they/them john lennon

The thing about a codependent boy besties situationship is that if you think you're basically two halves of one person then giving each other handies is basically the same thing as jacking yourself off...right?

John Lennon and Yoko Ono in New York City 1979.  

I'm sorry my stupid gay tail started wagging when I saw you. I'll go .

paul: john likes me ?!?! but ...😳 hes a boy ... and ... IM a boy >_<

george: uughh how can i get them to see im just as good of a songwriter as them🚬🚬

john: okay ringo now hit the second tower

like we really hate to hear this - but power is in every human relationship. unless you are the exact same as your partner in age, class, race, ethnicity, religion, language, nationality, citizenship status, gender, sexual orientation, physical and mental ability, salary, education, etc, you have to negotiate the problems material power differentials pose to love, to treating others well. the response to this seems to have been to make certain points of difference - like age - load-bearing, in a way that erases others - class would be my example: far bigger a power disparity than, say, a ten year gap in age between adults is class and inheritable wealth, but you almost never see that acknowledged in the same way. and even if you were at parity in all those areas (gay twincest sweep??) there is still the emotional power that someone’s love and desire for you gives you over them. you can’t get rid of it. you cannot find the perfect relationship where it doesn’t exist by steadily winnowing down your “ethical” options via widening designations of “problematic relationships.” you have to confront the power you have over other people and think how you will wield it most lightly. sorry!

the thing is if you're writing a beatles book, you'd want to know basically nothing about anything. it's a fine tradition of beatles books. you wouldn't want to bring too much 'knowing things' to a 'ridiculous assumptions' party.

the whole of it is that men's books will never be anything in comparison to women's understanding, because in actual fandom, you don't hide all your working and then put out a ridiculous standalone thing that feels important. You just put stuff out there for other people to see, and then you take your feelings and some other feelings, and sort of smudge them up, and together you all create a cob house of possible feelings, with a vaguely plausible layout, which you're not saying is absolute, but which you are saying is wonderful and possible and which smells like home. And then sometimes someone comes over and adds some detailing to the mantelpiece, or builds a little annexe, or someone else is like 'well that window doesn't make sense there!' and you're like 'yeah I know - but we had all this rumour and conjecture and we had to put it somewhere'.  And then they take it out and put a three word quote from a 1975 magazine article in its place and everyone gathers to look at the lovely new thing with better flow, and have a cup of tea. 

and meanwhile men are building fucking standalone square houses from a flatpack, and pretending they fit in the space, pretending they're new or interesting or even fucking functional, when they've not even built foundations and the whole thing would blow over in the slightest wind, but they're too busy lauding each other as design geniuses to actually care.

this is not about ken womack* specifically who I know nothing about and I'm sure is fine.  it's not even about anyone specifically.  it's about how much better the internet is at understanding beatles than books.  and how much more I value fandom than authorship, and how hilarious it is that books are taken more seriously than any decent blog with a functioning tagging system.

* a post I wrote when Ken Womack brought out his book about Mal's diaries, and confidently decided that little cartoon was Paul, and a post which the whole Ian Leslie stuff has reminded me about so I went into drafts to find it.

Yoko Ono and John Lennon photographed by David Bailey, 1971.

Pathé Marconi VSM 3004 // portable record player (France, 1975)

*listening to a famous song that came out over half a century ago that I have also heard many times before* goddamn this is fucking crazy….. is anyone else hearing this?