#c&r

The kind of stuff I’m looking at and thinking about for the Carlos&Rudy novel. I’m working out the driving themes of the novel, that will inform the type of plot it will have, and it occurred to me that anxieties around the concept of “madness” would be a very compelling internal problem for the lads, and specifically Carlos to have, as he’s the more rationale and logic driven between the two of them, which is further complicated by the fact that both of them also have religious and superstitious lens that they filter their life experiences through; and that those lenses can overlap with the medical stuff, it’s not mutually exclusive. It’s also textualized in their song, with lyrics like “darling, are we crazy? Or maybe just crazy in love”— where the discussions of lunacy are brought up, then walked back as a joke about romance, then examined once again as the song progresses.

Other half of my brain, doing the processing and secretarial work: so, like a John Lennon?

Me: I never said that

My own brain: let the record show—

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As a comparative example, to me, it feels like the mainstream flattening and straight-washing of the Beatles musical legacy is something of a tragedy—not because I think the individual lives of the artist should be pried apart, but because the idea of this revolutionary influence on modern pop music having queer and counter-cultural elements is, I think, important to the populations in question. And then this other topic I will talk about is also a tragedy, because it could measurably improve broader perception of a different marginalized population if the topic was discussed as directly related to that population. I’m not going into detail here because I want to fully formulate the thought in the book first, but I was just having a moment wherein I thought… geez, this is a sad thought I’m having, writing this.