Sometimes I think about the incalculable waste of time, money, energy and self-actualisation that happens in service to institutionalised beauty and I want to weep. It really does feel like an inescapable matrix. There’s many things to say about how Sisyphean and dehumanising the whole thing is, but one thing I think we struggle to grasp is that all the things we ultimately want, that make life worth living, conventional beauty alone cannot provide.

my theory, based on nowt but overthinking & vibes, is that 'relationship types' usually began dating at a young, formative age. their sense of self is thus built around a certain porousness, a certain space where a wider variety of people might come in & be in partnership w them

https://twitter.com/melosyna/status/1633029883885506561

i don't think this is good or bad. in many ways, its a beautiful way to be. im just built different, partly because that wasn't my experience. so yes, what i want from a partner/s is v particular. i want s/o i greatly admire, s/o kind, principled & smart & peng (to me).

Will probably delete this but want to post for those who feel similar because it's maddening thinking you're the only one/one of very few. I am very sad about but making peace with the fact that romantic love is sthg that eludes some of us for reasons we cannot know or control. When I say elude, I don't mean it will never, ever happen. I'm saying that whilst many people go in and out of relationships on some miraculous, regular wave, some of us have that happen rarely or not at all.

Am always startled and haunted by how James Baldwin's work keeps circling around this search for a life of singular integrity and how this search is often quietly brutal, devastatingly lonely. I love me some Baldwin, but reading his work often makes me crave a cigarette, and I haven't smoked a day in my life, looool. The most artful nihilist there ever was!

Okay, all of you listen up. Every now and then a book comes along that forges new synaptic pathways in your brain. I was always going to read and support it because Travis is a friend. But fuck friendship: this book has sincerely changed the way I think for the better. First of all, it is a feat of ontological wonder. To write this fluently when the ideas you're discussing are so big, so difficult and so complex, is extremely hard. It takes a v gifted writer and thinker to pull this off. I need you lot to know that Travis is an ARTIST.

We need to stop taking so many photographs of ourselves. Our brains aren't built to constantly take, consume & analyse this many images of the self - we're splintering & obfuscating our self perception, too aware of our own faces & what they should/shouldn't be doing I imagine the first major shift was when mirrors became a normal and ubiquitous thing to have in the home. Before then I assume you had to just trust you looked fine! Now we have these photos that we stare at, zoom in and out of, compare and contrast to others...

GAH. The fucking graft it's going to take to get the quality of my writing to even TICKLE the edge of my taste levels...I feel so daunted and smothered by it. But under that is a lean, quiet gratitude that I have the time and support to try and try and try again. Going to have to fall in love with process. Going to have to shed the gratifying but often shallow rewards of performance for a little while. Going to be gnashing my teeth and hiding away a lot. I may have something to show for it at the end. I may not.

This is a question concerning sofas. I want a really fuck-off good one. This is the one item of furniture I am willing to spend £££ on because I wanna be sitting, eating lying and shagging comfortably on it for 15 years MINIMUM. What are the good brick and mortar sofa stores? I simply can't fathom buying a sofa online when I haven't sat on it?? No website links unless you can personally vouch for the comfort and sturdiness of the sofa yourself. I don't want an IKEA sofa either. Okay, dassit. Go!

So I want to offer some thoughts on rejection as 1) a full time artist who necessarily experiences plenty of it myself and 2) someone who has had the simultaneous privilege and agony of having to select candidates for various opportunities. It sounds like an empty platitude when ppl say how tough it is to make these decisions but baby, it’s the TRUTH. It is long & complicated weighing up who the best people are for any opportunity. Lots of talented folk + relatively few prestigious opps = lots of thwarted dreams.

In the midst of current events, I want to offer some thoughts on gendered violence. Please know that 1) I'm not afraid of different opinions & multiple things can be true at once. 2) I'm not interested in being ‘right’, I'm interested in things getting better for all of us. We must think carefully about what we want when we ask men to step up and do the work. We must accept they will be coming with the reprehensible things they have done and still do. We cannot ignore these acts but we also cannot insist that people are forever stained by them.

As someone who was a City Poet I know all too well the difficulty of balancing the integrity of my own standards with the civic imperatives of accessibility. Amanda smashed it, wrote something that moved millions of people and performed with remarkable warmth and poise.

https://twitter.com/BernardineEvari/status/1352501300810940422

If it's not good enough for certain folks and their MFA sponsored sensibilities, so be it: no piece of art can hit the mark for everyone. She's not beyond critique or the discernment of her fellow writers, but let's be concessionary to the context of the occasion.

Inspired by @divanificent's post on fees and payment as a freelancer, I just wanted to offer some hints and tips. This is hard earned knowledge over eleven years of freelance work. If this helps at least one person then I’m happy. Grab a pen and paper, let's do this! @divanificent This is based on a career in performance poetry which has bled into theatre, festivals, corporate gigs, journalism, workshop facilitation and more. The union guidelines for diff. types of writers vary, so none of this is strict gospel.

I'm getting very (very VERY) bored of this petulant and uniquely millennial argument that posh white women (or any other 'majority' for that matter) making things is not 'representative'. Its boring, faux woke bollocks and here's why.
amp.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2… PWB has never claimed to make a universal piece of work that speaks to all female experience. A lot of her writing subtly satirises this type of asinine feminism-lite thinking in the first place. Stop looking at all art by women and holding it to impossible moral standards.