Libertas: The Apocalypse Issue by Libertas

LIBERTAS the apocalyps e issue

Vol. 17, no. 4

SATREBIL editorial CO-EDITORS IN CHIEF Design Emily Romeyn | Managing Vincent Weir POETRY Lucia Stacey & Tim Rauen FICTION Madeleine Brown NONFICTION Claire Ittner FILM Riley Ambrose MUSIC Will Stratford CRITICISM Colin Thomson YOWL Charles Pennell

contributors Emily Romeyn, Vincent Weir, Tim Raven, Edith Nicolaou-Griffin, Rebecca Marrifield, Michael Bachman, Matthew Schlerf, Jacob Cole,, Michael DeSimone, Will Stratford, Noah Driver, Jackson Mauze, Riley Ambrose, Claire Ittner, Jordan Luebkemann, Marybeth Campeau, Elizabeth Harry, Lucia Stacey, Madeleine Brown, Molly Dolinger, Jessie Blount, Meg Mendenhall, Colin Thomson, Charles Pennell, Ben Wiley. Libertas belongs to the students of Davidson College. Contact the editors at libertas@davidson.edu

special thanks to... Faculty Advisors: Scott Denham, Zoran Kuzmanovich (emeritus), Ann Fox (emeritus) Previous Editors: Mike Scarbo, Vic Brand, Ann Culp, Erin Smith, Scott Geiger, James Everett, Catherine Walker, Elizabeth Burkhead, Chris Cantanese, Kate Wiseman, Lila Allen, Jessica Malordy, Nina Hawley, Kate Kelly, Zoe Balaconis, Rebecca Hawk, and Hannah Wright Founder: Zac Lacy visit us online: sites.davidson.edu/libertas

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EDITORS’ NOTES Troubled Boom: Davidson’s Growth Masks Deeper Concerns “This Is What We Call a Lunchtime Poll”

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POETRY Item No. 1: MW 8.563, 62.338 p 3 Thermodynamics No. 3 Wishful Regret Revelations Gray’s and Torrey’s Abscission To Ashes

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YOWL Message from the Personal Voicemail of Mary Lewiston; Non-Mayan Timelines for the End of the World Mayan God Congress Gridlocks, Fails to Pass Apocalypse Walking Directions to Chipotle from Craig’s House

CRITICISM The Urgent Case for Pre-Apocalyptic Writing

Michael DeSimone Will Stratford

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MUSIC Top Music of 2012 Apocalypse Music Picks

Noah Driver Jackson Mauze

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FICTION Rules is Rules Just Another Flooded Flowerbed

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REVIEWS A House United: “Lincoln” Review “Skyfall” Review: Only Bond Can Fight Terrorism Vertigo Up Close; A Review of Giacometti: Memory and Presence

Vincent Weir Emily Romeyn Tim Raven Edith Nicolaou-Griffin Rebecca Marrifield Michael Bachman Matthew Schlerf Jacob Cole Anonymous

Ben Wiley

Vincent Weir Riley Ambrose Claire Ittner Jordan Luebkemann Emily Romeyn Marybeth Campeau Elizabeth Harry

FC MH 5 BC

ART Photograph Photograph; detail “Lunchtime Poll” film stills Tapioca Time Bomb Alone

editor’s note. Troubled Boom: Davidson’s Growth Masks Deeper Concerns V incen t W e i r

ournals incline toward the negative. Most of us see this syndrome in its newspaper version, where an adage reminds us “if it bleeds it leads.” Similar trends exist in other media, to the point where “criticism” describes all commentary, even the good kind. Complaining, it seems, lies deep in the blood of publishing. Our bias toward criticism may indeed result from biology. The human brain tends to focus on negative information more than any other kind (“a trait extensively documented by neuroscience and a studies”), and we distill this gloom through the press. However it comes to be, criticism constitutes an enormous percentage of our published work, especially our editorials. In a book that aired two months ago Steven Johnson reminds us that, in 1997, 71% of Washington Post editorials focused on negative U.S. trends. That was the year that marked, according to Johnson, “the middle of the greatest peacetime boom in U.S. history.” In hindsight the center-left leaning Post should have been optimistic: the economy was growing, the debt was shrinking (along with the poverty gap), and the Democrats were leading. Still, the editorials were negative. And yet something about the Post’s relentless desire for perfection makes sense. This editorial will be negative too, even if it stands on ground more precarious than the Post did. By many accounts Davidson is booming now. Our recent grants ($25 million from Ted Baker and $45 million from the Duke Endowment in the last seven months) add to record-setting alumni donation rates, all of which signify the value of our first female president and so forth. We should celebrate these achievements. At the same time, we should critique our shortcomings. We have them, as all institutions do, but I fear that we are more susceptible to missing our faults than we should be. Small, relatively prestigious schools like Davidson need all the positive press they can get, so they tend to stoke virtues and smother faults to the point of propaganda. Davidson’s newspaper, for instance, seems intent to function more like a college Facebook profile than anything else—to curate a positive front-page image and bury painful concerns. When unrest does come to the Davidsonian, our editors and sometimes even our trustees (who, by the way, own the The Davidsonian’s copyright) have attempted to overwhelm the malcontents. Take this email, for instance, which the Student Government Association sent last May: The latest issue of The Davidsonian contained several articles that do not paint the most flattering picture of Davidson for the outside world and we need YOU to help us change that. We believe that as a student body, there is a lot more love for the institution that is represented in several pointed articles. WE NEED YOUR HELP TO GENERATE SOME NEW CONTENT FOR OUR WEBSITE! We live in the age of reputation consultants where outsourced propaganda and search engine optimization make sense. But we also attend a liberal arts school that, at least in theory, joins all universities in a tradition of critiquing society—even its own. Schools are supposed to encourage critical thinking and empower minds that may, in their turn, foment and disrupt. These later functions have always been the task of Libertas. This magazine began in 1996 when Zac Lacy, a gay student disenfranchised by Davidson’s mainstream media, wanted to disrupt the campus publication scene. Lacy wanted Libertas to break free from the Davidsonian—

