When You've Got No Other Choice, You Know You Can Follow My Voice

Turning points are always so informative about who you are and what you value.

We've all had them.

Think back to a turning point for yourself.  A moment that made you make a change, or something that shifted how you felt about some thing or some one or some situation in your life.

What was it that happened that made it shift so completely?

Can you recall how time slowed down a bit as you realized what you absolutely had to do?

(pause)

Not too long ago but also long ago, I went to go see a live/play version of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

It's a play that has impacted more or less 90% of all queer and trans people I have ever known and, thus, also impacted me profoundly when I saw it for the first time ages ago.  During the more recent show, there was this queer boy sitting behind me and to my left.  We laughed and yelled and cheered for the exact same things while no one else did. (It was opening night.  There were a lot of funders of the theater there, season ticket holders and other people who just didn't get it.)

I recall after the show, going to share one of the songs with the person I had gone to the show with -  someone I had been dating, but was technically broken up with at the time.

Long story short:  She got mad and impatient and exploded. How she interacted with me that night after Hedwig made something shift for me.  It was something of the stark contrast in the meanness of her behavior with the incredible beauty of the story of that show.

What was I doing hanging out with someone who not only didn't get/have interest in the musical Hedwig and the genius of John Cameron Mitchell but, on top of and separate from that, was seemingly fine with speaking to the people she loves with such unkind words in such an explosive way?

It wasn't the first or second time it had happened. I was still getting to know her, but had seen her talk to people she loves in really cruel ways. Then she did it to me. It was why I had broken up with her. This was one of those attempts at friendship or a blurry date or, something that an aching heart tends to do. But that night things shifted for me.

After her outburst, she left in her car.  I sat in mine and listened to various versions of Wicked Little Town. Something had changed for me. It felt positive. Sad. Beautiful. Hard. Loving.  Much like the story I was listening to being sung, or the tale I had just seen on stage.

Love, no matter how it's struggling, would never be fine with those kinds of actions and words. I could love a person in their entirety, but I still - unapologetically and clearly- knew I deserved more than that.

Integrity matters in both words and actions.

['Cause love's such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of 
Caring about ourselves]

Needless to say: I made some decisions, set some boundaries, and that night of Hedwig would serve as the last time I would interact with her in person.

(pause)

The universe, in its strange and funny way, put me in a gloriously queer context about a week later.  Drag queens and community organizers and djs and dogs. A femmey butch queer man with so much knowledge and incredible taste in/about music and I began chatting. I liked what he had to say. I liked his attitude, his friendliness, his style and what he was involved with.  We kept chatting. Exchanged music recommendations. We kept chatting and chatting and...

He pushed up his sleeves.  I stared.  "I love your tattoo. From Hedwig, right?" (I already knew the answer).

He said yes, paused, and added, "You know, part of why I have this tattoo because it's a way to know pretty immediately if someone is awesome or not.  Awesome people recognize it and, as soon as they do, I already know that they are incredible people."

Word.

(pause)


There will always be something to be said about people who understand the pain, love, tenderness, beauty, loss, gain, terribleness, forgiveness, vulnerability and complexity of this moment:

(From the movie musical) : God, watch their eye contact and exchange


Here is to the necessary turning points and glory of musicals-as-church-yet-of-course-one-of-the-main-characters-last-names-is-Gnosis.


Keep loving out there- yourselves and others. Keep celebrating every piece of the complexity of your beauty - inside and out.


be well; be loved,

k.

P.S. Tonight RENT LIVE will be shown with Valentina as my favorite character !
P.S.S. A general reminder I received today: We need each other to heal. Bam

(image: one of nine zillion drawings related to The Origin of Love from Hedwig found on the internet.)
(italicized words: Lyrics from Under Pressure written by yet another beautiful gender maniac)

Perfect Pavement and Everything That Matters

This evening:

The perfect hooded-sweatshirt-and-a-jacket weather and sweet, sweet Sarah.  Philly librarian. I've known her since I was 19. I will never forget when I met her because we were in that punk house in Ohio. She had just gotten back into the country from Austria. I had heard about her forever from Mike and, there she was. Sitting in the kitchen on that shit-brown carpet of the stairs leading up to the bedrooms.  She was in a tank top, and the sun was catching her hair through the window.  I remember just staring at her like she was a ghost or, rather, an angel. If there was ever a moment I fell pretty instantly in obsession with someone, that was the moment. God, she feels so familiar every time we see each other. We have conversations that non-library people only sit through politely because they have no idea the depth of the obsession of language and words and information and the ability to locate information actually goes.

Being from the Midwest but living in Philly, she says shit and fuck every other word and says exactly what she means. My god it's so good to be around. So home. There was nothing better tonight than to see her and to wander through the downtown streets, together.


be well; be loved,

k.
(image: Valentin Fougeray via untrustme tumblr)

The Microscope Eyepiece I Slid Inside of You, or, Endulging Your Fetish of Exactness

I.

The other night evoked a conversation about the writing of Javier Marías. I will say that I absolutely respect and love his disregard for the unsaid rules of appropriate length of sentences and appropriate length of paragraphs.  I love the fact that a sentence can go on for half a page and that a paragraph can take up the majority of two pages.

I'm not going to pull a phrase succinct in its gorgeousness from one of his books. Rather, I will just pull a fragment of a fragment of one of his enjoyably drawn out ponderings and place it here:

But all this is pure conjecture and hypothesis, yet there are times when the lives of others, of another (the configuration of a life, its continuation, not a few mere steps), do depend on our decisions and vacillations, on our cowardice or daring, on our words and on our hands... 
                               
                                          -- from A Heart So White

(pause)

Everything feels so strangely alive. The people in my life, the conversations that have been happening, the connections that are coming out of thin air to lead me around the next corner and into the intriguing tunnel of stones and flickering lights.

I'm enjoying all that is unfolding.

There are points that I ponder the last year and all of its lessons. They all feel so good, so clear and so building.  Pieces of gold I take with me.  Not to barter with, but rather, to use to reflect the lights around me, to remind myself, and to share people who may need it more than I do. It's never a matter of depletion: Such giving has a way of offering unseen gifts, tenfold.

II.

There was such a cute, lovable child standing there.

Chubby face, chubby legs, blond hair and that expression that says "What planet have been I brought to this time?"

Such strange cards we are all dealt.

Help each other out in ways that matter
and let some of that tenderness extend
to your own heart
too



                                        


be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Marlon Teixeira via orphius tumblr)

What We Do About When We Do About Love

I. Saturday

I love the conversations that we have about art, language, the world, trauma and learning, literature and our relationships to ourselves, the people in our lives and the world. The conversations ignite me. They stay with me for months if not years afterward. I love getting to know more layers of the people I love. We slipped into an indoor soccer venue at night to watch strangers play and/or poke and prod lost balls out of the netting by the ceiling. Fluorescent lights hitting the ultra green field turf: It served as such a sweet and fitting backdrop to our conversations of balance and connection.

II. Sunday [Unfolding on the evening of the moon named for the season in which wolves mate. We are lone, but we also travel in packs]

One of the most incredible feelings in the world is being with someone who has loved and supported you in more ways you can imagine for a very long time.  There is a different feeling when someone kisses you or holds your hand who is a person who  has inspired you, treated you with thoughtful respect, made you laugh, made you dinner, and has supported you both in what you are aiming for and in what makes you feel safe. Respectful words, respectful actions and the simple truth of looking out for you.

When that same person buries their head in your neck, runs their fingers across your palm, slides their hand on your leg, places their mouth on the corner of yours - it changes you. Each and every time that it happens. It instills a self-love to leave situations that don't include the foundations of these things described, here. (It also allows for some of the most vulnerable and incredible sex, ever. It is within this trust, this love, this knowing that we can drown in the most beautiful of ways.)

I feel thankful of this, tonight.

It is something of reverence.



III.  Monday

Redaction in its sanitization sense (as distinguished from its other editing sense) is the blacking out or deletion of text in a document, or the result of such an effort. It is intended to allow the selective disclosure of information in a document while keeping other parts of the document secret.

I could live on the past 72 hours for a lifetime

and

on a cellular and blueprint level

I fully intend to.




be well; be loved

k.

(title: a play on Raymond Carver's book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. A book that, once I read it, was entirely underwhelmed by and, to this day, feel is overrated. Dig your hands into the soil, my love. This love is not one of observation and reporting; it is one of engagement with our minds, hearts and passions fully in tact.)

(image Une Semaine de Bonté (A Week of Kindness), 1933, Max Ernst via secretcinema1 tumblr)

The Beauty Beyond What You Know: A Story in Three and a Half Parts

Recently and inadvertently, I identified a gesture that makes me feel so loved. It's not the gesture, itself.  I would have never recognized it as something that made me feel loved except that it is something that almost all of the people in my life I feel incredibly loved by have in common. And so, in almost a reverse engineered manner: I feel loved when people do or say this because almost all of the people who have made me feel so, incredibly loved have this tendency:

When parting ways at night, they ask me to tell them when I get home.

