in a cloud of glitter and whiskey, I had, as indicated above, a lot of time on my hands. I followed her early press pretty closely. In interviews and videos, I saw someone who was obviously smart, in ways that had nothing to do with her SAT score or Barnard acceptance; someone who loved animals and glitter and stupid dick jokes, and disliked the rules of decorum and when people were mean; someone a little weird in some ways, and refreshingly normal in others, whose weirdness seemed not like a put-on but like the outgrowth of a commitment to doing what she liked; someone who said some pretty fucked up things, and some pretty wise things, and some boring or stupid things, and a lot of really funny shit, most of which did not precisely take the form of a joke. I saw someone who seemed, ultimately, like someone I might know, someone I could easily imagine I might enjoy talking with over a drink or six (hey: I was twenty-three, too).

Kesha felt, in other words, completely legible to me. And it stung in odd ways to see how baffled she made other people: the things they assumed were an act, or a lie, that I found wholly plausible, the contradictions they perceived that felt to me like just the typical mismatched knickknacks of personhood. Years later I still struggle to find words for how crazy-making it was to see the endless head-scratching around the stupid fucking line, kick ‘em to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger, the insinuations of irony or disbelief that someone of Kesha’s age and gender might use maybe the most iconic male sex symbol of all time as shorthand for exactly that. Like girls existed outside of culture, like it was so fucking hard to believe that they too might have a parent’s crate of records, or a cool older friend, or access to the internet and its many message boards, or any of the other rites of coolness we grant so easily to men. It would take a long time before I could articulate why it hurt, as a woman within a year of Kesha’s age who doesn’t give a shit about rock’n’roll but knows that Mick Jagger means sex, like, come the fuck on: it hurt to be confronted so starkly with the paucity of our collective imagination about women’s interiority. It hurt to be told, essentially, that aspects of myself and my knowledge that I took for granted were to many people so alien, so outside the bounds of any allowable feminine type, that they were literally inconceivable.

Now, of course, after the Dylan covers and the Iggy Pop feature, no one doubts Kesha’s rock cred. But I hate, still, that that’s what it took to get here. And I hate that this too has become part of the narrative of Rainbow, like we’re all finally seeing the authentic artist and actual human being under the ersatz mask of glitter and whiskey breath, instead of considering that maybe these things can coexist. That maybe the people you dismiss out of hand can also have complex inner lives; that a silly party girl can be other things on different nights, or even all at once. That same profile from last year included the following passage:

The problem was, she said, there was no balance. Every song was a song about partying, and yes, that was who she was, Kesha says that was definitely who she was, but she’s a real person having a complete human experience, and she wanted her album to reflect that. “To this day, I’ve never released a single that’s a true ballad, and I feel like those are the songs that balance out the perception of you, because you can be a fun girl. You can go and have a crazy night out, but you also, as a human being, have vulnerable emotions. You have love.”

You can have both; you can be many things. Of course Tik Tok was not, could never be, the entirety of Kesha, but no song ever is. That a portrait is incomplete, exaggerated, selective, doesn’t make it a lie, it just makes it art: a piece created, by someone, to express something. Kesha is showing now parts of her we haven’t seen, but we shouldn’t have needed to see them to believe they were there. Even before, she was never as simple as was often assumed; even on this song, she slides from bratty nasal tunelessness to tongue-in-cheek flirtatiousness, from fist-pumping marching orders to open-eyed vulnerability.

That’s a rainbow, too—not the transformation of light, but its refraction: a shift in angle that reveals that what appeared simple was in fact all along much more beautiful, and much more complicated, than you assumed.

—Isabel

[afrolesbikita]

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Before Sunday, some Texas Republicans were declaring this legislative session the most conservative in the state’s recent history.

They had notched long-sought breakthroughs expanding gun rights and restricting abortion, and while some argued even more could have been done, few disputed they had ample achievements to tout.

But a massive asterisk fell upon the session for Republicans late Sunday night, when House Democrats broke quorum and killed Senate Bill 7, a GOP priority bill to tighten election laws in the state, which opponents say would have restricted voting rights, particularly for people of color and the elderly and disabled. That move left several other bills that were pending final approval dead on the final day lawmakers could pass legislation, including a bill identified as a priority by Gov. Greg Abbott that would have made it harder for people arrested to bond out of jail without cash.

