BLAM 2013

2013

BROPHY LITERARY & ARTS MAGAZINE VOL 5

D E X I REM

BRophy literary AND Arts Magazine 2013 VOLUME FIVE Brophy College Preparatory 4701 North Central Avenue Phoenix, AZ 85012 602-264-5291 www.brophyprep.org

EDIT or's

NOTE

By Jack Flynn ‘ 13, Managing Editor

I’ll admit it: I’m a bad nineties kid. Destiny’s Child drama was never on my radar, I still have yet to wonder what’s inside a Wonder Ball, and even to this day, I remain completely indifferent to the fate of Corey and Topanga. I was relieved when Friends faded away and Britney Spears left the airwaves, but now I feel like I’ve been caught in a case of Day-Glo déjà-vu.

Chubbies are bringing back bright short-shorts, our students wrote and performed a Poké-musical on campus, Netflix now carries Nickelodeon favorites, and Pixar has been exhausting every prequel and sequel opportunity possible. Original content seems to have been buried by our childhood nostalgia, and no one is putting up a fuss.

Well, no one except for me. For the past few years, I have prided myself on preferring originals over remixes, books over their film adaptions, and pop-culture staples over the shows that reference them. Time and time again, I berated my carpool, friends, and classmates for missing the Streetcar references made by The Simpsons or laughing at Abed’s film facts on Community without having actually seen Pulp Fiction. I was an advocate for original content and an enemy to carbon copies everywhere. That was, at least, until Brophy’s student body decided to give me a collective reality check.

During my past three years on BLAM’s staff, I have seen our email inbox fill with imitation poems and prose chock-full of allusions. I’ve seen iconic images deconstructed and school campus celebrities made into short story characters. Through it all, I’ve been forced to admit that our generation doesn’t lack a unique spirit— remixing is our spirit.

Our iPods are filled with mashed-up top-40s hits and sequels to our childhood favorites. Our stories are pieced together from old wives’ tales and age-old archetypes. Our movies are referential, our clothes are thrifted, our art is borrowed, and our feet are planted

firmly on the shoulders of those who came before us.

Make no mistake: originality isn’t dead. It’s spectral, and it always has been. Our generation has just dropped the pretense, and so this year, the BLAM editors decided that we would, too. We asked students to reappropriate the first line of Kurt Vonnegaut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (15, 33) and rebuild stories out of outdated class stereotypes (28). We received everything from Victorian poetry remade into rap (3) to a revival of woodworking (7). We interviewed Girl Talk, the king of the remix (67), and we ventured to a screening of RiP!: A Remix Manifesto to learn more about the art of copyright subversion (39). Our editors explored the scarcity of novelty in popular music (5), the spread of memes to our newsfeeds (47), and film photography’s place in a digital world (51).

Athough our magazine may be an ode to the remix, that doesn’t mean that credit isn’t due to those who aid in the recreation. So thank you to everyone on campus who re-mashed and re-submitted, who reimagined what could be made. Thank you to our faculty moderators and all-knowing mix-masters, Mr. Damaso ’97 and Mr. Unrein, who oversaw it all. And thank you to our muses: our parents and friends who became characters in screenplays, our favorite authors whose plot arcs were recreated, and that guy at the bus stop who said that one profound thing that three years later ended up in a poem.

Now, as the rest of the staff and I sit here copyediting the compiled result, I can’t help but feel a pang of guilt for my former pretension and for every one of my self-righteous soapbox rants about the nature of art.

So, consider this my letter of resignation. Feel free to transform it into an erasure poem next week or cut it into your newest collage. We promise we won’t get angry, provided that you submit it back to BLAM come next fall.

TABLE

OF CON

TENTS

LITERARY WORK 2 9 11 12 14 15 18 20 22 24 25 28 30 33 58 60 63 72 76 78 79 81 83 84

Alex Keating ’14 Roan Enright ’13 Bently Brown ’13 Alex Keating ’14 Nick Kush ’13 Brian Ahern ’13 Calvin Fairbourn ’14 Nick Centrella ’13 Colin Marston ’13 Alex Keating ’14 Carter Watson ’14 Brian Ahern ’13 Alec Knappenberger ’13 Kieran Martin ’13 Jesus Betancourt ’13 Colin Marston ’13 Jackson Santy ’13 Alex Kucera ’13 Fernando Jimenez ’13 AK Alilonu ’16 Jesus Betancourt ’13 Brian Loh ’15 Alex Keating ’14 Alec Knappenberger ’13

A World of Passive Artists The Old Days The Table at 120 Wooster Atlantic Slaughter House Mine What Would You Do? A Monument to All Our Sins Alkaline Shells If You Had Seen Our Sandbox America Works To Play the Wind How To Become a Parlor Trick Pro/Amateur Magician This is Where the Title Goes Ave Gibraltar AKA My Home Bungie Cords, Dream Girls, and Rabid Wolf Love I Dreamt of the Machine Of Words and Men To the Sheriff This, Love, is a Hurricane Unchained Memories Leaf Just a Napkin

poetry poetry prose poetry poetry prose prose poetry poetry poetry poetry prose prose prose poetry poetry prose prose poetry poetry poetry prose poetry poetry

visual art 1 4 10 12 13 16 17 20 21 26 27 34 39 43 57 59 62 64 65 66 70 71 74 75 77 80 82 83 84

Alex Gross ’13 Ian Poblete ’13 Dalton Radcliffe ’13 Joe Trog ’13 Alex Gross ’13 Joe Trog ’13 Casey Weinstein ’13 Joe Trog ’13 Kyle Sourbeer ’15 Eshaan Daas ’13 Ryan Dolinar ’13 Ian Poblete ’13 Kyle Sourbeer ’15 Greg Vogel ’15 Alex Keating ’14 Ian Poblete ’13 Gus Wehn ’13 Ian Poblete ’13 Alex Keating ’14 Alex Keating ’14 Daniel Shaw ’14 Ian Poblete ’13 Alex Gross ’13 Alex Keating ’14 Austin Fritzke ’14 Joe Trog ’13 Alex Gross ’13 Anthony Fischetti ’13 Tommy Mroz ’13

Delusion Owl Trip Mosaic Dad The Corner Stone 3D Darkness and Shadow Murderous Smokey Spirals ‘Merica The Next Meal Deceptive Recollection Mustache You A Question Hotel TV Competitors Rose Soleil Charismatic Chief Polygonal Dancer One Dancer Two Eye Locos Deophage Flower Vitruvian Bronco Poseidon You’re Getting Nuked, Poor Kid Curiosity Looking at White Paintings

digital illustration digital illustration digital photo composite digital photo digital photo composite digital photo digital photo digital photo watercolor and spray painting digital photo pastel digital illustration pen and ink digital photo scratchboard linoleum block print pen, ink, and colored pencil digital illustration silkscreen and ink illustration silkscreen and ink illustration acrylic digital illustration digital illustration linoleum block print prismacolor digital photo digital illustration digital photo pastel

contest 45 49

Various Authors Various Artists

Tweeted Tales Life #Filtered

fictional tweets digital photos

special works 3 7 31 41 44

Nick Centrella ’13 Steven Oleksak ’13 Keaton Leander ’13 Carter Watson ’14 Greg Vogel ’15

The Real Raven Assorted Pieces Designing Space The Great Burnsy Thank You, Phoenix

remixed rap woodwork architectural renderings screenplay short film

features 5 31 39 47 51 67

Julian De Ocampo ’13 Kayvan Shamsa ’14 Jack Flynn ’13 Alexander Chen ’14 Sam Wolff ’13 Carter Santini ’15

Play it Again, Sam Art and Architecture A Rip in Our Silver Screens This is Not Read Only Film.

An Interview with Girl Talk

feature article feature article film review feature article photo essay interview

These stickers designate the winners of various contests BLAM hosted throughout the year.

Famous First Words: Use Slaughterhouse-Five’s opening sentence, “All this happened, more or less,” as your own.

(Re)Creation: Reinterpret and recreate a piece of literature.

Tweeted Tales: Create tweets that famous characters and authors would have made.

Golden Shovel: Poetry Out Loud finalists were asked to write poems in which the last word of each line is borrowed from the poem that they recited.

Class Act: Write a literary or visual piece that depics members of society doing something, given their socioeconomic class, that others would deem unorthodox.

Cut, Paste: Blend any two mediums to create a mixed media piece.

(Re)Masterpiece: Reinterpret and recreate a visual work.

Life. #Filtered: Take a photo of something in your life. Crop it square. Filter it.

Notable contest submissions are distributed throughout the magazine.

Delusion, a digital illustration by Alex Gross ’13

A WORLD OF

By Alex Keating ’ 14 My sense of wonder swells inside For vintage views with modern eyes, As insights to a world sublime Are echoed from a different time.

The works of those that lie as bones, Who sculpted words in timeless stone, Now lead amazement through the minds Of few who view what’s left behind.

These stories bring escape with ease To grand impossibilities, Of great adventure, love and pain, From life we know to be mundane.

Of paint, old canvas finds a way To color chaos, and display The beauty and inherent worth Of such a simple, silent earth.

Behold, the great creations made By those that wither, form decayed, Stay standing near, by those that live, Inspiring passions deep within.

Yet, with time and counting hours, From the greats to those of ours, Comes a culture less exciting, Always reading, never writing.

We reject our independence For old works, oh so transcendent, All at once, when one supposes That the past saw redder roses.

Not so true (this world that wasn’t), “Humans” change but “human” doesn’t, Rushed their blood and held confessions Just like those of our possession.

Still exist, we need reminding, Stars of Galileo’s finding, Flowers thick, a sun still sunny Over days still just as lovely.

With this search for beauty broken, Untold stories stay unspoken, Arts are lost as lost endeavors, Moving music, gone forever.

Now to stop this slow regression, Find inspired, deep expression, Pick up stones from past’s cooled embers; Construct a dream that’s worth remember.

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The Real

raven a remixed rap By nick centrella ’ 13 Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping So to you I come a rapping at my chamber door.

bit.ly/18721LV

Tis some visitor I muttered tapping at the door, Tis some visitor I muttered that and nothing more, Tis some visitor entreating entrance at the door, Tis some visitor entreating that and nothing more, Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And with each dying ember I pleaded for the morrow Vainly I had sought to borrow From my books to numb the sorrow of the girl they called Lenore “Sir,” said I, “or madam your forgiveness I implore But to my chamber you came rapping tapping at the door. ” No common name they did proclaim, could it be Lenore?

But there was only darkness when I opened wide the door There was only darkness when I opened wide the door And all I muttered was the whispered name of my Lenore There was only darkness when I opened wide the door And then an echo whispered back to me the word Lenore Retreating to my chamber, “tis the wind and nothing more.”

And out there stepped a stately raven of the days of yore Retreating to my chamber, “tis the wind and nothing more.”

There perched and sat an ancient raven on my chamber door

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Owl Trip, a digital illustration

by Ian Poblete ’13

Play it again, sam

By Julian De ocampo ’ 13, literary editor Can you listen to too much music?

I’ve been thinking about that lately when lying in bed with my headphones on, browsing through the day’s latest album releases. I tap the names of random bands that will probably never make it out of their home towns.

A few guitar strums, maybe a squiggly synth line or two, and then I pause.

It’s not that the music is bad. It’s just that everything comes flooding back into memory. Those drums are from a Talking Heads song. The guitars are too much like the Jesus and Mary Chain. The synthesizers remind me too much of MGMT. A million comparisons spring up in my mind and make everything feel disappointingly familiar.

I remember when music was so new. I was raised on Christian rock and Celine Dion before I discovered the radio. Music was largely a nonentity in my life throughout elementary school. Aside from a couple favorite top 40s jams (favorites: “Oops, I Did it Again” and “I Want it That Way”), most of my exposure existed solely through children’s television, Disney movies, and my church’s gospel choir. Not exactly the most riveting stuff.

And then I turned twelve, and people suddenly started talking about music. KISS-FM became a cultural touchstone amongst my young peers, and the radio became my God. The only thing I wanted for my birthday was a stereo system that could pipe top 40s into my room all day. I would literally sit in front of it and listen to the radio all night hoping that Fall Out Boy’s “Sugar, We’re Going Down” would come on.

Then the Guitar Hero fad hit its mania and introduced me to rock and roll. A perfect premier to rock standards, the Rock Band and Guitar Hero series had me obsessed with alternative rock. I turned up my

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nose to the top 40s tunes I had cherished for so long.

This stuff was raw, different, and cool. I worried that by embracing bands like The Killers and Queens of the Stone Age, I would lose the common cultural ground that pop music gave me. But the music was just too good to give up.

Fast forward a few years to me lying in bed, having listened to thousands of albums and holding strong opinions about hundreds upon hundreds of artists.

What happened to that excitement? The music was the same—hell, I still listened to Gorillaz’s “Feel Good Inc.” just as fondly as ever. But back then, every sound was new. Novelty was limitless.

I blame the remix. Not just songs with the word “remix” in parentheses, which are usually predictable EDM jams of little consequence, but the very idea of the remix. The idea that something can somehow be improved on. The idea that something can be the same, but still somehow be better.

To me, every pop song became a loose remix of another pop song. The same blaring synths and four-onthe-floor rhythms, the constant commands to shake my booty. It was just too rote for me.

