I like this question a lot so I had to think about it a lot. I don’t think there is ever a time you should stop interrogating your desires. Which doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t go with them—it just means that you should always understand the points from which they emerge.

I think, if I had to stake a claim, I would say that the point isn’t to deny desire or analyze desire out of being, but rather to understand the historical discourses that have shaped our desires and, therefore, to be poised to shape our own lives (as they will be driven by desire) as best we can. My point is to articulate a possibility within the system that maximizes personal freedom by acknowledging the ways in which we’ve been denied that freedom. 

Raw merit is tricky. When I wrote that sentence I was thinking about beauty specifically—about the capacity to acknowledge beauty in other shapes and colors—but I can see the sloppiness of the language that I chose which seems to posit a sort of “fundamental nature” which is obvious horse shit. 

I think that I would be interested in thinking about beauty (and the rawness of it) in line with a line Anne Carson wrote where she says something like, Beauty compels. Beauty makes sex sex. Which is such an important thought. In my adult life I have been struck again and again by the recognition of beauty in that which compels reaction or dictates course. And of course it makes sex sex. But to think about the places where I have been compeled to respond is to think about beauty that exists inside horror (which begins to move towards an understanding of why the horrible is almost always a little bit beautiful). 

I guess it really is just the rawness of it. 

I know that feel squirrelfriend. I remember working retail jobs that I hated for years and years and applying for everything under the sun and not even getting a courtesy “go fuck yourself.” I wish I could say that I understood how it all got better but I don’t. I just kept going. I networked and networked and networked. I found mentors who were doing things I found interesting. I worked odd jobs. I ate so much fucking canned tuna. I guess eventually it got to this razor point where I realized that I could keep doing things I hated forever (literally) or I could starve and make a break for it. I got really thin. 

It’s not really incumbent upon me to to think of how you think of me when you engage with a space I use as my archive. Like, that’s like if I came into your house and looked at your furniture and said, What do you want me to think of you? And like sure this space is curated but so is all space that people occupy and it’s curated with myself as the ultimate audience. 

ya, dig?

Voyager because Captain Kathryn Stone Cold Janeway is literally the baddest bitch in any galaxy. Literal nerves of steel. People would be like “we are going to blow you up” and every single time she would get on that monitor and say, “try me.” 

The only thing that could’ve made it better would’ve been Zachary Quinto who, honestly, could have it any way he wanted. 

I’m still working at 9.40 at night but I’m ok now that there’s beer I guess. How YOU doin hot stuff?