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thanksgiving sucks go help some natives survive. help our families too.

mi’kmaq fishing sovereignty post: https://ysera.tumblr.com/post/632357902965932032

navajo/hopi covid relief fund: https://ysera.tumblr.com/post/631833415079133184

sovereign bodies/mmiw database fund: https://ysera.tumblr.com/post/631828874798497792

navajo water project: https://www.navajowaterproject.org/

more efforts and posts about indigeneity: https://ysera.tumblr.com/tagged/ndn/

Paddy, Klaus and Gibson (Paddy Chambers, Gibson Kemp and Klaus Voormann) with their manager, Brian Epstein, at Granada Television Studios, Manchester, circa August 1965.

“Paddy is intelligent, interesting and slightly introspective. Klaus is clever, artistic and a dream. Gibson is charming, amusing and nice. […] They make a solid, fat, instrumental sound above which Paddy’s slightly-plaintive voice wails away. The best bit for me is where Klaus and Gibson join it all for a few bars with a high-pitched harmony.”

- Brian Epstein (The Newcastle Evening Chronicle - March 26 1966)

apollyodon​:

Every time I see someone try to say John’s ‘more feminine features’ came out in the 70s, I want to bloody scream.

I would really like to know what people you see every day that has convinced you that a underfed, heroin riddled skeletal frame is what counts as ‘feminine features’. 

The man was bulimic, lived off of heroin and was depressed as all fuck… but okay, sure, keep telling yourselves that’s ‘his natural feminine features’.

Just kindly never talk to me.

I just realized why this further annoys me, literally just…

When shit like this happens in the modeling industry it’s ‘horrifying’ and ‘needs to stop’.

Happens to a man in an emotionally and mentally abusive relationship?

Suddenly it’s ‘attractive’ and ‘his feminine features coming out’. 

John Lennon was not healthy in the 70s. At all. Physically, emotionally or mentally. Gushing and cooing over it, in any way, is disturbing. 

Physical ‘features’ that come out as result of self-starvation, drug and alcohol abuse, depression and deteriorating relationships/being in an abusive relationship are not attractive. They are symptoms and silent cries for help.

I watched Help! For the first time recently, it was a lot of fun, but my feelings are kinda mixed on it, considering how they used Hinduism in the film, and played into a lot of racist tropes towards Indians :/

yeah. they didn't even attempt to hide it. old media (and current media if we’re being honest, but they've just gotten better at hiding it) mocked/insulted cultures/races so much. they wouldn't even hide it. it was in kids cartoons, commercials, everything. even the monkees show had bits against mexicans, asians, and indians too with racist stereotypes. racist stereotypes have been around forever and it just keeps carrying over to other generations. sigh.

it’s just ignorance on the film makers part. i don't think the beatles were really involved in the making of the plot (not that i know of, at least), and they were stoned for basically the whole movie so they didn't give a shit. and to be honest, even if they were involved and sober i still don't think they'd see anything wrong with the film at the time. because it wouldn't affect them or hurt them/their culture. because a lot of people are ignorant to these racist tropes that they've deemed normal because they've seen it/heard it all their lives from media and their peers. 

help! is a decent movie (except ringo’s hair deserves jail time) and it’s a good laugh. it’s a fun movie. it’s okay to enjoy it but it’s important to understand the undertones it kind of had. and to acknowledge it. 

If you're celebrating Biden's win, consider celebrating by donating to a bail fund, planned parenthood, or the Navajo Water project.

Your action to help the marginalized shouldnt end at presidential candidates and voting.

