#still some interesting snippets

[muzaktomyears]

John Lennon by his friends and son: ‘He got eight years more than Jesus’

The former Beatle would have been turning 84 this autumn. Now his son Sean and those who knew him best are keeping his spirit alive with the rerelease of his classic solo album Mind Games

Everyone wonders what John Lennon could have become. When he was murdered in New York on December 8, 1980, the 40-year-old was in his post-Beatles prime. The superb album Double Fantasy had just come out and he was plotting a world tour. His second son, Sean, whom he took time off to bring up with his wife, Yoko Ono, was five, and Lennon was feeling inspired. Seven solo records since the Beatles had split ten years earlier; a reconciliation with Paul McCartney.

“Everyone gets the time they get, and he got eight years longer than Jesus,” says Bob Gruen, the rock’n’roll legend who took photographs of everyone who mattered in the 1970s. He captured Lennon and Ono’s time in New York and is confident and chatty — until conversation turns to what Mark Chapman took outside the Dakota that day.

“John should be alive now,” Gruen says, clearly still affected 44 years on. Gruen had spent the weekend with Lennon before he died and was developing his photos when he got the call. “He didn’t die in an accident or of a disease. His death broke my trust in everything. He was grounded at the time. He learnt a lot from raising his son, about enjoying his life and being sober. Then I heard he was dead.”

Lennon would have been 84 in October — and at least we are left with his songs. But legacy is complicated. Over the years McCartney has stolen his crown as chief creative in the Beatles. Partly because Lennon is no longer here to speak. Also because, during Peter Jackson’s 2021 film, Get Back, Lennon was largely stoned, while the charismatic McCartney conjured up magic. So to redress the balance, this month’s innovative rerelease of Lennon’s Mind Games (1973) pushes design and immersion in ways few box sets have before. It features new mixes — some that amplify Lennon’s voice, others that emphasise the instruments.

It is the work of Sean, 48, who has been at the forefront of the Mind Games rerelease. Lennon’s younger son is a musician and artist based in New York near his mother, 91. “The title track is one of the most beautiful songs ever written,” he says.

The songs answer questions Sean never got to ask his father. Despite being very young when his father was around, Sean does have memories of him — talking, watching TV, playing guitar and saying, “Good night, Sean.” The song Aisumasen (I’m Sorry) on the record is an apology from Lennon to Ono.

“One thing that distinguishes my dad’s solo career,” Sean says, “is how personal his lyrics became. It is like a diary, and it is my duty to bring attention to my father’s music. Not just my duty to him, but a duty to the world. With the world as it is now, people have forgotten so many things that I never imagined could be forgotten. I refuse to let that happen to this music — it means too much to me.”

Two years before Mind Games came out, Lennon moved to New York and met Gruen. Living in New York was simpler for him and Ono. They were hounded in Britain. “One paper called Yoko ugly,” Gruen recalls. “But in New York they were just treated as the quirky artists who came to town.”

Gruen’s eyes light up. “He was just funnier than everyone else,” he says. “I’d have loved him on Twitter, he was so cool with one-liners.” He smiles. “And, also, he learnt to cook. I’d always try to go to the Dakota for mealtimes.” What sort of food? “John used to be a meat and potatoes guy, but he met [the actress] Gloria Swanson in the vegetable store and she gave him a book that acted as a way into a macrobiotic diet from a western one. He got really into healthy food, baking vegetables and steaming fish.”

And this is the frustration. In the late 1970s Lennon was cleaning up his act. For himself, for Sean — a son he was involved with, as opposed to his first child, Julian. He had changed, from the man who went on his fabled “Lost Weekend” in Los Angeles in 1973. The weekend actually ran for months, during which Lennon left Ono, on Ono’s suggestion, for their assistant, May Pang, then 23. After Lennon went back to Ono, Pang carried on in the music business and married the producer Tony Visconti, but the Lost Weekend era remains her headline. During that time Lennon enjoyed chaotic recording sessions with Phil Spector. “I wondered if he’d ever make it back to New York,” Gruen says. “I thought he might get a place in Hawaii, or just die.” But Lennon returned in 1974, for his final six years.

