AN IMAGINARY RELATIONSHIP TO A REAL SITUATION

accumulated noise/TIRESIAS SPEAKS

[nobrashfestivity]

Joseph Cornell Blue Soap Bubble 1949 - 1950 Construction. 24.5 x 30.5 x 9.6 cm Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

[redlipstickresurrected]

Susa Monteiro aka Susana Philipp Baiôa Monteiro (Portuguese, b. 1979, Beja, Portugal) - Untitled #2020, Risograph Print on Arcoprint Milk

[thememedaddy]

[ellewantsrevenge]

poverty is a form of torture utilized by the government to bring about a conditioned response

that conditioned response is considered a form of learned helplessness wherein the victim stops fighting back against what it believe to be the inevitable

but not everyone breaks under torture

[nickyandmikey]

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?😳

[nickyandmikey]

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

[irrelevantlyvalid]

op is the only valid person i’ve ever met. everyone else needs to come to the light

[chokolattejedi]

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

[executeness]

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

https://www.gq.com/story/this-fucked-me-up-bruce-springsteen-singing-about-clarence-clemons

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

[ramshacklefey]

Now I’m mad that this is not among any of the things I was ever told about this artist.

[jbbartram-illu]

I knew about this in general (& via all those fabulous photos), but this just adds even more beautiful context <3

[eregyrn-falls]

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.

[garadinervi]

Rewriting the World: Isidore Isou and the Lettrist Book, Center for Book Arts, New York, NY, January 21 – May 2, 2026 [Art: © Isidore Isou, Spread from 'Les Journaux des dieux' (1950)]

[arahir]

i have this painting i got at a yard sale for free (if i took a broken dresser with it, which i did) and i have been obsessed with it:

so today i was trying to figure out where it was from and the more i searched the weirder it got because near as i can tell it's from the fex valley in the swiss alps which is cool but what kinda chokehold did this specific bridge/cabin have on people

these are two different paintings... and then i found this postcard on ebay

all these ppl painting the same exact image from the exact same random postcard... anyway if anyone knows this spot i would be fascinated to know more but i will live in mystery and if you're wondering "did you buy the postcard" yeah of course i bought the postcard

[worrynoodle]

I found it if you were still wondering

Val Fex is a southern side valley from the Upper Engadine in Switzerland

[arahir]

i know it's in val fex, but where is that exact picture from? that's what i'm trying to figure out... the hunt continues (when i get back from a walk)

[arahir]

however i still know nothing about this little barn... i will live and love in mystery

[arahir]

okay thank you @thepinkpeg who did find this and it turns out it's actually a 17th century cabin now converted into an art exhibit accessed only by foot (or horse). from the outside on the hill above it looks like this:

and inside it contains this:

thank you all so much. i have my answer and it is more fascinating than i could have thought.

[i-know-what-you-diddly-iddly-did]

miles davis by annie leibovitz, 1989

[entomologize]

Ceramic beetles by Ross DeWayne Campbell

[weepingwidar]

Stephen Hannock (American, 1951) - Incendiary Nocturne with Stormy Sea (2016)

[taishou-kun]

Kimono-hime / kimono姫 1 - Shodensha Mook 祥伝社ムック - April 2003

[thoodleoo]

EVERYBODY GIVE IT UP FOR 3RD CENTURY ROMAN THREESOME RING!!

[adz]

does anyone have the screenshot of the comment on the youtube video of molten iron slag being poured where it's a guy describing his experience witnessing the same thing written in the most beautiful prose imaginable

[adz]

@f2tal @barabones with your key addition of 'seagulls,' i was able to find it!

[internet-sentences]

[leolaroot]

angels forget what size things are they can really lose perspective sometimes. hmmmm is that a basketball I see or is it an electron or is it a planet. hard to keep track due to the godly power surging constantly through me. doesn't help that they can be whatever scale they want sometimes they are slipping between molecules other times they grow until the infinity of space feels claustrophobic

[dontlickdatoad]

I whisper my wants into the flame and watch the world catch fire

[thunderstruck9]

Ceri Richards (British, 1903-1971), La Cathédrale engloutie [The Sunken Cathedral], 1962. Oil, sand and collage on canvas, 30 ¼ x 20 ¼ in.

[deactivating-s00n-deactivated20]

tumblr users’ obsession with self-reporting (especially as a weird form of penance) needs to be studied

[deactivating-s00n-deactivated20]

you don’t need to tell the world you still like Harry Potter because it’s your comfort movie or because your dad read it to you when you were little or something like that in response to a post about the harm continued monetary support of Harry Potter causes. you don’t need to tell tumblr all the myriad of reasons you don’t like rap under a post about how rap is often misrepresented as ultra-violent or overtly sexual and misogynistic because of racism. No one on tumblr has to know anything about you. no one has to know you still read your old Harry Potter books or that the only rap artist you like is Eminem. No one is going to say “oh of course you’re the One True Good Person with a Good Reason!” when you say that rap is difficult to listen to because of your auditory processing disorder or you’re only a part of the Marauders fandom. Just keep your shit to yourself and don’t embarrass yourself under other peoples’ posts.

[lebada]

funniest possible reply and its not even on purpose

[crimeronan]

-charlotte zhang art installation at the alice gallery