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to own the copyright to its words and thus the ability to criticize others and itself. This editorial is an attempt to honor those traditions. I want to examine three complaints that reoccur in my conversations about our school. All the concerns I detail here reduce to a form of mild hypocrisy and find panacea in money or time. To that extent they are each universal problems. Still, I sense now a subtle though growing discontentment with Davidson—one that I suspect finds precedent at other schools, but not at the best ones. Duke Endowment Money Earlier this month the Duke Chronicle criticized Davidson for misrepresenting a gift that bears its name: Davidson’s [$45 million Duke Endowment] gift should not have been branded as an interdisciplinary initiative… Interdisciplinary is a big buzzword in higher education this year [but] we caution Davidson, Duke and other universities to not overuse the term. Haphazardly labeling all sorts of University initiatives … can breed confusion, sloppiness and disingenuousness. If Davidson’s gift is mostly about physical improvements of Davidson’s campus—as we suspect—publicize it as such. To be clear: we aren’t investing our gift entirely in buzzwords. Certainly some teachers will use the momentum of Duke money to further their interdisciplinary agendas. But how much will “flexible spaces and common areas” actually “encourage exchanging ideas across academic disciplines?” At the very least it’s a very expensive encouragement. The point is that buildings won’t create change, people will. In order to make this project successful, we need to match the Duke endowment with a community buy-in. That only happens if we stop congratulating ourselves and start critically reflecting on what we need to change to make it happen. Besides offering a good example of critical journalism, this Duke editorial suggests the root of Davidson’s difficulties. In an attempt to brand ourselves—to boost our résumé and make ourselves appear more successful than we are, we may have overpromised—or promised for the sake of promising only to hope that the results will follow. To some it already appears that we’ve stretched ourselves beyond our ability to perform, and to these people we’ve become disingenuous. I would argue that our mild hypocrisy becomes evident in other ways to students who spend enough time here, specifically to those who aren’t rewarded with the spoils of the brand. Diversity. Our diversity crisis has launched a flurry of outbursts, including the Davidsonian email quoted to the left. I imagine that few doubt Davidson’s desire to include “a strong diversity of perspectives and backgrounds” among students and faculty. But in the end it seems the college wants to spend its small endowment elsewhere. I’m not sure that this spending choice is a huge problem by itself. Clearly we have limited financial resources and student interest to support teachers or courses outside the mainstream. Our ideals stretch further than our wallets. But the problem becomes all the more grievous when it compounds the other hypocrisies at Davidson. Division I In the edits leading up to this publication, I decided to cut the majority my Division I critique. Our commitment to D-I is too big and the arguments against it too controversial to address in two hundred words, so I’ve delayed my thoughts to a much longer article that will appear next

year. However, there is at least one question worth insinuating. Are Davidson’s less than nationally ranked athletic teams worth supporting in an atmosphere that aspires toward comprehensive excellence? As an athlete I experience the discrepancy between our nationally ranked academic performance and our unranked athletic performance on a regular basis. I’m not sure I detect a synergy. Social Life Perhaps the most nebulous of these criticisms, this one nevertheless has increasing relevance. Davidson’s social life has undergone a series of small paroxysms since last May and looks to keep changing. When the school announced its decision to limit apartment parties to 14 people, many realized that fire safety was the thin mask covering more serious concerns about sexual assault and substance abuse at the school’s largest party venues. But discontentment with the weekend scene reaches past institutional anxieties and into the midst of the student body. At this point, most of us realize the need for a social space where 15+ independents can drink and talk without feeling like outsiders for not knowing Greek. Our push to build a pub on campus marks a step in the right direction, but underage-drinking laws will challenge its comprehensive success. Still, there’s another, more subtle side to our social deficiencies. For all their upsides, cheap beer, dance music, and easy sex lack the intellectual seduction that brought us to Davidson in the first place. Many of us want to use our minds in addition to our bodies on the weekend, but so far there’s not a great place to do that. Call it witty banter (or even conversation), but we desire an intellectual stimulus very difficult to find in loudspeakers and blacklights. According to a growing group of discontents, Davidson purports to have an intellectual culture we’ve never seen. The college’s dedication “to intellectual and cultural growth in the broadest sense” seems narrower or non-existent on the weekends. Our Task Each of these concerns point back to a common and, in all likelihood, universal issue. Our school, like perhaps all others, says one thing and does something else. We fail to live up to our ideals and the closer we look the more we see that discrepancy. There is, however, at least one way students can influence change: We have almost sole power over our social scene, and with that power comes the ability to affect each of these other criticisms. To begin with, we need to create a non-Greek social space that will bolster the diversity of campus life. We have plenty of places to drink and dance. Now we need a place to play chess and enjoy the intellectual beauty of a top school through leisure. This initiative doesn’t just require space, it requires student energy. We need a student body committed to the idea that “intellectual and cultural growth in the broadest sense” means doing both on the weekend. I’ve been following a movement for some time now that wants to renovate the Old Quad. If we could turn the four buildings between Cunningham and the church (Phi, Eu, Oak, and Elm) into an up-the-hill social scene, we could take a great step toward realizing the “academic neighborhood” our development plan talks about. This new social scene would combine the energies of up-the-hill academics with down-the-hill socializing, simultaneously expressing our commitment to interdisciplinary behaviors and our desire to create a more diverse social life. Whatever we do, we need to start thinking. If we want to steward our boom time well, we must be critical investors.

editor’s note. scene from Heathers (1988) frilm stills by E m i l y Rom e yn

Heather #1

Check this out. You win five million dollars from the Publisher’s Sweepstakes, and the same day that that big Ed guy gives you the cheque, aliens land on the earth and say they’re going to blow up the world in two days. What do you do?

Country Club Keith

Geek

Country Club Courtney “That’s easy. I’d just slide that wad over to my father, cos he is like one of the top brokers in the State.”

“If I got that money, I’d give it all to the homeless. Every cent.”

