#what our dead do

[apoemaday]

What Our Dead Do

by Zbigniew Herbert tr. John Carpenter

Jan came this morning —I dreamt of my father he says he was riding in an oak coffin I walked next to the hearse and father turned to me:

you dressed me nicely and the funeral is very beautiful at this time of year so many flowers it must have cost a lot

don’t worry about it father —I say—let people see we loved you that we spared nothing

       six men in black livery        walk nicely at our sides

father thought for a while and said—the key to the desk is in the silver inkwell there is still some money in the second drawer on the left

with this money—I say— we will buy you a gravestone a large one of black marble

it isn’t necessary—says father— better give it to the poor

       six men in black livery        walk nicely at our sides        they carry burning lanterns

again he seemed to be thinking —take care of the flowers in the garden cover them for the winter I don’t want them to be wasted

you are the oldest—he says— from a little felt bag behind the painting take out the cuff links with real pearls let them bring you luck my mother gave them to me when I finished high school then he didn’t say anything he must have entered a deeper sleep

this is how our dead look after us they warn us through dreams bring back lost money hunt for jobs whisper the numbers of lottery tickets or when they can’t do this knock with their fingers on the windows

and out of gratitude we imagine immortality for them snug as the burrow of a mouse

[liveandbreathemusicals]

Gay people will be like “this is my comfort show!” And then show you the most emotionally devastating, stress-inducing, tragic piece of media you have ever witnessed

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The dog days are over.

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[daily-singularity]

Never underestimate the pathetic charm of the survivors

[nerd-elf]

I’m tagging all my favorites here, feel free to do the same

[moderndaypandora]

i recognize that simon and edwin meeting and parting in hell is narratively very good and provides closure for all. but imagine if simon had agreed to try and escape with edwin. and charles doesn't have time to really question it, because anybody who likes edwin is aces in his book and it's hell, they need to leave. (edwin, out of courtesy to their third companion, puts his plan to confess on hold until they've escaped.)

suddenly the edwin harem of "supernatural boys who all hate each other but are attracted to that negative rizz" gains another member, and at some point edwin is going to have to mention that simon was the boy who sacrificed him to hell.

the chaos. crystal's bitchy commentary. charles going from friendly smiling to clutching his cricket bat. niko's whispering "200k slow burn schoolboy rivals to lovers" with heart eyes. it'd be chef's kiss good. edwin fleeing to his books and praying that nobody, but especially not the cat king, finds him because there has been SO MUCH emotion already. hysterical.

[ineedhjalp]

oh honey i have rewatching capabilities you couldn’t dream of

[local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti]

Watching Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron again as an adult is so great because not only do you appreciate the nostalgia and joy of it, the stunning 2D animation mixed with early 3D techonology and well written tight story with a main character that never speaks.

But also you appreciate that the plot relies on horses, despite not being typical talking horses in cartoons, being extremely intelligent to the point that they are aware of their captivity and exploitation. And it involves a hyper intelligent horse dismantling (or, at the very least significantly delaying) American colonialism's expansion into the west.

This horse also very likely killed many colonialists when they were either launched at high speeds from his back, kicked in the head or blown up in a train explosion.

Good for him.

[egophiliac]

LEON

LEON YOUR EYEBALLS

[aalghul]

jason doesn’t feel guilty for the murders he committed!!! he can’t feel catholic guilt or want repentance or atonement for something he doesn’t feel guilt about! and there are dozens of religions we could explore jason in that would be so much more fun than catholicism or any type of christianity

[homoquartz]

i wish y'all could occupy my delusional headspace with me. i'm 100% certain there will be a season 2 if we just keep yelling enough.

[inezrable]

I've lived through too many queer tv show cancellations

[rontra]

night shift (+ variant)

.

playing around w stipple beast

[maraudersislife]

the duality of man

[edwinisms]

it’s actually so wild to me that this fairly quirky YA type show gave both of its main characters deaths that can, in one way or another, solidly be considered hate crimes. they were both flat out murdered as a result of being A) gay and effeminate or B) brown (south asian, specifically) and you could argue whether or not those kids thought of it that way in the moment or whatever but the bottom line is that they would not have been in the situations that killed them if they weren’t of their respective minorities. like legitimately that is a ballsy choice for this kind of netflix show, let alone for the two Main Characters, and i respect it big time