In the absence of tyrants bootlicking is essentially ballet.
Her mouth had filled with light as they gave her TV teeth and a Barbie cunt.
Glass Houses, Madeline Ashby (excerpt here)
I met Maddie about a decade ago via a workshop organized by Tim Hwang; very grateful that despite never living in the same city we've remained in touch.
When I think about that stuff, it feels like someone took a shovel and dug out all of my insides and I know there's nothing in there but I'm still too nervous to open myself up and check.
Julia and I saw this at BAM on Friday. I can imagine some people will find it entirely too A24 Aesthetic for their tastes, but I was captivated as entirely as the characters in the film were with their beloved TV show. It's beautiful and weird and genuinely felt like a love letter the whole way through. The ending is brutal, but I think there's still a seed of hope in it. Or maybe the hope is in the fact that Jane Schoenbrun made a movie about trans experience that doesn't pander to cis audiences (i.e., it doesn't offer some kind of redemptive assimilation or shy away from the terror within the joy of self-recognition).
For some lighthearted fun, here is a press interview where the director and stars of the movie try to work references to the Jim Carrey movie The Mask into every one of their answers.
But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies.
"Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power", Audre Lorde
This essay holds a lot of the same wonder and terror for me that exists in I Saw The TV Glow. (Insert the David Lynch "Elaborate on that / No" meme here.)
I was suddenly aware that my body wasn’t a simple machine, but more of an ongoing negotiation between will and strength.
"My Outdoor Resumé, Part One, Rusty Foster's Today on Trail
Submitted by Matt.
At first glance, the long ranks seemed to be progressing in orderly lines, but on closer inspection, it was apparent that, like the obscured detail of a Goya landscape, the army was composed of a vast throng of people, men and women, interspersed with a few soldiers in ragged uniforms, pressing forward in a disorganized tide.
"The Garden of Time", J.G. Ballard
I haven't found much writing specifically about J.G. Ballard's use of crystals in fiction (they're mentioned in "The Garden of Time", are central to the novel The Crystal World and the short story "The Illuminated Man" that exists in the same timeline as The Crystal World).
I made my biggest bet ($3) on Mystik Dan, because it was the horse with the funniest name, and I thought it would be fun if the Derby was won by a horse that sounds like a guy who sells mushrooms in the parking lots of Phish shows.
I can’t think of a more tragic or trivial comic premise than: Things should stay the way they are.
Steve Albini in an interview with Mel Magazine
Not sure I'm living my life in a way that will make people react to my death in the way that they've reacted to Albini's death, but feel like it's important to try. Much love to the many Chicago friends who have been grieving this loss.