#in the one time a month we sang the national anthem (I was the only one doing it and I sang under my breath bc I didn't want attention lol)

[endless-summer-soldier]

ice ice baby - chapter ten

pairing: CollegeHockeyPlayer!Bucky x CollegeFigureSkater!Reader

summary: Bucky is a college hockey player, Y/N is a figure skater without a partner. What's happens when these two opposites start sharing the ice...

warnings: enemies to lovers trope, some alcohol use

word count: 4.3k

 taglist: @sebsgirl71479 @whiskeyrosepoetry

series playlist

series masterlist

The team stood on the ice, idling in place as a member of the university acapella group sang the national anthem. It was the first round of the playoffs and Bucky was doing his best to fight off the nerves. He caught Y/N’s eye in the stands and smiled at her, excited that she was there to support him. But her presence made him more nervous because he wanted to impress her.

As the anthem ended and the crowd broke out into applause, the team skated to the sidelines for a drink of water to prepare for the start of the game. Then, an announcement came over the PA system.

“And now we have a very special presentation honoring all our graduating seniors.”

Bucky looked up at the screen in surprise. He peered around to his teammates, but their eyes were all glued to the screen. 

The first message was from Steve’s parents, talking about how proud they were of him and wishing him luck in the game. Then Sam’s sister and his nephews appeared, smiling big and gushing over Sam. As the messages continued, Bucky wondered who his message would be from. It could be from his mother, but they weren’t terribly close. Maybe his younger sister, but he hadn’t spoken with her in a while. His question was answered a moment later when he saw Y/N’s face on the screen.

“Hey Buck,” she smiled at the camera, “I don’t know if you realize how much of an impact you have had on me over the past few months. First you swooped in and saved me by agreeing to be my partner. You persevered through my perfectionism and high standards, impressing both of us, which is when you gained my trust. And then, you pushed me outside of my comfort zone. Aside from my mother, you are the only person that has challenged me to try new things and to just stop and appreciate life every so often. Now, I’m not a very sentimental person and I’m terrible at expressing my feelings, but I mean it when I say that I love you.” 

She gave one more genuine smile at the camera and Bucky subconsciously placed his hand over his heart. He looked up to find her in the crowd and she was already peering down at him, her bottom lip wedged between her teeth. She was nervous about putting herself out there. Bucky gave her the toothiest grin and mouthed “I love you too.” She drew a heart in the air with her two pointer fingers and smiled back at him. Now he was ready to play.

In the last period, the game was tied 2-2. Bucky was playing extremely well. He had to admit, his figure skating lessons had improved his speed and technique, and his opponents weren’t ready for it. 

The clock was ticking down under the two minute mark, and something had to happen. Bucky was not letting this game go into overtime. He looked toward Coach Selvig and made a small T with his hands, signaling for a timeout. Selvig nodded and called for time as the team skated over to the bench.

“I’ve got something,” Bucky told the coach. He dropped his gloves to snag the small white board and marker, drawing out the play he had in mind. As he looked around, his teammates were nodding and Solvig held a thoughtful hand to his chin.

“That could work,” he approved. The team took one final sip of water and then the whistle called them back to the ice. Clint positioned himself in the small circle for the faceoff while everyone else circled around the ice. 

The puck dropped and Clint flicked the puck to Peter, who sped down the ice. Bucky and Steve shielded him on either side, keeping defenders out of his way. Peter looked toward the goal and took a fake shot while actually passing the puck to Sam. Sam skated around the back of the net and attempted to sneak the puck into the corner of the goal. One of the defenders saw it happening too quickly, and got a stick on the shot. The puck spun out toward Steve and he effortlessly collected it, skating around to reset the offense. Bucky gave him space, skating back towards the neutral zone to get a read on possible plays. Clint moved opposite Steve and attempted to get open, but Steve didn’t have many options. He passed the puck back to Sam when Bucky saw an opportunity. He skated in to protect Sam, planning to slam the defender into the ice. But Sam had a different idea.

He passed the puck just ahead of where Bucky was skating to and Bucky sped up to claim it. He was expecting a defender to put some pressure on him any second now, but the moment never came. Bucky continued skating to a wide open goal and found he was playing chicken with the goalie. He leaned toward the right, waiting for the goalie to shift, and as soon as he did, Bucky took a shot to the left. The shot clinked off the goalpost and flew into the back of the net. The lights flashed above the goal and Bucky glanced up at the scoreboard. With a mere 15 seconds left, this game was as good as over.

His teammates pulled him into a tight group hug and he heard the crowd going wild. The refs broke up the celebration and asked the players to reset, preparing for the final faceoff. Clint stood in the middle of the circle and easily won the puck, passing to Steve who skated in a figure eight to kill the time. The air horn blew, calling for the final time and the team celebrated once again. They shook hands with the other team and the opposition quickly filed off the ice. The fans were tossing teddy bears, scarves, and mittens onto the ice to celebrate the team. 

Solvig approached Bucky and gave him a pat on the back before letting him know the broadcast crew wanted to do a quick interview with him. He skated over to the edge of the rink and answered a few basic questions from the anchor. As much as he was loving the victory, all he could think about was Y/N. He wanted to squeeze her tight in his big arms and tell her he loved her over and over again. As he skated away, he saw her standing behind the glass, smiling at him. 

“Come here,” he mouthed and motioned. She looked toward the bench, figuring out how to get past the glass and acted before thinking. She jumped over the barrier onto the bench, and then used the little door to let herself onto the ice. She was surprised to find she didn’t even bother to consider the consequences of this action. She honestly didn’t care if she was forcibly removed from the ice, she just wanted to be with Bucky. 

She trode carefully on the ice in her boots, and Bucky did most of the work, striding toward her with little effort. 

“There you are,” he said, cupping her face with his hands.

“You were amazing. I’m so proud of you!”

“Really?” He said reflexively. It had been a long time since someone said those words to him.

“Of course. Now I can brag to anyone that will listen about my stud of a boyfriend who scored the game winning goal in the playoffs.”

He smiled and bit his bottom lip as a blush spread to his cheeks, “Oh boyfriend, huh?”

“Don’t tell me now you have a problem with labels. I just announced to this whole stadium that I love you!”

He placed a hand around her waist and leaned in close, whispering “I love labels. Almost as much as I love you.” He closed the gap between them in a passionate kiss as her hand found the back of his neck. He leaned her back into a dip and she squealed in his mouth in surprise. 

“Get a room!” Sam yelled. They separated and Bucky returned her to vertical, before telling Sam to shut up. 

“Now the real question is, how are we celebrating?”

T W O  Y E A R S  L A T E R

“I can’t believe this is really happening,” Y/N whispered to Bucky. The two were dressed head-to-toe in red and blue Ralph Lauren layers that consisted of a sweater donning the American flag, a buffalo plaid puffer, blue and red boots, and navy blue beanies with the American Olympic Committee logo. The only difference in their ensembles was that Y/N had on a pair of sleek navy leggings, while Bucky was in white snow pants.

“I feel…puffy…” she managed to say.

“Well you look adorable. You know I can’t resist you in a beanie,” he said, planting a wet kiss on her cheek.

She blushed before pushing him away, reminding him that they were about to walk out with the rest of their country representatives. It was the opening ceremonies for the Olympics and all that was required of them for tonight was to walk out with their flag, smile, and wave at the crowd. Yet this was the moment that everything hit Y/N; not only was her dream coming true, but she was doing it with Bucky at her side. 

As much as she would’ve loved to compete with Bucky, it wasn’t possible with his hockey schedule. She found another partner who skated well and was easy to work with. She still turned to Bucky for music recommendations, wanting to keep the crowd and judges on the edge of their seats.

Bucky had made the US hockey team with ease. He’d been playing in the minor league and practicing with the national team whenever warranted. He was drafted by the Boston Bruins after graduation and was scheduled to start practicing with the team following the Olympic games.

Y/N had been training in Lake Placid, which was close enough to Boston for them to see each other when they had free time. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked fine. Bucky’s latest campaign was for Y/N to move to Boston and move in with him after the Olympics. She wasn’t convinced just yet. She had to figure out what her next step was career wise. This would likely be her only Olympics but she wasn’t quite ready to hang up her skates. 

“This is it,” Bucky interrupted her thoughts and grasped her hand, as they prepared for the big stage.

She turned to him and said, “No one I’d rather have by my side.”

Y/N had her headphones in and was stretching in an attempt to release the stress she was currently harboring. She was next up to skate and was feeling more nervous than she expected. This was the biggest stage she’d ever skated on and she was trying not to let the pressure get the best of her.

She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to find her partner Scott, smiling at her. If he was nervous, he wasn’t showing it. He asked if she was ready because they were on next and she merely nodded. The routine was great, but technically challenging. Even the slightest misstep could ruin the whole thing. She pulled herself together and followed Scott to their on deck position.

She was practicing her deep breathing to center herself when Scott nudged her arm ever so slightly. She turned to him, curiously and he merely pointed out toward the crowd. Y/N peered out into the crowd and found the entire USA hockey team seated behind the judges at the top few rows of the arena. Her mouth turned upward into a smile when she saw Bucky leading the pack with a “Y/N for Gold” poster above his head. He never ceased to amaze her. After two years of being together, he still managed to pull off the perfect surprises. The butterflies in her stomach never quite went away when he was around. He caught her gaze and gave her a thumbs up as if to say “You’ve got this.” She carefully placed her fingers to her lips and blew him a gentle kiss. Bucky caught the symbolic kiss in his fist before placing it over his heart. 

Y/N turned to Scott with a nod and said, “I’m ready.”

Everything was a blur. Y/N and Scott completed the routine, but she did so without thinking about it. It was like she was commuting to work and all the sudden she pulled into the parking lot, realizing she hadn’t paid any attention to how she got there. On ice, the specifics of the routine weren’t on her mind; she was thinking about Bucky and the first time they skated together. It was a mess, he was all over the place. And yet, they built something out of nothing. Her mind then drifted to their routine at nationals. Bucky pushed her out of her comfort zone, creating an edge over the competition she didn’t realize was possible. Being on the ice with him that day felt magical. The only time she had felt like that before was the first time she skated with her mom. Now, being here on the biggest stage imaginable, she realized that the competition didn’t matter. All that mattered was her happiness. And Bucky gave her that.

She was released from her thoughts when Scott shook her shoulders and smiled at her. She mirrored his expression before glancing up at the rankings, where she saw their names at the top of the board, claiming the highest score of the competition so far. She glanced up into the crowd and saw the US hockey team cheering wildly and all she wanted was to climb up those stands and throw her arms around Bucky. 

Before she knew it, she was standing on the podium and they were placing an Olympic gold medal around her neck. This was the moment she had dreamed about her whole life, and yet something was missing. She smiled for the cameras and teared up imagining her mother cheering her on in the afterlife, but what she really wanted was Bucky by her side.

After the medal ceremony, there were several news interviews that she took with Scott and she provided the generic responses she had mentally rehearsed in preparation for this moment. Apart from wanting to find Bucky, she really just felt relieved that all the build up to the competition was finally over. She could finally relax and enjoy being across the world with her person.

Once the press frenzy was over, Y/N and Scott retired to their dressing room, where they would collect their things and head to the dormitories. They were both emotionally drained from all the attention, but they still had smiles plastered on their faces.

As soon as they opened the door, Y/N first noticed the “Y/N for Gold” sign propped up against the vanity and then she found Bucky sitting in her chair, phone out but head turned toward her. In a millisecond, he was up and had Y/N spinning off the ground in his arms.

“There’s my superstar!” he gushed, squeezing her as tight as he could. “You crushed it out there, Ace!”

When he put her down, he greeted Scott with a fist bump and complimented him on a flawless routine. Scott quickly collected his things and announced that he would head back so that they could have some time alone with each other, much to the couple’s appreciation.

Y/N nuzzled into Bucky’s shoulder, happy to be in his arms again.

“Can I tell you something?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Watching you skate today took my breath away. I’ve seen you skate before, but it’s different being with you on the ice. I was always focused more on what my next move was. But tonight, I was able to focus all my attention on you and you were absolutely incredible. I love that I was able to be here to see years of hard work pay off. I am so unbelievably proud of you.” He kissed the top of her head and pulled her in closer.

His words were so genuine and kind that she didn’t know how to react. The only thing she could manage back was, “I love you so much.” She pulled her head off his shoulder and planted a sweet kiss on his lips. As they separated, Bucky held her eyes for a moment and he never felt so connected or so in love. 

“You know what, fuck it,” he muttered to himself. Y/N looked at him, confused, and it was only when he held her hands and got down on one knee did she realize what was happening.

“I had a whole plan for how I was going to do this. We were going to go out to a beautiful dinner on a yacht and the server would bring out a chocolate mousse for dessert and right on top would be the ring. But something about this moment just feels right. You’re standing in front of me in your team USA tracksuit with a gold medal around your neck and all I can think about is how desperately I want to marry you. And please know I don’t want to overshadow your Olympic victory at all, I just can’t spend another day calling you my girlfriend when I want you to be my fiance. So, Y/F/N Y/L/N, will you marry me?”

The tears had started dropping before he was finished. It wasn’t until Bucky lifted his eyebrows that she realized she hadn’t responded.

“Yes, absolutely yes. I would love to marry you.”

He nearly jumped up from his knee to pick her up and smother her with kisses. 

“I love you so much. Did I say that? I don’t think I said that,” Bucky rambled.

“I know Bucky. I love you too.”

He carefully put her down and slid the ring onto her delicate finger.

“Can we still go to dinner on the yacht? Because that sounds really lovely.”

He chuckled, “Hell yeah we’re still doing that. Now we have a reason to celebrate.”

“Okay good. We should get out of here though, you have a big game tomorrow.”

“Yeah okay, but only if you stay and cuddle with me tonight.”

“Now you know I can’t say no to my fiance,” she smiled up at him. He planted a kiss on her head before they collected her things and headed out.

Y/N was seated in the stands, a few rows behind the team, dressed in her team USA gear. The hockey team was warming up to face Canada, a major rival in Olympic hockey. USA and Canada had a history of facing each other in the gold medal game, and this year was no different. She sat there, twisting her engagement ring in an attempt to calm her nerves. Bucky was so close to achieving his goal and she wanted it so badly for him. He was the reason all her dreams came true and he deserved to win something too.

“Excuse me, are you Y/N?” An older man approached her side with a woman who she assumed was his wife. 

“Yes, I am,” she responded.

He extended his hand, “Hi, I’m Joe Rogers and this is my wife, Sarah. We’re Steve’s parents.”

Her expression changed from confused to delight, “Oh, hi! So great to meet you.”

“We’ve heard a lot about you,” Sarah said. 

“Likewise! I should probably thank you for all the support you’ve shown Bucky. He’s spoken so highly about you both and I know he wouldn’t be here today without you.”

“He’s always been a good kid, he just fell into the wrong group. Watching him grow up to be a wonderful young man has been priceless,” Joe said. It warmed my heart that they spoke so highly of Bucky.

“How lucky are we that our Stevie and James both made the team!” Sarah exclaimed. 

“Those two are inseparable. I don’t think they would’ve been able to function being apart for this long,” Y/N added. On top of both making the USA team, they had both been drafted by the Bruins.

Sarah and Joe chuckled and they continued chatting like old friends, keeping Y/N’s mind off her game day nerves. But that only lasted until the opening face off; once the puck was in play, she started twisting her ring again.

Into the third period, the score was 0-0. Both teams were playing extremely well on both sides of the ice, and both goalies saved several shots on goal. While Bucky and Steve were both playing really well, they had nothing to show for it on the scoreboard. It was easy to see why the two had been drafted together; they had a connection on the ice that was telepathic, each knowing exactly where the other was and what they were thinking.

And then, out of nowhere, Canada scored a goal. It happened so quickly that Y/N nearly missed it. One of the players took a shot on the goal and the puck skimmed one of his teammates skates, changing the angle ever so slightly that the goalie didn’t pick up on. It was rotten luck, but sometimes that happened in ice hockey.

There were only three minutes left in the game, but that was more than enough time. It only took a few seconds to score, but the team would have to keep the puck on the offensive side of the ice. Team USA pulled their goalie and added another man on the ice, knowing it wouldn’t make a difference if Canada scored again. 

They did a great job moving the puck around and clearing out space for their teammates, but the goalie stopped every attempt at a goal. This didn’t discourage the team, as they continued to attack on offense, but as the clock ticked down, the reality of the situation was setting in. The final buzzer rang and team Canada circled up in a big group hug. Y/N watched Bucky look up at the scoreboard before hanging his head in defeat.

“They put up such a good fight. At least they can be proud of how they played,” Sarah said. Y/N nodded, agreeing with her statement but knowing Bucky would still be crushed.

“A silver medal is still a great accomplishment,” Joe added.  

Both teams took off their helmets and lined up on the ice to receive their medals. The Canadians were all smiles while the Americans put on a brave face, but the disappointment was evident behind their eyes. Y/N couldn’t help but tear up a little when Bucky received his silver medal. It wasn’t exactly the outcome they wanted, but she was still incredibly proud of him for coming this far and never giving up.

Once the medal ceremony was over, both teams retreated to the locker room. Joe and Sarah asked Y/N if she wanted to go with them to meet Steve but she passed, knowing Bucky would want some space to process everything before socializing. She sat in the empty arena and watched the zamboni smooth the ice, wondering what she could say to cheer up Bucky.

Once a sufficient amount of time had passed, Y/N wandered out of the arena to find the locker rooms. She poked her head behind the door labeled Team USA and found silence. She took that as a sign to continue and wandered through the rows of lockers, looking for her fiance. She found him lying on the bench, staring at the ceiling tiles, recently showered and dressed in his team USA track suit.

“Hey you,” she said, taking a seat next to his head. Her hands instinctively found their way to the side of his face and she started lightly playing with his hair.

He didn’t say anything, but his eyes floated upwards to find her. 

“Let me see it,” she demanded.

“See what?”

“Your medal!”

“It’s not as cool as yours,” he said, handing her the silver medal that had been tucked in his palm.

“Honestly, this will make for a more interesting display in the house. We’ve got two out of three!.”

“It’s not even about the medal. Or losing for that matter.”

“What’s it about then?”

He let out a deep exhale before he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bench so he was almost facing her.

“When you won that gold medal, I felt so full. I was proud of you and I was grateful that I was there to witness your achievement. And I wanted you to feel that way today with me. I wanted to see you smiling in the crowd as they put the gold medal around my neck.”

He hung his head and Y/N leaned into his shoulder and grabbed his hands.

“Bucky, I had that moment today. Despite my best efforts, I cried a little bit when you received your medal. Of course I am proud of you. I’m proud of you for just making it to the Olympics. Winning a medal is even more amazing. And most of all, I’m proud that you never gave up. You left everything you had out there on the ice. I know you didn’t get the outcome you expected, but there is still so much that you should be proud of.”

He turned to her, “How do you always know the perfect thing to say?” 

She placed a hand on his cheek, “Because I know you Buck. And I love you more than anything.”

He leaned into her and they shared a kiss that embodied their emotional connection. When the moment felt right, Y/N stood up and held her hand out for Bucky. He took it without hesitation and the two walked hand in hand out of the locker room.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get your gold medal,” she offered, as her final words of comfort.

“Don’t be sorry, I’ve got my gold medal right here.”  

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes hockey player #bucky barnes

[bowtiesnmusicals]

Here is my recap of the Game Changer (Hell-O) episode of the podcast.

This episode aired April 13, 2010. It aired 4 months after the first 13 episodes of Glee.

The #1 song was Rude Boy by Rihanna

The #1 movie was Clash of the Titans.

During the break the cast went to the Golden Globes for the first time.

The show won for the Best Television Series Musical or Comedy after only 13 episodes.

The cast was drunk but also in total shock when they won.

The Golden Globes has a very long carpet. They only did half of it because it was raining.

They partied their booties off that night.

A week later was the SAG Awards. Glee won Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy. They met Meryl Streep that night. The SAG Awards are fun because they are voted on by your peers.

Jenna has been a SAG member since she was six or seven years old.

When you win an award at the SAG Awards you get to take it home that night.

The after parties were crazy.

In April 2010 the cast went on the Oprah Winfrey Show and that same weekend went to the White House for the Easter Egg Roll.

The Oprah show built a set mimicking the McKinley choir room. They even changed the logo to to mimic the Glee logo.

They had sound check for the Easter Egg Roll on Easter Sunday. Beau, the Obama’s dog ran up to them. Sarah Bareilles was also there. Amber sang the National Anthem. Kevin said it was the greatest moment of his life. Barack and Michelle Obama are Amber Riley fans.

Kevin met Reese Witherspoon at the White House and forgot.

This episode feels like a reintroduction of the show.

You get a rehash of Glee club needing to win to get funding, Finchel, and Wemma. There is a lot of recycled ideas in this episode.

This is not Jenna’s favorite episode.

Kevin and Jenna both agree that Glee struggled with those first episodes back from a break.

Half of the Frozen cast is in this episode. Idina Menzel and Johnathan Geoff were in this episode. This is the episode where we were introduced to Jesse St. James and Idina was introduced as Shelby Corcoran.

This episode had songs by some big artists like The Beatles, AC/DC, Neil Diamond, The Doors, and Lionel Richie. The show maybe now had the power and money to get these bigger named artists.

They do a bit of a recap of the plot of the episode.

There are a lot of cringe and did not age well jokes in this episode.

There are some weird timeline things that happen in this episode.

This is the beginning of the inconsistencies.

It was like the school had taken a break while Glee was on break.

We get to see Jessalyn (Terri) again in this episode. It was very exciting to see Jessalyn(Terri) and Jayma(Emma) in a scene together.

Kevin said seeing the dvds in this episode really aged it.

They have done this before but we see Finn and Will’s romantic/love lives being mirrored. It’s a little weird considering they are a student and teacher.

The scene of Sue cutting the guys ponytail I real. Jane talked about in the ask me anything episode.

What do you say when you answer the phone? We finally get to the lesson for the Glee club.

Chris saying no she’s dead this is her son is so good.

Why Hello? It feels like there was a note from the studio to reintroduce themselves. It was like a rebranding of the show.

Jenna says everyone looks a bit better at this point. Everyone is looking a bit more glamorous.

Is this the first time we see Sue on here elliptical?

We see more sets in this half of the season. The show had a bigger budget now.

Brittany had great one liners in this episode. One of them being is we were seduced by the glitz and glamour of show biz.

There is a lot of great Santana and Brittany in this episode.

Cory’s tattoo was poorly covered up in the basketball scene. It looks like he has a really big bruise around his arm.

Finn’s line about wanting to be like Coach Tanaka who pulled a Jessica Simpson, lost his fiancée, gained 40lbs, stopped showering and everyone acts like its totally normal is just horrible. It’s really bad. We have learned. It was a different time.

Rachel is the crazy girlfriend that no one wants.

She is suffocating Finn.

It was nice to see Cory perform but this feels like a weird shoehorned song.

Cory sounds really good.

