BLUEPRINT: a book by em by EM Mag

BLUEPRINT 1

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF noah chiet

MANAGING EDITOR

nate smith

PHOTO DIRECTOR

valeria sarto

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

matt mckinzie

DESIGN DIRECTOR

chloe krammel

VISUAL ARTS DIRECTOR 4

coco luan

STYLING DIRECTORS

michael figueiredo lily scher

EVENTS COORDINATOR sam berman

ASST. MANAGING EDITOR

riddhima dave

ASST. PHOTO DIRECTOR kate gondwe

ASST. DESIGN DIRECTOR

reagan allen

EDITORIAL

nada alturki faith bugenhagen erin christie tom garback sam goodman leah heath alyssa lara carly mcgoldrick carly roberts allyson roche meredith stisser

PHOTO

yuhan cheng andy czucz keely martin mariely torres

VISUAL ARTS

ellie bonifant grace hwang kaitlyn joyner pixie kolesa queenn mckend nadezhda ryan nic sugrue graysen winchester

Blue Future words by carly roberts

TBD words by meredith stisser

A Guide to Building a Home words by sam goodman The Death and Lives of Judith Shakespeare written by keely martin visuals by allyson roche

Joniâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Blue(print) words by matt mckinze

Fucking the Blueprint words by nada alturki

Outlining Outliers words by tom garback Scenes From a Tumultuous Adolescence words by carlene mcgoldrick A Grandmotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Guidance words by faith bugenhagen visuals by graysen winchester

Fate in Three words by alyssa lara

When Virality Became a Good Thing words by erin christie Animated Maps words by leah heath

nadezhda ryan & andy cruz

coco luan

mariely torres grace hwang nic sugrue 7

graysen winchester valeria sarto ellie bonifant kate gondwe kaitlyn joyner yuhan cheng queenn mckend noah chiet

A PLAN FOR THE FUTURE, A PLAN FOR NOW, AND A PLAN WE SHOULD HAVE PLANNED OUT. WE THINK WE CAN PREDICT HOW IT WILL COME ABOUT. WE ALL KNOW WHAT WE THINK WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE. OUR WORLD IS WOVEN WITH MICROCOSMS, POSSIBILITIES. DO WE SUCCUMB TO THIS EXPECTATION OR DO WE EXPLODE IT ALL TOGETHER?

Noah Chiet Editor-in-Chief

PHOTOS nadezhda ryan & andy czucz MODELS olivia neil & josh deguzman STYLING/MAKEUP michael figueiredo & lily scher

WORDS carly roberts

Climate change and its effects are always discussed in terms of distance. The apocalyptic effects are far off, then closer, then far off again. For some, it is so distant it is a speck on the horizon, and for others still, there is no horizon and there is no speck. Our generation is being called “the Greta Generation” in the wake of the Climate March in September of 2019. For many it encompasses our generation’s tendency to mobilize,

to commit to our activism, and to care deeply about the environmental

crisis

and to care deeply about the environmental crisisfacing facingus. us. However, it almost more poignantly highlights the collective fear, anxiety, and anger expressed in her address to the United Nations. Distance is almost always relative. The rhetoric of distance becomes the rhetoric of carelessness for some. For others, the rhetoric of distance is horrifying. There is so much rhetoric in social media, in the news sphere, in thoughts, and in conversations about “the time we have left.” In the past few years, this idea that we are careening towards a mid-century date in which the effects of global climate change become irreversible and there will be no going back, has settled like a thorn. So many people talk about different dates—they have been tossed around without intentionality. Some people will say we have until 2050, or 2030, or even 2020 to create change what we are careening towards. So many people still say that if there was ever a time to do something and truly affect change, it was in the early 1980s. How can something so tangible be conceived of as so far off, yet simultaneously already hopeless?

When Renaissance painters, in portraiture of their wealthy patrons, began using blue to indicate things in the background of the piece—blue people, blue fields, blue sheep—blue became the color

of distance.

The future is becoming exactly that, bluer and bluer. It is becoming unclear. The problem is that there is now no blueprint, and perhaps there never was, but the blueprint we may have had individually or collectively for our future is lost. Even the biological, societal blueprint to be fulfilled— that of having kids—is compromised by climate change. The reality is that we are going to, as a generation, as a world, have to rethink both pragmatically and philosophically the vague concept of our “future.” We have crafted for ourselves a blue future. Our futures were never something we thought would be compromised– our futures were always there ahead of us, unshaken. Fear of the future and discontent with present life is something that can be paralyzing. Personal future, fear over being unsuccessful or successful, fear of finding or never finding love, fear of being unfulfilled all punctuate our conceptions of our futures.

It is natural to be both forward and backward looking. They aren’t contradictory. The propensity towards progress, the penchant for growth and expansion, for the future to be shining and full of promise is, in many ways, a very American conception. The future, while always anxietyproducing, is always a place in which hope dwells. Possibility and hope are arm-in-arm. If the future is a blue place, deep in the backgrounds of our own self-portraits, it can be rich indigo at times, or pale and settled cornflower at others, or biting and cold blue on some days. My grandfather sometimes refers to the “wild blue yonder”— either referencing the world outside our Virginia home, or referencing the expanses of life we have stretching out before us. It makes sense that aa future can be wild and blue and “yonder.”

20 Imagining our futures has become an exercise since we were young— many of us probably have memories of being in elementary school and being handed career tests that were to be catalysts for our professional lives, even when we were only ten or eleven. So much of imparted wisdom comes from the emphasis of making pragmatic future decisions—

we are instructed that every decision made could irreversibly change our futures. Yet, we are also told that the universe may be limitless and that other dimensions may exist all around us, where slightly different version of our lives, and our futures, play out. This can be either comforting or incredibly haunting. A future before consciousness may A future beforeclimate climate consciousness may have enclosed these questions, but now it feels almost reckless to imagine another dimension in which we ended the use of fossil fuels, a future in which we became sustainable. In films, television shows, and pulp sci-fi novels, we have always imagined futures in which humans move underwater, in cities under snow globe-like domes. We imagine a blue future, but in a different sense, one that comes with nameless and bottomless seas. The future is always tinged with the distance of longing, that blue-tinged and far-off realm of possibilities. These are the possible heartbreaks, the possible modes of living that could be. There are almost countless imaginations, dystopian and utopian, of the far, far off future. In some, human beings moved out of the sphere of the earthâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;out into deep and dark space, settling on the gray moon or red Marsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;no longer blue-tinged but black and deep and so distant it can no longer be blue. What if we, one day, dwell in that color that swallows all refractions of light?

Dystopian novels are becoming more and more which popular

feels

more and more popular, which feels obvious, but ties closely in with the sensation that we are born into something we feel we have no agency over. So many people talk about post-grad life, debating whether or not they will flee Boston to Los Angeles, or New York City, if they will plant roots or unroot on the East or the West Coast. So many people dream of New York City, but even that age-old mecca of dreams for the future will be underwater in the foreseeable decades. It can be almost paralyzing, thinking of all the ways of living that are fading from this world, that will no longer be accessible. It is overwhelming to think of everything that is lost or could be lost, the thousands of languages that have disappeared, all the animals that have been going extinct in what many scientists are calling â&#x20AC;&#x153;the Sixth Extinction.â&#x20AC;? In an environmental literature class, my classmates and I spent nearly an hour feeling deeply sad about the fact that one day our children may not see fireflies collecting at the bases of deeply-rooted trees. They may not walk outside on a fall morning and see deer brushing their noses through the grasses for apples. Still, that same fear, anxiety, and anger felt over being born into a world on the brink of crisis comes from something crucial. The abstractness of a future

is made all the more ambiguous by the abstractness and uncertainty of what will result from climate change. We are facing something that no generation has faced beforeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;there is no blueprint, no set of instructions for how to think about and act within this. To think of all that can be lost in a future so irreversibly undone in front of our very eyes has not actually been paralyzing for a generation whose futures have yet to begin to unfold. Which must come from that crucial thing, that drive to radically and fiercely defend and love our futures. How do we then radically love and defend our futures, to radically love and defend our earth? How can we make something salvageable out of the rubble it seems we were already born into? How do we unmake rubble? We are being told we will encounter a future filled with loss, and it is up to us to process how we will lose. To radically love our future will mean to love it, and love ourselves by that extension, within all of that loss.

coco luan Digital (2019).