“I’d to go Egypt. With a girl.”

Ram

Betty Finn “I’d pay Madonna a million bucks to sit on my face and have her ride like the Kentucky derby....she should pay me, though”.

“I’d use the money for an end-of-theworld get-together.”

Heavy Metaller 1

“That’s gotta be the most spooky-assed question I ever heard.”

Econ Kid

Heavy Metaller 2

“Alright, this is important. Tax is only the beginning... social security, legal fees..”

“You go to the zoo and get a lion, then you put a remotecontrol bomb up its butt.. ..you push the button on the bomb, and you and the lion die like one.” Jason Dean

“Ahh, I don’t know. Probably row out to the middle of a lake somewhere, bring along a bottle of Tequila, my sax and..some Bach.”

Female Stoner

Whaat?

Veronica

“How very.”

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Item no 1: MW 8.563, 62.338 p 3 3

two poems by

Ti m Ra ven

And so it’s come to this, the memory Of faith in evolution of our reach Scrawled out in toxic glitter, factory blood Of our successors. Carbon bones decay, But poisons will survive the wheezing world. Their will is stronger. If beauty is the temptress of the heart, Then progress preys the same upon the mind. The sterile spores we built spawned sterile life, Expanding over skies that once were blue In fairy stories. Oil polished seas Caught fire. Ashes reproduced and filled Our stomachs. Tigers sloughed their stripes and roared In scalding metal showers. Pigeons dropped

THERMO DYNAMICS NO. 3

From power lines, and when we rubbed the soot From dead wings, they shone white. Ah, so this is peace on earth. Forgiveness is a helpless man’s revenge Against a fate that chose him to be born Abed a casket in a tomb bejeweled With only stories trees are made of. Now, In elegizing those whose legacy Must parish with my mortal manuscript I find a paradox, impossible To capture in a hindsight prophet’s verse. Debris-strewn sidewalk panes and window frames Compose, as pixels, this abandoned smear Of God fed through a prism that was once A skull, or else a statue of a skull Melted into a grain of sand. The dunes Stacked high with plastic bullets reek of flesh O something burning in a microwave.

I found a house in the last hollows of the dawn, Huddled in the sucking cold, tucked into the arctic pines Just beyond, like a lantern on another ship sailing into another dream. I’m too tired for metaphors, too tired For time. I lean against the tree and I am the tree. I am the latticework of the cosmic snowflake frieze pattern. Heat crystalizes symmetrically, Stacking diamonds atom by atom by flame Frozen and then chiseled, like a stone from the hearth Of Eros inherited from Greeks and the tiny slot machine Of a gamete. I was a three-legged gazelle Running in circles from nothing, But I don’t fear being lost in the woods now, like a pinecone Doesn’t fear the night. A pinecone is the last piece, But the puzzle always sets an extra place For one who arrived here at the failings of a map and never knew that God Is just another form of energy, and that transfers are permitted, Never endings. Absolved of entropy, I turn to nothing.

In brick walls, fossilized, shrieks Linger, ghosts, But are silent now. And the silence sighs in hazy dusk, in these asphalt corridors where rubble

monuments cast monumental shadows.

And everywhere the silence settles, And I am uncertain what I imagine.

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A V RE EL

TIONS

“The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood…” (NIV, Revelations, 8:7). Impaled, into sleep drain thoughts evade. Battle numbs salty scars. Cliff of failure, faults hanging, nails scraping, Judgment Day is elusive. “I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True” (NIV, Revelations, 19:11). Self-evident God? Prince of Peace, rescue human wretch…such aimless perfection. Lackluster trust cold and rusted, we feign and yet miss the godforsaken train. “I am the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, Beginning and the End” (NIV, Revelations, 22:13). Humbled, into silence answers transmit Truth. Insignificant war with self-doubt, spinning on His axis, dust degraded blind faith elated. And He said it shall be Done. New International Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986. Print.

Rebec c a M erri f i el d

h wries ful gret

Chapter One: Arrival

After you, He said. Life is a Countdown to Regret. Chapter Two: Nature Fighting, Feeding, and Fucking they said. At the end-of-the-world party, basics are best: Making out, Murder and Meth Chapter Three: Love After me, I said. I would miss you even in death – even if we had never met. Let this end-of-the-world party be our eternal bed Let me be your Cleopatra, your Heloise, your Juliet Till death do us part – easy promise without the proper courtship – Or the steps of seduction Or the status “in a relationship” Chapter Four: Fuck everything No time for Time. I didn’t invite you to an end-of-the-world party, I invited you to Eternity. Did you bring your favorite music? “Marry the night,” “till the worlds ends,” Because tonight This. Is. It. “We R who we R” and we will “Die Young,” – None of that indie shit. Chapter Five: Clarity I would have invited you even if I hadn’t felt so alone all my life, even if there was another party to go to, even if the world didn’t end tonight –

E di t h N i c ol aou - G ri ffi n

The man struggles on a trail Drawn along the valley’s sternum, Cleaved between rising granite slabs Building out to infinity, or Whatever you call the sky. Daybreak reaches from the horizon, With fingers stretching out to Brush the peaks at their apex, Warming them with the color of day. Down in the valley It is still, cold – Calm in silent solitude. And down in the valley, Caught in sinking darkness, The man stalls. In a moment of falter, He looks up the slope In envy of the sun’s grip. And on tundra high above, Two forms move and do not belong – Two elk where none should be Drifting down, Weight of alpenglow infinity Held in the spread of their racks. And all carry on. Mic ha el B ac h m a n

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Message from the Personal Voicemail of Mary Lewiston; Recorded 12/22/2012 2:30 A.M.