What does Gruen think about how Lennon is remembered? Especially in Get Back? “Well, who’s the last one standing?” Gruen scoffs. “Who gets to write the history? The survivors get to write the history. That’s the way it goes.”

Tony King was the vice-president of Apple Records at the time of Lennon’s Lost Weekend. “We’re here to talk about my friend,” he tells me sweetly. King was out in Los Angeles working on a Ringo album when Pang phoned to say that Lennon needed help with his Mind Games record.

“I wasn’t looking forward to it,” King admits. “John could be sharp-tongued. But, in LA, he was super-friendly. I was straightforward. I told him he had to repair his reputation. After Imagine [1971] he’d gone in a different direction, making songs with a political edge. It was quite easy for John to get caught up in things. He had this tendency to see someone, decide he loved them and then go in their direction. I was lucky he went in my direction for a while. He realised he had lost some fans. Mind Games was more what people wanted.” Its songs were simpler and less political.

Personally, however, Lennon was in turmoil. “May on one arm, Yoko on the other!” King says. “He was juggling a lot.” Did Lennon talk about McCartney? “They were not getting along, but he was still fond of him,” King recalls. And what about that Lost Weekend era? “He was off the walls, to be honest.

“We went to Las Vegas and John interrupted Frankie Valli during a show, saying, ‘Get your cock out!’ We got thrown out and on the way back to the hotel he was pissing up against trees and then throwing his chips around the lobby. I put him to bed. It was difficult when he drank. John had taken way too much acid and so when he drank it flipped him into another style of person. One day it was great, the next it was very hard.”

King remembers the night his friend died clearly. “I was out at dinner in LA and the waiter said, ‘He’s dead.’ I returned to a very lonely, sad hotel room.” Does he ever think about what Lennon might have achieved later in his life? “Elton and I talk about John,” King says. He means Elton John. “We say, ‘I wonder what he’d be up to?’ Well, he’d have pounced on the internet and got into AI. And he’d still campaign. I could see him hopping on a plane to see Zelensky. He was a busy person, with an arresting personality. You’re never going to forget him.”

The Mind Games reissue is a beast, a lavish celebration of a fine, melodic rush of songs. Bonuses include the Ultimate Mixes, which bring Lennon’s voice to the fore; Raw Studio Mixes; there is a Super Deluxe Edition “presented in a 13in cube”; puzzles; and even an experience on the free Lumenate app that is described as a “consciousness-expanding psychedelic meditation” and uses the phone’s torch and Lennon’s tunes to guide users into “a state of consciousness between deep meditation and psychedelics”.

We are a long way from 1973 — when the session musicians David Spinozza, on guitar, and Ken Ascher, on keyboards, were asked to play on Mind Games. They recall the recording as efficient — Lennon left his partying for later. He was in a creative peak, with Mind Games his fourth album in three years since the Beatles.

“He was a Beatle!” Ascher says. “I was thrilled to get the call. Yoko told me, around 10pm, that John would like to meet. I called my wife and said, ‘I’m not coming home — I’m meeting John.’ He played me music he liked, and we talked for hours. His humour helped me relax.”

Spinozza worked with Lennon and McCartney in the 1970s. How did the men compare? “Paul would do one song for six hours, even for a day,” he says. “With John we never worked on one song for six hours. He worked quick — he was all business. I’m not saying one was better than the other, but Paul could work on a drum sound for hours. John just wanted to get it done.”

How does Sean feel about his parents, looking back? “Their story is a love story,” he says. “They found each other across a great divide and certainly struggled through ups and downs, but never doubted their love. It is important we remember them as an example. Even through rough patches you can see my father thought about my mother. They were simply, irrevocably intertwined.”

