#youngvulgarian

[goingsoftly]

These things are beautiful and important to me because I believe that the place you grow up in can shape you just as much as your family or your friends. I have this stubborn optimism anchored deep in my soul and I’m not sure it came from my upbringing. I think it came from the city in which this upbringing took place. Who would I be if I’d been born somewhere else? I have no idea. I think I probably would have become a slightly worse, slightly more sullen version of myself. I’ve got Nantes in my bones and it often keeps me going.

[...]

After all, Nantes is mine and mine alone. My mother was born in Marrakech and my father in Normandy, and they ended up moving from Paris to Nantes only a year or so before I was born. My brother and I can truly say we are from Nantes, but we are the only ones. I didn’t end up staying there in the end, and neither did he, but I don’t think that really matters. Neptune favours the travellers and Nantes brought us up then gladly sent us away. That’s what port cities do; they’d frown at the idea of everyone staying put, when the water is right there.

Marie Le Conte, 'I <3 Nantes' (17 May 2024) Young Vulgarian

[passionthatmoves]

It also makes me rage, again, at the “citizens of nowhere” speech, and all those screeds about “somewheres and anywheres”. I know it’s been years and I know I should probably just move on but I can’t. They’ve been lodged in my throat for all these years, unwilling to get dislodged. [...] There is an assumption always hiding in plain sight with those monikers, and it is that we don’t care for communities, preferring instead to focus on ourselves and our very immediate circles, all of whom sound and think like us. We can and do move around a lot because, fundamentally, our lives are as big as they are small. We’re white collar, very online individualists; every man an island. We’ll belong anywhere because, on a base level, we don’t care about whether we actually belong. Somewheres, on the other hand, rely on the people around them. They love their neighbours and the small shops they go to every week and all the people they see when they walk around their local streets. They wouldn’t make sense out of context, because context is what made them. They are, needless to say, the superior kind, according to this way of thinking. What got and still gets under my skin, I’ve come to realise, is that I definitely identify with those Somewheres. I’ve had a solid relationship with the people owning the small businesses of every neighbourhood I’ve ever lived in. I’ve always made an effort to meet my neighbours, even befriending some of them. I usually get to know all the dogs who live near me, and in doing so I often get to know their owners, even if our friendship extends to a firm nod when we walk past each other. Shallow bonds aren’t lesser just because they are time-limited. I doubt that seeing the same person in a supermarket for three decades would make you more likely to have them over for dinner than seeing them there for only two years. It is possible to derive joy from seeing loose acquaintances even if you did not go to school near them.   Perhaps most importantly, “roots” can mean different things to different people. Some trees will have few of them but they will burrow deep into the soil to find what they need. Others will stay near the surface but spread and spread. Everyone does what they can, and as they must, in order to keep going.

Marie Le Conte, 'In Defence of Anywheres' (5 April 2024)

[firespirited]

“In the space of about a week recently, there was a video of Kim Kardashian explaining that the corset she'd wear to the Met gala was so tight she wouldn't be able to sit down all night, and a story of some actress at Cannes who fainted at a lunch because her corset was too tight.”

[ruseg]

WHY CAN'T YOU ALL JUST BLOCK PIERS MORGAN AND GO ON WITH YOUR LIVES, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

— Marie Le Conte (@youngvulgarian) January 5, 2019

[thrusticus]