pacinosgf

[pacinosgf]

many old guard stars have succesfully made the transition into the digital era, but barbara ann robinson is not of them: no social media team or presence whatsoever, though is known that she keeps a tight staff running anything related to her work. since she started dating a (younger) girl a few years ago, she has made some appearances on the internet: besides showing up on her girlfriend's account from time to time, barbara now has an instagram account from herself, where she posts videos playing bass and piano from time to time with the help of her beloved girlfriend. still, no one imagined she would show up in 2022 to talk about her only dig at a solo career for spotify, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the cult classic contemplations and ramblings.

     barbara ann: it's been 40 years since contemplations. that's more than half of my life. ( barbara chucks lightly to the camera, dressed in one of her famous flowy dresses and wearing her cowboy boots. ) so many things have happened since then. i've had girlfriends. i've broken up and reconciled with my husband. i've written some songs, we will get back to this. i've done some few shows. i turn 75 this year. it's been an eventful, mostly good, life. above everything, it's my life, and i think it's already obvious how much i like to ramble. i have always thought a bit too much for my own good, but it's important to contemplate from time to time, to remember where you came from and check where you are now. that's what i needed to do when i released contemplations. that was my remembering-and-checking moment.

     barbara ann: so, the first song is core. i had just come back from what you could call a nervous breakdown. i was desperately trying to get back on my feet, all i had to talk about was this solid emptiness inside of me. when i realized i wanted to do this record, and i wanted the theme to be, you know, my contemplations, i knew i wanted it to go from low to high. i start the record by saying that i know i ruined it all, that i couldn't face myself and that, well, if you are here you know it- that breaking up with brooke wellington messed me up. but there i was now, ready to accept the punch and move on with my life. the only thing that could truly make me feel better was reconciling with her, and that was not going to happen, so. i had to go on.

( pictures from the robinsons personal archives are shown on the screen, with home videos of barbara in her home studio and newspaper cutouts about barbara at the time of her mental breakdown and the end of midnight mayhems. )

     barbara ann: the second is don't tell me, the first one of many i wrote about brooke. you know, during my breakdown, i wasn't in the country, i was travelling. this is one of the first songs i wrote once i felt like myself again, probably at some european beach, while my husband pretended not to look what i was writing. it's me, finally letting some of this terrible pain crawl out of my body. if you don't know anything about the relationship me and brooke had, you'd think, by the lyrics, it was easier and ended better than it actually did. i still have this journal entry.

     barbara ann: this is where the fun starts, and the point where the rock fans who bought the record finally shut up about all my folk and country. success would be a perfect country song, but i wanted a contrast between the desperate lyrics and the dancing sound. i like to think some kids danced over my lyrics complaining about how terrible were the shifts as a nurse and how nobody but me believed that i could make it as a singer. it's a personal favorite out of the tracklist.

     barbara ann: here we come with success' sister, failure. thank god i became more subtle with time. also a rock song, now i admit that though i was in the top of the world at some point, i certainly didn't feel like it. i wasted that time worrying and once it was over i lost everything i loved. i had wasted all my years of hard work. when i listen to this one, i feel this sorrow all over again. it was not easy for me to admit that i had failed, that we had lost the war. but once again, the rythm distracts you from all that. failure is also an answer to brooke's playing your song, but i am only admitting this now.

     barbara ann: annie is my childhood nickname and the fifth song of the record. it's the longest one. my parents were odd and shy people just like i am, and though they mainly expressed their love through giving me a bed to sleep and food to eat, they were very loving. as a girl, me having to get married and leave home destroyed them. if it weren't the fact that i had to get married so i could study and leave my town, i would have stayed with them forever. it took me long to get used to the idea that my family would now be my husband's family and my only connection with the family i was born would now be my memories. i loved them. after my first tour with the band, i came back home all excited to share that happiness with them. they weren't so pleased.

( three pictures of young barbara show up on the screen. barbara as a baby on her father's truck, barbara studying as a well-behaved teenage girl and barbara smiling for the camera on the day of her wedding, just a few moments before becoming mrs. robinson. )

     barbara ann: the contemplations wouldn't be complete if i didn't come back to my childhood. i talk about running with the chickens all over our farm, about dreading my aunt's piano lessons, about being a young girl waiting for her lover to show up. about being a grown woman who had lived so much since then and wondering how that girl became this. i talk about how me and jim have been solid as a rock since the moment i agreed to be with him. i talk about how i never actually thought me and brooke would ever be over. i talk a lot. nowadays only jim calls me annie, since it's the person that has been the longest with me, and that's what i like about our relationship. he has seen and been through all the barbaras that i have been.

     barbara ann: i go back to talking about brooke with crazy on you. it's quite a sensual song. our relationship wasn't all about sex, but it was a big deal for both of us. brooke was, is, a free spirit, and it took me long to follow her steps and stop being so repressed. i think she would still call me repressed. but here i reminisce our nights on tour, when everything was so intense and hot and there was nothing we wanted to do more than to go crazy on each other. i try to sing like she does, i reference her song ash. i really did not want to be subtle.

     barbara ann: bait and love bites are sensual too, but in a different way. i acknowledge the complexities of our relationship, how one day we would be making love promises to each other and then the next day we'd say we were just messing around, and then the next we would break up. and repeat it all the next day. but it didn't matter, because we always came back to each other. even after all those years, if she called me, i'd drop anything to answer. i'm her bait. for love bites. and all.

     barbara ann: we get to moving on, where i finally collect myself and stop crying over brooke. it was hard, but i did. there is a point where you learn how to live with the pain and the simple things that suddenly seemed so hard to do become simple again. i'd never get over her, but for my own sake, i had to pretend i could. and so i did.

     barbara ann: it's a stroke of luck having myself again, i saw a girl in the street wearing this shirt once. stroke is my favorite song out of the released ones. it's me, being able to trust myself again, being able to live with myself again. i have the belief that you don't have to love yourself, but you can't make your own life harder than it needs to be. you have to at least be neutral about yourself, and i liked having myself on my side.

     barbara ann: the last one is call her. it obviously doesn't match the rest of the record, but i needed to add it, so entranced i was by amèlie bergstein's charm, whom i met at one of those boring hollywood parties. she flirted with me and said i should make a new record, i promptly told her i had a few song written down. it's also the only song out of the album that became a hit, the song to her, the song about her. i know for a fact she loves it.

     barbara ann: this is the official tracklist, the one i released way back in 1982. many songs were left out, and those, along some others that i have written over the years, will be released in contemplations and ramblings' special reissue for its 40th anniversary. i told you i had lived so much since then. ( barbara chuckles, and the camera lowers down to show the record cover she holds, a modern version of the contemplations one, with older barbara and her characteristic melancholic look staring at the camera. )

( once again pictures from the robinsons person archive show up on the screen, pictures taken since 1982. you can see barbara with her stepchildren, barbara and some of the girlfriends she had since then, barbara and jim at their ranch. )

     barbara ann: we start the new batch with bw. somehow someone leaked it and now there are dozens of audios of the song around the internet. i recorded it so it could be on contemplations, but i thought it was too heavy for the record. i still think it's quite heavy. it's another song that i wrote during my exile, and you can see by all the traces of sorrow and bitterness in the lyrics. it's bw for brooke wellington. i couldn't find a better name for it, but the lyrics made up for the lack of a creative name. i've never been more honest in a song. this kind of love i wrote about back then, which is the love we had, is not one you get over. i lost myself when i lost her, and i got myself back by accepting that i could not get her back, but daydreaming about it should be enough.