It wasn’t long before this malaise had infected all music. When rock bored me, I moved on to hip-hop via the entry-level rap of Kanye West. Although I am still a faithful fan, I couldn’t help but be taken a little bit aback when I found out that the famous “Foreva, eva?

Eva, eva?” from “Diamonds Are Forever” was taken from OutKast’s “Miss Jackson.” The more I looked into it, the more I realized that nearly every hip-hop song I loved filched lines from predecessors, creating motifs and lines that strung the genre together. Beyond lyrics, I was shocked to learn how Beck’s “E-Pro” lifts the drums from the Beastie Boys’ “So Whatcha Want.” Or how “U

Can’t Touch This” is really just “Superfreak.” And don’t even get me started on EDM; Daft Punk’s “Crescendolls” is musical robbery with a beat on top.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize that the remix (in the loose sense of the word) has given me a fair share of pleasure as well: Kanye West and Radiohead mash-ups that deconstruct a song’s parts and put them back together, seeing Chairlift in concert interpolating “Melt With You” into their song “Bruises,” and Girl Talk (ah, Girl Talk, how I love your keen ear for hyperactive mash-up material). Check out the genre of plunderphonics, where The Avalanches’ seminal “Since I Left You” repurposed thousands of random vinyl samples into one of the most beautiful records ever made. It’s no surprise that Phoenix’s onstage mashups with Daft Punk and R. Kelly met such great attention— we love the idea of mixing what we like into something we love.

This year, I watched a documentary about one of my favorite bands, The Magnetic Fields, in which songwriter Stephin Merritt discussed the idea of musical theft. Merritt’s songs utilize and poke fun of various musical tropes to create something snarky, self-aware, and undeniably compelling, if not unoriginal. One of my favorite quotes about musical originality comes from his essay “The Formulist Manifesto,” in which Merritt writes, “We the formulists (with a sigh of relief) renounce the deluded striving of moderns for self-expression through novelty. We accept all foregoing and contemporary expression as a set of templates.” Maybe that’s all music is: mix-and-match templates working with a limited spectrums of notes and sounds and rhythms.

And yet, isn’t that all we need? Big templates that can be painted in with such vibrancy and color that we can keep enjoying the picture, even if we’ve seen the elements a million times over. A killer chord progression can be used a million times over, but that doesn’t stop it from being a solid foundation for a song. These tropes and clichés are the foundation that give any music listener ground to stand on. An experienced listener might feel slightly jaded, but maybe that’s because he or

she knows that there’s something better out there. And so music becomes a quest to find something unique, something unheard of, something beautiful and new.

While that might make the average song a little less impressive, it makes the real stuff—the stuff that keeps us addicted to the search—that much better.

The more I think about it, the idea of jadedness goes beyond music. Movie criticism is a notoriously tough industry due to the danger of simply getting sick of movies. Ditto for music, TV, video games, etc. Hell, life experience can tire a guy out too. Asking if you can listen to too much music is like asking if you can live too much life; the only way to fight burnout is to keep remembering what you loved in the first place. Whatever it is that keeps you grounded, whether it be in music (e.g. the first time I heard In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, seeing Weezer at my first concert) or life (my friends, my family, my passions,) will answer the question for you.

The new will always be new, and if you try hard enough to appreciate it, the old can be too.

Detail of a handmade instrument by Steven Oleksak ’13

Handmade iPhone cases

by Steven Oleksak ’13

A handmade ping-pong paddle by Steven Oleksak ’13

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A handmade instrument by Steven Oleksak ’13

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THE OLD DAYS By roan enright ‘ 13 After Carole Simmons Oles’s “Stonecarver” Forget about his ears, clogged and crippled from the hisses of Rock and Roll, and his pressure-filled eyes, squeezing his sight away.

Forget his loose mind, leaving the ceramic coffee mug on the roof of the car, or his deep impression on the black leather sofa, and the faded food stains tattooed on the front of his t-shirt.

Instead remember the early mornings, gathering the lawn tools from the packrat garage, dirt stains running through the ripples of his jeans, smeared residue on his circular glasses, and the white pools forming in his yellowed palms.

Remember him with the boot on the shovel, tightly gripping the wooden handle behind a dark mound of dirt, kissing a seed before pressing it in the ground, just remember the man, smearing the salty brown paste off his forehead and clapping the dust off his hands.

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Mosaic Dad, a digital photo composite

by Dalton Radcliffe ’13

ThE Table at By bentley brown ’ 13 Closing my eyes, I can feel his struggle, his misery, his pain. Closing my eyes, I can almost smell the aroma that fills his studio; the smells of varnish, turpentine, and wet paint all blend to form a fragrance that for me, is home. This same smell permeated my father’s skin; it’s the perfume of a master at work. I carry this scent in my heart as a lasting memento of my father. When I close my eyes, I see “The Last Supper,” not Leonardo’s, but Frederick’s; this is his masterpiece - this will transcend time. When I close my eyes I can see him putting on strokes of blue paint with the delicacy and care of a tailor crafting the finest suit. I hear the jazz music in his studio; the music, in many ways, is a soundtrack to the cinematic drama that is art. Listen to the tis tis and boom bap of Lionel Hampton’s drums and the symphony of Johnny Coltrane’s horn, listen as they tell the artist’s story, listen as they tell my story. After much emotion, after months of projecting his soul into his masterpiece, my father’s Last Supper was born. “The Last Supper” depicts the twelve apostles as those who helped nurture the American Renaissance of 1970-1995. These apostles came from all walks of life: poets, artists, architects and even lawyers who came together to make SoHo a place like none other during this time. This collaborative artistic experience was enabled by the multiple lenses in which they viewed the world, an attribute my father instilled in me at an early age. As I gaze upon the table of “The Last Supper,” I see my family table; for me, family extends beyond the immediate. Family is everyone and everything that has affected my life in some way: big or

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small, positive or negative, all adding to my odyssey.

Looking closer at my father’s painting, a man has his back turned, walking away from the table. This man is Judas. To me, Judas represents obstacles that have tried my loyalty to what I hold most dear: my ambition, drive, and vigor to strive for what some see as unobtainable, unimaginable. I push through blood and sweat and tears and life and death and doubt all to create my masterpiece, my life, inspired by my father’s. Judas is the pain of his death that affects me every single day. Judas is the fear of the unknown, the “faceless.” Facing Judas is what gives me the motivation to get up in the morning, for my father, for my loved ones and for myself. Facing Judas empowers me to overcome the inevitable challenges in life. My father conquered the uncertainties and doubts of Judas in the decisions he made in every painting and at each turning point in his life. In the same way, I conquer Judas. I conquer him with my aspirations, striving to become the great man that at dinner every night my father told me I would be.

Facing my father’s death can be a frightening daily battle of emotion. I head into this world wounded but braced, not knowing what each day will bring. Walking down the city street, the smell comes, turpentine; Coltrane blows his horn while Hampton mirrors him with the boom bap of his drums. My father looks through the symphony, into my weeping eyes, into my injured soul; he takes my hand, and tells me, “Let’s paint your life story.”

Bt

The Corner Stone, a digital photograph by Joe Trog ’13

I stroll across a sea of time As hours pass my longing sighs, Cerebral prisms bend and chime For better times their echoes die.

Atlantic

By Alex Keating ’ 14

Let come a day for shattered hearts, But one I’ll grasp is all I ask, For these I’ve dreamed in broken parts.

Seem not to spark ‘till moments passed.

Oh life, resume my early smile, Just let me prop a resting hand, For those I lost by meager miles, Might wash upon themselves in sand.

I lead a life as cautious host, Afraid to tread ‘cross windy coast.

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3D, a digital photo composite

by Alex Gross ’13

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I trusted clocks when I was younger, But one moment doesn’t follow another.

I didn’t ask for this, to be a soldier, If only I had knows that I would never get older.

Boots pounded in the winter’s wet forest.

I felt sorry for us, Post-crash, post-vows, Valencia’s food and inebriation, The other side of morning left me with impossible concentration.

I’m coming unstuck in time…

Now I’m the fool who knows what’s next.

It happens too fast, forever to last.

Did anyone ever ask you what’s the sweetest thing?

American aircraft full of holes and wounded men And German fighter planes sucking bullets out of them.

Bomb bay doors shrink the fires, Words resemble the voices of barbed wires So it goes…

After the capsules had exploded, Cylinders taken from the wings unloaded, Made into minerals in a factory they’re sent, Properly buried in places unchecked So they never hurt again.

The birds don’t need to sing this massacre.

Everything hurt and nothing was beautiful.

More or less, all of this happened, And it was all so human.

By nick kush ‘ 13

I came unstuck in time…

Now I’m the fool who knows what’s next.

It happened too fast, forever to last.

Did anyone ever ask you what’s the sweetest thing?

After Slaughterhouse-Five

The past is painted and the future photographed.

Other lives and planets unfolded time.

I will always write my memories of the future, For no one has travelled farther than I.

Slaughter House mine

I will die, have died, and always will die on February thirteenth, 1976.

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do

What

would

?

you

By BRian Ahern ’ 13 All of this happened, more or less. I can’t begin to stress that enough. I’m writing these words to tell my story as it happened, not to justify the things I did and not to ask for forgiveness. There is no forgiveness, not for the things I did, and even if there were, I wouldn’t want any. I made my mistakes, and now I have to live with that. Maybe that’s strange, but it makes sense to me. Anyways, I guess this is more than just my story; it’s also a warning of a sorts. Hopefully, most of you won’t ever need this, and this document will be nothing more than a curious tale. But maybe one of you out there that reads this will have it happen to you too, and maybe you’ll remember me and just turn around and walk away. Doubtful, but I have to give it a shot.

It began a few days ago, in the middle of the night; clichéd, I know. The moment I woke up, I knew I wasn’t alone. It had a…. presence of a sorts, an aura of evil, if you will, radiating fear and hatred from the cover of the darkness. I could feel it in my room, staring at me. I never got a good look at it; to me it was only a blurred

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outline hiding in the shadows. From what I could see, I’d like to keep it that way. I don’t know how it found me, but it did, and it knew exactly what to say. At the end of the conversation, more of a sales pitch, we made a deal. One way or another, even if I didn’t know it at the time, I sold my soul that night.

It told me to do things. Things I never would have done before in my life. But it knew exactly what strings it needed to tug on to get me to do… well, you know what I did. I’d rather not go over them, suffice it to say it bought and paid for it all. It kept all its promises, and so did I. I haven’t seen it since the night we parted ways, but I remember at the end of all this, even it seemed surprised at the things I did. There was shock in its voice when it said, “Well, I hope it was worth it,” and gave me a Klondike bar.

Darkness and Shadow, a digital photograph by Joe Trog ’13

Murderous, a digital photograph by Casey Weinstein ’13

A MONUMENT TO all our sins

By Calvin Fairbourn ’ 14 “And remember! Your essays are due next week.

I expect a printed and a holo copy on Monday! Now get out of here and enjoy the rest of the day.” With that said, the professor turned back to his desk and switched off the projector. Behind him, the students packed their computers back into their bags and quickly exited the lecture hall. He shuffled a few wrinkled papers off of his otherwise empty desk, devoid of clutter save for his tablet. He sighed slowly, and picked up his bag from the floor.

“Excuse me, sir.”

The voice startled the old man, who turned quickly to face the speaker. He was surprised to see one of his students standing behind him, with both of her arms wrapped around her tablet. He took a quick second to look her over. The professor liked to claim he recognized all of his students, but he had never seen this girl before. Her long, dirty blonde hair cascaded down her shoulders and spilled out over her olive cardigan.

Her soft smile carried a hint of timidity, and her posture took on a very relaxed and comfortable position.

“Ah yes, you had a question? And you are?” His voice trailed off as he looked at her. She hesitated for a moment before responding, gathering her thoughts and shifting uncomfortably where she stood.

Finally, she responded, “Well, I just had a quick question,” she paused again, “about the relevance of this topic.” The professor was visibly taken aback.

Never in all these years had a student questioned his course, his passion!

“I’m afraid I don’t understand your question.”

“Well, sir, it’s just that I don’t get why we need to

be learning about this stuff. I mean, it’s all history; it’s already happened.”

He already knew where this was going. He had lost count of how many times his students had asked this question over the course of his nearly forty years at the school. He had quickly come up with an answer to this question, and he now felt as if he was reading off a script, so many times had he given this speech.

“Well, the past 150 years have been the most controversial, but also the most important in all of human history. You remember in Chapter One, when we discussed pre-arrival beliefs?”

“Yes sir.”

“And you also remember in Chapter Two, when we discussed the upheaval surrounding the first contact back in the 1890s?”

“Of course I do, sir, but I just don’t understand why it matters.”

He stopped for a moment, furrowing his brow as he looked at her. After a short silence, he turned back to his desk and picked up a creased old book with dark green binding. Stamped on the top, in gold letters, was the title: On the Nature of Them. He turned back to the girl, who was peering over his shoulder to see what he was doing. She quickly relaxed back into her earlier posture, still holding her tablet tight to her breast. He cleared his throat, before extending the book out to her.

She hesitated for a second before placing her tablet down on a nearby desk and taking the book from his hands.

“This book,” he started, “should provide an answer to your question.”

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She opened it up and began to peruse the table of contents. The professor waited for a moment before beginning again.