Listen Mary, ever since you ran screaming from my house around 1:00, I’ve been discussing the events of last night on my ‘The Walking Dead’ fan forum, and while I, personally, thought there was nothing particularly corrupt or deceiving about what happened , my fellow ‘Dead-heads’ have been throwing around words like “emotionally scarring” and “a little hostage-y,” so, uhh, yeah, I guess you deserve a few clarifications. First, I realize that back on Wednesday I framed my invitation as “a few people from work getting together for a little ‘End of the World Party, haha,’” when in fact, only you and me were in attendance. I would just like to say, in my defense, that two people can still technically have a party, and that there was actually a third guest in attendance, my friend Ralph, although he was hiding in the attic for most of the night. And, well, this actually leads nicely into my next explanation, because remember when I told you that what you were hearing was the wrath-filled voice of the Mayan God of Death? Well, that was actually just Ralph, doing his best Javier Bardem impression over a pair of large-watted subwoofers. Hence the hiding in the attic. Oh, and that “rainstorm of blood”—well, just let me say that you can buy industrial quantities of red-food coloring on most restaurant-supply websites, and that my sprinkler technician is highly unscrupulous. And alright, I admit, I do not in fact own a specially-constructed meteor/bomb shelter or a three years’ supply of potable water, but rather a half-flooded basement with several rolls of aluminum foil haphazardly stapled to the walls. So yeah, as you might have guessed by now, the study claiming that the safest place to be during a world-ending gore hurricane is crouched on a soggy mattress in the well-toned arms of your cubicle neighbor has never actually been published in a reputable scientific journal. I’d just like to apologize for these small misunderstandings, which taken together could possibly be interpreted as a deliberate attempt to trick you into believing that we were single-handedly responsible for repopulating the earth. But the world’s still trucking along, although our shitty jobs almost make me wish that the apocalypse had happened, am I right? Haha. Speaking of which, see you on Monday.

Non-Mayan Timelines for the End of the World

o. 1: According to the people who make Netflix preference algorithms, a cosmic snake will consume the earth three days after you finally convince your cousin to give “Breaking Bad” a try.

o. 2: Once he gets his hands on your pot-smoking ass you’re gonna wish the world was over, says Dad.

o. 3: If you look at the Situation’s abs the right way they prophesy the ascension of a Guido King, spawned from a four foot tall orange-tinted media construction, who will bring about the End of Times in a storm of tanning lotion and the

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subtitled conversations of alcoholics.

o. 3: Jim Strong from Jim Strong’s Jeep of Mooresville thinks there’s a good chance the apocalypse might come just after this limited-time-only, Christmas sale ends, and wouldn’t you be happier dying in a well-accessorized, fuel efficient Jeep Wrangler?

o. 4: As per the ancient Norse soothsayers, Apple products will rise up and enslave humanity when a three-legged goat eats from the hands of an albino.

o. 5: Seven seconds from now, or your money back.

M a ry bet h Ca m p ea u

O O Y THE

WALKING DIRECTIONS T

eotihuacán—In what pundits have called “a humiliating display of single-minded unwillingness to cooperate,” the Mayan Gods left their holy congress Thursday without deciding how to decimate the Earth. The embarrassing fallout will commence when a sudden halt to all rumors of widespread planetary destruction coincides with the resumed presence of normal reality on December 21. According to one source, the so-called “Apocalypse Cliff ” became a decidedly less majestic “Apocalypse Bluff ” the moment the Gods failed to enact legislation that would destroy the world, the moon, and parts of outer space. “Our inability to achieve bipartisan support for something as simple and universally acknowledged as the December 21 destruction of our planet reveals the cloyed and frankly unprofes-

sional nature of our theocracy,” said one hot dog vendor working close to the scene. “I mean how long have we been talking about this? Two thousand years? Everyone knew exactly what needed to happen, and on what date. None of this ‘I’m a God, I transcend time and can do whatever I want’ business, please. Get over yourselves.” Newswires report that negotiations broke down over the question of which apocalypseinducing sequence to launch. His royal Godness Gukumatz led the conservative charge for a more traditional apocalypse, “including but not limited to hot lava, Zombies, floods, giant Lizards that ravage Tokyo, etc.” On the other side, the feathered-snake God Kukulcan led the minority opposition in favor of changing every world nation to Greece.

TO CHIPOTLE CRAIG’S HOUSE

FROM

MAYAN GOD CONGRESS GRIDLOCKS, FAILS TO PASS APOCALYPSE

Don biohazard suit and pack whatever is left of Craig’s liver into a Ziploc™ baggy for lunch.

Wade 1.7 miles into the river of flame and clamber up the bank made from the bones of the damned before turning right along the ravaged swath of interstate.

3. 4. 5. 6.

Bypass sadomasochistic orgy/murder cult via conveniently placed and unlocked monster truck.

7. 8. 9. 10.

Do a barrel roll. Continue 3.4 miles to smoking pile of mangled, toothless skulls. Acquire machine gun, bone saw and a refreshing glass of ice cold Coors Light™. Coors Light™, Taste the Rockies™. Squint into what is left of the Sun and squeeze trigger while gently panning gun muzzle into numberless hordes of the marauding zombies. Descend into the jaws of Hell® where Satan guards the last remaining heat source of planet Earth. Note: due to current traffic conditions, this portion of the route may take several months. Detour around Downtown Hell® through the affluent suburb of Rolling Pinebrook. Try any of the renowned bed and breakfasts in the area while hiking your way through the rolling hills of bucolic Southern Hell®. Well, who knew that killing Satan would make you the Devil? Screw around with Craig’s soul a little bit, for old time’s sake. Go 500 yards on the street that shall not be named, and Chipotle will be on the right.