PHOTOGRAPHY mariely torres

mariely torres film photo, paper, marker (2019).

WORDS meredith stisser

II moved into 2 Boylston place in August of 2017, maybe you did too. I had visited campus a few weeks before. The building was still under construction, with stacks of desk chairs overflowing in the lobby. I was filled with apprehension as I grappled with how this stark, incomplete place could ever be a respite to come back to every day. Sure enough, in the following weeks, the chairs found desks to match and rooms to live in, just as I would do. I arrived on a campus in progress, I have since lived on a campus in er son progress. Scaffolding and Em Emerson have become a word association pairing I will never unlearn. I kept my head low as I sulked under The Colonial Theatre, through the massive boards sheltering the Little Building ravaged with onehundred years of freshman angst. I accepted but never admired that I lived on a city corner that was unsatisfied with how it wasâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a city corner that craved expansion. Metallic structure left little room for daydreams of open spaces and a fluid world beyond. My friends from home boasted grassy quads and postcard university views, and although I never envied them, I wondered what it would be like to exist in a finished space. Only now, on my third rotation past our favoritestar, star, have I realized our favorite

that this constant building, tireless reach upwards and excavation inwards, is a noisy gift. A cliche-yet beautiful all the same— metaphor for how we live our lives. A less than aesthetic reminder of imperfection and the dangers of growth purely for the sake of getting bigger. We are never complete, not in t this his intermediate phase of our lives, the messy tides of college. Though the sting of sidewalk expansion (as soon as the scaffolding came off of Walker no less) was very real, and very upsetting, I come to argue in favor of the construction. This imposition in our niche can be taken at face value, loud and unflattering, or we can get to know her. Construction around us as we construct ourselves. Does the class of 2025 have it made? Will they get to see everything up and running? Will their experience be more complete than ours? Friends have asked how different things may have been had we had “The Lion’s Den” in place of Whiskey Saigon. No buzz from locally sourced nitro cold brew will compare to the cringe induced adrenaline rush I felt when walking past the the nightclub on a Thursday night in of all my sweatpants. Maybe all of the Boylston block will be bought up by dear Emerson, and our campusless campus will at long last feel established and defined. Maybe all of Boston will start to accept board bucks as a legitimate currency and those of us who graduated will resent the classes that came after us to reap the benefits of our steadily climbing tuition. They’ll get a gym with windows. It is not fair. It is annoying. I hear that, I feel that. Yet, the ability to look past these trivialities and ferociously enjoy the time we spend each day in spite of and because of the unfairness of it is an invaluable skillset to acquire. To wallow in our perceived injustice is not a productive form of activism. A bolder stance to consider; embrace the status of the sidewalk, and strut through the barricades with a smile on your face. Construction serves as a reminder to look at our lives and our futures, and devote sense to it.

Construction can mean expansion, but it can also mean demolition. Increasing oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s property is an intrinsic capitalistic value. The American ideal of manifest destiny exists in microcosm as people buy up property, a wild notion that any human can own Earth. Yet they do. This capitalistic pursuit for progress instills constant anxiety in all of us. If we are not doing something, we are not standing still. We are moving backward. Time is money, a moment of silenced jackhammers is a moment wasted. A moment spent sitting with yourself is a moment wasted. These are the values of a construction site, these bleed into our everyday routine. Reject Reject

embrace

these themes in or embrace these themes your life, there are lessons to be learned from the metal beams and pulley systems around us. To be a part of something in its infantile stages is rare. Feelings of frustration that many of us will not walk through a campus free from construction is natural, but let us look at this construction as a blueprint for better. Would it be fair to say that political policies need not be improved because eventually, future generations will be better off than the current? No, it would not be. Should we be satisfied with the inequality of the genders, of the growing divide between extreme growing poverty and extreme wealth, with an environment gasping for air, simply because the inconvenience of having to construct a better blueprint for those who will inherit this world after us is too great? I think not.

synonymous Construction is synonymous with manifestation. Imagine the structure you want to see more than anything, lay the plans to make it, and begin building. To manifest is to trust the present and remain hopeful for the future. To manifest is to allow the universe to gift you with everything you want simply by actualizing those desires. Lay a blueprint flat and recognize that everything drawn will come to fruition. Are you still listening? If you checked out after I said I was in favor of construction, that’s alright too. These notions are grandiose. It is a stretch, to compare frustration with awkward ramps to deeper existential frustration with the rat race world we live in. But take a moment to appreciate yourself, for building a home in a ruptured campus and creating consistency through chaos is a beautiful thing to be able to do. Though I resent the walkways hindered with bright orange cones and rattling metal restrictions, existing alongside the constants in this changing landscape is a superpower.

There lies a secret message with this constant expansion; we are constantly spreading, shapeshifting, growing. To exist among construction should not leave you with a sense of being “unfinished.” Unfinished can mean: left to decay, never to reach completion, never to fulfill one’s potential. We are not unfinished. We are simply in progress. We will not settle for a “good enough” version of ourselves. We will look to improve who we are as a people, starting with our sturdy foundations, and working our way out to facades that express what we want them to. Come down to Earth a moment, and remember the history of this city. Stolen from indigenous people, bought up by the wealthy, commoditized by universitieses—so much struggle so much negativity...allow that cycle to be broken. Terra firma altered so many times, change is the human way. Reject the negative tropes of construction; progress is ugly, rest is stagnation, bigger is better. Embrace the positive tropes; the here and now is beautiful even when unfinished, pausing to breathe is one of the most human acts one can do, capitalism is a trap—just kidding… sorta. Indulge in being a founding member in a group of people who quite literally built this college. moment. Seize this unsteady moment. Roots will always grow through the cracks in the sidewalk.

grace hwang Ink on paper (2019).

WORDS sam goodman

DEMOLITION I spent most of my adolescence patiently waiting for my future to arrive. I waited for the sound of her knock on my door. I was ready to answer. grasp free from my parents’ and break free I dreamed of the day I would break from my parents’ grasp and begin living life according to me. I was told to let it be what it will be, to take my time. Que será, será.¹ So, I sat by the door, and waited for my future to take me by the hand. She would lead me along ever so sweetly. She was a hypothetical future of romance and roommates and rushing to class on hazy Boston days. I waited patiently for those days. As I dreamed of this future, I lay on the grass outside of my Granada Hills home. I fell in love with the world around me. There was beauty in the willows, power in the hills, pride in the pavement.

I was 25 miles from Los Angeles, hidden from the grime and gray of the city. My quaint white home sat atop a small hill. Ivy brambles weaved around the mailbox in my front yard and neighbors waved “hello” as they walked their kids to one of the neighborhood schools. Annual fires blackened our hills and rain rarely blessed our valleys. I grew attached to this home as my future quickly approached. My love letter to Granada Hills was being written at a time when I was leaving it behind. Close friends and I let the soft sound of “Landslide” and “The Circle Game” whisk us away while we turned cul de sacs in the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley. We felt the cool summer breeze kiss our cheeks. We posed to Taylor Dayne and RuPaul and smeared lipstick on each

other’s mouths in teenage rebellious rage. Movie nights and late nights turned to up-all-nights and lazy, hazy, crazy summer nights.² Late afternoon on the West Coast ends with the sky doing all its brilliant stuff.³ We were 17 in every glorious way. We swam and sang and shouted out. We held teenagehood firmly in our fists. We felt power in our youth. We dreamed of our futures and promised to keep in touch. Future wasn’t a word that separated us; it was our collective fantasy, a distant

daydream

of grandeur. Wrapped in the warmth of the sun, we lay by the pool, breathing in the smell of hydrangea and horseshit. The sweet scent of suburbia flirted with the stench of small backyard ranches our neighbors had cultivated. It was home nonetheless. Our minds drifted. The future would come. We were ready for it. But that was then and this is now. Let us just lay out and dream for a little bit longer. The future would come. …

The future came. It banged down my door, busted down my walls, and dragged me away kicking and screaming. My future was just a dream until I was sitting on a plane, longing to return to what seemed like my distant past. I felt my childhood slipping away. I clung to the willows, the hills, the pavement and remembered how far my then future, and now present, felt. I boarded flight 1423, LAX to BOS, and the lyrics “Can we be 17 again?” never felt so real. 4 When future bangs down your door and busts through your walls, how do you rebuild?

