Notice: not only do your friends actually like you, they secretly like you twice as much as they let on
An experience that made me feel much more assured in my friendships was at college, a friend and myself were talking about a third friend of ours and how cool and knowledgeable and smart she is and how we feel like we could never be that cool. The next day I was working with a professor on some paper presentations we were about to have and when I came out of the staff room I was informed that these two aforementioned friends were having the same discussion about me. And it turns out we spent a lot of time thinking about our friends who aren’t currently in the room and gushing over how cool and smart and talented they are without being able to say all of it to their face.
Your friends secretly love you a lot more than they already express, just like you love them so intensely that saying it all to their faces would sound clumsy to your own ears. It’s true though
im dying over this thread of algorithmically-generated/otherwise low-effort Kindle covers
don’t forget
grossly inappropriate copy of animal farm that is on my nightstand at this very moment
…When you’re getting ready to design a book cover and you’re not sure what you do is going to be good enough.. it’s always reassuring to see something like [all of the above].
when two musicians sing into the same microphone and lean in very close to each other… like omg are you guys gonna kiss now to relieve the homoerotic tension?😳
THIS IS NOT ABOUT ONE DIRECTION I DON’T KNOW WHO THIS “HARRY” PERSON IS GO WATCH BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND CLARENCE CLEMONS KISS ON STAGE RIGHT NOW
op is the only valid person i’ve ever met. everyone else needs to come to the light
Okay, but this is really important: Bruce Springsteen occupied this really weird place in music history. His songs were all from this pessimistic, nihilistic view of an America that had let him down:
Just like the anti-Vietnam War protest songs that we associate with the 1960s, or the early nihilism that spawned punk music in the 1970s. But he didn’t *sound* like a punk anarchist; he sounded like a country rock singer. When he released Born in the U.S.A. people completely misinterpreted (or possibly ignored) the lyrics in favor of the tone of the music.
Politicians used his music to promote their ‘Murica Yes! brand, and he had to literally explain that that was not what he was about. He’s over here asking when we’re going to have jobs and heathcare, not stanning the politicians who weren’t helping the people.
It was also kind of a big deal that he had an integrated band, because even as late as the 1980s music was still kind of segregated and MTV was straight up racist. They refused to play and promote black artists and then claimed that were no black artists in the first place. Michael Jackson’s record company had to threaten a boycott of their white artists to get MTV to play his Thriller video.
Plus, the first black/white interracial kiss on TV was in 1968 (OG Star Trek). Also it took us until the 70s to get sympathetic gay characters on screen, and the 90s to get gay characters to kiss onscreen. And all of those firsts were met with outrage.
So keep that in mind when you see Bruce Springsteen not just playing with an interracial band, but engaging in an interracial, gay kiss on stage repeatedly.
Passages from American Popular Music by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman
I used to think that Bruce and Clarence kissing onstage was exuberance, showmanship, and telling racist homophobes to fuck off. Like, they picked up a certain kind of audience and went “Racist homophobes? Not in our house!” And started the kissing then but then I actually looked it up and
It was a story where… we remade the city. We remade the city, shaping it into the kind of place where our friendship and our love for one another wouldn’t have been such an exceptional thing. - Bruce Springsteen
It wasn’t about showmanship or rejecting bigots or anything it was just. Damn right that was one of the loves of his life and damn right he was going to kiss him onstage
It gets me a little that Bruce has had a divorce, that he’s been married twice, but he loved Clarence for the rest of Clarence’s life and will presumably love him the rest of his own
Clemons said in one interview. “Bruce and I looked at each other and didn’t say anything, we just knew. We knew we were the missing links in each other’s lives. He was what I’d been searching for.” In another version of the story, Clemons says “He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we fell in love.”
I’m having some emotions about it!
“He was elemental in my life,“ Springsteen adds, “and losing him was like losing the rain.”
Not just! I love you pure and deep and true but! I am going to love you like that in front of the whole damn world!
We have fewer narratives about taking risks and making statements for platonic love rather than romantic and supposedly it would be easier to downplay this onstage than romance and! They refused! They fucking refused! In front of hundreds of thousands of people, over the course of years! In the spotlight, in word and deed, I love you!
God I’m not okay about it
Now I’m mad that this is not among any of the things I was ever told about this artist.
I knew about this in general (& via all those fabulous photos), but this just adds even more beautiful context <3
Just to add to the pile: this was the cover of Springsteen’s break-through album Born to Run, in 1975:
I mean, will you LOOK at this:
This was the pic chosen for the album cover from an extensive photoshoot, too. A few others:
There’s a lot more online if you search. They’re all pretty amazing. But the photographer is right, the one chosen for the album cover just pops.
i am totally going to come across as a boomer in this post but as an engineer it’s common sense to not build systems with a single point of failure. and i’m starting to realize that our usage of the smart phone is exactly that. a single point of failure. the calling/texting is the implied function of the smartphone, which is fine. that’s what it’s built for. but nowadays we don’t think to keep a physical map or atlas or gps unit in our car because our phone has google maps. we don’t keep address books anymore because it’s all stored in our contacts. i serve customers who no longer carry a wallet/physical card because it’s all on their phone. this is literally a single point of failure. if you lose or break your phone when you are in a foreign place you are fucking screwed. maybe you’re still screwed even in your home town because so many people have become accustomed to using a smart phone to take them anywhere.
cat planning on stealing cheese of your plate: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair. Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away
mad scientist planning to rewrite the fabric of reality: feeling a bit silly today :3
machines and robots should be allowed to be depicted as feral. like we need more robot dogs just absolutely foaming at the mouth ready to murder you. too much media portrays machines as cold, logical beings and while that’s still cool we need more absolute beasts
C/Kiwi, 29/F/Moon: Human-passing shapeshifter and wannabe super villain. Socially Anxious! Do Not Pet! This is a personal screaming blog mostly; I'm just here to have fun. I don't tag much, or well tbh, but if you need something tagged send me a dm!