Lovely words — and as for John Lennon himself? “Generally it’s whatever comes out, like diarrhoea,” he once said of his recordings. “A bit personal, a bit political — someone told me Mind Games was Imagine with balls, which I liked. It was like an interim record between being a manic political lunatic back to a musician again.”

Speaking in the early 1970s, after a decade of super-fame, he said he did not feel different to how he had before. “I’m still a bit adolescent,” he said in one of his final interviews. “My old friends from Liverpool got jobs after school. I’d see them six months later and their hair would be thin and they’d be getting fat. They were becoming old men — while I just keep going.”

(source)

[laddertek]

etho said actually you _don't_ understand the intricacies of how tango is my boyfriend and bdubs is my ex

(and how tango and bdubs kiss too)

Scar: We went on that little adventure, you know! Etho: Yeah, yeah, we had our adventure, that's true, that's true. Scar: You disparaged your teammates. That's it, all right, no more spoilers. Etho: (laughs) Our team has -- our team has some weird dynamics this -- this season. Cleo: (overlapping) Really, Etho? Is there trouble in paradise? (pause) Who's third-wheeling with you, again? I can't remember. Etho: (laughs) Uhh. The -- Cleo: Genuinely can't remember. I know it's you and Bdubs. And...Tango? Tango. Tango. Etho: (loudly) Why -- Why is Tango the third wheel? Why -- why isn't Bdubs the third wheel? Cleo: Because it's you and Bdubs. I'm sorry. I understand how that relationship goes. Etho: (dissatisfied) Hmm.

[amogus-real-not-clickbait]

part 1 of a little comic / art sequence that i've been working on! :D it's part tribute, part experimenting with brushes n colors and trying new thingz :]

| 1 | 2 | 3 | ... |

and thus continues my endless quest of spreading the carrot fics like a plague! if you've seen my art floating around you probs already figured that this au holds a very special place in my heart, forever and always!!

if you haven't heard of it, it's a fic series by @crowned-ladybug called carrot soup!! it made me wish i could speak colors and i need more people to share my struggle xd

go check it out if you're into sweet voice lore and qpr level gayness and just wanna feel warm and soft and warm (hurt/comfort my beloved) <333 there are some heavier themes cos everyone's traumatized but they're working through it! be sure to check the tags and stay safe! <3

[padfootastic]

hohoho i am writing a remus & sirius confrontation that is ending up a little too mean and it’s verging on the edge of not fitting into FoD but by god, is it satisfying 😈😈😈

“Oh, stop pretending, Remus.” There’s a part of Sirius, not insignificant, that tells him to shut the fuck up. To bite back the words as he’d always done. They don’t expect it of him but he is perfectly capable of maintaining a civil tongue when needed. He just doesn’t want to, today. “You’ve always resented us, haven’t you?”

“Padfoot, do you even hear yourself—?” Remus’ amber eyes are bright, almost feverish, and Sirius knew that all he had to do was push.

So he did.

- brought to u by ‘i’ve been thinking about remus and i also recently read a fic that blindsided me w commentary on james’ and sirius’ social positions intimidating remus into compliance as an excuse for his cowardice and general temperament and got incredibly annoyed at how he is, yet again, victimised so i shall now endeavour to turn that idea around on its head using the ‘ol ‘u cannot help someone who does not want to be helped’ adage so help me god’

[writerfae]

Okay hold on — who wants to be tagged in my Knights of the Alder Christmas movie au advent calendar?

@bunnymermaidsblog @deadlycupid you two are not getting out of this one anyway so consider yourself tagged already

[bonefall]

Voted for Bumble bc of course but also if you think Alex would not pspsps Bumble you are wrong. If they could communicate they would go to therapy together /s

If then could communicate they would go to therapy together

/GEN

Kyle/Green Lantern resurrects her but then he becomes convinced that she's not the same person she was before the incident, OR SOMETHING SOMETHING Black Lanterns aren't ACTUALLY bad they're just misunderstood Grim Reaper types, in either case Alex ends up breaking it off with Kyle because they've become very different people.