Brittany and Santana linking pinkies and being up to no good was the best.

This was the first time we see Breadstix.

Breadstix was not a set. It was a cafeteria on the Paramount lot. This meant that the scenes at Breadstix would be the last scene of the night because they would have to close the cafeteria to film.

The cast hated it because it meant a long day for the them but some of the best scenes came out of Breadstix.

Jenna doesn’t like Give You Hell so it was hard to watch.

Jenna thinks that the scene with Rachel and Jesse was shot at a real library.

Johnathan was nervous doing his first scene with Lea.

Lea introduced Jenna to everyone when she joined Spring Awakening. Lea and Johnathan were called mom and dad when they were in Spring Awakening. Jenna thought they were dating.

Why is there a piano in the library?

The Brittana scene with Finn is one of the best and greatest scenes from Glee. It is iconic. Santana says the food was bad and wants to send the food back even thought they have eaten it all. Brittany says there was a mouse in hers.

Santana says I think that dwarf girlfriend of his is dragging down his rep. If he were say dating popular pretty girls like us he would go from dumpy to smokin. They are talking about and ranking the boys at schools and completely ignoring Finn. Finn chimes in that he would like to be a part of the conversation. Santana said let me break this down for you, you buy us dinner and we make out in front of you. It’s the best deal ever. Then basically says can you go wait in the car and leave your credit card.

Then we get the most iconic line ever from Brittany: Did you now that dolphins are just gay sharks? It’s one of the most famous if not the most famous lines from Glee. It’s on shirts. This line was definitely from Ian Brennan.

This makes Finn realize he wants to be with Rachel.

Highway To Hell is a wild number. Groff sounds insane and amazing. They pull out all the stops for Vocal Adrenaline .They were using pyro at rehearsal.

Shelby says it’s like watching beige paint dry.

Shelby says insulting things but is not mean about it and makes you want to believe her.

Schue has a revolving door of women. He makes out with everyone.

Everyone finds out about Rachel and Jesse. Kurt says cut the butter Benedict Arnold. Chris has great comedic timing.

We get one more great Lauren Zizes moments with her being in the Old Maids Club. This was the beginning of Ashley Fink making everyone laugh.

When Rachel and Jesse kiss Jesse gives a sly look to Shelby who his hiding in the wings.

This is Rachel’s 5th guy in 14 episodes. Her and Will are making their way around.

Now Finn is chasing Rachel.

Kevin and Jenna each had two lines in this episode.

Everyone was vomiting during Hello Goodbye. Amber, Lea, and possibly someone else had the flu. They come of the riser and do the hand gesture and then someone would run off to the side to get sick. Naya might also have been sick.

Jenna and Kevin had started living together at this point.

Kevin said this number looks weirdly clean.

In the first 13 episodes they had more time to learn the dances and record the songs. This was when the conveyer belt was starting. They had figured out the rhythm and timing to getting everything done in a timely manner.

Tartie Takes:

Cringe Moments: There are so many. The Jessica Simpson joke. The Katrina joke. The seppuku joke.

Worst Dance Move: Gives You Hell and running off stage to throw up

Best Song: Hello Goodbye and Highway to Hell

Best Prop: The pyro

Best Lines: Did you know dolphins are just gay sharks?

Shit We Found On Tiktok:

An associate professor in chemistry did a video of Say A Little Prayer. It is absolutely incredible. They have costume changes and an overhead shot.

The is the reintroduction to the reintroduction of Glee.

Next week is very exciting. It is the Power of Madonna.

#and that’s what you really missed #atwyrm #jenna ushkowitz #kevin mchale #glee #podcast

[paperstarwriters]

Mercury?

This is terribly written and I am so sorry for that. I barely edited this and it shows. I just wanted the Autobots to learn about Bohemian Rhapsody is that so bad?

——————————————————

It was a peaceful day. Megatron and his Decepticons were currently off of their radar for the time being, but that didn't mean that they could be lax. Peace never lasted long. For war torn veterans of war, peace was to be cherished, not squandered. For children who felt more entertained at being put at danger than they did afraid, peace was "Boring", and they sought to make that evidently clear to everyone in the room. 

Ah, correction. She.

Jack and Raf were sensible enough to be weary whenever the Deceptions reared their collective heads around. Miko however often acted as if she could fight Primus himself with nothing more than a screwdriver. Miko liked to brag that she'd do it with her bare hands. They hadn't believed her for a good while, until she tried to threaten Megatron during their weary truce. Ratchet argued that it still made him anxious every time he saw Miko run off somewhere, no matter how mundane, and most of the team was inclined to agree. Wheeljack was regarded as a different case entirely.

Now, Miko wasn't so cruel as to beg fate to send a Deception attack their way. She did, in her own way, appreciate peace. Just not the peace that they wanted. Because of this, Miko often brought the odd item to the base. Her guitar and sound system, a video game for the TV. Miko bringing in a new toy was almost expected whenever peace stretched on for longer than an hour. 

"Looooook what I got!!" Miko cheered slinging herself out of Bulkhead's seat, holding a large and clunky looking box with her. For all they knew, she could be holding a small bomb, but by Jack and Raf's unimpressed reactions it didn’t' seem to be anything too troubling.

"Geez, that thing looks ancient, where'd you get it from?" Jack asked, pressing on the buttons of the box tentatively. "Besides, we have the bots for that don't we? Or, well you guys do."

Miko scoffed rolling her eyes. "Oh come on Jack. It’s a boom box! It's a part of the aesthetic!!"

Bulkhead, who listened in more blatantly than the others, cast a weary glance to the 'boom box' in question. "Uh, Miko, you still haven't told me what that thing does…"

"It's like a radio, the kind you guys have, only bigger and clunkier." Raf explained. "Where did you get it?

At this Miko puffed up her chest proudly brandishing the box over her shoulder. "Ms. Fairfax was cleaning some stuff out, and guess who just so happened to be there after school to collect this beauty!"  

Jack rolled his eyes though he grinned while he did. "You were only there because you were in detention." 
 

Miko stuck out her tongue. "That doesn’t matter. What matters is that now, I've got this!"  

Hitting a button on the box Miko opened a compartment and retrieved a smaller box from within the boom box. This thing was flatter and telling by Jack's reaction, no more impressive than the boom box. At this point, however, Miko's chaos seemed to garner everyone's attention, and even Optimus who was busy at the base's main computers, leaned in a little to see what was going on.

"A cassette?" Raf asked, perhaps for the sake of their audience.

"Not just any cassette!"

Miko put the cassette back into the box, and hit another button. There was a weighty silence which should have been filled with Optimus' typing and Ratchet's tinkering, and whatever else anyone was pretending to do while they listened. And then a voice began to sing And then a song began to play


Raf and Jack spared a glance to one another, and grinned.

Since their enlistment in the team, the humans have given the bots a very in depth lesson on different types of music. Miko did most often, but Raf also introduced Ratchet to his 'study playlist', filled with classical earth music that Raf said helped him concentrate. Ratchet shrugged at the offer made a comment about 'limited earth technology', then proceeded to play the entire playlist on loop deep into the night, as he worked away with Optimus by his side. Jack offered his own tastes with Arcee and Bee, a playlist of some popular songs, or even some that he admitted were lesser known. There were some that had a very valiant theme, and when Bee and Arcee raced they'd sometimes use Jack's music to race to. Even agent Fowler gave his own few songs that he enjoyed, though the lyrics were rather off putting to most of the team.

One clear lesson that the bots took from it all was that music tastes varied, and what might be popular to one, was bizarre and unknown to another—even among humans. Jack and Raf knew popular local songs, but miko did not. Jack knew more 'pop' songs than Raf did, and Raf knew more classical music. Amidst the three it was long deemed impossible for them to all know a song without having to teach the others before hand.

And yet.

Miko started as soon as the music began to play, nearly yelling all the lyrics to the song, before Raf and Jack joined in enthusiastically. It was jarring, a rather slow paced song, treated with such fervor and excitement from the three. Ratchet groaned at the noise, returning to his work, but he did not ask them to stop. On the other hand (with the exception of Optimus who simply smiled as he continued to listen and to work), most of the team had given up on pretending and approached the three singers as an audience. The lyrics were filled with meaning that twisted the children's faces into a dramatic agony while the guitar picked up. Miko nailed the solo, on her air guitar her hands moving with less of her usual overdramatic flash, and with a flare as if she were holding the guitar, and had memorized every chord. Jack and Raf bashed at the air, a trick foreign to Bee and Arcee, but known as 'air drums' to the resident air drumming star, Bulkhead.

The song took a drastic switch from melodramatic, to a more playful piano melody, and a lot of nonsensical words that the children never sang at precisely the right moment. Many parts of the song sounded like a conversation, but they could never decide who was speaking first and who spoke second. And then, after a high note that Miko almost hit, it erupted into a rock style burst, and the kids had at it, with headbanging, careless air guitars and air drums. The energy was infectious, and those who had taken the front row seats, danced about with the others for what was a surprisingly short rock moment.

The song mellowed out all over again and the kids sang it out dutifully until the very end marked by a crash that Miko mimicked while Raf air played the instrument.

For such a bizarre mix of music from slow to fast to slow again, the bots caught themselves on various occasions humming and nodding their head to the song. On occasion, if the kids weren’t around with their own music, Bulkhead would play the song from his speakers. Sometimes Arcee would sing a line or two, and if Bee was around, all three of them would end up half muttering and half singing the song. Bee and Bulkhead usually tried to  sing with the same kind of fervor that the kids had. Sometimes even Ratchet complained that he had the song stuck in his head. It didn't stop him from tapping his pede whenever Bulkhead played it.

On one rare day with Optimus on curbside duty, he had the chance to see just how many humans knew the song. Miko was playing it loud on her boom box, and a small crowd of eagerly dramatic singers followed her and her music. Yet, that wasn’t all. Kids on the sidelines sang idly along, even as some worked away at homework. Optimus patiently waited for the song to finish, and when he did, he opened his door and let the kids in.

They told adamant tales about how the song could be sung with near perfection by a sea of people and how besides a country's national anthem, this was the rare song that everyone seemed to know. There were others of course, but that depended on the place, generation, and community. None apparently reached as far as Freddie Mercury's Rhapsody. Truly the final nail in the coffin was when Bulkhead was playing the song, the kids humming along, having long forgone singing every time it came on, and Agent Fowler walked in. He looked like he was about to bark about something, only to stop as he noted the song. Clearly, whatever it was was not so important if he could be so easily swayed. 
 

Optimus asked him about the song, and if he knew it, and Fowler took (what Optimus now understood was) mock offence and told Bulkhead to turn it up. Agent fowler sung the remaining song brilliantly, getting the kids to join in with him as well. Fowler even hit the high note which earned a pat on the back which may as well have been a shove from Miko.

From then on, Optimus put effort into learning the song.

He quickly understood that his deep voice would not be able to reach the high note, but he put in effort on the rest of the song, to the point that he knew the song by heart. He appreciated the lyrics, finding them both odd and  sympathetic at the same time, which he told Ratchet when he responded to his idle humming of the song with a muttered singing of all of the lyrics. Ratchet still stared at him oddly for it.

With Optimus followed Bulkhead, and Bee, and reluctantly, Arcee. Even more reluctantly so, Ratchet, who on another night of working away, asked Optimus for the lyrics to the song. He handed them over without question or comment, but Ratchet still avoided his gaze days later.

So, it was no wonder, that nearly a month later, after Miko had gained a collection of songs for her boom box, that when the song played again, the whole team broke out into song. Uneven, wonky song where they sometimes stumbled over who was singing what, but they sang it nonetheless, too caught up in the melody to notice that the kids had stopped to stare at them. They sung as they worked, nonchalantly for some and with playful vigour for others. When they did realize that they hadn't sung, the gong had already sounded.

"No way." Miko hissed, eyeing both Optimus and Ratchet. Optimus stood proud as ever, while in contrast Ratchet avoided eye contact.

And they played the song again, arguing that they wanted to sing with them. It was the most horrible and amazing experience they all shared together singing the song terribly whenever it came on. It was fun and silly, and planted firmly in everyone's processor to teach their friends the song as soon as they could.

The next day, Miko (by harassing Agent Fowler) hauled in a karaoke machine, and smiled.

#Transformers #Primus this is so terribly written #I am so sorry #Optimus prime #ratchet #bumblebee #bulkhead #arcee #jack darby #miko nakadai #rafael esquivel #Transformers prime #tfp #transformers memes #Crack fic

[pedropascalunofficial]

My Cousin, Pedro Pascal

Ximena Riquelme

16 NOV 2017 12:53 PM

Before being the protagonist of Narcos or filming with Colin Firth, José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal (42) was a child whom I knew very well because we are from the same family. A man who today looks with nostalgia and some perplexity at his place of origin and his history and who still does not answer what would have happened if he had stayed here.

The first memory I have of Pedro is in the arms of my mother during his baptism, in the garden of my house. She was a weeping bus and had huge black eyes. I was 9 years old. It was cloudy. Years later I learned that the priest was Gerardo Whelan, the legendary rector of Saint George's College. Pedro's parents were not at his baptism: my uncle, José Balmaceda, my mother's only male brother, and his wife Verónica Pascal were asylees at the Venezuelan embassy, which was on Bustos street, near my house. Pepe, as we used to say to my uncle, who years later would become a famous gynecologist, an expert in fertilization, was then a 27-year-old young doctor, in those days wanted by Dina. Some time before they had hidden Andrés Pascal Allende, Mirista and his wife's uncle. One day they came to take him to the José Joaquín Aguirre Hospital and he managed to escape by jumping through the roofs. It was October 1975.

Like most of the Chilean families, there were supporters of both sides in mine: for and against Pinochet. Trying to help Pedro's parents, my dad called a relative who held a high position in the Army. "Tell the children to get asylum, because I cannot guarantee their lives or that nothing happens to Veronica," was his reply. She was 22 years old. Then began the journey of my uncles and with them that of my cousin José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal. Pepe and Verónica had to start living secretly in different houses. Pedro, who was only 6 months old at the time, and his 3-year-old sister Javiera were left in charge of my mother's older sister, "Aunt Juani."

The second memory I have of Pedro is when I accompanied my parents, who carried him and his sister in their arms, to stand on the sidewalk in front of the Venezuelan embassy so that their parents could see them through the window.

My uncles left the Venezuelan embassy for the airport in January 1976, Pedro was 9 months old and obviously does not remember anything. I just remember that they didn't let me go. Pedro could not record the image, which I could not see, of his grandfather Luis Pascal Vigil - a very prominent lawyer - singing the National Anthem on the balcony of Pudahuel. A memory that is not mine but that I adopted, for cute.

As the people of the International Red Cross advised our family on time, Pedro and his sister did not leave the embassy with their parents, but arrived directly at the airport: this allowed their passports not to be stamped with the "L" for " limited to circulate "that stamped on the exiles who left. Therefore, the years that Pedro and Javiera came could come to Chile without problems. And for that reason, the choclón of cousins, we were able to share long summers in Pucón and some winters in Santiago.

The Balmaceda Pascal first arrived in Aarhus, Denmark, in October 1976. A year later they left for San Antonio, Texas, where Pedro's father was able to continue improving himself thanks to a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. Veronica earned a PhD in Child Psychology.

________________________________________

"But Denmark is invisible to me," Pedro writes me by email. A while ago I proposed to interview him at a distance to travel a little about his history, and here we are, in front of the computer, sharing memories. "It is invisible to me, like everything that happened before. Although once, after telling him about my childhood, a doctor told me that the temporary separation with my mother was trapped in the memory of my body and that I could remember it through the senses".

My cousin, far away

The third memory I have of Pedro is a summer in Pucón. It must have been in 1978. "Pepelo", as we said, was no longer a guagua but a restless, very blond boy, who was so impacted by poverty in Chile that when he went out on the street with his gringo accent, he asked any person: "Are you poor?" He took food out of the pantry and gave it away. With my cousins we rented a warm wooden house, colorful, with the door frames out of square. It was summers with trips to those black sand beaches that burned the feet and picnics in Caburgua with lamb on the stick. They took us to mass and Pedro sang very inspired.

"This is where the memories become more vivid, like dreams," he writes. "I remember so many details: my older cousins, children my age who were like family. The beach seemed endless. I also remember running down the hallways and stairs of Aunt Juani's house looking for Santa Claus at Christmas."

XR: What was it like leaving your parents in the United States?

PP: "I think the trauma was going back to the States, although I obviously wanted to be with my parents. But childhood in Chile, with the Balmaceda and Pascal, was a dream, a world where nothing was missing, pure adventure and love."

Now that he tells me that, I remember that image of Pedro hanging on the neck of our aunt Juani, crying in Pudahuel because she did not want to return. At that time going to the airport was a panorama: we were going en masse to leave him and his sister, who traveled in charge of the stewardesses.

In 1981 I went with my parents and my two sisters to see the Balmaceda Pascal in Texas. I remember an eternal road trip from Miami, I remember Pedro's house, in a middle-class neighborhood, comfortable, beautiful, lovingly arranged by his mother. I remember the tears of my mother and Pedro's mother when we said goodbye to return to Chile. We still didn't know when they could return. Although Pedro never fully returned.

In December 1983, Pepe and Verónica were able to enter Chile. The whole family was packed on the terrace of Pudahuel, waiting for them. I remember the Balmaceda Pascal walking from the stairs of the plane to the International Police. I remember them happy, triumphant. Pedro was 8 years old and chose to stay in my house, in love with my girl sister.

We all went to Quintero, to the house of our grandfather Pepe, a great smoker, tennis player, and fanatic fanatic who took us to the town cinema to see double Tora! Programs, Tora !, Tora! More Bridges on the River Kwai and other old movies. Surely Pedro had to see several. Since he was a boy he said he wanted to be a "director". He liked horror movies and was a big movie consumer, like his dad.

PP: "I remember going to the movies with the cousins and the grandfather to see anything with Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone. They leased me VHS movies to see alone and happy."

XR: You once recited Hamlet on the beach with Grandpa.

PP: "No, it was Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller. I was about 14 years old. I videotaped it and lost the fucking camera on the trip back to the United States."

After that summer, Pedro began to come more sporadically. He was already grown up, at school and then at university. They had moved to Newport Beach, California. His father was doing very well. But Pedro, not so much.

PP: "I think that the way the family supported me in Chile was the opposite of what I experienced in Newport Beach. I started well in California but at 13 years old, very involved in the cinema, reading plays, books, TV, TV, TV, obsessed with these things, I had the bad luck to find few like me. It was a world very attached to conservatism and its privileges where not fitting was punished. There was a group of shitty goats who were my friends the first year and became my terrors thereafter. I don't enjoy remembering that time, but there are deep connections from back then. Friends of my parents who are like parents until today."

Pedro's mom soon found a performance arts program at a high school in another district. A more inclusive school compared to Corona del Mar, the neighborhood where they lived in Newport.

PP: "My mom and my driver's license were my salvation. There I was able to unleash my appetite for movies and theater without limits."

As time went by Pedro became a fun, provocative teenager with character. He said he was "lazy", but he went to study Theater at NYU in 1993 and he loved it. I started to see it less. When he came to Chile he went out with his friends, I was already married and having children.

XR: Did you find that our way of life was very boring?

PP: "Bored, no. But overwhelming regarding life's permanent decisions. I didn't have the Catholic structure, and I felt there was no room for a young guy like me. Like suddenly, from one trip of mine to another, you had lives that included marriages and children, and pleasing the visits of the gringo cousin was no longer an option for all of you. I had to duel, because I was jealous of his inattention."

XR: Do you find us very conservative?

PP: "Yes, but it is a major contradiction for me. I come from the perspective that no one can decide how someone else should live their life. And well, in our family there are social rules that are very firm. I think that a person has the right to live his life conservatively or wildly as long as he does not negatively impact anyone or tries to embarrass others by his lifestyle. I don't touch these issues very much with our family for fear of hearing their perspective, but what I do know is that if I ever needed help I could ask any member of our family by the name of Balmaceda, and I would get it."

In 1995, Pedro's parents returned to Chile with their two youngest children, Nicolás and Lucas, who had been born in California. Javiera also came for a couple of years. Pedro stayed in the United States.

PP: "It was a very scary period. I grew up with my family in the United States and from one day to the next there was no home to return to. Suddenly the idea of the safe nest was gone. It was shocking because in previous years I took for granted the privileged life we had in California. I never thought that this could change as suddenly as happened to my parents when they became exiles. Everything felt fragile. Also, I knew that my parents' marriage was wrong and that the tension of those circumstances was hardly going to end. My mother's life felt in danger and the line between needing her, being there for her and finishing my studies and pursuing a career was a horrible conflict. I knew that my mom wanted me to continue doing mine, she never would have wanted me to sacrifice it."

XR: Did you really resent the failure of your parents' marriage?

PP: "For me it was the hardest time. I have not been able, and I do not know if someday I will be able to reconcile completely how my parents separated and the tragedy that came after that separation. The circumstances of my mother's death made it very hard for us to keep her memory of who she was. It hurts so much ... Sometimes I feel distressed and try to face it in the best possible way, because I know that my mother would not like me to do it in any other way."

Pedro lost his mother when he was 24 years old.

PP: "It's hard to say what I remember most about her. You met her, so it is easy for you to understand that she was the love of my life. I think of her every day. Since I don't pray, I can't say that I have a practice to feel her close, but I live for her even though she's gone, and that makes sense to me."

From Alexander to Pedro

XR: Do you believe that pain makes us stronger or does it seem like a horrible cliché?

PP: "I don't think it's a terrible cliche but a profound reality. In some way, losing the most important person in your life, discovering that something like this is possible and that what you fear most in life can happen is an identifiable and permanent moment. There is a before and after after his death. I think, yes, that old age would not have been for my mother, there would have been no footwear with her. Of course, no one wants to grow old, but others can handle it better. I would not have liked to see my mom struggling with it, but at the same time, I wish I had her every day still with me."

It may have been the summer of 2012. Pedro said to our aunt Juani: "I am 37 years old and I still can't get what I want. And it's the only thing I know how to do." It had been a long time since the death of his mother in the summer of 2000 that Pedro had changed his name. From Pedro Balmaceda to Pedro Pascal. He had been searching for years, years of casting where, by being called Pedro Balmaceda in the studios, they hoped to find a Latin or classic Mexican phenotype. He had only made minor appearances in some series.

XR: Although you did not regret it, you did wear Alexander at some point. Why?

PP: "That was a desperate period and directly related to having lost my mother. I was desperate to work, to fill my days with something more to suffer. To eliminate the confusion that casting directors had with this guy named Pedro with European or Caucasian traits, I changed my first name to Alexander and took my mom's last name, Pascal. That only lasted a year, until I was able to find a job and be selected for an Ibsen theatrical classic. But it was too late for people to identify me as "Alex". Also, my mom named me Pedro. So the decision was to call me Pedro Pascal, a name that fits with me more than any other."