“Texans shouldn’t have to pay the consequences of these members’ actions — or in this case, inaction — especially at a time when a majority of Texans have exhibited clear and express support for making our elections stronger and more secure,” House Speaker Dade Phelan said in a statement.

The Democrats celebrated their victory on Sunday, but that could be short-lived. Republicans are now staring down a guaranteed special session to get the job done on SB 7 — and potentially a host of other issues that could further escalate intraparty tensions.

Democratic leaders said they know Republicans will try to bring the issue back in a special session and are preparing to fight it back again.

“We’re outnumbered. There’s no doubt about it. Republicans are in the majority,” said Rep. Chris Turner, chair of the House Democratic Caucus. “Democrats are going to continue to use every tool in our toolbox to slow them down, to fight them, to stop them. What that looks like weeks or months down the road, I can’t predict at this point, but we’re going to fight with everything we’ve got.”

SB 7 had been a top priority of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Abbott, who named “election integrity” one of his five initial emergency items earlier this year. After the House gaveled out for the night, Patrick didn’t hold back in comments from the Senate dais, criticizing the lower chamber for taking days off near the end of the legislative session as bill-killing deadlines approached.

“I can’t even blame it on the other party for walking out,” said Patrick, a Republican. “They got an opportunity to walk out because of the deadline.”

Revisiting the topic a short time later, Patrick, who’s been increasingly at odds with Phelan as the session wound down, said the “clock ran out on the House because it was managed poorly. That’s the bottom line.”

Phelan, a fourth term state representative from Beaumont, is in his first session as House speaker.

Even before Sunday night, Patrick and like-minded House Republicans were laying the groundwork to argue the session was not as conservative as it could have been. After three of his priorities died in the House last week, Patrick called for a special session to revive the proposals, including one that would ban transgender student athletes from playing on teams that correspond with their gender identity.

No Republican leader is now in more of a squeeze than Abbott, who on Saturday tweeted that the “most conservative legislative session in a generation is wrapping up.” He will have to decide when to hold a special session and what all to put on the agenda to appease his right flank, just as the statewide primary season is beginning to heat up for the 2022 elections. Abbott expressed disappointment that both the sweeping voting bill and bail reform, two of his priorities for the session, had failed to get legislative approval.

“It is deeply disappointing and concerning for Texans that neither will reach my desk. Ensuring the integrity of our elections and reforming a broken bail system remain emergencies in Texas,” Abbott said in a statement. “They will be added to the special session agenda.”

Abbott did not say if he would call lawmakers back for a special session before a planned session in the fall to handle the state’s decennial redrawing of political maps. But he said lawmakers would be expected to have worked out the details to both of those items by the time they arrived for a special session.

The House Republican Caucus, which had fueled the billing of this session as the “most conservative” the chamber has seen, said in a statement that it is “fully committed to taking all necessary steps to deliver on election integrity and bail reform.” Most House Republicans who spoke out Sunday night echoed that sentiment, denouncing Democrats as obstructionists and expressing perseverance for the special session. “Ready to get back to work,” tweeted Rep. Briscoe Cain of Deer Park, the House sponsor of SB 7.

But not all House Republicans were as willing to overlook their mishaps. Reps. Bryan Slaton of Royse City and Jeff Cason of Bedford, who regularly test GOP leadership, noted that Republicans had months to pass such an election bill in the House and waited until the last possible day, despite it being well-known that the minority party was dead set against the legislation.

“Democrats can only kill a bill that Republican leadership lets them kill,” Slaton wrote on Facebook.

Democrats said at a news conference Sunday night at Mt. Zion Fellowship Hall in Austin that they had prepared to use procedural tactics to kill Senate Bill 7 by running out the clock until midnight, the deadline to accept bills worked out in conference committees. More than 30 Democrats were prepared with questions and points of order to delay the bill’s discussion.

But when they were not allowed to ask questions on the floor or use the delay tactics they had prepared, Democrats resorted to the last tool they had left: breaking quorum.

