they don’t see it, because it is around them like air. to them, it would have to be through movies, through magazines. they think it happens outside of life, like it must be selected to be interacted with.
but you discovered in the fifth grade that you couldn’t wear shirts with words on them, it was an excuse for someone to look at your chest. you were catcalled before you were in middle school. sometimes you look at that memory and deny it - surely that can’t be right, you were young. but you were in a skirt, so maybe that was a natural byproduct. it was a skirt from that place “justice by limited too” - a store literally for kids. it was popular around then. you wore that skirt twice and then never again.
you can’t wear headphones, because what if a man wants to talk to you? there’s a guy on the internet who complains that women shut themselves off from being approached. at night, you often keep the headphones positioned but with the sound off, just in case you need to hear something behind you.
you learned at 12 that you can’t make eye contact, don’t acknowledge the aggression. just walk faster and hope he picks on somebody else. don’t wear your hair like that. do not park next to that kind of car, park an entire cityblock away if you must.
you can’t go to the museum, you’re sitting and tying your shoe when he approaches you and mentions that nobody understands art anymore. that in the whole world, it’s just you-two. you have no recourse for eating a meal (it’s rabbit food if it’s salad, and someone will roll their eyes, eat a sandwich. it’s pick-me behavior if it’s a burger, we get it you’re a cool girl). if you like mushrooms you are cottagecore, which is cheesy. if you likevideo games you’re an egirl (similar to a pick-me). boys do not get categories, but if you point out the categories are sexist, you are told okay but these girls really exist.
it is somehow developing, a little undercurrent that you’ve been uncomfortable with. the nickname “karen” went from being “a white woman that uses her whiteness as a weapon, particularly against people of color,” to now mean “any woman raising her voice or being even a little upset.” the reappropriation of a term used specifically to call out white women for their racism has set your skin on edge. now it is just another version of “bitch,” one that can be said on television. recently you saw a woman get called a karen because a drunk driver sideswiped her, and she screamed when it happened. the comments on the dashcam video all say “why do women always scream about everything.” “when has the world ever been bettered by women screaming.” “this fucking karen. she deserved to get hit.”
in the sitcom, it’s a joke that the wife is furious; slamming her hands down into the sink. i do everything around here, might as well do this too. in your house, your father is always in-his-office. before you know better, your first boyfriend is the type to say it’s just easier for you. you used to beg him to take you on dates. he used to make a big deal about it, about the sacrifice of effort, even if you were the one who did most of the planning.
someone on the internet makes a “POV: the most boring person you’ve ever met” where he puts a towel on his head and just talks like a normal person. his impression of a boring woman is just a woman that is talking about her pretty-average life without exaggeration.
you are sometimes actually sad in the reverse, because actually you did used to struggle to pay attention in conversations. you were also easily bored of normal things, your adhd pinging off of every radio tower in the vacinity. it took time and therapy and patience, and now you delight in the small things about your friends. you like having them show you their organizational systems and talk about their taylor swift tickets. you are entertained by them because you learned to be, even though your brain is structured to only be excited by novelty. you kind of hate the idea that the reason your father will never actually pay attention to you is that you’re no longer interesting. eventually the shine wore off, and you were just a person, not a spaceship. he never learned how to just, like, form an actual intimate friendship. it was always at a distance, this sense - emotional closeness was too much. (and yes. he’s homophobic).
you’re already tired of whatever the fuck is happening with the words “divine feminine”, a rancid take that is basically just a rebranding of the patriarchy in action. what the fuck do they mean “being small and delicate and needing protection” is feminine. the words they are looking for are that they want a partner, not that their desire for equivalent support is relegated to gender. the human desire for community is not actually gendered at all. also, what fucking wolves are these “divine masculine” men even battling. fuckken taxes? shouldn’t their “desire to protect” also mean “protect you from emotional neglect”, or are all emotions off-limits (and how sad would that be. that’s a horrible bar to set.)
and they tell you it’s really not bad actually, because it’s just there. they suggest you get off the internet or you stop reading that book or you stop thinking so hard about the movie or you stop just-being-a-feminist because honestly it’s a killjoy sort of thing and then you tilt your head to the side and there’s that little siren in the back of your head. if things were actually fine, being a feminist wouldn’t put a stop to anything, it would go completely unnoticed, because you wouldn’t have any comment to make about any of this
but you are ruining your own life, they tell you. also, girls don’t sit like that. also, all girls are catty. also, all girls are bad drivers. also, all girls just need a cute bracelet and an iced coffee.
you do like iced coffee, is the thing. when you close your eyes, the world around you has this strange note to it. and once you hear it, it never stops ringing.
at some point it’s just like. do they even fucking like the thing they’re asking AI to make? “oh we’ll just use AI for all the scripts” “we’ll just use AI for art” “no worries AI can write this book” “oh, AI could easily design this”
like… it’s so clear they’ve never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they’ve never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they’ve never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.
