#SOMEONES BITTER THAT WOMEN KISS IN CARTOONS SOMETIMES!!!

[newspecies]

"the vast majority of legal persecution against early queers was focused on men" ARE YOU INSANE

[gayenerd]

I have literally no source for this interview, but it’s one of my favorites because Billie seems to be really honest about his songwriting here - this is when Nimrod came out

The day I met Billie Joe Armstrong he flashed me his new tattoo, a Chuck-Jones-perfect cartoon character on his right bicep. Above it was some skull or Celtic armband or something, but below was the name "Joseph," exquisitely lettered, for his firstborn child. It's that image of him that I always keep in my head, and what I think of when I hear his band, Green Day: loopy humor and face-punch riffs and sincere sentiment I tight formation, worn as close to the skin as possible, covered in sweat. From the band's first records on the local Berkeley label Lookout, 39/Smooth and Kerplunk!, through the multi-million selling Warner Brothers releases Dookie, Insomniac, and now Nimrod, Armstrong has written dozens of perfect little punk-rock ditties that are probably the most sincere and playful acts of musical aggression since that first punk wave twenty years ago. 

But the songs are more than throwbacks. Armstrong writes from a very personal perspective, the perspective of someone born in the Me Decade, raised in the Me-vs.-You Decade, and trying to cope in the Yet-to-be-Stereotyped Decade. His songs are about the current crises of being alive right now, in a society that's used up and marketed all of its counter-cultures, and has little use for its youth except as consumers. The songs are also about how one reconciles anger and rebellion with love and desire to not be so down all the time. It's less political and more personal than its punk rock predecessors, an angry/crying/shouting/fucking definition of self.

 It made me wonder how you can take bile directed at you and turn it into a song that gets sold at the local Sam Goody. I figured I'd ask, so I called him up at his home in Berkeley. 

Q: Where do you start when writing a song? 

A: Most of the time I'll come up with a melody, and I'll do lyrics, but I'll tackle them at different times and not connect the two, you know? So I'll come up with the riffs, and the melody of the song, like a short ditty. I'll put some lyrics to it and bring it to band practice and then we'll just start to pound it out. And then, as things need to be restructured, sometimes Mike [Dirnt, bassist] will have an idea for something, or Tré [Cool, drummer] will have an idea for something, or sometimes we'll just leave it alone and it's sort of already done. 

Q: Have there been any particular songs that have stayed the same from the original inspiration to recording, or have they all gone through changes in the process? 

A: There's a lot of them that stay the same. "Redundant" really never changed, except we made it a little longer by adding another chorus at the end. And there's this song called "All The Time" that's pretty much exactly the way I had it.

 Q: So how much does a song change then, in producing the record? On Nimrod there are a lot of different arrangements: strings on "Good Riddance," horns on "King For A Day." Did you have the ragtime horns in mind when you were writing? 

A: No, not at all. I actually demo'd that song and played all the instruments myself and showed it to the band and they're like, "oh, that's pretty cool." We fucked around with it and practiced it a couple of times, but we never expected it to go onto the record. Then when we got to the studio, we said whatever, we'll just put it on there. It ended up being pretty good, but the song was just screaming for horns. We got Gabe [McNair] and Steve [Bradley] and it was so funny. They said, "what do you want us to play?" And I said, 'I'm sure you'll think of something.' And they looked at me like, "aw man!" So they basically wrote all the horn parts to that song. 

Q: What's more important, lyrics or the music? 

A: I think lyrics are really important, because there are songs that, musically, I don't think are the greatest in the world but lyrically are amazing. I mean, Johnny Rotten never had the greatest voice in the world but he wrote really good lyrics for the first Sex Pistols record, and that goes for a lot of people. But the thing is, a lot of people tend to -- especially in pop songs -- they tend to take the music and put something sappy to it, and it's just a one-dimensional emotion that the rest of the songs has to carry. I was actually thinking about that yesterday. I went to a friend's house, and they were joking around, putting on the Spice Girls records. And it was blatantly catchy, super catchy, but at the same time it really didn't say anything. You could only hold it at face value, there was no depth behind it, you really couldn't tell anything about the people singing it. But I guess there's a need for that. People want to hear songs that don't say anything, they want to go out to a dance club and shake their booty.

