Failed An Exam, Because I Was Too Distracted Staring At The Professor During The Term…

Françoise Hardy in Courrèges (1973)

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

ideal ways for me to die

1. old age, peacefully in my sleep

2. after a long and illustrious career i am at a rooftop gala hosted in my honor. i am wearing a beautiful gown, holding a glass of red wine, standing by the railing. a scorned lover approaches and, after a passionate spat, they push me over the edge of the building. the wine glass goes flying, splattering their outfit in red as a visual metaphor for the blood on their hands. as i descend my gown flies around me like two beautiful wings, a bird in flight. a photographer on the street manages to take a photo before i hit the ground and that photo wins the pulitzer. a new york times think piece is released regarding whether or not it's moral to profit off a photo of someone's death. the think piece also wins a pulitzer.

3. sex accident.

my flat is so plain, I am in desperate need of a Persian rug 💔

“Ah! my darling, it’s not me who kills the time which separates me from you, it’s the time that kills me. Your dear eyes, your serious look, your beautiful smile… I persist after you. Let life flow again, at least. And may this reunion be quick, and exhilarating. I love you. I wait for you impatiently. And I kiss you, my tender one, softly.”

— Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, February 27, 1950 [#217]  

You notice it first as April ends and May begins, a change in the season, not exactly a warming-in fact not at all a warming-yet suddenly summer seems near, a possibility, even a promise. You pass a window, you walk to Central Park, you find yourself swimming in the colour blue: the actual light is blue, and over the course of an hour or so this blue deepens, becomes more intense even as it darkens and fades, approximates finally the blue of the glass on a clear day at Chartres, or that of the Cerenkov radiation thrown off by the fuel rods in the pools of nuclear reactors. The French called this time of day "I'heure bleue." To the English it was "the gloaming." The very word "gloaming" reverberates, echoes—the gloaming, the glimmer, the glitter, the glisten, the glamour-carrying in its consonants the images of houses shuttering, gardens darkening, grass-lined rivers slipping through the shadows.

Joan Didion, Blue Nights

I have a lot of creative energy, yet I sit mindlessly scrolling through lobotomizing Instagram reels and TikToks. I've thought countless times about what to do about my restlessness, but I stay stagnant. I want to make something personal and honest with all of my favorite things. I worry if what I make will be enough for me, I doubt myself a lot but my contentment is getting harder to come by and I think I just need to do it