O L OW

DAVIDSON’S NEWS FOLLOWER

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A House United Lincoln Shows Virtue of Teamwork Against Background of Haggard Politics Vi n ce n t Weir

ou might expect a film called Lincoln to be all about Lincoln—a biopic, perhaps, or a hagiopic. It isn’t. A political thriller that belongs more to screenwriter Tony Kushner (the marriage rights leader behind Angles in America) than to director Steven Spielberg, Lincoln focuses less on the 16th President than it does on the 13th Amendment—and more generally, on the democratic process that makes both the President and the policy possible. Kushner’s script is light with period language (c.f. “flib-flubs”) but dense with the familiar themes of compromise and social justice. Loosely based off Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 2005 book, Team of Rivals, Lincoln makes teamwork rather than stardom the center of its drama. At the end of this film we realize that, despite his masterful combination of backwoods candor and political instinct, Lincoln couldn’t have beat slavery by himself. The spotlight widens to illuminate the less familiar names (especially Thaddius Stevens, played by a brilliant Tommy Lee Jones) that made freedom possible. In doing so, it shows us the rough team sport of politics. Undeniably, of course, the film centers around the namesake star (Daniel Day-Lewis), who emerges the unsurpassed (if severely contested) leader of the film’s artistic achievement. But the production seems trustworthy because it invests our initial interest in the President back into the democracy that sustains both Lincoln and the film. Instead of showing us the focused portrait of a demagogue, as the title might suggest, the film presents a democratic lawmaker who fights—though whatever unsightly means—for freedom. Though the lens of midnight deals and mild corruption we see democracy, in all its ugliness, achieve a wonderful result. Like a football game played in sleet and freezing mud, the distasteful process is,

however paradoxically, inspiring. Ugliness, to be sure, forms a dominant motif for the film. With a handful of minor exceptions, Avy Koffman’s entire cast is old or ugly, and probably both. Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski accentuates this trend with lighting that stresses wrinkles and tinges everything with the dreariness of blue and gray. Physiognomy insinuates the obvious: politics is a dark and ugly business, even in its great historical episodes. This film stands apart because it draws us in despite that ugliness. Though most of us would never watch CSPAN we’ll watch this—and in doing so we catch a glimpse of democracy we would otherwise overlook. We learn to appreciate the necessary ugliness of a republic and respect the compromises that make it possible, and that it makes possible. The film is not entirely a test of common taste. Counter to the strain of old and uncomely exteriors, Kushner’s script and Spielberg’s editing endow the interior world of politics with a youthful energy more akin to football than anything else. In this most American of analogies, Lincoln is the quarterback—the leader of a team who needs help from every unsightly lineman and showy wide-out to win. Lincoln influences the play more than any other single player, to be sure, but he can’t win or even compete by himself. (Spoiler alert: he wins.) In his New York Times review, A.O. Scott names Lincoln “among the finest films ever made about American politics.” Some viewers, especially those expecting an epic like Alexander or Braveheart, may question that. The dialogue-heavy scenes, restricted action, and ponderous length (with only one war scene in 150 minutes) may cause us to suspect the movie should have stayed a book. But Lincoln succeeds precisely because its medium. A good example of a great demo-

cratic art form, this film is at once an illustration and exercise in democracy. It illustrates the teamwork of politics in the same way that film embodies teamwork in art. Day-Lewis is at his best with Kushner, Spielburg, Koffman, Jones and the rest of the cast behind him. Similarly, Lincoln needs his cabinet and of course his party’s unwavering support to pass the bill. The team that built “Lincoln” may not have been rivals, strictly speaking, but the same teamwork required to defeat slavery and win championships finds grand expression here.

Only Bond Can Fight Terrorism, or When Did Odd-Job Become Old Hat? Riley Ambrose

t the end of all things, where is your Skyfall? Will it have Barbour jackets, guns, dogs, an ursuline man-servant, antiquated (yet still useful) tunnels, and conveniently placed oxygen tanks? And will your “end of all things” come as a band of incompetent thugs led by an overly competent cyber-genius with ambiguous sexual tendencies? Perhaps this is an unfair question; it’s no secret that James Bond is a movie first and a story second. I suppose the better question how do the Skyfall producers make such an entertaining and “sophisticated” movie? How do they succeed where so many B-movies have failed? (Am I right to assume that the plot’s central tension—the irrelevancy of special agents—has intentionally extra-diegetic implications?) That is to say, Skyfall, more so than any other Bond movie, functioned as a bridge between two ages of secret agent movies—it stepped in to rescue an archetype that would otherwise become anachronistic. Writing this, I feel as if my job of explication has already been done. If you can manage to look just beyond the brushed lapels of Bond’s modern cut suit, underneath the komodo dragons, and to the right of Bardem’s prosthetic jaw, you will see that the entire film is comprised of dissimulated Bond staples, the most obvious of which is the ’65 Aston Martin DB5, ejector seat 7

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standard. The Bond production team was, in effect, doing a very careful job of keeping the baby without the bathwater. Only the baby is a middle-aged Bond and the bathwater is filthy with communists, nuclear bomb threats, and out-of-date politics. They were saying that the bathwater—while having done a great job making the baby shiny clean, sexy, alcoholic, and capable of surviving gunshot wounds, large falls, and titanic train crashes—must go. At least, it must be packaged into collector’s edition boxes and displayed in the best Holiday marathon specials on SPIKE . The old was great—the new will be the same, only without specialized gadgets that conveniently appear when their particular function is needed; and with more muscular actors who could easily beat their predecessor in a fist fight. So what I am saying is, provided our collective Skyfall is not the complete and utter annihilation of the world as we know it, get ready for a more relevant Bond, a sleeker, more fashionable, more ratiocinative Bond who is at once sensitive to extra-diegetic social issues and equally as stoic and masculine as Sean Connory. In case you hadn’t heard, the next Bond is rumored to be Idris Elba. I am already looking forward to the 2014 movie.