 Q: That's a good question, then: what makes a good song? Depth, a point of view...? 

A: I guess so. I don't know. I know what I like, personally. Like, yesterday I did my top ten favorite songs or something like that. 

Q: What's on there? 

A: Let's see. "Surrender" by Cheap Trick. "In My Life" by the Beatles. A song called "They'll Never Call It Quits" by a band called One Man Army. Generation X, "Kiss Me Deadly." "Outsider" by the Ramones. Hüsker Dü, "Makes No Sense At All." 

Q: How do you deal with writer's block?

 A: I write something else, just for fun. I'm just habitual about it. If I can't come up with the song...the great song that you want to write that will leave your mark forever or something cheesy like that, I'll write a polka number if I can't come up with something. 

Q: Do you put that kind of pressure on yourself? Do you say "this one's gonna be a statement?" 

A: Sometimes I do. Sometimes I'll think way. I just have a really strong work ethic. I have that sort of way about all my songs that, lyrically, every single one of them has to have some subliminal thing going for it. But most people don't really get what you're talking about until 10 years after the fact anyway. That seems to be how people respect songwriters through time. 

Q: Do you have a time of day or a place where you write? You say you have a work ethic, how does that manifest itself? 

A: Anytime, every time. The other night I was dead tired. All I wanted to do was fall asleep, and me and [my wife] Adrienne get in bed, and we're laying there. I was just dozing off a little bit, and all of the sudden this music was popping in my head, going over and over. And I was like, aw man, I have to go downstairs to put this on my guitar and just write it down. But I don't want to. I was so tired. So finally I got up and I go, 'goddammit! I have to get this done.' Otherwise I would forget it.

 Q: When you're writing, do you write with an album in mind or song by song? 

A: Song by song. I can't really conceptualize that far in advance. We knew we wanted to change and bring in new elements on the new record. But we really didn't know how to do it. So I wrote, constantly, all kinds of songs. Fifty or something. And you try to find some sort of natural progression within those songs, and try to capture that on the record. 

Q: So are the songs you write linked by your state of mind, or thematically? 

A: Sometimes if I'll get into a depression, writer's block, where I can't write, I get really bummed out and then I'm not working at all, I'm not doing anything. And then I'll deliberately get myself down to the lowest of the low that I could possibly get down to. And then a song will pop up. And I'll be happy, I'll get ecstatic for like the next month and then all of the sudden another one will pop up. 

Q: So you revel in the dark zone and it's useful. 

A: Yeah...sort of...I kind of...well...definitely. 

Q: But you don't necessarily choose to be there... 

A: Sometimes I'll cause problems just so I can get in touch with that emotional side or whatever, you know. Just to see if something will spark up, start a fight or something (laughs). 

Q: Can you name a song that has come out of something like that? 

A: Umm...a song called "Worry Rock." 

Q: Seems like a really personal song. 

A: Yeah. I think I got drunk and put my fist through a window. Adrienne called me an asshole or something like that and, I don't know. We just got into some meaningless fight like most couples get into, those fights that don't make any sense. A fight for the sake of fighting, which can be destructive to your relationship. That's how that song came about. 

Q: Are you okay with that kind of exposure that comes from investing your personal life and emotions in a song like that? Is your family okay with that? 

A: Yeah, I think so. I guess the only problem would be if, say, Adrienne doesn't have an outlet for herself. That's the kind of thing that I worry about. The things that she could say about me could be pretty horrifying. 

Q: In what way are you a different songwriter now than you were on 39/Smooth and Kerplunk? 