And then Bumble's there

And then they go to therapy or Alex adopts Bumble, and then uhhh Bumble's like one of the superpets. Like Krypto the Superdog. Free premise go forth and play with it if ur a DC fan

[desognthinking]

👀 More haunted house designer au?! 👀 I love that concept so much so would be overjoyed if you ever decided to revisit it :)

😎i love it too. i wish i could tell you there are finally actually haunted houses in this one but unfortunately the girls are still working through it 😭 also i am working through it (editing 😭)

so in this one they're on a scouting-slash-forced teambuilding trip and it's um Going. it's a few thousand k of Meet The Ava wherein Ava is frustrated + up against it + dramatic, but also Meets The Beatrice.

anyway anyway it starts like this (subject to me finding it too cringey and editing it):

Ava sees her at the end of the pier, a dark figure in the already-dark; a smudge of barely-moving ink on the line between wind and water. Barely, indeed – wavering less than the yearning swallow and swoop of the waves interrupted by pillars of wood, and, further back, stone. 

At night, after everything’s shut, this place is quiet until the fishermen get out in the early morning. In the off-season, even more so. Rain slings down frequently, and it’s not warm enough for balmy walks by the rocks. Not many come out, if any. Ava’s one.

She calls out as she walks down the planks, only thinking belatedly that perhaps she might not want to be disturbed. Out here behind the motel, unmoving under the preliminary drizzle of rain, embraced and cocooned by temperamentally warping air. It is, after all, that tremulous transitory phase between spring and summer that borrows its faces from both, and switches its masks sharply in the slit-time of blinks.

[avantguardisme]

ive spent like the past week finishing up putting together a literature curriculum for a spanish class im teaching over the summer & man, there's nothing like trying to give an overview of spanish lit to a bunch of teenagers in just 4 weeks to make you feel the weight of The Canon. like, on one hand i want to give them an overview that doesn't just pretend that the only people writing anything good or important were just a small group of men who only spoke castillian spanish (or even just who lived in spain, the class is focusing on spain in particular but im still including sor juana and ruben dario on account of sheer influence, and if i had time i'd probably throw at least one latam boom author in there), but on the other hand-- with the amount of time we have and an average language level of the class, we can't actually read a whole lot of material, so i feel like i cant leave out some of the biggest names regardless of personal taste. like sure, i generally preferred reading maria de zayas to cervantes, but we only have time for one siglo de oro prose author and i'm not going to leave out miguel de fucking cervantes, are you kidding me?

this is doubly complicated by the fact that'd i'd be completely justified in using emilia pardo bazan as my example of an Important Canonical Realismo author who is also a woman but i simply refuse to do that to myself on account of jesus christ have you tried to read her prose. i'm not doing that to a high schooler

[bumblingbabooshka]

From: Incident at Arbuk [Novel] I know they mean this in the straightest way possible but in my brain Neelix would be jealous because he wants Tuvok to compliment him too v_v

[clownandout]

[coldercreation]

"

“Hope you realise that if you mess up my ink -” Kit said quietly against the side of Liam’s head, his voice too soft and too silky, his sharp smile carving into each of the letters falling from his lips, “- I’ll put you in a fuckin’ muzzle.” 

"

Good lordy, I hope that makes the final cut, though I may need a fan... and an ice bath... or a very cold shower :-D

Loving all the little snippets!

Hehehe thank you so much! ;')

Love to hear you've liked the snippets, posting them keep me feeling more connected and they help me keep writing too! So I refuse to feel too bad about spoiling all my work lel xx

[eyivibyemi]

✧ I won’t really write descriptions for these, but see original post tags for explanation/commentary on the song snippet ✧

[princesssarcastia]

here, have the start of the next story in that one series I wrote two years ago, about what would have happened, if ahsoka tano thought to ask maul who his sith master is.

in which time has passed, old wounds are healed if still tender, and there is a new generation to shepherd and nurture.

