Who needed light? Lovers didn't. Their own love was light enough to see by.

I've always wanted to believe in this Post Secret and now I can.

I just have this fantastic feeling right now. I feel like a barrier's been broken down and that I have nothing to hide. I'm sick of having to tip-toe around peoples feelings when all they do is trod on mine. What makes you think I have to put with your shit? If you're upsetting me you bet your ass I'll let you know. I don't have a care in the world.

From The Heart.

 

I need to write this.

I’ve been traveling alone in Japan for the better part of three weeks now, and it’s been so remarkable an experience for me that I can’t book a ticket home yet. I haven’t spoken very much out loud these days, but I’ve been thinking to myself in what feels like surround sound. I can see so many things clearly, and feel so connected to myself and the world around me that I need to share the perspective with you.

I’m already aware that when I sing, say or write anything, 50 percent of the response will be in support of it and the other 50 will want to discount it. This blog, though, is directed to 100 percent of people reading it. If my blog truly does have any cultural effect, then it should be used for more than just pictures of sneakers and funny youtube videos. (If you don’t think my blog has any effect, than you can’t by definition be reading this right now and therefore don’t have to respond to it in any way. Isn’t that tidy?)

What I’m about to write isn’t about fame or success or celebrity or the media. That’s my business.

This is about us all.

This is about a level of self consciousness so high in my generation, that it’s actually toxic.

This is about the girl in her bedroom who poses in front of the camera she’s awkwardly holding in her outstretched hand. She’ll take a hundred photos until coming up with one she’s happy with, which inevitably looks nothing like her, and after she’s done poring over images of herself, will post one on her myspace page and then write something like ” I don’t give a fuck what you think about me.”

This is about the person trying out for American Idol, who while going off about how confident they are that they were born ready to sing in front of the world, are trembling so badly they can hardly breathe.

This is about me, the guy who walks through a throng of photographers into a restaurant like he’s Paul Newman, but who leaves a “reject” pile of clothes in his closet so high that his cleaning lady can’t figure out how one man can step into so many pairs of pants in a week.

This is about a young guy who maintains a celebrity blog that subsists on tearing other people down but who has wrestled with a lifelong battle for acceptance as a gay man.

This is about us all. Every one of us. Who all seem to know deep down that it’s incredibly hard to be alive and interact with the world around us but will try and cover it up at any cost. For as badass and unaffected as we try to come off, we’re all just one sentence away from being brought to the edge of tears, if only it was worded right. And I don’t want to act immune to that anymore. I took the biggest detour from myself over the past year, since I decided that I wasn’t going to care about what people thought about me. I got to the point where I had so much padding on that, sure, I couldn’t feel the negativity, but that’s because I couldn’t feel much of anything. And I think I’m done with that.

I’m not the first person to admit we’re all self conscious, Kanye was. But what I want to do is to shed a little light on why we’re all in the same boat, no matter the shape of the life we lead: because every one of us were told since birth that we were special. We were spoken to by name through a television. We were promised we could be anything that we wanted to be, if only we believed it and then, faster than we saw coming, we were set loose into the world to shake hands with the millions of other people who were told the exact same thing.

And really? Really? It turns out we’re just not all that special, when you break it down. Beautifully unspectacular, actually. And that truth is going to catch up with us whether we want to run from it or not. The paparazzo following me to the gym ain’t gonna be Herb Ritts and the guy he’s following ain’t gonna be Bob Dylan. It’s just a matter of how old you are once you embrace that fact. And for me, 30 sounds about right.

What now, then? I can only really say for myself: Enjoy who I am, the talents and the liabilities. Stop acting careless. In fact, care more. Be vulnerable but stay away from where it hurts. Read. See more shows. Of any kind. Rock shows, art shows, boat shows. Create more art. Wear hoodies to dinner. Carry a notebook and hand it to people when they passionately recommend something and ask them to write it down for me. Root for others. Give more and expect the same in return, but over time.

Act nervous when I’m nervous, puzzled when I don’t know what the hell to do, and smile when it all goes my way. And never in any other order than that.

And when it’s all over, whether at the end of this fabulous career or of this life, which I hope takes place at the same time, I should look back and say that I had it good and I made the most of it while I was able. And so should you.

I’m going quiet now.