A: It goes in a way of, you know, what kind of person were you at sixteen, and what kind of person are you at twenty? It's almost like two different people in some aspects. I think that most of my stuff is based on infatuations with women. Some are just straight obsession. I mean, nowadays you could call me a stalker (laughs). The quest for that ultimate happiness with another person, which I think started to change, and it changed pretty dramatically with Kerplunk, because I started to talk about other things, like loss of innocence, going out on your own, moving out at the age of seventeen, being a high school dropout, living in west Oakland in a warehouse with fifteen people. Where the first record was more...mushy...the next one you could tell I was going through some pretty dramatic changes. 

Q: So Dookie comes out, and where are you there? 

A: I think I turned more bitter. I started to realize where my true friendships were, the politics of Berkeley were setting in, drug abuse was starting to fuck with me a little bit. I was trying to figure out what was wrong with me, but I couldn't really do it and that had a lot to do with drugs. I started to get a lot more bitter. Life wasn't how it was supposed to be when you're on your own. There's a couple of different songs on there...I mean, the psychoses that went into that record! Songs like "Basket Case" and "Coming Clean" were blatantly neurotic songs. 

Q: That's messed up: amazing success, and it's your bitterness you're being celebrated for. 

A: I don't know. It's funny because I feel that once you write a song, and then record it, and then release it, it doesn't necessarily belong to you anymore. I mean, you can hold that piece of work closer to you than anybody else can, and that was one of the big problems for a while. I felt so misunderstood all the time. Which goes with the territory, anyway, of writing songs. Because nobody really understands what the hell you're talking about. Other people have interpretations of whatever, figure out their own plot, make it fit to the soundtrack of their own lives. It messed with me a little bit, 'cause people didn't know where I came from, people didn't know where I came from, people didn't really know what I stood for. People calling us a throwback to 1977, I guess I got affected by that. Because punk rock is a lifestyle for me, and has nothing to do with 1977 or any particular band, but the relationship that you had with and the amount of work that you put into your local scene. And it gets completely misinterpreted as trying to make a buck. 

Q: It wasn't a fashion statement, it was a lifestyle. 

A: Yeah, a lot of people took it as a fashion statement, even to the point where I think a lot of people thought we were the '90s equivalent of Sha Na Na or something. Some of that's kind of funny, whatever. But now I sort of don't care. No one's gonna understand it anyway. The whole success or fame thing was so new to me at the time, it came so abruptly, and I was like, wow, this is too much. I didn't know all this baggage was connected to all this shit. I thought I'd just have the opportunity to play my songs for people. 

Q: Is that why the new album is as different as it is, because you're just doing what you want to do, you don't have to be what people thought you were, or even what you thought you were? 

A: I think so. That might have something to do with it. I think when you stop caring and worrying about what people think, even stop caring what you think of yourself to a certain extent, and just sort of do it, it's a release to push your past behind you. I think that's when the best stuff comes out. And, of course, when you're forging ahead really hard. I think this time our songs are much more than just things that you can listen to, but actually visualize at the same time. It's like this guy told me the other day, this friend of mine, he goes, you know I was listening to that song "Platypus," and I can totally imagine this big western stampede of horses and cows. And that, for me, is exactly what I was thinking. Not that I was thinking of a stampede, you know, but that kind of quality. 

Q: So you communicated an image and a feeling. 

A: Exactly. 

Q: Of any of your songs, do you have a favorite? 

A: Lately, I like "Walking Alone" and "Uptight" I've been into. My mind changes all the time.

 Q: Let's talk about one of those. What are the circumstances around a song like "Walking Alone?" 

A: I play in this side project band called Pinhead Gunpowder. This guy Aaron Elliot writes all the lyrics and a lot of the music. And he wrote this song called "I Walk Alone," which is about walking at night, the streets, being a street punk. And so I wrote...I don't know what you'd call it -- an alter ego song? -- called "Walking Alone." 

Q: An answer song? 

A: Yeah, cause we always work in that sort of way. I wrote a song called "She," so he wrote an article in his fanzine called "She." It's kind of funny, it's really good to bounce things off of each other. So "Walking Alone" and "I Walk Alone" were sort of the same thing. I think Tom Petty could play that song. It's got that harmonica and the big smashing snare sound on it. But it was the first time I ever played harmonica. I can't play harmonica at all. I had to teach myself how to play that. 

