Immigrating Back To Tumblr, Patriotism Is Real Guys

Joan Didion photographed in her Corvette Stingray at her ramshackle mansion just at the base of Runyon Canyon in the Hollywood Hills in 1968.

Photographer Julian Wasser was commissioned by Time Magazine to take photos of Didion upon the release of her first book of essays, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” that captured some of her experiences living in LA during the 1960s.

Speaking to Vogue magazine in 2014, Wasser described the photoshoot as “a big event in my life” as he was an admirer of Didion’s earlier fiction. “It was very LA. She didn’t miss a thing. She was such a heavyweight person.” In the same Vogue article Didion recalled her own memories of the day. “What do I remember? I had a baby. I was living in a rented house in Hollywood. It was kind of a wonderful period of my life actually. Not because I was in a rented house in Hollywood. But just in general,” she said. Didion didn’t remember why they took photos of her with her car, thinking it must have been “a whim of Julian’s. Wasser however refuted that claim, “You don’t tell a woman like that what to do.”

Didion did however remember the car. “I very definitely remember buying the Stingray because it was a crazy thing to do. I bought it in Hollywood,” she said. “The Stingray was Daytona yellow. Which was a yellow so bright, you could never mistake it for anything other than Daytona yellow.”

Tony Russell     Leonard Cohen, Isle of Wight Festival     1970

“It was a dismal evening in New York City… I had a cheeseburger; it didn’t help at all,… I went to the White Horse Tavern looking for Dylan Thomas, but Dylan Thomas was dead.”

It was enough to find Cohen in a dismal state when he crossed the famous lobby of The Chelsea Hotel. Bristling with talent and the electrifying buzz of fame, filled to the brim with rent-money paintings from its guests the Hotel’s lift was notoriously tricky. While Cohen did usual Fonzie impression on the troublesome controls, a wild-haired, fiercely confident woman entered the lift. The current resident of Room 411 – the singer for Big Brother and the Holding Company, and one of the voices of her generation – Janis Joplin.

Cohen gathered his courage and decided to use the slow pace of the lift to engage in some conversation with this shining light of womanhood. He remembered in 1988, “I said to her, ‘Are you looking for someone?’ She said ‘Yes, I’m looking for Kris Kristofferson.’ I said, ‘Little lady, you’re in luck, I am Kris Kristofferson.’ Those were generous times. Even though she knew that I was someone shorter than Kris Kristofferson, she never let on. Great generosity prevailed in those doom decades.”

Leonard Cohen, on his meeting Janis Joplin at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City, in 1968, in Jack Whatley, “The Story Behind The Song: Leonard Cohen’s ode to Janis Joplin, ‘Chelsea Hotel No. 2’” Far Out Magazine, 2019

i am the way is am because like a prayer was my favourite song at 5 years old

Kagen No Tsuki

hi human baby, I feel so exhausted all the time with the expectations of my desires, but I never act on them because I never feel good enough. I’m so tired of trying to be good enough. I want to write, but it feels so selfish and pointless. But we both know that’s really a flimsy cover for terror. I know I must let go of this desire, but the grief is overwhelming. What do I do?

Do you want to write? Or do you want to be the person that writes? The first sounds like desire. The second sounds more like expectation. Actually, desire is pure, and it overrides any belief about what you should or should not be. Your actions become a map of your desires. Your life becomes it's portrait. Yours tells me that you want to hide. But how am I supposed to love you if I do not know you?

Françoise Hardy in Courrèges (1973)

Sofia Coppola at the Venice Film Festival in 2003 and 2023.