“In it, you will find the complete history of our contact with them. From the first time we made contact with them back in 1892 up until 2006, when our coexistence with them ended. It starts with early communication and then proceeds on to the first visit.

You remember that things started off rocky. People didn’t know how to react to them. Religion was one of the first to go. People couldn’t understand how religion could still exist.”

“I remember all of this, sir. I just don’t understand why it matters!”

He sighed for a moment, as if the weight of the world sat upon his shoulders. He took a step closer to her so that he could see the small green pendant hanging from her neck. He cleared his voice and began again.

“The following 150 years would be very, well, interesting. A lot of things would change. Conflict began in 1908. The first laws protecting them came in 1923. Their first experience in our wars came in 1945 and then again in the 50s. We finally visited them as the 1960s came to a close. Do you remember the champions of equality back in the 1980s? Ray Bradbury, Martin Luther King Jr.?”

The girl’s face lit up. The professor knew now that she was starting to get it. He prepared to drive his point home.

“But like all great things, this period of prosperity was destined to end. It happened on a sunny morning in D.C. in 2008. Perhaps the most historic moment in American history. And it all ended with a bang. A single shot, penetrating the skull, killing him instantly.”

The professor felt great pain as he said this, like an old wound roaring back to haunt him. His student’s face was set like stone, and she bit her lip nervously. With great pain, he drove the nail into the coffin.

“And it was over like that. War came within a week, and it was over in two. They never stood a chance. But we paid the price for what we did, in more ways than

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you can imagine.”

She took a step closer to the professor and took hold of his elbow. With her eyes now fixed on his, he choked through the last few sentences.

“I watched it happen; everyone on this side of the planet saw it. We cleansed their home in the warm glow of atomic fires.”

“I think I get it now.”

“Good. now get out of here, and enjoy the rest of your day.”

“Thank you for your time, sir. And have a good weekend.”

With that, she turned and walked out of the room, her blonde hair bouncing as she did. The professor turned back to his desk with a great weight in the pit of his stomach. He sat down in the large armchair behind his desk and began to grade a pile of homework. When night fell, he packed his bags and left the room, the lights clicking off automatically as the door closed.

Outside, he took a moment to gaze up into the inky black sky. The stars shone brightly, but the moon, or rather its shattered remains, hung dully in the sky.

A monument to all our sins.

Alkaline

By Nick Centrella ’ 13 Uploading Message…

100% Complete.

By 2040, scientists of high esteem are predicting we will turn from men to machines.

Uploading our conscience into alkaline shells retrofit with an assortment of whistles and bells.

But it is my own personal belief that humanity requires more than logical beeps.

Electric nothings hold no sway in the day when men remade themselves.

Play with the notion, give it some thought. We’re already weak and primordial robots.

Our machine brains fueled by caffeine and gin, our machine hearts short-circuited to life again.

Our artificial descendants will compute back on the things we taught. The ideas we brought.

But none of it will matter, because none of it is real, only the stale taste of cooling fan wind.

The streetlamps will wave hello to us as we glide into their golden light.

The telephones will be slaves to us as we collide into a sea of radio waves.

And in that soup of codes and keys that comprises both tremendous and trite, Not a single soul will show the same compassion as in the early days.

But don’t mind me and my silly words, through the thickness of the alloy they must sound absurd As you upload your conscience into alkaline shells retrofit with an assortment of whistles and bells.

I shall download my mind to a better time when the noise of machines was drowned out by birds, For electric nothings hold no sway in the day when men remade themselves.

Error: Your message to “The Human Race” could not be sent at this time.

Smokey Spirals, a digital photograph

by Joe Trog ’13

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‘Merica, a watercolor and spray painting by Kyle Sourbeer ’15

BY COLIN MARSTON ’ 13

IF you HAD SEEN

Flesh, free from polyester cold, shivering, shining like the sparkle Disneyland once promised our brief repose from the grid.

If you had seen As I saw the soil toes touching, interlocking transporting to another realm.

Traveling through the touch of our bodies huddled against the primal mother of these peaks, The San Francisco Peaks Unknown fears, bulldozers burdened with unfathomable loads of tears.

We long ago left the human race to become Homo Americano those steaming espressos and illusionary dreams Breaking our spines Memory nothing now but ticker tapes speeding on never ending flashing screens.

Staring into static Through that abyss of technicolor, quiet chaos concealed in the make-up smile of pale powdered flesh I stand here On these peaks And weep.

If you had seen What I saw Hope a tingling butterfly Smashed generations ago.

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These pines resolute.

Cyclical gods of unending wisdom budding leaves of intricate maps, giving solace to our amnesia Once given ear to the newborn baby The quilted dreams of a trekking people Now become deaf To the machines Pounding and pounding and pounding.

Unquenchable.

The sirens screech Not budging an inch pipelines protruding sewage raining We don’t look away from one another.

Silent yet not serene Ours is an existence of cards Delicate Casting a glance another way would cause collapse So we kiss Knowing nothing but love Fearful of all that surrounds us A rock among seas When will we come to know we can’t swim?

Drowning in these droplets of lust Of untold histories Murmurs of suppression standing out As we sink Further and further From the peaks That are still present I swear I see them I haven’t lost.

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Horizons become deeptive Stretching round through millennia.

I hug your ruggedness Your trails of terrestrial wonder, Trembling at folly I wonder As we become deaf Why you can’t scream as the dynamite envelops The chase of the hare The eyelids of the aspen The shiftlessness of the clouds covering the quiet anguish beneath those brown brows.

I wonder If you had seen, what I saw.

OUR SANDBOX

By Alex Keating ’ 14 At three foot four, our hearts were tall, Our sense of worry never stirred, All dreams we thought would never fall, For all of life we thought we’d heard.

So still we’d dig, and dig, and dig, And craft our mountains best we could, Then press the sides, form flags from twigs, And there, of sand, our artwork stood.

So often, sitting down alone, I’d press my hand on thickened dirt, Enveloped in the tiny stones, Then pat the granules off my shirt.

To think of all the mounds we made, And didn’t care how long they’d last, Not work for ends, but work for play, Our inspiration never passed.

The sandbox, not just patch of land, We ran around and kicked up dust, They’d soon disperse as clouds of sand, And back to work we knew we must.

At last, we’d scoop the sandy grains, Our tightened shoes aside the hole, Unclench our fists, sand drizzled, rained, Restoring back our box as whole.

Behind our age’s wretched hold, Lived times, as kids, immersed in laughs, And shovels close, we acted bold, Construction seemed most noble craft.

Oh how I crave the aura then, Emitted, gentle tones from smile, Phantasms plague the minds of men, But never once they did of child.

Each time we dug, the bottom filled, The sides of holes would tend to slide, And still, excitement never spilled, Frustration never sparked inside.

And passing thousand clockwork’s hands, My wonder slipped as hours spun, Our youthful games could not withstand, I worry I’ll remember none, As fondly as I do of sand.

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AMerica

WORKS

By Carter Watson ’14 America diurnally works.

God needed rest on the seventh; America doesn’t.

God never needed his check on the first or the fifteenth so he didn’t live day to day, instead, by the weak.

America lives and works and rations one by one by one even though the factories are gone.

God gave America ears and a few voices but America lives one by one by one until all of the voices are gone.

They took one from Afeni’s son and from Martin and from Malcolm and they’ll take one from Kendrick and from Sharpton and from the next one until God’s voice factory relocates to another heaven for cheaper, less enlightened sayers so that he can rest on the seventh while America labors.

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The Next Meal, a digital photograph by Eshaan Daas ’13

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Deceptive Recollection, a pastel drawing by Ryan Dolinar ’13

To play the Wind

By Brian aHERN ’ 13 November 17th, 2008 I was the first person to see him. I’m sure I wasn’t the first to notice him; in fact, I believe he may have bumped into someone as he weaved his way through the sparse crowd in the south end of the concert hall.

However, I was the first person to actually see him.

All they saw were the externalities. His torn overcoat, streaked and stained with mud and refuse. Torn and frayed, pocket marked with gaping holes and makeshift patches.

Weather beaten in every sense of the word: baked in the sun, soaked by the rain, pounded mercilessly by hail, and buried deep under snow. His faded blue jeans were much of the same, though it hardly seemed fair to call them blue anymore. His right pant leg had been nearly ripped off at the knee and was loosely hanging on, quite literally, by a thread. His leather work boots looked like they had seen more miles than my car, and his left toe was beginning to peek out of another small hole. The only splash of color on him was his red and white checkered flannel shirt, though it was slightly torn to reveal a plain white undershirt. He wore his hair tucked into a dark grey beanie, and had on a pair of matching finger-less gloves. He was, in short, exactly how one would picture a wino in New York City. They took this in in an instant. The concert hall went silent for a moment, and then erupted with furious murmuring.

The crowd parted before him, scattering like pigeons as

dignitaries and benefactors placed themselves between him and their socialite dates. They saw exactly what they were trained to see, what they wanted to see. A bum, filthy, dangerous, probably insane. A blemish on society, as unwelcome and out of place as that little black girl being escorted into an Arkansas high school by federal troops. But he had no soldiers to protect him.

He had no force of law. He had no one, and nothing. He was alone. Alone, except, perhaps, for me. Because what I saw was something different. Yes, I noticed the dirt, the grime, the disheveled rags he had for clothing. Among the hundreds of spotless tuxedo jackets, crisp white shirts and perfectly knotted bow ties, he stood out like a black dot on a flawlessly white canvas. But what I saw was him. He radiated certainty, like here and now was exactly where he was supposed to be. I would have wilted under the merciless stares my compatriots shot at him, but they seem to bounce off like they were nothing; all things considered, I guess they really were.

Although he slowly shambled forward, hunched slightly rather than standing erect, he seemed to move with a purpose that was palpable, lending him a fluid grace that belied his actual appearance. I couldn’t tell you how long we stood, both fearfully and eagerly awaiting what could happen next. At first, I thought he would simply pass me by, leaving me nothing but a spectator.

However, he stopped before me, and without further

hE WAS ALONE.

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ado said, “Hello s-s-s-sir,” with a soft but pronounced stutter.

Silence fell, sharp and sudden like the blade of a guillotine, before my instincts kicked in and I replied, “Good evening, sir, how are you?” My voice echoed among the rafters like the ending notes to the last piece we had performed,the irony of which I failed to appreciate until later. In the void left by the absent music and chatter, my voice stood out, clear and alone.

After a brief pause he said, “I c-c-could hear the music from the s-s-sidewalk outside. It wa-was b-b-bbeautiful. I wa-wanted to come inside and t-t-tell you how much I ap-a-ap-appreciated it.” At this point, I had no idea what to say. A moment later, he asked me, “I wa-was wondering if you c-c-could do me a fa-fa-fafavor. It’s been so long since I even had the chance to see a violin; c-c-could I hold yours for a mo-moment?”

He reached out to me in such a plaintiff manor that, without thinking, I handed him both my instrument and my bow. In a daze, I watched him cradle it the way a man might his newborn son in a romantic movie, and after a moment’s hesitation, he began to play. Looking back on it now, I know that no description I write here could ever do it justice. Words have truly failed me. The closest I can come is to say that there, in that concert hall, he played us the wind. The music rose suddenly,

invisible yet tangible, unique yet familiar. It wrapped around us, weaving its way among the throng of listeners, enveloping us completely. Rising crescendos overpowered us, crashing into our ears like the roar of a thunderstorm. Rapid accelerando drove us with the force of a hurricane. A subtle pianissimo brushed against us like the soft kiss of a summer breeze, inspiring nostalgia for the halcyon days of our youths.

And suddenly, it was over. Like the wind, it rose out of nowhere, like the wind, it touched all of us, and, like the wind, it slipped through our fingers and was gone.

I never got to see him again; hell, I never even got the chance to learn his name. He just calmly handed me back my violin, turned around, and shuffled out of the building. I will always regret not chasing after him, for just standing there, poleaxed, like the rest of the listeners. By the time I had recovered enough to return to rational thought, he was gone. I wish there were a moral to this story; I wish there had been some lesson learned. I wish that something had happened, or something had changed. Of course, nothing did. That’s not how it ever seems to work in the real world. This is just another memory, locked away in some dusty journal. But it’s still beautiful to me, with or without some greater point, and I guess that’ll just have to be enough.

wORDS HAVE TRULY FAILED ME.

How to become a parlor trick pro/ amateur magician By alec knappenberger ’ 13 After Lorrie Moore’s “How to Become a Writer”

First things first, throw that dignity out the window.

You’re going to feel like an infomercial spokesman selling obvious lies to a TV audience. These tricks can be about as hard to sell as ShamWow’s, so it is vital that you look confident up there. If you ever want to successfully lie to an audience, you have to first succeed at lying to yourself; so take a look in the mirror and lie your face off.

If you need help mastering your craft, scavenge the Internet for the works of others who were, at one point, as bored as you are now. You’re not the only attention addict in the world.

Before you even think about trying your skill in front of a panel of cynical judges who want to expose you for the liar you are, you better be sure you’ve tried it a million times by yourself. Then, once you’ve thoroughly impressed the mirror, you can think about moving on to performing for people. Start with the most biased person you can find, someone who would never tell you the truth, even if they knew you would fail. Your parents are always a safe bet, until they start asking you about your lifestyle choices and putting limits on how much you can practice yo-yo-ing a day.