Soon after that came Brothers and Sisters, other small roles, and later more important ones in The Good Wife, The Law and Order, The Mentalist, until Game of Thrones, Narcos in 2015 and now, filming Muralla china with Matt Damon and William Dafoe - last year we all went to see his cousins together - and then Kingsman 2 with Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Jeff Bridges, Halle Berry and Channing Tatum.

XR : Have you ever been excited acting with such powerful actors?

PP: "I have been thrilled with everyone."

With fame have come the new meetings of the cousins with Pedro Pascal. We all want to see him, take pictures of us, we ask him for greetings-chub for friends, we inflate ourselves by saying that he is our cousin. That Peña, the protagonist of Narcos and the sexiest guy in the world, is my cousin-brother. He laughs and humorously calls us "scoundrels" because now we remember him. In fact, that's what our cousin chat on Whastapp is called.

But there is also the modesty to disturb him. Know that you are busy. That while I'm sending you these questions, you're filming in Boston with Denzel Washington. And to feel that there is always a lack of time to speak to him calmly, a space to ask him questions like the ones that occur to me now:

XR: Exile changed your life. Can you imagine growing up in Chile?

PP: "I don't know, because I haven't thought much about it. I have been asked this question all my life and have never been able to come up with an answer. Perhaps my life would have been more complete and solid. What I am used to is that the past disappears as if it had been lived by someone else, in another time."

XR: Do you miss something from when you were Pedro Balmaceda?

PP: "You know? There is very little difference between Pedro Balmaceda and Pedro Pascal. As it is all part of José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal, I feel the same person. But with back problems and more money."

XR: Would you like to start a family?

PP: "Being a dad? I don't know. I have no fucking idea. I love being an uncle. It may just end there. But anything is possible."

XR: Marialy Rivas said something very nice about you on Saturday: that when you play a character, you pretend that this character brought a whole previous story, much bigger than what they are telling. And it's true: you carry a bigger story than you tell it.

PP: "I don't know, cousin. I am very confused trying to organize the past and see what turns out. It helps me understand the pain or be grateful for what I have. Sometimes I feel like I'm a fraud, living between waiting for fame and attention and completely embarrassed by these wishes.

In reference to what Marialy said, I think she means that I put all my confusion, joy and sorrow, ambivalence, hostility, rage, love, lust, greed, compassion, ignorance, knowledge either to indicate a map with the finger on Narcos, throwing an arrow in Game of Thrones, lashing out at Kingsman. Cool! But I think my experience in theater taught me that."

XR: Would you someday like your life to be a script?

PP: "No way." (in english)

XR: Do you still want to be a "director", as you used to say when you were a kid?

PP: "Yes! That will be my way of being a father. Father of a production."

XR: Is dreaming about an Oscar the dream of every actor, even if you don't confess it?

PP: "I confess that possibly… yes."

#pedro pascal #cousin #la tercera #2017 #family #mother #father #asylum #embassy #pedro pascal article #article #javiera balmeceda #peter balmaceda #cousins #pp article

[natromanxoff]

Queen live at Royal Dublin Society Simmonscourt in Dublin, Ireland - November 22, 1979 (Part-1)

(x)

Tonight is the opening night of the "Crazy Tour," the tour when Queen decided to go back and play the smaller, more intimate venues (especially the London ones). The lighting rig had to be scaled down to accommodate most of the venues. There used to be five rows of red and green lights and four rows of white, but the red and green have been cut back to four as well. Along with the change in the band's attire (particularly Freddie's pants with knee-pads) and Roger's bass drum head sporting a picture of himself, all these factors make pictures from this tour easy to distinguish from those taken earlier in the year.

Queen's old front of house sound technician returned to the job after a long illness (the Jazz album is dedicated to him for this reason).

The show now begins with an intense drone leading into the thunder and lightning. Combined with their lighting rig (even the scaled down version), this would be a very effective opening of their show. It has been said that people were often left breathless before the band even played a note.

Being their first gig in the UK since releasing Live Killers, the band decide to shake things up a bit by opening the show with Let Me Entertain You, followed by the fast We Will Rock You. The setlist is otherwise mostly similar to the live album and previous tour, with a couple new songs added to the repertoire (Mustapha made its first appearance in Saarbrucken in the summer).

Tonight would see the first performances of Save Me and Crazy Little Thing Called Love, which had been recently recorded. The latter has been released as a single and would fare quite well on the charts, becoming their first American #1. Save Me would be released as a single early next year, peaking at #11 in the UK. On stage, Brian May plays the piano on the ballad. Through 1981, he'd play the first two verses on piano and switch to guitar at the second chorus. The instrumentation would change slightly in 1982 with the addition of an auxiliary keyboardist. In the meantime, these 1979 versions would have the band finishing the song at the end of the last chorus, omitting the piano outro.

As for Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Brian would start on acoustic guitar, switch to a black Telecaster for the guitar solo, and to his beloved Red Special for the finale of the song. Unlike the 1950s-flavoured studio version, it would become a heavy rock song by the final verse. By 1982, the end of the song would often be a relatively long jam. Freddie would play a 12-string Ovation Pacemaker acoustic guitar for the song through 1982, and would switch to a cream-coloured Telecaster from 1984 to 1986. Throughout the years, he would often joke about how he knew how to play only a few chords on the guitar.

On stage, the band end Crazy Little Thing Called Love with a coda similar to the one in You're My Best Friend.

This is Queen's first of four shows they would play in Ireland, and so they perform a one-off version of Danny Boy in the encore. As told by someone who attended the show, almost no one in the audience knew the words of the second verse, while Freddie had done his homework.

During Now I'm Here, a fan manages to make his way on stage for a brief moment, and Freddie sings, "Now He's Here." An audience recording of the song was reportedly broadcast on the radio not long after the show, but no known copy has survived.

At the end of the show, instead of playing their version of Britain's national anthem as always, in Ireland the band use the outro from the A Day At The Races album - the only location where they would make a political gesture like this.

Here is a review of this show from the Dublin Evening Press, submitted by Rob Schoorl.

Photos 1-3 were taken by Eddie Mallin.

Fan Stories

“I couldn't believe it! Summer 1979 and I was reading a review of a gig in one of Dublin's evening newspapers. At the end of the review, added almost as an afterthought, was news that the promoter, Pat Egan, was planning to bring Queen to Dublin! I read and re-read it but still could not believe it. Queen, at last, would make their debut in front of an Irish audience! The Crazy Tour would begin in Dublin. Fast forward to the autumn and myself and a number of friends from school eagerly queued up to buy tickets to see our heroes. After buying the tickets, it was a long countdown to the show which would take place on Thursday November 22nd 1979. I still clearly remember the date even after all the years. Eventually the day arrived. That night Queen were on Top of the Pops with Crazy Little Thing Called Love but I didn't mind missing it. We were going to the real thing! After a long day in school we made our way to the RDS in Dublin. After a wait outside the gates we were allowed in to the venue and found a standing place near the front of the stage. I recall it got ever more crowded at the front of the stage and before the show, the tour manager (was it Gerry Stickells?) had to go on stage and appeal to people near the stage to relax and step back. Eventually the lights dimmed, there was a tremendous roar from the crowd, the Pizza Oven exploded into light and there were our heroes only yards away from us. I recall at the time being so overwhelmed by the amazing lights and the fact that we could almost touch Freddie, dressed all in black leather and sunglasses, that I barely registered that Let Me Entertain You was the opener. After that, it was into We Will Rock You and, largely the same songs and running order as the Live Killers album which I knew very well (!!) at that time and had almost worn out playing over the previous months. There were however some exceptions. Of most interest to Queen fans now and the biggest shock to me then was that Danny Boy was played live - a great version, from what I recall which received a terrific ovation from the audience. Also, If You Can't Beat Them was played which surprised me as it wasn't included on Live Killers and I wasn't even aware at that time that it was ever played live. The Dublin show was the first time that Save Me and Crazy Little Thing were played live. I remember being astounded at the power and range of Freddie's voice - even better than Live Killers. At that stage he was developing as a singer and over the next few years became recognised as one of the best rock singers and best frontmen in the business. (Am I the only one who was slightly disappointed with the quality and range of his voice during the final Magic Tour especially when compared to earlier tours?). The gig was a terrific show, especially to a young person attending his first major rock gig, and many of the songs are still memorable to me. During Now I'm Here one idiot actually got up on stage and Freddie sang "Now *he's* here" before he was removed from the stage. One girl also managed to get up on stage and plant a kiss on Freddie during the show. The following night, a couple of songs recorded during the show by someone in the audience were played on the Radio Dublin pirate radio station. These included Now I'm Here. A bootleg of the gig definitely exists *somewhere* but, try as I might, I cannot track it down. I would be grateful if anyone reading this comes across it or has it in their collection, that they get in touch with me!” - John Brogan

“The first night of the Crazy tour - amazing show. Seen some people on the web note that they played Danny Boy that night but for some reason I can only remember Brian playing it as part of his solo and us singing our heads off. Freddie handing out a champagne glass to a friend of mine who still has it. Anyway it was nearly 30 years ago and I find it hard to remember what I did last week never mind that long ago. They ended the show with the outro from A Day At The Races which took me a while to figure out what it actually was. The lighting rig was totally amazing - the pizza oven was aptly named - it was scorching and the intensity of the light when it turned around behind the band to face the audience was something else made a couple of friends that night (in the horse show bar opposite the venue) that I am still in contact with and we are all still crazy after all these years.” - Gary aka hoops

“A couple of notes on the Queen show in Dublin, 1979. Fred was in red trousers, not black as John Brogan has mentioned above. Small point but there you go. And when it came time for the audience to sing along to Danny Boy, almost no one knew the words of the second verse - I remember one chap shouting out to Freddie that he was doing a grand job all by himself. I saw them sixteen times in all and that show, the first, has a very special place in my memory. On the subject of bootlegs from that show, a chap in Aungier Street in Dublin used to have just about every show ever played in Dublin by anyone worth taping. I got a really bad and incomplete (C60) copy of the Queen show from him just as a record of having been there - his voice could be heard just before the start of the show, discussing bootlegging. The tape is somewhere in a box in my house and should I come across it, I'll let you know.” - Paul

Part-2

#queen #queen band #roger taylor #brian may #freddie mercury #roger meddows taylor #queen concerts

[yee-fxcking-haw]

What Happens Next?

A/N: This chapter is kind of short, so I hope you still enjoy it! The next chapter will definitely have a lot of smut and cheesy stuff in it so stay with me lol. If you want added to the taglist or if I was the worst and forgot to tag you please just message me and let me know!!

Summary: You and James finally have that long avoided talk.

Warnings: Violence, blood, mentions of mental illness, implications of sexual assault.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four Playlist

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Part Five

Annie's Diner

James orders two chocolate milkshakes and plate of fries, thanking the waitress with a beautiful smile. Sitting in this diner with him feels absolutely surreal. It's obvious to you why you've refused to say a word to him since prom. He makes you weak. You feel yourself falling again, you're so easily swayed by him and you don't even want to fight it.

"Are you sure that's all you want to eat?" He asks, obviously trying to be careful with his words.

You just nod without a word. You keep your eyes glued to the table, pretending to be very intrigued by it. It kills you that this is almost awkward. You never dreamed that you and James would ever have a moment that would feel this unnatural.

"Doll?" He says, his voice has a questioning tone.

"I told you not to call me that." You say without looking up. You don't want to hear him call you that name ever again, he poisoned it when he used it for that other girl.

"What's her name?" You ask quietly, glancing up at him.

He sighs deeply, accepting the inevitable question.

"Elise, I never wanted to take her to prom." He explains.

"So you dumped for me somebody you didn't even like! That makes me feel so much better, thank you so much James." You say, filled with anger at his sorry ass explanation.

"She started the rumors about you, not me. As soon as she got into the gym that night she started spreading them." He blurts out, obviously desperate to convince you of his innocence.

"Honestly, I don't care who started the rumors. It almost makes it worse that you didn't. If you had, then you would at least be able to plead the case of clinging to your own lie, of not wanting to embarrass yourself by telling everyone that you were an asshole that made that shit up. Since somebody else started them, you had nothing to lose by telling everyone the truth. You didn't though, so that's what matters, not who started them, but the fact that you didn't stop them." You finish your little rant with a huge sigh.

Does he really think that he's going to get out of this by blaming somebody else? James just sits there, eyes wide. He looks so defeated already, like you just sucked all the life out of him. Maybe he's really starting to grasp just how much pain he's subjected you to.

"You're right, I didn't. Because I cared too much about what people thought and I was scared. I was stupid, and selfish, and it made me lose the best thing that's ever happened to me." He looks at you with pleading eyes.

"Save the Shakespeare bullshit, James. If I was the best thing you've ever had you wouldn't have thrown me away for somebody who meant nothing." You retort.

"I did not fucking throw you away. I did not dump you. I showed up expecting to meet you with Elliot and Henry, but then the girls were there like an ambush or something." He says, his voice laced with frustration.

"Listen to me, if I had turned Elise down right then and there, your life would have become a living hell." He says, lowering his voice like he's scared somebody will hear.

"Right, because she didn't do that anyway." You snap, words dripping with sarcasm.

"Do you remember that girl at the beginning of the year, the one that sang the national anthem at the football game?" He asks urgently.

You try to think back, you do remember her a little. She wasn't here for very long though, just long enough to sing the national anthem and then she left the school abruptly. She had the most beautiful black hair, that seems to be the only detail you can remember about her.

"Elise wanted to sing that, but the principal liked the way Wendy sang it." You begin to put the pieces together.

"When Elise found out that she wasn't going to sing it, she got very close to Wendy all of a sudden. She found out that she was pregnant because she was foolin' around with one of the football players." He explains.

"So she told the principal and got Wendy expelled." You fill in the rest.

"Where's Wendy now?" You ask.

"Last I heard she left town, she was about 6 months pregnant when she moved. Her and her parents just up and left one day." He says.

"Is that according to Elise?" You ask.

"That's according to Andrew, the guy that knocked her up." He states.

You sit quietly for a second, could one girl really hold that much power over a school? You think back to when you were called to the principal's office that Monday afternoon. You had plead your case honestly, but all the principal had to say was, "Evidence suggests otherwise". What the hell did that even mean? It sort of made sense now. Adults have never been good at taking people your age seriously. Especially if it's a grown man being asked to listen to a young woman. Unless of course, that young woman has something to offer him.

"So you were scared of what Elise might have done, then you saved your ass by pretending you didn't know me?" You ask, not really angry just trying to understand.

"I hate myself for it, but yes." He says.

"How did she even know you'd be there?" You ask, realizing how stupid the question is.

"Elliot told Annette, then Annette told Elise. You know how it goes." Annette is obviously one of the two girls that accompanied Elise that night.

"She was the one stalking me." He says.

"Stalking you?" You ask, your eyebrows shooting up in shock.

Just then the waitress shows up with your milkshakes and fries, sets them down quietly and asks if you need anything else. You say "no thank you" a little too quickly, trying to get back to the story James is telling as fast as you can.

"You've gotta be kidding me." You say, popping a fry in your mouth. Your anger is disappearing slowly, but you still cling to the fact that he hasn't made it right until now though.

"She was obsessed with me man." He says, sipping his shake.

"I caught her driving past my house, I even caught her looking in my bedroom window when I came home one night. I was scared what she might do to you if I didn't go along with what she wanted at prom." He seems genuinely stressed, visibly upset by how everything played out.

You just sit and listen, munching on your fries, occasionally drinking your shake. Every part of you wants to be mad at him, to yell at him for not making it right before now. He didn't even want to make it right really, he just happened to be at the dance hall tonight. By pure coincidence he saw Daniel dragging you out of there. Right? He couldn't have known you would be there tonight… unless.

"Molly?" You ask, realization suddenly hitting you like a bus.

He's not confused at all, his eyes just go wide.

"Molly set this up with you didn't she?" You say, voice growing in volume.

"She may have given me a call." He says calmly.

"Oh my God." You whisper.

"Doll, please-." You cut him off by staring daggers at him for using the nickname.

"Sorry, just please hear me out." He says cautiously.

"That's what I've been doing." You scoff.

He ignores your snark and keeps talking, taking it as some form of permission.

"I couldn't show any sign that I knew you at prom, for obvious reasons. I couldn't come talk to you after, I never found out where you live, I never got your phone number, I had no way of reaching you except for at school where you wouldn't even look at me. For good reason I know, but I just couldn't get to you." The words spill out of his mouth like he's running out of time.

"Then of course there was Elise, she was always breathing down my neck constantly. I tried to confront her one time, asked her what the hell her problem was. All she said was that I should watch it or she would get the principal involved. I can only guess that her rich ass parents were pumping money into the school, or maybe she was-"

"Or she was sleeping with the principal?" You interrupt to ask out of morbid curiosity, your eyebrows high and eyes wide.

"That's a possibility." James says.

"Either way, she had some kind of hold on him. Something that made it very difficult for him to combat anything she told him." He says.

"Jesus, this is like some twisted murder novel." You exclaim.

"Now I hate to use this line, but please believe me when I say this." He says with begging eyes.

"In a very messy way, I was trying to protect you. And when you wanted nothing to do with me, I couldn't force myself back into your life because that would just make you hate me more. I couldn't tell the school the truth because Elise would have dragged you down with me. If it had just been my own ass on the line I would have told everyone and their mother the truth, but I couldn't let her make things worse for you."

You both sit in silence, him waiting for a response, you waiting for him to go on.

"As soon as I could I found Molly and told her everything. She told me it would be hard to do, but that she was certain we could fix this."

"Traitor." You mutter, earning a chuckle from him.

"I had to wait. I'm not just saying this to sound dramatic, I was genuinely afraid of what Elise might do if she ever found out how I felt about you. Which are feelings I still have, by the way." He says quietly.

You just sit there, dumbfounded. He was being stalked, genuinely stalked. That's why he was so stiff that night, so unlike himself. Holy shit. James actually has a pretty good reason for what he did. It's not perfect by far, and you could sit here all night arguing about other options he may or may not have had. That would be a waste of time though. There's just one question burning in the back of your mind.

"Why didn't you ask Molly where I live, or what number to call?" You ask.

"I told you, I couldn't force myself into your life with you already so angry with me. While Elise could hurt me with words, I'm quite confident you could whoop my ass if I pushed you enough." He says, a teasing smile on his lips.

"I didn't want to ruin it doll, the most I could hope for was a night like tonight. I told you, I had to just wait. If I had pushed you or cornered you that would have been the last straw and you know it. I had to hold on to that hope that I had a sliver of a chance to…" He stops for a second, his face knits into a very pensive look.

"A chance to love you again." He finishes, seemingly content with the words he's found.

You hate how much sense it all makes. If Elise is really that batshit, he really had no other option than to just let everything play out until he could find a way to talk to you. A chance like tonight.

"That afternoon, it's irreplaceable. I know a lot of it happened really fast, and a lot of it was really intense." He says, the look in his eyes tells you he's thinking about the way you made love. Both of you were so reckless and full of passion. Your chest burns with desire, heart aching for his touch again.

"Well then what about now, James? Are we supposed to just be together and expect Elise to be over it just because we're not at school anymore? Is she still stalking you?" You ask.

"She's not here anymore. Her family moved to Florida, not before she broke one of the windows in my house for not calling her back though." He says and lets out a little laugh.

"Well shit." You say.

"So let me get everything straight. One of your friends let it slip to one of her friends that you would be at prom. She surprise attacked you and then you panicked and did your best to make it seem like you didn't know in an attempt to protect me. That wasn't good enough for her, so she started the rumors about me being your stalker for good measure?" You ask.

He nods silently.

"Then I was so pissed off that I wouldn't talk to you, for good reason in my mind. You couldn't expose the rumors as lies without painting an even bigger target on my back, so you just gave me my space, waited for Elise to not be a problem anymore, then conspired with my best friend to get me to the dance hall so you could finally have your chance to explain?"

Another quiet nod.

You chew your lip, it does all add up. You try to think of what you would have done in that situation. Of course you want to say you would never throw James under the bus, you would stand up for him and bravely profess your love, but human nature is a bitch. People panic and scramble to do what they think is best based on instinct. That's what James had done. You can't even be mad at him for not trying to get you alone to talk sooner, because you know you would have been too blinded with rage to do anything except flail your fists at him like you had earlier tonight.

"I am so fucking sorry doll." You don't even flinch at the name now.

"After I've said all of that, I need you to know that I know it's my fault. I should have told you about Elise that night on the roof, I should have warned you and kept you safe that way. I just didn't know how to really throw in the fact that I was being stalked without absolutely ruining everything. It was all so perfect, everything was perfect with you. It was all so new and overwhelming, I couldn't think straight. So when I saw you there, in those damn boots and that dress, I just fucking panicked. I only ever wanted to keep you safe, that's all I wanted. I just fucked it up. I really fucked it up." There are tears in his eyes now, he pulls his bottom lip into his mouth and breathes deeply in through his nose.

He's watching you with those beautiful eyes, waiting for you to say something, anything.

Then it hits you, there's something he still hasn't done. With Elise gone he has no reason to not tell everyone she made it all up.

"Then why haven't you told everyone the truth? That I never stalked you, that Elise did, that it was all a lie and-"

"I have, everyone I could get to listen, I told. I told them as soon as Elise left." He says.

It makes sense that you never heard of him doing so. You've avoided everyone from highschool since you graduated. That would definitely explain the lack of stares and whispering at the dance hall. Your presence no longer caused anxiety in everyone, because they knew the truth.

"Why didn't you ever call the police on her Buck?" You ask, slipping back into the habit of using his nickname. His shoulders relax a little bit when he hears it leave your lips.

"What good would that do? She's too young to go to jail, so the only other place they'd put her in is the asylum." He says, his voice very serious.

You start to feel very sorry for Elise. She has all that beauty, but she's so very sick. You understand how somebody could be that crazy over James, he's everything a girl could want. Your mind wanders to what all Elise must have been through in order to be so unstable. Your heart aches for the girl you only spoke to once. You had seen her around school a handful of times now that you think about it hard enough. Always smiling, always talking to somebody, always looking so pretty. Even after she ruined prom for both of you, even after she stalked him at his house and damaged his property, he didn't want to ruin her life.

"Her friends came and talked to me after she started driving by my house. Of course I asked them what was wrong with her, all they could say was that her parents were both too obsessed with their wealthy socialite lives to give her the time of day, so she became desperate for any attention she could get, to the point of getting involved with faculty. They told me her family was moving eventually and begged me to let them and Elise's parents deal with the situation. That way Elise wouldn't get herself into a bigger mess." He says the last part with a low serious voice, your jaw drops when you catch his implication.

"Good God." You gape at him.

"So they begged you to wait until she had moved to tell everyone the truth, so she wouldn't snap and get herself into legal trouble?" You ask, filling in the blanks, everything making sense now.

He nods, "She left two weeks after graduation. She came to my house and cried on my porch for two hours the morning they moved."

He seems like he feels guilty, like he wishes he had done more.

