#U GAVE US WHAT WE WANTED

[mrsensitive]

EVERYONE HIT THE BRAKES RIGHT FUCKING NOW

[inkskinned]

the thing about art is that it was always supposed to be about us, about the human-ness of us, the impossible and beautiful reality that we (for centuries) have stood still, transfixed by music. that we can close our eyes and cry about the same book passage; the events of which aren't real and never happened. theatre in shakespeare's time was as real as it is now; we all laugh at the same cue (pursued by bear), separated hundreds of years apart.

three years ago my housemates were jamming outdoors, just messing around with their instruments, mostly just making noise. our neighbors - shy, cautious, a little sheepish - sat down and started playing. i don't really know how it happened; i was somehow in charge of dancing, barefoot and laughing - but i looked up, and our yard was full of people. kids stacked on the shoulders of parents. old couples holding hands. someone had brought sidewalk chalk; our front walk became a riot of color. someone ran in with a flute and played the most astounding solo i've ever heard in my life, upright and wiggling, skipping as she did so. she only paused because the violin player was kicking his heels up and she was laughing too hard to continue.

two weeks ago my friend and i met in the basement of her apartment complex so she could work out a piece of choreography. we have a language barrier - i'm not as good at ASL as i'd like to be (i'm still learning!) so we communicate mostly through the notes app and this strange secret language of dancers - we have the same movement vocabulary. the two of us cracking jokes at each other, giggling. there were kids in the basement too, who had been playing soccer until we took up the far corner of the room. one by one they made their slow way over like feral cats - they laid down, belly-flat against the floor, just watching. my friend and i were not in tutus - we were in slouchy shirts and leggings and socks. nothing fancy. but when i asked the kids would you like to dance too? they were immediately on their feet and spinning. i love when people dance with abandon, the wild and leggy fervor of childhood. i think it is gorgeous.

their adults showed up eventually, and a few of them said hey, let's not bother the nice ladies. but they weren't bothering us, they were just having fun - so. a few of the adults started dancing awkwardly along, and then most of the adults. someone brought down a better sound system. someone opened a watermelon and started handing out slices. it was 8 PM on a tuesday and nothing about that day was particularly special; we might as well party.

one time i hosted a free "paint along party" and about 20 adults worked quietly while i taught them how to paint nessie. one time i taught community dance classes and so many people showed up we had to move the whole thing outside. we used chairs and coatracks to balance. one time i showed up to a random band playing in a random location, and the whole thing got packed so quickly we had to open every door and window in the place.

i don't think i can tell you how much people want to be making art and engaging with art. they want to, desperately. so many people would be stunning artists, but they are lied to and told from a very young age that art only matters if it is planned, purposeful, beautiful. that if you have an idea, you need to be able to express it perfectly. this is not true. you don't get only 1 chance to communicate. you can spend a lifetime trying to display exactly 1 thing you can never quite language. you can just express the "!!??!!!"-ing-ness of being alive; that is something none of us really have a full grasp on creating. and even when we can't make what we want - god, it feels fucking good to try. and even just enjoying other artists - art inherently rewards the act of participating.

i wasn't raised wealthy. whenever i make a post about art, someone inevitably says something along the lines of well some of us aren't that lucky. i am not lucky; i am dedicated. i have a chronic condition, my hands are constantly in pain. i am not neurotypical, nor was i raised safe. i worked 5-7 jobs while some of these memories happened. i chose art because it mattered to me more than anything on this fucking planet - i would work 80 hours a week just so i could afford to write in 3 of them.

and i am still telling you - if you are called to make art, you are called to the part of you that is human. you do not have to be good at it. you do not have to have enormous amounts of privilege. you can just... give yourself permission. you can just say i'm going to make something now and then - go out and make it. raquel it won't be good though that is okay, i don't make good things every time either. besides. who decides what good even is?

you weren't called to make something because you wanted it to be good, you were called to make something because it is a basic instinct. you were taught to judge its worth and over-value perfection. you are doing something impossible. a god's ability: from nothing springs creation.

a few months ago i found a piece of sidewalk chalk and started drawing. within an hour i had somehow collected a small classroom of young children. their adults often brought their own chalk. i looked up and about fifteen families had joined me from around the block. we drew scrangly unicorns and messed up flowers and one girl asked me to draw charizard. i am not good at drawing. i basically drew an orb with wings. you would have thought i drew her the mona lisa. she dragged her mother over and pointed and said look! look what she drew for me and, in the moment, i admit i flinched (sorry, i don't -). but the mother just grinned at me. he's beautiful. and then she sat down and started drawing.

someone took a picture of it. it was in the local newspaper. the summary underneath said joyful and spontaneous artwork from local artists springs up in public gallery. in the picture, a little girl covered in chalk dust has her head thrown back, delighted. laughing.

[3416]

YOU ARE SO REAL FOR THE DOMI HATE!!!! i haven’t seen anyone else with that opinion but it’s so frustrating seeing everyone on twitter act like he belongs on the first line with 34

logically i get we're just spreading out the actual elite players to make the lineup more dangerous (potentially lol), but. players like domi aren't consistently good, and their mistakes could come back to haunt easily when you're playing opportunistic teams. i follow plenty of people who don't like him, so fbdjdjskkd. people are just high on the am70 chase, but it's sooooo so so so silly to act like that's a result of playing w fucking tyler bertuzzi and max domi. could've put auston out there w ryan reaves x2 and he'd prob pace the same the past 2 weeks, he's been lights out.