FOUNDATION I arrived and began throwing my belongings onto a bed I would call “mine” for the year. I smelled the freshly painted walls of 80 Boylston. Far from home. I watched the minutes count down until my parents would leave. They grasped me tightly. I cried. They would go

and

I would be alone.

That would be it.

I pause to think about the concept of being a first-year college student. It almost seems cruel. Drop 900 insecure, immature, horny strangers in one building in the middle of a city most of them have never been to. Sick. But that’s exactly what it is. It’s a beautiful mess of teenage angst. Parents empty their nests and children begin building their own. As quickly as I arrived, my parents departed and with them went my childhood. They packed away my 17 and showed me 18. My foundation was being demolished, uprooted below me. I had to work to lay a new one. I said “goodbye.”

FRAMING The door shut behind my parents and then there was me. There was me, a freshly made bed, and a clean carpet while outside my door on the 12th floor laid a world of possibility. Out there could be a best friend, a groomsman, the man of my dreams. More realistically, it was a bunch of college freshmen looking for someone to talk to. Strangers turned into neighbors and neighbors to friends. We exchanged names and majors and hometowns of getting-to-know-you. in a whirlwind

Some names stick out more than others. I find my way back to my bed. It’s 1:12 a.m. and I sit and wonder when this room will feel like home. When will these people be my people? I would latch onto them for a week or two or three. I would lean on them, demanding they listen to me divulge the trials and tribulations of my 17 years of living. I would do the same for them in return. I built a support system and called these people “my people,” all while knowing it would inevitably collapse. In desperation, we rush to build walls around us. We make errors in our construction and wait for those walls to crumble. When the framing is finished, we begin to furnish.

FURNISHING There are posters above my bed. Artists’ work that lets my mind wander. Images that remind me of home— curved palm trees, orange sunsets, rolling hills. These images will never bring me home. I carefully selected a yellow comforter for my twin XL bed thinking yellow would make me feel less lonely. I’m still alone. Stringy lights line my walls— a feeble attempt to make my cold, dark dorm feel inhabitable. It’s still cold and it’s still dark.

These things create a momentary feeling of hominess. It’s an act. My essential oil diffuser filled with lavender and lemon will never replace the summer scent of hydrangeas and horseshit. We hang things above our beds and hope knick-knacks will fill the void. Nothing will fill the void. It is impossible to decorate your space as it crumbles. Home cannot be defined by posters and pillows. It must be carefully constructed, not hastily tacked on. And yet, I continue to tack things onto the wall above my bed. I sit on the windowsill of my 10 x 20 ft. dorm and gaze at the gray of the city. It’s raining. I dream of the hills of the San Fernando Valley. My heart will always lay in those hills. I can come and go as I please, knowing I will always belong there. However, until I can return, I need a home to keep me safe. Construction begins. I work to rebuild.

DEMOLITION I consider the structure of a houset its blueprint. The foundation was recently demolished then freshly laid. The walls came down as quickly as they went up. The decor has no ability to make this skeleton of a life feel like home.

Your future has arrived. It’s banging down your door. It’s tearing down your walls. It’s destroying your foundation and forcing you to start all over again.

41 That’s ok.

It’s ok to let your future, your fate, tear down your walls. The place I now call “home” is an absolute mess. The paint is chipping and the ventilation is on its last leg. There’s a leak in the roof and the floors are filthy. There is still work to be done. Do not abandon your home. Do not leave it to rot. Start anew. Lay a foundation, add your framing, finish with furnishing. You will always be in a state of renovation. Build a house, a home, all while knowing it will soon be demolished once again.

Endnotes 1. Ray Evans. “Que Será, Será (Whatever Will Be, Will Be).” Columbia, 1956. 2. Hans Carste and Charles Tobias. “Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer.” Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer, Capitol Records, 1963. 3. Didion, Joan. Unknown. 4. Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe. “Seventeen.” Heathers: The Musical, Yellow Sound Label, 2014.

nic sugrue Digital & photo manipulation (2019).

graysen winchester acrylic on paper (2019).

PHOTOS keely martin WORDS allyson roche MODEL geneva klein STYLING michael figueiredo, lily scher & allyson roche MAKEUP michael figueiredo, lily scher & noah chiet

If William William Shakespeare Shakespeare had a female sibling talent and powho possessed the same talent tential that he did, she—despite being “as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was”—would not be sent to school. When caught reading her brother’s schoolbooks, she would be scolded, then told to mend her stockings. Her parents would plan for her to get married, but she would “[cry] out that marriage was hateful to her.” Her father would beat her for resisting. Before reaching seventeen, she would run away from home, leaving behind a childhood and innocence she never fully tasted. She would try to become an actress, but would be rejected because of her gender. She would get pregnant, with her gift and means of expression so suppressed, and kill herself. This is how the story would go—Virginia Woolf argued in, A Room of One’s Own—had Judith Shakespeare been a real figure. Maybe she wasn’t a historical figure, but she has certainly appeared and reappeared throughout history because “she lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed.” This typical housewife figure described by Woolf exemplifies the rigidity of the system that yearns to hide women’s desires. Whether they seek to write, paint, build, or count, the archetype reduces the value of women down to their ability to nurture while suppressing their own voices and needs. They are conditioned to please, to be quaint and quiet. These duties are the foundations of the blueprint given to us at birth, and when women attempt to veer from the predetermined fate of this role, they end up like Judith Shakespeare: alone and dead. The gift of her voice was being suppressed and she would certainly accept death over conformity. Judith’s blueprint is bleak, but so is the “housewife’s.” Are these the only options? Do we suffer through a life in which our voice is undiscovered or do we attempt to break through that mold only to lose everything?

During the 1940s and 1950s, when the housewife symbol reigned, the “strong woman” figure emerged in film noir: the femme fatale. Women on screen broke the rules by becoming seductive, sinister, and murderous. Whip-smart, strategizing women take hold of the screen only to end up dead, like Judith, for attempting to achieve freedom. The femme fatale illuminates the manifestation of male fear, specifically after World War II. They posed the question: What would women

life domestic they refused to re-enter their roles after do if in the

war

ended

? Their personal ambition was viewed as inherently conniving and as housing ulterior motives. They were always punished; most noir films end with the femme fatale either dead or in prison. Too many times, the femme fatale is condemned for being purely evil, while the film in which she lives evades analysis of her motives. In Double Indemnity, Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrichson convinces a life insurance salesman to help kill her husband, as he makes her feel like she can’t breathe, “keeps [her] shut,” and “has always been mean” to her. Phyllis, like many other noir dames, hints at her position in an abusive relationship. With divorce an unacceptable, and sometimes inaccessible option in 1944, Phyllis saw murder as her only way to gain freedom. If the femme fatale was indicative of women’s ambition and frustration toward domestication, her commitment to achieving freedom should not be ignored. For this alone, Judith’s spirit lived among these characters, whispering to the audience members a muffled cry for help. cryfor help.

reb But sto orn. even W nes a Woo at tha oolf f nd dr lf co the e he t if ollo own mmi nd o ma r pote we li wed t ing he tted s f Wo tim rk, a ntia ved he f rsel uici olf ’s can e, pr nd I l fulfi “ano ate o f in thde in life, foll ovin wou lled ther f Ju e O 1941 Jud ow. g t ld . W ce dith use by ith he arg e’r ntu , h Ri fil had exi ue t e 1 ry o er ver. ling n’t sten ha 0 y r o S h ce t Jud ears so,” wn cr he w er co been a c of a e i a n th is away Judith ation s 59. t poc omple . ke t E ew pre fro pat sen m r would Wool ven V ts wi ely h— t a eac b f e irg th a n nd h hing e re stim inia bo a ew as blu been that c rn anted “Bu epr t int—for a entury d the she li y n ves tha long eed ; fo tw onl r gr e y th eat e op poe por ts d tun o n ity ot d to w ie; alk they am are ong co us ntinu in the ing p fles rese h.” nce s;