"There's a million things I could have done differently, and I'm so sorry for all the things I should have done. I'm sorry for not telling you everything right away, I'm sorry for being so fucking cold to you at prom, I-"

"James." You say, reaching across the table to grab his hand, he stills completely and looks at you like a deer in headlights.

"It's ok. It was all a shitshow, and you were doing the best you could. I understand now, I can see how you were just trying to protect everyone. It's ok." You tell him.

Every ounce of anger and pain has left your body. It all makes sense now. James did all that he could to keep everyone involved from hurting anymore than they already were. At his own expense, maybe his execution wasn't flawless, but he did everything he could to make it right. He's still doing everything he can. He's sitting here with you, begging you for another chance, owning up to all the ways he fucked up. Had he really though? You realize something you haven't yet, James may very well have the biggest heart of anyone you know. Filled with enough kindness to even want to protect a person who made his life hell.

"She's sick James, you didn't want to fuck her life up anymore than it already had been. I don't blame you for that, I don't blame you for how you handled it." You explain.

God this night has done a complete turn around. As soon as you saw him, you agreed to talking with him and you fully expected him to tell you that he and Elise had been together all along, that he had gotten caught up in the moment with you and that he was sorry for leading you on. You never imagined that James had been carrying this load all by himself the past few months. It's all absolutely insane, and incredibly difficult to wrap your mind around. You feel so much relief at the fact that James had never lied to you about his feelings, and a significant amount of guilt for never reaching out to him to give him a chance to explain.

"I'm sorry that I never even-"

"Doll, don't. You had every reason to cut me out of your life. You were trying to protect yourself." He says, he squeezes your hand for reassurance.

You feel like you should have trusted what you shared that afternoon instead of acting purely on emotion, then maybe you would have been able to heal quicker. Then you remember the sensitive timeline with Elise, she would have done everything in her power to ruin what you and James have if she had been around to see it. Everything that happened had to happen that way for the safety of everyone involved.

"I haven't stopped loving you. I can't, I know I can't. Which sounds absolutely fucking insane, but I just feel it. You're still the most incredible thing I've ever seen." He says.

You don't even feel like you're in the diner anymore, it feels like you've floated to the roof and you're suspended in the sky, high off of the feeling of being loved again.

"It's ok if you can't say it back, I know we've only really spent half of a day together, but I've been miserable without you and I can't see myself ever feeling this way about somebody else so, I know what I feel. I know that I love you." He says it like somebody's about to cover his mouth to stop him from telling you.

You open your mouth to tell him that you love him too, that everything is ok, that you guys are going to figure it out, but you freeze when you hear the bell of the door jingle then see a large man in uniform walk through the door. You feel your entire body tense up, anxiety welling in your chest as your throat closes and your palms begin to sweat.

"Oh shit." You say quietly.

It's fucking Daniel, how the hell did he find you? He's accompanied by the boy that danced with Molly, and one other stocky blond man.

"What?" He asks, bewildered he turns his head towards the door.

"Oh shit." He says, whipping his head back around to look at you with terrified eyes.

"What's the plan if he-" James starts to say, but he's cut off by a loud voice.

"Hey punk, that's my girl you're sitting with." Daniel states, slurring his words just a little at the end.

James' chest inflates and he gives you a stern look. Anger flashes in his eyes.

"James don't." You try to say it as harshly as you can, but he's already moving before you can get the words out.

Everyone in the diner is frozen, watching with dropped jaws and wide eyes. Even the wait staff has paused to observe, those behind the counter have halted their cooking so they can gawk. This stupid small town, everyone's always so desperate for drama.

"Oddly enough, I don't remember her ever agreeing to be your girl." James starts, rolling up his sleeves as he talks. Is this idiot really about to try and fight off three soldiers?

"-but you don't strike me as a man who cares too much about consent." He says, dropping his voice a little to stress the weighty implications of his words.

Daniel's fists ball up at his sides, his friends start to glance around the diner with anxious eyes.

"Boys, if there's to be a fight y'all better take it outside." One of the older waitresses says loudly, obviously sick and tired of all these young bucks bringing their nonsense into her diner.

"What a great idea ma'am. Shall we gentlemen?" James asks with all the confidence in the world. God he really is an idiot.

"James-" You start, but the men are already stomping through the door into the parking lot.

"Fucking hell." You huff, you throw money down on the table out of your clutch, inevitably taking out way too much for some shakes and a plate of fries.

"Keep the change!" You say with an urgent voice as you gather yourself and run towards the door.

The boys have circled around to the side of the building, horrible fluorescent lights illuminating the scene. They've got James completely surrounded, almost backing him into a wall already. You know you aren't going to be able to stop this, not with all the damn testosterone and adrenaline already pumping through all of them. The most you can do is make sure it's a fair fight.

"Alright look. If y'all are gonna fight, you're not going to do this bullshit where you just outnumber him so you can win." You nearly shout.

"This is between James and Daniel, you goons need to step off." You say it like you're a strict teacher telling them off for whispering in class. You can't fucking believe that you're playing referee for this idiotic dick measuring contest.

"Unless you're all cowards who don't feel like you could beat him unless the fight is unfair." You finish then cross your arms, your plan to challenge their masculinity obviously working.

"I could take this prick in my sleep." Daniel says, rolling up his sleeves with clumsy drunk hands, "Watch and learn boys." His two friends glance at each other then take the cue to step back and let this fight be his.

James gives you a quick look, the corner of his mouth twitching up into a cocky smirk. His eyes say thank you, while he rolls his shoulders back and brings his fists up while Daniel steps towards him. Your fool in shining armor runs a hand through his hair and winks at you, you assume to thank you for getting Daniel's cronies to back off. You internally curse him for looking so damn handsome.

"Was one hit not enough pal? You want some more?" James says, cocky as ever. Your stomach twists with nerves, he's pushing it. He and Daniel are about the same size. Daniel is maybe an inch or two taller, but James has more bulk to him. Of course you want to say James is going to win, but it could really go either way.

Daniel sneers at him then cracks his knuckles, taking a hulking step towards James. James opens his mouth to make another snarky remark, but is cut short by Daniel's fist landing right on his jaw. Right where you hit him earlier. It makes a horrible cracking sound and blood sprays out of his mouth. You gasp and have to fight the urge to run and stand between them, knowing that would only make James more bent on fighting for you.

He seems completely dazed by the impact, stumbling back while he holds his face. He pulls his right hand away to look at the blood pouring out of his mouth. Before you can even process it, Daniel lunges at James, knocking him to the ground. They both smack on the pavement with a grunt, Daniel has James pinned to the ground and he just starts swinging, hitting anywhere he can, much like you did earlier. Except Daniel is drawing blood. James has his arms up, acting like a cage over his face. They're taking most of the blows, but Daniel occasionally gets his fist through to hit his face again.

"Fucking do something!" You scream at his gawking friends. They both jump and look at each other, not having any idea what to do.

"Stop!" You scream, running over to where Daniel is still laying into James.

You know you won't stand a chance just using your fists, so all you can think to do is kick. Kick like hell. You run up to Daniel, you bring your upper body in tight then let your right leg swing forward, bringing your foot full force into Daniel's face. He howls and falls back off of James, who takes the opportunity to jump and scramble backwards.

"You fucking whore!" Daniel yells, standing up to stalk towards you. That's when his friends finally intervene, each grabbing an arm to hold him back.

"Call the police, somebody call the police!" A woman's voice yells from behind you. You look wildly around, unaware of the crowd that had gathered.

Daniel and his friends panic at those words, faces white as they scramble back towards their car. Daniel turns and spits at you, swearing under his breath while his friends drag him away.

You hear James groan and your heart freezes in your chest. He's lying flat on his back, hands holding his face.

"Oh God, James." You run to him and drop to your knees. There's blood coming from his nose and his mouth, and his left eye is already swelling. He lets out a breathy laugh, gazing at you with heavy eyelids.

"I'm alright doll, doesn't hurt half as bad as when you socked me." He says, lopsided smirk spreading across his lips.

"You fucking idiot. Bucky, what the hell were you thinking?" You ask, cradling his head, you wipe his hair off of his forehead and cup his jaw. He looks up at you with an earnest look in his bright blue eyes, they appear almost silver in this lighting.

"He said you were his girl." He says with a weak voice.

"So?!" You almost yell at him, but you catch yourself.

"You're my girl." He says simply, then he winces and screws his eyes shut. His face relaxes and his head goes limp and falls to the side. Your chest fills with terror.

"James? James!" You yell, shaking him while you do. You know he isn't dead, but he's still unconscious, and that's enough to panic you. You hear somebody yell about an ambulance, but all you can focus on is James. God, this is all your fault.

@b-o-n-e-daddy @lillsrecs @all-art-is-quite-useless @brownlee-22 @peace-love-hobbitness @pinknerdpanda @supernaturalwintersoldier @can-i-sin-right-now @pennyroyalcreep @jessyballet @calwitch @aurora-sweet @learisa

#bucky barnes #sebastian stan #bucky barnes smut #bucky x reader #bucky x you #captain america #marvel smut #sebastian stan smut #bucky barnes imagine #marvel fanfiction #comics #comic fantasy #marvel

[96thdayofrage]

Mrs. Douglas was the music teacher. Let me be clear: she was not a music teacher, she taught music at the three predominately Black elementary schools in my hometown. She taught at a different school every day and, if you lived in Hartsville, S.C. any time between 1968 and 2006, she was the music teacher. Mrs. Douglas is the reason everyone from my childhood knows the words to “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the Black national anthem.

Being home-schooled at a young age, my mother hadn’t shielded me from whiteness so much as she surrounded me with Blackness. But I longed to go to school. I wanted to play on a playground and carry books in a knapsack. Having to raise your hand to speak and eating square pizza seemed like so much fun, which is why I cherished Wednesdays with Mrs. Douglas. On Wednesday afternoons, Mrs. Douglas gave me private piano lessons in her home and I was her prized student. I was a child prodigy and–if I could just remember to lift my wrists and keep my posture straight–I was on the path to becoming the next Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles. I was always eager to play for Mrs. Douglas because she had one thing that inspired students to perform at the highest level:

Mrs. Douglas was beautiful.

Even as a ten-year-old, I could see it. Everyone could. Perhaps the best way to contextualize her beauty is to say she was a combination of Thelma and Willona from Good Times. She had a pre-Beyoncé level of fineness that made little boys swoon and little girls belt their hearts out in perfect tune. And, she began every gathering with the Black National Anthem–“Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

It really is a perfect song. God must have laid that on James Weldon Johnson’s heart because, in 169 words, he somehow captured the entirety of the Black experience. The lyrics are at once painful and triumphant without wallowing in our trauma. And when we hit that “Sing a song...” part, we really spill out all of our Blackness. In the annals of Black music, “sing a song” ranks right up there with Frankie Beverly’s “Before I let you goooooooo....” or Ricky Bell’s confession that “it’s driving me out of my mind.” If there’s anything Black America can do, we can sing a song.

Mrs. Douglas did not teach me the Black National Anthem. I have never been in a setting where people actually learned the words or the melody. Everywhere I went, people just seemed to know it. Looking back, this was probably the work of Mrs. Douglas, but for the first ten years of my life, I assumed everyone was born knowing how to blink their eyes, do the Electric Slide, and sing “Lift Every Voice.”

One Wednesday, at the end of our hourlong lesson, Mrs. Douglas gave me a copy of the Maya Angelou bestseller along with the sheet music to “Lift Every Voice,” as if one were necessary to understand the other. She told me that she would be teaching me how to play the anthem for the next few weeks but we could only begin after I read the pages she had bookmarked. In the chapter, Angelou describes her elementary school class singing the Negro National Anthem. I’m sure my piano teacher was trying to stress the importance of the song to our history and culture but all I could remember is Maya Angelou describing her anger after a local school board official denigrated the entire Black race during her grammar school graduation ceremony:

We were maids and farmers, handymen and washerwomen, and anything higher that we aspired to was farcical and presumptuous.

Then I wished that Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner had killed all whitefolks in their beds and that Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, and that Harriet Tubman had been killed by that blow on her head and Christopher Columbus had drowned in the Santa María. It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life.

It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us.

Jesus. Was I supposed to be reading this? Were white people this bad? Was the song this good? And how would this help me play the piano? It did not help my posture at all. I know this was probably Mrs. Douglas’s attempt to ensure that I would thank her in one of the Grammy speeches that I would surely give later in life but, Ma’am...

I. Was. Ten.

Still, enthralled by her beauty and a little disturbed by her reading assignment, I committed to playing the fuck out of that song. And, by “playing the fuck out of that song,” I basically hit the keys harder and with more emphasis (Did I mention I was ten years old?). It was obvious that Mrs. Douglas was pleased. For the next few years, I played “Lift Every Voice” at all the Black functions around town, including Pastors’ anniversaries, cotillions and every Black History Month program. I didn’t even need the sheet music. I didn’t know any other songs. To this day, my entire piano repertoire consists of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” It was the only song I could interpolate into other keys.

But my favorite time to play the anthem was when Mrs. Douglas’s Combined Glee Club performed. The Combined Glee Club was basically the best singers from the Black elementary schools combined into one choir. Led by Mrs. Douglas, the CGC was the number-one ranked glee club in all of the greater Hartsville area. Not just anyone could be in the Combined Glee Club; you had to be selected by Mrs. Douglas. It was the official verification that you had musical talent. I’m sure some people put it on their college application.

If there was something Black going on, they were invited and those motherfuckers could sing. All of my neighborhood friends were on the Combined Glee Club and my best friend played the drums for them. (Yes, they had a drummer!) The CGC usually performed the Donny Hathaway version of “I Believe in Music” (which, until a few years ago, I believed was a song Mrs. Douglas had penned herself). But their specialty was opening up with “Lift Every Voice.”

If I am being honest, I have to admit that I am a tiny bit afraid of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” in the way that I am afraid of the Holy Ghost or making potato salad for a family dinner. I know how important it is to us, so I am afraid to mess it up. Even though I hadn’t been around white people, I somehow knew it was our song. I had never seen it on television or on the radio. It was like a secret handshake or a fried chicken recipe–It belonged exclusively to us. Plus, if I messed it up, Mrs. Douglas might not consider the marriage proposal I was planning in a few years. Every time I played “Lift Every Voice,” there was a lot riding on it.

When I finally started attending public schools, my mother enrolled me at a predominately white school where I was assigned to a homeroom where I was the only black kid in the class. I’d like to explain how the white kids made racist jokes at my expense but, if they did, I didn’t even notice it. In fact, spending time around white people for the first time at ten years old, I learned more about Black people than I learned about white people.

I had not assimilated the subconscious deference to whiteness that often accompanies being Black. I became acutely aware that white people are not smarter or even more educated than any of the kids in my neighborhood. They were perfectly mediocre. They didn’t know how to double-dutch and they didn’t even have a glee club. In music class, the teacher just passed out instruments and let the kids have jam sessions. How were they supposed to acquire their daily recommended dosage of glee? I was a little ashamed of going to school there, so I led all my friends to believe that I was still being homeschooled until they discovered the truth at the annual Holiday Music Showcase.

Every year, all of the schools would get together for a Christmas program to show off their best musicians and singers. The white schools would have violinists, saxophone players and ensembles playing classical music with terrible basslines. As for my predominately glee-less institution, we learned a special super-Caucasian rendition of “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.” I was just thankful that we didn’t have to follow the Negro Mass Choir. They were last on the program.

My white classmates were unmoved as each individual school performed and, with each successive song, I slunk lower in my seat. During Washington Street Elementary’s performance, as they lifted up His name with a perfect a cappella version of “Children Go Where I Send Thee,” a kid sitting behind me whispered:

“Look at all those lips!”

Everyone giggled. I did not.

Our performance was predictably lackluster (probably because I refused to sing). It sounded like an episode of Little House on the Prairie. It sounded like long division. Rudolph’s nose had never been so unremarkable. Had he heard those flat notes wafting through the Center Theater, I’m sure he would have been as ashamed as I was. We trudged back to our seats as the Baddest Glee Club in the Land took the stage for the last performance. Of course, they sang “I Believe in Music.” Accompanied by Mrs. Douglas on piano and my homeboy James on drums, they blew the doors off the place. Even my classmates were impressed because, when they hit one particular a cappella refrain that every Black choir does, my classmates were clapping along. They were off-beat, but they still clapped.

After a rousing round of applause, Mrs. Douglas announced the next song from her piano: “Lift Every Voice.” Of course, all of the Black people in the audience—even the children—stood up. None of the white kids even moved. I was the only person in my entire class who stood.

Mrs. Douglas didn’t play that shit.

She stood up from the piano and glared at the audience as if to say: “You motherfuckers better stand up and show some respect.” I had never seen Mrs. Douglas express anger. And she waited. And the choir waited. She looked. And the choir looked. As she scowled at the audience, Mrs. Douglas saw me standing and smiled. She waved me to the front of the auditorium and whispered in my ear: “You wanna play?”

By the time I sat at the piano and she ascended to the stage to direct the Combined Glee Club, everyone was standing. She looked at me with her usual glance and in one microsecond, my back straightened. My wrists were raised to the perfect 45 degree angle.

And just like that, I was Black.

For the first time since I had read Maya Angelou’s angry words, I was no longer afraid of the song. I don’t know if it was the repetition of playing so many times, or the hand of some unseen thing, but I was suddenly able to play and sing the song simultaneously. And goddamn, did that Combined Glee Club lift their voices. They sang that song.

Our song.

I called Mrs. Douglas today.

I had so many questions. I wanted to ask her why she dragged me around town when I don’t have a sliver of musical talent. I really wanted to know why she made me read that book. I figured she’d tell me something about building my character, giving me a reason to socialize with people my age or how music helps the brain mature. Or maybe she’d make some perfect metaphor about birds in cages.

She did not answer.

I still have a song, though.

We are the song.

[memorylang]

12 Months’ Pandemic Chronicled | #51 | March 2021

Happy Palm Sunday yesterday, and Happy Passover from the night before! Right under two weeks ago, March 16, 2O2I, marked the one-year anniversary to the close of my first Peace Corps Mongolia service. While I’ve continued to serve virtually, I’ve done so informally as a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. Having lived these past 12 months back in the States, today’s tales chronicle that year. 

Also commemorating the one-year anniversary, I’ve uploaded dozens of photos from my first nine months serving Mongolia. You can find those on my Instagram and Facebook, from February and March. I begin today’s stories with those. From there, I chronicle my journey across the year. 

Evacuating Mongolia (February 2O2O)

February’s final week, on Ash Wednesday 2O2O, I was in Mongolia celebrating the third day of Tsagaan Sar, its Lunar New Year. Returning to my apartment from my last supper, I read an email from Peace Corps Mongolia that we were evacuating. I pulled an all-nighter packing my apartment. Shortly after sunrise, I visited a Peace Corps neighbor’s apartment to pack theirs. Then in my final two days, I said hasty goodbyes to community members, exchanging parting gifts. 

Sunday morning, which began Peace Corps Week and March 2O2O, I and fellow Volunteers loaded into Peace Corps vehicles and rode in our caravan till evening. Then the snowstorm caused us to need to stay overnight in a hotel coincidentally located in a city that my cohort would frequent during our summer 2OI9 for training. My evacuation group reached Mongolia’s capital Monday afternoon, with briefings from staff throughout Tuesday. Mongolia had already begun to enforce mask-wearing and physical-distancing, so we couldn’t do much with our final hours in Mongolia. Indeed, since mid-January, many public places had already closed due to quarantine. 

Wednesday night, the week after my peers and I had received notice of our evacuation and now mere hours before my group would depart the country, we awaited the arrival of fellow Peace Corps peers to the capital. For, Peace Corps staff staggered our arrivals into and departures from the capital to account for both the time drivers would need to assemble us from across the nation and the limited flight options still going out of the country. Those of us who remained awake through our final night enjoyed getting to see and embrace peers for our final moments together. 

Over the course of Thursday, March 5, my group flew first from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, through Moscow, Russia, to Berlin, Germany. Many of our itineraries diverged. From Germany, I and a few flew to Amsterdam, the Netherlands. From the Netherlands, I and a couple others flew to New York, New York. I slept four and a half hours’ in a hotel. Then I flew alone Friday from New York to Las Vegas, Nevada. I returned to my home of junior high and high school in North Las Vegas. 

American Twilight Zone (March 2O2O)

My first few weeks in the States felt weird, not just because of reverse culture shock. Back in Mongolia, fellow Peace Corps Volunteers, particularly Health Volunteers, had followed American media and read that our presidential administration had been downplaying the COVID-19 pandemic. Problematically, too, when leaders acknowledged it, some labeled it the “China virus” and accused Asians of spreading it. These set the tone. 

When I arrived in New York, I felt perturbed by the lack of mask-wearing and physical distancing. The morning when I’d fly out, I felt annoyed when the worker who checked me into my flight joked that I might have the virus since I’d flown in from Mongolia. Mongolia had no COVID cases—and wouldn’t have its first community transmission till November 11, 2O2O. Friends, too, when I said that I’d come back, distrusted that I couldn’t have the virus. So, although Peace Corps peers and I had already been quarantining nearly a month and a half before returning to the States—and very much craved to reconnect with folks—we found ourselves again isolated. 

Then Vegas felt weird. Nevada had reported its first COVID case the day before I returned, yet Mongolia hadn’t any. Yet Mongolia had shut down, and Nevada hadn’t. Society moved as though little was happening. My brothers still had school and were gone most of most days. Dad worked weekdays out-of-town. Thus, while I lived again in the States, even inside my family’s home, I was the only one around. I felt lonelier than how’d I’d felt before leaving my life abroad. 

The Filipina family of my father’s fiancée was perhaps the most understanding of my circumstances. The oldest daughter was celebrating her birthday that first Sunday, March 8, since my return to the States. So, I got to join them in enjoying the occasion. As I’d come to learn, Mongolia and the Philippines had more cultural similarities than I’d expected. I’d also feel dismayed to learn that people weren’t treating the youngest daughter kindly in her food service role, for some customers believed that her being Asian meant that she had the Coronavirus. 

Resettling Into Lent (March 2O2O)

Most every morning, my first few days and weeks, tracks from Disney's “Frozen II” became my anthems. I’d seen the film that Friday, March 6, when I’d flown alone back to Vegas. I’d connected especially with “Show Yourself,” “Some Things Never Change” and “The Next Right Thing.” I started to learn the lyrics not only in English but also in Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. 

My local church was still open. Meanwhile, in Mongolia, our church had been closed for nearly months. So, I attended services daily. I overheard old parishioners wondering what all this pandemic talk was about. I visited Reconciliation and a Stations of the Cross service. I applied to sing in the choir with which my late mom sang. 

My second week in the States, church and schools closed. Meanwhile, Peace Corps announced its global evacuation. My peers and I weren’t to expect to return to Mongolia this summer and instead were to expect that fall would be the soonest. My youngest brother’s hs senior spring ended abruptly, so he stuck around at the house. Our oldest brother left to quarantine with his girlfriend and her sisters. 

