Discussing transition online can be hard because I don’t know the English word for half of my body parts and Dutch is a clown language. Picture me entering “shame lips” into google translate and being told that’s what a labia is
do note that this will probably mean US phones will follow this standard as well, as manufacturing streams are much easier to maintain as streamlined as possible, and having two separate standards like this makes it more of an expensive hassle for a company
this is also known as the Brussels Effect, where a regulation in one part of the world (usually the EU) results in new global standards.
This painting was left intentionally incomplete. Haring began it when he was dying due to complications from AIDS, and knew he didn’t have much time left. The piece represents the incomplete lives of him and many others, lost to AIDS during the crisis.
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“AIDS Memorial Quilt” — Multiple
This quilt is over 50 tons heavy, and one of, if not the, largest pieces of community folk art. Many people who died of AIDS did not receive funerals, due to social stigma and many funeral homes refusing to handle the deceased’s remains, so this was one of the only ways their lives could be celebrated. Each panel was created recognition of someone who died due to AIDS, typically by that person’s loved ones.
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“Untitled” — Felix Gonzalez-Torres
This pile of candy weighs the same amount as an average adult man. Visitors are encouraged to take some of the candy. As they do so, the pile of candy weighs less and less. This is a commentary on how AIDS deteriorates the body of those who have it, as Gonzalez-Torres’ partner, Ross Laycock, had died due to AIDS-related complications that same year.
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The SF Gay Men’s Chorus
This photo was taken in 1993. The men in white are the surviving original members. Every man in black is standing in for an original member who lost their lives to AIDS.
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“Electric Fan (Feel it Motherfuckers); Only Unclaimed Item from the Stephen Earabino Estate, 1997” — John Boskovich
After the death of his lover, Stephen Earabino, from AIDS, Boskovich discovered that his family had completely cleared his room, including Boskovich’s own possessions, save for this fan. An entire person, existence and relationship had been erased, just like so many lives during the AIDS crisis. Boskovich encased the fan in Plexiglass, but added cutouts so that its air may be felt by the viewer, almost like an exhalation. In a sense, restoring Earabino’s breath.
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“Blue” — Derek Jarman
This was Jarman’s final feature film, released four months before his death from AIDS-related complications. These complications had left him visually impaired, able to only see in shades of blue. This film consists of a single shot of a saturated blue color, as the soundtrack to the film described Jarman’s life through narration, intercut with the adventures of Blue, a humanization of the color blue. The film’s final moments consist of a set of repeated names: “John. Daniel. Howard. Graham. Terry. Paul". These are the names of former lovers and friends of Jarman who had died due to AIDS.
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“Untitled” (Perfect Lovers) — Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Created by the same man who created the previous untitled piece, this piece was also inspired by his lover’s deterioration and death due to AIDS. This piece consists of two perfectly alike clocks. Over the course of time, one of the clocks will fall out of sync with the other.
In a letter written to his lover about the piece, before his lover’s passing, Gonzalez-Tourres wrote, “Don’t be afraid of the clocks, they are our time, the time has been so generous to us. We imprinted time with the sweet taste of victory. We conquered fate by meeting at a certain time in a certain space. We are a product of the time, therefore we give back credit were it is due: time. We are synchronized, now forever. I love you.”
I wish Americans fucked with more foreign music. You don’t have to know the language to appreciate a good record. Folks in other countries listen to our music and don’t speak a lick of english. Music needs no translator
you’ll get an endless streaming of songs (ad free!).
I personally found myself loving 1970s Ghana, Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire!
Also 1920s and 1970s Japan for sure! Cambodian music:
spectacular. Love Armenia and Mali as well. I’ve been told 70s Germany is weird and 30s
Algeria is cool but I haven’t gotten around to those yet.
Italy’s 1960s is bomb ofc but I’m biased ;)
seriously i think “you’ve been sick. i brought you medicine” is one of the most severely underrated parts of the hunger. everyone talks about oh yeay wrap those tentacles around me and spib and it’s done more for me than a girlfriend ever could and dont leave me ETC ETC but something about You’ve been sick. I brought you medicine. it gets me so badly. screams. what if you literally went around eating people and even made me eat a person but i recognize that you werent in your right frame of mind during it. you made me commit one of the worst deeds possible but i dont hold it against you. you were sick. i brought you medicine.
and the medicine is phenethylamine and eddie literally explains what it is by talking about how humans produce it when we’re in love. like thats one of the first things he says about it. therefore the medicine exists in a literal way, but also like. metaphorically, the medicine is also Love. just giving someone Love is healing too. You were sick but i will love you through it
Thank you. Especially to the guy with the acne. Lots of people have acne on the chest and back, but almost no one ever acknowledges that. Young children that just start going into puberty need to know this is normal and not something to freak out/ be embarrassed about. Body positivity in the media helps so many people with self esteem issues.
