Louder than bombs
Where we want to go is back to beauty
Is it devastating how many evil people there are in the world or instead is it heartening how many good people there are in spite of that?
Just a little something that I think about 22 hours a day every day. The other two hours are for the Boston Celtics.
Let me know where you land in the comments if you like. I'm sure with a little effort we can all get our heads together and figure out If Humanity Is Worth Saving Or Not.
Coincidentally I just saw this poem come across my timeline. Maybe it's related?
Today's main piece is for paid subscribers. Annie Howard returns to write about "a spate of incredibly diverse and incredibly gay museum and gallery shows happening in Chicago" as they describe it. That includes "a Nicole Eisenman retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art; a show at the Chicago Cultural Center including the devastating photo slideshow Electric Blanket, documenting the toll of AIDS in the late 80s and early 90s; a remarkable new show by Edie Fake further exploring the speculative, multidimensional queer spaces I first encountered as part of Renee Gladman's Cities of the Future, Their Color; and work by Paul Mpagi Sepuya, featuring remarkable photos of silhouetted gay men having sex photographed behind white sheets."
"Artwork created by those responding to the rampant dehumanization and loss of life from the AIDS crisis is something that we can and should still see in conversation with the hopeful futurity of Edie Fake's work, especially as we slog through the interminable, unclear present moment we are in with so little available for us to anticipate any immediate positive change," Howard explains.
Previously for Hell World Howard looked back on the anniversary of the Club Q nightclub shooting and reflected on growing up queer in Colorado Springs.
I went on the Guys podcast with Bryan Quinby and Chris James to talk about "DJ Guys," my illustrious career as a DJ, and the ins and outs of taking or making requests. Plus an incident involving Steve Aoki and cold beans. It was a real funny one. Give a listen.
I was also on the Nersey Guide to Ethical Hating with Trey Smith and Drew Millard the other day. We talked Gaza, the Celtics, and how to be a hater and also had a lot of laughs.
drew millard
Oh and I made this piece about assembling the mythic Pinkerton 2 available for subscribers of Hell World to read here now if you aren't a Flaming Hydra subscriber.
It was my birthday over the weekend and we had our first actual party at the house since we moved in here a few years ago and it was lovely and heartwarming and I felt loved for a couple of hours and then woke up the next day and instantly snapped back into my default weltschmerz. This was a very nice gift though.
Hey you know what would make a nice belated birthday gift for both of us? A subscription to this very newsletter!
Man you really have to hand it to Macklemore for being the first mainstream rapper to put out a track this powerful about the righteousness of the campus protests and calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza. I'm sorry but the song is good. I was crying my eyes out watching it last night.
I'm not saying he deserved to win that Grammy over Kendrick, Drake, Kanye, and Jay-Z ten years ago – holy shit that was ten years ago??? – but two of those dudes are talking about some bullshit right now, one of them is a raging antisemite, and the other is completing his transformation into Human Capitalism.
The song is called Hind's Hall which is what the Columbia protestors named a building on campus to commemorate the short life of Hind Rajab. She was a six year old girl who was murdered by Israel. I mentioned it in here back in February.
In case you forgot here's what happened to her via The Independent:
A six-year-old Palestinian girl who called authorities begging for help as the lone survivor of an attack in Gaza City has been discovered dead. She died alongside a pair of paramedics who were trying to save her.
The girl, Hind Rajab, was with family members – her aunt, uncle, and her three cousins – racing in their family car to outrun Israeli tanks and escape the city.
Tanks ultimately fired on the car, killing Hind's relatives. The little girl survived the initial assault long enough to call emergency operators to try to find help. Gunfire can be heard just before Hind's call abruptly ends, the BBC reports.
Hind's mother was told recently that her daughter had a building named after her in America. She said she started crying when she heard "because I wanted all these movements and support to come while Hind was still alive."
"But I was still happy about it," she said. "That there's a possibility that Hind's cause could move and mobilize people in this world. That there's a possibility that Hind could be the spark that creates change for the Palestinian cause."
Hind Rajab's mom on Columbia students naming Hind's Hall:
— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) May 7, 2024
"I started crying because I wanted all of these movements & support to come while Hind was still alive."
Hopes protests don't stop till permanent ceasefire.
"Wake up now! Why are others like Hind still going through this?" pic.twitter.com/Hk8RyowOLu
Meanwhile here's this fucking guy.
Biden talks about a “ferocious surge” of antisemitism, links it to college campuses, says Jews are being forced to hide their kippas and Jewish stars, repeats the mass sexual violence hoax pic.twitter.com/haoL44V7fM
— barbarism critic 🇵🇸 (@SxarletRed) May 7, 2024
Hamas is like ten years younger than me. Hamas is as old as a millennial. What "ancient desire" is he talking about there?
This piece in Protean was quite good I thought. It starts like this:
Abdelrahman ElGendy (@El_Gendy_95) writes about The Encampment—from Egypt's Tahrir Square to US universities—as sites of radical love, promoting revolutionary ways of seeing and being which threaten the rotten order standing against justice for Palestine.https://t.co/ZxorgmYExM
— Protean Magazine (@proteanmag) May 7, 2024
"I'm 25 years old. I’ve lived my whole life in Gaza City, and I have never felt hope like I do right now,” says Bisan Owda, the now internationally recognized Palestinian journalist who has covered the Israeli genocide of her people for the past seven months. In a video published on her Instagram account days before, Bisan appears teary-eyed and shaking. She describes the Palestine solidarity encampments erupting across US campuses over the past couple of weeks as having infused her veins with magical feelings. Suddenly, she says, she can imagine a world where the genocide has ended, where she is back in Gaza, rebuilding her city and her home.
I watch Bisan’s video while lying on a tarp in Pittsburgh’s Schenley Plaza, facing the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning, surrounded by a half circle of tents and hundreds of protesters. A symbolic fence of little paper Palestinian flags planted firmly in the grass, each bearing the name of a martyr, encircles us. In the encampment’s center, a large desert-brown tent carries a sign plastered across its side, declaring the area a “Liberated Zone” in bold red lettering.
...
“For the first time in our lives as Palestinians,” Bisan says in the same video, “we hear a voice louder than the sound of their bombs.”
Going to turn it over to Annie Howard now to talk about some gay art. Subscribe to read this piece and every issue of Hell World if you can please and thank you.
We must hold onto the humanity of all
by Annie Howard
Where do the past, present, and future begin? In this moment where all around us are signs of collapse, time itself seems out of joint, no clear pathway available to any sort of future worth living in. To remain in patient, present struggle towards a better world yet to be born requires a belief that such a future could even exist, a hopefulness battered by the daily act of witnessing genocide and being brutally punished for making even the smallest gestures to slow its seeming inevitability. So we must remain unmoored in our own time, adrift and in need of guidance, seeking some form of inner ballast.