     barbara ann: on a brighter note, we have maybe love. it's about my husband. i've never written many songs about him, which i know upsets him and it's a flaw of mine. i was always very protective of our relationship, because i soon realized people understood brooke and dash's arrangement better than ours. brooke and dash were different people. they would scream and get their feelings out and they didn't care about anything as long as they were having fun. but me and jim worried, i felt bad because i loved someone else, he felt bad because he could never compare, we would suck it up until we finally exploded. but i also haven't written many songs about him because me and jim were real. solid. we existed in both of the worlds we lived. we were in the same band, but we also would go back home and do the groceries and i'd say that he had to fix the sink and he'd say i had burned the eggs again. the day-to-day mattered me. meanwhile, i had to resort to writing songs to talk about my relationship with brooke.

     barbara ann: anyway, maybe love goes back to our early days, as boyfriend and girlfriend, as newlyweds. i remember the anxiety i felt about finally becoming a woman, going from girl to wife in a night. i didn't love jim from the start, but i wanted to, and as we progressed, as i felt it was safe to trust him... well, after so many years, we are still together, you see.

     barbara ann: i sang this one in a midnight mayhems' concert once and it almost made it into the contemplations' setlist, but it's finally out. renegade is, obviously, about brooke, straight out of the midnight mayhems momentum. as i sang it and attentively watched her face so i could see what she was thinking, she held her head high and went on drinking her beer, left the stage a few times, didn't say much besides alright, enough with the moping. she had this thing about saying that she never needed anybody or anything, that nothing could ever affect her. we fought a lot about this. i wanted to be there for her, she wanted me to go easy and leave her alone. the drugs and the chaos gave her an escape from this life, while i wanted to pull her out of that. i couldn't accept to watch her destroying herself. sometimes i though she did it on purpose, kept fucking herself up so i would get tired of her or whatever. i couldn't understand her, she couldn't understand me. after i finished the song, just me, rambling alone on the mic and playing a made in the moment melody for five minutes, i remember dash said something like you are fucked up, barbara on his mic. as always, we aired the dirty laundry on stage. the only thing we did without a crowd, besides sex, was breaking up.

     barbara ann: his song is about the years me and jim spent apart. i wanted to free him from our relationship, so i said he was free to go, to meet someone nice and have a normal relationship as he dserved. i wanted him to do it. but he felt i was getting rid of him, so he got back at me. if you are here, you know what happened, i don't wanna talk about it, but the song is i what i felt during those years. i thought we'd never reconcile. i still haven't forgiven him for what he did. but then again, he will never forgive me for falling in love with someone else. we will have to keep on living this way.

     barbara ann: if it's been 40 years since contemplations, it's been a bit longer since the moment i told brooke i was leaving. we have done a few band reunions, we never had a proper relationship, but my love for her is still as strong as it was then. every girlfriend of mine has had to deal with her shadow, and i don't plan to get rid of it. this love keeps me grounded, as much i have suffered over it, as much as it is hopeless. as you age, you start to appreciate even the bad things that happened to you. i will always ache over the fact that we didn't work out, but at the same time it's such a beautiful feeling! i wouldn't trade it for anything. our love was fleeting and intense in a way that doesn't seem real. sometimes i wonder if she ever loved me too or if i simply want to believe she did. but what is the good in thinking so much? love is something to feel.

     barbara ann: and i do feel. i never buried brooke's ashes, you see. i kept the memories as my allies in life, close to me so i could dip into them whenever reality felt too much. ashes is a song i wrote for contemplations, but it never made into the final cut. i think i only recorded half of it back then. jim asked me to not release it, and though he gave me no reason, i felt obliged to comply. he had never felt anything so strong about my work to the point he couldn't simply ignore it. but we have accepted our problems since then, enough that i'm releasing it now.

     barbara ann: the same way i accept mine and brooke's relationship in ashes, i accept mine and jim's relationship in yosemite. we did good things for each other, we did bad things for each other, through affairs and children and breakdowns, we are the person each other wants to be with every day, and so we will, until we die.

     barbara ann: we finish with years, baby sister to annie and stroke. it's me, talking to myself, once again thinking about everything that happened in my life and who i am in this world. ever since i was a child and even after i decided to retreat from living in the spotlight, people have been trying to tell me who i am, who i must be, and their words were once my sense of self. this is the past. the best thing aging gives you is that you realize that nothing really matters in this world, but that you must engage with life anyway. before we even know it, it's over, but we once lived.

@gllianowens

#ok essas são as musicas oficiais! #até que eu fale o contrário #o bebê é a stevie tar #nao um aleatorio #barbara ann.

[pacinosgf]

❝ we were in austria, which is a very depressing country, with all due respect, though i think barbara would have really enjoyed the place if she wasn’t catatonic during our stay there. when she got a bit better, i made her take walks with me all through vienna so she could tire herself out before getting back to the hotel. one day she asked if we could rent bikes for our walks. and then another day she left the room, alone and in her own will, for the first time, without saying anything. i was sleeping and when i woke up, she wasn’t there. i was still hiding any sharp objects from her at that point, mind you. i was almost calling the police, but she came back with a huge map of the countryside, telling me that we should visit it. i thought, well, this has changed her forever. but maybe we can learn how to live after this. ❞

❝ we spent a few months in greece, but ultimately settled down in italy. i didn’t want to come home. coming home meant facing everything again, finding a new way to live. i got an abortion in another country so i could deal with it privately, but somehow it got leaked to the american press. i didn’t want to mope anymore, either. i felt sick of myself. i got tired of jim being all careful around me. i didn’t want to be this fragile little thing for the rest of my life, though i learned to let myself be taken care of after that. i learned how to slow down. i can’t always do and be everything for everyone.

i bought a leather bound notebook so i could write in a brand new diary. many of my first entries were just describing my day. we went to the beach. we ate ice cream. saw a woman dressed like brooke in the street. i cut my hair. in venice, we stayed at the house of a family for a while and i sang for them so i could thank their hospitality. i did my best to have myself back, little by little. now that i’m telling it after so much time it seems it wasn’t that big of a deal, but i know it was. i spent months out of myself. you can recover from that, but there will always be a little part of you that wants to give in to that dark place, those dark thoughts. when i got back home from brooke’s funeral, i found myself lying on the cold floor at this old age of mine, same thoughts as i had back then. see what i mean?

then, after two years, we got back home. i had missed my house, missed my huge garden, missed my instruments. i cried out of relief when i found out i could still play. i found myself trying to get used to this new reality, producing and only producing, but still coming up with random lyrics. still coming up with bass lines. i still loved the music. that part of me hadn’t gone anywhere, but now i had to learn again how to deal with it.

i listened to brooke’s album, of course. someone sent it to us and it was right there, waiting for me when i got home. seeing the words brooke wellington’s first solo album hurt like hell. but it was good. she had always wanted to rely into this heavy rock sound. i felt happy for her. she didn’t seem to be alright, but that’s how brooke is. i didn’t have a say in it anymore. i wanted to kill myself when i heard my bones and dope, but it wasn’t my business.

i lived. i worked. i took care of myself. didn’t get out of the house much. all that fire i had to do things had been lost. i felt a bit of it again when i was organizing contemplations and ramblings, and then i was reminded people would see it and try to find hidden meanings in my lyrics, i was reminded brooke would know that i had been fucking miserable. but it was good to write again. our solo work was so different. most of my songs were ballads, i’ve always loved a folk sound. my voice sounded so much older for some reason, when only two years earlier i thought of it to sound so ingenue. my plan was to release the album as an exorcism, you know? this is the last you will see of me, take good care.

