“Tell Me; I’m Listening” BOSSIER MINI-ZINE, FALL 2022
apartment, then sip the second one slowly while I watched movies and ate animal crackers and took trazodone and Ambien and Nembutal until I fell asleep again. I lost track of time in this way. Days passed. Weeks. A few months went by. When I thought of it, I ordered delivery from the Thai restaurant across the street, or a tuna salad platter from the diner on First Avenue. I’d wake up to find voice messages on my cell phone from salons or spas confirming appointments I’d booked in my sleep. I always called back to cancel, which I hated doing because I hated talking to people.
Emily Hardy
Dear Reader,
Playlist of our pain, library of our growth; we, as human beings, inevitably experience literature and music within the context of our lives. Our experiences shape our taste. A character we once thought was justified, a specific experience later we realize isn’t. A lyric which helped us heal, one day we don’t need anymore.
Consistent with the concept of my podcast StarkMarkings, in this semester’s Mini-Zine, I wanted to explore how books and music are indicative of our past, present, and future selves. I hope this edition of the Mini-Zine will spark ideas about the ways in which your book and music taste reflect, in all your complicated glory, the tumultuous evolution of who you are today.
Sincerely, Fall 2022 Mini-Zine Editor, Victoria Chen
Mini-Zine Event, October 2022: My Night of Music and Conversation
StarkMarkings X Bossier:
StarkMarkings was a podcast I started this past summer, centering on a guest, a book of their choosing, and four music tracks. I wanted to understand both how people see themselves and what they see when looking in hindsight.
When merging StarkMarkings with Bossier in this event, we chose My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh with participants selecting relevant songs. Our discussion began with each student panelist, including myself as moderator, discussing how we’ve seen feminism change over the course of our young lives. With the audio from the live event recorded, fusing music tracks and conversation together, scan the QR code to listen to the three other panelists and myself discuss how we see the past, present, and future of feminism.
Acknowledgements:
I want to shout out the event panelists Angelena Bougiamas, Isabela Gomez, and Kaitlyn Murray for having volunteered to share their opinion. Should you scan the QR code, you will hear their voices in addition to my own. I also want to thank Angelena Bougiamas, Isabela Gomez, Charis Suh, and Madhura Shembekar for all of their incredible behind the scenes work with the Mini-Zine at large.
Scan to listen to the event:
Inspired by East of Eden by John Steinbeck