Just as I saw Judith wisping through the seductive dames of film noir and through tragic, gifted writers like Woolf and Plath, I sensed the unborn poet in the works of the Riot Grrrl movement of the 1990s, who did not let barriers stop them from publishing their own content in zines, music, films and poetry. Riot Grrrls not only embodied the rebirth of Judith, but also used language similar to Woolf’s in their efforts. Activist Angela Seguel is famously pictured naked with the words “every girl is a riot grrrl” written across her body. Saying “every girl is a riot grrrl” is not ignorantly believing that all women are on the same page, or feminists with the same agenda. Instead, it is an invitation. It has the hospitality that the phrase “every girl CAN BE a riot grrrl” would have, yet excludes the next question that would be asked: This question doesn’t need an answer, because there is already a Riot Grrrl inside you, sitting right next to Judith Shakespeare. Riot Grrrl was an invitation to meeting the Judith Shakespeare in each of us—accepting the invitation that Judith Shakespeare could never respond to. The Judith Shakespeare inside you and inside me dances with the joy; the prospect of expressing her voice sets her free. Her fate in her first life does not have to be the same 55 for her in the next, as she works within our cursive and collage making, exercising her genius through creativity and collaboration. The Riot Grrrls have graduated to the past tense, and Judith still needs saving. History has not been on our side. So, why do we write? Why do we keep trying to use our voices? As Patti Smith put it best: “ Because we cannot simply live . ”

WORDS matt

Joni Mitchell was once credited with creating “the blueprint for the human experience.”1 It is a lofty and almost unfair attribution. How can one person possibly possess a singular cyanotype of the very facet of our existence—our humanity—that cannot be essentialized? That question takes me to a conversation I once had with a friend, who referred to 60 Joni as “the universal woman.” But what is universal womanhood, and how could someone possibly understand the whole of the female experience, in all of its diversity and intersectionality? And yet, we see Joni Mitchell venerated at that feverish pitch time and time again. “Mitchell, in all her incarnations, remains a chief cartographer of American music and the female experience. Regardless of who you are, her map is made for you,” a recent VICE article claimed.2 With her chameleonic command of craft, Joni was at the vanguard of the folk rock revolution in the late-1960s (writing one of the era’s most enduring numbers, “Both Sides Now,” from 1969’s Grammy-winning Clouds). By the turn of the decade, she began channeling her sun-soaked lamentations into far darker and more personal fare, with a penchant for confessionalism that won her critical raves and radio airplay. Upon the virtually back-toback releases of Blue (1971), For the Roses (1972), and Court and Spark (1974), Joni emerged the raw and unpretentious pillar of an agonized generation, and seemed to pour out universal realities in sumptuously sparse sessions of guitar-strumming realness.

mckinzie

The effects of Blue ,

widely considered Joni’s magnum opus, are still felt today. On Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums List, it occupies the highest-charting entry by a female artist, and in NPR’s lineup of the 100 Greatest Albums Made By Women, Blue comes out on top. In terms of genre alone, it is commonly heralded as the decade’s gold standard in pop music, and the poster child of the mid-century American folk revival, with a kind of structural exceptionality that reads like a musical “palindrome…[a] perfect record,” according to critic John Corbett.3 It comes as no surprise, then, that when Joni experimented with jazz sonics on 1975’s The Hissing of Summer Lawns (the follow-up to what would become her greatest-selling, and most pop-oriented, album), critics and audiences approached her work with skepticism and even hostility. For millions of listeners, her early-70s discography was the tabernacle of the singer-songwriter genre. Blue was the Holy Eucharist inside, and Joni was the priest leading the sermon. Venturing into jazz was not merely unorthodox—it was sacrilegious. sacrilegious

And yet, examining Joni’s oeuvre with a retrospective eye, it is clear she was not dismantling those folky origins with her mid-70s diversion into genre exploration. Contrarily, it is in Blue—the album most credited with inventing the genre blueprint for singer-songwriters in the first place—that the singer-songwriter blueprint is wholly, and radically, subverted. I, too, regarded Blue as the apotheosis of countercultural songwriting for a long time. It is an unavoidable album, with an immediate, almost rustic beauty detectable on even the most casual of listens. And that is exactly how I had heard Blue for most of my life: in passing. In random, Spotify-curated playlists, or in the occasional movie scene (Annette Benning belting out “All I Want” in The Kids Are All Right still puts a smile on my face). But I never gave it the thorough, uninterrupted—and revealing—listen it deserved. Summer 2019 was my summer of Blue. Its beauty managed to linger diaphanously in my brain and heart even as years of silence had passed. I spent rainy car rides in June revisiting “All I Want,” water droplets flung against windshield glass with each unfettered pluck of a dulcimer string. “My Old Man” sent me into dreams of wintry city living, post-Christmas, shivering under the covers of an empty mattress, waiting anxiously for my lover to return home from work. I passed hot July afternoons reading Play It As It Lays on our back patio to the sounds of “Little Green,” Maria Wyeth’s disconnect from her hospitalized child imagined in my mind’s eye by Joni’s cry for the daughter she was forced to put up for adoption. I spent nights pacing, barefoot, around the airy hardwood of our room living

floor floor ,

the summery background vocals on “Carey” feeling particularly liberating. As far as the title track went, I only listened to it once or twice. Its bleakness terrified me. It remains my least favorite song on the album—perhaps because it is too beautiful: Blue. Songs are like tattoos. You know I’ve been to sea before. Crown and anchor me, or let me sail away. Hey Blue, there is a song for you. Ink on a pin, underneath the skin. An empty space to fill in. I still aim to find closure at the A-side’s denouement, and while “Blue” no doubt elicits a melancholy, even religious solitude, it simultaneously hurls our expectations into a boundless and terrifying purgatory. It is something I still haven’t reconciled. The LP’s final track, “The Last Time I Saw Richard,” remains one of Joni’s least-discussed songs. It doesn’t elicit the same emotional response as the other tracks, and perhaps that is because it is Joni’s at her most meta, and most frank, for it confronts the stereotype that has come to be associated with Blue, and the very stereotype that Joni herself yearns to escape: The last time I saw Richard was Detroit in ‘68, and he told me all romantics meet the same fate someday: cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe. As a collective listening culture, we’ve essentialized Blue to be just that: romantic, cynical, 62 dark-cafe music. But

what

dark-cafe

music ,

really ? Many would argue Blue is the epitome of just that, its album art (Joni’s agonized visage, amid a cobalt, low-lit haze, crooning into the head of a microphone) remaining the chief icon of the “genre.” Blue is where the narrative begins, we tell ourselves, and unspooling from its murky gatefold are the direct progeniture of its poet: contemporary female artists (Brandi Carlile, Joanna Newsom, and Lydia Loveless among them) must only populate the coffeehouse circuit because it was Joni that blazed the trail for them in the first place. In reality, and in spite of its iconic cover, Blue radically departs from the zeitgeist with which it is often erroneously enmeshed, and reveals itself as the artist’s prime antithetical masterwork. Revealing piano ballads, open-tuned guitar-based tone poems, and raw dulcimer-laden tunes operate in auditory contrast with the cozier, open-mic elements of the Greenwich Village scene, and depart especially from the increasingly overproduced music of Joni’s contemporaries: she

is not Melanie Safka, giddy about her Brand New Key, or John Lennon crying out for us to Imagine a world of peace—not even Bob Dylan crooning that he’s Thrown It All Away. She certainly isn’t lobbying for a hit single, or for us, as listeners, to navigate and comprehend the deepest mechanisms of her emotions or relationships. She simply yearns to be, and to feel, and to love, and to ache, as freely and authentically as possible. Blue is her pliable, personal, flippant-to-trends forum in which to do all of those things. But what have we done? We have made Blue ours; in a sense, this is what Joni wants: the music should reveal to us more about ourselves, and not have us mining for the details of her own life. But we have taken so much ownership of her music that we’ve turned the album into exactly what Joni works so hard to subvert: a blueprint— for other albums, for genres, for styles, and for standards of excellence. In the open, virtually anarchist landscape of her deeply intimate LP, standards and stereotypes are upheaved and undone to better explore, and live in, the complex and amorphous nature of human emotions and relationships. Ironically, the culture has scooped from Joni’s shifting soundscape a commoditized item of consumption, and made from it something hierarchical

and

restrictive

what kind of a creative culture does that breed ?