and it worked. people didn’t care much about contemplations, which i still love and feel proud of, but i did. i kept writing and singing many songs, but i kept them all to myself. the spell they had put on me was over. i can’t say much about it, but when we had the reunion, though i felt immensely good for being on stage, i felt immensely good for being able to get back home. salting the wound for one night had been enough.

i had a few girlfriends here and there, but i knew i couldn’t love again. not how i loved brooke. i had more faith than ever in my love for jim after all the drama, but i couldn’t be the same anymore. i felt terrible about him. had damned him to this life. i told him, in the sweetest way i could, baby, if you ever want to, you know, actually have a family, go for it. i won’t blame you. i hoped he did it. i wanted to see him far away, happy with his family, and then brooke far away, not so happy with dash, and be sure that i was the problem of all of us. i would never give jim the divorce, but i could do that for him. we discussed the women he was seeing, i thought it was no big deal.

and then jim did the most stupid thing in the world, because he can think properly when he wants to. i thought he’d find a model, you know? an actress. maybe a normal girl who wanted a good life. he looked nice, and i knew he was loyal like a dog. i remember thinking they’re going to take my husband away from me.

but he went back to venus. i hadn’t gone back there since my failed visit, but he had. he spent months there, talking about how he is so miserable and his wife hates him and he just wanted a bit of love to whoever would listen. and of course, some slut listened to him, because there will always be a woman who will see a failed man, ignore the reasons that he might have been failed for, and think i can be good to him. i had grown up with her, though we weren’t exactly friends. jim stayed at her house, played house with that woman just like he did with me, would occasionally visit me so i would mind my business. he got her pregnant.

i punched him right in the eye when he told me who he got pregnant, how he wanted to be there for her, and that we needed to divorce. he wanted his part of our money so he could raise the child. mind you, jim wouldn’t raise no fucking child. that’s a man who was raised to drink while his children cried. that’s a man who got used to the good tour life, where he could have a different woman every hour and he’d leave soon, no need to think if she had gotten pregnant or what. he humiliated me in front of everyone that once knew me, people who already didn’t like me, by doing that.

i went to venus to see the bitch. didn’t beat her up because she was pregnant, but beat up everyone who tried to take me out of there. called her a whore, a homewrecker, a gold digger, screamed to the point my throat closed down. if she thought she would get that money so easily, she’d have to go to court or kill me.

she went to court, against jim. that was an easy fix, he had to pay for child support anyway. and then jim went to court against me, asking for a divorce and separation of property. can you believe? i made him what he is, and that’s how he thanked me.

it took us years. the little girl was born, i visited her every two months so i could take some things, you know? i loved babies. i love the idea of raising something of my own. i hoped jim would have some with a nice woman, so i could be around and pamper them like they were mine. i got cute dresses and toys for her, but then she would get out of my arms and i’d go back to screaming at her father and her mother, those fucking idiots.

the girl was three or four when jim realized he couldn’t be a father. big fucking surprise. if he was meant to be a father, god would have made me pregnant in a better moment that the one he did, you know? not to to fucking punish me. we didn’t divorce, but we got to a deal about our shared property. he came back home, spent months apologizing. i didn’t mind much. i hired a nanny i could trust and would send the woman to venus so she could come back with the girl every three months. i made him call the baby, sent pictures, would play for her. when she got older, this phase every girl goes through, she didn’t want anything to do with us anymore. couldn’t blame her, but we had nice times together. after the teenage turmoil was over, she slowly came back again. mostly talks to me. i adore her. it’s just a shame her parents are such idiots.

we had some nice, tranquil, boring years after that. jim had girlfriends, another child. this one turned 18 a few years ago. isn’t it weird how men can always have children, don’t matter the age? at least he didn’t have as many as dash.

i had girlfriends too. nowadays i date this beautiful tall woman, she is british, all grace and poise, named adeline. blonde, obviously, that’s my type. she has showed up before, she is the only helping me making those collages since brooke died, so i won’t forget history. i will die soon, so i won’t take much more of her life. she is sweet, but can be very feisty. she was born after the reunion happened, so it’s funny to me to tell her how things were, remember things in the process and see how shocked she is by everything. she’s such a sweetheart. adeline gave me some good last years.

that’s where we end. it was a pleasure to mayhem with you. hopefully, for the last time. ❞

@gllianowens

#barbara ann.

[pacinosgf]

❝ but i got ahead of myself. let’s circle back. midnight mayhems in all its glory. we were doing drugs and drinking and playing and writing songs everyday. and fighting, of course. i love songs like the chain, you make loving fun, but i think we did our best work at the same time we were at our worst, what would soon become our end. we couldn’t pretend anymore, everything was personal by then.

and we wrote obsessively. all the time. we would fight and stop for a second to write a line one thought one would be good for a song. i think we have so many unreleased tracks that if we put all them together it would become more than a single record, and they are rotting in some studio somewhere. dash had this thing of turning miserable lyrics into catchy tunes, like he did in the river — we changed the lyrics more than he wanted to, but the original idea and the song itself are his. get free is brooke’s, of course, there’s her name all over the lyrics. me and dash had fun composing a structure for that one.

and then brooke showed up one day with cowboy like me. she had the nerve of naming it like that, and no one questioned. i remember i was trembling even before she started singing how she imagined the song would go, this hole in my chest becoming larger and larger as she progressed. it’s one of the songs we barely changed anything. we discussed how we would play and got to a decision quickly, probably because nobody wanted to think much about that song.

we had the habit of recording songs multiple times in different ways. instruments and voice isolated, instruments isolated, voice isolated, so we could get a mix of the best parts. there’s a version of cowboy like me that if you pay attention you can hear me sobbing in the background for one, two seconds: my whole body was aching because of those lyrics. i’m not one to cry, not today and not then, but i had to leave the studio so they could keep playing and we wouldn’t lose the tapes and i bawled and sobbed like crazy because of those fucking lyrics. cowboy like me. and i’m never gonna love again.

i wrote epiphany. dash wrote changes. we all wrote silver springs together. definitely some of our finest work, though we were all hurt and tired while making it.

of course, we had to go on a tour to play the new songs. that tour would be our last one. there’s this journalist that i love, song nari, who your generation knows for her work in culture and political matters, but i’ll always think of as this timid girl interviewing rock bands. she was already known when we got famous, but she got fond of us for some reason. we sent her every record before it was oficially released. she was busy then, out of the country if i'm not mistaken, but she wanted an interview before we got on the tour. she took a look at us, sighed very deeply and said very sweetly i don’t think you should go ahead with this tour. she was right, though we cursed her name for what she said.

i just want to finish this subject as soon as possible, let me shorten the story: arguments, arguments and arguments. me and brooke were finally realizing that we couldn’t be together. it wasn’t the band, or the boys, or the world, we were the ones stopping us from being together. we would cry, fuck and fight all night. we would get on stage too fucked up to remember every lyric, every pause. when you think it can’t get worse, life finds a way of proving you wrong. brooke had an overdose.

she was mixing up a lot of stuff, everyone knew that. we were all mixing up, but brooke went the extra mile. there came a point her body wouldn’t take it. all four of us were discussing something, and i followed her crashing down in the middle of the room with my eyes. she had the habit of pretending she had passed out as a way to win an argument, so it took us a few seconds to realize what had happened. her lips and fingertips were blue, she was barely breathing. our whole night changed in a second.