(pause)

I.

Let me tell you about joy.

To do so, I will have to tell you about a person I have loved for many years. Someone I have been friends with, dated, been friends with again and who I negotiated away a wedding plan with at some point in there.

I love who he is. I love our connection and our absurd and constant hilarity, yet our seriousness when it matters.  I love the attention we pay to each other.  The details we retain of each other's histories, families, dates, irrational phobias, guilty pleasures and dreams.

We share the same love of scents. Each time we meet up we wear something complex because we know the other person will push their nose up to that curve behind the other's ear, and inquire; then discuss. (Who knew Viktor & Rolf released a second version of Spicebomb? Now I know. My God, now I know.)

I love, simply but fully, how much we enjoy each other. Make fun of each other. Know each other. How we don't even have to discuss the fact that, yes, there will be at least two kinds of hot sauce on the popcorn (each kind on a separate side of the bowl) while we watch some movie or idiotic television show at his house, talking a quarter of the time, all while under either a blanket or his elegant and beautiful dog that is almost bigger than I am.

II.

For the first part of the night we sat at a bar and, as is the annoying obligatory presence, some random white guy interrupted our conversation with the same tired ass line of "I'm sorry to interrupt you" (they never are) followed by some pseudo-intellectual crap of how they were trying to identify the exact accent of Spanish we were using (the punchline is that these dudes almost never know more than even three words of the language) which they then use as a launchpad to talk about their travels to Spanish-speaking countries. Like who gives a fuck, Chad?

In these situations, there is always a balance to feel out and to act upon: I name/jab at the interruption in order to check the person and situation for what it is (some weird, racist, colonizer attempt at monopolizing strangers' time to play out their Christopher Columbus and/or "adventurer" fantasies). At the same time, there's this fucked line of things.

Typically, being a woman-read person, if I'm a dick to a guy and am with another guy, the guy I'm a dick to doesn't go after me: He goes after the guy I am with. It's a bizarre function of sexism. It gets tricky. I have to know that the level of aggression I spit towards some idiot may end up making the person I am with a target in a way they hadn't bargained for. When the asshole is a white dude and the guy I'm with is a man of color who has English as a second language, the balance becomes even tighter/more important. This balance is something that I think about so much. So much of maintaining it has to do with the endless variables in endless situations that no one asked for.

III.

Let me tell you about joy.

When we left the bar and went to his house to continue hanging out, I had this moment of experiencing just the pure joy of us both laughing while he was asking and I was trying to explain the concept of "teenage angst". (Ask yourself: How would you explain this concept to someone? I can almost guarantee you that you will end up laughing while doing some kind of impersonation of the concept.) The conversations he and I have about language are different from any others I have. He used to work as a language assistant years ago. He and I are both so serious when it comes to understanding meaning and nuance, but also laugh like hell knowing that we will never fully understand each other's language. I love these conversations. I love things like him laughing at me when I forget the word for "comb" and, instead, use some janky circumlocution that involves the phrase "the plastic thing you organize your hair with".

(pause)

It got late. He welcomed me to stay. I knew I had to go home.

Before I left, he pulled out a worn leather bag from his closet.  It was a medical bag of sorts from WWII that he had gotten in Poland. I know that you love tijeras, Tía*- and he opened the bag that had about fifteen pairs of antique looking scissors- I love them, too. I picked up a few different pairs. My eyes widened. Each were both delicate and heavy all at once. When I picked up a particular pair, my pulse quickened. Admittedly, I don't think they even constitute being scissors- they are more of a surgical tool that look like scissors. They gave such a satisfying and heavy snap when you closed them. I thanked him, and slipped them in my bag.

He walked me outside.

We hugged.

I started making my way down the steps to my car.



Text me when you get home, Tía.







be well; be loved,


k.
(*= He calls me "Tía" because he's making fun of the accent and slang I have from some of my friends and teachers who are from Spain. He's always trying to scrub me of that slang and accent and, as part of it, he calls me Tía and, because of my ever-bratty-sister composure, I call him Tío in return. He hates it.)
(image: Javier Torok via untrustyou tumblr)

The Gentleness of a Knife: Necessary Diva Edition

I.

The room I am in smells like campfire and I absolutely love it. The flannel sheets and layers-of-clouds blankets I am smuggled away in just makes it even better.

II.