         After their breakup the deal was that John could say things about Paul, but if you did – if anyone said anything bad about Paul, John would take a swing at you. He’d say, “You can’t talk about Paul like that.” Paul was his best buddy. If you were talking to Paul, and you said something derogatory about John, he’d get up and leave. Paul was more of a peaceful guy, but John had that hot head, and he would say, “You wanna talk about Paul? Let’s go.” You weren’t allowed to say anything bad about Paul or John to each one of them. They would defend each other to the nth degree – which I liked. I thought that was great. You knew that they were connected at the hip. Honestly, the two of them as friends, there was never a time when they wouldn’t have fought for the other guy. They would just write songs. That’s how they fought: writing songs. – Alice Cooper

Reminder that polyamorous people:

remain polyamorous even when they’re dating only one person or nobody, in the same way a bi/pan person is still bi/pan when they’re not dating someone of the same gender

are often socially ostracized and suffer discrimination and aggression, including things like being fired or kicked out of their parents’ house for being polyam

don’t have marriage rights or many other legal protections anywhere in virtually the entire world

are inherently queer. They aren’t just sometimes also queer in addition to being polyamorous - polyamory is queer

“John loved his Uncle George, who was a big soft-hearted gentleman. He could speak fluent French and was a wonderful artist who’d won scholarships at school.

He was very attentive to John. He bought him his first bicycle and would take him for walks into the Woolton countryside and tell him about nature.”

“He was well read and would read entire books out loud to John.”

“He was particularly fond of John and when the boy was four and a half years old, taught him to read by reciting the headlines from the Liverpool Echo to him. He also taught John how to draw and paint and bought him his first mouth organ.”

Oh god.  I find Uncle George’s death absolutely one of the saddest parts of John.  I think it changed his life so much.  And he barely speaks about him.   (Or when he does it’s often as part of this pattern of loss and grief that would last all his life, not really about his uncle in particular.)

I’d be so interested to know how much Paul and John ever spoke about him, but especially when John was young. When Paul talks about their connection it’s always ‘we’d lost our mums’ - and I know it’s a huge thing between them, I am not trying to lessen Julia’s death - but when they first knew each other John hadn’t lost his mum. But he’d already lost his father-figure, aged 14, the parental figure he was closest to by all accounts.  And lost him in a similar way - not the exact circumstances, but where he was kept somewhat removed from it - they didn’t tell him for a few days until he came home from holiday - and he felt shame/guilt about his initial reaction which was nervous laughter.  In some ways it’s more the mirror image with Paul’s situation than Julia is - although admittedly not the mirror image in how much emotional importance John puts on it.  I wish we had so much more information about it.  I really wonder if he and Paul talked about it at that time, or if he was able to be open about his feelings with himself, much less with Paul.

(I also wonder if Paul knew that when John said that heartless thing about ‘how can you sit there with your mum dead’, it was coming from a place where John did know some of how he was doing that, of being forced to get on with things, despite this huge loss in your life, that strange sense of unreality.  I’m not saying that makes it better, it’s still a very cruel thing to do.  But I think it changes colour a little bit.)

And all the evidence there is suggests that John was really close with George.  He supported John in basically all the things he loved: books, writing, art, music.  He bought him his dog.  There’s a lovely thing Mimi says about them leaving her a chocolate bar and a note that said ‘have a happy day’ while they went off for their days out.  And John leaving George notes asking him to come and tuck him into bed.  When he died, didn’t John keep George’s coat and wear it everywhere for years after?  But there is so little weight to him in John’s emotional story.  And I just never know if John didn’t talk about him because it was just one thing that the press and his terrible biographers left him alone about, so he didn’t feed it to them, or if he genuinely didn’t connect with it very much.

Every biographer rushes over Uncle George’s death to get to Julia, and I think some of that is because John’s emotions rush over it, to get to Julia.  But he raised John from 4 to 14.  I think it’s easy to forget that calling him ‘Uncle George’ doesn’t mean he wasn’t his dad in a lot of ways that matter.

January, 1964: John works on the composition of ‘If I Fell’. 

JOHN: So I hope you see that I / Would love to love you / I hope that she won’t cry / When she learns we are two / We’re two / Gonna be the two two of us in love / Two two of us in love…