dash waited half an hour to see if she would wake up. she didn't, he left. fucking asshole. how can your wife be so close to death and you decide to leave? what if she had died then? i had taken drugs too, but i sobered up the moment i realized brooke could die. that could have been the end.

i spent the night awake, scrouched by the side of her body. i made her throw up so we could get the drugs of her system, i vomited too because i was afraid she would die, no one wanted to come help because they thought it was already too late and they didn't want to be the ones to say it was the end. i kept trying to find her heartbeat, kept whispering love promises into her ears, sure she would wake up and mock me for it.

we had a long conversation after that happened. i told her we had to stop taking drugs. i told her i’d be by her side all the time if she wanted to. she had a terrible argument with dash about him leaving her there to die.

they got back together again. she slowly got back on drugs, more eager than ever. brooke was the kind of person who would trade it all for a minute of pleasure, a minute of peace within her mind. the drugs gave her that. she had no mercy for herself, so i couldn't have any either. i wrote the great war about that.

i didn’t talk much to her after that. i was going through my own turmoil, besides what we were going through. i was throwing up three times a day, my body couldn’t take anything i ate. i felt sore and swollen from head to toe. i had fucked jim for the first time in ages just to get back at her, you know? not that she would care, but i did. fucking any other woman wouldn’t affect me as fucking my dear moron of a husband. i thought god was finally punishing me for thinking i was so smart, for wanting more than i should have, and i wanted to be punished. i wanted to be humbled. i had to go back to being that little perfect wife again or simply destroy everything i had earned. now that me and brooke were over, i wanted jim to hate me so much he would finally leave.

obviously, it got worse. i was pregnant. very much pregnant. huge hips and tits. you could see a little belly. first time i had truly slept with my husband in years and i got pregnant. jim always had a terrible timing for those things, we will talk about it later. dash had joked about taking a baby crib on the tour bus.

i couldn’t stay any longer. we never got to chicago, the last show of the tour. i wanted to sing the great war for the first time there. instead, jim packed our things so we could leave the country and i cried. i cried in the airport, i cried in the plane, i cried when i got there. we went to france. abortion had just been liberalised in france, italy, those countries. i had my procedure done in austria. it was all very quick and safe, but i got very sick right after. out of guilt, maybe. guilt because i had ran away from my problems, guilt because god was finally punishing me, just like my parents had said he would.

i spent weeks having random high fevers. i would hallucinate. i felt something growing inside of me, moving around my organs and taking all the space. i cried and i cried and i cried and i wanted to kill myself so bad that i don't even know. i spent months in bed or in bathtubs. jim would get me from one hotel to another and i'd get in the room and immediately lie down. to not say i was completely insane, i would ask the cleaning ladies to give me some products so i could wash the bathtub until my fingers bled, and then i felt safe enough to rot in the bathtub.

do i regret getting an abortion? no. i know i only got to that point because it was needed. i never thought about if i wanted to be a mother, because that was imperative, a woman must be one if the chance comes, but i knew i couldn’t be one at that moment. if i had gotten pregnant during one of the other tours we had done by then, or during a break, i’d probably fantasize about a way of keeping it and showing the world how i could be a great musician and mother. not even because i wanted to show myself, but that's just how i was raised. you get pregnant, you become a mom. i don't doubt i would have done it, i've always been a little too... some have a few loose screws, i have a few too tight.

anyway. i would never have brooke again. the band was over. i was away from home. my body was failing me, and part of my truth was that anything could happen, i'd still have myself. i didn't then. i couldn't recognize me in that body, in that mind. give me a moment to get myself together before we continue. ❞

@gllianowens

#barbara ann.

[pacinosgf]

brooke wellington is the greatest love of my life. she was, i suppose. still is, because i'm still alive. and if you're here, interviewing me about this, she'll keep being the greatest love of my life, because people will know about it even after i die. it won't take long. and it's important to me that you know, because that fact shaped most of my adult life, and i couldn't go a day without thinking about her before she died, and now i can't go a minute without thinking about her. and of course she had to be first one to die and spoil the fun for us. it couldn’t be different.

there’s this thing about one person of the couple dying and then the other one following. i hope that’s what happen to us. it’s between me and dash. if i go first, he’ll die right after me in spite. if he goes first, i’ll do the same. and then jim will go too, because he won’t be left behind. i’m praying that’s how we will end. i feel like i’ve aged more in these few weeks than in my whole life. i’ve been smoking and drinking like i am 32 again.

now that she is dead, we can be objective. i loved her more than i loved anyone else in this world. i hope she loved me in the same way. and i love jim more than i’ve loved anyone else in this world, except for her. he’s a bore, but that’s what i need. and brooke definitely loved dash, i can’t say if more or less than she loved me, because he turns chaos into a daily thing, and she needed that too. we couldn’t be together, you see? she would party all night and i’d want to get up early to run errands. she told me multiple times she didn’t want to play house, and i wanted someone to cuddle and play crosswords with. can you see brooke doing that? it would be insane of us to try. we couldn’t spend a night following the other one’s routine without fighting. but i did love her. and nowadays i doubt it all, but i do think she loved me.

people have told me that me and dash are actually very similar. i can see that. we are both very stubborn and headstrong. we fought a lot, but i could count on him to make sure everything was alright, you know? and he hated when i took his lead, but he knew i could do a good job. the thing is that he had the advantage of being born as a man, while i’ve been conscious of myself and what i do ever since i was gained conscience. he did coke to stay up the night, i did coke to do what i had to do for the day.

so maybe we completed each other in brooke’s life, just like she and jim completed each other in mine. this fiery love and our own sorts of grounded love. i can’t complain about that. most people don’t even get to have one of those. ❞

❝ if i feel jealous about barbara and brooke? don’t feel now, didn’t feel back then. it was barbara’s business, i had no right to say anything. at first i thought barbara was just fooling around, you know? nothing serious. so why bother? dash didn’t bother either, he wanted all of us to enjoy the opportunity and seal the deal with an orgy— sorry.

you think, how can this man’s wife love someone else so much and he won’t do anything? but i’ve been in love with barb since we were kids. i say barb out of habit but i call her annie when we are alone, just like her parents used to. and i knew back then she couldn’t love me like i loved her. but she wanted me around. and when a woman who has her whole life planned out makes space for you, you take it and follow her wherever she is going. she made you feel special and she made you want to be good because she is who she is, and still would pay attention to you for some mysterious reason. i don’t know if brooke felt that, or maybe the reason she couldn’t get used to barbara is because she did, i know she had issues with this type of thing.

barbara could be cruel, but most of the time, she wanted to be good. she didn’t want me to feel hurt, she didn’t want brooke to feel used. i know that because she’d would change the setlist to make the whole crowd sing to celebrate our anniversary, would change again so she could sing a song she had written about brooke, and then there was the last change, a song so dash could show off and get off her case. she’d micromanage everything trying to make us functional to the point that it became infuriating.

to shorten the story: no, i didn’t and don’t feel anger, resentment or whatever towards brooke. i felt embarrassed, because everyone knew my wife didn't really love me. and i felt sorry for them, because there was no way of making those two personalities be good to each other. she had barbara’s passion, the mad passion of someone that is used to be so collected and quiet all the time, and i had barbara’s love, the love of someone who is committed till the end. that’s it. ❞

@gllianowens

#barbara ann.