This brings me to my next point: false confidence.

As the age-old maxim goes, “Ignorance is bliss.”

Confidence, whether it is based on fact or on your twisted idea that “magic is cool,” is unbelievably important, so do whatever it takes to attain some.

People only have so many compliments in them though, so make sure you show your skill to a variety of people.

If you don’t, you will run out of people to show. Never forget: false confidence is better than no confidence.

If this continues to be a hobby of yours past middle school, you may run into problems fitting in with the status-quo. The magic/parlor trick following consists of a very specific type of people, and it is a lifestyle choice that may be seen by many as questionable. Well, passion is passion, so ignore those dream-killing robots and learn to juggle or do a card trick or something else.

Do what you love, and remember: all that matters is that you impress yourself.

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art and architecture

By Kayvan Shamsa ’ 14, Assistant literary editor In a world of constantly developing artistic mediums, oftentimes we fail to take a step back and recognize less obvious crafts as art forms. Such is the case with architecture, the practice of constructing and designing edifices.

Fortunately, this 2012-13 school year saw the launch of a new fine arts class for Brophy students – Art and Architecture, taught by Mr. Noah Lewkowitz. The class learns the various theories and procedures behind creating a piece of architecture, while also exploring the architectural histories of myriad buildings from around the world.

Upon first entering E300 this semester, the tight space hiding furtively behind Mr. Mulloy’s room, you’d be hard-pressed to believe in its function as an architecture classroom. With its cramped spaces and empty walls, it looked far from being able to facilitate an art class, especially one requiring as many tools and supplies as architecture does. However, as the semester progressed, the walls turned from mere structural buttresses to canvases displaying the marvelous works of the class.

“We’ve certainly created a little architecture studio,” said instructor Mr. Noah Lewkowitz.

Students chose this class due to a mixed bag of

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motivations: some chose it because it was the only art class available to them, others because of some inherent motivation. Myself, I’d taken the class through an interest piqued by Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.

A fellow student, Joseph Conroy ’15, said he was inspired to study architecture because “architecture applies creative design to the modern world.” “[Buildings] are places that make you feel certain things and act certain ways while being part of this environment that isn’t natural,” Mr. Lewkowitz said, “and so we should understand how and why we inhabit them.”

Consequently, our first project of the year was titled “Designing Space.” Throughout the project, we began to apply our growing knowledge of architectural design into creating a public space, which often emulated actual public spaces that inspired us. After finishing sketching plans, sections, and elevations (various design views) for this first creation, we took full advantage of Mr. Lewkowitz’s Maker Bot 3D printer to create physical models. The process of compiling the design into a modelling program called Google Sketchup and printing out the piece in three dimensions quickly became one of the highlights of the students in the class.

“Usually when I thought of architecture, I just

Architectural renderings and 3D print by Keaton Leander ’13

thought of the plans and blueprints,” Conroy said, “but I soon found my favorite aspect to be bringing my projects to life.”

The end creations, small and colorful cubic miniatures, manifested, for many of us, the hard work we’d done over the past few months.

Another student, Sahib Purewhal ’13, said, “I initially chose Architecture because the other art [courses] were full, but I soon grew to appreciate and enjoy the class, especially after seeing my peers’ designs built on the 3D-printer.”

Architecture plays an important role as an artform as well.

“I think the merging of art and physics is the real interesting part of architecture,” Mr. Lewkowitz said.

“The key is to have real function within your form, but to be use it creatively as possible” So the next time you’re driving through Phoenix, take a step back and consider the artistic functions and forms of the various buildings you see – notice the use of space in the Burton Barr Public Library, or the classicism in the State Capitol. Architecture is an art form that, in all its artistry and functions, influences us to a larger extent than we can realize.

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This

IS WHERE THE TITLE GOES By kieran martin ’ 13

All this happened, more or less. Don’t get too caught up on whether it’s more or whether it’s less because chances are you’re wrong whichever way you think. It doesn’t matter if these things happened, really.

What matters is that they could have happened because if they could have happened, then at some point they probably did, and there’s a lot of history and timelines for me to hide behind and claim veracity. I might as well file this under “non-fiction” because nobody was there when it happened to contradict me. That’s partially because I invented it all in my head and that it never really happened, but that’s not important. What is important is that it could have happened, and so it did.

What exactly it is that did happen was a ruining of a very nice suit, but what happened first was a nice little get-together. That’s what the host had called it when he sent the invitations out, but he was lying with every word. It was the type of party that is anything but little, and the type where nobody really wants to get together.

Nobody wants to meet new people, but everybody wants to be met. For half of the attendants, having been there was more important than actually being there.

The other half was too drunk to remember what was important, except to keep drinking.

I guess the only word in the description the host gave of his party that could apply is “nice” but you could say that about anything. While I could call it “nice” I’d be misleading whomever I was describing it to, which, in

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this case, is you, and I don’t intend to cheat you like that.

“Nice” is a word you use when you don’t have any good words, like when you’re trying to sell a friend on a date with a girl whom you don’t want to date yourself. She’s nice, you say, and no thank you, he says. To be honest, though, I don’t have a good word to describe this party, so I’ll take the liberty of using more than one, which I believe you would more or less call a story.

It was the type of party that required a strict dress code. Nobody cared what you wore on your body except for to your appendages, because the only rule in the dress code was that your hands were to be filled at all times with either a wine glass or somebody else’s hand in the act of introducing yourself to him. Because of this strict code, a lot of people were drunk and a lot of people were introduced, and nobody was more drunk or more introduced than one Wilhelm Lehman. Wilhelm Lehman wasn’t particularly funny or good looking, but his bank account was almost as large as he was, the effect being that he could get all the laughs and women anyone ever needed. He was always the center of attention, at least partially because he was physically large enough to field his own gravitational pull.

Most people referred to him respectfully as “Mr. Lehman” to his face, but to his back they called him “gimpy” because that’s what he was. He walked with a distinct limp that was caused by a birth defect, which left him with one leg that didn’t come close to reaching

Moustache You a Question, a digital illustration

by Ian Poblete ’13

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the other. Luckily, or perhaps consequently, he wasn’t a professional sprinter. He made his money in oil, or possibly steel, or anything really. All that matters is that it wasn’t running because he didn’t have good body stability, and that’s all you need to know for my purposes.

Mr. Lehman never told anybody the story behind his leg. Instead, he told them an entirely different one involving bulls in Pamplona, breath taking risks, and clumsy surgeons who couldn’t quite put Humpty back together again. This story always gained him admiration for his bravery and pity for his poor choice of doctors so he chose it for most occasions. The last thing he wanted was anybody thinking his limp was a result of pure bad luck. Mr. Lehman really was a self-made man because whenever something arose that made him look otherwise, he made something about his self up to restore proper order. And because he said it, everyone else believed it, and it became true even though it wasn’t.

The reason I’ve spent two paragraphs telling you about Wilhelm’s limp is that it’s probably going to be important at some point in this story. That’s called foreshadowing, and so is this. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea though, so I will say that not everything is foreshadowing. For example, while one of Mr. Lehman’s invented stories was being listened to intently by his large following of wineglass-bearing admirers, there was a woman in a rather dull brown dress who wore three rings on each hand, none of which had been placed there by a groom. Her presence at this party, as well as what she wore and her current marital status, is noteworthy for no other reason than that I am noting it now. She was lonely because she spent more time watching than talking and more time thinking than drinking. Her kind really doesn’t do well at parties like this, so I’ll be sure not to mention her much. She was there, but that’s not foreshadowing in the slightest.

Instead, it’s a transition because at that moment she happened to see a waiter pass her by, gliding through the crowd with a distinctly subtle gait. His name might have been Carlos if anybody had ever bothered

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to ask, but nobody had since the lady who had filled out his birth certificate, and that was only because she had been required to. He was very good at being a waiter because nobody seemed to notice him until they needed more wine. He was dressed in a tuxedo just like a lot of the male guests, as well as a few females who wished to defy social stereotypes. The only difference in their uniforms was that while the invited guests bore one wine glass each, he carried a tray of a dozen or so at all times. Had he carried just a few less glasses, he would have been far more interesting. The number of wine glasses you carried at this party directly correlated to whether or not you mattered, and Carlos was carrying the most. Mr. Lehman, by comparison, had somebody else carrying his so that he could use both hands to introduce himself and speed up the process of making new acquaintances. The number of glasses Carlos held is important in that it made him less so.

That thought had occurred to Carlos, but he wasn’t the type of person who let his thoughts lead to anything.

Instead, he was the type of person who gets a job as a waiter, which he had done already. Carlos didn’t really want to be a waiter though. He wanted to be like Mr. Lehman, but since he had two good legs he knew that it could never work out. Ten years after this party, Carlos would still be a waiter, but at some nice restaurant downtown maybe. It doesn’t matter where he was a waiter, but wherever he went he always was one. He was a waiter because he waited, and by that I mean he wasn’t one for initiative and action. Carlos would always be holding too many wine glasses and always not being Mr. Lehman. It’s a little sad, but it’s also important.

Really, everything is a little sad if you take the time to look at it.

Some things are more than a little sad. One of these things was standing at the top of the staircase in the main room. This particular thing was a woman who wore not a dull brown dress, but an old, bright red one, so you could tell she had mattered at some point. She might have been a child star at some point, but anyone who would remember those days is long dead. The exact reason this woman was so sad is because she

was extremely paranoid. The doctors had called her that because she was, and everybody else called her that because they hated her. She was once somebody famous and now she wasn’t, but she still got invited to all these parties simply because nobody could be bothered to censor the guest list. She used to be called by her name, which was Alice. In her prime, she had seen “Alice” slowly roll down countless movie screens next to the name of the character she had played. It was usually accompanied by her last name, but since she didn’t matter anymore, nobody cared to remember what it was, and neither do I.

Lehman, which terrified her because he was then statistically more likely to murder her than if she knew nothing about him at all.

Mr. Lehman was using both hands on the handrail to assist his ascent, which he didn’t like because it severely restricted the number of hands he could shake.

One of these un-shook hands belonged to a wealthy young lady who was passing him the other way on the staircase. Perhaps if he had been able to shake her hand, they would have talked and then one day got married and had children and been happy. Mr. Lehman mentally noted how his constant need to have his hands

At parties, he had all the company he needed, but it was always impersonal. He had a great impersonal life.

She was paranoid because she lived under the constant delusion that everybody else wanted to kill her.

She drank no wine at all because she thought Carlos had been trying to poison her, which he wasn’t but probably could have if he felt like it. Interestingly, because she thought everybody wanted to kill her, she was awfully annoying, and so everybody actually did want to kill her.

She spent all her time at the party trying to memorize the face of everyone in the vast crowd so that she could identify them later in a police lineup. Nobody introduced themselves to her, and that was the way she preferred it because she had read somewhere that most victims of violent crimes had known their attacker beforehand.

The less people she knew, the safer she was, or so her prescription drug-addled mind hoped.

Currently, her prescription drug-addled mind was preoccupied by the sight of a rather bulky and well dressed man making his way up the other side of the staircase with a large posse of devotees surrounding him. He took his time in this deed because he didn’t walk very well due to a limp, and Alice soon realized with great horror that she recognized this man as Mr.

on a handrail may have directly led to his admittedly lonely personal life. At parties, he had all the company he needed, but it was always impersonal. He had a great impersonal life.

Carlos didn’t have a great impersonal life, but he didn’t have much of a personal life either. He had a few friends who were his friends only because they were also waiters. When you’re a waiter at a party like this, the only people who talk to you without needing something are the other waiters. Like Alice and Mr. Lehman, Carlos was also at the top of staircase, his reason being so that he could talk with one of his waiter friends. They weren’t the type of friends to socialize with each other after the event had ended, but it didn’t really matter because all the parties they would have liked to attend together were exactly the same as the ones they were required to work at. The lady in the dull brown dress did get to go to these parties, but she did so alone. She had a very boring personal life, just like Carlos and Mr. Lehman but she doesn’t matter in this story, so I won’t say anything else about her.

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This next part coming up is more or less the climax, if you could call it that. This was the type of party at where there are many interesting things happening, so there could be many climaxes, but since I’m only telling you about a select portion of the night, you only get one climax. Several far more interesting things happened later on, but you only get the climax I give, and it’s coming up, just so you know.

As Carlos, Alice, and Mr. Lehman had some way or another brought themselves up to the top of the staircase, they all noticed as the grand double doors behind them opened up, and out stepped the aforementioned party host who had lied about the party description. He was wearing what was originally a stunning three piece suit, but he wore so many accessories and extra pieces of fabric tailored onto it that the number of pieces in the suit soared to around a few dozen. The dominating color was white, but it wouldn’t be for long, and that is another example foreshadowing.

The reason his 26-piece suit was about to experience a dramatic color change is that Mr. Lehman chose that specific moment in time to introduce himself to Alice. He already knew who she was, but he was eager to take advantage of his new found free hands, having just reached the top and let go of the handrail.

He had missed one potential bride on the way up, and he would not miss another. Perhaps if he hadn’t reached out his hand, there wouldn’t have been a climax to this story, but he did, so there is.