A culture of blueprints, where Joni’s artistic progeny find themselves at the mercy of critique and comparison should they choose to venture down a road less traveled. Myriad creators proudly acknowledge the influence other artists have had on their lives, and even aim to pay them homage in their work. It is also true that many of those same creators contend with feelings of intimidation and inadequacy, living in the shadow of their predecessors’ sacred roadmaps. Even those who outright ignore the “classics” in favor of their own originality must contend with the trappings of the blueprint. The aforementioned Loveless, a female singer-songwriter who had never before heard Blue, was once confronted by a male audience member in a club: “I was at a bar when I was like 16, when I just started playing out solo, and this guy was like ‘Every female singer was inspired by Joni Mitchell.’ Then I replied, ‘No, that’s not true. I do not listen to her.’ Then he was like, ‘Well, you’re wrong.’ Like, what the fuck is this conversation?”.4 Contrary to essentialist common discourse (the journalists interviewing Loveless forced her to sit down and listen to the album, brainwashing her, if you will, into the musical “blueprint”), the shock here isn’t Loveless’ “lack of love” for Blue. Rather, it is the culture’s collective insistence that an artist like Loveless must force herself into the box of Joni Mitchell-decscendancy, and carve a cyanic roadmap within that set of expectations. How ironic that is—with the knowledge that Blue is inherently an album of remapping: not only of genre conventions, but of literal travels subverted, written while Joni lived out her plan to journey across the European continent for a year...a plan subsequently diverted by her decision to return home early.

Thus, when we find that Joni, in Blue, was dismantling the very blueprint she was credited with creating, we understand how ludicrous our pop cultural honorifics truly are. There is no blueprint for art, or for the human experience, and Joni herself is perhaps the biggest defender of this reality. If we must let any iota of her (or any creator’s) work operate as our blueprint for creativity, or for life, let it be a lyric from the song “Cactus Tree” (which, ironically, cannot be found on Blue): We should be

so busy

. ..

being free .

Endnotes Endnotes 1, 2. Bain, Katie. “The Guide to Getting Into Joni Mitchell, the Blueprint for Human Experience.” VICE, Vice Media, 7 Nov. 2018, http://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3mzpb/ joni-mitchell-best-songs-guide-playlist-essay. 3. Corbett, John. “Anatomy of a Perfect Album: On Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue.’” Literary Hub, Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature, 28 Mar. 2019, https://lithub.com/anatomy-of-a-perfect-album-on-joni-mitchells-blue/. 4. Terry, Josh. “We Made Lydia Loveless Listen to Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’ for the First Time.” Chicago Tribune, Chicago Tribune, 15 Nov. 2016, https://www.chicagotribune.com/redeye/ redeye-lydia-loveless-blind-spots-interview-jonimitchell-blue-20161107-story.html.

coco luan Digital (2019).

It is hard to imagine that a 17 or 18-year-old kid can do their own laundry

WORDS nada alturki

let alone decide what they want to do with the rest of their lives. They can barely legally drink at that age, let alone choose their career path. But this is our reality, and we have spent centuries normalizing it. If you’ve watched any ‘80s coming-of-age movies, you’ve seen how tough the kid’s parents were; they had a plan A, plan B, and then some. College is the first option. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, a big part of the parental population had not gone to college, and many of them were immigrants as well. It is understandable that they wanted a better education for themselves, and since that was something they couldn’t have, they made it a priority for their kids instead. It wasn’t the millennials’ dream, it was theirs. Education is becoming inaccessible to most, and as a result, people have begun relating it to a factor that strengthens the patriarchal society we live in, disempowering the lower-middle and working classes. If those communities cannot access education that provides them with a booster degree in order to get a life-sustaining job (i.e. a doctor, lawyer, engineer), then they will continue to work in labor-heavy positions—ones that do not pay well, and ones the higher classes are not willing to work. More and more millennials are choosing to go to work straight out of high school, mainly due to the fact that college tuition rates are increasing exponentially. Twenty years ago, all that a 22-year-old student had to worry about was making it to graduation day without having a less-than-satisfactory GPA to show for their time in college. Most college students today find themselves overwhelmed with classes, schoolwork, extracurriculars, an internship in order to obtain the experience that post-undergrad jobs require, and a part-time job to pay their bills. According to an article by Market Watch, “one in five Gen Z and young millennials say they may choose not to go to college.”1 Additionally, “89% of Gen Z, along with nearly 79% of young millennials, have considered an education path that looks different from a four-year degree directly out of high school.”2 Monetary restriction is not the only reason newer

generations are choosing not to obtain a higher education. Although the only way to get a high-paying job 20 years ago was through a college degree, the workforce today looks very different. Various factors, including the rapid growth of technology, globalization, a growing embrace of the arts, etc. have helped deconstruct the rigid structure or routine of the pursuit of happiness and success in life. Although nearly 100% of parents still think that a college education is a key factor in determining future success, younger generations don’t seem to think so. Millennials today would prefer getting “real world experience” rather than sitting in a classroom, learning about what that experience will look like—hence the emphasis on getting as many internships as possible before graduation. Job institutions understand this reality, which is why so many hiring parties require prior experience, you’re even when fresh out of college

The facts are, education and the work environment will look drastically different in the future.3 According to research conducted by Dell Technologies, jobs 100 years from now will look nothing like they do today. The world is quickly evolving, and a method of learning developed centuries ago will not lead us to the future we are meant to serve. An article by Business Insider states that education has already changed dramatically over the past few decades: “Rigby-Wills has been teaching since 1996. Within just the past five or six years, parent involvement has gone way down, she says.”4 Now, students are looking for alternatives to traditional lecture- style educational methods. The education alternative organization UnCollege is a one-year gap year program with the goal of encouraging students to follow their interests, embrace self-directed learning, hack the education system, and entertain the idea of entrepreneurship. Students are also increasingly likely to venture into alternative in-class education, such as online tutorial websites like Lynda.com, Coursera, etc. to acquire new skills. Real world experience is encouraged more than anything these days. It isn’t enough anymore to have a college education; hiring firms look for driven students who have taken on internships or have done volunteer work. Real-world experience and working skills can be enough to get hired. The changes in education have also been mirrored in the workplace. One example is WeWork offices. They have taken the professional work-area by 72 storm; the fact that they exist is an encouraging factor for people who might consider working remotely or doing freelance. WeWork is also working on launching an elementary school that encourages hands-on and entrepreneurial learning. Students are no longer leaving their futures up to the system, and they are ruthless about leaving their education and livelihood in the hands of others. Millennials and Gen Z kids are more open to embracing the arts and adopting the idea that they can be anything they want to be, regardless of how dependable it is. “I personally don’t like going into college knowing what you want to do,” an Emerson College tour guide tells a prospective student’s mom as they walk into an academic building.

We are creating a context of culture with individuals being “artists” or “creators” or “thinkers,” rather than “employees” or “workers.” In general, millenials are better educated and more diverse in the workforce than any other generation. However, they are less financially independent, according to an article by Pew Research Center.5 Is that because the system isn’t progressing in the way education is? Is our generation doomed to lifelong low income because of our free spirit and our “fuck the blueprint” mentality? We can only hope that our surroundings catch up with our evergreen embrace of change and innovation .

