Tag: censorship

Red State

A stack of aged hardcover books sits on a plain wooden shelf beside a blank notebook and a pen.
~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

Writers weep and howl and pour out anguish in the form of words

Wanting to be seen and wanting others to be heard

Seek the neglected beauty in strange thoughts and hopes and faces

Fantastic worlds where power lurks in unexpected places

Where the wicked is the one who doesn’t see the witch,

While the open hearted hero is the one who will be rich

I want it all, the universe, contained between these pages

Where happiness belongs to those who have wept in other ages

Alone, I am surrounded by the ghosts who I invoked

A symphony of voices that in other times were choked

I am not worth of this message, this divine immanence

This way of saying damn the guards as I reach across the fence

Please take my hand, we haven’t long, I see their fires on the hill

If we don’t save these books from burning

Who will?

(Will Forrest, 2023)

WHAT RUINED ME Episode 2: The VCR

~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

My father (R.I.P. 1989) had no filter. I’ve had to think about him from this peculiar distance for most of my life, and thank the gods I knew him as long as I did, because I don’t know if I would understand myself as much as I do without that solid decade.

a VHS cassette sits on a wooden table

Near the end of that decade, he acquired VCR, then rented a number of really challenging films for a nine year old to wander into the room and watch.

2001: A Space Odyssey. Altered States. Rocky Horror Picture Show (calling Dr. Freud, bring clamps) and oh gosh, and I sort of wish this wasn’t so, but among these mind-bending stalwarts I have to list A Clockwork Orange.

I was nine. Maybe ten.

Now, I’m not saying that I’m a bad person because my daddy didn’t monitor my viewing. I’m saying these are some heavy duty psychological loads for an absorbent mind to bear. The circumstances of my life had already conspired against me being normal (Montessori is scarily effective, for the record.)  Now I had the mental imagery to suit, stewing in my preadolescent brain, waiting for me to stumble into my libido.

But I like who I am. I don’t think I’m a bad person because I have peculiar tastes. I’ve never thought that, no matter how often people have tried to tell me it was so.

I still miss him, for the record. 1989.