I cleaned much in and around the house. My greatest achievement early in the pandemic was to lead a garage clean-up with all siblings when my sisters visited. The task enabled us to at last park a vehicle in it once more. My siblings and I donated, too, decades of belongings. 

Among the unearthing, I dove deep into family history. I wrote up my understanding of my father's and my late mother's ancestries, which were also mine. Months later, I'd join WikiTree, talk to distant relatives and migrate large swathes of history onto the platform. 

Easter in Action (April–May 2O2O)

Gloom seemed to enshroud the world by Easter. I saw from the telly the Vatican's Lenten services, witnessing Pope Francis’ words from his city to the world and for Holy Week. His Good Friday Way of the Cross felt especially moving, for prisoners had written beautiful reflections that made me realize how little of a prison our quarantine was. 

My younger sister in LA had also returned to visit Vegas. I resumed daily exercise routines, including trying to concurrently complete handheld video games and walk miles on the treadmill. This began my May push to make the most of my days back in America. I kicked up a daily Duolingo habit, rising through leagues, and talked regularly with Mongols during early mornings. Such helped my sanity, especially when state offices gave me a hard time trying to get the unemployment assistance to which lawmakers entitled evacuated Returned Peace Corps Volunteers.  

Around Memorial Day, an uncle and aunt visited from Kansas to celebrate my youngest brother’s high school graduation online. The relatives also took my siblings, a family friend and me on my first national parks trip in years. We saw Saguaro, Great Basin and Capitol Reef. During the trip I’d grown my Goodreads library and soon enough uncovered the Libby app. The journey led me too to begin a pensive look back on my life. 

Summer in Reno (June–July 2O2O)

Dad remarried on June 6, 2020. Shortly thereafter, I relocated to Reno to help Pa and Stepma (“Tita”) handle copious amounts of yard work. With more time to reflect, I took up the request of a homebound friend to pray rosaries daily over the phone with him. 

Another friend of mine was going through a dark patch too but had a love of films. So each morning I’d rise early to see one of his recommendations then discuss it while working the yard if I wasn’t praying a rosary. I fondly recall the conversations while trimming plants, as I wander the Reno backyard even now. 

Near the same time, the friend and another encouraged me to tell my stories. So I began to write a memoir, on which he’d give feedback. The other friend had me appear on his podcast. Both experiences made the summer feel very whole. In memory of my first summer in Mongolia 2OI9, I also wrote a more detailed series on those experiences. [Arrival (June 2OI9), Meeting Host Family (July 2OI9), Summer’s End (August 2OI9)]

I celebrated my 23rd birthday in Vegas with an overnight vigil, praying 23 rosaries alone and with Catholic friends from around the globe. I felt such joy to reconnect meaningfully with so many across languages and cultures. Languages became a growing theme for me. I’d also begun again playing Pokémon GO after having not played since 2OI6. 

That summer, I finished seeing “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” (Season 7) as well as relevant bits from “Star Wars: Rebels.” I kept up with the Japanese episodes of “Pokémon Journeys: The Series.” Those, I’ve watched with English subtitles to know what’s happening. I’d also begun to read chapters of the Bible daily, at that time checking in weekly with an ol' friend. I started with Acts then Proverbs, Ephesians then Psalms. Meanwhile came Hebrews and John. Then were Ruth and Matthew. Now I read 1 Kings and Mark. I’d grown to appreciate both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles with renewed interest. 

Autumn Languages (August–September 2O2O)

Much of that fall, I was back in Reno. Yet, my younger brother had also come to Reno for his undergraduate fall semester. The guest room where I’d stayed quickly became his room, which left me a tad displaced. Still, I stuck through. Mornings, I rose early to read through a Latin textbook before daily conversations with a close friend who’d majored in classics as an undergrad.

Meanwhile, I’d stepped up to arrange meetings with Congressional lawmakers on behalf of the National Peace Corps Association. I’d also taken on roles within my alma mater Honors College and within the Social Justice Task Force for the American Psychological Association’s Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. I kept people organized and took notes during meetings. Meanwhile, my siblings and I had been starting a scholarship foundation, so I’d taken point on negotiating a partnership with the Vegas-based Public Education Foundation. 

As a nice break, I joined friends I’d met in high school on their near-monthly trips to national and state parks. These sights included Lassen Volcanic, Burney Falls and Tahoe’s Emerald Bay. Realizing that I wouldn’t return to Mongolia that fall, I booked a Department of Motor Vehicles appointment to renew my learner’s permit—The earliest appointment would be in December. 

In entertainment news, I’d finished seeing “Queer Eye: We’re in Japan,” “Love on the Spectrum” and “Midnight Gospel.” I’d also started playing “Pokémon Masters EX” when I’d heard that it included characters from multiple generations. I enjoyed how the stories felt new yet nostalgic. 

National Park Winter (October, November, December 2O2O)

October was a great month for my spiritual life. I got to attend my youngest sister’s Confirmation. I enjoyed my first retreat in years. I also got to tape videos for my alma mater. 

Then I returned to Vegas some weeks to complete more yard work. I’d also relocated belongings in different rooms and was able to have my own bedroom back in Vegas. This gave me a decent space in which to work. From November, I’ve also been hosting weekly video calls to help Mongols from my community abroad continue to practice English. 

I’d also listened to Riordan audiobooks, “Blood of Olympus” and “Hidden Oracle,” and various authors’ financial literacy materials. By December, “Kafka on the Shore” was a real highlight. In Reno, I saw too “The Mandalorian” (Seasons 1–2), emphatically recommended by a friend with whom I’d hiked at Red Rock Canyon. My other friends and I reunited to try again at Crater Lake and succeeded. 

My siblings and I partnered with the Vegas-based Public Education Foundation to launch our family LinYL Foundation to honor our late mother with scholarships for students. Though my formal role’s within outreach, I’ve done a fair bit of organizational leadership given my undergrad experiences. I’ve also been helping another non-profit start-up. Through it, I’ve gotten to meet alumni of overseas programs. 

My family celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas in Vegas with our stepsisters. I’d also celebrated American Independence Day with them. Christmas felt peculiar, as I’d returned from Mongolia to Vegas the Christmas before, too! 

Then my national parks friends and I hit a new record, seeing Walnut Canyon, Petrified Forest, Meteor Crater, Sedona’s Devil’s Bridge and the Grand Canyon. Having successfully renewed my learner’s permit, I scheduled my driving test for the earliest date—February. I returned to Reno and at New Year’s reunited with friends for whom I’d participated in their wedding the year before. 

Road to Rejuvenation (January–February 2O2I)

Following the U.S. elections came the presidential inauguration. I felt more at peace with the state of the nation after that. Though U.S. politics have absorbed media significantly throughout the pandemic, I felt relieved by the calls for unity and returns to political normalcy from Inauguration Day. 

Meanwhile, I sought to kick off 2O2I strong, with renewed optimism and control. I practiced driving almost daily. I’d seen “Daredevil” (Season 3) too and progressed in the Blue Lions story of my younger sister’s “Fire Emblem: Three Houses” copy. At February’s start, after years of challenges, I secured my driver’s license. 

Mid-February, my national parks friends and I saw Utah’s Mighty Five. Our trip spanned Canyonlands, Arches, Capitol Reef (different section), Escalante, Bryce Canyon and Zion. I got to help drive at the end from Vegas to Reno, a major milestone. 

Thanks to Discord, I attended a virtual alumni reunion of my high school alma mater. I experienced our school's recreation in “Minecraft: Java Edition,” wandering into the classroom where I used to play “Minecraft” as a freshman. In “RuneScape,” after 12 years on-off, I’d achieved level 99 in all but the newest skill. I'd even gotten the characters I wanted in “Pokémon Masters EX” and nearly finished my Kanto Pokédex in “Pokémon GO.” (I've never before completed a Pokédex.) 

I finished February recording music for my undergrad parish’s online edition to our annual performance for “Living Stations of the Cross.” I got to lector at and attend a friend’s baptism. I’d also soaked up my youngest sister’s boyfriend’s Disney+ again and saw “WandaVision” entirely. Its takes on grief and joy astounded. 

Social Justice (March 2O2I)

These bring me to where and how I am today. I write from Reno, Nev., where snow had fallen and the weather grown warmer. Spring is here. 

The announcement of increasing vaccines gave me lots of hope. Since I've lost so many people this past year to COVID-19 and other conditions I'm grateful that we may near the end. An email from and a check-in call with Peace Corps confirmed that summer would be the soonest I’m going back abroad. Still, I’ve kept in touch with my people in Mongolia. 

My older brother and his girlfriend moved into the Vegas house, so I haven’t felt as obligated to be there. Thus, I’ve focused more time on the church in Reno. 

A great fount of a spiritual joy for me has been getting to help lector for my college parish’s weekly Proclamations of the Word. I received particular acclaim for my reading from 2 Chronicles, for Lent’s Fourth Sunday, which delighted me. At the time I’d been reading 1 Kings, so I’d enjoyed recognizing parallels. In some ways the exercises are like a miniature college course. Beyond regular Sundays and Holy Week, I’d also lectored for such feast days as St. Joseph’s Day (March 19) and the Annunciation (March 25). 

My siblings’ and my family foundation chose our first year of recipients. It’s been an exciting process, reading and witnessing our inspiring candidates. I hope that I'll get to meet these students someday, but ah, the pandemic. 

I’ve gotten back into “Frozen II,” thanks to its authentic behind-the-scenes docuseries. I've also passed the one-year anniversary of my first seeing the film. Each morning I’ve sought to see something on Disney's platform—real' nice. 

Our psychological division’s presidential task force for Social Justice released our statement about the Capitol riots, which received strong critics but stronger supporters. Then came the Atlanta situation. 

In my U.S. Week 5I (Feb. 19–25), during a walk past the nearby elementary school, I’d had an unpleasant personal experience that led me to feel very grateful when the #StopAsianHate campaign began. I’ll likely share more later, but today’s blog story is about done. 

Hope and Easter 2O2I (April 2O2I)

At the last Adoration activity before Easter, our parish offered Reconciliation, so I returned again. Absolution offers such sweet cleansing for my mind and soul. Now Holy Week begins. I'm still lectoring, too! 

This summer, I hope to write more on my memoir. I’m still revising my research. I'm set to finish all five tiers of Duolingo Latin tomorrow. Then I'll get back to my textbook. 

I still delight in chatting with ol’ friends. My national parks homies and I will hit Redwood next weekend. Then my parish has Spring Retreat. I look forward to getting vaccinated in coming months then hugging folks forevermore. 

You can read more from me here at DanielLang.me :)

#Peace Corps #Mongolia #memoir #story #Catholic #God #memoryLang #Easter #Lent #USA #StopAsianHate #BlackLivesMatter #year #Coronavirus #COVID-19 #Nevada #America #WithMe #Reno #social justice

[bluewatsons]

Claudia Roth Pierpont, A Raised Voice: How Nina Simone turned the movement into music, The New Yorker (August 4, 2014)

Simone with James Baldwin in the early sixties. Her intelligence and restless force attracted African-American culture’s finest minds. Photograph courtesy New York Public Library

“My skin is black,” the first woman’s story begins, “my arms are long.” And, to a slow and steady beat, “my hair is woolly, my back is strong.” Singing in a club in Holland, in 1965, Nina Simone introduced a song she had written about what she called “four Negro women” to a young, homogeneously white, and transfixed crowd. “And one of the women’s hair,” she instructed, brushing her hand lightly across her own woolly Afro, “is like mine.” Every performance of “Four Women” caught on film (as here) or disk is different. Sometimes Simone coolly chants the first three women’s parts—the effect is of resigned weariness—and at other times, as on this particular night, she gives each woman an individual, sharply dramatized voice. All four have names. Aunt Sarah is old, and her strong back has allowed her only “to take the pain inflicted again and again.” Sephronia’s yellow skin and long hair are the result of her rich white father having raped her mother—“Between two worlds I do belong”—and Sweet Thing, a prostitute, has tan skin and a smiling bravado that seduced at least some of the eager Dutch listeners into the mistake of smiling, too. And then Simone hit them with the last and most resolutely up to date of the women, improbably named Peaches. “My skin is brown,” she growled ferociously, “my manner is tough. I’ll kill the first mother I see. ’Cause my life has been rough.” (One has to wonder what the Dutch made of killing that “mother.”) If Simone’s song suggests a history of black women in America, it is also a history of long-suppressed and finally uncontainable anger.

A lot of black women have been openly angry these days over a new movie about Simone’s life, and it hasn’t even been released. The issue is color, and what it meant to Simone to be not only categorically African-American but specifically African in her features and her very dark skin. Is it possible to separate Simone’s physical characteristics, and what they cost her in this country, from the woman she became? Can she be played by an actress with less distinctively African features, or a lighter skin tone? Should she be played by such an actress? The casting of Zoe Saldana, a movie star of Dominican descent and a light-skinned beauty along European lines, has caused these questions—rarely phrased as questions—to dog the production of “Nina,” from the moment Saldana’s casting was announced to the completed film’s début, at Cannes, in May, at a screening confined to possible distributors. No reviewers have seen it. The film’s director, Cynthia Mort, has been stalwart in her defense of Saldana’s rightness for the role, citing not only the obvious relevance of acting skills but Simone’s inclusion of a range of colors among her own “Four Women”—which is a fair point. None of the women in Simone’s most personal and searing song escape the damage and degradation accorded to their race.

Ironically, “Four Women” was charged with being insulting to black women and was banned on a couple of radio stations in New York and Philadelphia soon after the recording was released, in 1966. The ban was lifted, however, when it produced more outrage than the song. Simone’s husband, Andrew Stroud, who was also her manager, worried about the dangers that the controversy might have for her career, although this was hardly a new problem. Simone had been singing out loud and clear about civil rights since 1963—well after the heroic stand of figures like Harry Belafonte and Sammy Davis, Jr., but still at a time when many black performers felt trapped between the rules of commercial success and the increasing pressure for racial confrontation. At Motown, in the early sixties, the wildly popular performers of a stream of crossover hits became models of black achievement but had virtually no contact with the movement at all.

Simone herself had been hesitant at first. Known for her sophisticated pianism, her imperious attitude, and her velvety rendition of “I Loves You, Porgy” (which, like Billie Holiday before her, she sang without the demeaningly ungrammatical “s” on “loves”), she had arrived in New York in late 1958, establishing her reputation not in Harlem but in the clubs of hip and relatively interracial Greenwich Village. Her repertoire of jazz and folk and show tunes, often played with a classical touch, made her impossible to classify. In these early years, she performed African songs but also Hebrew songs, and wove a Bach fugue through a rapid-fire version of “Love Me or Leave Me.” She tossed off the thirties bauble “My Baby Just Cares for Me” with airy insouciance, and wrung the heart out of the lullaby “Brown Baby”—newly written by Oscar Brown, Jr., about a family’s hopes for a child born into a better racial order—erupting in a hair-raising wail on the word “freedom,” as though registering all the pain over all the years during which it was denied. For a while, “Brown Baby” was as close to a protest song as Simone got. She believed it was enough.

And then her friend Lorraine Hansberry set her straight. It speaks to Simone’s intelligence and restless force that, in her twenties, she attracted some of African-American culture’s finest minds. Both Langston Hughes and James Baldwin elected themselves mentors: Simone, appearing on the scene just as Holiday died, seemed to evoke their most exuberant hopes and most protective instincts. But Hansberry offered her a special bond. A young woman also dealing with a startling early success—Hansberry was twenty-eight when “A Raisin in the Sun” won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, in 1959—she had a strongly cultivated black pride and a pedagogical bent. “We never talked about men or clothes,” Simone wrote in her memoir, decades later. “It was always Marx, Lenin and revolution—real girls’ talk.” A milestone in Simone’s career was a solo concert at Carnegie Hall—a happy chance to show off her pianism—on April 12, 1963, which happened also to be the day that Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested with other protesters in Birmingham, Alabama, and locked up in the local jail. The discrepancy between the events was pointed out by Hansberry, who telephoned Simone after the concert, although not to offer praise.

Two months later, Simone played a benefit for the N.A.A.C.P. In early August, she sang “Brown Baby” before a crowd gathered in the football stadium of a black college outside Birmingham—the first integrated concert ever given in the area—while guards with guns and dogs prowled the field. But Hansberry only started a process that events in America quickly accelerated. Simone watched the March on Washington, later that August, on television, while she was preparing for a club date. She was still rehearsing when, on September 15th, news came of the bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four young African-American girls who had just got out of Bible class. Simone’s first impulsive act, she recalled, was to try to make a zip gun with tools from her garage. “I had it in my mind to go out and kill someone,” she wrote. “I didn’t yet know who, but someone I could identify as being in the way of my people.”

This urge to violence was not a wholly aberrant impulse but something that had been brewing on a national scale, however tamped down by cooler heads and political pragmatists. At the Washington march, John Lewis, then a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was forced to cut the word “revolution” from his speech and to omit the threat that, absent immediate progress, the marchers would go through the South “the way Sherman did” and “burn Jim Crow to the ground.” James Baldwin, in a televised discussion after the bombing, noted that, throughout American history, “the only time that nonviolence has been admired is when the Negroes practice it.” But the center held. Simone’s husband, a smart businessman, told her to forget the gun and put her rage into her music.

It took her an hour to write “Mississippi Goddam.” A freewheeling cri de coeur based on the place names of oppression, the song has a jaunty tune that makes an ironic contrast with words—“Alabama’s got me so upset, Tennessee made me lose my rest”—that arose from injustices so familiar they hardly needed to be stated: “And everybody knows about Mississippi, goddam!” Still, Simone spelled them out. She mocked stereotypical insults (“Too damn lazy!”), government promises (“Desegregation / Mass participation”), and, above all, the continuing admonition of public leaders to “Go slow,” a line that prompted her backup musicians to call out repeatedly, as punctuation, “Too slow!” It wasn’t “We Shall Overcome” or “Blowin’ in the Wind”: Simone had little feeling for the Biblically inflected uplift that defined the anthems of the era. It’s a song about a movement nearly out of patience by a woman who never had very much to begin with, and who had little hope for the American future: “Oh but this whole country is full of lies,” she sang. “You’re all gonna die and die like flies.”

She introduced the song in a set at the Village Gate a few days later. And she sang it at a very different concert at Carnegie Hall, in March, 1964—brazenly flinging “You’re all gonna die” at a mostly white audience—along with other protest songs she had taken a hand in writing, including the defiantly jazzy ditty “Old Jim Crow.” She also performed a quietly haunting song titled “Images,” about a black woman’s inability to see her own beauty (“She thinks her brown body has no glory”)—a wistful predecessor to “Four Women” that she had composed to words by the Harlem Renaissance poet Waring Cuney. At the time, Simone herself was still wearing her hair in a harshly straightened fifties-style bob—sometimes the small personal freedoms are harder to speak up for than the larger political ones—and, clearly, it wasn’t time yet for such specifically female injuries to take their place in the racial picture. “Mississippi Goddam” was the song of the moment: bold and urgent and easy to sing, it was adopted by embattled protesters in the cursed state itself just months after Simone’s concert, during what they called the Mississippi Summer Project, or Freedom Summer, and what President Johnson called “the summer of our discontent.”

There was no looking back by the time she performed the song outside Montgomery, Alabama, in March, 1965, when some three thousand marchers were making their way along the fifty-four-mile route from Selma; two weeks earlier, protesters making the same attempt had been driven back by state troopers with clubs, whips, and tear gas. The triumphant concert, on the fourth night of the march, was organized by the indefatigable Belafonte, at the request of King, and took place on a makeshift stage built atop stacks of empty coffins lent by local funeral homes, and in front of an audience that had swelled with twenty-five thousand additional people, drawn either by the cause or by a lineup of stars that ranged from Tony Bennett and Johnny Mathis to Joan Baez. Simone, accompanied only by her longtime guitarist, Al Schackman, drew cheers on the interpolated line “Selma made me lose my rest.” In the course of events that night, she was introduced to King, and Schackman remembered that she stuck her hand out and warned him, “I’m not nonviolent!” It was only when King replied, gently, “Not to worry, sister,” that she calmed down.

Simone’s explosiveness was well known. In concert, she was quick to call out anyone she noticed talking, to stop and glare or hurl a few insults or even leave the stage. Yet her performances, richly improvised, were also confidingly intimate—she needed the connection with her audience—and often riveting. Even in her best years, Simone never put many records on the charts, but people flocked to her shows. In 1966, the critic for the Philadelphia Tribune, an African-American newspaper, explained that to hear Simone sing “is to be brought into abrasive contact with the black heart and to feel the power and beauty which for centuries have beat there.” She was proclaimed the voice of the movement not by Martin Luther King but by Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, whose Black Power philosophy answered to her own experience and inclinations. As the sixties progressed, the feelings she displayed—pain, lacerating anger, the desire to burn down whole cities in revenge—made her seem at times emotionally disturbed and at other times simply the most honest black woman in America.

She recalled that racial anger first arose in her when she was eleven. Born Eunice Waymon, in 1933, she was the sixth of eight children of John and Kate Waymon, who were descendants of slaves and pillars of the small black community of Tryon, North Carolina. Her mother was a Methodist preacher, a severely religious woman who made extra money by cleaning house for a white Tryon family; her father, who had started off as an entertainer, worked at whatever the circumstances required. Even during the Depression, the Waymons made a good home. Simone’s earliest memories were of her mother singing hymns, and both the house and the church were so filled with music that no one noticed little Eunice climbing up to the organ bench until, at the age of two and a half, she played “God Be with You Till We Meet Again,” straight through.

Yet as rare as the little girl’s musical gifts is the way that, in that time and place, those gifts were encouraged. She began playing for her mother’s sermons before her feet could reach the pedals, and was soon accompanying the church choir and Sunday services. She especially enjoyed playing for visiting revivalists, because of the raptures she discovered that she could loose in an audience with music. At the other end of the spectrum, she was five years old when the woman for whom her mother cleaned house offered to pay for lessons with a local piano teacher, Muriel Mazzanovich. The British-born Miz Mazzy, as Eunice called her—and also, later on, “my white momma”—inspired her love of Bach and her plans to become a great and famous classical pianist. Giving a recital in the local library, at eleven, Eunice saw her parents being removed from their front-row seats to make room for a white couple. She had been schooled by Miz Mazzy in proper deportment, but she nevertheless stood up and announced that if people wanted to hear her play they’d better let her parents sit back down in the front row. There were some laughs, but her parents were returned to their seats. The next day, she remembered, she felt “as if I had been flayed, and every slight, real or imagined, cut me raw. But, the skin grew back a little tougher, a little less innocent, and a little more black.”