Endnotes 1, 2. Wellemeyer, James. “Half of Young Americans Say Their Degree Is Irrelevant to Their Work.” MarketWatch, 11 Aug. 2019, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/half-of-young-americans-say-college-isnt-necessary-2019- 8-06. 3. Jenkins, Ryan. “This Is How Generation Z Will Bypass College.” Inc.com, Inc., 20 Feb. 2018, https://www.inc.com/ryan-jenkins/this-is-how-generation-z-will-bypass-college.html. 4. Weller, Chris. “Teachers Reveal How Education Has Changed Dramatically over the Past 20 Years.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 25 May 2017, https://www.businessinsider.com/teachers-how-education-has-changed-2017-5. 5. Bialik, Kristen, and Richard Fry. “How Millennials Compare with Prior Generations.” Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project, Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, 14 Feb. 2019, https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/essay/millennial-life-how-young-adulthood-today-compares-with-prior-generations/.

PHOTO valeria sarto 120mm film, old 35mm film, staples, matches, lighter,

WORDS tom garback

we look If we look back back on our human history, it is clear that gay is more than okay: Alexander the Great, Florence Nightingale, Michelangelo, Emily Dickinson, Leonardo da Vinci, Eleanor Roosevelt, James I, Billie Holiday, Julius Caesar, Virginia Woolf, James Buckanon, Frida Kahlo, possibly Shakespeare, and many others, were rulers, artists, and activists. Despite what most mainstream religions and your uncle with the Chevy pickup try to make us think, queerness is by no means an unwanted—dare I say unnecessary—genetic outlier, provided a “norm” was ever legitimately established outside ancient scripture, lawbooks, or social media posts.

If we If we are built from the people who have lived, created, and died before us, we are made of the compassion, exploration, and courage of each gay figure who forged their forms of justice and love. There is no drop of blood, no square inch of skin, no fold of brain tissue that has not been culturally, intellectually, and physically touched by queer human beings. So what, then, are we to do when faced with proof that homosexuality specifically is not within the bounds of our genetic blueprint, or so says the most recent scientific breakthrough everyone’s been talking about, including The New York Times, PBS, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, Forbes, NPR, and any publication you’d find in a doctor’s waiting room? The study is called “Large-scale GWAS reveals insights into the genetic architecture of same-sex sexual behavior” and was written by Andrea Ganna, Karin J. H. Verweij, Michel G. Nivard, and nearly twenty others. Published on August 30th of this year by nationally renowned journal Science, this piece claims there is no single gene that determines sexuality. Instead, it argues, sex is made up of hundreds of genes that each have small but indirect impact. Our blueprints have come undone, or maybe they have only been made more complicated, and our understandings have come undone instead. I’m sure you’re imagining what this research means for homophobic institutions who may now twist the facts into making a case that being gay is a choice, and therefore repressible. The bigger question remains: what does this study change about the way we collectively identify with the building blocks of our bodies? I’d say this same-sex study affirms the significance of our fluidities, our transience as sentient beings open to moldings and remolding. We are made up of many tiny blueprints that are living, always changing and interacting with each

other, book-loads of overlaid pages, each sheet showing through to the next, disrupting or continuing each other’s rigid lines, darkening their hues to thicken our geometrics. This place and time allows us to remember how far we’ve come in understanding human sexuality, and if this new study permits anything remarkably, it is the freedom we face to view gay identity as a realm in which to thrive rather than a sentencing under which totocategorize oneself. categorize oneself. After all, homo sapiens are the only primates that exhibit homosexuality in exclusivity as opposed to being a component of bisexuality. Perhaps that’s due to most societies’ reliance on monogamous relationships. In a world that gradually peels off the labels that glue us down, what’s more empowering than a study that rips away the “gay gene?” Fifty years ago, most research surrounding homosexual behavior discussed “treatment” through desensitization, assertion training, and environmental manipulations. Contemporary worldviews on sex and morality are unique. There is no proof that Mohammad or Jesus ever taught against homosexuality, yet their consequent systems of morality barricade gay rights in 74 countries, including punishment by death in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and ten others. Even in the freest countries, from America to New Zealand, there is hate. We couldn’t have gone from “Love Thy Neighbor,” to “God Hates Fags” without a great deal of the stuff. Crucial to the Western World’s understanding of psychology was Sigmund Freud, who in “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality” viewed homosexuality as perversion, and procreation as a means of reproduction devoid of pleasure. He associated male homosexuality in particular to sadistic feelings toward one’s brothers and father, if not to the discovery of one’s castrated mother. What of the brotherless, or those raised by guardians? Surely our blueprints account for nontraditional family structures. I often wonder what use it is to scour our genetic blueprints, or what of them we may perceive with modern technology or tender

philosophies. In my mind, our blueprints dress us up as living skins, altering under the environments we traverse, folding into our cavities, tying fated fingerprints into the ova, or filling up the vestibules of spinal vertebrae and interlacing orchards of laryngeal prominence, the proteins of our DNA muscle memorized by that medium dark blue, hexadecimal color code #001484; 0% red, 7.84% green, 51.76% blue, blue, blue. What if I were to scratch lines into the drywall of my dorm in search of my own inward design? Would I find there the traces of a ghost gay gene obliterated? I scarcely think any of the scars on this wall would help piece together my identity. Our mental hallways are always evolving, their architecture in rejection of the floor plans, changing shape at each undrawn turn, impermanence personified. All of us. There are no concrete answers until the concrete has been poured, and no person is ever beyond the phase of the blueprint. We are never fully realized, and neither is Science’s study, which cannot close the conversation on sexuality, but can only further it.

87 Blueprints are artificial formations, outdated outlines. Even those welded at Nature’s torch dissolve when applied to reality. Each of us stands with the power of self-identity and the right to determine our blueprints—any that matter to our essence—for ourselves. It seems Lady Gaga was right, after all; we really are born this way…in a way. Our sexual identities are compiled of fragments, hundreds of genes that fragments, inform us without dictating us, and thus our temples are reigned by our own free will to solve the equations how we wish, if we wish.

Now that we’ve got the best proof that the world has got to offer, thus far, on the “gay gene,” our minds may rest at unstill ease, happy for the atoms from which they are constructed. What we cannot rest into are the legal and societal systems that refuse to put faith in science, justice in love, or trust in the hands of the public. Organizations like OutRight Action International, Equality Federation, the Trevor Project, the Gill Foundation, and DoSomething.org seek refuge and enlightenment for people who identify with sexualities and gender identities facing discrimination today. There’s only ever more work to do, and more love to share with those who need it. Only in unity may our self-determined blueprints be pieced together, and maybe that’s when things will start to make some sense—if, by then, sense is even what we shapeshifters are looking for.

How do we build moments ?

When Noah first pitched the idea of BLUEPRINT ,

I began to think about how we construct our relationship with intimacy .

The way we feel about love and sex is shaped by every experience had in those realms. weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve

89 Past crushes

flings , relationships , and rejections form a blueprint for

how we

move forward

love

ellie bonifant watercolor pencil & watercolor on paper(2019).

WORDS carlene mcgoldrick Five

years ago, I thought I’d be writing you to from someplace else. I remember taking a sheet of computer paper from the printer in the corner room of my childhood home. On it, I sketched a series of skewed bubble letters across the top in a dried-out blue marker, and it took a few tries to get the spacing right. Each time I needed a new sheet, I had to tip-toe past my father, his eyes glued to the light of the computer screen and I, terrified he’d say something about the waste. I was fourteen, still drawing bubble letters in Crayola marker. Strewn about the kitchen table were crumpled papers, somehow imperfectly lettered, reading

“SEMESTERS UNTIL COLUMBIA,” or “SEMESTERS UNTIL COLUM-,” or “SEMESTERS TIL COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,” followed by a countdown of eight. I don’t recall actually keeping up with the countdown as I progressed in high school, though I found one of the crumpled failures somewhat flattened-out in my mom’s desk drawer last Christmas. She’s even a little wistful at the thought of what have been. what could could have been.

