#or kae tempest

[rowanhoney]

the joy and relief, I won’t be working, I’ll be off and free to party soooo hard at the speedy label anniversary

I will not repeat the warpaint after party keira knightley incident again

[medlilove]

I saw it, roaring.

I felt it clawing at my clothes like a grieving friend.

It said "There are no new beginnings,

Until everybody sees that the old ways need to end"

- Kae Tempest

Not Jared Harris making me fall in love with a weird, awkward, wobbly, terrified, blunt, scientist. Full of dread and care. A dead man trying to stop a man made apocalypse. I finally finished this up after abandoning it for a few months. Listen to Kae Tempest People’s Faces if you want to look into the heart of the universe.

[gatheringbones]

when/if you read queer literature as someone who deals with chronic internalized queerphobia: please find a way physically to deal with the distress, please process it, please walk circles in the yard about it, please tap on walls or rake up the dirt about it, but please for the love of god don’t just let it sit

[fyeahtimwalker]

Encyclopedia Britanicca by Tim Walker for Vogue UK, December 2023

Olivia Colman, Jodie Comer, Eddie Izzard, Kristen McMenamy & Eddy Earl, Katharine Hamnett, Kae Tempest, Vanessa Redgrave, Cecilia & Lucas Chancellor, and Isaac Julien.

Styled by Edward Enninful.

[finelythreadedsky]

idk if it's what kae tempest was thinking but the chorus of philoctetes absolutely should be a chorus of inhabitants of the island and all women-- because it's lemnos, the island where the women famously killed the entire male population a couple of generations before the trojan war. what does it mean that philoctetes is abandoned there, on that island?

[words-and-coffee]

Imagine how it feels To walk so far away from life and love, To know that all you've known Is now No longer enough.

Kae Tempest, Hold Your Own -  Tiresias

[x-heesy]

Our whole system is very very wrong 😑

Europe is lost, America lost, London lost

Still we are clamouring victory

All that is meaningless rules

We have learned nothing from history

The people are dead in their lifetimes

Dazed in the shine of the streets

But look how the traffic's still moving

System's too slick to stop working

Business is good, and there's bands every night in the pubs

And there's two for one drinks in the clubs

And we scrubbed up well

Washed off the work and the stress

And now all we want's some excess

Better yet, a night to remember that we'll soon forget

All of the blood that was bled for these cities to grow

All of the bodies that fell

The roots that were dug from the earth

So these games could be played

I see it tonight in the stains on my hands

The buildings are screaming

I can't ask for help though, nobody knows me

Hostile, worried, lonely

We move in our packs and these are the rights we were born to

Working and working so we can be all that we want

Then dancing the drudgery off

But even the drugs have got boring

Well, sex is still good when you get it

To sleep, to dream, to keep the dream in reach

To each a dream, don't weep, don't scream

Just keep it in, keep sleeping in

What am I gonna do to wake up?

I feel the cost of it pushing my body

Like I push my hands into pockets

And softly I walk and I see it, this is all we deserve

The wrongs of our past have resurfaced

Despite all we did to vanquish the traces

My very language is tainted

With all that we stole to replace it with this

I am quiet

Feeling the onset of riot

Riots are tiny, though

Systems are huge

Traffic keeps moving, proving there's nothing to do

'Cause it's big business, baby, and its smile is hideous

Top down violence, and structural viciousness

Your kids are dosed up on medical sedatives

But don't worry 'bout that, man, worry 'bout terrorists

The water level's rising! The water level's rising!

The animals, the elephants, the polarbears are dying!

Stop crying, start buying, but what about the oil spill?

Shh, no one likes a party pooping spoil sport

Massacres, massacres, massacres, new shoes

Ghettoised children murdered in broad daylight

By those employed to protect them

Live porn streamed to your pre-teens' bedrooms

Glass ceiling, no headroom

Half a generation live beneath the breadline

Oh, but it's happy hour on the high street

Friday night at last lads, my treat!

All went fine 'til that kid got glassed in the last bar

Place went nuts, you can ask our Lou

It was madness, road ran red, pure claret

And about them immigrants? I can't stand them

Mostly, I mind my own business

They're only coming over here to get rich, it's a sickness

England! England! Patriotism!

And you wonder why kids want to die for religion?

It goes work all your life for a pittance

Maybe you'll make it to manager, pray for a raise

Cross the beige days off on your beach babe calendar

The anarchists are desperate for something to smash

Scandalous pictures of fashionable rappers

In glamourous magazines, who's dating who?

Politico cash in an envelope

Caught sniffing lines off a prostitutes prosthetic tits

Now it's back to the House of Lords with slapped wrists

They abduct kids who fuck the heads of dead pigs

But him in a hoodie with a couple of spliffs

Jail him, he's the criminal

Jail him, he's the criminal

It's the bored-of-it-all generation

The product of product placement and manipulation

Shoot 'em up, brutal, duty of care

Come on, new shoes, beautiful hair, bullshit

Saccharine ballads and selfies and selfies and selfies

And here's me outside the palace of me

Construct a self and psyhcosis

Meanwhile the people were dead in their droves

And no, nobody noticed, well, some of them noticed

You could tell by the emoji they posted

Sleep like a gloved hand covers our eyes

The lights are so nice and bright and let's dream

But some of us are stuck like stones in a slipstream

What am I gonna do to wake up?

We are lost, we are lost, we are lost

And still nothing will stop, nothing pauses

We have ambitions and friendships and our courtships to think of

Divorces to drink off the thought of

The money, the money, the oil

The planet is shaking and spoiled

And life is a plaything

A garment to soil

The toil, the toil

I can't see an ending at all

Only the end

How is this something to cherish?

When the tribesmen are dead in their deserts

To make room for alien structures

Develop, develop

And kill what you find if it threatens you

No trace of love in the hunt for the bigger buck

Here in the land where nobody gives a fuck

Europe Is Lost by Kae Tempest

[timeflow]

I just want you guys to know that I'm currently the cutest girl of all time

[d-i-x-i-t]

If you force it, it will not open. Trying to make it mean something, kills the meaning. It should occur to you fresh in that moment. It’s through you, not because of you. - Kae Tempest

[do-you-know-this-play]

[jtbb]

btw

[all-chickens-are-trans]

1, 5, 9 - The Modern Gomorrah (1978) script / 2, 3 - Thunderheart (1992) / 4 - Richard Siken, "The Torn-Up Road" / 6 - Jenny Holzer, Marquees, "Truisms" (1993) / 7 - Kae Tempest, "Man Down" (2014) / 8, 11 - Richard Siken, "Little Beast" / 10 - Jenny Holzer, "Plaques"

[shy-girl04]

People's Faces

It's coming to pass

My country's coming apart

The whole thing's becoming

Such a bumbling farce

Was that a pivotal historical moment

We just went stumbling past?

Here we are

Dancing in the rumbling dark

So come a little closer

Give me something to grasp

Give me your beautiful, crumbling heart

[aeolianblues]

I've been thinking so much about that one interview where Grian Chatten talks about how people have been looking to him for answers since Dogrel came out, where he's just an ordinary guy. We really do turn to our poets when the waters are murky huh.

2022 I think. Headlined something like 'People are looking to me for answers. What the fuck do I know?' I think it was that cover feature NME did with them when Skinty Fia came out. The one with the appropriately red-themed photoshoot.

[fyeahtimwalker]

Kae Tempest by Tim Walker for Vogue UK, December 2023

Styled by Edward Enninful.

[skyeoak]

Kae Tempest said “I want to dig a big ditch in the soil of my breath and bury my brain in it” and I really get it, you know