speak with your tongue tied.

Taken from Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s–1950s

so i will be a wolf in my own bed. we will find a way to get it out without opening my ribs. we will remove it under a full moon, and we will be feral, but we will no longer kill the girl wild on the altar of her own bones. we will raise her instead.

Dolly Parton onstage, 1970

lately nothing feels under my control!!!

Milk and honey

In the middle of a controversy over white actor Joseph Fiennes’ new role as Michael Jackson in an upcoming British TV movie, who better to hear from than the King of Pop himself? In 1993, Jackson explained his vitiligo and his pride in being black. That didn’t stop Fiennes from coming up with an excuse for his casting.

“I wanted to be a famous author.  Literature has been my passion since childhood.  But whenever you have a passion, it’s so easy to convince yourself that you’re not good at it.  Because you read all these fantastic authors.  And then you try to write yourself, and you learn how difficult it can be to write a single perfect sentence.  It’s so much work to be happy with what you’ve written.  And sometimes you choose life.  We’re in Paris, it’s sunny, I have wonderful friends, maybe I should just be enjoying these things instead of thinking about how to package and share them.  So I got a job in communications.  And I mainly just wrote for my own enjoyment: poems, notes, journals.  But I never shared a thing.  Not a single page.  With anyone.  But last year I wrote a story.  A complete story.  A real story.  With two characters, a beginning, and an end.  I thought: ‘Maybe it’s not too bad.  We must test.  Maybe this is the moment.’  So a few months ago I submitted it to a contest in my town.  It’s just a small town.  And just a very little contest.  But this morning I got the email.  I won the prize.  And I’m just so happy.  This weekend I’m going to the beach with my family.  I can’t wait to tell my mother.  I can’t believe I get to say these words, the greatest words: ‘I will be published.’” (Paris, France)