At the beginning of high school, I had handcrafted for myself a kind of resume-in-hopes, consisting of class presidencies and volunteer experiences and club secretaryships and perfect studiousness. I’d get no less than a 97 in every class, I thought, and I’d row for the crew team and get in shape and learn to drive and get a boyfriend and go to prom and get into my dream school, as my brother and sister had gotten into theirs. I had everything planned out, dependent on a few factors that, in actuality, played out disastrously. By my junior year, By my junior year, I was violently depressed, threatening to transfer out of my all-girls Catholic school or drop out entirely, gaining 40 pounds in the span of six months and crashing my sister’s car twice. I nearly failed my math and science courses as well. A pillar of my path to Ivy League acceptance was the suffering-through of three high school forensics seasons. My sophomore year, I competed in a category that mandated the retelling of any speech. With the help of my mildly-overbearing mother, I chose a 2000 Villanova University commencement address by author Anna Quindlen. The circumstances of the speech were sort of serendipitous in terms of personal significance, having been given at my parent’s university a week before my birth and by an alumna of my dream school, Barnard College. Sophomore me was hopeful that some force in the universe would see that I had dedicated an entire season in forensics to Barnard and therefore increased my chances of getting in. This force of the universe, I soon discovered, did not exist. I medaled at some tournaments with the speech, qualifying nearly to the state competition and lining my bookshelves with small plastic trophies and cheaply-made plaques. It seems all too insignificant, now, but the weight of Anna Quindlen’s words remains heavy, now that I’m distanced from tenth grade forensics. In the address, Quindlen says to her hopeful graduating class in an effort to calm their fears about the real world, “Don’t ever forget

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forget what a friend once wrote Senator Paul Tsongas when the senator decided not to run for reelection because he’d been diagnosed with cancer: ‘No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time in the office.’ Don’t ever forget the words my father sent me on a postcard last year: ‘If you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.’ Or what John Lennon wrote before he was gunned down in the driveway of the Dakota: ‘Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.’” Though I’d repeat this quote over and over at competition after competition throughout the season, I’d never come to internalize them. They’re great quips, nearly party tricks, to share with others and pretend you’re more cosmopolitan and wiser than you actually are. They’re the sort of quotables my mother spews out after reading an especially heartfelt Facebook post by my Aunt Tricia. In revisiting the speech, though, I’ve come to realize that they do have inherent, inherent, profound, useful meanings. useful profound,and meanings. and Come May of my senior year of high school, I had been rejected by three of the schools I had applied to outside of the state of Ohio. That spring, mornings frequently began with a stumble to the bathroom across the hall where I peeled my plaid school skirt from the floor and wrapped it around my waist, feeling for the cigarette burns on the left hip and the ones down the center. I eventually stopped wearing that skirt, thankfully, once I stopped eating lunch, and lost weight and could fit into the one I wore in middle school.

My bedroom, My bedroom, like the bedrooms of ofmost like the bedrooms mostteenage teenage girls girls throughout the world, was the only place where I truly felt myself. It was a temple of sorts, of band posters and dying plants and empty water bottles and dirty dishes and the sheets I hadn’t washed in a month. It was my main source of comfort throughout those years in late adolescence. I crave that sort of intimacy with a space even now. I’d sleep in my mother’s bed with her every once in a while. After experiencing the rejections, the suspensions, the broken friendships and the car accidents, I sometimes felt reduced to a child.

I frequently wondered where I was and who took my consciousness and put it in the body of an 18 year-old. I’d run down the staircase with unbrushed hair, gripping the bannister but still misplacing some footsteps here and there. My backpack was always halfunzipped, a devastating symbol of genuine academic apathy, and the assignments I had forgotten and left untouched. My counselors blamed my laziness, while I blamed my physical inability to get out of bed in the colder months. I hadn’t done donemy homework in weeks. my homework in weeks. Even in these last few months, I had plans to book an internship in New York City where I could dip my toes into the dating scene of the West Village and live off brown rice and deli scraps. Coincidentally, I’d become a charismatic size 6 in a stable relationship by Labor Day. Instead, I lived in a shithole apartment in Roxbury, Massachusetts, for the summer, spent way too much money, worked for Starbucks, and killed myself in a summer literature class, simultaneously fulfilling my lifetime quota for Bumble dates and one-night stands. Now I’m broke, spending whatever savings I have left in my bank account at random thrift stores and on MBTA commuter rail fares, dating an internet comedian with a DUI from Rhode Island, and eating bags of gummy worms for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Even my miserable 17-year-old self couldn’t have imagined this sort of despair for her future self. I’m doing okay.

101

It’s kind of funny to think that in spite of all that, I am doing okay. Just because I’m not necessarily doing as well or as prosperously as I had pictured myself five years ago, I’m still alright. I had to forget the blueprints I had so intricately crafted for my life in order to end up where I am now; someplace that, after thinking about it for awhile, isn’t so bad. I am alright. I’m alright, and I wish I could say that things get better from here, but that’s an exhausting sentiment. What’s life worth if we’re all working explicitly to the plan, kicking ourselves if we so happen to stray from the expectation of the future? Venture off at some points intentionally, and don’t beat yourself up if it happens. Blueprints are a waste of paper, anyway.

PHOTOS kate gondwe MODELS chassidy david & brian williams STYLING kate gondwe WORDS majavoah bastien 35mm film

I want to go home and let serenity cover this body â&#x20AC;&#x201D; look into the distance and see my people .

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If my blood could speak it would tell the story , how the djembe got a mouth full of skin , how we danced inside its chest.

a ceremony of our limbs beating in sync to our gods humming .

Let my body turn into the dirt my foremothers walked thousands of years ago .

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In our circle of dance and royal bones we make communion with the ancestors

, make peace with the ground , and the creatures that worship it .

Soil pregnant with diamonds and plated with gold : my people built a piece of land and I call it home . My veins slowly turn to rivers and my land fills me.

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Body takes all the ocean in Its mouth Body raised American and taught African. Body born continent but lives country .

I want to carry our lineage no Because without a lineage there is home .

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graysen winchester Digital (2019).

WORDS faith bugenhagen

She sat in front of the mirror ,

hair tinged with ruby-red, and applied the almond-scented cream with her soft 115 hands. She scrubbed and rinsed, but never too hard; that could cause wrinkles, after all. I watched this routine, with my head peeked out from the covers, transfixed by my grandmother’s actions. Every day she would choose bright garments to wear. Even in her old age she wanted to draw attention. Dying her hair even darker, avoiding the most dangerous color of gray— the inevitable was no tangible threat to my grandmother. Since childhood, my grandmother has been the most radiant woman I have ever known. She transcends the word “beauty” with her very being. This became the pitfall of our relationship, when I understood what her beauty entailed. Her beauty meant more than I was willing to sacrifice. The time, the pressure; I could accept it from the world around me, but accepting it from the matriarchal figurehead of my family, whom I only looked at with love, hurt me worse than could imagine.

It wasn’t

about her constant prys , or her jarring comments like “you’ll never be a wife unless you shave your legs.” It was the idea that the lady I found most beautiful would file me as less-than. Whether this judgement came subconsciously or consciously, I always knew it would be at the surface of our relationship, breaching the connection that used to be suspended between us. My confusion continued, watching from the back seat of her Chevy, as she drove to eyebrow-tattooing sessions, waxings, and hair appointments. I had a firsthand account of the extraneous efforts that it took to maintain her looks. She never took a break, constantly implementing tricks into her daily routine to combat the years that had passed. These were moments of discombobulated thought: did I want to adopt her rituals, to maintain a life looking through the mirror, or did I want to fracture the blueprint of beauty she and society were lending me? Would I reconstruct that blueprint to how I desired it to be, or would I simply adhere to what was expected of me? This turmoil was perpetuated until my discovery of the power that beauty held within my adolescence. I understood, whether or not I, or society, wanted to ac116 cept it, that an individual had the ability to advance themselves in the world with a beautiful face. Beauty could be used as an instrument, and I began to understand my grandmother’s actions. She regulated her beauty for others’ consumption, not for herself. She desired that attention since she was young, and this would not change with age. She feared the loss of it, and as a result, these sacrifices were worth it to her. But what knowledge she had hoped she could pass on to me was diminished when she realized I had not had the same priorities. I was not concerned with how I would look when I was older. This was not because I was not aware of how my body would betray me, but because I did not consider aging a betrayal. Physical appearance never mattered too much to me, nor does it now. I have always been more concerned with where my life would lead me, what I would experience, and how I could bring change to what concerned me. I want the life I live to show on my body, like a roadmap, each destination and experience marked.

