everything i stand for

Self explanatory: I yap. Mostly to myself. My first blog, so we'll see where this goes. I'm also not reblogging anything unless I've got a rant prepared.

[everythingistandfor]

A hasty intro

Y'know it's been a while since I set this blog up. Probably a couple of months since I did all that acquainting-myself-with-a-new-platform shit. But I didn't post anything for about 3 months. I think I was scared to start this off all wrong... "Like it matters." I can hear myself say, "Like these posts will get read by anyone but my best friend." I think I've fucked it up in about a hundred different ways already, and then I remember I actually don't have a metric for this. Nothing to compare it to. Nothing to point at and say "my shit ain't like that; I must be shit too".

No one ever has written what I'm trying to write, specifically because no one like me has existed or will ever exist. Because this is true for every person who has ever been, is and will be. This is true for all art – which is to say all things done with love – which is to say all things done by people with a home to get back to (metaphorical or otherwise).

My motivations are fairly simple: I just want to talk. Get some words down and hope it resonates with at least one (1) person.

And if not? My personal property gets legally released from my possession and I lose a part of who I am for a fraction of a moment (before I regain it: because I am ever-changing and my past self does not exist... But that's a topic for another post.) and then we all move on like almost nothing ever happened. And I keep writing. Because I do this for me (... mostly. See paragraph before this one – I do have some hope, ya know).

I yap because I think it's worth saying something out loud if you believe it. Because shouting it aloud in an empty room and not saying it at all produces the same result for everyone but me: For them, it feels like silence. But for me? There's a difference. So I shout aloud and am optimistic enough to offer a place for someone in the next room to talk a while. I'm human enough to hope for a response, but I'm certainly not expectant.

I know what this is for. I know why I'm doing this. I don't really need you to know, but if you're staying, ya might as well know what you're getting into. Just pay attention, and you'll pick it up in no time.

This – to me, at least – is considered a hasty intro (despite it genuinely having taken at least an hour to fuss over) because I know that overthinking it any longer would just delay what I want to do which 1. I know I should just do and 2. I have always been ready for. "It's not rocket science," I reason. "it's just something important to you, which you will certainly get wrong no matter what you do and may regret for a long time - the internet is forever, you know" I add.

But then, in my infinite poetic wisdom, I answer: "You need to chillax dude"

Honestly that worked pretty damn well.

[everythingistandfor]

it's so funny posting anything even vaguely personal here: it's like remember: this stays between me and you, ok buddy? you listening, The Internet? my dear close friend? this is our secret, ok? my mum cannot know i know the word 'fuck'

[everythingistandfor]

mitski my beloved

A little desperately in love with Mitski's Washing Machine Heart

like WHAT???

the beat, the way it feels desperately nostalgic. but not a memory i recognize. like it's someone else's memory i'm getting a glimpse into.

she did it right.

the sound of it kind of reminds me of the start of Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

[antlered-vixen]

I am so tired of short-attention-span, trim-the-fat culture. All writing advice these days is for how to write like Chuck Palahniuk. "Cut 'think', cut 'feel', cut 'wonder' - only action, only pushing forward, show and move and move and move." What if I could emulate this style, and still don't want to? What if I want to write like Henry James, with three paragraphs of introspective musings between each dialogue line? The music advice is, "make it shortform, make it Tik-Tok compatible, make it punchy, hit the refrain as soon as possible." What if I want that 10-minute prog rock piece? What if I want that symphony? What if I want it slow and luxurious and lazy? Movies. Series. Poetry. Bodies. Everything is "trimmed trimmed trimmed trimmed, stripped bare, you have three seconds to win me over, make it airport chic." I don't want to win you over, then, I guess. I want the fat left it. I want the pleasure and the indolence and the indulgence. Fuck this art-advice that's always "your art needs Ozempic."

[everythingistandfor]

i fell in love a little, reading this

no notes

[corpseprize]

the reality of being a writer

heres how to fix it

[everythingistandfor]

what if i don't want to fix it

what if the process is the point and the struggle while writing is an allegory for living and finishing it would be like -- oh well i mustn't say

like yes the relief and satisfaction of finishing the story is what seems to be the reward but what kind of a artist would i be if i wrote only to publish and not to simply write?

i'm getting far too much into this – apologies if i'm ruining the delivery of a post with a much lighter intended tone – but i gotta say this:

we don't write our stuff just to say we have written it, we write because it feels good to (or at the very least, it feels less good not to)

it feels good to have someone read your word and go 'yeah good shit' but also, admit it, it secretly felt a little satisfying writing it at 3 AM, too

[everythingistandfor]

easter eggs are love letters

i want to tell you a story:

i exchange letters with a close friend of mine. i recently sent a couple lines of a personally-made simple code, just for fun.

i've always been a fan of encrypted messages & simple alphabet-based codes; there's something very intimate about having a language which only a few people in the world know.

it's the same reason I love having inside jokes with family and why so many people love it when their favorite fandoms add easter eggs or continuity references:

we love it when we feel special

i'm sure i'm not alone in admitting this: it feels fantastic when there's something we picked up on that someone else – someone perhaps less tuned in – wouldn't notice.

like yeah, no shit, of course.

but i think there's a special kind of love in that kind of communication, too. i imagine a writer sitting down and typing out the next episode of a beloved show, and adding particular little details because those matter to the fans

because they are – at least a little – aware of the influence that their work has on their audience.

also, i can't imagine they're all as vain as me about how many people really enjoy their work, so i believe there's a bit of self-satisfaction in there as well.

it's my belief that people who create, do so – at the very least, a little, if not entirely – for their own sake. i know many people who can't seem to stop themselves from making; from tearing matter from their world like shiny magazine paper and pasting pieces together, satisfied to leave papercuts and glue residue on their hands as signs: signs that something had been formed from their own personal vessel of electricity and flesh.

i can imagine easily that my favorite writers leave notes in the margins of their works yet to be published – like the way cheap glue sticks leave that matte and craggy finish on your palms and on the thin, shiny paper – proud and insistent and messy and a little illegible for anyone but the people who get it.

so i leave a little encrypted code here and there in my letters, and i reveal the decryption bit by bit (because i'm a diva and i can), and i spell it out in a thousand different ways to a dozen different people: i care, i care, i care

and yeah, oftentimes the larger the project, the larger the struggle: the harder it is to piece together something coherent and right, but when you get it right, you get it fucking right. and what felt like hell seems to kind of dim a little when you're finished with it.

it's like handwriting a letter, or wiping down the kitchen counter, or brushing through my hair: i'm performing my own little ritual of care. i'm going through the motions, knowing full well: that it's work with love behind it, that feels so fucking worth the hell.

the rhyming just sort of happened, i couldn't help myself: though i will not apologize

[everythingistandfor]

you are nothing solid and that is good

I made a note last week, about a post I wanted to write, but didn't have the words for it.

I still don't really have them, but what the hell, the note goes as such:

Make another post on identity & the past and personal property on the internet and being free because you are nothing solid and that is good

i was another person, with different emotions, thoughts, molecules: I was literally of a different composition last week, month, year...

But like that's what it's all about: being a changing, fluid thing: you're bound to be a different creature tomorrow because you were a different creature yesterday BECAUSE YOU ARE MADE UP OF DYING AND LIVING THINGS ALL THE TIME. you are a system and the system shifts like populations across maps

Fancy shit, I know.