shewhoseeksfreedom

[shewhoseeksfreedom]

Maybe it’s better to have the terrible times first. I don’t know. Maybe then, you can have, if you live, a better life, a real life, because you had to fight so hard to get it away⸺you know?⸺from the mad dog who held it in his teeth. But then your life has all those tooth marks, too, all those tatters and all that blood.

James Baldwin  This morning, this evening, so soon  

[shewhoseeksfreedom]

"I have resigned as poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine. The Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza is not a war for anyone. There is no safety in it or from it, not for Israel, not for the United States or Europe, and especially not for the many Jewish people slandered by those who claim falsely to fight in their names. Its only profit is the deadly profit of oil interests and weapon manufacturers. The world, the future, our hearts—everything grows smaller and harder from it. This is not only a war of missiles and land invasions. It is the ongoing devastation of the people of Palestine, people who have resisted throughout decades of occupation, forced dislocation, deprivation, surveillance, siege, imprisonment, and torture. Because our status quo is self-expression, sometimes all artists have left is to refuse. So I refuse. I won’t write about poetry amidst the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more sanitized hell-words. No more warmongering lies. If this resignation leaves a hole in the news the size of poetry, then that is the true shape of the present."

—Anne Boyer, in her resignation as poetry editor from The New York Times Magazine

[shewhoseeksfreedom]

Palestinian girls playing in the snow, Jerusalem, Palestine, 1921,

[shewhoseeksfreedom]

festering within the worms belly

a figure of speech

folding within the arms of a mechanic

the whistle reaches its peak

boldly we speak to one another

with flailing tongues to the finish

when we separate the ripples send outwards

to the corners of the morning

to the shadows of the evening

the meaning of the gesture

it runs into the light cast from the lamp missing from my bedside

she grunts constantly

telling the air about her bothers

the sigh comes out when she is surprised

Always returning, she shares the burden

the awareness of the lack remains present

space to fill

resisting the want, the urges

speaking of no logic or practice

the possibility is endless

turning its back after the progress

with the shadows of the evening

and corners of the morning

surfacing, the flailing tongues speak

showing tomorrow the lining

within the silver coins teeth

the rustling of the leaves

the blooming of an unplanted flower

hard to place a meaning

but he cares for his sister

and she returns the favor

#leaves #prose #wings #inspired

[shewhoseeksfreedom]

[shewhoseeksfreedom]

In Oscar yi Hou’s paintings, the American flag’s stars and stripes are ribboned, scattered, and reconfigured amongst East Asian artistic symbols in a semiotic constellation around Asian-American sitters, many of whom are queer.

His gutsy canvases render him and his loved ones with their gazes fixed firmly on the viewer, sometimes assuming historically White roles to confront the foundations of American “belonging,” other times calling back to the legacies of East Asian art.

Read more about his work in our New York art guide for August.

[shewhoseeksfreedom]

A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert. -Andrew Carnegie

[shewhoseeksfreedom]

https://t.co/CSjEfxAdTr

[shewhoseeksfreedom]

Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible. -Richard Feynmann

[shewhoseeksfreedom]

“My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.”

— Joyce Carol Oates (b. 16 June 1938)

[shewhoseeksfreedom]

“James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78”, An Interview by Jordan Elgrably

[shewhoseeksfreedom]

Punk & Metal gigs are always portrayed as scary, unsociable & intimidating in movies when in reality they are some of the friendliest gigs you can attend.

[shewhoseeksfreedom]

Hand in hand with the physical is the spiritual

Hand in hand with myself I feel you feel

Spirit inside of me I feel you

Let's fly

Physically feeling tired

But my spirit is dancing

Dancing in my head and in my heart

Have to live, to work, to eat, to share, and to be fair

Have to work to improve the physical, the physical

But my spirit is dancing

Dancing in my head and in my heart

Hear you laughing

Music is spiritual

Dancing notes and atmosphere

Let’s fly

We've got a long, long way to go

With the physical, with the physical

With the classes and the colors and the sexes and the races

You've got a long, long way to go with the spiritual, spiritual

Spirit I see you dancing, hear you laughing, hear you laughing, see you waving

Sense you beckoning, rocking, seeing, gently flowing, beckons me (?...)

Communication, our minds to meet

Spirit I see you dancing, see you waving

But my spirit is dancing, dancing in my head and in my heart

#the raincoats #dancing in my head #lyrics #the physical #spiritual #my spirit is dancing #in my head and in my heart #post punk #music is spiritual

[shewhoseeksfreedom]

Listed: Violin Sect

Photo credit: Steve Jinks

Formed in 1980 and disbanded in 1981, the obscure Welsh post-punk band Violin Sect left behind just one seven-inch, “Highdays and Holidays/Rivals,” documenting their brief existence. In fact, they’ve flown so low on the radar since then that they were even overlooked for the Messthetics compilations, the CD series that brought the sounds of the many forgotten and amusingly-named UK DIY bands of their time and ilk to a (relatively) wider audience. This started to change in 2019, however, when Sect bassist Steve Walker posted a couple of previously unreleased songs that he’d dug up to Soundcloud, where Minimum Stacks label head Joe Piccirillo heard them as his label was just getting off the ground. Fast forward to 2023 and we have the Vile Insect 12-inch, featuring all four songs from the band’s short life transferred from the original ¼" tapes. The result, to Andrew Forrell of Dusted’s ears, is a mix of “dubby rhythms, scratchy post-punk guitar, whimsy and skepticism,” able to stand with Scritti Politti’s “Skank Bloc Bologna” and Swell Maps “Read About Seymour.” And thanks to this release, it’s finally in a position to reach the audience it deserves.

Although Walker’s bandmates — Steve Jinks (guitar), Phil Rimmell (drums) and Hywel Pontin (percussion and backing vocals) — were unavailable to take part, Walker has assembled a list of some of his favorite music, art and literature from his 67 years on earth for Dusted. “A snapshot within a snapshot,” if you will.

Keep reading

[shewhoseeksfreedom]

“It is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again. Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”

— Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

[shewhoseeksfreedom]

“A lot of the time you hear people say that the best thing people can do for nature is to stay away from it and let it be. There are places where that’s absolutely true and our people respected that. But we were also given the responsibility to care for land. What people forget is that that means participating—that the natural world relies on us to do good things. You don’t show your love and care by putting what you love behind a fence. You should be involved. You have to contribute to the well-being of the world.”

—

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

[shewhoseeksfreedom]

"In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top--the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation--and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as "the younger brothers of Creation." We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn--we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They've been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out."

-Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer