the thing that makes you awesome is the thing that

// the thing that makes you awesome is the thing that makes you suck, always
am at this tumblr srch via ggle for jacob clifton *makes you awesome* *makes you suck" "always"
bcs reading it here: //  Find The Lady - The Good Wife 3-1 'The New Day' recap by jacob clifton | TWoP: The thing that makes you awesome is the thing that makes you suck, always. Alicia's higher standards of personal behavior and development make her awesome, but they're also the main sucky thing about her.
//and i recognize it as sth I've read twopj saying before, maybe more than once, a refrain -- the context I am thinking of is re PLL, I think, re Hannah.



tumblr.com/search/jacob+clifton


'Frozen' is obviously the best movie of all time, but the thing nobody ever mentions is how at the end, Elsa becomes God, or at least a Goddess: If she can bring winter and summer, then she’s covered the whole board. She’s the Black Swan.  [televisionwithoutpity.com/show/pretty-little-liars/unmasked-1/9]
But the only way that can happen for sure in the real world is if you understand that you are not the Anna to anybody else’s Elsa: That movie works like a dream, where you are all the characters at the same time.
Your unconditional love for yourself is what powers the change, but you can’t change until you accept what already is, which is the paradox that fuels any successful therapeutic or spiritual change. You can’t change What Is until you accept What Is //y. read him saying this ~ on his blog ~ knees up ? as a ~diatribe.  .. sth re have to accept cannot fly... //; the paradox is that by that time, you’ll be so much higher for having transcended it that all that poison and garbage just turns into fuel for the furthering of your awesomeness.
Which is why 'Frozen' is the best movie of all time:
Holding both parts of yourself in alignment, for the rest of your life;  **
being at peace with the part of yourself that will never be at peace.
Understanding that the thing that makes you awesome is the thing that makes you suck, always;
that being ashamed of that part of yourself leaves it without any way to be effective except at hurting you from the inside.  So do you want to fight your demons until you’re both bleeding, or do you want to love them into serving you?
-Jacob Clifton, http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/pretty-little-liars/free-fall/6/


** Ali Smith [The Accidental] Talks About Her New Book, ‘How to Be Both’ - NYTimes |   .. how to reconcile, how to be tolerant of all the possibilities, to recognize how fine it is to be us & to be in the world.



Everybody knows that you can’t love other people until you love yourself, but nobody ever tells you that the opposite is also true: You can’t really love yourself until you love everybody else, because they’re just the pieces of yourself that you said no to. — Jacob Clifton



/more re Frozen:

That’s the really subversive part, to my mind: Every Disney princess is secretly rescuing herself, because she IS the kingdom. —  Jacob Clifton re 'Frozen'

//I keep hearing Elena's pronunciatin of it.  her voice: Okay, we'll watch Fwozen."//



/ in re pll
It’s like that old joke:   Q: “What’s more of a surprise than a necklace made of human teeth?” A: “Two human-tooth necklaces, several months apart.” —  Jacob Clifton, PLL 3x19: Recaplet   // oh, nice "A" //



I broke a lot of bones as a kid so I know that at some point I was relatively fearless, but those days are gone. And I actually did think of Emily Fields during that conversation with myself, and how sometimes you get hurt and you still just keep doing the thing? Do people not understand that the world is fraught with danger?
I realize everybody does this all the time, but it’s amazing and beautiful to me on a level I cannot explain. I mean, I get along with athletes better than I do most people because I am fairly intense and serious in real life, and I admire them a lot. Athletes, people in the military. Suze Orman.. But it’s still a language that sounds to me like animals, just nonsense. Like how do people save money, what is an IRA, how does your money make other money?  How can people just eat broccoli?  How do you not quit playing football the exact moment that someone first touches your body without your permission?
How do you get hurt and not immediately run screaming from the source of the pain, never to return?
-Jacob Clifton in his latest Pretty Little Liars recap.  //dfntly hv read this.  may well have dlcs pgmrkd. //





If you think about how many moments in our daily lives are about ignoring or negotiating the sex lives of straight people — from jokes about dads with shotguns on the porch, or about what’s going to happen on your wedding night, or “I saw mommy kissing daddy’s [whatever],” to how you deal with your son-in-law, to what being a grandparent is really about — and think about just how much of etiquette, social interaction, communication are about getting around the sticky subject of straight people fucking, you can understand why straight people get so weird about gay people: There’s none of that social filter built in, the sexual aspect is not blurred out like it is with straight people. […] “Coming out” is going to keep being everybody’s business until those things equalize, and I don’t know that they ever will. But especially here — and in Pride season, when so much is written online about “these gays aren’t as gay as they used to be” — I think it’s important to think about this distinction, between socially mediated sexuality vs. sexuality-as-identity.”
— Jacob Clifton, Why Anderson Cooper Is A Thing
This is also why I wish people stop saying “I don’t care, it’s none of my business” on every coming-out article’s comment section. Because it’s fucking your business, whether you like it or not.


......“When you talk about your boyfriend, or your wedding, or joke about polishing your shotgun on your front porch when your daughter’s boyfriend shows up for her first date, you’re taking part in a grand tradition of understanding that sex happens, and we don’t have to talk about it. But if a gay man brings these things up, we don’t have those buffers in place: Your head goes to sex, because that’s what makes gay people interesting: Essentially, default straights who just happen to accidentally have sex with other ones, somehow.
“How do I explain this to my children?” you say, buggers and blowjobs hanging over your head like the Sugarplum Fairy. But what kids know, and you have forgotten, is that life—day-to-day, romantic, mundane—is a lot larger than that. Children have no stronger interest or opinions about gay sex than they do about straight sex, because they don’t actually care about sex: They care about social behaviors, weddings, romance and fairytales. It’s why we invented those things in the first place.






Being an adult means understanding and taking ownership of the effect you have on the world and the people around you, because your intentions don’t mean shit. — Jacob Clifton




_________________
twopj re Art ... to show you that / how to be / not alone.  ....... Steve Earle saying same. _________________

Art exists purely to show you a way out—of loneliness, of darkness—into a very select club of unique individuals which, as it turns out, includes absolutely everyone.
I cannot think of a higher purpose on this planet than to do your part in that great work. Finding the exits, pointing them out. Being the first through the door to make sure it’s safe. Opening the windows, letting the light in. Sometimes dragging people screaming across the threshold, but mostly just shrugging if they don’t want to hear it yet. Because the thing about loneliness is, it’s not a natural state and it’s not something that finds an equilibrium: It’s a negative space, a vacuum, with whole worlds poised and trembling to come rushing in.
Faith, Hope, Charity, Love: These are all verbs that accomplish it, on their way toward some other purpose. Art is the only human activity that was designed—specifically, and solely—for the purpose of reaching across time and space so that one person can say to another person, ‘There. I have felt this too. And now we are both so much less alone.’ To shred the dark into little pieces, and put things right again.”
—  Jacob Clifton,  www.zap2it.com/blogs/american_idol_recap_finding_the_exits-2011-05

//cf just today 11/30/14 read pitchfork 2007 intrvw steve earle
Pitchfork: There's a scene in Heartworn Highways where Townes reduces someone to tears.
SE: Oh, yeah, Uncle Seymour.
Pitchfork: I've actually seen you do that before. I saw you perform "Christmas in Washington" and make Nanci Griffith cry.   //oh. she also cried at TVZ memorial as Earle sang Fort Worth Blues.  I cry at that too.//
SE: It happens. I've made myself cry. If you're doing it right, you will. It's a drag to even try and put it into words. You're in danger of looking like a megalomaniac if you do. But it's my job. I'm supposed to make people cry, but not by manipulating.
What art does it let people know that they're not alone.    That's what its function is.
It lets us know that fucked up shit doesn't just happen to us.
We can take that past the decimal point and figure out that we're not necessarily bad people, that things can get better, and we hang in there.
The difference between us and the animals is not an opposing thumb. It's the fact that we make and consume art. /hmm. seems true?  despite my knee-jerk agnst anyth sounds like elevating us above *other* animals.  my: we are animals.  but ok, among animals, we are the ones who make art?  or ~ the political ones.  same thing?  we are the ones who make art: *because we need it* - bcs in the polis we are alone while together.  ~but not for sure that other animals d n also experience that worlding.   and if not, anyway, I always want to say they are the better spirits.  ~ bcs all in.  all world.  ~d n suffer fr being their bodies. ///
That's one of the most fucked up things about American society. We think art is an elective. We call them elective subjects in school. But it's not an elective, dude. It's sustenance to human beings, just like food is. This is what keeps our souls from dying. It's what keeps us from becoming Dick Cheney.
Pitchfork: Writing songs allows you sentimental shortcuts.
SE: Gregory Corso used to get really pissed off when people referred to songwriters as poets. Including Bob Dylan. I totally get that. //y.// One of my scariest moments, every year is reading at St. Marks on New Years Day  /neat - Poetry Project ~ 12 hrs poets reading/, which I've done for several years now. I'm up there with some of the best poets in the world, and I'm reading poetry. It's scary as shit, because it is a purer form of the art. I have the advantage of the effect sheer tonality has on emotion at my disposal when I'm writing songs //y//, and it is cheating. [laughs] I'm pushing two buttons at one time. That's why it's so powerful.
The reason music became so powerful to our generation is that it's art you can consume in your car, and we were driving around a lot.  /cool. int.

... Townes was fully aware that Bob Dylan invented his job. Make no mistake about that. I am, too.

.. .[David Olney] told me years later, but years ago now, that he used to worry about me because I seemed to change personas really rapidly. I had done it by that point several times in my life, and become what seemed to him a different person on the surface. He worried about me losing myself, but then he figured out that wasn't really what was happening.  //rt, okay:// I was in danger of losing myself, but not because of my haircut or whatever clothes I was wearing.

/and now, sober, Steve Earle seems to me to excell in honesty.  living his real life.  I am not reading thinking he is so smart - only that he has his moments - but "I believe every word you're saying." [Here's to you old Skinny Dennis The only one I think I will miss I can hear those bass notes ringin' Sweet and low like a gift you're bringin'  You play it for me one more time now You got to give it all you can now Well, I believe every word you're sayin' Just to keep on, keepin' on, keep on playin'  Well, I can just get off of this L.A. freeway Without getting killed or caught..   Guy Clark, but writ by? Rgr Creager]  ... eg re racism, and his position on this is a more likeable one, too, than the person who defends agnst any charge of being racist ~  (rather than defend, we shld always listen)   :

.. But it's also important to remember that for southerners-- and people from Boston //wh? :)// -- it takes effort every day of our lives to overcome racism, because it's ingrained. I'm not a racist, but I do have to work at not being a racist, because of where I grew up. I don't ever lose sight of that, and I'm totally okay with being mindful of it. I had to work hard, and I have to work really hard not to instill it in my children. But it only takes one generation to drop the ball.
Pitchfork: Are there any parallels to rehab? Is it a discipline?
SE: Discipline's a bad word to use when it comes to not taking drugs. There's discipline involved, and I'm a very disciplined person when it comes to my work, but discipline can‘t save me from being a drug addict. What saves me from being a drug addict is sort of the opposite. It's me realizing that I don't really control anything. //y good right. ~ it's about not having the need. not so actually deeply fully needing.  f you *need* you will take what you need wherever you can.  can'd discipline yrslf not to.  bcs you actually need.  //
 I'm not sure racism works like that. /good, thinking, right./  There are too many people and too many forces out there that want you to believe that the other is a threat to you, for their own agenda. They want to divide people. So you have to overcome it every day of your life. People are trying to teach it to your children. It's like the immigration thing. It's not people coming here from other countries that are taking people's jobs. People's jobs are being shipped away to other countries. The idea of building a fence to keep people out to save jobs is a total red herring. It's a complete and total bald-faced lie being told to take attention away from something else that's taking away your job.  //this makes me think of jaime.  the confidence of opnion. that seems probably right to me, while I also hesitate at the overt intent ascribed to the ~ bald-faced liars.//