The tactic is a legislative last resort and has been used rarely in recent memory, most notably in 2003 when Democrats in both chambers left the state to delay votes on redrawing political maps. The Democrats ultimately returned to the Legislature and, after three special sessions called by then-Gov. Rick Perry, passed the redrawn political maps, which cemented GOP dominance in the state.

On Sunday night, Democratic leaders got wind that Republican lawmakers had gathered the necessary 25 signatures to end debate on a bill and call for a vote.

At 10:35 p.m., Turner, the Democratic caucus chair, sent a text to other Democrats to take the keys to their voting machines and discreetly leave the chamber, and then, the building.

About 10 minutes later, when the House called for a vote on a procedural matter to excuse an absence for Rep. Joe Moody, D- El Paso, lawmakers confirmed that they no longer had a quorum to conduct business.

“We were determined. We know how to talk for a long time when we need to. That’s what we were doing and it was working,” Turner said at the news conference. “They were prepared to cut us off and try to silence us. We were not going to let them do that. And that’s why Democrats used the last tool available to us, we denied them the quorum.”

Democratic lawmakers said they had been frustrated by a session in which GOP leaders had pushed through controversial legislation on social issues. Republicans pushed through permitless carry of handguns, a near-total ban on abortion, penalties for cities that cut police budgets, a proposal targeting the teaching of critical race theory — even a Patrick priority to require that professional sports teams with state government contracts play the national anthem at the start of every game.

“Why is there so much legislation that’s arguably hateful coming to the floor?” Rep. Ramon Romero, D-Fort Worth, told The Texas Tribune. “I’ve been here four sessions. I’ve never experienced a session where so many hateful bills have come to the floor. They always have been at the back of the line.”

Romero said he was also upset by the lack of decorum in the House. Republicans, he said, jeered at Democratic lawmakers and had threatened to call for votes repeatedly throughout the session while the minority party was trying to use legislative procedures to stall on legislation their constituents opposed.

“I don’t blame that on Dade Phelan, but on his lieutenants,” Romero said. “They’re not secretive about it. They’re so disrespectful. And it has been so disrespectful all year long.”

Turner also deflected blame from Phelan and pointed it squarely at Abbott.

“I hold Greg Abbott responsible. He’s the governor of the state of Texas,” he said. “He set in motion this entire process by demanding a vote suppression bill come to his desk. And why is he doing that? He’s doing that because [of] the ‘big lie.’ Because Donald Trump has set this fever upon the Republican Party that the election was stolen.”

Before Sunday, the mood among Republicans was general satisfaction with the session — and among Democrats, downright disgust. The laundry list of conservative priorities at times overshadowed the dual crises that lawmakers were confronted with toward the beginning of the session: the coronavirus pandemic and February winter storm that left millions of Texans without power.

“It’s been a strong session for business, a strong session for pro-life, it’s going to end up a good session for public education, and we had a good budget,” said Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, who has served in the Texas House since 1999. “All in all, there’s some things I wish we’d gotten done, but there always is.”

Rep. Ann Johnson of Houston, the only Democrat to flip a House seat last year, had a decisively different take in an interview Friday.

“This has been one of the hardest sessions, and it’s felt painful for me,” Johnson said. “When I talk to my older colleagues, they say this is the worst it’s ever been. And so when you look at what we’ve seen happen, with Democrats being run over on social issues — and social issues that I don’t believe the majority of Texans agree with — it’s been gut-wrenching.”

By Monday morning, Johnson had one less thing to worry about for now.

“I was proud to stand up for our democracy today,” she said in a statement, “and walk out to kill SB 7 with my colleagues.”

This article was first provided here.

I trust you found the above of help and/or interesting. You can find similar content on our blog here: northtxpointofsale.com Let me have your feedback below in the comments section. Let us know which topics we should write about for you in the future.

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Sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

Before Sunday, some Texas Republicans were declaring this legislative session the most conservative in the state’s recent history.

They had notched long-sought breakthroughs expanding gun rights and restricting abortion, and while some argued even more could have been done, few disputed they had ample achievements to tout.