Alice took his outstretched hand not as an offer of friendliness, but as an attempt to take her life. She responded as any sane person would to their murderer and shoved Mr. Lehman with a loud shriek. The difference here, though, is that Mr. Lehman is not a murderer, and Alice is not sane, but she still shoved him and shrieked. Perhaps if Alice were the least bit mentally stable, she wouldn’t have shoved Mr. Lehman and shrieked, and there wouldn’t be a climax to this story, but she wasn’t so there is.

A while ago I mentioned how Mr. Lehman had a limp, and I called it foreshadowing. Well, this is what it

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was foreshadowing: As Alice shoved him, Mr. Lehman’s shorter leg struggled to find balance. Other more gullible party goers would later curse the bulls of Pamplona and incompetent doctors for causing Mr. Lehman to stumble away from Alice’s push because Mr. Lehman’s birth defect caused him to topple over completely. Perhaps if he had been born with completely normal length legs he would have been a sprinter instead of a businessman and he would have been able to keep his balance, and there wouldn’t have been a climax to this story, but he wasn’t, and so there is.

Carlos was busy handing out glasses of wine to the socialites who had followed Mr. Lehman up the staircase. Consequently, he wasn’t busy paying attention to Mr. Lehman, as the small fleshy planet with the bad leg crashed into him. Carlos did his best to keep every wine glass upright on the tray but couldn’t manage them all. Perhaps if Carlos had been more important he would have been holding less wine glasses and would have been able to keep them all from spilling, and there wouldn’t have been a climax to this story, but he wasn’t and so there is.

As Carlos was standing rather near to the double doors, and as the host had just emerged from that exact location in his extravagant suit, the wine glasses fell from the tray and managed to spill a vast majority of their contents onto the beautiful white 31-piece ensemble.

As Carlos was assigned to hand out mostly red wine, it made for quite a sudden color change in the host’s attire. The host looked down at his shirt, realized he needed to change garments immediately, and turned back around through the double doors and towards his dressing room. He was terribly distraught about the entire ordeal and likely would have fired Carlos on the spot if he hadn’t been in such a rush to remove himself from the presence of his guests. The woman in the dull brown dress saw all of this, but she doesn’t matter.

That’s the climax of the story, or at least that’s what I put as the climax where a climax should normally go. Normally, after the climax comes what is known in English classes as the falling action. If I were taking that literally, it would no doubt involve more of Mr.

Lehman’s volatile lack of stability, but he’s already fallen once in this story and it would be rude to make him do it again. So instead of falling for the second time, Mr. Lehman picked himself up off the floor and struggled to his disproportional feet. Carlos would have helped Mr. Lehman up if he hadn’t been so busy clearing away shards of broken glass and apologizing to all the guests he had spilled wine on, save for the host who had already left to change. Alice would have helped Mr. Lehman up except she was a nasty shrew who quite enjoyed the spectacle of Mr. Lehman’s violent rising action.

The party had come to an awkward lull in which nobody wanted to say anything unless somebody else said something first. The result of this was a near complete silence except for the harp player in the corner who played on. as she had been born completely deaf and couldn’t hear anyone not talking. All the other guests stared at our three heroes staring at each other for a few seconds. Because Carlos had just broken all of his wineglasses, he wasn’t holding any at all, and Mr. Lehman realized he had yet to introduce himself to the prominent-looking lad in the wine-stained tuxedo. Carlos gladly shook Mr. Lehman’s hand and began feeling somewhat important, even standing with one leg slightly shorter than the other just to see how it felt. Carlos waited for Mr. Lehman to say something to initiate a conversation but Mr. Lehman moved on into the crowd.

Alice didn’t see Mr. Lehman’s attempt to murder Carlos because she was far too busy digging in her purse for as many orange prescription bottles as she could find. It wasn’t supposed to be a cocktail party, but that didn’t stop Alice from making one of her own with a combination of pills and wine that would have been deadly had she not long since built up a tolerance to all things pharmaceutical. Alice downed the medicated mixture and relaxed as much as one could after having narrowly survived an attempt on her life. All the other guests realized nothing else interesting was likely to happen on top of the staircase and began focusing their attention instead on filling their hands with unbroken wineglasses and unmet acquaintances. The woman in

the dull brown dress remained unimportant throughout the entire affair. If you had asked her to describe what had just happened, she probably would have told you that it was “nice” or something boring like that.

But I wouldn’t, because sometimes you have to tell about an entire party just to tell how somebody’s favorite suit got ruined. It’s up to you to decide whether or not that’s important enough to warrant an entire story, if you can even call this one, but I think it’s better than just calling it “nice”. I could have called the party nice but then you wouldn’t have heard about the suit and Alice and the three rings on each hand that don’t matter. I think this is a case in which it’s more interesting to see why something happened as opposed to what actually happened. If you spent this entire story doubting that it happened, then the why doesn’t matter, and I might as well have dressed it up in a dull brown dress for all you care. What’s important is that everything might be important, unless it isn’t.

Ultimately, I just want to make sure you know that all this happened, more or less, and that it more or less resulted in something of a climax, and that falling action and foreshadowing were also involved. If I were honest, I would tell you that I made this all up, but I’m not honest so it really did happen, probably. Things that happen, as this most certainly did happen, always come with some sort of lesson to be learned, but I’m not sure there is one here. If there’s anything to be gained at all, it’s that you shouldn’t wear an expensive white suit to a red wine party without recognizing the slight possibility that an old paranoid woman could shove a fat gimpy businessman into a poor overlooked waiter who is carrying an unsteady tray full of wine glasses, which could tumble and spill and ruin your nice suit for good and have all this witnessed by a lonely woman in a dull brown dress who doesn’t matter. Because that can definitely happen, and if it can happen, then it will, and if it will happen then it might as well already have. More or less, of course.

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A RI P IN OUR SILVER SCREENS

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Hotel TV, a pen and ink drawing by Kyle Sourbeer ’15

A film review By jack flynn ’ 13, managing editor Hollywood is known for a lot of things. Avoiding hypocrisy is not one of them. Whether it’s a big budget film fighting for the little guy or a sexist franchise like Twilight being marketed to tween girls, profit has proven time and time again to take priority over principle.

However, Brett Gaylor’s 2008 documentary on the remix generation, RiP: A Remix Manifesto, proves to be just that: a manifesto. It’s authentic, it’s punchy, and perhaps most importantly, it’s true to its message.

The film itself is a mash-up about mash-ups, composed of interviews, old movie footage, academic lectures, and more. It jumps from the story of Gregg Gillis, the remix artist better known as Girl Talk, to the history of Disney and its relationship with and influence over copyright law. It passes back over some of the original victims of Napster lawsuits and then leaves us with the example of Brazil as a copyright-lax Eden in an increasingly globalized and heavily corporate world.

But that’s not all. The movie has been remixed, remade, and re-uploaded by the filmmakers. The film includes viewer-created content, including a formerly live action sequence that was animated by fans of the film.

And for those of us who wish it to be, the whole thing is free. If you visit the film’s website (ripremix.com), you’ll find that a personal screening is just a click away. And what’s more, you get to pick your own price. Ultimately, the film isn’t put on a pedestal or hoarded away as a piece of property. It’s laid out as a project and it commits itself to staying that way.

Make no mistake; this movie is not a digital adaptation of Sunday school arts and crafts. It’s not a cinematic shaking of the fist at “The Man.” Sure, if you blink or take a bathroom break, it may be easy to mistake the film for a pop-culture extravaganza. But, if you look just a bit closer, it becomes clear that this movie is a rallying cry.

The director, the experts, and the interviewees are all begging the viewer to carry through with our cultural shift towards the remix before we all become consumed by the authoritarian rule of the copyright. But they’re not talking to us, the teens who love to torrent. They’re talking to us, the society whose staple stories, plants, and medicines are becoming the property of major corporations that had nothing to do with their creation.

As the movie explains, there are songs like “Happy Birthday” that were written as early as the 19th century and yet are still not public domain. They’re instead owned by corporations that never knew the artist and can now legally prevent us from singing our wellwishes to friends in restaurants. And although there are companies like Disney that made their name on free-use fairy tales and referential classics like Steamboat Willie, they are now using lobbyists and lawyers to prevent others from doing the same.

Perhaps most horrifying is the film’s examination of copyright in medicine and research. Because while many of us love to imagine scientific research and humanitarian aid to be one big collaborative project, the reality is far more bleak. Basic biological discoveries become intellectual properties, which in turn become a financial block to new research, new innovation, and new cures. And even when research does bring about results, those vaccines and medicines are reduced to formulas that then become for-profit property whose prices are driven up artificially while lives are lost in the meantime. It is a scary world. And it seems that we are its make-or-break generation.

Like I said, this movie is not pretending to be anything it isn’t. And it’s certainly not a step-by-step guide for a social movement. But, if we venture beyond our screens and trade our newsfeed slack-tivism for Gaylor’s unapologetic and authentic form of protest, then this movie may just be the start we need.

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G R E A T BURNSY An excerpt from

THE

By Carter watson ’ 14

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Want to read the rest? Use the QR code above or visit bit.ly/17rEo28 to see how it ends.

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bit.ly/12pB4Cs

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Competitors, a digital photograph by Greg Vogel ’15

THANK YOU, PHOENIX A SHORT FILM By GREG VOGEL ’ 15 Longboarding is enjoyed by many people in Phoenix, Arizona. The city has been very open to the sport, despite the danger involved, and the longboarding community is truly thankful for that. I made this video to thank Phoenix for her cooperation and acceptance.

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this is not read-only WRiting and illustrations By alexander Chen ’ 14, social media and publicity editor In the past, creation was different. Whether it was the story of Genesis, da Vinci’s flying machine, or Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, creation based itself on inventing things that hadn’t existed before. Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig called this time period a “Read-Only Culture.” Society simply took the information as it came. This has changed.

Creation has rapidly become what Lessig calls a “Read-and-Write” or “Remix” culture. We draw inspiration from things already made, and use it to create something new. Instead of being passive consumers, we have created a new relationship between former “producers” and ourselves, a relationship in which someone creates something and then others react to it, before creating something based off of the previous work.

Perhaps the greatest manifestation of this “Readand-Write” culture has appeared in the realm of social media. With increased accessibility to the Internet, more and more people have the ability to create, recreate, and re-recreate works.

Many of these works are classified as memes.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “meme” as “a cultural element or behavioral trait whose transmission and consequent persistence in a population, although occurring by non-genetic means, is considered as analogous to the inheritance of a gene.” The memes today are slightly different, though. They form part of the culture developed solely on the Internet. And this cultstyle culture has become so engrained in our lives that we now have what researchers call a “meme culture.”

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And memes aren’t just really-awful-yet-reallyhilarious pictures of “Ridiculously Photogenic Guy” (a guy running a marathon who, in a candid photo, smiled perfectly for the picture), “Ermahgerd Girl” (an excited 90s girl), or “Condescending Wonka” (an image of Gene Wilder from the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory). They exhibit nuanced trends in a rapidly changing culture.

Researchers Francis Heylighen and Klaas Chielens of the Vrije Universiteit Brussels explain that “memetics,” or the theoretical and empirical science that studies the replication, spread, and evolution of memes, is the basis of our generation’s cultural revolution. Rather than Mao’s Great Leap Forward, we’ve got “High Expectations Asian

Father” (Note: if you do something wrong, there are similar consequences!). Rather than the second feminist wave, we now have “Feminist Ryan Gosling” (both worth appreciating). Heylighen and Chielens also relate the creation of culture (both our current “memetic” culture and past cultures) to basic genetics.

Like hereditary information and culture, memes are also transmitted and shared. Some basic characteristics may stay the same, but deviations will develop. Similarly, you may share the same eye color or facial structure as your parents, but you’ll have a different hair color or different ears. Mutations may develop as well: your parents could have tolerance for lactose, but you may be lactose-intolerant, which you may pass on to your hypothetical biological children. Eventually, something further down the gene-line won’t be similar to the original at all.

Memes are formed the same way. They derive their existence from an original movie, book, or idea—and then certain screenshots or characters get revised. And when someone sees the meme, she or he may interpret it differently, and create something based on that interpretation. As such, the meme will change over time.

This change tends to be gradual. Yet, what happens when the change is rapid? Heylighen and Chielens refer to this as a “disease” (without the negative connotation). It will rapidly attack a cell until the cell dies—or the cell will overtake the disease cell and use its genes to become stronger. This is similar to the foundation of counter-culture and revolutionary ideology.

It attacks the original ideas that have been engrained for years and attempt to reform them. Some instances have positive outcomes (which tend to reform and create a stronger culture), and some have negative (which tend to overthrow the entire system and destroy culture).

Similarly, our “memetic” culture shares this dichotomy. Some memes have helped bring to light certain social issues, such as “Social Justice Sally”. (which criticizes hypocritical social justice bloggers) or “KBURD” (which stands for “Okay, But You’re Wrong Though,” and refers to Caucasian people who attempt to relate to people of color). Others, however, content themselves on propagating stereotypes, such as “Good Girl Gina” (who reinforces gender stereotyping and gender roles), or “Insanity Wolf” (which reinforces our society’s rape culture, in which we shame victims rather than the perpetrator).

Because we have so much power in creating memes, particularly in our meme culture, we are necessarily called to action to create, develop, and remix our culture. We have just as much control in creating positive memes as we do in creating hateful, negative memes.