John

Andrea Gibson - How It Ends

"It has been 3 years, 10 months and 27 days since the first time I saw you naked. Since the night you ripped off your shirt. Tonight in the grocery store I found one of your hairs in my underwear. I pulled it out in the frozen foods section and screamed 'That is so gorgeous it could kill a man!' Good thing I’m a leprechaun. Lucky, lucky. Baby, I have no idea how this will end, maybe the equator will fall like a hula hoop from the Earth’s hips and our mouths will freeze mid-kiss on our 80th anniversary. Or maybe tomorrow my absolute insanity combined with the absolute obstacle course of your communication skills will leave us like a love letter in a landfill. But whatever, however, whenever this ends I want you to know that right now I love you forever. I love you for the hardest mile we walked together. For the day I collected every sharp knife in the house and threw them one-by-one on the roof and told the sun 'Listen, show-off! From now on, you better only give me blades of grass.
Things that are growing and soft ‘cause there’s this girl who says she wants to float on her back
through my bloodstream and when she does I want my rivers to reach the sea.' Do you hear me, lover? Do you know the night you told me about a crush on my ears?  I swore to never become Van Gogh and look, baby they’re both still there. Just like my firefly heart is still right there in your glass jar. I never trusted anybody more to poke enough holes in the lid. So in the nights you sleep like a ballerina, I try to snore like a piccolo. And I press my lips to your holy temples and I say 'I crash into things in the dark. Even when the lights are on and I am wrong more often than I am writing and even then I am often wrong.' But when my friends are in the bathroom at the bar rolling dollar bills into telescopes and claiming they can see God I will come to you holding my grandmother’s Bible.
I will press it to your chest and I will bless it with your breath and when you ask if I want to role-play altar boys fucking in the church kitchen during Sunday mass I will say, 'Hell yes.' But only if you leave a hickey on my ass in the shape of Jesus’ palm so I can be sure I got nailed down. Lover, you will never lose me to the wind. You are the lightning that made me fill my chest with candles. You are the thunder clapping for the poem that nobody else wants to hear. You are an icicle’s tear, water in a tulip on the first day of spring. You melt me alive. You kiss me deep as my roots will reach and I want nothing more than to be an eyelash fallen on your cheek, a thing collected by your fingers and held like a wish.
I promise whatever I do I will always try my best to come true.”

La Dispute.

Forget all the fears you’ve kept about love and sex and death and faith,
Erased, or swinging sweet from around her neck and between her breasts.
Let every lonely body finally break it’s fear of flesh and say,
“How strange it must’ve been back when we shook at the sight of sweat.”
Let our worries wander out of like water streaming from a spring,
And sing of all the things our heads have failed to ruin yet.
There’s so much they have failed to ruin yet.
Bright as lightning, loud as thunder,
We’ll move all the hurt aside to let love sustain our passions,
And move up and onward.
We are not our losses, we are only the extent to which we love.
So build a home for your family, and build a castle for your friends.
Now set their beds with sheets and blankets, keep them safe until the end.
I’ve felt the damage and burn from the fallout.
My love failed but theirs prevailed.
My friends, I’m only flesh and bone,
But I won’t let you die alone.
So leave our hearts at the foot of the mountain.
Let our burdens be locked in the stone.
If you will help me roll it upward,
I won’t let you die alone.
I see a beauty springing upward from the earth and from out our hearts.
For all the bad that seems to plague us, I swear to you there’s good.
They say that death is not a problem, it’s a promise,
I can only say for sure that when it makes your bed I’ll kiss your head “Goodnight.”
So speak of all the love we lost, and what it cost us,
Left us beg our breath to stop but we kept on and
We were strong. We stayed bright as lightning,
We sang loud as thunder, we moved ever forward.
We are not our failures. We are love.

I'm sorry. Thankyou. I'll miss you.

I hate this feeling, I thought I wouldn't have to feel it again. The anxiety, the stinging throat and eyes that well up without notice. I don't know how I've only realised this now. Less than two weeks and you'll be gone. It's not like her, you can't just drive down every now and then and spend a weekend. You'll be gone and I don't think I'm going to ever see you again. You aren't going to be just a couple hours away. Sure we'll keep in contact but it's not the same as seeing your beautiful face everyday. I want you to know something; I took you for granted and I'm sorry. I sent you a text message last night telling you how I felt about you leaving but I feel like it wasn't enough. I somehow thought that this wouldn't happen or that I wouldn't have to deal with it, but it's here and it hurts. You were always there to talk to when I felt I had no one else. I thought I wouldn't have to feel this again but I'm realising over the next few years everything's going to change more and more people are going to leave. You're too beautiful to be broken, I hope you love your new life and your new town and I hope I do see you soon.

John Motherfucking Mayer

"What now, then? I can only really say for myself: Enjoy who I am, the talents and the liabilities. Stop acting careless. In fact, care more. Be vulnerable but stay away from where it hurts. Read. See more shows. Of any kind. Rock shows, art shows, boat shows. Create more art. Wear hoodies to dinner. Carry a notebook and hand it to people when they passionately recommend something and ask them to write it down for me. Root for others. Give more and expect the same in return, but over time. Act nervous when I’m nervous, puzzled when I don’t know what the hell to do, and smile when it all goes my way. And never in any other order than that."