Q: Hey, you did great. 

A: Oh, thanks. We actually tried to get a studio musician to play it, but I think he was a little too hobo for us. 

Q: Smelled bad? 

A: Actually, he had almost too much soul for it. He was too good at what he did. And I wanted it to come across more loosely. Not as good, I guess. So I played it. 

Q: It's not a confident song, or a song about confidence. "Sometimes I need to apologize/sometimes I need to admit that I ain't right." 

A: It's sort of like sticking your foot in your mouth sometimes, and thinking out loud, but the lyric changes. It turns into talking about friends and how they change and your friends either become lawyers or the local town drunks. 

Q: Any advice for people writing who want to be hit songwriters? 

A: Oh God, I don't know. Don't take advice from anybody.

[prixmiumarchive]

Rosemary, Verbena, Winona :D

Rosemary: what cartoons did you grow up with?

I watched reruns of things that came on Cartoon Network mostly. The first show I remember really “discovering” that had a major impact on my life was the Sailor Moon dub. After that, it was Digimon which was the first show I had Higher Than Original Rating headcanons for. The Lion King was the first film I saw in theaters and I was really into it.

Verbena: playlist for your life? 

Wow this is an ambitious question. I guess I’ll go with things that have been most important lately? Other than the DCTV and Expanse OSTs which I listen to a lot. I’m gonna pick like 10 in no particular order.

1. Hoodie - Hey Violet - I’m obsessed with this song for some reason? My friend @thethirteenthhouse​ made me this great playlist of music recs recently, and I got to this one and just listened to it like 200 times this month. I’d heard of the band before, but listening to this song made me start listening to that album a lot. Also, like fuck, the aesthetic of their music videos gets to me (although I don’t know why because it feels very idealized high-school-y at times and I am sort of horrified by high school now more than I was as a teenager lol). Link to the video.

Favorite Lyric: I can’t keep your love / I can’t keep your kiss / Gave you everything and all I got was this --

2. Praying - Kesha - I already talked about this song in my last ask from this ask meme. I just fell in love with this song the first time I heard it, and it has never faded. I just think it is such a powerful and important message about forgiveness and moving on and what to do if what something did to you was unforgivable. It is beautiful because it never equivocates about what it’s about, and the way Kesha performs it is just so raw and honest. It reminds me of several fictional characters I love which is often high on my criteria list for reasons to like something, but this song is also deeply personal for me.

I guess I talk about it less than I used to, but a lot of my life story so far (and, you know, more uncomfortably what feels like a lack of one) stems from the aftermath of a very short-lived but life-altering and worldview-shattering relationship with a boy in high school. Then more recently, the first hope I’d had of that kind of realigning itself and healing in terms of a romantic prospect was pretty casually and quietly shattered in a way that, in some sense, hurts more badly than abuse and coercion at the hands of what I now recognize was a disturbed and neglected teenager. I’m angrier about this more recent experience even if it was technically “less” abusive. It was a stronger break in trust that was negotiated and given, so I’m still this boiling kind of pissed off when I think about it, which is a mood I think really shines in this song and its performance.

This song just.... grapples with this really complicated feeling of caring about someone who abused you but learning to do so in a way that is no longer justifying, no longer equivocating, no longer excusing, and no longer hoping that it will ‘get better’ with you in the picture. It is acknowledging that you have a right to your experience and to tell whatever truth about it you want because you know the truth and won’t let them trick you out of your own perception anymore. It acknowledges that maybe you loved this person, maybe you currently love or currently hate them, but you can still find a way - either way - to wish the best for them and not to let a wish for vengeance make you bitter. This song is bitter and vengeful, but it is also triumphant. The revenge it seeks is simply in being honest about an experience and the person someone currently is. It doesn’t demonize or dehumanize the abuser, which might seem like a kindness undeserved, but it is an important kindness for the sake of one’s own humanity and one’s own perception of other people going forward. It doesn’t let the person get a cop-out because they were a monster. It doesn’t let them hide behind a boogie-man mask. It lashes out in a way that is perhaps even more frowned upon because it doesn’t excuse a person’s (or a man’s, let’s be honest about the context but it could apply to women too) villainous and wicked actions because of something innate to them which cannot be changed. It allows for the possibility of forgiveness, for change, and therefore insists that it is the abuser’s job to take responsibility and to change their ways, and at the same time it does not place the onus on the abused to be the one who enacts or grants that forgiveness. It just just one of the most powerful things I’ve ever heard on coping with being an abuse survivor of abuse that, at the time, felt voluntary or asked-for, and I love it with all my heart. It will probably be one of my favorite songs forever. This video is also the bomb.