Financial Times journalist Tim Hartford wrote, “There will never be another Da Vinci.” This is probably true, but not necessarily because no one is as inventive as da Vinci was. It will be because people are recreating, remaking, and remixing other works, and making it available to others. We cannot afford to be “Read-Only,” because our imaginations must fly away, touch the heavens, and dive down to reach the planet’s core so that we can recreate the world around us.

And the resulting culture is one worth sharing.

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film. writing and photographs By sam wolff ’ 13 visual/layout editor At some point in history, the walls enclosing marble statues became a backdrop for graffiti artists.

Theater troupes abandoned their stages for street curbs and subway stations. Animation studios began to make feature films on a computer screen. The symphony was recorded onto vinyl that became a 4-track that became an 8-track that became a CD that became an MP3, which I put into my pocket.

Art changes.

In January of 2012, photography giant Kodak filed for bankruptcy. Overshadowed by digitalformat brands like Canon and Nikon, the company could not sustain its sale of film products. Indeed, photographers are fast abandoning the chemicals and dark rooms for cheap memory cards and effortless editing. Art changes, and, thus, art dies out. In a quicker, easier, and sexier digital world, many would argue that traditional film photography’s time has passed. I would argue, though, that this aged format is relevant now more than ever.

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While digital photography might offer sharper colors and finer lines, film photography is unparalleled in its dynamic range and visual aesthetic. The silver emulsion found in film captures a greater range of darks and lights than even the most competitive digital cameras. The soft features and slight grain of a traditional print also offer a unique sense of visual imperfection that communicates a much more sincere and authentic form of expression.

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Traditional photography is not limited in manipulation. Cross-processing, selective exposure, filters, and even text are all tools in a film photographer’s belt.

In fact, many of the adjustment tools found in programs like Photoshop are named after or based on tools used in the dark room.

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With only a few dozen photographs in each roll, photographers are forced to fully invest themselves into every shutter click. Without quick digital fixes, framing, composition, and lighting become paramount to the artist’s creative process. This, in turn, establishes a far more intimate relationship between photographer and subject.

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What is more, film photography offers a tactile connection that the digital format will never be able to emulate. The hours spent rolling a strip of film, bathing it in chemicals, and developing it in the dark room create a sense of anticipation that is either confirmed or crushed when viewing the final print under a light for the first time. Hard drives will crash and sites will shut down, but that photograph will remain.

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AveAveAveAve Ave A

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Rose, a scratchboard by Alex Keating ’14

eAveAveAve eAve AveAve AveAveAve AveAve AveAveAve AveAve

By JESUS BETANCOURT ’ 13 I heard you singing in the back, in the back far away Cantor, tell me is it hard to choke down on your lies?

Hard to choke on your own prize, Hard to choke on your own pride, Hard to choke on your own mistake?

You’re visibly upset, distraught and it feels so right Like, who is this poor, poor man? Is he fine?

No he’s not fine, he says he’s alright But he’s not alright yet he says he’s okay, Says he’s okay but, man, he’s in so much pain.

Get down from there, young man, you’ll hurt yourself Go back to the stand and start singing, “Ave…” Ave today for a moment and then it will be gone, And then I’ll look back at you, take a breath, whisper, “Ave…” There’s a word for you, I’m not allowed to say,

Lover.

There’s a word for you, you’re not allowed to be,

Lover.

There’s a word for you, I’ll never have,

Lover.

Tip of my tongue, filling my lungs Your name fills my breath, puts an ache in my head, Migraine when I see you, I hear you.

Please, don’t be so perfect It makes it too hard to find myself solace.

You’re too far away, sing a little closer.

Ave, this heart from Beirut to Lisbon, Whether morning or evening Scatter, scatter, doesn’t really matter,

We’re gone.

We’ve got nothing to lose but six chances.

You can be the judge to preside over my trial, And I’ll raise my hand pleading, “Guilty, and Ave...”

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Soleil, a linoleum block print

by Ian Poblete ’13

Gibraltar

my home

By Colin marston ’ 13 Pacing slowly into eternity The heart nothing now shards of obscenities I am lost with it yet so are you.

I grope for something, anything, my mouth opens emitting nothing but muted radiation asking Come to me, feel me in this dark night, touch the faded grandeur of my crippled form, a tapestry unraveling from the strings you stitched, still stitching I had thought, I had hoped Moths send a shutter through the fabric, the skeleton sits erect under a hanging harsh glow The light catches your torso unspoken dreams piled up, waiting to be used as timber in the unending heat of our family’s hearth.

I pull from the flames to see gestures that only hit at our mutual millennium of sequester

I cradle you in my cold hands all these broken brittle of ribs I went to Louisiana to collect them, off Interstate 55 your car lights were still on amid the wrecked metal, the kudzu covering everything with no shame those bones, organs, tissue of yours, now – I hold them. They’re mine.

You know you really should have quit smoking those lungs are so black as to make the pearly bones that sit near form yin yang slowly and carefully my fingers forming walls of splendid silence around you My kiss shatters the sound wave frequencies piling up to resemble tsunami’s crescendos of somber affection piercing the deaf.

My hands become embers shining brightly blue mimicking that night of tranquility, in Baton Rouge, in the depths of everywhere we call sacred welcoming a spring so short we all had to flicker wildly like candles near waxy wane dancing to the jubilee of flesh scared, derelict cars drinking till the driving wheel becomes death in steel celebration on the street giving off such heat the sun would be shamed yet now with amusement, smirks as ash is disintegrating, baking Crumbling at the seams that seatbelt, it was too much for you?

Nader why must you always appear at the wrong time?

You felt the weight of the world. It became crushing.

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Towers, conjoined in infancy as twins, collapsing, prematurely in guilt at the empty edicts of salvation, Vitamins used as a secret formula for veneration, hiding that inevitable creep of the last breath, In this midst of carefree company there hangs the mists of modernity strangling us like an elephant gone aloof Scissors snap, humble men give Cubans to the hopeless, the homeless, the house wives and there there we find our true form vulnerable as violins quivering for comfort of just, one more touch.

Now you hold me I thought I lost you.

You have become my eternal rest.

Cooped up in your fingernails without qualm I remember when I fell from the tree of palm that Sunday in Jerusalem divinity in organic camel stitch clothing how I shook and spasmed with adolescent vibrations I was forgotten and stampeded My leaves withered and writhed, another diamond ring at Auschwitz But your face hath shown a light Lines emerging from the erasure, a pink rosy glow beholds With you I am once again.

It’s the Lord’s day pray and rest finish contemplation evoke the sensation we lost in the womb.

Fling me and my ashes and let me fondle the air of

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your breath. no need for no tomb no crying, no fists towards heavens We shared so much, lost in relationships never to know rust.

When we picked zucchini in the garden When you hugged me after I ran away saying it’ll all be okay When I rustled your hair hoping to find lost species gems of dreams and flashback gleams these memories of you will get me through the pounding of the concrete the sigh of the spreadsheet I won’t forget that this island this Gibraltar this was yours this was ours I keep the soil plowed with the salt from the sea that glimmers like the lice that once felt home in your hair And I know looking into these fine particles seeing the synchronicity between the violent ocean and your sad scalp I know firmly, Dad, that home is here on this island, in Louisiana in this water.

Charismatic Chief, a pen, ink, and prismacolor illustration by Gus Wehn ’13

BUNGEE CORDS, DREAM GIRLS, AND

By Jackson Santy ’ 13

RABID WOLF LOVE This wasn’t puppy love; this was rabid wolf love, gnawing at my nine-year-old heart which was now beating at the speed of light. Her name was Aly, she was sixteen, and the second she stepped into our house, every adolescent hormone I read about in my “What’s Happening to My Body” books was roaring through me. Her mother divulged to mine that their family had just moved into the house across from our backyard wall. I never knew the previous owners of the house, never cared either. Before this, the only neighbor I knew anything about was Henry, the elderly man next door who owned dozens of exotic birds. While my ears were somewhat in tune to Aly’s mother, my eyes remained locked on to this goddess of a daughter standing beside her. Her face was of flawless skin, un-plagued by the eruption of acne that most of my babysitters her age had. Accompanying the face were locks of radiant cherry blonde hair that danced every time she moved her head.

I can’t seem to remember what she was wearing, but I’m sure it was tasteful and elegant on her.

Being a fourth-grade Casanova, I had my fair share of crushes that came and went, but this time was different. The natural swagger and loquacity I always had on the playground had all but vanished now. Then came the moment I dreaded most. My mother and Aly’s mother’s conversation had ceased and they moved to

63

a new topic. A topic that had been standing in the living room with the same dumbfounded expression molded on his face for the last ten minutes.

“So Jackson, what grade are you in?” asked Aly’s mother. For some reason, the question was an inexplicable one for me. It was as if she was asking me what the capital of Azerbaijan was.

“F-fourth,” I spouted out as if I were answering to a probing lawyer in a deposition. I tried my best to entertain the array of questions as best I could without choking up under Aly’s unbreaking stare.

I love my mother, but what she was about to say next made me want to move to whatever the capital of Azerbaijan was. “Jackson why don’t you go show Aly your room.” To her, this was merely an excuse for her and Aly’s mother to retreat to the kitchen to crack open a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. To me, this was a death sentence. I had had enough trouble conversing with Aly with two others in the room; I was without a doubt incapable of doing it alone with her. But I knew that there was only one possible answer to my mother’s request.

After all, the bottle wasn’t going to finish itself.

“Okay,” I said coyly.

My room was a smorgasbord of nine-year-old delights. Action figures from various character universes, scattered about my shelves. A myriad of books stacked

Polygonal, a digital illustration by Ian Poblete ’13

64

across my dresser. Because I read at a high school level, the titles differed greatly compared to my peers.

Where they had Captain Underpants, Judy Bloom and Artemis Fowl, I had the works of Jack London and modern dystopian authors nobody ever heard of, the only exception being the collection of Garfield books I had voraciously collected. My bed, always precisely made by my mother, was covered with the small army of stuffed animals I cherished so dearly.

I led Aly into my room, letting her quietly examine everything. I could tell she was amused by it. As she examined my stuffed animals, I could see a smile form gradually from her lips.

“I love your room, Jackson,” she said merrily as she took a seat on my bed, wrinkling the meticulous work of my mother earlier that day. “Which one is your favorite?” she asked pointing to my stuffed animal parade. As soon as she said this, I immediately knew the answer.

“That one,” I replied, pointing to Raisin, the stuffed black lab leading the pack at the foot of my bed.

“He’s so cute,” she said, reaching for him. She squeezed him

d n a , e d i r b s es it. c n i r p e h t , g n i s k a n w o i s l i h e t h t w e om ove, then i kn r f g n i h t y n a ed beast about l n r a e l d a h I If auty and the be

just as I did every night in bed. Arms wrapped tightly around, keeping him tucked close to the body.

The subsequent minutes of conversation between the two of us seemed like a millennia. Our topics spanned favorite subjects, music, movies - the few things that sixteen-year-olds could converse about with nine-year-olds. Eventually, the time came when Aly’s mother had finished her last glass of wine and she called for her daughter to depart. When we said our goodbyes, I expected nothing more than a handshake or a wave; instead, to my utter surprise, I received much more than I expected. “It was really nice meeting you Jackson; I hope you guys come over soon.” She then knelt down to my level and wrapped her arms around me for a hug.

Her scent was intoxicating, indescribable, memorable.

Although our embrace was brief, the feeling I had during it, stuck with me. Butterflies raced through my chest and the wolf in my heart before was now ripping it to shreds.

After they left, I lay on my bed inhaling the scent that she had left on my sheets and on Raisin.

That night and the weeks following, I couldn’t get Aly out of my head. Although her scent had long

65

Dancer One, a silkscreen and ink illustration

by Alex Keating ’14

passed, her image would not fade away in my mind.

The girls at school meant nothing to me now. I was to be a sophisticated man now if I wanted to woo Ally, and sophisticated men took no interest in juvenile girls. At night, my dreams were frequented by her, most were replications of our conversation and the hug. Some nights, when my imagination was running especially wild, she would throw in a kiss. This was love. I was sure of it. If I had learned anything from The Lion King, The Princess Bride and Beauty and the Beast about love, then I knew this was it. And if I specifically learned anything from those films, it was that if I wanted to express my love to her, I would have to do it with the utmost grandeur.

I had it all planned out, an ingenious plan that would have Romeo himself jealous. The only thing standing between our love was a seven-foot wall, and I planned to break that barrier. The timing was perfect, we were both home from school, my mother was working on the computer and All That wouldn’t be on for another hour. I managed to sneak into the garage unnoticed and snagged the needed supplies. Bungee cords, batting gloves, a step stool and, of course, knee pads and a helmet for safety. My deficient fourth grade biceps lacked the strength to lift our ladder, but a ladder would have been too easy anyway, not enough to impress the girl of my dreams.

My confidence was at an all-time high now—at least until I actually stood in front of the wall. Questions began arising; “How am I supposed to set this up?” I felt I had selected the right materials, I just had no idea how to use them. I managed to craft a makeshift grappling line with the bungee cords. However, securing it to the top of the wall proved problematic. I spent a grueling amount of time tossing the rope, hoping to get it locked on the top of the wall, but failed. Finally, I had done it. I used every bit of strength I held in my statuesque body and hurled the line. To my satisfaction, the line held.

Then began phase two—the climb.