My first memory of the importance of femmes-supporting-femmes was back in the midwest. I was hanging out with my friend Zakiyyah, a femme presenting person, at a restaurant. A woman in a beautiful dress and heels walked by us and into the bathroom. Later, as Zakiyyah and I sat there talking, the same woman walked by leaving the bathroom. All of a sudden- mid conversation- Z got up and ran after her.  I turned around to see what was happening. As I did, I saw that the woman had a trail of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of her shoe. Z ran up behind her, stepped on the toilet paper (causing it to detach from the woman's shoe), pick it up and throw it out.  All without the woman even knowing.

I'm not sure I will every be able to articulate how beautiful, strong, and tender this moment was. There was something about this femme running after another femme to do this. To assist another femme in her gender presentation. To assist in her looking and/or feeling flawless in a world that does nothing but point out one's flaws.

III.

There has been a friendship I have been cultivating for years (roughly around 8? 9?) with friend of mine that has meant a lot to me.  I mention it because, a year and some ago, I made a conscious choice to ask her to be involved in something I was scared to ask her to be involved in. Not scared as in "I'm going to die" but just scared as in "I might be rejected".  But, at the time, I knew that it would be such an important form of support for something I was going through at the time. I also knew that it could be a dive so that she and I could get closer.  I had been friends with her for so long but we always seemed hesitant to take the next step so to speak and become close friends in the way that involved things that felt like heavily weighted risks of trust.

Anyway, I asked her and she showed up- 150%.

Since then, we've continued getting closer. She actually reminds me, in a lot of ways, of J in the way that she is a tough ass femme. It's familiar to me. This quality of being seemingly entirely  unflappable on all levels.  "Femme armor" I have read it described as.  I can't think of a more apt description of way femmes hold themselves to all of the fucking bullshit that is thrown at them on an actual daily basis.

I'm thinking about her tonight because we had quite a beautiful interaction both this weekend and today.  I had sent her a copy of that essay on femmes and suicide that I mentioned a few days ago after her and I had this whole conversation about a very common bullshit narrative that femmes tend to have to deal with. When I sent it to her, I wrote to her about what her friendship has meant and why. Today I received a message from her talking about an aspect of her life that she had struggled with that me and another femme have acted as role models of sorts for. I read it and started tearing up. I was completely floored.

Femme-read people have so much weight, expectation, violence and blame put on them. Tonight I'm just feeling very proud of and grateful for all of the femme-read people who have been in and/or are in my life. There is a particular type of connection in how we are able see each other.  There is a power in how we show up for each other when it matters most. And somewhere in the midst of this connection and this power, a pact is woven. Something less of "friends" and more of "coven".

Thank you for the things you have taught me.  Thank you for the risks you have taken.  Thank you for holding me stronger and in a more tailored way than anyone can when I dive or simply when I take a fall. And, most importantly, thank you for letting me hold you when you need it - and even when you don't.




Be well; be loved,

k.

(title: You know who. via yvonneconstance tumblr)

We Are All Boundaried as Fuck, or, Try Not to Hurt Yourself

What I love about my friends is that they are a unified front.

If someone fucks with or mistreats one of us, there are no weak links.

You should know that by now.

The parts where she's saying Don't Hurt Yourself and a few other lyrics on a loop and piped into every building you set foot in as a reminder for you to find your way:

It is no longer in the direction of any of us.


be well, be loved,

k.
(image: Dusan Reljin | Anais Pouliot)

The Purple of Royalty, or, Tradition and Sabotage

I just finished seeing the 2018 Alexander McQueen documentary. Each night was sold out when it opened, here.

Jesus fucking christ.

McQueen is someone I have painted before. He is someone who has inspired me in his strength of personality and pure obsessive, emotive creativity. His flamboyance. Parts of his vision.  Even the ones seemed more controversial. (I have to admit that I didn't agree with the critics about his Highlander Rape show.  I thought it was fucking bomb and that all of the women looked like bad asses that have just walked through nails and fire.)

I had no idea that one of his plans was to kill himself on stage at what he had decided would be his last show. I only knew that when he did kill himself, it was at home on the eve of his mother's funeral.

The shows, in particular, that struck me - and that there's way more footage of in the film- was the Spring/Summer 2001 show, Voss, (the one rooted in a concept of an asylum, but also involving a recreation of one of Joel Peter Witkins' photographs at the end).  Although this show is online, I would watch the footage in the film first because of sound. The ones online either have no sound, or have just music.  In the film, not only do you get more of an idea of the experience of the audience (via the two way mirrors), but the sound of one particular dress - which has weighted, almost flattened test-tube like plates on it- is incredible.  The model runs her hands up the dress and destroys some of them and the sound is just fucking amazing.