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Her skin was very black, and she was made fully aware of that, along with the fact that her nose was too large. The aesthetics of race—and the loathing and self-loathing inflicted on those who vary from accepted standards of beauty—is one of the most pervasive aspects of racism, yet it is not often discussed. The standards have been enforced by blacks as well as by whites. Even Harry Belafonte wrote, in his memoir, about his mother’s well-intentioned counsel to “marry a woman with good hair,” and he added, in unnecessary clarification, “Good hair meant straight hair.” (Reader, he married her.) But Nina Simone, strong and fierce and proud Nina Simone? “I can’t be white and I’m the kind of colored girl who looks like everything white people despise or have been taught to despise,” she wrote in a note to herself, not during her adolescence but in the years when she was already a successful performer. “If I were a boy, it wouldn’t matter so much, but I’m a girl and in front of the public all the time wide open for them to jeer and approve of or disapprove of.”

Countering the charge of physical inferiority, in her youth, was the talent that her mother assured her was God-given. Music was her salvation, her identity. Thanks to a fund established by a pair of generous white patrons in Tryon, she was sent to board at a private high school—she practiced piano five hours a day, and graduated valedictorian—and then to a summer program at Juilliard, all with the unwavering aim of getting into the Curtis Institute of Music, in Philadelphia, where admission was terrifically competitive but tuition was free. Her destiny seemed so assured that her parents moved to Philadelphia before she took the Curtis exam. The fact that she was rejected, and believed that this was because of her race, was a source of unending bitterness. It was also a turning point. In the summer of 1954, in need of money, Eunice Waymon took a job playing cocktail piano in an Atlantic City dive—the owner demanded that she also sing—and, hoping to keep the news of this unholy employment from her mother, turned herself into Nina Simone, feeling every right to the anger that Nina Simone displayed forever after.

At times, it seemed that she could outdistance her feelings. In 1961, after a brief marriage to a white hanger-on at the Atlantic City club, she married Stroud, a tough police detective on the Harlem beat whom she initially sized up as “a light-skinned man,” “well built,” and “very sure of himself.” The following year, she gave birth to a daughter, Lisa Celeste, and Stroud left his job to manage Simone’s career; they lived in a large house in the leafy Westchester suburb of Mount Vernon, complete with a gardener and a maid. Although she complained of working too hard and touring too much—of being desperately exhausted—her life was not the stuff of the blues. And then, before a concert in early 1967, Stroud found her in her dressing room putting makeup in her hair. She didn’t know who he was; she didn’t quite know who she was. She later remembered that she had been trying to get her hair to match her skin: “I had visions of laser beams and heaven, with skin—always skin—involved in there somewhere.”

The full medical facts of Simone’s mental illness became public only after her death, in 2003, thanks to two British fan-club founders and friends of Simone’s, Sylvia Hampton and David Nathan, whose account of the singer’s career was aptly titled, after one of Simone’s songs, “Nina Simone: Break Down & Let It All Out” (2004). Subsequent biographies—the warmly overdramatizing “Nina Simone,” by David Brun-Lambert (2009), and the coolly meticulous “Princess Noire,” by Nadine Cohodas (2010)—have filled in terrible details of depression and violence and long-sought but uncertain diagnoses: “bipolar disorder” appears to be the best contemporary explanation. Excerpts from Simone’s diaries and letters of the nineteen-sixties, published by Joe Hagan (who got them from Andrew Stroud) in The Believer, in 2010, added the news that Simone’s personal hell was compounded by regular beatings from Stroud. The marriage dissolved in 1970, but it was many more years before she received any helpful medication.

All the more remarkable, then, the strength that Simone projected through the sixties. As the decade wore on, she began to favor bright African gowns and toweringly braided African hair styles; she became the High Priestess of Soul, and though the title was no more than a record company’s P.R. gambit—Aretha Franklin was soon crowned the Queen of Soul—she bore it with conviction. It would be wrong, however, to give the impression that her songs were mostly about civil rights. Stroud, with his eye on the bottom line, was always there to keep her from going too far in that direction. In concert, she even pulled back on “Mississippi Goddam,” singing “We’re all gonna die, and die like flies” in place of the gleefully threatening “You’re all gonna die . . .” Although she did record the classic anti-lynching ballad “Strange Fruit,” in 1965, and she could give the most unexpected songs an edge of racial protest (listen to her harrowing version of the Brecht-Weill “Pirate Jenny”), she had a vast and often surprising musical appetite. By the late sixties, she was so afraid of falling behind the times that she expanded her repertory to include Bob Dylan, Leonard Bernstein, and, covering all bases, the Bee Gees. One of her biggest hits of the era was the joyously innocuous “Ain’t Got No—I Got Life,” from the musical “Hair”—which, in her hands, became a classic freedom song.

But womanly strength was in everything she sang: in the cavernous depths of her voice—some people think Simone sounds like a man—in her intensity, her drama, her determination. It’s there in the crazy love song “I Put a Spell on You,” in which she recasts the crippling needs of love (“Because you’re mine!”) into an undeniable command. It’s there in the ten-minute gospel tour de force “Sinnerman,” when she cries out “Power!” like a Southern preacher and her musicians shout back “Power to the Lord!,” and especially when she takes the disapproving voice of the Lord upon herself: “Where were you, when you oughta been praying?” If you’d never before thought of the Lord as a black woman, you did now.

The civil-rights songs were nevertheless what she called “the important ones.” And the movement is where she gained her strength. It’s also where her private anger took on public dimensions, in the years when patience gave way entirely and the anger in many black communities could no longer be tamped down. Onstage in Detroit, on August 13, 1967—two weeks after a five-day riot had left forty-three people dead, hundreds injured, and the city in ruins—Simone, singing “Just in Time,” added a message to the crowd: “Detroit, you did it. . . . I love you, Detroit—you did it!” She was met with roars of approval, which one Detroit critic said he presumed had come from “the arsonists, looters and snipers in the audience.” Another critic, however, wrote that her show let white people know what they had to learn, and learn fast. Was she the voice of national tragedy or of the next American revolution?

And then King was shot, on April 4, 1968. Sections of Washington, Chicago, Baltimore, and more than a hundred smaller cities went berserk. Despite her rhetoric, Simone was profoundly shaken, and her views of what might be accomplished in this country only grew more bleak. At an outdoor concert in Harlem, the following summer—it’s available on YouTube—she went for broke.

Majestically bedecked à l’africaine, she opened with “Four Women,” singing now before a crowd where an Afro was the norm. After several other stirring, politically focussed songs—“Revolution,” “Backlash Blues”—she closed with something so new that she had not had time to learn it, a poem by David Nelson, who was then part of a group called the Last Poets and is now among the revered begetters of rap. She read the words from a sheet of paper, moving across the stage and repeatedly exhorting the crowd to answer the question “Are you ready, black people? . . . Are you ready to do what is necessary?” The crowd responded to this rather vague injunction with a mild cheer, prompted by the bongos behind her and the demand in her voice. And then: “Are you ready to kill, if necessary?” Now a bigger, if somewhat incongruous, cheer rose from the smiling crowd filled with little kids dancing to the rhythm on a sunny afternoon. It had been five years since the Harlem riot of 1964, the granddaddy of sixties riots; New York had largely escaped the ruinations of both 1967 and 1968. “Are you ready to smash white things, to burn buildings, are you ready?” she cried. “Are you ready to build black things?”

Despite her best efforts, Simone failed to incite a riot in Harlem that day in 1969. The crowd received the poem as it had received her songs: with noisy affirmation, but merely as part of a performance. People applauded and went on their way. There are many possible reasons: no brutal incident of the kind that frequently set off riots, massive weariness, the knowledge of people elsewhere trapped in riot-devastated cities, maybe even hope. Simone had her unlikeliest hit that year with a simple hymn of promise, “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” based on the title of a play that had been put together from Lorraine Hansberry’s uncollected writings. Hansberry, who died in 1965, had used the phrase in a speech to a group of prize-winning black students, and Simone asked a fellow-musician, Weldon Irvine, to come up with lyrics that “will make black children all over the world feel good about themselves forever.” Indeed, it is a children’s song (or it was, until Aretha took it over). Simone’s most moving performance may have been on “Sesame Street,” where she sat on the set’s tenement steps wearing an African gown and lip-synched her recording to four enchanting if slightly mystified black children, who raised their arms in victory toward the end.

It was not a victory she could believe in or a mood she could sustain. By the end of the sixties, both Simone’s career and her marriage were in serious trouble. Pop-rock did not really suit her, and the jazz and folk markets had radically shrunk; the concert stage still assured her income and her stature. And if the collapse of her marriage was in some ways a liberation she was also now without the person who had managed her finances and her schedule, and who had kept her calm before she went onstage (by forbidding her alcohol, among other means), and got her offstage quickly when the calm failed. She was left to govern herself in a world that suddenly had no rules and, just as frightening, was emptied of its larger, steadying purpose. “Andy was gone and the movement had walked out on me too,” she wrote, “leaving me like a seduced schoolgirl, lost.”

Looking back on the historic protests and legislative victories of the sixties, one may find it easy to assume a course of inevitable if often halting racial progress, yet this was anything but apparent as the decade closed. When, in 1970, James Baldwin set out to write about “the life and death of what we call the Civil Rights movement,” its failure seemed to him beyond contention. As for the black leaders who had “walked out” on Simone, they were in cemeteries (Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, King, Fred Hampton), in jail (Huey Newton, Bobby Seale), or in Africa (Stokely Carmichael), or else had “run for cover,” as she put it, “in community or academic programmes.” White liberals had diverted their efforts to Vietnam; this was now the war being fought on televisions in living rooms every night. According to Simone, “The days when revolution really had seemed possible were gone forever.”

She left the country in 1974. Travelling to Liberia with her twelve-year-old daughter, she stayed for two years, during which she performed hardly at all. She left Liberia for Switzerland in order to put her daughter in school there. Eventually, she moved to France, alone. It seems to have been only the recurrent need for money that spurred her to perform again in the United States, although she took great pride in an honorary doctorate that she received from Amherst, in 1977, and insisted ever after on being called “Doctor Nina Simone.” Meanwhile, her concerts tended increasingly toward disaster. As she now sang in “Mississippi Goddam,” “the whole damn world’s made me lose my rest.”

The remainder of her life, some twenty-five years, is a tale of escalating misery. At the worst, she was found wandering naked in a hotel corridor brandishing a knife; she set her house in France on fire, and once, also in France, she shot a teen-age boy (in the leg, but that may have been poor aim) in a neighbor’s back yard for making too much noise—and for answering her complaints with what she understood as racial insults. Yet the ups of her life could be almost as vertiginous as the downs. In 1987, just a year after she was sent to a hospital in a straitjacket, her charmingly upbeat 1959 recording of “My Baby Just Cares for Me” was chosen by Chanel for its international television ad campaign. Rereleased, the record went gold in France and platinum in England. In 1991, she sold out the Olympia, in Paris, for almost a week.

She toured widely during her final years. In Seattle, in the summer of 2001, she worked a tirade against George W. Bush into “Mississippi Goddam,” and encouraged the audience to “go and do something about that man.” She was already suffering from breast cancer, but it wasn’t the worst illness she had known. She was seen as a relic of the civil-rights era, and on occasion she even led the audience in a wistful sing-along of “We Shall Overcome,” although she did not believe her country had overcome nearly enough. Once she became too sick to perform, she did not return to what she called “the United Snakes of America.” She died in France, in April, 2003; her ashes were scattered in several African countries. The most indelible image of her near the end is as a stooped old lady reacting to the enthusiastic cheers that greeted her with a raised, closed-fisted Black Power salute.

Thirty-four years after Simone released “Young, Gifted and Black,” Jay Z reused the title for a song that describes the fate of many of those gifted children—“Hear all the screams from the ghetto all the teens ducking metal”—in twenty-first-century America. The rap connection with Simone is hardly surprising, since rap is where black anger now openly resides. Simone disliked the rap she knew, however, in part for displacing so much anger onto women—or, as she put it, for “letting people believe that women are second class, and calling them bitches and stuff like that.” Back in 1996, Lauryn Hill rapped an anything-you-can-do retort to a male counterpart, “So while you imitatin’ Al Capone / I be Nina Simone / And defecatin’ on your microphone,” but no one has really taken up the challenge of Simone’s example. There was a minor uproar last year over Kanye West’s sampling of phrases from Simone’s recording of “Strange Fruit” (with her voice speeded up to an unrecognizable tinniness) in “Blood on the Leaves,” in which Simone’s evocation of lynched black bodies is juxtaposed with West’s personal concerns about “second string bitches,” cocaine, and the cost of paying off a baby mama versus a new Mercedes. Some people have seen a social statement here, but one can’t help recalling Simone’s broader reaction to rap: “Hell, Martin and Malcolm would turn in their graves if they heard some of this crazy shit.”

As for jazz, Simone was largely excluded from the history books for decades. Will Friedwald’s seminal “Jazz Singing,” of 1990, mentioned her only in passing, as “off-putting and uncommunicative” and as the center of a cult “that only her faithful understand.” But Simone’s eclecticism has slowly widened the very definition of jazz singing. And, ever since Presidential candidate Obama listed her version of “Sinnerman” as one of his ten favorite songs of all time, in 2008, the cult has gone mainstream. There’s now a burgeoning field of what may be called Simone studies—Ruth Feldstein’s “How It Feels to Be Free” and Richard Elliott’s “Nina Simone” offer two highly intelligent examples—and Friedwald’s even more authoritative volume of 2010, “A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers,” includes a lengthy entry on Simone that pronounces her “more important than anyone” in her influence on twenty-first-century jazz singing.

Last year, two Broadway shows depicted Simone as an inspiration for a couple of unexpected figures: in “A Night with Janis Joplin,” she helped to provide her white soul sister with the gift of fire, and, even stranger, in the crude but enthusiastic “Soul Doctor”—which reopens Off Broadway this winter—she was the force behind the “rock-and-roll rabbi” Shlomo Carlebach. Nutty as it seemed onstage, Simone’s acquaintance with the rabbi appears to have some basis in fact, and helps to explain the Hebrew songs she performed at the Village Gate (where he also performed) in the early sixties. While it may be a show-biz exaggeration to suggest that the rabbi and the jazz singer had an affair—the show featured an Act I curtain clinch that, on the night I saw it, had its largely Orthodox audience literally gasping—the point was the universality of Simone’s message about persecution, the search for justice, and the power of music.

Back in 1979, at a concert in Philadelphia, Simone followed a performance of “Four Women” by scolding the black women in the audience about their changes in style: “You used to be talking about being natural and wearing natural hair styles. Now you’re straightening your hair, rouging your cheeks and dressing out of Vogue.” In 2009, the comedian Chris Rock made a documentary titled “Good Hair” because, he explained, his young daughter had come to him with the question “Daddy, how come I don’t have good hair?” For an African-American child, nothing had changed since Harry Belafonte’s mother’s advice, more than half a century earlier. (According to one contented businessman in Rock’s film, African-Americans—twelve per cent of the population—buy eighty per cent of the hair products in this country.) As for skin tone, the cosmetic companies have been expanding their range ever since Iman established a line of darker foundations, in 1994, although in March, 2014, a former beauty director of Essence, Aretha Busby, complained to the Times,“The companies tend to stop at Kerry Washington. I’d love to see brands go two or three shades darker.”

The question of skin tone and hair and their meaning for African-American women exploded on the Internet with the announcement of the casting of Saldana in the Hollywood bio-pic about Simone. When the idea for such a film was initially floated, in the early nineties, Simone herself gave the nod to being played by Whoopi Goldberg. When, in 2010, the present film was announced in the Hollywood Reporter, Mary J. Blige—the reigning Queen of Hip-Hop Soul—was announced for the lead. Once Blige was replaced with Saldana, however, a woman whose skin tone is more than two or three shades lighter than Simone’s, the cries for boycotting the film on the basis of misrepresentation—on the basis of insult—were instantaneous. Why not cast Viola Davis? Or Jennifer Hudson? Production photographs showing Saldana on the set with an artificially broadened nose, an Afro wig, and—inevitably, but most unfortunately—dark makeup that is all too easily confoundable with blackface rendered any hope of calm discussion futile. It’s been suggested that the filmmakers might as well have cast Tyler Perry in full “Madea” drag.

Simone’s daughter has come out against the film because its story focusses on an invented love affair as much as for the casting of Saldana, although she is quick to point out how much her mother’s appearance shaped her life. (Lisa once told an interviewer that her mother would sometimes “traumatize” her because she is light-skinned—“and I’d remind her that she had chosen my father, I didn’t.”) The fight over the film ultimately extended to a lawsuit filed by the director, Cynthia Mort, against the British production company, Ealing Studios Enterprises, on the very eve of the screening at Cannes. Since then, though, the suit has been dismissed, so “Nina” may yet show up in a theatre near you. And Saldana may give a compelling performance—may well prove that she can play not only women who are sci-fi blue (as in “Avatar”) or green (as in “Guardians of the Galaxy”) but real-life black. Still, there is no escaping the fact that her casting represents exactly the sort of prejudice that Simone was always up against. “I was never on the cover of Ebony or Jet,” Simone told an interviewer, in 1980. “They want white-looking women like Diana Ross—light and bright.” Or, as Marc Lamont Hill writes in Ebony today, “There is no greater evidence of how tragic things are for dark-skinned women in Hollywood than the fact that they can’t even get hired to play dark-skinned women.” Well beyond Hollywood, these outworn habits of taste reverberate down the generations, infecting all of us.

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Simone’s favorite performer in her later years was Michael Jackson. She brought cassettes of his albums with her everywhere, and recalled having met him on a plane when he was a little boy, and telling him, “Don’t let them change you. You’re black and you’re beautiful.” She anguished over his evident failure to believe what she’d said: the facial surgeries, the mysterious lightening of his skin, the fatality of believing, instead, what the culture had told him, and wanting to be white. Simone appeared onstage with him just once, amid a huge cast of performers gathered for Nelson Mandela’s eightieth birthday, in Johannesburg, in the summer of 1998. She was sixty-five years old, and photographs of the event show her standing between Mandela and Jackson, overweight yet glamorously done up, her hair piled in braids and her strapless white blouse a contrast to the African costumes of the chorus all around. But she was also very frail. In one photograph, Jackson—in his glittering trademark military-style jacket, hat, and shades—holds her left hand in both his hands, in a gesture of affection. But in another shot he has put one steadying arm around her, and she is grasping his hand for support. Few people seem aware of what is happening. The stage remains a swirl of laughter and song, a joyous African celebration. And at its center the two Americans stand with hands clasped tight—one hand notably dark, the other notably fair—as though trying to help each other along a hard and endless road.

#nina simone #greats #performing artists #civil rights #embodiment #culture #the black experience #art #music #self-expression #self-image #civil rights movement

[sunflower-swan]

Not fandom related. TW for Covid content. I just need to put this out there.

...

...

...

One year ago this week...

Wednesday, March 11, 2020: My HS Choir sang the national anthem at the opening game of the state basketball tournament. We had lunch on Mass Street. My Mom came to see me and have lunch together. Dad was busy with farm stuff. My kids were excited to meet my Mom. On our way home we visited the capital building because they had never seen it before.

Thursday, March 12, 2020: HS Music trip to St. Louis cancelled. We were supposed to leave in a week. The kids had been fundraising for a year. We still haven't taken this trip. I'm hopeful for next year.

Friday, March 13, 2020: All of my groups had fantastic rehearsals. We were on the right path to having another great contest season. I told my kids I would see them Monday. We had four more days until Spring Break.

Sunday, March 15, 2020, around 5pm: Schools in my state shutdown until further notice.

Sunday, March 15, 2020, around 5:15pm: Calls and texts from crying and hysterical seniors who just lost all of their lasts. Who had been practicing their solos for months because this was going to be the year they received top marks at state music. Who had their final day with their band and/or choir family and they didn't know it at the time.

And then...

November 2020: A staff member tests positive. I was sitting next to them in a meeting the day before. We were both wearing masks and socially distanced. I was not quarantined.

Also November 2020: Three of my students test positive. I sit next to one of them during band rehearsal the day before. We were socially distanced and I'm not quarantined.

Still November 2020: My BIL tests positive. Sister and kids are quarantined. Family Thanksgiving is cancelled. We'll get together for Christmas.

Day after Thanksgiving 2020: My Uncle calls me to say he was in the hospital a few weeks ago for Covid. My Uncle never calls me. I probably hadn't talked to him in... A year? It was nice to talk to him but apparently thinking you're going to die changes a person.

A week before Christmas 2020: My Dad and his parents admitted to the hospital for Covid. My Dad and Grandma come home. My Grandpa does not... He passes away on New Years Eve. We did not have family Christmas.

Two weeks ago: We made an impromptu visit to see my family. It did not suck as much as I expected it to, to be at my grandparents house. It was the first time had seen them in person in four months. My Grandma is having surgery to remove her thyroid soon. When she was in the hospital for Covid the doctors found early stage cancer.

It has been a real turd of a year for everyone. For educators I feel like it has had an extra special suck. In my classroom (band & choir), kids are literally projecting their breath forcefully into the air. Kinda scary in an environment where kids are often unknown carriers of a dangerous virus that is transmitted through droplets expelled from one's mouth.

In August, when I found out my school was going completely in person with no mask requirement, I did some serious soul searching for a couple of days. In the end, I took the gamble that if I got sick, odds where good that I would feel lousy for a week or two but ultimately be ok. If I wasn't at school, then my kids would not be able to play their instruments or sing, and what's the point in being in music if you can't do those things?

I still feel like that was an unfair choice I was forced to make. The choice between my future health and my students education. For many kids, their elective classes get them out of bed and at school every day. A couple of teachers chose to teach remotely. I'm glad they had that option. The way I looked at it, if I wanted my program to survive beyond this year, and I did, then I had to be at school.

Not gonna lie, that first month of school was rough on me. I hadn't been around anyone other than close family in about six months. I went to the store a couple times with my husband early in the spring. Apparently I don't hide my fear as well as I think I do because we got home and he said that he wouldn't make me do that again. And he hasn't, bless him.

Except... Our weekly trips to the store were fun. We don't really go out so that was our time together outside of home. And we lost that. He still does the shopping on his own. It's the only time he leaves the house other than when we walk the dogs in the evening. (His job allows him to work from home.)

Which brings us to today. I got my second Covid shot on Friday. Saturday I spent the day in bed. I didn't feel "bad" I was just too exhausted to do anything. Yesterday I felt better but still kinda tired. I don't like needles or shots, and the thought of receiving an emergency vaccine really scared the hell out of me.

Teachers in my state were part of group two, right after senior citizens and health care workers, to have the chance at the vaccine. Some of my colleagues chose to opt out. In the end I decided to get it because my Grandpa couldn't. He was gone before it was an option.

And then my Dad sends me this picture this morning:

I was probably about six years old here. And that's my Grandpa helping me ride a bike.

Tell your loved ones you love them every chance you get. Don't take a single second for granted.

...

This ended up way longer than I expected it to be. When I started it was just going to be what happened a year ago. And then it sorta snowballed into everything from the past year. If you've made it this far, well, congratulations I guess. Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

#covid 19 #covid tw #covid vaccine #personal

[kevinspaceyarchives]

Kevin Spacey is featured in Parade Magazine | December 5, 2004 (Photographed by Blake Little)

In Step With Kevin Spacey

by James Brady

"I've had the time of my life" said Kevin Spacey about making his latest film, Beyond the Sea. The story of the late singer Bobby Darin, it opens this month across the U.S. and co-stars Kate Bosworth as Darin's actress wife, Sandra Dee.

