“Sometimes you hear that statistic about how if Barbie were a real person, she would fit the weight criteria for anorexia and her boobs would be so disproportionately big that she wouldn’t be able to walk upright. There’s a less fantastical version of that idea, though, that a generation of girls like me saw play out in Britney Spears: If you did everything you were supposed to do to become the Perfect Girl — did just enough sit-ups and cooed just so and showed just enough skin and kept up the lie that you were born only to make someone else happy — it all just might send you completely over the edge. I hear a strain of this idea in the macabre of Lana Del Rey’s music, which blurs the borders between life and death, between the American dream and a nightmare: “Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?” But Britney’s music explores this deep a darkness in only its subtext; her sad songs like “Lucky” and “Everytime” strike me as so intensely devastating because even in their darkest moments, they still put on the façade of pretty, like the girl who early on learned that trick of how to blot away tears without smudging even a smidge of mascara. Britney’s meltdown happened when I was in college, learning to hate the game more than the player, finally able to see larger and more systemic threats to my liberation than the feigned innocence of a pretty girl from Kentwood, Louisiana. Still, something about her breakdown felt too traumatic to fully process it at the time. Only when she managed to miraculously come out the other side of it could I acknowledge the terrible pain she must have been going through, could I admit that I didn’t know how Britney Spears didn’t die of it, of being a girl.”
the most life-changing customer i’ve ever had at work was a guy who came up to me and my coworker when we were at cash and said ‘hey kids…. wanna see something?’
and I said sure because why the fuck not, i’m here for a good time not a long time, and this motherfucker pulled a railroad spike out of his pocket.
A GODDAMN
ANTIQUE
RAILROAD
SPIKE
It was a fucking foot long chunk of steel that weighed about five pounds on its own so i was like ‘huh….. neat’
and he said ‘wait. there’s more’ and he took out a screwdriver. inlaid into the head of the spike. ‘things aren’t always as they appear’ he said as he unscrewed the bit and pulled out of this goddamn railroad spike
a statue
a tiny, tiny golden statue stood on the base of this flathead screw. it was a tiny golden man standing next to a tiny golden flower with gemstones in the petals. the whole thing was smaller than my thumbnail is tall. it was detailed enough that the tiny man had facial features. it was amazing.
‘oh my god,’ i said. ‘how long did it take you to make that?’
‘here’s a word of advice,’ he said, ‘never answer that question when people ask it. it devalues your work. you’ll get faster and better at things, and be able to make more art in less time. they don’t need to know about the process, just the product’.
and he left and that’s the one artistic piece of advice i definitely wanna hold to.
Whenever I’m on the street children throw large pebbles at me and say “This is only somewhat due to your bad tumblr posts. There are multiple reasons for this.”
If I'm your savior, then you're mine. 