There's more to say to this. About him, his work, his death, his life.  But, for now, I want to sit with this film a bit. Let it digest and unfurl.


Be well; be loved,

k.



(image: from a collection of McQueen's. They represent gazelle horns. He had likened himself to the gazelle, but the aspect of which I'll leave to you to learn about in the documentary if you watch it.)
(title: (the second part) A person in the film briefly described the allure of the mixing of tradition and sabotage, and I was immediately enamored with the pairing/phrasing.)

Witchcraft and Hanging Out on Porches

Life gets weirder and weirder, yet better and better.

Is it strange to have had so many odd (and arguably terrible) things happen at once and walk out with the same glow that is, well, growing?

The excitement of anticipation and knowing is in the air and in my body and it feels incredible.

It's day 227 (shout out to anyone who ever knew, watched and loved that show. I remember once talking to Jodi because I was confused as to why no one who was roughly our peer in age seemed to know it and then she reminded me that we grew up in an area where there was actually black representation on television in both programming and newscasters- unlike the majority of the country. What up Doris Biscoe!) of meditation and next level weird ass mental wizardry.

To the people in my life who I find endlessly lovable:

Be good to yourself, be good to your body, be good to your brain, be good to your heart, be good to your feelings.

IT PAYS OFF.

In every imaginable way, and in a thousand even beyond that.

(Also, be good to your pets.)

[Side note: If you have a cat and it irrationally loves me let me just be honest in saying that your cat is, more than likely, my familiar. People tend to think that shit was left back in Midieval and Early Modern times, but bitch let me be real: It's 2019 and whether I love your cat or if I don't like your cat at all and it stares at me/follows me around like Jodi Foster's stalker, it's because it's helping me out with some bad ass magic. Make no mistake.]

I'm going to leave you with the song that gets stuck in my head if I ever hear it. (I also think it's fucking hilarious to see Bill Bonds' random ass in a boxing gym in the second one.)

I always remember the look on this woman's face haha

Here it is

You gotta love it.  It also subconsciously probably explains why, in my last entry, I just keep talking about standing up for people. Stand up and tell em you're from... bam!

Be well, be loved,


k.

(image: via boxfullofletters tumbler)

The Angel Protecting Your Future, or, For the Love of Lucas

I.

The issue with magic and the existence of angels is that if one does not believe in either or both, they will miss it and/or run it over with their car.

II.

It has been quite a (long) six days.

Friday afternoon I received an envelope mailed to my house by a former date of mine from a while back that included a beautiful letter of thank you and a handmade gift.

I will use this as my beginning simply because it was a notable moment of warmth before events, unrelated, fell directly into the toilet.

The next few days would go on to involve incidents I had to stop counting, multiple police departments, multiple nights, security footage, forced entry, and ending with the last 24 hours that involved a group of three men at night, me and a wooden baseball bat.

My head hurts.

I feel so grateful for the people who surround me.

These statements are true in equal amounts.

Here is to the beautiful balance of standing up for yourself, letting those that love you stand up for you, standing up for other people and standing up for the people that you love.


III.

(related to II. and a reoccurring theme both as of late and forever)

What you do, individually, matters.

Don't let people fuck with you about this and don't let people shit talk who don't have their sleeves rolled up and hearts exposed in what matters. If they don't, they really aren't much more than those asshole old white dudes who sat in the balcony during The Muppet Show and talked shit about everything. (Admittedly funny as fuck at times, but, what were they actually doing with their lives other than sitting on a couch and watching/judging people actually doing shit?)

On levels political and personal, I want to applaud and encourage folks who are engaging. Who aren't sure what to say or do, but say or do something that matters anyway. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be.

Thank you to those who are engaging in ways that feel scary or uncertain. It's important that this is happening on all levels. It's incredible how much matter can come out of one person's willingness to be a brave, bad-ass, imperfect motherfucker and address the things that need to be addressed in the world or in their lives all while being kind. (Being kind is what moves things forward in the world. That balance of bold truth and kindness.)

Those who stay on their couches in their balconies can have their husks
their scraps
their private frowns.

Perhaps one day they'll join us.

(pause)

I'm going to leave you with this quote. The ideas within the words have been sticking with me in past few weeks in ways that matter:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again...who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly."

Here's to those who have gotten off their couches and stepped out of their balconies to engage in love and in what matters.



Be well; be loved,

k.