THE URGENT CASE FOR

PRE-APOCALYPTIC WRITING

can’t remember when this issue will be released, but I hope it’s before finals are over . . . because I’m not sure if anyone noticed but the next day (December 21) is the fucking Apocalypse. It’s not like anyone will have time to read anything during finals anyway (though the world may be ending, we cannot forget about our high-paying jobs which are certainly awaiting us on the other side), but a greater imperative is at hand: that to save evil before it’s wiped away forever. If we’re going to be really technical, the “Apocalypse” is actually the Biblical Book of Revelation. But the book itself does predict, according to the Merriam-Webster English Dictionary, “an imminent cosmic cataclysm in which God destroys the ruling powers of evil and raises the righteous to life in a messianic kingdom.” God originally forgot to specify when this would happen, but the Mayans (Jesus’s western hemisphere cohorts prior to the Europeans’ Imperialist-era kicking-of-ass) nicely picked up where God left off, informing us the world as we know it will end shortly after the exam center closes. This all may sound great at first, particularly given Merriam-Webster’s optimistic description, but we have to remember what the imminent domain of Heaven will bring: nothing. Heaven, void of any conflict, famine or inequality, will be straight-up boring as hell. Except pardon my French, because Hell will be a fiesta and a half compared to the siesta that will be Heaven after you have your Wall Street job but no impoverished masses whose faces you can rub that position of power into. It turns out the shit in life, you know, one man’s joy at another’s expense, is what makes it wonderful. And God’s encroaching plans for eviction contain no blueprints for misdeeds. The forces of evil in our world are in danger and we’ll all soon be in a

Abscission

miserable state of bliss if we do nothing to stop this. As literary scholars, as wielders of pens, we must do what we do best, and write all the shit we can muster. Forget quality, forget revision, we are now called to preserve evil in whatever god-forsaken form we can find it. While our Honor Code pervades, we have secrets to spill. Tell of the compostable food tray you knowingly dropped in the trash bin at the Union. Divulge of the time you talked loudly in the 24-Hour Room. Confess to hosting that 15-person party in your Armfield apartment. And you have to act quickly! If Socrates and Jesus ever agreed upon anything, it was that writing down things is itself wrong (or so their collective written works seem to hint). The opportunity is now to write down evil about evil before the landscape is sugarcoated in sap. Come December 21, our writing utensils will be together confiscated, and our best bet is that our time capsules are buried deep enough and will be someday found in the next kingdom. Our lingering hope, should we take this task, is that our writings will be unearthed, at least partially restoring our once-great humanity. The Machiavellian humanity. The good kind. The evil kind. The only kind. I don’t know what we’ll be able to call our species postApocalypse, for our worst features will be gone and we’ll be nothing left. That is why we must not fail. This is our ultimatum: preserve the evils of the world to preserve humanity. There is no other way. Let finals take a backseat for once—and write like your shitty life depends on it.

A knife meant for flowers saved her life when it missed its mark and spilled bad blood. Her second digit blossomed red releasing a stream of guilty sap. Doctors filled her thirsty limbs in vain and deemed her marrow rot. They cut her from surrounding wood separating healthy blood from bad. As autumn waned she shed raking leaves off pillowcases. We cleaned and spent to hide abscission like children pasting leaves on empty branches. Now, wilted, she awaits the spring when hope abounds in regeneration. Her roots run deep. Cracked twigs grow. I know her rings are many.

M a t t h ew S c h l erf

B en Wiley

Vertigo Up Close

Cl a i re It t ner

A Review of Giacometti: Memory and Presence at Bechtler Museum of Modern Art

Alberto Giacometti Homme qui marche I/Walking Man I 1960 Bronze 180.5 x 27 x 97 cm Collection Fondation Giacometti, Paris (Inv. Nr.: 1994-0186)

f there’s one thing (hem) that the college tour guides exaggerate, it may be the advantages of Davidson’s proximity to Charlotte. I can’t say I’ve made the trip more than three times this semester—and I have even less of an excuse than other people, having a car and friends that are easy to persuade. If you go to Charlotte only once this year, though, go before the Giacometti exhibit at the Bechtler Museum ends. Go. You have less than two months. If you need any confirmation of the monumentality of Giacometti: Memory and Presence, you need only to look at the timeline for the show—the Bechtler has been basking, perhaps too proudly, in the glow of its loan for almost three months—and will continue to exhibit another two, for a total of almost half a year. We will grant the peacock its feathers, though, and move on to the art—which is truly a remarkable collection of work. Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss artist, best known for his attenuated human sculptures—thin, craggy, almost impossibly fragile figures, that press their isolation on you even when they are grouped together. The exhibit begins, however, before this existential stage, with a rare showing of the artist’s early work—a collection of the young Alberto’s studies of his mother, drawings, as well as a few rather unmemorable impressionist-like paintings of his father’s. The exhibit moves chronologically, completing

a thorough examination of Giacometti’s Surrealist phase (bizarre little sculptures that, fittingly, draw you close for examination only to send you away, vaguely repulsed.) The true heart of the exhibit, however, is found in the next few rooms, which contain a sampling of the artist’s most distinctive work. Giacometti was a studio artist—he worked from models, most often his brother, Diego, and his wife, Annette, repeating their form in paint and plaster over and over, obsessively, almost ad nauseum. He has been called, in fact, an existentialist painter; and it is hard to argue when faced with some of his sculptures in the Bechtler. It is precisely the acute intensity of this later work, however, that makes the entire exhibit worthwhile—the agony of the artist probing for a face in plaster that becomes palpable when you’re surrounded by his sculptures. You become bound, somehow, held by their presence even at the point of flight. It is that vertiginous experience of unbearable lightness that the exhibit builds toward, even as it turns an odd corner into the work of Diego Giacometti at its completion. The effect is disorienting, certainly, exhausting, often—but if it moves us to the point of apocalyptic encounter, a reckoning with ourselves, we at least have the half hour in the car and the reassuring “Davidson/Davidson College” road sign to bring us (although hopefully not fully) back to the familiar. LIBERTAS, V o l . 1 7 , N o . 4