The extraordinary and very successful Spacey, who has won two Oscars, a Tony and the British academy award, not only stars in the Darin flick but also directed it and is one of the producers. What drew this wonderful actor to the pop idol?

"Bobby was one of our great entertainers" Kevin said. "I wanted to do a celebration of his life. When I was 7 or 8, my dad had a great collection of 78 RPM records, and I used to sit in my living room with a hairbrush, singing Darin's songs. I thought he was the coolest ever. He played the drums, piano, guitar, harmonica, and he could dance! Only Sammy Davis Jr. was as versatile."

Kevin said he had difficulty getting backing. "Film bios make Hollywood nervous" he said. "I cut a deal with UK and German interests, and we made the movie I wanted to make. And except for a scene on the English coast, we shot the whole movie in Berlin. Even the Harlem scenes are really Berlin."

How was it directing himself? "I liked it" he said. "You set your own pace. There's less sitting around."

Will we hear Darin's voice? "I hate lip-synch" said Kevin, "so I sang the whole thing. The Darin family started off feeling,'Over my dead body,' but when they saw what we wanted to do, they went into their archives and gave us all the arrangements."

Among Spacey's other influences have been Jason Robards, Kate Hepburn and Jack Lemmon, all now gone. Miss Hepburn and Kevin were known to exchange letters. Robards, who had owned the role of Hickey in Long Day's Journey before Kevin played it on Broadway, was so supportive of the younger man that, when Robards died, The New York Times printed an eloquent tribute by Kevin. And Jack Lemmon? "I miss him" said Spacey. "I worked with him on four different projects. He was a mentor, as an actor and a person."

Brady's Bits

These days Spacey is living in London, where he's the artistic director of the famous Old Vic Theatre. In February, he'll return to the stage there in National Anthems. Kevin's career began onstage. After attending the Juilliard School of Drama, he began landing roles on Broadway. He was in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night with Jack Lemmon. Later, in 1991, he won a Tony for Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers. In Hollywood, Spacey earned an Oscar in 1996 for The Usual Suspects and Best Actor in 2000 for American Beauty. How important was that acclaimed movie to him? "Enormously so" Spacey told me. "That's a film that will be around for a long, long time." Another of his hit films was 1997's L.A. Confidential. Why was that not just another cop story? "It had a great cast" said Spacey. "And the people in it are consciously questioning their own morality. I really believe if Titanic hadn't come out the same year, Confidential would have won the Oscar."

#Kevin Spacey #This Day in Spacey History #Parade Magazine #Parade #Blake Little #photoshoot #photoshoots #article #articles #interview #interviews #Beyond The Sea #Bobby Darin #in step with #teacups #December 5 #2004

[cinemamablog]

Lana Del Rey Goes to the Movies

I use roughly 1/16th of my iPhone’s storage space to hold my collection of Lana Del Rey’s music, including her (misspelled) self-titled album Lana Del Ray AKA Lizzy Grant and over a hundred of her leaked, unreleased tracks. (If you have an MP3 of “Yosemite” or “Life is Beautiful”... Hit me up, please.) My husband teases me because I have a LanaBoards account so I can read - and occasionally participate in - the pre-release gossip months, sometimes years, before the next Lana album drops.

Just like I make no secret of my Lana Del Rey obsession, Ms. Lizzy Grant pulls no punches when it comes to her idolatry of the silver screen and Hollywood lore. With songs aptly titled “Hollywood,” “Hollywood’s Dead,” and “Super Movie,” she wears her movie loving heart on her sleeve. Lana makes references to movies, iconic (usually dead) actors, and David Lynch throughout her discography. She has also contributed to countless recent movies, providing sultry vocals while matching the vibe of the films, like on the soundtracks for The Great Gatsby, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and Big Eyes. In fact, Mary Ramos, Quentin Tarantino’s music supervisor, revealed last summer that Lana submitted music for Tarantino’s latest film, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. She also reportedly recorded a song for the James Bond franchise at one point. A casual fan of motion pictures, Lana is not. To which I say: girl, same.

Lana frequently references to Marilyn Monroe in her music, always in a very blatant (some might say distasteful) manner. “If I call you on the telephone, I might overdose, ‘cause I’m strong but I’m lonely, like Marilyn Monroe,” she mews in an otherwise sweet love song named after the actress. She also references suicide and Monroe in her single “Body Electric”: “Elvis is my daddy, Marilyn’s my mother,” she sings in the first verse. By the second verse, she sings “Diamonds are my bestest friend [Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, anyone?]. Heaven is my baby, suicide’s her father, opulence is the end.” On a less morbid note, she also pays homage to Monroe in the intro of her National Anthem music video. In the black and white clip, Lana sings “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” a la Marilyn Monroe, except instead of JFK on the receiving end, she serenades rapper A$AP Rocky. 

The reason for Lana’s attraction to Marilyn’s mythos seems obvious to me. They both created their persona by studying the stars that came before them: Marilyn by emulating Jean Harlow, Lana by paying her respects to Marilyn, Sharon Tate, and other young movie stars known for the tragedies that marked their lives. The cycle continues into the 21st century.

Lana has a few other movies and film people that reappear throughout her song catalogue: David Lynch, Scarface, and Easy Rider. I find this appropriate, as all three present the viewer with stylized visions of how the American Dream can go wrong. Lynch explores the nightmarish underbelly of the suburban lifestyle, Scarface follows Al Pacino’s immigrant character up a violent ladder of success, and Easy Rider glorifies living on one’s own terms, a freedom for which the main characters pay dearly.

Lana covered the titular song of David Lynch’s film Blue Velvet on her first studio EP, Paradise. At first, I thought that maybe she just likes the song, but then, on her second studio album, Ultraviolence, she gave an undeniable nod to Lynch that marked her for a fan. In the song “Sad Girl,” she sings: “He’s got the fire and he walks with it,” a blatant reference to the phrase “fire walk with me” from Lynch’s project Twin Peaks. Both Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks focus on the sexual, drug-fueled violence lurking just under the surface of an otherwise idyllic community, much like Lana’s storytelling through song.

“Scarface, sacrifice, sold my soul to make it nice. It was worth it, paid the price, life is death when blow is life,” Lana sings on an unreleased track called, you guessed it, “Scarface.” The lyrics of the song follow the same themes as the movie, describing a life characterized by mob violence and stoned patriotism. Lana also references the De Palma remake in another unreleased song, “Never Let Me Go”: “Like they say in Scarface, kid, you can push your drugs and I can make it big.” I’m pretty sure they don’t say that in Scarface, but still, the sentiment remains the same: the road to the American Dream (and doom) can be paved with drugs, money, and luck.

“Is the sun in your eyes, easy rider?” Lana asks in the unreleased “Angels Forever, Forever Angels.” She sings in the bridge, “Paradise is a hell-colored flame sky. Is it nice to feel free and wild?” throwing out a subtle, decades-old reference to the theme song of Dennis Hopper’s 1969 counterculture hit Easy Rider, “Born to be Wild.” On her third studio album, Honeymoon, Lana recycles the reference on the track “Freak”: “Sun reflecting in your eyes, like an easy rider.” Like Blue Velvet and Scarface, Easy Rider shows the American Dream onscreen as a drug-induced fantasy that can’t end well, but the ride is worth it.

Occasionally, Lana sings about the real dark side of Hollywood, where the bad decisions and late nights aren’t a fun game or even a choice anymore, but rather the price of artistic success, demanded of her by men with sinister intentions. In Lana Del Ray AKA Lizzy Grant’s “Put Me in a Movie,” Lana teases a powerful man in the movie industry: “Come on, I know you like little girls... Put me in a movie.” Some of Lana’s other lyrics came under fire in the media shortly after the accusations against Harvey Weinstein publicly surfaced. Lana sings the lyrics in question during the bridge for the already-controversial song “Cola”: “Harvey’s in the sky with diamonds and he’s making me crazy.” She’s since claimed in interviews that she won’t sing “Cola” anymore due to the backlash, but I think the song has made its point: Lana’s always known that men like Harvey have the money and power (“diamonds”) to drive desperate people crazy.

In her penultimate album, Lust for Life, Lana doesn’t let up on the Hollywood imagery. In the album’s teaser trailer, Lana lives inside of the Hollywood sign, stirring a witchy potion and pondering the fate of the world from above the LA lights. She climbs that same Hollywood sign with the Weeknd in the music video for the titular song, “Lust for Life.” While the album begins on this upbeat note, by the third song, “13 Beaches,” we return to a familiar sense of isolation and sadness. An audio clip from the cult classic movie Carnival of Souls plays over string instrumentation: “I don’t belong in the world. That’s what it is. Something separates me from other people. Everywhere I turn, there’s something blocking my escape.” (This monologue is only available in the deleted scenes of the recent Criterion Blu-ray release and in unrestored YouTube videos. Lana knows her independent horror movies.) This cinematic depression haunts the rest of the album, with lyrics like “Cherry”’s “My celluloid scenes are torn at the seams, and I fall to pieces” and the disturbing Charles Manson references in my all-time favorite LDR song, “Heroin”: “Manson’s in the air and all my friends have come ‘cause they still feel him here… Something ‘bout the sun has made these kids get scary. Oh, writing in blood on the walls and shit…” Even when Lana tries to shift her audience’s focus to her lust for life, she can’t help but revert to her old melancholic ways. But as she sings in the final bridge of “Heroin”: “I hope that I come back one day to tell you that I really changed.”

“You move to California, but it’s just a state of mind,” Lana sings on her latest album, Norman Fucking Rockwell, and the rest of the album echoes that sentiment. Her disenchantment with the City of Angels has been a running thread through her discography and yet she returns to it over and over, in songs like “Bartender” and “California.” On Honeymoon, she sang “I will never sing again. With just one wave, it goes away.” On Lust for Life, she sang “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sick of it.” Now on NFR, she sings “I guess that I’m burnt out after all.” But after three albums of threatening to leave it all behind, I don’t think Lana Del Rey will ever really be done with Hollywood. In the words of the last song on NFR: Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like Lana to have… but she has it. 

#music #critique

[5bi5]

It’s a crappy sort of place, really. The windows are broken, the paint is chipping, a couple of the inside doors are missing, rusty hinges still hanging loosely from the walls. Then and again, we’re not paying for it, so we can’t exactly demand perfection.

At eighteen years old, he’s fresh out of the foster care system, and I’m fresh out of my legal obligation to my parents. So this is it. This is the year we finally make it out of here.

Two years ago, at the age of sixteen, we met. I’d known about this place for a while; whenever school or my parents or the news or anything else became too much for me, I would come here to be alone. One of the windows is completely missing, and it’s not that difficult to climb in. That combined with the fact that this place is way out in the woods, and nobody is ever around to condemn us for trespassing, makes it the ideal hideout.

One day, I climbed in the window, and there he was. Tears streaming from his eyes and dripping off the tip of his nose, face red and slimy with snot, hair wild and disheveled. Everything about him screamed for help. Unsure what to say, I just stood watching him for a second, until he looked up and saw me.

He looked defensive for a second, and then he seemed to take in more closely just what he was seeing: my own hair was perhaps just as out of place as his, my left eye was blackened, and the denim jacket I wore every day hung loosely around my ribcage. I was, to say the least, not threatening. He cleared his throat, and spoke softly, his voice a hairsbreadth from breaking at every word.

“I’m Jasper. Who are you?”

“My name is Zach.” I told him. “Are you okay?”

We sat there for maybe an hour as he told me about his life thus far, about how much he missed his parents, about how the whole foster care thing wasn’t really working out for him, about how much he just wanted to be done with it all. He was ten when he had been orphaned, he said, and six years later he still felt alone in the world. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with the idea of foster care, but rather that he seemed to always wind up unlucky in just which people attempted to take him in.

After that, we sat for some more time just listening to the birds, and before I climbed back out the window to make my way home, we made plans to meet back there the next day.

In the following months, we would both spend a lot of time crying in this place, but it also became one of the only places either of us would smile, or laugh, or joke. Once, in the sunshine of a mid-July afternoon, he sang me a soft rendition of Going to California. He grew up on Led Zeppelin, he said, and he knew their songs the way most people around here knew lullabies, or the national anthem– he never struggled to recall a word.

“Maybe we should go to California.” I said when he had finished singing.

“What, like, for real?”

“Why not? We have to get out of here someday. Go somewhere.”

He nodded, chewed his lip, and asked, “Where do you want to go?”

“I’ve heard good things about San Francisco.”

“Alright.” He looked over at me. “San Francisco it is.”

That was the day we started saving up. We had both had some money set aside for the future already, but once we had a real plan, we kicked things into high gear. I worked five days a week, and rarely spent a penny of it. To my knowledge, he did the same.

Once I found him staring at an unopened pack of cigarettes, his eyes glazed over, and blood oozing from a cut on his lip. Most of me, the part of me that I hope he sees, was worried for him. My more selfish side simply reminded me that this could eat all our money, and with it our future.

As it turned out, he hadn’t been planning on smoking at all.

“Some kid punched me a couple times. Threw this at me.” He turned the pack of cigarettes to me to reveal the word “fags” scrawled on it in sharpie. “Thought it was funny, I guess. His friends certainly did.”

The selfish part of me disappeared in a flash as my heart played leapfrog with my throat. “Jasp, that’s terrible. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” He smiled. “It’s his money to waste.”

I took care of his lip as best I could, but I couldn’t prevent the purple bruises from blossoming across his face in the days afterwards, or the anxieties that stung my eyes and filled my throat like smoke. The bruises faded eventually, but the worries never subsided.

It sounds cliché, but falling in love with him was like falling asleep. We became each other’s worlds in an instant; it might have seemed unhealthy had everything else in both of our lives not been so toxic it was hard to judge. The empty house in the forest felt like home to me– or, more accurately, he did.

Once we turned eighteen, it really did become our home, just for a little while. We wanted to stick around to graduate high school, but neither of us felt safe enough to stay in our current living situations, even for a short time. The house isn’t technically that much safer, but it feels better. At night, I cling to his arm the way I held a teddy bear as a child. I doubt I could fall asleep alone anymore.

The day we finally bought our train tickets, we were on top of the world. I wanted to kiss him there in the railway station, but public affection has always been too much of a risk. It wasn’t until we made it back to the privacy of the house in the woods that I could truly let down my guard and let everything sink in: we were going to make it.

We leave tomorrow afternoon. It’s maybe midnight now, and I’m trying to get some sleep, but I’m wide awake from the awareness that this is our last night here. It’s a strange place to leave– this has been our safe haven, our home, our hope. But we’re off to a future where we won’t need a safe haven, because we’ll just be safe.

I breathe in time with Jasper, trying to lull myself into whatever world he’s dreaming of. Eventually, everything fades to black.

#writing #story #my writing #gay #lgbtq #lgbt #original #ocs

[phroyd]

PARIS — In the shadow of a grand war memorial here, French President Emmanuel Macron marked the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I by delivering a forceful rebuke against rising nationalism, calling it a “betrayal of patriotism” and warning against “old demons coming back to wreak chaos and death.”

His words during a solemn Armistice Day ceremony under overcast skies at the foot of the Arc de Triomphe in the heart of the French capital were intended for a global audience. But they also represented a pointed rebuke to President Trump, Russian President Vladi­mir Putin and others among the more than 60 world leaders in attendance.

Speaking in French, Macron emphasized a global order based on liberal values is worth defending against those who have sought to disrupt that system. The millions of soldiers who died in the Great War fought to defend the “universal values” of France, he said, and to reject the “selfishness of nations only looking after their own interests. Because patriotism is exactly the opposite of nationalism.”

Macron has attempted to stand as a vocal counterweight to Trump, who recently called himself a “nationalist” and has moved to set the United States apart from global treaties, including the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate accord and a U.N. program for refugees.

Amid growing divisions in Europe that have strained the European Union, Macron defended that institution and the United Nations, declaring the “spirit of cooperation” has “defended the common good of the world.”

“By putting our own interests first, with no regard for others, we erase the very thing that a nation holds dearest, and the thing that keeps it alive: its moral values,” Macron said.

He denounced fringe ideologies that have become more mainstream, warping religious beliefs and setting loose extremist forces on a “sinister course once again that could undermine the legacy of peace we thought we had forever sealed.”

The powerful remarks came as the world leaders gathered here have sought to mark the 100 years since the war by honoring those who served and died. Among those who participated were German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

British Prime Minister Theresa May did not attend, remaining in London to preside over a war remembrance there, though she visited France last week to lay wreaths at military cemeteries and meet with Macron. Chinese President Xi Jinping also was not present.

In speech honoring WWI soldiers, Trump vows to preserve 'civilization ... peace'

President Trump spoke Nov. 11 at a U.S. cemetery in France on the 100th anniversary of the World War I armistice. Here are key moments from that speech. (The Washington Post)

Putin told Russia’s RT network after the ceremony that he and Trump spoke during a leaders’ luncheon, but a formal meeting would wait until they cross paths at the Group of 20 Summit in Buenos Aries later this month. Putin said he and Trump agreed to a request from French officials not to overshadow the war remembrance ceremony.

“We are ready for dialogue,” said Putin, adding a dig at the Trump administration for announcing the United States would exit a landmark Cold War arms treaty. “We’re not the ones exiting the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.”

Ahead of the ceremony, dozens of world leaders dressed in black strode shoulder-to-shoulder along the Champs-Elysees toward the Arc. Military jets streaked overhead, emitting red, white and blue smoke, the colors of France.

Trump and Putin did not participate in the processions. The group, which had first gathered at the Elysee Palace, had come to the Arc on tour buses along the 230-foot wide boulevard. Bells at Notre Dame cathedral tolled at 11 a.m., marking the signing of the armistice of a war in which 10 million military troops perished.

But Trump and Putin took their own motorcades to the event and made separate entrances a few minutes after the main group. A White House spokeswoman said Trump arrived separately due to “security protocols,” though she did not elaborate.

Trump and Putin shook hands with leaders, assembled on risers at the foot of the monument, and took their positions. Trump and first lady Melania Trump took spots next to Merkel, while Putin stood next to Macron.

The ceremony could begin.

To the sound of a military brass band, Macron inspected French troops standing at attention and a choir sang the national anthem. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma performed a solo piece.

For Trump, dressed in a dark blue suit and red tie, the ceremony marked the beginning of a day in which he also attended a luncheon with world leaders and then delivered a speech at the Suresnes American Cemetery and Memorial — a day after he skipped a visit to a different cemetery.

At Suresnes, Trump ditched an umbrella and spoke in the rain for 10 minutes, at one point joking the crowd was “getting drenched.”

“It is our duty to preserve the civilization they defended,” Trump said of the 1,541 buried there. “We renew our sacred obligation to memorialize our fallen heroes.”

He did not address Macron’s speech.

The relationship between Trump and Macron has soured as the U.S. president has promoted an “America First” foreign policy that has unsettled allies on trade and defense. Macron has sought to counter some of Trump’s agenda, and he has organized a three-day Peace Forum that began Sunday afternoon, just as Trump headed home to Washington on Air Force One.

[The Broken Bromance? The Trump-Macron relationship is on the rocks.]

For European observers, the commemoration was a somber event — and not exclusively because of the dead it honored.

In a climate of resurgent nationalism — which has seen upheavals in Rome, Budapest, Warsaw and even London — Macron was alone on the dais, preaching the virtues of multilateralism. Merkel, his most loyal partner in this endeavor, has announced she will soon leave public life.

“Franco-German reconciliation was at the very heart of what we’ve been seeing together,” said Dominique Moïsi, a French foreign policy expert at the Paris-based Institute Montaigne and an informal adviser to the Macron campaign.

“But she’s out,” he said of Merkel, who announced she will step down in 2021. “The spirit in which we are commemorating the events is no longer fully present.”

Macron’s speech was full of literary allusions, including to the French poets Guillaume Apollinaire and Charles Péguy, both of whom served in World War I. (Péguy was killed in combat in 1914.)

Sunday’s address also contained a number of historical rebukes. He made a subtle reference to a well-known 1927 French book that decried the elites at the time, who embraced reactionary, nationalistic ideologies at the expense of a rational consensus.

Taking the stage to applause at the Paris Peace Forum later Sunday, Macron avoided presenting the weekend’s event as a success. Instead, he said history would remember the image of multiple world leaders whose countries were once at war gathered in peace under the Arc.

The question, Macron said, was how that image would be interpreted.

“Will it be the symbol of a durable peace among nations?” he asked. “Or, on the contrary, a photograph of a final moment of unity before the world descends into a new disorder?”

Phroyd

#macron #patriotism #nationalism

[whenyouthinktaylorthinkofus]

Hiiii, we are Luisa and Andy. We live in California, we have been friends since 2007 and this is the story about how we became friends because of @taylorswift.

We’ve lived in the same city for our whole lives, and we met in another city and another state back when we were 12 and 13 and we went to summer camp, at the beginning we weren’t friends, we didn’t talked that much and Luisa thought that I hated her hahaha. The story of us began one night during dinner; our counselors let us play music to make dinner more fun so when it was Luisa’s time to choose she picked none other than TIM MCGRAW. I got so excited cause none of my friends either back home or in camp liked Taylor so I only listened to it at home and I made my sisters listen to her until she grew on them and became fans hahaha, after that we instantly became friends and talked Taylor nonstop! Once we came back home we kept messaging each other through MSN chat, don’t know if you remember it? Luisa was going into 7th grade and I was going to 8th grade and we were going to be attending the same school and we were so excited! Luisa pretended to be Taylor Swift and Andy pretended to be Selena Gomez (EVEN BEFORE they were besties, I had an obsession with Selena and I gotta be honest that I still have hahaha). Back then not many of our friends were using Facebook, it was around 2008 probably, so we used our accounts to upload pictures of Taylor and Abigail and Selena and tag ourselves, and Luisa was the master at photoshopping her face to Taylor’s body hahahaha (we still have those pictures but are private thank god)

We followed Taylor via MySpace, oh how obsessed where we with MySpace, we could spend the whole afternoon designing it and putting a theme and looking for pictures on Photobucket, wow now I feel really old, selecting Teardrops On My Guitar as my song to be played in my profile (and being sneaky and hiding it so people could never pause it hahaha). We were there during the 27 second call drama, oh boy, our 14 year old selves lived for that drama (sorry Taylor, sorry Joe) and it was intense … we cried with Taylor and at the same time we were also obsessed with The Jonas Brothers (Luisa loved Joe and I couldn’t resist Nick’s curls hahahaha) so you could’ve imagine how torn up we were. Forever and Always broke our hearts and even at 14 years understood each lyric perfectly and made perfect sense for us.  