[pacinosgf]

we had some nice years, going here and there, playing and working, and then we had the bad luck of meeting this awful guy, who you may know as dash burnett, but will always be daryl to me. fucking daryl. he needed someone to play with him and his wife, basically background playing, nothing special. we could do that, but i swear he hated me from the moment he met me. that happened a lot between me and men, for some reason. i didn't talk a lot to his wife, who is, you guessed right, brooke wellington, back then, it had no specific reason, i simply minded my business.

but if i had to say something, was that brooke was all warmth. i had the type of beauty that would scare people away, brooke had the type of beauty that would make people want to get closer, even though she was danger from head to toe. she intimidated me because of that. you couldn’t hurt her in any way, but she could hurt you. i just remember being astonished at her.

and we were all so different. me and jim were very much a traditional couple, dash and brooke weren’t and they rejoiced in shocking us everytime they could. the spineless lovely little thing that is my husband would simply smile and ignore, but i was unable to do that. there was no way our arrangement, us as a band, should last as long as it did.

after a specially good night he told me he had something serious to say, and i remember thinking he was finally getting rid of me. of us. you know. but he said a big record guy saw us playing and thought we had potential. and then it all started. rehearsals, fighting, threats that one would kill one another, all that stuff that made midnight mayhems known like it is today and hard work. our first real tour was in 1974.

we were ecstatic. it wasn't anything glamorous like our last tour, but glamorous enough for us back then. tour bus, drugs and alcohol always avaliable, women coming and going backstage for the boys. i was playing bass every night. who cares if i'm just background noise to the so-called leader of the band? me and dash would fight almost every day, then girls would come backstage and he saw brooke was nowhere to be found and he left me alone. i let jim do whatever he wanted and retreated to my hotel room, would spend the night playing records or reading, or would hang out with the crew. wasn't doing anything as crazy as the rest of the band, but i had my fun this way.

then i had this experience. with a woman. i didn't care about sex until then. did it because jim wanted it and that's what a wife had to do. but i liked having sex with a woman, and kept looking for one to kiss and caress every night, eager to have back all the lost time. i wouldn't retreat to my room anymore, i'd stay backstage, waiting for the first one to approach me. i didn't care that my husband or anyone else would see it. i wanted to have fun too.

jim didn't say much about it. something like is that your thing? and i said yes and nothing else. he accepted it. he probably thought it was a tour-only thing, just like i said he could fuck anyone else while we were on tour. he was being bad, it was only fair of him to let me be bad too. so we lived.

brooke kissed me. or i kissed her. one of the first moments we actually chatted. we made out in the corner of a hotel. dash caught us that night so nothing else happened, but after that, she started giving me the microphone so i could sing with her, instead of dash. we interacted on stage. she'd find her way to my bed and would mock me for being so pushy all the time. she liked it, though. we would spend the night together, until she got tired and went looking for something else. i didn't mind much, i wanted to not mind much. we’d fight during a rehearsal and fuck backstage. once again, i wanted to not mind much.

but everything was going well. we had turmoil all day, but now i can look back and know that we were doing well. there was always a crowd to see us, our songs were playing on the radio, the boys were fine, me and brooke were fucking daily. not hidden anymore, we’d greet each other kissing, we would care for each other, in front of everyone. news got out pretty fast. soon everyone wanted an interview with us, more to talk about whatever was happening between me and brooke and how could our husbands allow it than about the band, but we survived it: our name was famous! people knew us in the streets. not only young people, but also their mothers and fathers, who watched something about those dangerous women on tv. money was coming, we paid our debts, bought nice things, started dressing up for real, people wanted to take pictures of us. couldn’t be better.

i went back to venus so i could thank my parents for supporting me. dressed normally, in a pretty dress, nothing like the pants i liked to wear back then, took sweets and wanted to know what i could for them. they didn’t let me get past the door, though. i was a shame for them. they told me i was living my life in wicked ways, god would soon come punishing me.

but that’s a footnote and it only means something to me. the band was well. we were making another record, we had agreed to heavily play into the whole couple-fighting thing. i think we thought that, if we had a say in it, it was less real, you know? but not really. dash would come up with a song about pulling all the effort and losing his lover and no one caring. jim would get a line about being left behind by the world. brooke would talk about her addiction. i'd write about all these topics.

me and dash kept fighting, but now about brooke too. jim mostly avoided talking to brooke. me and brooke had our own problems. we became tired of each other pretty quickly, but then we had a break and would come back crazy for each other again. most of our less deranged hits came from that time, when we were still having fun exploring and getting sick of each other. when we wanted to think it was all just a game. the chain, the river, she’s a rainbow, i know i’m not wrong. you can see there’s not so much bitterness in those as, let’s say, in the great war.

i want to make it clear that me and brooke happening was not only because we were bored and away from home and life on road is just like that. i wanted a life with her. i wanted all the boring stuff. not at first, but we developed into it. that’s what love is about, to me. but it just wasn't possible for us. we didn't stop playing simply because me and brooke couldn't fuck anymore.

brooke wellington is the greatest love of my life. she was, i suppose. still is, because i'm still alive. and if you're here, interviewing me about this, she'll keep being the greatest love of my life, because people will know about it even after i die. it won't take long. and it's important to me that you know, because that fact shaped most of my adult life, and i couldn't go a day without thinking about her before she died, and now i can't go a minute without thinking about her [ . . . ]

@gllianowens

#barbara ann. #you think its bad amiga... #its only starting!

[pacinosgf]

barbara ann robinson (née morris, born april 7, 1947) is an american musician, singer, songwriter and producer. she is known for her work as a bassist, keyboardist and vocalist with the band midnight mayhems and as a solo artist.

❝ i was born in a little place called venus. after all these years, it remains a little place. last time i went there was thirty years ago, to solve a problem of my husband's doing, but he has gone there since then. i was my parents' only child, because my mother had such a complicated pregnancy that, after me, she couldn't have any other one. i had the nerve of being born as a girl, at that, but my parents were really fond of me. i had a good childhood. helped them at the farm all day, they looked after me. they were very private people and didn't really engage with the community, so we were the odd ones.

i'd spend the morning running after our animals, helping my mother with the house, my daddy with the farm work, and then in the afternoon i'd go over to my aunt's house to learn how to be a proper lady. she was a war widow of a rich man who came back to town after the war. she'd wrap my hair in ribbons and teach me how to cook, how to sew, how to behave, how to play the piano. we would read romances together. no girl i grew up with had this kind of thing, which didn't help my case, being the odd one. she'd talk about her life in houston as a wife. we'd go there once a month so she could get me new dresses and stuff, i still keep a beautiful hairbrush and some other things she got me.

i was too young to remember when it started, but she always talked about how i had to leave venus and study somewhere else. study to become a teach, a nurse, whatever it was, but study and leave our town. and so i did. that gave people the impression i thought i was better than them, but i don't even know what i thought about it back then. i was just too obedient. relied on my parents and my aunt to know what i could and should do. all i knew is that i should study and leave and marry good and send money back to my parents' every month, never really thought deep about it.