Music2012

Top

M i c h a el D eS i m o ne

Top 50 Songs 50. “Ghost Tonight” - Chairlift 49. “Higashi Loves You” - Hodgy Beats 48. “AMIR voc mix” - Dean Blunt & Inga Copeland 47. “Sentimental Trash” - Sweet Valley 46. “Charly Wingate” - Ryan Hemsworth 45. “Sleeping Ute” - Grizzly Bear 44. “Ladies feat. Twista & AK” - Jeremih 43. “Big Beast feat. Bun B, T.I., & Trouble” - Killer Mike 42. “Big Spender feat. A$AP Rocky” - Theophilus London 41. “Harlem Shake” - Baauer 40. “Express Yourself feat. Nicky Da B” - Diplo 39. “NEEDSUMLUV (SXLND)” - Azealia Banks 38. “Boyfriend” - Justin Bieber 37. “Ridin’ feat A$AP Rocky & Lana Del Rey (Kickdrums Preview Snippet)” - The Kickdrums 36. “Jose Canseco” - RiFF RAFF 35. “Coldness” - Clams Casino 34. “Pussy Is Mine” - Miguel 33. “Troublemaker” - Beach House 32. “Gotham” - Animal Collective 31. “Flight Confirmation feat. Danny Brown & Schoolboy Q” The Alchemist 30. “Tan Leather” - Action Bronson 29. “The Full Retard” - EL-P 28. “Hacker” - Death Grips 27. “A Free Man” - Alexander Spit 26. “‘soul child’”- atμ 25. “No to Love” - Jessie Ware 24. “Changes feat. Heart Streets” - LOL Boys 23. “About to Die” - Dirty Projectors 22. “Genesis” - Grimes 21. “Westside, Right on Time feat. Young Jeezy” - Kendrick Lamar 20. “Getting There feat. Nicki Randa” - Flying Lotus 19. “The Narcissist 2” - Dean Blunt & Inga Copeland 18. “Cherry” - Chromatics 17. “So Far Away” - Charli XCX 16. “Sing About Me” - Kendrick Lamar 15. “Back from the Grave” - Chromatics 14. “Mirror in the Dark” - Twin Shadow 13. “Hands on the Wheel feat. A$AP Rocky” - Schoolboy Q 12. “Survival Tactics feat. Capital STEEZ” - Joey Bada$$ 11. “White Dress” - Kanye West 10. “Higher Ground” - TNGHT 9. “Pyramids (2nd half)” - Frank Ocean 9

LIBERTAS, Vol. 17, No. 4

8. “Latch feat. Sam Smith” - Disclosure 7. “Angels” - The xx 6. “Analog 2- Tyler, the Creator, Frank Ocean, and Syd tha Kid 5. “Ashtray Wasp” - Burial 4. “Flashing Lights” - BADBADNOTGOOD 3. “Heartbreak Hotel (Chopped and Screwed by OG Ron C)” Whitney Houston 2. “Climax” - Usher 1. “Between Friends feat. Earl Sweatshirt” - Captain Murphy

Top 30 Albums

30. Untitled EP - Hodgy Beats 29. Love What Happened Here - James Blake 28. Live Love Purple - A$AP Rocky and OG Ron C 27. Late Nights With Jeremih - Jeremih 26. Shields - Grizzly Bear 25. Express Yourself EP - Diplo 24. Kaleidoscope Dream - Miguel 23. The Man in the High Castle - Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire 22. The Money Store - Death Grips 21. Eternal Champ - Sweet Valley 20. TNGHT - TNGHT 19. Visions - Grimes 18. Mansions - Alexander Spit 17. R.A.P. Music - Killer Mike 16. Blue Chips - Action Bronson 15. Coexist - The xx 14. Until the Quiet Comes - Flying Lotus 13. (V)- atμ 12. Du∆lity- Captain Murphy 11. 1999 - Joey Bada$$ 10. Kindred - Burial 9. Bloom - Beach House 8. Devotion - Jessie Ware 7. Confess - Twin Shadow 6. Habits & Contradictions - Schoolboy Q 5. BBNG2 - BADBADNOTGOOD 4. Heartbreaks and Earthquakes - Charli XCX 3. good kid, m.A.A.d. city - Kendrick Lamar 2. channel ORANGE - Frank Ocean 1.Kill for Love - Chromatics

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

“Apocalypse Dream,” Tame Impala “Suns of Temper,” Clark “How It Ends,” Devotchka “New Year Storm,” Clark “2+2=5,” Radiohead

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

“It’s All Gonna Break,” Broken Social Scene “Half Day Closing,” Portishead “Tetragrammaton,” The Mars Volta

E AP CALYPS

PICKS

W i l l S t ra t f o rd

11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

“Neon Bible,” Arcade Fire “Disease, Injury, Madness,” Opeth

“When the World Comes to an End,” Dirty Projectors + Bjork “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains),” Arcade Fire “The Ungrateful Dead,” Hella “Land Locked Blues,” Bright Eyes “Memphis Will Be Laid to Waste,” Norma Jean

16. 17. 18. 19.

“Tiny City Made of Ashes,” Modest Mouse “Rite of Spring, Part I (Excerpt),” Igor Stravinsky “Armchair Apocalypse,” Andrew Bird “Thriller,” Michael Jackson

20.

“Apocalypse Please,” Muse

LIBERTAS, V o l . 1 7 , N o . 4

“Rules is Rules”

he bangs and booms Daddy told us about sound super-far away. But, that’s probably ‘cause of our earplugs that Daddy got us. Me and my little brother are hugging each other tight, and he doesn’t like things here. I’m not sure I do either. The gray walls aren’t as good as the pink and blue ones me and my brother used to have. And it smells weird, like when we go to the Home Depot. Which is all the time. I think I like the old house better. “This is our new house!” said Daddy. And he was really excited about it, so I guess we should be too. He worked on it a lot. He spent all his time since mommy left making sure it was just right. I guess he wanted to make sure she liked it too for when she came back. “The concrete is supposed to be 28 inches thick,” he would say, “But I’m making it 48 inches because I love you two so much!” and he would give us a big bear hug and start to tell us another story about Mommy. The stories were always about things I never knew about Mommy. Like, how she was afraid of the hospital she worked near. She had to go there a few times. She never stayed though ‘cause Mommy’s aren’t made for hosptitals. And hospitals aren’t made for Mommy’s. But, Daddy would never finish the stories about Mommy. Which is weird. He would turn away and think real hard and close his eyes ‘till they watered. I guess he forgot how the stories ended. Daddy always told me, “Madeline, there’s two rules in this house. Safety first. And Rules is Rules.” He said “rules is rules” ‘cause Ben was too little to say it right, and his “R’s” sounded weird, like he had too much toothpaste in his mouth. So I said it too, “Rules is Rules!” Ben would always clap when I said it to him and roll around ‘cause he was too little and his head was too big. The bangs and booms are getting louder. Safety is definitely not first in the world outside. Daddy keeps running around the new house, checking the door and the walls and testing out all the lightbulbs we bought last week at the Home Depot. He looks over at me and gives me the thumbs up sign. That makes me feel a little better. But Ben keeps crying. Which doesn’t make me feel better. The other kids at school always made fun of Daddy. Except Johnny. Johnny