Favorite Lyric #1: I’ll bring thunder / I’ll bring rain / When I’m finished, they won’t even know your name

Favorite Lyric #2: Sometimes, I pray for you at night / Someday, may you’ll see the light / Oh, some say in life you’re gonna get what you give / But some things only God can forgive

3. Break My Heart - Hey Violet (again, sorry for patterns) - This song feels like a silly favorite when I’m not in the right mood for it. It’s a break-up song, so the literal interpretation of the lyrics is pretty exclusively for fictional characters for me, but it also feels like this song that speaks to a certain kind of frustration and anger that I feel sometimes that it touches in a way that other songs don’t. It’s cathartic. It’s fun and sort of punk-pop-y in a way that makes me feel like I’m letting it out without hurting anything.

Personally, I can’t help that it reminds me of a relationship that was more platonic than romantic but which was really complicated and blurry for a while, then was nonexistent. This relationship has since healed back into something that is kind of doable. I’m glad it didn’t end forever, but I also fear that it’ll never feel as big and real as it once did. I love the person I’m talking about dearly, but it’s still a part of my history in the past couple of years that also colors my emotional health and worldview, so yeah. Also the night I realized we were probably going to have to let Rudy go back (which we did), I listened to this song over and over to block out or at least buffer the absolute tidal wave of misery that seemed relentless a few weeks ago.

On a relating-it-to-characters or just aspirational things for myself, I also think that it’s really cool that it sort of has this dissonance between its sound and its content. It also seems like it has a speaker/singer who’s not being entirely honest with the person she’s addressing. It has this very puffed-up kind of vibe that seems a little childish, endearing, defiant attitude of “Well fine, if you want to go ahead,” that is clearly not entirely genuine but that is no less a little bit brave. Even the ways in which this attitude seems doomed when looked at from an objective and calm standpoint are part of what make it a bit precious. Basically, it’s this steeling oneself, ripping the bandaid off, fake-it-til-you-make-it anthem for me and fictional people whose angst I find cathartic. Also this is the video that made me think all of Hey Violet’s stuff was probably not for People My Age, but I still love it. Kind of has this Sofia Coppola vibe to me without all her bullshit? That heart-shaped pinata and the baseball bat bit is like one of my favorite Aesthetic things I’ve seen ever. Also I love how she literally looks like she’s sobbing sometimes and it matches up with the sound of her vibrato.

Favorite Lyric: It’s like a test, it’s like a game / To see how much I can take / I’m curious to live and learn / So light me up and let me burn / Tell me you’ve never loved me / Tell me that it wasn’t real / Just say you found somebody else / I want to know the way it feels / Tell me you’ve never loved me / Tell me it was just a lie / I want to feel the pain / I want to see the light

4. Fuqboi - Hey Violet (let’s finish with them I guess, haha) - This song needs to be required listening/reading for every single girl on the planet who is even slightly romantically oriented toward boys/men. It is hilarious, but it has some really stinging truths about boys/men who are the products of their culture/toxic masculinity/etc. It’s really fun to feel like you’re insulting and condemning the right subsection of men without writing off men who are willing to grow, learn, empathize, and feel unfairly in a way that only furthers a stereotype and agenda of painting men as heartless and entirely useless and incapable of the previously-listed things. That kind of “misandry” literally has become, in my opinion, almost a movement that does only deepen the mire of toxic masculinity. This, however, is exactly the right type of #misandry that is cathartic and beautiful and fun. A lyric video here that maybe contains one or two errors.