At this time in my life, I had known a minuscule amount about physics and upper body strength,

Dancer Two, a silkscreen and ink illustration

by Alex Keating ’14

needless to say, a very important aspect of this endeavor. I pulled myself up a few inches off the ground and firmly planted my feet on the side of the wall. The image of Aly waiting for me on the other side rambled through my head and for ten whole seconds, gave me the strength of twenty men. “Keep going,” I thought, “she’s only a few more feet.” Then those ten seconds ended, and disaster struck. TINK. In a moment, the cord, that I believed to be sturdily locked, had come loose and came undone. And just as the cord came flying downwards, so did I. The three feet I began falling seemed as if they were in slow motion and I swear I could hear Mozart’s Requiem playing as I plummeted. THUD. Every ounce of air in my lungs had been cast out upon impact with the ground. As I lay there, gasping for the sweet taste of oxygen, I could picture Aly on the other side, displeased with my attempt. “No!” I called out to her, “Just give me one more chance!” But no matter how loud I shouted in my mind, she wouldn’t respond. So I lay there, on the damp grass, body aching, mind in disarray, desperately trying to let the air return to my lungs. Was this what love felt like? I wasn’t sure, but in a strange way, I kind of liked it.

An interview with

girl talk

By Carter Santini ’ 15, Assistant Publicity Editor In March, BLAM had the opportunity to talk with the house music artist Girl Talk (stage name of Greg Gillis) and get his perspective on inspiration, art, and the importance of remixing. The interview was conducted on March 15th by telephone and has been edited and abridged.

CS: Let’s talk about your musical background, specifically in high school. What were some earlier projects that really started to get you into music?

GT: I started listening to music at a pretty young age.

The first music I listened to that was really inspirational to me was electronic music related. I was never so much into electronic dance music, stuff like EEM or Techno or anything like that. I wasn’t so into that through middle school or high school. Around that time I started listening to local college radio, listening to find out new stuff and I got into really experimental stuff that was very far out: just noise, no repetition no melodies, just making a racket with electronic music. My earliest projects in high school were related to that — very far out, what would be considered maybe avant garde, no traditional structure but a lot of times just related around electronic.

I was pretty active and in high school, and in that neck of the woods it was popular to run set labels for your thing.

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So I ran a set label way back then. I was in bands and made a point to play out as much as possible and got actively involved in the Pittsburgh music scene where I’m from, I was pretty active. Even back then, I dabbled in sampling not really doing what I’m doing now, but definitely using some sounds and four track recorders and skipping CDs and pitch and synch style noise band.

So yeah, even though I think that music is not accessible at all — and I consider what I do now barely accessible — I do think there is a pretty strong connection to sampling. I think it’s a good idea if you’re into music to dive in as much as possible when you’re young and I definitely think those high school experiences helped shape what this project became, getting this experience of playing in front of audiences, booking shows, dealing with promoters at a young age. Even at a small scale that was something that helped me out a lot down the road.

CS: You’ve been described a sampler, a remixer, a DJ. How would you describe your music?

GT: I’ve always considered myself a sample-based producer, considering all I’ve done with this project revolves around samples. I think in the early days, even though it was sample based, it sounded very different

from where it is now. It was very experimental and it didn’t really have any traditional mash-up elements, which is traditionally an acapella over an early metal.

I think over the years, the one thing that I have stuck by is just using the pop samples. I think the sound has changed even over the past few years, though it has stayed to the mash-up theme, but that has evolved as well. The one thing that ties it together is the idea of taking something previously existing, a song that is already out there, and cutting it up, pitching it up or down, layering and manipulating it to make something new out of it.

CS: Where did you get the name Girl Talk?

GT: When I started doing this, I was in a scene of underground electronic musicians and in that scene, it’s kind of male-dominated and also, in my opinion, overly serious. [It’s] a scene of a lot of people playing at art galleries and stuff and I considered it somewhat stuffy or pretentious. I knew going into the project that I wanted to do something where I was sampling and appropriating a lot of elements of pop music and pop culture and all of

when I hear a song, when I think classic things for rock music or for rap music, I think the drum breaks. When you listen to a lot of older records like jazz or funk records from the 60s or the 70s there are parts where the music cuts out and the drummer just plays. A lot of times those are great things. Just grab a sound, you might not even like the whole drum break you might just like the sound of the kick drum or the snare sound or whatever. I think that idea applies itself to other forms of music when you’re listening to something. Those moments where it’s a guitar solo with no vocals or a vocal breakdown with no music or a bass thing, any time the music is changing and a piece to grab is isolated that you can add to it, those are great signs for me on what I can use. Other than that, it’s kind of hard to say, it’s like a trial-and-error process for me where I sample many different things and spend a lot of time preparing them, but the majority of stuff that I cut up and try doesn’t really go anywhere even though I think it might sound good or think it’s a good idea, a lot of times it doesn’t work out. It’s hard for me to say what makes a good sample because I feel like I don’t know. I try out many different things and I find that it might just come together from bits and pieces of other songs.

“There is an art FORM to doing pop, Just as there is to doing Abstract ARt.” that. So, I wanted to put a fresh spin on the whole experimental electronic thing. I picked the name Girl Talk because it didn’t sound like a name of a guy playing a computer. It was a name that I wanted the other guys to be embarrassed playing with. t sounds like some sort of Disney group of something so I thought that was a funny contrast to the scene. When I picked the name I didn’t intend for the project to be a twelve year thing that would eventually become my career. Like a lot of projects it started on a whim and I thought it would be a funny name for what I was doing. And then, before I knew it, the project became a long term sorta thing.

CS: When listening to a song for the first time, what jumps out to you as being sample-worthy?

GT: The easy answer to that is just isolated parts. So

CS: A lot of people shun the top 40 hits for being shallow. When you listen to it, as someone who uses it in your own music, what goes through your head?

GT: I think that people just have to realize that different music has different goals. Just because someone is trying to be smart with their music doesn’t mean it’s smart. There is an art form to doing pop, just like there is to doing abstract art. When you’re looking to visual art, you can’t compare a piece of abstract art by the same comparison that you would check out a commercial.

Even with a commercial, there is an artist behind it and there is a way to do a brilliant commercial as well has a brilliant abstract painting. I think those are just different criteria and you look at them on different levels.I’m someone who grew up with a lot of underground music and I’m still a big fan of underground music. I think there is an art to doing pop music as well.

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There’s a way to do it smart. Sometimes it’s not all about or not even primarily about the artist’s name on it.

A lot of times it’s a machine. A lot of times, there are a lot of people behind it. That doesn’t necessarily discredit

common tool in music. People have more access to computers and to the software; people are becoming more and more into electronic music so remixing is becoming a common tool in music. I think that if

[Pop] is not trying to front anything. IT’s just making music that People Will Like. it from being something that can be special. So you really have to evaluate each thing based on what it’s going for. I think that’s a funny thing that often times, I think that with musicians who really put themselves out there, it’s not that hard to convince people that you are smart, or weird, or abstract or anything. So I think a lot of times I’ve really enjoyed pop because it’s not trying to front about any of that. It’s just making music that people can like. For me, it’s hard to hate on that idea. It’s a very simple, easy applicable idea. In the history of pop, there is this whole section that’s very interesting and there’s a section that’s not so interesting. But I do think there is even more of a backlash towards pop. It seems like there’s a lot of younger people and magazines and more underground sources giving more props to good pop music like Justin Timberlake or Beyonce, whereas, I think in the 90s, there was more of a divide. I’m not trying to tell anyone to like anything they don’t like, but I think you should have to figure out what you like.

For me, it’s hard to dismiss a type of music even if I’m not completely into it. You have to realize there is an audience and it is genius to somebody and even if you don’t think so, give it the respect and understand that you’ve been down a different path and based on your intellect, what you think is cool, and who you hang out with, that’s all influencing. Just cause someone is on a different path, it doesn’t mean they’re wrong or stupid or off. It’s just, you know, different.

CS: How important do you think it is to get involved in remixes?

GT: I don’t wanna say that everyone should do it, but I guess that’s something that’s becoming more of a

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you’re more interested in doing music, then it’s cool to experiment and get your hands on as many things as you can and really find out what’s interesting to you.

I think it’s a healthy thing if you’re a musician, guitar, violin, or whatever. It can provide you with a different perspective, which is awesome. It’s not necessary, but if you’re interested in looking at different areas then remixing offers a potentially interesting perspective.

CS: Where do we draw line between remixing, reappropriating, and outright theft?

GT: There’s no easy answer. It’s not quantity. It’s not in any way saying this sample can be any duration or something like that, so it’s really case by case. In my own music, the goals of what I want to do musically line up with what is considered legal in that I want to do something that is transformative. When I’m doing a remix I’m typically familiar with the original songs, especially because they are pop songs. A lot of songs I remix are songs I’ve been hearing my entire life growing up with on the radio on CDs, wherever, you know. For me it’s recontexualizing it: you know what the original song is but now that you’re hearing this manipulated version it becomes something else. It’s hard to define and it goes person to person. You know, legally, with the controversy and the perpetual issues that surround copyright, that’s where it gets copyrighted because it is subjective. For me I think it’s a good some that when I’m doing a remix of the song and I’m listening to it, when hearing it sounds so natural that it’s hard to even remember on the spot what the original sounds like at the moment, that’s a sign to me that it’s becoming something else. It has its new thing. I think with a lot of

music I remix, it’s fun to change the context, like if it’s a very serious themed song to make it more lighthearted, or if it’s more lighthearted, make it more aggressive, just shifting the mood. The only way to fade it is to make it transformative, make it something new CS: How can we protect remixing without enabling corporations to steal from the artist?

GT: I think it’s up to the artists. If you’re an independent artist, especially if you’re trying to get known, most artists want to protect it the way they want. Most younger artists are licensing under Creative Commons and there are various levels to that, but you can allow your music to be remixed. There is that line, though.

In doing this I don’t believe in completely getting rid of copyright. I believe in people having their rights, when you make a record, I don’t believe that someone else should be able to take that record and make money off that record, sell it and make money off that album. I think it’s a silly thing that copyright doesn’t have to work

against those people’s rights. And I think that Creative Commons and allowing people to use your thing doesn’t have to work against your rights. I think it’s just drawing that line. I believe in fair use, which is highlighted in the remix movie a lot (see movie review by Jack Flynn on Page 40), but that is what is in the law and allows the people to sample without permission. It has to fall under that criteria. It has to be transformative, not negatively impact the artist’s sales. Where it stands, it’s kinda a whole separate issue with people downloading music for free. For a lot of young independent artists a lot of people aren’t trying to steal from them and make money, for people really trying to make it, it’s a good idea to allow people to reach a new audience. And I think there are a lot of bands who have broken out there and reached a new fan base maybe through a remix. Maybe the remix is the thing that gets the people into the music in the first place. I don’t think of it as things fighting against each other, but more as an aid to getting the word out to the masses.

Eye, an acrylic by Daniel Shaw ’14

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Locos, a digital illustration by Ian Poblete ’13

e n i ch

a m he t f o 3

1 ’ a r t e c am By Alex Ku

e r I d

All this happened, more or less. To this day it remains an experience that I myself strain to comprehend; almost as if it has blurred the lines between certain fiction and uncertain reality: the night I dreamt of the machine.

The moon had passed its apex in the sky when I decided to finally turn my attention to the clock. My conscience had no hand in drawing me to it. Its chirping ring was not easily ignored. I was shocked to see time had passed by, and so, without a second thought, I

At first it came as a low rumbilng. made my way to bed. My nightly regiment was not to be deviated from. I brushed my teeth, drank a healthy portion of water, and made my way to bed. I could feel the previously nonexistent strain creeping over my body.

As I began to close my eyes, I heard the first pitter-patter of rain drops dive-bombing into my bedside window.

They were the last things I heard before I left. I left the world behind and entered my own head.

It was dark, vastly different from any dream I had ever played a role in. I was formless. I was thoughtless.

I was without structure. There was no fear in my dream.

No boogieman threat looming overhead. There was only silence and darkness. Then, piercing the dark, I heard a sound. At first it came as a low rumbling. My formless conscience was unable to comprehend the source. The sound separated until the once deep rumbling became a pausing thud. Like a stretching wave, the sound began to pull even further; every increase in pause, increased the volume and frequency of the resounding thuds.

Then I felt it. Even in the darkness, there was matter. It was a sea of non-creation; the essence of the universe.

The waves of sound collided with the pools of primordial existence. Ripples split from their center and spread.

As the liquid was swirled I could feel myself being born.

Like sifting people out of liquid, I felt it peel off from the whole and eventually give way to me.

I was nothing special. I had no distinguishing features. I was a mere blueprint of human construction.

Released from the sea of would-be creation I floated into an unknown atmosphere. Over time the thuds grew weaker. I could not tell if sound was fading or if I was drifting farther away. Slowly, the darkness gave way to a new sight. It began, small as a single gear, then two, then three. Innumerable pieces of antique technology began to group increasing in size until it seemed to stretch from one end of the blackness to the other,

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and there I beheld The Machine. From the machine poured color and light, and the darkness was filled with so much more. All senses were meshed in the machine’s creation. Color, soft, sweet fragrance, and song came together to form a sensation that was the sum of its parts. It was no less a vision than a sound, and no more a smell than a taste. The faint clanking of the machine could be heard, but only enough to feign non-existence. I continued to drift in the newly painted dimension, listening to the soft movement of gears.