she died when i was 15, which was for the better, because she'd kill me if she was there to witness how i let jim follow me up and down, take me home from the church and all. we wouldn't say a word, just walk. he says that he is in love with me since we were kids, but he's a liar, don't listen to what he says. i started paying attention to him because he was gentle and he'd take me home without making any move and, at 15, i knew i should get some prospects for my future. my parents wouldn't let me leave venus if i was still single. the girls i grew up with already had planned weddings with guys much older than us or the boys we grew up, disgusting men like only a place like that could raise, that could have been my future too. and jim was kind, third of six kids, played the drums for the church band just like i played the organ. it felt safe. one day i stopped him in the tracks before getting home and asked him what he wanted with me. no, i think i said something like i want to study. you can't stop that. i want to leave this place. i won't change my mind. find another girl to take home or bear with me. and he showed up the next day to talk to my parents, so it was official.

after that we finally started properly talking. he had never thought about leaving, but it seemed good. he said i was too smart to not study, so he'd wait and work until then. we would walk through town, the only thing we could do as a non-married couple, taking the longest paths so we could keep talking. i would talk, actually, he'd listen in a way i was never sure if he was paying attention until he showed he was. i told him about how i liked playing music and went as far as saying that i had this fantasy of playing and making music one day. he supported it, of course. said i could do it, started practicing more on the drums in the case i'd ask him to go with me. we haven't changed much since then.

i am a few months older, we got engaged when he turned 18, and i went to houston for nursing school. he'd visit me once a week, under the watchful eyes of the lady that owned the boarding house for the single nursing students, bringing things like his mother's jam, letters, all that stuff. that's when i actually got attached to jim. he would ask me about how i was doing in school, if i had found a place to play. i took him to the vinyl and music store i was a regular customer and we'd share a headphone, we went to one of the nursing school parties and he made me sing. i sang for the girls at the boarding house, i sang for some of my closest school friends, but had never sang to so many people in that context. i remember feeling full that night, so happy that i'd explode.

i got a guitar and played the piano for an old lady and her friends every week. i saved all the money i could to buy a bass, that brand new instrument media was diminishing because it was too dangerous. made girls dance and lose themselves, made men forget who they were. and then i finally went to the store, all happy and mighty, and they denied me one. said i should save more for a piano of my own. the bass guitar was too masculine and dangerous for such a girl.

i wrote a letter to jim about it, how i was mad and feeling down, but i wouldn't give up, of course. i think it only a few lines of the whole letter, of course. he answered me and kept sending letters but stopped visiting me for almost two months. i became afraid that he had found another girl, nicer than me, and i'd have to drop everything to go back home to live with my parents. i was already used to this new future when he came in a random day. he went to pick me up at the school in his brother's car, seemed like he would die at any moment. and then he gave me the bass. a red bass, beautiful bass, that i still keep, of course. said that he really liked me, that he hoped i liked him too. that i made him feel special because i put up with him. that i deserved all good things and that he knew i could get them alone, but he would try his best to give me some too. i wasn't big on physical touch, but i had no idea of what to say. i kissed him. not the first time, but probably the first one i truly, totally, wanted to do it.

we got married in 1967, my last year of nursing school. we were twenty. i left the boarding house, we found an apartment to live in houston, he got a new, less strenuous, job, in the city. we'd work all day, and when i didn't have night shifts, he'd take me to places where i could sing or play. nothing fancy, but still. we'd play with wedding bands sometimes. we'd go home and talk and listen to records. i felt happy. i remember thinking that if the music thing didn't work out, i'd still be happy enough. jim was still nice, he didn't change after getting married, which was my biggest fear.

we had some nice years, going here and there, playing and working, and then we had the bad luck of meeting this awful guy, who you may know as [ . . . ]

@gllianowens

#barbara ann.

[pacinosgf]

and nooooow we're done!

i've been sooooo sensitive about this like!!!! my girl is turning 22!!!!! the distance is hard and i'm always yearning for an afternoon of crochet and gossip but i'm warmed up by the idea that there's someone out here who understands me, from the depth of my obsession about isabelle huppert to my longing for the future. and when you feel lonely and tired you better remember that there's someone who can't see people talking about tom cruise without feeling the urge to roll eyes and talk about nicole kidman instead and text girl lollll they're talking about the devil around here!!!!

but seriously... there's someone who is living normally and thinks this is so isa when she sees cute videos of ducks or crochet tips or something about living quietly in exile. there's someone who always wants to say oh my friend loooooves her and in a way you could never understand! when people talk about sylvia plath and has to sometimes hold her thoughts because only you could understand. love you to bits and pieces and also in your entirety! so blessed to have you in my life the way you are and wouldn't want it any other way. you're magic babe!

@gllianowens

#isa's feeling 22.

[pacinosgf]

  barb can feel the sweat dripping from her eyes, or are those tears? it doesn't matter, at this point they're all the same. completely sober and tired, the drugs and alcohol have left her system long ago, more precisely in the moment she noticed brooke's strained breathing, the woman losing the usual perfect balance while stumbling around the room. she felt right back in one of those simulations she used to train when she was a nurse; check pulse, open mouth, hold tongue. maybe the band has been an hallucination all long and she's still there, giving injections and trying to have hope for a better future.

now she hopes too, but for a better future for brooke. she needs it to happen, to brooke get out of it so they can get back at fighting. don't die just to win the argument! she'd yell and they would forget all the chaos, soon to end up making out on the floor. or they'd make up and go out to eat somewhere nice, all forgotten as it should be. the overdose would be something brooke would ramble about to the crowd while the band tunes their instruments or gets ready for a new arrangement, a speech she'd make with a mysterious drink in her hand and a smirk on her face. oh, how cocky she'd be talking about it! barbara is almost already tired of the whole thing.

she still holds brooke close to her chest, observant of every little sigh, every breath, every whisper. she almost wants it to be one of brooke's performances, waiting for her to open her eyes and wink while laughing at her despair. you thought that was real? wise up, babe!

you wise up, she'd say, ready to jump at anything to forget what had just happened. she'd tell her it was time for them to stop living so recklessly, and then how dash had run and left her alone at the first sight of trouble. in her wildest dreams they'd leave to somewhere far away to begin again from the scratch: a beautiful place where she'd walk around barefoot every day and a beautiful place where brooke could heal. she had always wanted to take her to her home in texas, and maybe now it would be the perfect time.

but brooke would never want to go — too ordinary for her, apparently. you can play house with jim if you want it so much. so they'd depart each time a tour was finished, brooke to ignore her problems partying all day somewhere and barbara to rest and reflect whether she could take it anymore or it was time to leave. she'd never leave, though. they would go on as long as brooke wanted, for she didn't feel she could be brave enough, ready enough or whatever, to put her foot down and say they were done. that meant going through all the crises, breakdowns, and now she could add to the list, overdoses. how promising that sounds.

@gllianowens

#esse tava aqui aleatoriamente na vdd mas eu reli e pensei #ok. i think she should see it! #isa's feeling 22.

[pacinosgf]

  doesn't matter if a girl is 22 for only one year

or three hundred and something, she is still entitled to doing some silly mistakes from time to time! rhiannon told her it was going to happen one way or another, but donatella couldn't believe... and how would she, blinded by all the attention her tiktoks commenting about period fashion gave her? when people started joking she's a real vampire, she couldn't do anything but join it... she's a leo, after all! now those young people with lots of free time in their hands seem to be unearthing all the pictures and paintings they can find of girls who look too much like her and the woman who shows up on the background of her videos sometimes... she just hopes they don't find rhiannon's nude portraits from the time she decided to be a flapper-painter, or it will be bad for her...

@gllianowens

#adjani pra energia perua da donatella #e huppert pra energia trombadinha da rhiannon #esse filme dela do ultimo still ainda nao vi mas ela está Uau nele... sincerely charlotte! #isa's feeling 22.