Favorite Lyric: There’s this cute guy down my street / I always wanted to meet / So I went creeping around on his socials / In all the selfies he takes, his head is tilted the same / Oh yeah, and his favorite hashtag is #beastmode

5. She Used to be Mine - Sara Bareilles - This song is much more melancholy than the songs on this list so far. It’s hopeful but kind of feels a bit more like a self-pity song. That’s not to say that the lyrics themselves are self-pitying in their conclusion. Lately, my job is kind of hurting me, and my best friend’s job worries me on her behalf, so I really relate to it even though the Waitress references occasionally make it highly specific. It also is a really beautiful song, I think, about the transition between being, like, in your early 20s and feeling enchanted by adulthood and the challenges of it even if they hurt and then getting in your late-20s and beyond and feeling a little bit afraid of the loss of youth and stuff. Here’s a lyric video. 

Favorite Lyric: It’s not easy to know / I’m not anything like I used to be / Although it’s true / I was never attention’s sweet center / But I still remember that girl / She’s imperfect, but she tries / She is good, but she lies / She is hard on herself / She is broken and won’t ask for help / She is messy, but she’s kind / She is lonely most of the time / She is all of this mixed up and based in a beautiful pie / She is gone, but she used to be mine

The songs after the above on this list are less deeply personal (and Hoodie just is because I feel it so viscerally even though I don’t super relate to it - maybe it’s envy of people who can) and more, like, “this reminds me of a fandom thing” right now or “this sounds cool” so the tone will change.

6. Haunted Heart - WILD - Some random song I found on spotify that is #reylo and several other shippy vibes. It’s more ambient than anything else, but it can literally apply to a lot o fictional relationships we obsess over. Lyric video.

Favorite Lyric: As the shadows dance across the room / I pretend that in the dark it’s you / It’s all I have

7. Go - Grimes ft. Blood Diamonds - Honestly this song has been lowkey in my head for days, and I wanted an excuse and reminder to listen to it again. I just recently fell down another fiction/fandom rabbit hole in The Expanse, and the only part I could hear in my head was the chorus before the dub-steppy drop, but my brain for some reason was summoning and suggesting it as a song that would fit my vibe about this show. Sure enough, I am feeling it for The Expanse, and it makes me wish I could still make fanvids. The actual verse lyrics are more Miller @/Julie than anything else I’ve seen so far, so if you ship that a lot then maybe this is even more your song for this than it is mine, but for me what I like about it is the sense of this personal connection being very important but kind of interrupted by all of this noise. Maybe that’s me reading too much into the design of the song, but I love that the chorus cuts itself off until its last repetition. “When I go can I go with--” and then finally “--you?” Audio video here.

I don’t need to do a favorite lyric because it’s got so few but it’s the way they parse “When I go can I go with you?” through the music.

8. Let Me Go - Hailee Steinfeld, Alesso (ft. Florida Georgia Line) - I honestly feel a bit conflicted by how much I like this song given that it’s got heavy involvement from bro-country artists Florida Georgia Line, but I like what I like. As far as an association goes, it’s like my sort of heartbreaking Lauriver song honestly. I really like the idea that they could have been happy together, might’ve been soulmates in another world as is implied, but that it’s sort of irrevocably fractured in DCTV Earth 1. Now, if only they had let me have that, Olicity, and Merlance, I would have been happy forever. Lyric video.