The pitter-patter of gears gave way to the sound of rain once more. I sat up in my bed and stole a look from my window. The moon was still in the sky; ever slightly deviating from its apex. I was unsure of what to think.

Everything had been felt in the mere blink of an eye.

The machine, in all its beauty, had disappeared. All I could do was lie awake in my bed, wondering what I had experienced. Sleep permeated my yawning body and took victory over the curiosity. I rolled over to position myself and suddenly felt a blunt pain in my side. My hand reached down into the sheets and brought forth a tiny bronze gear. “That’s strange,” I muttered aloud.

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Deophage, a digital illustration by Alex Gross ’13

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Flower, a linoleum block print by Alex Keating ’14

s d r o w F O n e m d n A 3 1 ’ z e n e m i j By fernando

That which is of a word, A mute utterance of such impact A blow derived of circumstance, And yet a gentle murmur I’ve always known I’ve lacked A word that with its mutter binds to the heart, And a breath I know that tears me apart.

One I can’t seem to ever hold my fingers around, The words whispered from her lips barely daring to make a sound, That of words that mean a universe, But words that also mean something far worse Of a word that is a rose, And the thorns that I find staked in my heart A gentle stream of lyrics that say I matter, An I love you that would sum up all this whimsical chatter An I love you heard from the flutter of a dress A cruel whisper only meant to digress Of a word that can light fires Within me so great as to hold captive even the wildest of desires Of a word that is a rose, A gentle gust of autumn breeze And yet a stinging cold that makes blood freeze An I love you to be given, and also received And of men that use this only to deceive Of a word that is a rose, And all that I may be, Might not be all that much, But my rose gently sings, “I love you.”

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Vitruvian Bronco, a prismacolor by Austin Fritzke ’14

To Sheriff The

By Ak Alilonu ‘ 16

Editor’s Note: Poetry Out Loud recitation contest finalists were invited to create a poem wherein the last words of every line, when read together, would form a line from another poem. This poem is based on “Backdrop addresses cowboy” by Margaret Atwood.

This West is a wild one, where your watch keeps the wicked from the righteous; Nothing stays safe from your eyes.

They hide from your gaze, because your mind has long forgotten words; your body, laconic, speaks through its dusty trigger fingers.

But then there are some, the rejected people who come from the shadows, who ride to the gates, the men who duel with cowboys in the streets and shoot them to the dirt, loading the pistols they had once fought with.

Those we will call, “the villains.”

As their dust cloud sprouts from the desert sand, as the footfall of their horses becomes a steady beat, you drop the watch. You move.

Running up to the gates, the fear of goodly folk hanging like dust in the air, You call to let them in.

A rugged band are they. The guy in front scratched and patched and bruised and cut with things you’ve never even heard of takes out a long, greasy pistol; he aims for you.

It is springtime, and an apple tree blossoms.

In the fresh season you once again clasp the warm gun you’ve shot with And start looking for targets.

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, E V O L , S THI IS A 3 1 ‘ t r u o c n a t e B s su

By Je

I played a lot of games and I saved a lot of worlds and princesses, But I never got the chance to save myself for you because That ship sailed a while back, I apologize I couldn’t let you board it.

I may have seen someone shattered, but I’m not broken, I’m just cracked and that’s alright because that gives me a shield, But anyway, the point is that you should not have flown the coop As early as you did because it was a nice thing we had going I actually thought I had connected to another human being, But obviously that’s not the case, anyway, keep in mind, I rocked the boat first, and I’m watching it float, and I’ll watch it sink, And when it sinks I’ll be at the pier, applauding your drowning And maybe I’ll throw you a life-preserver, but I have a bad throwing arm And bad aim, so it won’t land near you and then you’ll drown and I’ll try not to laugh.

This heart loves like a hurricane and you’re always in the eye, But if you step out remember there are winds surrounding you Blowing between 75 and sometimes over 150 miles per hour, So if you want to be blown away just take a step and cross another line But you saw the surge and you watched the tides rise, never forget, That this, love, is a hurricane and you can hide behind levees, But adaptation is a better alternative to climate change than it is to me.

You lied your way out of me, but lying is how you came in, but now you can’t, Because this, love, is a hurricane and you can’t lie to a force of nature.

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Poseidon, a digital photograph by Joe Trog ’13

Unchained Memories

By Brian Loh ‘ 15 He thought of all the evenings he had spent away from her, working; and he regretted them. Contents of a Dead Man’s pockets, he thought with sudden fierce anger, a wasted life.

– Jack Finney, “Contents of a Dead Man’s Pockets” Within Room 329, Albert Kauffman and his wife sat together in silent anticipation. The scent of latex and sterilization equipment cut through the cold air conditioning. For eight minutes, they sat slouching under the cheap cotton hospital blanket, hand in hand, waiting for the world to catch up. The heavy wooden door swung open, and a rush of endorphins ran through his frail, eighty-year-old body. Overwhelmed with anxiety, Albert’s mind skipped between the snapping of the doctor’s fingers in front of his face.

“Mr. Kauffman, I’m your neurologist. The questions I am about to ask you should only take a moment. Where are we, Albert?”

Albert shifted uneasily. “I don’t remember how I got here but I think it’s the urgent care center near my house? Sir, would you mind turning up the air?”

“Of course, as soon as we are done here. You mentioned your house…do you know where that is?”

“Just past the airport, right? Oh wait! What state is this again? Minnesota or Iowa? I always get those two confused!”

“Don’t worry; you’re not too far off. We’re actually in the hospital just off the freeway, remember? Near the office building you used to work at?

“What do you mean ‘used to’? Did I get fired yesterday?”

“No, sir, you’ve been retired for almost 10 years. Do you know what year this is?”

“It’s 2007. Wait, 2009? How do you know all of this about me?”

“Your wife told me. Do you know her name? How many kids do you have?”

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“That is easy; I don’t understand why you’re asking me this. My wife’s name is definitely Jaime and we have two kids together.”

“Do not be alarmed, Mr. Kauffman, the test is over.”

The doctor feebly clasped his horn-rimmed glasses and sat deeply into his chair. “After analyzing your PET brain scans, I must be the one to clinically diagnose you with a very severe stage of Alzheimer’s disease with an impaired mental function. There is some treatment even for patients in your condition, but…”

The doctor’s speech seemed to slur as time slowed down. Burning heat of this revelation seared down the back of Albert’s neck, only leaving behind a trail of fragmented hope. A soft pat on his leg brought him back once more. He looked at Jaime. In her eyes, Albert saw a different reaction to the scans of his deficient brain.

Her tired expression gave a sense of exasperation and one sick of hospital food.

As Jaime stood up from her chair, she said, “Al, I’ll be right back, I just need some fresh air.”

“Okay, okay see you soon hun--” Even as the last sounds rolled off his tongue, Albert Kauffman was already lost again. *** The soft pitter-patter of skipping, the pat on his leg, and the exuberant exclamation of “You’re it, Daddy!” sent him running. The summer light was a blanket of dazed warmth over the field, causing Albert Kauffman to perspire slightly through his slacks and dress shirt.

Everything was perfect. He had taken the day off to spend time with his two children and lovely wife out in the field of their local schoolyard. His kids ran around

him, bursting with laughter like noisy flies, and the only rocks in his shoes were the plaid tie flapping in his face and the buzzing beeper in his pocket. The smile on his face quickly turned to one of inopportune, professional seriousness, and he immediately walked off the field to his old-fashioned Buick, his family trailing behind.

“Honey, I need to go to an emergency business meeting. The boss says my pitch could really pay off. Who knows! Maybe we’ll make out like bandits, like Mr. Madoff!”

“Will I see you home for dinner?”

“Maybe, who knows how long this could take…”

“Daddy, Daddy will you be back to Hide-and-Seek with us? Mommy says we can only play for a little bit longer until it gets dark!”

Albert Kauffman sat into the comfortable leather driver’s seat, turned the key, and powered up the air conditioner. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Daddy will be right back!” he yelled out of the window as he pulled out of his parking space. Suddenly, a vortex of cool air rushing upon his face, Albert Kauffman found himself in an unfamiliar place.

In a bout of intractable consternation, Albert Kauffman began shaking. The goose bumps rising on his skin were products of his discordant mind and body. Without a second thought, he found the first person in sight, a man in an odd, white coat.

“Sir, my name is Albert Kauffman. Where am I? What day is it today? How did I get here? Where is my family? Are they safe?”

“Mr. Kauffman, please sit back down. It’s me, your doctor. We were just discussing some treatment possibilities, remember?

“Who are you? Get away from me!” wailed Albert as he stumbled over his chair towards the corner of the room. Pushed up against the cabinets, he watched a heavy wooden door swing open and another stranger walk You’re Getting Nuked, through. As the figure turned around, Albert recognized the familiar face Poor Kid, a digital and smiled. illustration by

Alex Gross ’13

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LEAF By Alex Keating ’ 14 Majestic willow sways in breeze, A chill that wobbles flexing bark, A spot in waving arms of these, Our single verdant petal marks.

For whirls of flight are not in stone, They curl and wind like smoke from flare, Take wings to sky we’ve never flown, Strip worries off till doubts are bare.

It blends amid a cloud of green, A life thus far that’s wholly dark, But drive of stems to hold will wean, To wind away the leaf embarks.

And after time has run its course, He kisses ground with little scare, Our leaf will greet his woeful source, Embracing Earth to die in care.

Departs from whole to icy air, He falls to dust with breeze between, And caught by whips of wind with care, His weight to trail a path unseen.

His hue will weaken, fade, and yet, Within each fleeting life of leaf, Without the burden of regret, Live endless paths, his choice unique.

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Curiosity, a digital photograph

by Anthony Fischetti ’13

JUST A By Alec knappenberger ’ 13 NAPKIN

The cold cast iron support tickled my back A naked chair in a place equally unfinished Rocking back and forth on four uneven legs and a folded-up napkin As my mind writhed in its agonizing cell Anticipating nothing but a night of restless sleep Time slows as it passes by Pupils fixated on the second hand Taunting me with its grating clicks A constant reminder of the void and lack of activity Like a lecture on how to waste a summer day A gentle breeze bit at my neck, until Barely alive, I turned as if to catch the wind Before it struck again, but all I caught was a glimpse A view expanding endlessly, like a mirror-walled room Or just a clichéd photo of a starry sky Meek in the scale of things Just a cog in the workings Helping spin the clock's hands round Or maybe just a folded-up napkin Keeping the Earth on its axis.

Looking at White Paintings, a pastel by Tommy Mroz ’13

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STAFF SAM WOLFF ‘13 VISUAL/LAYOUT

alex chen ‘14 PUBLICITY

jack flynn ‘13 managing editor

grant gustafson ‘13 graphic design

julian de ocampo ‘13 literary

Literary COmmittee visual/Layout COmmittee Graphics COmmittee Assistant Editors: Colin Marston ’13 Ryan Frankel ’14 Phil Rapa ’14 Kayvan Shamsa ’14 Copy Editors: Jacob Anderson ’14 Staff Members: Asher Enciso ’14 Alex Keating ’14 Jacob Browning ‘14 Seth Harris ’14 Calvin Liang ’15 Brian Thorpe ’15 Anand Swaminathan ’15

Assistant Editors: Alex Giolito ’15 Staff Members: Austin Fritzke ’14 Justin Hegyi ’14 Griffen Tymins ’14 Greg Vogel ’15 Connor Zautke ’15

Assistant Editors: Aaron Oleson ’13 Chandler Hall ’14 Staff Members: Kevin Clark ’14

Social media and publicity committee Assistant Editors: Jeremiah Johnson ’14 Carter Santini ’15

COLO PHON

Staff Members: Sam McGehee ’16

Designers used Adobe InDesign CS5.5 and Photoshop CS5 Extended to create the 2013 print issue of Brophy Literary & Arts Magazine. The dimensions are 8 inches by 8 inches. The body copy font is Alte Haas Grotesk in 10 pt. font with an 12 pt. leading for prose and a 13 point leading for poetry. The attribution and pullout quote font for all writen pieces is Tall, Dark, and Handsome in 32 pt. The default title font is Couture in varying font sizes with various leadings. Printed by Prismagraphic. © 2013 by Brophy Literary & Arts Magazine, 4701 N. Central Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85012.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner without permission.

All images and literary works are property of the respective artist, reproduced with the permission of the student.

phil OSO PHY

Brophy Literary & Arts Magazine is a student-run publication that seeks to be a platform for student talent, a catalyst to further mutual understanding among peers, and an amplifier for the collective voice of the student body. The BLAM staff works to add permanence to student artwork and creative writing both in print and digital media, as well as through oncampus events, contests, and readings.

policy Throughout the year, BLAM solicits submissions through a combination of contests, author readings, and class assignments. All submissions are submitted via email to blam@brophyprep.org by the annual deadline in late March.

Contests winners and final publication lists are determined by the visual and literary committees, who evaluate and select according to weighted rubrics and score averages. No more than five works are published per artist or author.

BLAM reserves the right to edit content for appropriateness and aims to communicate any changes to the author.

Notable works are published periodically at blam.brophyprep.org.

2013

BROPHY LITERARY & ARTS MAGAZINE VOL 5