keep your head up

First Encounter

Over the Garden Wall is almost ten years old and that both feels too old and unbelievably young.

I remember first watching this in the backroom of a museum on my ipod touch in late August in 2015 and it still feels like it’s been a pillar of Americana for the past thousand years.

Over the Garden Wall is timeless and ancient and boiled out of the aether of American folklore and happened to be caught in animated form like a photograph of a lightning bolt, and it’s also the most 2010s-ass thing I've ever watched.

Maybe redraw later but for now....

Tristamp Vashwood

And also smol nico breakdancing

People are like “it’s so beautiful no clouds at all” it could use a little clouds if I had to be honest.

it literally could use a little clouds if i had to be honest

thinking of summer

Macklemore using his platform and art to advocate for Palestine and help UNRWA is really huge, but can people stop saying that no other artists have been speaking up for Palestine? Palestinian artists like Nemahsis, Lowkey, Saint Levant, Elyanna, Zeyne, Lana Lubany, Bashar Murad, and many others have been using their art to advocate for their people their entire careers. A lot of people would rather support white people supporting Palestinians than actually supporting Palestinians and it just adds to the dehumanising idea that Palestinians can't or don't speak for themselves.

ive found that partially treated mental illness can sometimes look to uninvolved onlookers like faked mental illness.

"someone who really has pOCD would be disgusted and horrified at their intrusive thoughts" or maybe i'm in therapy & am going by the books, being radically ambivalent to my intrusive thoughts instead of wasting energy mentally washing my paws of sin. i'm not going to perform my rock bottom for you for the sake of being believed.

also like... something something, being afraid of healing because you're afraid of letting go of the stability of misery, letting go of the narrative you made up to feel worthy of attention, letting go of your "sympathy cred," this narrative has probably killed a few ppl.

not now kitten, daddy's about to have a mental breakdown from seeing the prices at the grocery store

John Watson is the BIGGEST hype man and that’s just canon

A lot of you on here feel waaay too comfortable admitting that you don't and refuse to listen to rap music, and I'm not loving the incredibly reductive takes on rap because the kendrick/drake beef has it on some of yall's radar for the first time in your life.

I'm not going to sugar coat it-- for americans especially, if you consider music a significant interest of yours but still feel the need to search for acceptable reasons to keep yourself ignorant of black music, or think of rap as a monolith of hate and violence and not equally as diverse as any other genre, or can only name nonblack rappers… you should be embarrassed of that. And your embarrassment should not keep you from being active about exposing yourself to unfamiliar art and broadening what you listen to.

'I don't understand what they're saying/they rap too quickly' I'm surprised by how much I keep seeing this-- speed is not a stylistic trademark of most rap music, & clearer diction as a performer is much more necessary in rap than other genres?? Statistically rap has a lower bpm (here's an example of one person's study) average than other genres. (of course these aren't all-encompassing, but you can look into this yourself using sites like bpmdatabase.com.) Do you really feel overwhelmed by speed listening to Kendrick or Biggie or Nas or 2Pac, or have you never actually listened to their songs?

'I have to look up the lyrics'-- so what? is it a bad thing to take an extra few seconds to engage with an artist's work? If you listen to lyrical music, do you care when it's the artists you listen to? Why does the thoughtful art consumption everyone talks about not also apply to black art?

'there is too much violence and misogyny and commercialism' this is not unique to rap, or true of all rap music. Artists exist that talk about other things, the way they exist in all genres. There is an entire wikipedia page listing alternative hip hop musicians and rappers if you consider seeking it out too much labor. Click one!

'i find it unrelatable'-- who cares? Being unable to engage with art you don't find wholly relatable is a deeply childish and self centered way to exist. You get on here reblogging feel good navel-gazey posts about the shared human experience and caring for one another, but a rapper talking about living with violence or poverty is stretching the limits of what you can imagine or empathize with too much for you to care about it? You don't find that embarrassing to admit to?

You don't have to love rap, you don't have to incorporate it into what you listen to every day, but a lot of you need to be aware you're parroting reagan era anti-rap (& antiblack) pearl-clutching talking points, and it's a very ugly look. It isn't racist if your favorite genre isn't rap, but you need to do some serious self reflection if you consider it inherently less artistic, intelligent or positive than 'whiter' genres when you don't actually listen to it. I am looking at you, people into other counterculture genres-- it's crazy how much I see this from self-professed punks and metalheads especially lmfao. If expression, counterculture art, anti-censorship in music and the right for raw and unfiltered music to exist matters to you as much as you say you do, you should care about rap's relationship to censorship & fight for its legitimacy just as much as what you listen to.

Missing you

a lot of people are dismissing the "violent" rap music rushing and scrambling to say well not ALL rap is violent here's some rappers who don't rap about violence but like. idk. I think the "violent" rap is important to listen to as well. do you know why gangs exist? do you know why Compton is the way that it is? can you listen to the experiences of black men when you can't personally relate on any level? or will you dismiss an entire genre of music because certain sub genres make you feel a bit uncomfortable as a non-black person?

I love taking a moment to sit down with myself and recognize what rap is: poetry. So I listen with intent on understanding what the lyrics mean and the context, just like literature analysis.

Just an innocent man

The Fish Jacket in all its glory!

I don't know what to say.. I started the jacket 10 months ago. What a journey! I'm so proud and happy!

Thanks for your lovely and kind words and the overwhelming interest! Happy stitching everyone.

Neko!Austria finally got his wish, a life as a housecat in the city

Some casual ameripan