(title: 2nd half: Most of my life I have over related to Corey Haim's character in the movie Lucas. )
(Image: Chris Friel, 8:28 week 3 #6)
(quote from T. Roosevelt)

Learn Your Musicals, Faggot

My current mood is, somehow, both Sandy's pants and general message (emphasis on 1:15-1:19 delivery of statement) while simultaneously Danny's eyeliner and glorious topping-from-the-bottom in this iconic number. 

(Special shout out to heels-while-on-the-Shake-Shack and how they go down the stairs around 3:20.)

I can dance both parts. Practice, because an entire reenactment of this scene will need to ensue. 

be well; be loved,

k.

P.S. Grateful and loving how much dancing has been going on as of late. Here's to the reminder of how fabulous it is to dance with people who actually know how to dance. Also, lesson learned: I will keep a dance playlist with me at all times. Sorry, folks. I love a good Madonna song just like the nice guy, but it isn't a stand in for a seamless thread of fucking incredible dance songs.

P.S.S. Whole hearted shout out to the twins who taught me everything I know about this musical over and over again in their living room when I was a kid.

(image: Sara Imloul, Le Cirque noir, Sans titre #7, 2010 via yvonneconstance tumblr)

 .

You are Not Fit to be a King, or, It Was My Duty to Fight for What I Love

First of all, let's just be reminded that, generally speaking, I love Common's take(s) on love and on organizing. In addition, he remains to be the owner of one of the sexiest voices I've ever heard in my fucking life. I'm thinking about him and love because he posted this New Year's Day video on Instagram that was great. Mostly a push that everything will prosper if you "let love lead' and if you "let love have the last word".

Indeed.

Let love have the last word.

Sometimes people's families and lives break their hearts so deeply that their hearts fill with some kind of weird venom. At the bottom of it, the real deep down story, is that they're afraid they won't be loved. That somewhere, deep down and hidden even to themselves sometimes, they don't believe they are worthy of love. I'm both proud and in awe of the people in my life who have managed - who knows how- to grow open beyond what they experienced growing up. But I also have so much painful compassion for those in the world who haven't or weren't able to.

[If you need to, go and watch Black Panther again because I'm about to make an analogy. That film is about love on so many fucking vital levels.]

It's the difference between T'Challa and Erik Killmonger.  Goddamn did I cry at that last scene with Erik.  We all should have, or wanted to. Like *fuck*, Killmonger, I have seen so many people like you in life and it's so complicated. There are all of the reasons you would/could lack the love/generosity of love, but it's so goddamn hard to see the hate you bring and, ultimately, the sadness you bring into your own life.

(pause)

I'm thinking about love, community, inspiration, connection... all of it, and all of this, a lot.

We all grow.

It's a hopeful and beautiful feeling.

(pause)

I've also been thinking about the love I learned from a friend who passed many years ago.  Recently, I posted a miniature painting I did with an accompanying story that told one, particular and unforgettable story of this love. I was really surprised by overwhelming responses to it. I'm not sure why. Love breeds love, I guess/know. It still felt really good. An unforeseen piece to doing this is that I may have some pieces along with some stories up in an art show (like, in an actual art space that is part of art walks!? The thought of it kind of blows my mind.) That would/will be pretty amazing. More than I can really articulate right here and now.

Anyway.

I'll put a 2016 interview with Common here that was from The Breakfast Club. One, because it has both him and Charlamange Tha God in the same interview and thus is immediately more fabulous, but two because you can hear his voice when he is talking about the kind of energy he wants to be around and says "...man, this is my life.  I want to spend my life with people that I feel are at least going to do their best to bring their best energy." You can hear it in this tiny snippet at 6:53 of this interview. (He later talks about how there is love between him and the majority of his exes. Because of course there is. Exes as continued love as fam for the win.)

And...since I'm on my little Common trip, I'll also leave this song that was the first song that really turned me onto him (thank you, Matthew) so many moons ago. It's a song I think of a lot. Mostly because of the imagery of being able to recognize light in people. All of us have it. It tends to shine brighter for us with the people we love, but all of us have it. "It don't take a whole day to recognize sunshine".  So true in all of its meanings. Here it is:  The Light

That's all for tonight.

Love, love, love and 2019.

Let love lead and do your best to bring your best energy, indeed.


k.
(title: The first part is a part of a line said to Erik Killlmonger in Black Panther. The full line is "Your heart is so full of hatred. You are not fit to be a king."  The second part of the title is said by Nakia. So fucking good. The end.)
(image: from billykidd via le-nuage-sauvage tumblr)