[pacinosgf]

  once we played with dolls… (3/3)

now we play with dolls too, just in a different way! it's you, me, a computer and lots of words to use so we can play pretend as we please. my dolls weren't actual corpses or demons, but they planned to kill their husbands (when they had one) from time to time, and mostly they were princesses or rich girls who could do whatever they wanted. even then, sometimes i ran out of dolls to play and realized the need for some new distraction to keep things afloat and interesting, something we could call nowadays a non-playable character. mothers, sisters, husbands, affairs, the options are endless! so of course, i will use this opportunity to talk about some of my grown-up npcs.

i've been dying to talk about marianne!!!!! monterey rich girlie, aquarius sun, grew up used to luxury, ditched it all when her stupid boyfriend didn't want to father their child and ran away to raise her kid alone and in a better place, she's truly my personal icon. she's an archivist for a museum right now, which has always been her biggest goal, but she took every and any kind of job while donna grew up and she kept studying so they could have something of their own: waitressing, cleaning, you name it and she probably did it. she's the kind of woman you are intimated by because she doesn't make herself busy trying to be sweet and all that but she is sweet. a notorious loretta lawrence fan!

donna's fondest childhood memories consist of the days her mom would decide they should have a spa day. they'd paint their nails, get some expensive candy, choose a musical to watch and simply enjoy themselves. having spent three years of her life in france when she was a young woman, marianne loves french musicals and constantly talks about catherine deneuve like she's an old friend of hers — her favorite french actress is isabelle huppert, though. she is one of those, and it makes total sense that she raised a girl like donna.

@gllianowens

#isa's feeling 22.

[pacinosgf]

  once we played with dolls... (2/3)

now we play with dolls too, just in a different way! it's you, me, a computer and lots of words to use so we can play pretend as we please. my dolls weren't actual corpses or demons, but they planned to kill their husbands (when they had one) from time to time, and mostly they were princesses or rich girls who could do whatever they wanted. even then, sometimes i ran out of dolls to play and realized the need for some new distraction to keep things afloat and interesting, something we could call nowadays a non-playable character. mothers, sisters, husbands, affairs, the options are endless! so of course, i will use this opportunity to talk about some of my grown-up npcs.

you already know sarah, but she's worth talking about anyway! hannah likes to say that she filled her cup with her mother's bitterness so much that sarah came out of the womb pure and joyful, and though sarah would hate to hear her beloved and adored sister talking something like that... it's kinda true. she's a true hopeful being but not to the point that it gets unbearable, and it's truly a feat to hate her because why would you do that? she's a doll! the type of girl to come into the function with cupcakes for everybody and also the type to give you some gift for your birthday though you barely know each other. she simply is not afraid to live, and will not diminish herself for anybody.

she has always wanted to be a mother, though it only happened now, and she ditched her boyfriend when she realized she wanted to do it alone. her mom criticized her for the decision but she stood up for herself, happy to be a single mom with an incredible safety net to back her up. she's a wedding planner and she loves what she does, and she always throws amazing parties to her loved ones to show that she's got it for a reason. she's as sweet as they come!

#isa's feeling 22.

[pacinosgf]

 once we played with dolls... (1/3)

now we play with dolls too, just in a different way! it's you, me, a computer and lots of words to use so we can play pretend as we please. my dolls weren't actual corpses or demons, but they planned to kill their husbands (when they had one) from time to time, and mostly they were princesses or rich girls who could do whatever they wanted. even then, sometimes i ran out of dolls to play and realized the need for some new distraction to keep things afloat and interesting, something we could call nowadays a non-playable character. mothers, sisters, husbands, affairs, the options are endless! so of course, i will use this opportunity to talk about some of my grown-up npcs.

josephine (usually called josie, though midge calls her posy to annoy here) is midge's sister. ten years older and a huge party girl in her days, josie was one of monterey's brightest stars, though born in the family less monterey-style possible. midge recalls watching her sister getting dressed to go out in some tight sweaters and short skirts or going through her extensive sylvia plath and virginia woolf collection and thinking wow, posy is truly the coolest girl ever. she loved taking midge for a stroll as an excuse to stay out of the house, and sometimes they'd spend whole afternoons playing at the beach or just having ice cream and chatting. josie is an antique deler and a true fashion girl, dressed glamurously even when there's no apparent need to, and never afraid of being overdressed!

the thing is, there's something about the bannion women... coming from a long lineage of german witches, any man who marries into the bannion family suffers from the unlucky fate of dying and making their wives, widows. josie avoided marrying her long-time boyfriend even after having children to make sure it wouldn't happen (though she claimed to be a non-believer!), but there was no way of avoiding the curse, and she eventually became the most recent widow of the family. she moved out of monterey after that but visits the family almost every other weekend, especially after becoming auntie to a little boy.

* the melmidge baby is the first boy birthed as a bannion in ages, so midge thinks he is free from the curse. or he is the curse itself. whatever that means!

@gllianowens

#isa's feeling 22.

[pacinosgf]

  dear corinne has spread her wings and fled,

but what will be of her devoted and loving tutor without her presence? tethered to the opera company until it becomes ruins, condemned to spend the rest of her existence hiding herself from people’s careful eyes, erika aches and yearns for her little angel, hoping she will return some day to see her again. how ironic is that, the phantom waiting for the dear and delicate corinne to come back and save her from herself?

@gllianowens

#erika & corinne #isa’s feeling 22.

[pacinosgf]

  i prefer the two of us alone together...

there are very few things that fleur likes more than playing the victim, venice knows that well at this point. they have fooled the media by organizing venice's funeral and screwed armani's life for good by making sure that he will never find peace and then ditched him, so of course they have to find some way of entertainment! when the games get a little too tiring, they go back to their default setting: fleur playing the helpess innocent girl, veniceplaying the wicked wench. good thing the beaumont-montenegro is huge so they will have a lot of space for themselves...

@gllianowens

#fleur & venice. #isa's feeling 22.

[pacinosgf]

  what if i show up at your party...

stephanie has always thought that rizzo is the coolest girl in the world, and she isn't very discreet about it, though she tries to! fortunately they have become close in the last months in a way that she can ditch the common nickname and call her friend betty. and what a great name that is, betty... steph doesn't want to admit it, but she is kinda afraid of attending betty's birthday party. what if she does something wrong, what if she makes a fool of herself in front of such a cool girl? but of course, she wouldn't miss the party for anything in the world...

@gllianowens

#amiga por favorrrr clique pra ver em melhor resoluçao... #ficou tao bonitinho!!!! tumblr pare de gongar #stephanie & betty. #isa's feeling 22.

[pacinosgf]

  get a glass and pick your nicole kidman movie, today is the day isa will be turning 22!

august 3rd! also known as the birthday of my third sister herself, isadora! i just think it's soooooo funny how you can yearn for the presence of someone you've never met in person but like... i'm always craving one of your hugs. i get so sad when i remember that i know some of your biggest fears but not how you physically behave and that you know all the rise and fall of my life but not that my glasses are too loose and always falling down from my face and i kinda tiptoe when i walk. all those details make extra sad when i remember how close we were at some point of this year to finally meet in person (and would there be a better place than in a taylor swift concert?), but that's just how life is, and we can't do much besides holding on to the hope that it will happen some day and it will be great.

but now moving on to happier things! this is no day to be sad (although of course you will be because you know. girly things), it's the day to put that leo sun and leo rising to good use and bask in your own glory, every thing that makes you very much you and assures that nobody else could be as isa as you are. your birthday being on a thursday this year means that you can make the whole week, weekend and the other week (the first one you'll face being officially 22!) yours, so i hope you enjoy the opportunity! watch a bad movie where nicole or noni look beautiful, go out with your friends and have fun (just not too much because i won't be there <3 kidding!), do something cool with your mama, knit, journal about the unavoidable feeling of grief creeping around... and don���t forget to check tiktok! it's your week babe, you rule!