So Fearless came out during Andy’s freshman year and Luisa was in 8th grade, we were obsessed and I remember begging my parents to buy me the CD and one day after babysitting my brother my dad took me to Best Buy and told me I had earned it and I think he regretted that idea because the whole way home and every time we were in the car I was playing this CD. We turned 15 on 2009 and OF COURSE we played and sang to each other Fifteen, we were so corny hahaha but at the moment it was our anthem, we couldn’t believe we were 15! Just like Taylor’s song, for us it was like a sign.

I still have it fresh on my memory when she announced the Fearless Tour and oh god, we were soooo excited! We were going to buy tickets and see Taylor for the first time ever! We organized it and two other friends were also coming. The tickets sold out in like 1 minute and we didn’t have the chance to buy them … that’s our sad story haha we missed Taylor that year. There was a time in our lives when we went to high school, Luisa being 1 grade below Andy they started talking less to each other but still were present in each other lives. But we met more people who liked Taylor and we kind of drifted apart for a bit, but it’s all good now hahaha don’t worry!

Then came the Speak Now era and … as you may know we were STILL CRAZY ABOUT TAYLOR. Andy had the opportunity to go to the concert because a friend of hers got tickets, Luisa had tickets to but she had to sell them a week before because her parents couldn’t take her. (We talked about this the other day like WTF why didn’t you asked for a ride with us, but at that moment we didn’t think about it, and well … now that’s in the past). She cried so much because that would’ve been Luisas’ first time seeing her live, and now as I’m writing this I feel like such a bad friend hahaha, thank you Luisa. But then the Speak Now concert DVD came out and of course we bought it and we cried happy tears because that DVD just gives you chills and sad tears because she had missed the concert. Until this day we still watch the DVD, last time we tried to play it, it was almost mission impossible because we couldn’t find a DVD player in the house hahaha.

For the rest of the eras, we still followed Taylor really close. We bought merch, tickets, CDS, magazines, anything that had Taylor’s name or face you name it and we bought it (we’re sorry mom and dad for spending all that money hahaha, it was worth it!) Red and 1989 were EPIC, still are, many heartbreaks and many adventures made us relate so so much to Taylor’s songs. Andy was in her first year of university when Red came out, and oh wow … if I could tell you about all the stories and how I related to those songs. And Luisa was a senior in high school, and well … that first love, you feel like that pain is gonna be there forever, but thank you Taylor for making it bearable, and also making us feel like we can be in love again. During Red we had the chance to buy PIT tickets! I remember getting an email of Taylor Nation or Taylor Connect about fans getting the chance to buy those tickets and I begged my parents for the tickets, and oh wow … seeing Taylor from the PIT, life changing experience. She grabbed Andy’s hand during Love Story and I swear it was like super long! (I’ve seen the video and its like 2 seconds) but I’m sure we had a connection hahaha

During the 1989 era, it was like Taylor knew how to blow our minds over and over again each CD she recorded it was even better and exceeded our expectations! Blank Space wow! Even my non swiftie friends were OBSESSED with the song! I was super proud of that cause I felt like I was taking them to the fandom side. We went to her concert in San Diego and Luisa went with a friend of hers and Andy went ... alone hahaha. Andy was studying abroad that year so when I came back my friends had plans and well I ended up going alone BUT let me tell you it was an EXPERIENCE, I’ve never been to a concert alone and wow I did feel like it was more special. I remember the surprise song was Fearless and I cried but those happy tears because I remember not being able to see her during that tour and how special that song is, and I may or may not have shed a tear writing this paragraph. We ended up seeing each other during this concert and being together during Shawn Mendes and Vance Joy’s set.

Now let’s talk about Reputation! We went to opening night in Glendale; we drove 4 hours to be there! At the beginning when we bought the tickets I wasn’t aware what opening night meant until I got there and realized I was seeing all of this BEFORE anyone else, well besides the other 59,157 people who attended (yes, I searched on Wikipedia for the exact number). She BLEW our minds like … it was BEAUTIFUL, like nothing we’ve ever experienced before! Honestly most parts of the concert are blurry because of so much excitement. We drove back next day and it was over … after months of waiting it was over so quick. But things changed next week when we decided to buy tickets to night 2 in Pasadena and again sorry mom and dad but I still think IT WAS THE BEST DECISION EVER. We enjoyed this concert SO MUCH we didn’t even had our phones out for most of the concert, we decided we were gonna enjoy it and dance like crazy! And I think the people besides us thought we were on something cause the girl switched places with her dad so she wouldn’t be next to us hahahaha, but we didn’t care because we danced and sang like it was the last night ever! We honestly don’t understand how people can be so calm and serious at concerts!        

Months passed after our concerts and that’s when we decided to start our own Taylor inspired Instagram and Tumblr, we’ve followed so many and we thought it would be cool to have our own. We have met so many lovely Swifties, everyone with a different and unique story about how Taylor changed their lives and how they have met people through her (just like us!). Taylor brought to our lives a really special friendship that after 11 years we are still going strong! Right now we’re 24 and we really hope one day we can thank Taylor personally what she has done for us.

Thank you so much if you stayed and read all of this, I’m sorry we just got a bit inspired hahaha. It would be so nice and we will appreciate it if you could tag @taylorswift or @taylornation so they can see how much she has impacted our lives.

#taylor swift #taylor nation #reputation #reputation tour

[canyousevmyheavydirtysoul]

Cape Town. (Part 5.2) (Ryan Ross x Reader)

“So,” you addressed Ryan as the two of you leisurely strolled through the bustling streets of the surrounding area just outside the central business district of Cape Town, “Are you enjoying Cape Town so far?”

The both of you had come to an agreement that you would forfeit the bet and pay for lunch, just so that you could sneak out of the museum and get away from your meddlesome friends.

(Y/B/F) and Brendon were unbelievable; their attempts to get in between the two of you carried on through the beginning of the scavenger hunt – with (Y/B/F) asking you stupid questions like what you needed to study for your exam in six months time and Brendon pestering Ryan for his thoughts on what songs should be on their setlist for their concert at the end of the trip – until you got fed up and decided to ditch the museum and go for a walk instead.

“Oh yeah,” he answered with an enthusiastic smile, “I’m having the greatest time! I mean, we all are,” he chuckled nervously and looked down at the sidewalk, “but me especially.”

“Good to hear,” you playfully nudged him with your elbow, shooting him a smile that he oh so eagerly returned.

The two of you were strolling past a building that had a mural painted on its side and Ryan halted as he pointed at the portrait of a black, afro-haired woman raising a closed fist into the air. The fist was surrounded by a strikingly yellow circle, and it was quite obviously the focus of the mural.

“Hey, I’ve seen this symbol a couple times and I’ve been meaning to ask you… what does it mean?”

You couldn’t stop the wide grin that spread across your face as you sauntered over to the mural; Ryan trailed closely behind you.

“So you obviously know that the Apartheid era lasted from 1948 to 1994,” you tilted your head to address Ryan, who nodded in confirmation, “One of the most hated Apartheid laws was the Pass Law. It allowed the government to control the influx of black men into the cities by stating that all of them had to carry a pass, and only those carrying said passes were allowed access into urban areas. Oh, and passes were only allocated to those who found employment in the city.”

You took a few steps forward and ran your fingers along the paint on the wall. “Before the 50s, only black men were required to carry passes but then in 1952, the government announced that black women would also have to carry them. Understandably, that did not go down well with the masses,” you chuckled shortly, “The idea began in 1955 at a meeting of the Federation of South African Women, where a suggestion was made: ‘Let us go to Pretoria – the nation’s capital – ourselves and protest to the Government against laws that oppress us.’,” you paused, smiling at the thought.

“So they did?” A wide-eyed, super concentrated Ryan queried, unconsciously stepping closer to you.

You nodded proudly and turned to smile at the musician, raising one brow. “On the 9th of August, over 20 000 women of all races marched in unison to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to hand over a petition to the then prime minister, Hans Strijdom. Leading the march were Lilian Ngoyi and Albertina Sisulu, Helen Joseph, and Sophia Williams-De Bruyn, who were black, white, and coloured, respectively. So as representatives of each race group in South Africa, they carried the petition for presentation to the Prime Minister. But being the coward that he was,” you growled, grinding your teeth, “when he caught wind that 20 000 boss-ass, strong women were coming for him, he arranged to be somewhere else so he wouldn’t have to accept the petition from a ‘multicultural group of women’, so in his place, it was accepted by his secretary.”

“What a douchebag,” Ryan mumbled under his breath, scrunching up his face in disgust.

You nodded in agreement with Ryan’s statement, before inhaling deeply and continuing. “The women then stood in silence for thirty minutes before singing Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika – our national anthem – and then,” you sighed dreamily, reaching out and dancing your fingers across the words painted along the bottom of the wall, “then they sang this little beauty, here: Wathinta umfazi, wathint’ imbokodo!”

“What does that mean?”

Slowly, you balled your fist up and raised it up into the air. “You strike a woman, you strike a rock.”

“Wow, that’s…wow,” Ryan breathed, at a loss for words and moved by the strength and unity of the women.

“And even though the march was against the Pass Laws, it led to significant changes towards the emancipation of women. It was an incredible display of the strength and ferocity of all women, and it’s left a phenomenally impactful legacy in our country. Which is why in 1995 – a year after South Africa became a democracy – the 9th of August became a public holiday known as National Women’s Day, in remembrance of the inspirational 20 000 women who took a stand against their male oppressors.” You took a step back from the mural and looked at Ryan, shoving your hands in the back pockets of your jeans. “That symbol is so much more than just a hand gesture.”

“Forgive my language,” Ryan held out his hands in a premature apology, “but those were some fucking badass women.”

The two of you shared a laugh as you resumed strolling down the street.

“They sure were,” you agreed with a bob of your head before smirking cockily, “and I’d like to think that their descendants are substantially badass, too.”

Ryan sucked his bottom lip between his teeth and squinted as he raked his gaze over you in mock deliberation.

“Mm,” he hummed a moment later, shaking his head, “nope. I don’t see it.”

Letting out an offended scoff, you reached out and lightly shoved a sniggering Ryan, who in turn stumbled to the side a little.

“Come on,” you laughed along and cocked your head in the direction of the street heading back to the museum, “we should start heading back.”

The musician nodded in agreement as the both of you started on the journey back.

“So Ryan,” you said soon after.

“So (Y/N),” he smiled back.

You giggled quietly and stretched your left hand to the side, gently brushing it along the leaves of an overhanging tree branch. “I’ve been disclosing historical information to you for the past week; I think it’s your turn now. Tell me some of the history of Ryan Ross.”

Ryan sucked in a deep breath before letting out a low whistle and ruffling the hair at the back of his head. He turned to look at you with a lopsided grin. “You want the short story or the full on exposé?”

You shrugged casually. “Up to you.”

“I’ll tell you whatever you wanna know.”

Blushing somewhat, you transferred your attention over to the next tree you were approaching, this time pulling a flower from its branches. “How about we start with the obvious,” you suggested, twirling the bud in your hand, “How long have you been playing music for?”

“When I was twelve, I asked my parents to get me a guitar for Christmas, which they did. And Spencer’s parents got him a drum kit, so we had mini jam-sessions together and I guess it just grew from there,” Ryan shrugged and smiled slightly as he thought back to his earlier days.

“So you and Spencer have known each other since you were kids?” you queried, a tiny bit shocked by the revelation; you had assumed that they’d met in high school.

He nodded fervently. “Yeah, we met when I was six and he was five,” he paused to let out a laugh as he recalled how exactly they had met, “I was hitting golf balls across the fences into the neighbours’ yards and accidently wacked him in the head.” He turned and gave you a proud grin. “We’ve been best friends ever since.”

“Cute,” you chuckled, returning his grin with a lopsided one of your own.

“So yeah, we started playing music together and started a band.”

“Panic!?”

“Nope,” he shook his head, “our first band was called Pet Salamander – don’t ask me why; it’s a long story – and it was just the two of us. I’d do vocals.”

“I like hearing you sing,” you admitted somewhat shyly, choosing to look down at the flower in your hand as opposed to his face – the face that was now turning ruby-red. “Brendon has an impeccable voice, don’t get me wrong, but it’s nice to hear you featured on certain Panic! songs.”

“Really?” he gaped, staring at you in disbelief; he found it hard to believe that you were speaking the truth.

“Yeah,” you confirmed, finally looking up and tossing a sweet smile at the musician. One that made his heart flutter and his stomach do cartwheels.

“Th-thanks.”

He cursed himself over the fact that that was all he was able to get out.

“No thanks necessary,” you assured him, “So what kinda music were you guys into?”

Ryan cringed. The fact didn’t go unnoticed by you, leaving you to urge him on. “When I was little,” he sighed, giving in to your prompts, “I used to listen to country a lot. I even, uh,” he scratched the back of his neck in embarrassment and his voice dropped to a mumble, “used to dress up as a cowboy.”

“You’re lying,” you gawked, amusement evident in the sparkle in your eye.

Ryan sighed in defeat and fished his cellphone out of his pocket, pulling up a picture of a much younger, much tinier him, clad in a full-on cowboy outfit – complete with a lasso and everything.

“Oh my goodness,” you squeaked, unable to supress the feelings of adoration that came as a side effect of looking at the cuteness that was a little Ryan. “You were adorable!”

“Were?” Ryan arched both brows and pouted slightly, surprising himself with his forward reaction.

Looking up from the screen to the musician, you coked your head lightly and gave him a soft smile.

“Still are,” you added, lifting a hand to gently pinch his cheek – an action that left the man stunned into silence. He’d never get used to the rush of feeling your skin against his; even if it was only a minor, mostly-friendly gesture, such as the previous one.

Ryan timidly took his phone back and shoved it into his pocket, trying his best to still the nervous tremor in his hands.

“So, uh, yeah,” he cleared his throat, “I used to listen to a lotta country but then Spencer introduced me to mainstream rock when I got a bit older. We played covers of blink-182, mostly. And then a friend of ours – Brent Wilson – started joining our jam-sessions; eventually the three of us started a new band called Summer League.”

“Oooo,” you pursed your lips and brushed away the stray strands of hair the wind had swept across your face, “How’d it end up being you, Spencer, Jon and Brendon, then?”

“Brendon and Brent met because they were both taking guitar lessons at their high school. We were looking for a lead guitarist at the time – since I was on vocals – and Brent asked Bren to audition. The rest, as they say, is history.”

“Wait… if Brendon was the lead guitarist, how did he end up being lead singer?”

Ryan scrunched his face up as if he had just tasted something sour; you cocked one brow in intrigue at the sight. “He filled in for me at a rehearsal when I was sick one day, and everyone was so impressed that he was chosen as the new singer.”

Ryan let out a sudden giggle, and you frowned at him in confusion. He waved a somewhat dismissive hand before explaining himself. “When we asked him why he didn’t tell us he could sing, you know what he said?”

You gave him an expectant smile.

“’I didn’t know I could.’”

The two of you shared a giggle as you approached a pedestrian crossing. You pushed the button on the traffic light and the cars came to a halt, allowing you to cross the street to the other side. Once you were back on the sidewalk, you elbowed Ryan in the side.

“How did you feel about Brendon taking over your position?”

The expression on his face clearly showed how taken aback he was by your question, and he stammered as he tried to string together some words to say. Your query was a tad on the audacious side but you had noticed the slight shift in Ryan’s body language when he had spoken about Brendon’s addition to the band. He had tried to keep his tone and expression as neutral as possible, but the tensing of his shoulders gave him away.

“I…I was totally on board with it,” he answered, shaking his head as if his answer was obvious, “He has a killer voice. It made sense for him to be lead.”

You nodded. “Yeah, I’m not disputing that,” you held up your hands in defence, “I just thought you must’ve felt kinda bad, is all.”

Ryan was silent for a few seconds before simply stating, “Brendon was the better choice for the band.”

You took his sudden abrasiveness as a sign that he wasn’t too keen to say more on that particular sub-topic, and so you brought it back to the main one.

“What’s Jon’s story?”

The musician seemed thrilled that you had diverted, and he exhaled in relief before replying. “In May – I think it was – of 2006, Brent left the band. We had a tour coming up, so we asked our friend Jon to fill in for Brent at the shows. He eventually ended up becoming a permanent replacement.”

“And that,” Ryan threw his hands sideways dramatically, “is the musical history of Ryan Ross slash Panic! at the Disco.”

You started clapping enthusiastically, making Ryan laugh and do a little bow.

“You’re amazing, Ryan,” you complimented as you placed the flower you were carrying into the breast pocket of his waistcoat. He grinned sheepishly and bowed his head.

The festivities were short lived, though, because you had arrived back at the museum and a pissed-off coupling of Brendon and (Y/B/F) were marching towards you and Ryan.

“Here we go,” Ryan groaned, letting his head fall back.

“Was fun while it lasted,” you placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled sadly.

The two of you shared a hopeless look as (Y/B/F) stopped right in front of you, hands on her hips and a scowl on her face.

“What the hell is wrong with the two of you?” she demanded.

“Sure, because we’re the ones with the problem,” you scoffed, grabbing Ryan’s hand and brushing past her. “We went for a walk to get some air because you guys wouldn’t stop suffocating us.”

Brendon stepped up, wanting to intercept, but Ryan cut him off with a raised hand. “Don’t waste your breath. Just get in the car; we’re paying for lunch.”

~

Since Ryan had no knowledge other than what you and (Y/B/F) had told him regarding Cape Town, it was left to you to pick the lunch place. You choose Charly’s Bakery, situated not too far from the museum, in the old District Six area.

“Oooo, this place is so magical,” Brendon buzzed in awe, eyes widening as he scanned the store from top to bottom as the four of you stepped inside.

“One of the best bakeries in Cape Town,” (Y/B/F) spoke, stuffing her hands in the back pockets of her jeans and swaggering over to peer through the glass at the delicacies lining the display cases.

“They make the best chocolate cupcakes in, like, all of South Africa,” you stated, licking your lips as you locked your gaze on one of those beautifully dark and sinful treats.

“You’ve tasted every single type of chocolate cupcake in South Africa?” Ryan teased, cocking one brow and joining you by the display.

“No,” you blushed, “but I am very confident in my statement.”

“Well, I trust your judgement immensely,” he beamed at you and you smiled back while tucking your hair behind your ear.

Fortunately, an employee walked over to seat your group before Brendon could butt in with some snarky comment.

Once seated, you all scanned over the menus, ordered lunch and engaged in conversation that consisted mainly of small talk. You and (Y/B/F) spoke about your studies for a little while, explaining the education system in South Africa and discussing your plans for the future. The boys told you some stories from the road and talked about their writing and recording process.

“Thank you,” Ryan said as the waitress cleared up everyone’s plates; she gave a polite smile and nod in response.

“Dessert time,” you wiggled in your chair in excitement, earning chuckles from your friends. “Bring on the cupcakes!”

“We can get them the personalised ones,” (Y/B/F) suggested, tapping the back of her hand against your arm.

You gasped happily. “Yes!” The boys looked confused so you elaborated. “They’ll put your names on them. And any other design you want.”

“I think Ryan wants your name on his,” Brendon chortled, “We all know he wants to eat-,” the singer got cut off with a death glare and a kick to the shin from his bandmate.

Ignoring Brendon’s comment in order to preserve Ryan’s dignity, you stood up and started for the cupcake counter, gesturing for everyone to follow.

“What flavour are you guys going for?” you asked.

“I’ll go for the chocolate,” Ryan spoke first. You grinned proudly.

“Vanilla,” Brendon and (Y/B/F) said in unison. They shared a look of surprise before smirking and high-fiving.

“Hypocrites,” Ryan fake-coughed, covering his mouth with one hand; you giggled.

“What can I get you?” the employee on the other side of the counter smiled, wiping her hands on the front of her apron.

“Four personalised ones, please. Two Wicked Chocolate and two Vanilla.”

The employee – whose name badge read ‘Rose’ – nodded. “Names for the chocolate?”

“(Y/N) and Ryan.”

“And for the vanilla?”

“Brendon,” Brendon piped up, pointing to himself, “Spelt B-r-e-n-d-o-n.”

“(Y/B/F),” your friend finished the order off.

“Gotcha,” Rose winked, “we’ll get those out to you right away.”

“Great,” you pulled out your purse, “Can we pay in the meantime?”

“Sure, I’ll ring you up,” Rose moved over to the cash register and rang up the order for the cakes, “You paying for the lunch, as well?”

“Yep.”

“Don’t worry,” Ryan told you, taking his wallet out of his pocket, “I got it.”

“No,” you shook your head, “I can’t let you do that. Team effort, remember?”

He was about to fight it, but you had already handed your portion of the cash over; he smiled at you as you looked down to stuff your purse back into your bag.

The two of you had just sat back down when one of the waitresses brought over the cakes. Everyone looked down to admire the artwork on top; the writing on yours and Ryan’s made the both of you redden enormously.

Upon seeing your reactions, Brendon and (Y/B/F) immediately leaned forward to get a look at what was written atop.

“Seriously?” she scoffed incredulously, shaking her head and slumping back into her chair. “First the milkshake thing and now this?”

“How does shit like this keep on happening?” Brendon slumped back as well, turning to look at (Y/B/F). “It’s like the universe is playing Cupid.”

You and Ryan were too in shock to hear anything your friends had said, and they looked on in disgust as the two of you glanced at each other awkwardly, occasionally looking down at the pair of cupcakes that each read ‘(Y/N) and Ryan’, complete with a heart around it. You had no idea where the heart came from; it hadn't been part of the request. Clearly the bakery employees, just like seemingly everyone else in the country, were under the impression that you and the musician were together.  

“Ugh, let’s just eat the stupid things,” (Y/B/F) said after a few moments as her annoyance took over.

Breaking out of your trance, both you and Ryan picked up the cupcake and started munching. The conversation from earlier had resumed, and Brendon was telling the story of the first time Panic! had met Fall Out Boy, and how shit-scared they were.

You sniggered in response to something amusing Brendon had said and Ryan tilted his head to look at you. He noticed that you had a little icing on your cheek, and he slowly reached out to carefully wipe it away with his thumb.

“Oh,” you mumbled, looking up at him, “Th-thanks.”

“Yeah,” he whispered, the corners of his mouth tugging upwards.

Brendon squinted his eyes in irritation. “What, are you going to lick it off now, too?” he sassed.

Ryan clicked his tongue at the younger male before rolling his eyes and wiping his thumb on a napkin.

“Do you guys have plans for tomorrow?” you questioned, taking another bite from your cupcake.

“You guys aren’t gonna be with us?” Ryan asked dejectedly.

“We have lectures all day. We told you yesterday, remember?”

“Oh,” he recalled with a sad nod, “Right.”

“An intervention,” Brendon muttered in response to your earlier question.

“What?” you leaned in, not quite catching his words.

“What?” he made like he hadn’t said anything.

You brushed it off and resumed talking. “Well you have been out and about non-stop as of late. Maybe you should just stay at your hotel. Have some R&R,” you shrugged.

“That’s a wonderful idea, (Y/N),” Brendon perked up before shooting a wink at Ryan, “I think a band bonding session is exactly what we need right now.”

_______________________________

Thank you for reading x

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