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Two hours of Big Brother is equal to sixteen hours of the History Channel or a single episode of Laguna Beach, if you look at it right. If you want to see war strategy in action.  Whether it’s the nightly news or a sci-fi show, a show is not brainless if you engage with it; the quality of the entertainment is always directly dependent on the quality of the viewer, how much you are willing to risk in engagement.  It’s about interaction, the quality of how you choose to spend your time, and what you do with the information.
It’s about intimacy. —  Jacob Clifton  [televisionwithoutpity.com/show/doctor_who/the_long_game.php?page=6]



This sense of momentum can be as fleeting as it is delicious, so I don’t want to say that the season is ramping the fuck up heading into its middle next week, but that long-ago feeling that absolutely anything could happen on this show //y//, that feeling we lost somewhere in Mexico?  /maybe. s5? well I liked it all.  going to Mx was anyth happening. nancy in prison and th others in denmark, as the pre-s8 story, th was anyth happening.// Way back. This episode felt about two hours long; here’s hoping it’s a sign of things to come. Good work. Excellent work.   —  Jacob Clifton  [weeds/boomerang-1]





  ************     Their feelings make the weather.   ************
Midsummer Night’s Dream, oh  .. but I like these parts specifically, the parts where Titania and Oberon are having a fight — .. and she’s gone away, won’t come back, and Oberon’s jealous and mad and nuts about it. So the moon is off, and the seasons act weird, and people have animal heads, and love potions, and fairies are all around being dumb, and the whole thing is just this circus of thunder and mistakes and rude mechanics. Their feelings make the weather. When she left him, she broke the universe.—  Jacob Clifton, The Good Wife recap





The answer is never the answer for longer than it takes you to find it. —Jacob Clifton   7/9/14   morningafter.gawker.com/the-very-erotic-journey-of-true-bloods-sookie-stackhous-1601997131






“I was thinking about this the other day and I just remembered I need to ask my siblings about it, but like, is there such a thing as Typing anymore? Do people learn to do that in school? It seems weird, like getting elective credit for breathing in and out at a constant rate.”  Jacob Clifton, Television Without Pity  //on our times.






_________________
_________________  ^ to dlww draft save ~ just to have, or maybe arrange: one post wh he says re art, and then wh read fr steve earle this a.m.

one post ~ lovelyish as descriptive, abstract:  ~ 'their feelings make the weather'  /

- one post cmmts applied worldview
 'you'  -thing that makes you awesome is the thing that makes you suck.   -cannot love self without loving others bcs they are the parts of yrslf said no to.

.. worldly ~ re 'socially mediated sexuality': , you can understand why straight people get so weird about gay people: There’s none of that social filter built in, the sexual aspect is not blurred out like it is with straight people.


~incidental worldly (our times) cmmts  eg typing class like elective credit for breathing

~ incidental re shows, eg pll tooth necklaces

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Or to put it another way, I’ve always wondered what Carrie would have thought about Nick, say, ten years ago.  The thing in him she loves, that binds him to her, the blinding brightness they share: Did Abu Nazir put it there, while he was tearing him apart? Or just crack him open and let it out?    Do they love what’s broken in each other, or do they love what that breaking revealed?
Because if it was always there, it’s still there now, and they have a shot. But if it’s gone... One more thing Quinn was right about.—  http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/homeland/a-red-wheelbarrow-season-3-episode-8/10/


It’s not that I hate Dan for these things, it’s that it makes Serena impossible to love because she accepts these “accusations,” when the proper response is, “Call me in two or three years when you grow the fuck up and stop hating people for having things, because that is not my fault. I’m the one stretching here, and you burn me every time I do.”  [re Gossip Girl]





Being smart is something that is handed to us, but integrity and self-love and becoming a force in the world are all much, much harder.  —  Jacob Clifton  http://girlslikegiants.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/engaging-television-an-interview-with-writer-jacob-clifton/
mm girls like giants  "bcs I like Giants!  all girls feel too big stimes .. "
// ~ "makes me think God's a woman too" - thing called love //
/ re smart handed to you, said in recap pll, how Emily - being hufflepuff is the hard thing.  being smart, dear reader [~readership self-selecting], is given to you.