—

Ahsoka meets Cilghal for the first time when Obi-Wan volunteers her to lead a group of younglings to Ilum with Master Windu.  Normally, the Temple respects her status as a Ranger too much to snatch her up for missions during those periods she’s on Coruscant to rest, but somehow, this time was different.

She has to jog through the hangar to catch the Crucible in time, which she also doesn’t appreciate.  Force, she didn’t even manage a real shower, just a quick run through the sonic in her quarters, which means her montrals are a touch out of sync with the rest of her; it’s not quite a headache, but it makes her…cranky. 

That’s something she can admit to herself, if not Master Windu, who eyes her when she sheds momentum by nearly sliding up the ramp into the ship, projecting faint irritation in the Force.

Catching his gaze calmly, she pulls her emotions back behind her shields and gives a faint bow.  “Master Windu, it’s nice to see you again.”

“And you, Knight Tano,” he returns, and they walk deeper inside together, the younglings already scattered to set up their bunks in the berth.

It’s been a while since they’ve spoken at any length; most of their interactions are consigned to polite acknowledgement as they pass one another in the halls of the Temple.  Ahsoka honestly wouldn’t put it past Obi-Wan to be forcing them to finally get over themselves, after all these years.  They don’t dislike each other, it’s not that.  But there’s a hum-thrumming of sensitivity itching under her skin whenever they spend too much time together, force-memory of a shatterpoint shared and echoes of tortured laughter cut brutally short.  That’s something she’s spent the last eight years trying to put down.

Though on rare occasions, that edge of a reminder at the back of her head makes for a spectacular spar between them in the salles, and their last bout drew what felt like half the Temple before it was over.  Her musing actually pulls that particular clash out of both of them and into the surrounding Force, and they both soften at once.

Just in time for a little Rodian youngling to dash into the room across from them, chanting, “Knight Tano!  Knight Tano!  Padawan Katooni said when you took her to Ilum you were kidnapped by pirates is that true?  Are we going to be kidnapped by pirates?”

She gets a blinding flash all her own of Ganodi pouting in disbelief at the idea of learning from a droid, but before she can even smile, a chorus of half a dozen other younglings gasp, “Pirates?” and practically stampede into the room in the wake of their fellow.

Mace audibly sighs, and Ahsoka’s not-quite-a-headache has definitely solidified.

But she spends the next hour or so recanting the frankly ridiculous series of events that followed her last trip to Ilum, including being attacked by pirates, being kidnapped by pirates, the worst circus acts she’s ever seen in her life, teaming up with those same pirates, and a brief and terrifying battle with General Grievous. 

Fucking Hondo.

By the end of it, she has all their attention wrapped around her like a cloak, wide eyes following her hands and, in some instances, seeing what she saw through the Force.  A few of them definitely have a talent for clairvoyance, if not outright precognition, which will make this trip interesting, to say the least.  Ilum is strong in the unifying Force.  She does her best to tuck the sheer desperation of that final duel away as she tells it because it’s just another fun story, for them.  Jedi, fighting the forces of evil!  The ups and downs of battle are exhilarating, not horrifying, because they still know in their hearts a Jedi can do anything they set their mind to.

—

Creating a lightsaber is a sacred process, one that unites every Jedi.  These younglings will remember one another for the rest of their lives, remember the feeling of each other in the Force every time they held the physical manifestation of their lives in their hands.

All the crechémates Ahsoka built her first lightsaber with are dead.

—

aaaaand that's as far as I got, back in 2021. Cilghal is a real star wars character, a healer-knight from the days of the new jedi order. i figured bariss and ahsoka probably ended up sharing a padawan, given the ending scene of Had we but World enough, and Time.

[izzy-b-hands]

I might have a thing

I don't think it's an amazing thing

but it's a finished thing and maybe that's the best I can ask for

[honeyvenommusic]

.