“oh AI can mimic style” “AI can mimic emotion” “AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid.”
… how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.
and i’d still keep writing.
i don’t know there’s a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it’s like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. “i write because i need to” and “my music is how i speak” and “i make art because it’s either that or i stop existing.” it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it’s a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn’t actually persistant. so many of us have this … fluttering urgency behind our ribs.
i’m not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i’ve never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley
“we’re gonna replace you”. that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they’re both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see “audience spending” and “marketability” and “multi-line merch opportunity”
and i see a kid drowing. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.
it isn’t even love. the word we use the most i think is “passion”. devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - “abracadabra” means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a “real life” and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it’s like breathing. we create because we must.
most days I feel sick to my stomach sometimes I fear I have prayed for beauty so much that everything else is lacking & even the beauty won’t come no matter how much time I spend with my fingers crossed. I’m still afraid of dating. I don’t go on dates. I say I love being alone and I do I do but I still need to fill my periphery with color & noise to not go insane from longing for something I can’t even name. I harbor last summer in my arms and there is no space for anything else. I think the only solution to my illness is making myself read more & going to bed earlier. I wish I was a 14th century nun. goodnight
technology related sensory memories from my childhood
sliding the metal cover on floppy disks
the slight resistance of inserting cassette and video tapes
ripping off the strips of holed paper off of dot matrix printer paper
rolling the wheel on a disposable camera to take another photo
The heaviness and rubber texture of the roller ball in a computer mouse, and the little ring of lint
Unkinking the curly cord of a telephone while you talked
The -peww sound and slowly fading image of a crt monitor turning off, and then running your finger through the static on the dusty glass
The crunch of opening or closing a plastic Disney vhs cover
The sound effects in kidpix
Extending and collapsing metal antennas and using them as magic wands
Manually rewinding cassette tapes by spinning them around my fingers
Playing with the rubber casing of the buttons on a Walkman–pulling them away, rotating them, slipping them from side to side on the stiff posts of the buttons
The audio and visual static at the end of a videotape
The satisfying thwap-thwap-thwap as you page through a well-filled CD sleeve book
How weird and small and light the first cordless phone felt
Sticking your fingers into the holes of an older relative’s rotary phone they still have yet to replace, and pushing to get the dial to turn and the oddly-satisfying click-click-click to get to the right number.
The sheer loudness and weight of a typewriter: the loud clack! as keys struck paper, the high-pitched warning ding! at the end of the line, the whirring zip! of shoving the heavy carriage back to the start.
The blockiness of computer monitors and towers: huge boxes with sharp lines, cases a roughly textured matte beige.
Depressing the power buttons into the casing of various electronics - and if you didn’t push hard and deep enough, it wouldn’t turn on at all.
Turning the heavy handle on the inside of the car door, and the window lowering in soft jerks.
The weight of your parents’ camera and the strange milky brown of new film being installed before the back of the camera was shut with a soft click.
The actual smell of the camera film.
The smell of the house after getting the first window-unit air conditioner. (It smelled like other people’s houses, not ours.)
The high-pitched, barely audible whine of the television tube.
The sound and feel of turning the TV dial really fast, past the empty channels (and it was faster for UHF than for VHF, since there were so many more UHF frequencies.)
E v e r y t h i n g about the slide projector–the back light when the man lamp isn’t on, the sound and feel of the fan, the motion and sound of the slides being pushed in and pulled out and the carousel advancing, the clunk when the direction is changed, and the glow of the images…
The heavy feel of turning the film strip in class. That God awful BEEP.
that awful squeak when you used the new piece of chalk on the board.
spinning the dial of the radio to find the right station and the joy of finding some obscure station that you could only get if you fiddled with the knob just right.
A scratched CD skipping in the same place every time.
Placing the arm of the record player down, how sharp that needle could be.
The gargantuan effort of trying to turn the wheel of a car with no power steering.
the cracked, sharp, extremely hot vinyl seats of your parent’s van.
Watching the analog numbers flip on the pump at the self serve gas station.
The heat expelled from the side of the teacher’s overhead projector and the smell of non-toxic transparency markers.
The gradual slowing of the Walkman as the batteries died.
Pulling a 5.25″ floppy disk out of a cloth-paper sleeve.
The heft of the gray, brick-like Gameboy and perching like a gremlin under a table lamp so you could actually see the screen.
The ksssshhhhh-boing-a-boing-a-beep-kssssssssh of the modem connecting.
Sticking your finger through the swinging silvery door of the coin return on a payphone and scooping forward to look for change.
Sliding the switch on the splitter from TV to AV to watch a movie.
Pressing your nose to the tv screen and seeing the tiny, tiny vertical bars of red, blue, and green
The smell and unnatural chill of freon when the car air conditioning came on.
Just a single one from me, but liking a movie enough to rewind the VHS on the slowest mode so I got to see it again, just backwards and a bit faster