Favorite Lyric: Chased that high too far, too fast / Picket white fence but we paint it black

9. The Night We Met - Lord Huron - The first time I saw some lyrics to this song it was on this edit for this sort of maybe American Civil War Era fandom I have never identified or known what the heck it was. But when I saw them, I had to know what this song was, and I knew we’d be in love forever. And indeed, I love this song. It’s just so simple and sort of that new-folksy thing that my kind of a hipster ass loves. I love it for fandom and shippy reasons because it touches on one of those hard-to-quantify and only slightly less-hard-to-qualify things that I love fanfiction and headcanon to tackle. That thing is this messy, awful (and awesome - we’re focusing on the word awe here, sublimnity) feeling that comes from having loved someone in an intimate, sexual way but then watching that totally and completely vulnerable bond erode into something where you can no longer touch that person in any sense of the word. It’s a terrible topic full of angst but it’s so much a human thing that happens and I love it. (Of course, in my fanfiction and roleplay and shit, I want it fixed, but give me all of it.) It also does that thing with unconventional but technically comprehensible syntax that I love.

Favorite Lyric: Take me back to the night we met / And then I can tell myself what the hell I’m supposed to do / And then I can tell myself not to ride along with you / I had all and then most of you, some and now none of you / Take me back to the night we met

10. Ophelia - The Lumineers - On the topic of folksy-or-something feeling music that feels like it’s touching on weird, underbelly human emotions that no one knows how to describe or wrestle with, there’s this song. It is one of those songs that makes you want to dance in the rain life throws at you. It sounds happy or melancholy depending on when you’re listening to it and what you’re bringing to it, and that is probably why it has been on Spotify’s “Your Top Songs” compilation it makes for me at year’s end for two years in a row. And gosh the instrumentation. I know nothing about instrumentation technically speaking, but gosh. It feels like going to church, driving down a country road, being in a bar, and crying your heart out in a bathtub all at once. This is probably the most playlist-for-life song on here because it is just really one of those songs that it feels like you could carry in your pocket to soundtrack a lot of moments in your life when you’re quiet, observant, and just paying attention to it. It’s not really about anything, but it kind of feels like it’s about everything. Lyric video.

Favorite Lyric: And I don’t feel nothing at all / And you can’t feel nothing small

Winona: favorite quote? 

I actually answered this one earlier, but let’s see if I can come up with another answer. My friend @morethanprinceofcats​ did a cute thing I forgot to do where she talked about text posts that come to her mind and sort of get stuck in her head, and I’ve got those too.

One I really should refer to more often is this one: http://burninglianyu.tumblr.com/post/169380411461/angel-ani-setheverman-what-is-the-january

And for the part of me that occasionally wants to become a surreal, non-human entity that dwells in the space before the alarm clock goes off and never has to move past it, this one: http://burninglianyu.tumblr.com/post/167821073666/sarah531-the-first-time-i-ever-heard-take-me-to

Oh, and I have no idea how it didn’t come to mind earlier but, like, the entire novel Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov? I always feel like there is a certain kind of shame-narrative attached to genuinely liking that book. Sometimes it’s for good reason like people who are using it to romanticize CSA beyond what the book already does as a means of justification. However, when I think the text is really read honestly and compassionately it does a lot of those things that I was saying above the song “Praying” does for me. It does so in absolutely gorgeous prose that certainly is worthy of a murderer with a fancy prose style.

I think I love it because of the way it shows the villain as protagonist and gives him this beautiful way with words that forces you to understand his point of view while conscience and even the foreword charges you never to condone it. I also think that its aesthetic quality and attention to detail of, I guess, mid-century (1900s) America and the trappings of suburbia and the places that live alongside interstates just enchants me. There’s something about that part of the description that reminds me of feeling some kind of visceral mix of pleasure and discomfort that comes from just existing in the summertime for me on a day spent outside. It reminds me of something and some time I lived through in the last 90s that I think has since passed into oblivion -- the experience of living in an America before the internet and cell phones’ prevalence or something. Suburban anonymity and the creepiness of that but also the strange, transient beauty of plastic, neon, and trying to get anywhere in a car across this absurdly big country.

The quote that came to mind this time was this one (warning for mention of child sexual abuse):

We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night — every night, every night — the moment I feigned sleep. 

Basically it just encapsulates that vibe I was talking about for me except, of course, for the banal horror of that list item.

Also, pairing the words “rust and stardust.”