But a massive asterisk fell upon the session for Republicans late Sunday night, when House Democrats broke quorum and killed Senate Bill 7, a GOP priority bill to tighten election laws in the state, which opponents say would have restricted voting rights, particularly for people of color and the elderly and disabled. That move left several other bills that were pending final approval dead on the final day lawmakers could pass legislation, including a bill identified as a priority by Gov. Greg Abbott that would have made it harder for people arrested to bond out of jail without cash.

“Texans shouldn’t have to pay the consequences of these members’ actions — or in this case, inaction — especially at a time when a majority of Texans have exhibited clear and express support for making our elections stronger and more secure,” House Speaker Dade Phelan said in a statement.

The Democrats celebrated their victory on Sunday, but that could be short-lived. Republicans are now staring down a guaranteed special session to get the job done on SB 7 — and potentially a host of other issues that could further escalate intraparty tensions.

Democratic leaders said they know Republicans will try to bring the issue back in a special session and are preparing to fight it back again.

“We’re outnumbered. There’s no doubt about it. Republicans are in the majority,” said Rep. Chris Turner, chair of the House Democratic Caucus. “Democrats are going to continue to use every tool in our toolbox to slow them down, to fight them, to stop them. What that looks like weeks or months down the road, I can’t predict at this point, but we’re going to fight with everything we’ve got.”

SB 7 had been a top priority of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Abbott, who named “election integrity” one of his five initial emergency items earlier this year. After the House gaveled out for the night, Patrick didn’t hold back in comments from the Senate dais, criticizing the lower chamber for taking days off near the end of the legislative session as bill-killing deadlines approached.

“I can’t even blame it on the other party for walking out,” said Patrick, a Republican. “They got an opportunity to walk out because of the deadline.”

Revisiting the topic a short time later, Patrick, who’s been increasingly at odds with Phelan as the session wound down, said the “clock ran out on the House because it was managed poorly. That’s the bottom line.”

Phelan, a fourth term state representative from Beaumont, is in his first session as House speaker.

Even before Sunday night, Patrick and like-minded House Republicans were laying the groundwork to argue the session was not as conservative as it could have been. After three of his priorities died in the House last week, Patrick called for a special session to revive the proposals, including one that would ban transgender student athletes from playing on teams that correspond with their gender identity.

No Republican leader is now in more of a squeeze than Abbott, who on Saturday tweeted that the “most conservative legislative session in a generation is wrapping up.” He will have to decide when to hold a special session and what all to put on the agenda to appease his right flank, just as the statewide primary season is beginning to heat up for the 2022 elections. Abbott expressed disappointment that both the sweeping voting bill and bail reform, two of his priorities for the session, had failed to get legislative approval.

“It is deeply disappointing and concerning for Texans that neither will reach my desk. Ensuring the integrity of our elections and reforming a broken bail system remain emergencies in Texas,” Abbott said in a statement. “They will be added to the special session agenda.”

Abbott did not say if he would call lawmakers back for a special session before a planned session in the fall to handle the state’s decennial redrawing of political maps. But he said lawmakers would be expected to have worked out the details to both of those items by the time they arrived for a special session.

The House Republican Caucus, which had fueled the billing of this session as the “most conservative” the chamber has seen, said in a statement that it is “fully committed to taking all necessary steps to deliver on election integrity and bail reform.” Most House Republicans who spoke out Sunday night echoed that sentiment, denouncing Democrats as obstructionists and expressing perseverance for the special session. “Ready to get back to work,” tweeted Rep. Briscoe Cain of Deer Park, the House sponsor of SB 7.

But not all House Republicans were as willing to overlook their mishaps. Reps. Bryan Slaton of Royse City and Jeff Cason of Bedford, who regularly test GOP leadership, noted that Republicans had months to pass such an election bill in the House and waited until the last possible day, despite it being well-known that the minority party was dead set against the legislation.

“Democrats can only kill a bill that Republican leadership lets them kill,” Slaton wrote on Facebook.