was our neighbor. Johnny said Daddy was cool and he liked to come over and look at the new house and he even helped me with the cans one time. The other kids said their parents said Daddy was crazy and that Daddy missed Mommy too much. I told Johnny I didn’t mind the other kids. I knew they were right ‘cause Daddy always said he was crazy about me and Ben. And of course he missed Mommy so much. I did too! That’s why I helped him make the new house for her. “Make sure you look at the date on the can before you put it on the shelf, Maddy. Make sure it’s “2015” or bigger, ok honey?” Daddy knew I was real good with numbers. I can see that the sky is getting darker, but it’s still morning. Which is weird. I can see through the 48 inch thick window Daddy put in a few months ago. I had told him I wanted a window like how I have in my real bedroom at the old house. Now I’m worried about the other kids. They don’t have 48 inch thick windows. They don’t have a new house underground. They have their old house and the old house isn’t safe when the bangs and booms come. “Always say goodbye to your friends from school every day. It’s polite.” Daddy would tell me. I told goodbye to everybody in my class but Johnny yesterday at school. He was sick. That makes me sad ‘cause I think I like him. Even though his head is too little. The little picture of me and Mommy that Daddy put up is shaking on the wall. Daddy is going over to the picture whenever I hear a banging noise above me. I let go of Ben and walk over to the window. Now, I can see Johnny and the other families through the window. They look like they’re screaming at me and they look really scared. I tap Daddy on the shoulder and point toward the window and scream, “Let them in!” Daddy lifts up my earplugs and whispers, “Rules is rules.”

Noa h Driv er

just another

flooded flboewer d 11

LIBERTAS, Vol. 17, No. 4

using is not a good habit of mine, my relatives oft repeated. I miss them already, I think, though so little time has passed. I am a different sort yet hold nothing against the rest of them. The matriarch never did see fit to ostracize me for my lethargic habits. Still, the community noticed that I merely looked on, day after day, as they toiled and built and collected and I...well, perhaps I feel a certain measure of jealousy. I will never be like them. Their work is absent of any cheer or merriment, that much is true, but neither does it depress them. Indeed, they seem emboldened by their communal successes. The fruits of their labors mount with each passing day. Our home at this point is a veritable mansion now, twisting corridors connect cavernous halls with space enough for storing food, raising newborns, and sleeping. Oh! errors abound. I switched into the present tense when I meant to stay in the past. Shock still grips my feelers. I’ll merely put the unedited rambling down as evidence of my trauma. I won’t repeat myself. Please regard what little came before to be in the near past, and let’s carry on. My world ended today. It all happened right before my very eyes. In fact I remain the lone witness to the catastrophe. I lay sunbathing on the swaying bulb of my favorite iris flower. The exertions from the climb alone left me breathless. As per the usual, I dis-

Ja c k so n M a uze

tantly spied on my laboring relatives. My mind wandered for a moment, contemplating how my relatives applied psychological hedonism (that is, working for the greatest common good) at the expense of themselves. They worked so hard, but where did they find the worth? Or did they not ask themselves that question? After birth, the run of life’s cycle (returning us to zero) invalidates our former existence because there is nothing for us after death. The justification they seek is in physical works and infant reproduction. I fail to see the point in maximizing either, since they are so temporary. Anyways. The sky was bright and the warmth welcome; I ably suppressed my usual anxieties. As I now postulate, it was the most effective moment for tragedy. A rippling, roaring wall of water swept in and suddenly consumed my home. It ripped away the foundations of our home, so massive was its swell. Those inhabitants assuredly drowned and the rest were brutally swept away to wet graves. I huddled pathetically far above the carnage. Nothing became audible over the torrent of cascading water, except for the sing of nearby nesting doves. I am alone now. What is the rest of this geography, this expanse rolling away beyond and above me, without my family? Just another existential crisis for me, the atheistic ant. At least I was right about everything returning to zero.

S HE H AS

A T S ES Tonight, I destroyed and saved my life.

All too frequently, we can trap ourselves in a corner, imprison ourselves in the same reality we’ve constructed. Some days you just wake up, look at the mess that faces you, and realize: This is what I’ve created. The present I face is the outcome of my own actions. Who I am is a product of what I’ve done. How do you think Cain felt wandering the desert?

And I had a volume, one full of my own sins, at my side all the while. In it, I chronicled every step of my pathetic descent into the man I’ve come to hate: a faceless figure who lashed out until everybody was gone. I only have this single confidant left. That’s why it has to burn. Burning a book takes more than a lit match. To burn a book is to show complete disdain for its author, for their ideas, for their message, for the hours and hours of their life left behind on those pages. I can hardly think of a more deserving volume. Tonight is the night that I put my past away. Tonight is the night that the person I have been vanishes from memory. Tonight is the night that I can finally sleep. My words go up in flame. Thoughts curl up under tongues of fire, expunging a decade’s worth of sins. The pages char into ashes. Some embers still smolder, but they’re little more than the indecipherable remnants of what was once my life. And all of a sudden, I’m a man with no past. No regrets manifest themselves in ink before me. I am a blank slate. Tabula Rasa. I am finally nobody.

J a c ob Cole

LIBERTAS, V o l . 1 7 , N o . 4

El i za be t h H ar ry

LI TAS last word