[karinyosa]

i can't go into the tag rn bc i'll get spoilers but the other show i'm going insane about is blue eye samurai and oh my god. the scene where mizu has a flashback to the fight w taigen while watching a threesome. my god

[rotzaprachim]

fundamentally a horror beyond words happened to my people and some people swore it didn’t happen and a bunch of other people who include also my people decided that terrible things would happen to civilians and idk how to be a part of my own culture atm in any way we should all be filled with shame I found out everyone hates Jews this week in particular white Americans I also found out there were Jews who would use what happened to us to commit ethnic cleansing everyone is screaming someone needs to die

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

u know... 2021 rachel was onto something when writing feeding habits harrison... like she walked I could FLY bc how did I singlehandedly give that man every single problem that could exist after struggling to see him as flawed for YEARSSS & how did that new level of understanding become foundational to the harrison we all know and love (loathe)

[delicatetaysversion]

my best friend's MOTHER called me to scold me about being depressed and self isolating lol what has life even come to

[ef-1]

legs & lessons in perseverance | march '23

[horce-divorce]

It has been 0 days since the last "old man leaves blood tracked around the entire house and goes on with his day UNbothered" incident....

I cannot fucking verbalize how disturbing this shit is... I literally can't get up at 7am to take a sleep-drunken piss without having to wake up fully and fucking bleach the floor because I look down at my shoes and realize I'm STEPPING in someone else's BLOOD. AGAIN!!@!!@!!!!!!!!!!!

same guy that leaves food out for the mice, puts his used dirty dry ass dentures flat on the kitchen counter, leaves bloodied bandages on the TABLE!!!!!!

and every time you try to have a conversation with him he goes "oh haha!" and trundles off, absolutely utterly regardless of what the topic is. Period. Always. Once during a fucking tornado he sat upstairs watching TV, chuckled at us rushing to the basement as the sirens wailed, I informed him "we already lost everything once, we don't need to do it again" and he said "ha ha ha" and went and sat in front of the TV again.

Once he said "I wonder why the mice keep coming back in the summer?" And Bel looked him in the eyes and said "you! It's because you leave them full course meals every day, you should scrape your plate off into the garbage when you're done with it :)" he said "oh haha!" Wandered off and then never once cleaned his plate, continuing to leave full plates out overnight (im talking 3 corn cobs biscuits and gravy), and "thawing" ALREADY THAWED MEAT on the counter for upwards of 10 hours before just... sticking it back in the fridge???

He is literally not even on this plane of existence. To the point where he refuses to use his cane and yet falls down multiple times per day. I don't understand how he continues to live. Fucking energy vampire. Literally!who needs a cane! he just asks us to help him up off the floor! then refuses said help while we stand there and watch him struggle. he has THE most weaponized incompetence i have EVER encountered. He literally just likes an audience!!!! That's all he wants and he gets it for free every day!!!! Every day he lives one day longer and Thorin, Bel and I feel years age off our fucking lives in exchange!!!!!

I CANT! KEEP DOING IT! I NEED TO FIX MY CAR AND GET OUT OF HERE IM GOING FUCKING INSANE I DIDNG SIGN UP FOR DAILY BIOHAZARD WASTE REMOVAL IN EXCHANGE FOR MY FUCKING LIFE!!!!!!!LIVING IN THE WOODS IS BETTER ILL TAKE IT ANY FUCKING DAY

Hot tip: if you become homeless DONT just take the first offer of a roof over your head IF you can absolutely help it at all, ESPECIALLY if you became homeless due to fleeing abusive family. You will very likely just end up with someone else's abusive dad instead :) repeatedly :)))

[anotherpapercut]

when I was in 8th grade I had the same teacher for physics and geometry and he was like one of those dudes who always wanted to be one of the cool kids but never was so now he got to be the cool teacher that all the cool kids loved so he would like straight up bully the weird kids (me and my friends lol ✌️) and I thought it was wack as hell that a grown ass man was calling my friend, a 13 year old girl, stupid in front of the whole class for asking a fucking question so I constantly told him to back off and would get in full on screaming matches with the man about why he was not allowed to treat us like that (at one point I basically told him that if he ever made my friend cry again I would not rest until his teaching license was revoked lol) and it got to the point where he was like. actually for real beefing with me during class and in the hallways when he saw me and sometimes after school

anyway I just wanna say first of all fuck you Mr. Glasson, second of all what kind of like 28 y/o man has a fr beef with a fucking 13 year old. I literally wore a cloak to school. he was having beef with a child with pink hair, in a cloak. can you fucking imagine jsbdksbdndmdbnd

[britneyshakespeare]

you know. back when i reviewed poetry submissions for [insert unnamed literary magazine here], i once got a submission containing only two poems (you could submit up to five) both of which were about the author's older brothers, whose names are dan and john (my older brothers' names are dan and jon...athan) and her relationship w them and descriptions of them were not all that unlike my own brothers. still one of the weirdest things that has ever happened to me

[pocketramblr]

dndhat movie is fun but i'll admit a good 30% of my fun was pointing at the screen like "wait i have a character/party member who does that too! :0!!"

[stevethehairington]

if i never had to use amtrak again that would be the best day ever

[bibleofficial]

they didn’t know i was gay but set the pic for the druggie groupchat to a selfie, w me fully limped

[apathyfairy]

soooo sick of companies acting like they dont make 1 million dollars every millisecond and that sharing your membership with your friends is bankrupting them

[stockholmgf]

:(