OH MY GOD AND A MASC NONBINARY PERSON?! YES YES YES YES THANK YOU
we were the liminal kids. alive before the internet, just long enough we remember when things really were different.
when i work in preschools, the hand signal kids make for phone is a flat palm, their fingers like brackets. i still make the pinky-and-thumb octave stretch when i “pick up” to respond to them.
the symbol to save a file is a floppy disc. the other day while cleaning out my parents’ house, i found a collection of over a hundred CDs, my mom’s handwriting on each of them. first day of kindergarten.playlist for beach trip ‘94. i don’t have a device that can play any of these anymore - none of my electronics are compatible. there are pieces of my childhood buried under these, and i cannot access them. but they do exist, which feels special.
my siblings and i recently spent hours digitizing our family’s photos as a present for my mom’s birthday. there’s a year where the pictures just. stop. cameras on phones got to be too good. it didn’t make sense to keep getting them developed. and there are a quite a few years that are lost to us. when we were younger, mementos were lost to floods. and again, while i was in middle school, google drive wasn’t “a thing”. somewhere out there, there are lost memories on dead laptops. which is to say - i lost it to the flood twice, kind of.
when i teach undergrad, i always feel kind of slapped-in-the-face. they’re over 18, and they don’t remember a classroom without laptops. i remember when my school put in the first smartboard, and how it was a huge privilege. i used the word walkman once, and had to explain myself. we are only separated by a decade. it feels like we are separated by so much more than that.
and something about … being half-in half-out of the world after. it marks you. i don’t know why. but “real adults” see us as lost children, even though many of us are old enough to have a mortgage. my little sister grew up with more access to the internet than i did - and she’s only got 4 years of difference. i know how to write cursive, and i actually think it’s good practice for kids to learn too - it helps their motor development. but i also know they have to be able to touch-type way faster than was ever required from me.
in between, i guess. i still like to hand-write most things, even though typing is way faster and more accessible for me. i still wear a pj shirt from when i was like 18. i don’t really understand how to operate my parents’ smart tv. the other day when i got seriously injured, i used hey siri to call my brother. but if you asked me - honestly, i prefer calling to texting. a life in anachronisms. in being a little out-of-phase. never quite in synchronicity.
I imagine that the last generation to really feel this way, to really feel a before-and-after kind of world, was at the last turn of the century, which had 3 huge, life-changing inventions happen all at once.
In 1890, everybody rode horses, used candles to see at night, and communicated through letters.
By the 1920s (only 30 years later!), everybody had automobiles (or access to another form of 'self-driving’ transportation like busses or trams) and nobody had horses. Nearly everyone had electricity in their houses. Nearly everyone had a telephone, or access to one.
Can you imagine? Can you imagine growing up, being taught by your parents all about how to ride horses and care for them and hitch them to a wagon, only to…not ever use that knowledge as an adult, because you have a car? Can you imagine learning how to make candles, finally getting good enough at it to be useful to your family as a teenager, only to flick a switch to turn on a light bulb as an adult?
I feel like that last huge change in technology is the same thing we are going through. I know how to read a paper map. I will never need to use this knowledge. But it’s still in there; including the many patient hours my mother spent teaching me, and a lot of fond memories I have of her doing it. I know how to research a topic in a paper library, with actual books. Pretty sure I will never do that again. I memorize phone numbers, 'just in case’. In case what? The automobile (smartphone) gets un-invented? But I hold that knowledge in my head. It’s there. It’s part of me.
I wish I could speak to my great-great-grandmother, who had her first baby in 1900. To ask her, if what Millennials now are going through is what it was like for her Centennial generation. The absolute whiplash, from one way of life to another.
Kids born in 1890 knew how to make candles, and kids born in 1920 could not fathom why you would need to know this.
My late wife used to tell me about her grandmother, who rode to school on a buckboard wagon as the local school bus, and lived to see the moon landing.
Yeah. My great-grandmother grew up in a one-room tarpaper shack in the Northwest Territory, to which she had traveled with her parents by literal covered wagon, and by the time she passed, we had a personal computer in our home.
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