@gllianowens

#isa's feeling 22.

[pacinosgf]

After Midnight Mayhems’ first split up, Barbara was nowhere to be seen. Not in Texas, not in California, couldn’t be reached through the phone: the woman had vanished from the planet. Travelling, everyone assumed, since Jim had also disappeared, and they were right. After almost two years travelling around and exploring the world, she came back home a few weeks after Brooke Wellington’s first album release. Healthier, almost totally sober and more introspective than ever and with a leatherbound notebook, every single page filled with random-seeming scribbles to anyone, Barbara didn’t want to talk to anyone. Her hidden scribbles were the idea for what would become her first and only solo album, Contemplations and Ramblings.

It would take a while to convince her to play again, though. The Robinson couple decided to get into producing, Barbara being very vehement about her desire to live peacefully and away from the spotlight, as much as she could. Being a producer and technician meant she got to spend the days analyzing (criticizing), discussing and playing music, all that safely. Why would she want to put herself on the edge again?

She kept writing, almost obsessively, even with no plans of ever returning to the other side of the recording booth. Acquaintances at the time justified her refusal by saying she didn’t want to be compared to Brooke Wellington, former bandmate and lover — the true reason was never revealed, but Contemplations and Ramblings’ production began in early 1982, after Barbara invited her closest friends to her home studio to show what she had come up with on the keyboard, a tune that would later be known as Stroke. She first intended to sell it to another artist, but ultimately changed her mind.

barbara ann: i was so excited, had just written something completely alone, something that i deeply related to. i didn’t want to see anyone else playing it, but i also didn’t want to let the lyrics rotting in my notes. so, i had to release it somehow, and i always thought that if you gotta do something, you gotta do it right.

Barbara played most of the instruments heard in the songs, including bass, keyboard and ryhtmic guitar. Jim played the drums, and any other instrument was played by session musicians. The cover was shot in her property in California, and the full shoot depicts Barbara barefoot and in a modest dress, wandering around the property, the cover clashing with the record content. Though it gained more attention and acclaim with time, Contemplations and Ramblings received modest critical acclaim and attention from the public when it was released. There was barely any promotion and it has been the said that the folk looks from the record cover and name put off a lot of fans from Midnight Mayhems. The only hit was completely unintentional: Call Her got to the top 10 of the country, allegedly written about a major celebrity at the time. In 1997, Barbara Ann told press she didn’t regret writing the album.

Barbara opens the record with Core, announcing her own return after almost four years away from the mic. Disappearing suits me, you don’t need to say it twice, she addresses before anyone else can do it, spending the next four minutes diving into her own core. She knows she is seen as a weakling now, and directly tackles the subject by confessing how much she needed time alone to be able to face herself again. Though I ruin everything / Let it crash over me / I will pick up the pieces / With no intentions to flee again. She doesn’t regret doing it, having understood that her life is for herself and herself only.

Don’t Tell Me is a sorrowful ballad about trying to start over after going through an intense heartache. The narrator pleads to remain unaware of what happened ever since the last meeting with her lover, savoring the sweet memories though conscious there’s no way of fixing the problem. And if you should ever find it in your heart to forgive me / I’m setting you free / We must go on.

In Success, Barbara sings about working hard day and night to make her dreams come true, though nobody else seems to believe. She references her days as a nurse and finishes the song with Here I am, only the tenth hour of this shift / God, if you think you have some time for me / Please, I’m working hard / For some success. It fades right to the next song, Failure, where Barb admits not being able to appreciate her success and feeling empty and angry while supposedly on the top of the world. The song starts as a drunk chat, Barbara laughing while trying to tell her story, but the tone becomes serious in the second verse. The thing is / Nothing matters when I feel like this / Empty, down and more miserable that I want her to think / All this while mistreating everyone around me / Failure is not for the weak. Both are played like traditional country songs with some rock arrangements.

The longest and most personal song of the record, Annie pictures Barbara’s life from her healthy early childhood in Houston to the present. Annie is a childhood nickname, used only by her closest friends, and by revealing that Barbara exposes a softer side of herself that she usually likes to. She talks about her marriage (And if anyone can handle me / I’m glad to say the one is Jim / Through the thick and thin / I’ve been able to trust him), and about her former lover, Brooke Wellington, also referencing her album (I threw myself into the eye of the storm / A natural disaster / I never thought I’d miss).

No one expected a song like Love Bites, but Barbara didn't think about that when she first sang Your teeth on my skin / Gentler than a kiss / I won't turn to ashes / You can bite me, setting a pun with Brooke Wellington's song Ash. She is more rational in Bait, describing the process of trying to get over an old flame when the attraction is so strong: I take care of myself / knowing I will be your bait / at the very first opportunity / Give you myself in a silver plate (...)

Playing With You and Moving On also touch the subject of an old flame, with Barbara being able to acknowledge mistakes from both sides. Bitter in Playing With You, she confesses the wish to see her lover as miserable as she feels, dropping the act and telling the truth. Still, she collects herself in Moving On, giving what may be the last step to get over the relationship: I danced in the eye of the storm / Turned to ashes and howled like a madman / I will take my blame and let you live.

Barbara returns to the topic of facing herself with Stroke, in the happiest of the record. It doesn’t matter what happens, she says, it’s a stroke of luck having myself again.

Call Her is the final track, added to the album only a month before release, forcing the album to be remade and reissued before the official date. The song describes the journey of a rising star known by her scandalous behavior, and the not so bright future it might be upon her. It’s been said that Barbara was inspired by the actress Amèlie Bergstein to write the song.

barbara ann: i was attending one of those boring celebrity parties, looking for the guy i was supposed to be making a deal with. he didn’t show up, jim was nowhere to be found, i didn’t know anyone, i was so pissed off and overwhelmed and then she enters — everybody instantly stops, like they can feel her presence. she was on tv, she was on the movies, amèlie bergstein was the biggest star you could think of. she walks into the room barely acknowledging how shocked everyone is, just smiling, greeting and making her way when she stops and looks right at me. “barbara ann, isn’t that right?”

i remember she took me to the bar and i could barely babble a sentence, even more overwhelmed than before. people were saying she’d get an oscar for black widow, it was the first time i felt so in awe in the presence of someone famous. but she was so charming, she dropped the fancy act and spoke to me in her oklahoman accent after the second sentence. mind you, i could only smile and nod! she said she loved midnight mayhems when we were together. 

my expression probably changed when she mentioned the band, and i remember she pulled me closer and told me make a new record so we’ll have nicer things to talk about. i told her i was finishing one, when i didn’t even know if i’d release it. when a woman like that demands something from you, you just accept it. i got home and started writing call her immediately.

it wasn’t the nicest song ever and i think the lyrics were too obvious and maybe even a bit rude, but people liked it and as soon as she caught up the references, she called me to go meet her and play it exclusively for her. the rest is private.

#barbara ann. #IT'S HEREEEEEEEEEEEE