Democrats said at a news conference Sunday night at Mt. Zion Fellowship Hall in Austin that they had prepared to use procedural tactics to kill Senate Bill 7 by running out the clock until midnight, the deadline to accept bills worked out in conference committees. More than 30 Democrats were prepared with questions and points of order to delay the bill’s discussion.

But when they were not allowed to ask questions on the floor or use the delay tactics they had prepared, Democrats resorted to the last tool they had left: breaking quorum.

The tactic is a legislative last resort and has been used rarely in recent memory, most notably in 2003 when Democrats in both chambers left the state to delay votes on redrawing political maps. The Democrats ultimately returned to the Legislature and, after three special sessions called by then-Gov. Rick Perry, passed the redrawn political maps, which cemented GOP dominance in the state.

On Sunday night, Democratic leaders got wind that Republican lawmakers had gathered the necessary 25 signatures to end debate on a bill and call for a vote.

At 10:35 p.m., Turner, the Democratic caucus chair, sent a text to other Democrats to take the keys to their voting machines and discreetly leave the chamber, and then, the building.

About 10 minutes later, when the House called for a vote on a procedural matter to excuse an absence for Rep. Joe Moody, D- El Paso, lawmakers confirmed that they no longer had a quorum to conduct business.

“We were determined. We know how to talk for a long time when we need to. That’s what we were doing and it was working,” Turner said at the news conference. “They were prepared to cut us off and try to silence us. We were not going to let them do that. And that’s why Democrats used the last tool available to us, we denied them the quorum.”

Democratic lawmakers said they had been frustrated by a session in which GOP leaders had pushed through controversial legislation on social issues. Republicans pushed through permitless carry of handguns, a near-total ban on abortion, penalties for cities that cut police budgets, a proposal targeting the teaching of critical race theory — even a Patrick priority to require that professional sports teams with state government contracts play the national anthem at the start of every game.

“Why is there so much legislation that’s arguably hateful coming to the floor?” Rep. Ramon Romero, D-Fort Worth, told The Texas Tribune. “I’ve been here four sessions. I’ve never experienced a session where so many hateful bills have come to the floor. They always have been at the back of the line.”

Romero said he was also upset by the lack of decorum in the House. Republicans, he said, jeered at Democratic lawmakers and had threatened to call for votes repeatedly throughout the session while the minority party was trying to use legislative procedures to stall on legislation their constituents opposed.

“I don’t blame that on Dade Phelan, but on his lieutenants,” Romero said. “They’re not secretive about it. They’re so disrespectful. And it has been so disrespectful all year long.”

Turner also deflected blame from Phelan and pointed it squarely at Abbott.

“I hold Greg Abbott responsible. He’s the governor of the state of Texas,” he said. “He set in motion this entire process by demanding a vote suppression bill come to his desk. And why is he doing that? He’s doing that because [of] the ‘big lie.’ Because Donald Trump has set this fever upon the Republican Party that the election was stolen.”

Before Sunday, the mood among Republicans was general satisfaction with the session — and among Democrats, downright disgust. The laundry list of conservative priorities at times overshadowed the dual crises that lawmakers were confronted with toward the beginning of the session: the coronavirus pandemic and February winter storm that left millions of Texans without power.

“It’s been a strong session for business, a strong session for pro-life, it’s going to end up a good session for public education, and we had a good budget,” said Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, who has served in the Texas House since 1999. “All in all, there’s some things I wish we’d gotten done, but there always is.”

Rep. Ann Johnson of Houston, the only Democrat to flip a House seat last year, had a decisively different take in an interview Friday.

“This has been one of the hardest sessions, and it’s felt painful for me,” Johnson said. “When I talk to my older colleagues, they say this is the worst it’s ever been. And so when you look at what we’ve seen happen, with Democrats being run over on social issues — and social issues that I don’t believe the majority of Texans agree with — it’s been gut-wrenching.”

By Monday morning, Johnson had one less thing to worry about for now.

“I was proud to stand up for our democracy today,” she said in a statement, “and walk out to kill SB 7 with my colleagues.”

This article was first provided here.

I trust you found the above of help and/or interesting. You can find similar content on our blog here: northtxpointofsale.com Let me have your feedback below in the comments section. Let us know which topics we should write about for you in the future.