The cusp of my adolescence was the peak of the fracture within our relationship. My grandmother could not understand why I had not valued my appearance as much as she did. Phrases that she said stuck in my head, like bullets infiltrating under my skin. It took every ounce of maturity to understand what was at fault in my grandmother’s way of thinking. This fault resided within the rhetoric she had heard about beauty her entire life. She grew up in a world where women were meant to fulfill only one role: catering to the satisfaction of men. Whether that be achieved through assuming all domestic responsibilities, or through bending to whatever they wanted, she was only ever a product of the expectations the world had for her. Beauty was objective and digestible: either you complied with the standards of beauty (the thin body, the made-up face, and the empty smile), or you were labeled as less-than. This way of thinking permeates society today, if not at an increased pressure. With instruments of influence (such as social media platforms and the Internet) that were never experienced by my grandmother’s generation, this pressure comes at us constantly. Beauty standards are amplified, and the importance of being “conventionally beautiful” is emphasized. Every diet tea, anti-aging beauty product, and botox procedure is supposed to maintain this beauty, aging being the obstacle we are attempting to avoid. Society has adopted the idea that age is integral to beauty and attention: the younger someone is, the more beautiful they are, and the more attention they will attract. But when did this shift occur? When did we decide that aging made us inherently less attractive? When did we start equating our worth to the years that we have lived? These are the questions I want to ask my grandmother. I want to ask her why she feels the need to continue this upkeep, when, in the end, it will not matter. She, and the rest of us, will turn to dust one day. We will all be brought to the same level in death, and no anti-aging beauty routine will change this fate .

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I wish

more than anything

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that my

grandmother

could derive her worth from the golden heart she possesses, and the love that she shows each person in her life, but this will never happen. This deeply saddens me, but I am also appreciative of it, because it has shown me the other way of living, the way in which I can radically embrace the changes that will come. Since entering college, I have dyed my hair darker and worn less makeup than before. Maybe next month Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll have platinum hair, or maybe I wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. The beautiful thing about beauty itself is that there is no one definition. Maybe one day the wrinkles I have on my face will show the years of laughter, or sagging of my skin will show the years of life I have experienced, and I will be grateful. This is how I wish to define my beauty, and this is how I wish to age gracefully. This I know, because of what my grandmother taught me. Inversely, she achieved her goal.

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kaitlyn joyner paper, pressed flowers, old photographs, clippings, pen, lipstick, stamps, stickers (2019).

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WORDS alyssa lara

ALYSSA LARA: Where do you want me to get married? MOM: I don’t know.

AL: Do you want me to get married in a church? M: Of course. AL: Why?

M: Why?

AL: I don’t want to get married in a church. What if we’re not religious? I’m not religious! M: Well, that’s on you because you don’t want to practice. AL: I just think that I have stronger beliefs. M: Like? AL: Um, the universe.

M: Well, sometimes you need divine intervention.

AL: But that’s what the universe already does. When something goes the wrong way, that’s the universe telling you that’s the wrong way.

M: But it’s not just about the universe. You need faith as well. AL: But that’s what I have faith in.

M: Then who are you praising? The universe? With no God? AL: Praise? M: You don’t pray anymore? AL: No.

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M: Your sister doesn’t talk to any boys. AL: Because she’s shy! M: She’s not shy. That’s what she says. She says that she’s not shy.

AL: I don’t know. Maybe because she doesn’t like them?

M: Well, I’m hearing the same thing I heard from you, “they’re all stupid.”

AL: Well yeah. M: But then you still continue to date white boys. AL: Well yeah. But then at least, I still talked to the guys. M: Well, that’s what I’m wondering about your sister. She has no male friends. She doesn’t talk to boys.

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AL: Okay, why is that a problem? M: I don’t know. I just feel like it’s weird. AL: [Laughs]. No, I think there’s a lot of girls that didn’t care about boys until later. I don’t know. Let me check her birth chart.

M: What is that? AL: It’s her astrological signs. Allaine’s Venus meaning that “their romantic side is somewhat repressed in the name of responsibility and rationality. Sometimes it seems like they don’t care about love. They’re extremely cautious and appreciate stability.”

AL: Yeah that’s right! Do you wanna hear mine? My Venus is in Cancer, which means that “your romantic side is gentle, thoughtful, and sentimental. You love being tender, kind, and nurturing to the people you love. You’re intensely loyal but this may stem from a fear of rejection.”

M: Well then that’s right.

M: That’s very accurate for you.

When I post a photo of myself on Instagram and it gets about 300 likes and 30 comments, I think I’m loved. I am loved. But then of course that sense of validation leaves me within five minutes of the initial feeling. A perfectly curated version of my life—I am performing myself to other people. The universe knows this: when I wrote a brief reflection about my body dysmorphia for class, my Co-Star app asked, “From what perspective do you look at your body today?”

I wrote, “WHY CAN’T I BE KNOWN WITHOUT BEING LOOKED AT” in my journal, and my Co-Star app asked, “Is there a difference between being and being seen?”

The universe knows I have an audience. I see myself in the context of you. But I so badly want you to see me through a mirror and watch my reflection that same way I see myself. I want to be powerful and dynamic and genuine because I 127 am all of these things, but I want you to know it and see me for who I am. So here I am, talking to myself out loud in public, or singing the same song that’s been stuck in my head for weeks, or dancing while walking. Then here I am screaming in frustration or sobbing or wanting to be held. I listen to my body and give her what she wants as an act of rebellion. I bare my soul. A soulmate once told me that the best thing to do on a rainy day is to put on your headphones and raincoat, go to the Public Garden, and dance. I think my purpose in life is to experience as much love and joy as I can, and in return, give it back. That is my destiny. Yesterday, my Co-Star app told me, “To be seen is not a penalty.” What I’m asking is for you to love

me .

When I was younger, my mother would always bring me to the hospital where she worked. That was the hospital I was born in, and the hospital my sister was born in seven years later. I was in a world that was familiar but did not make sense, the same way I was happily running, playing games around so much illness and death.

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So I chose art over science. Partly because I had no patience for math or science. Partly because of the spontaneity of the unknown (who knows if I’ll ever get a job!), mostly because my understanding of the world is nowhere near practical.

There is something called “the Alexander Technique,” which is a health technique used to improve posture and relieve bodily pain. Performers often use it to align their bodies, so that every shift in their being, be it physical or emotional, can be felt and taken note of. What I feel for art is something large, something instinctual, and something deep. In fact, if the sensation is not guttural, that simply is not true love. It’s like gorging, then spitting it out because it’s disgusting and it feels wrong but I wanted to devour it in the first place.

I love art because I get nauseous thinking about it. I love art because I slur my words and stutter stutter stutter talking about it. I feel the same way about art as I feel with fate. I did not believe in love at first sight until I walked out of a conversation and thought, there was something. Of course, there is no way for me to predict the course of our relationship, except in that moment, an electric synapses fired in my brain to know that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s drawn to you. My soul vibrates. The art of sensationalizing the world is the same as falling in love.

129 Fate is in our DNA: etched in that tiny grain are all our pasts, presents, and futures. Every factor from the color of our eyes down to the street we grew up on and boys we have crushes on to the place we are going to di,e whether it is Papua New Guinea or Bangkok, Thailand or the street we grew up on. Our entire lives are programmed the second we are born. But that shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t scare you .

Not at all

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PHOTOS yuhan cheng MODEL alyssa lara STYLING noah chiet & valeria sarto MAKEUP noah chiet 120mm & 35mm film

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Sunny Co Clothing unleashed a monster onto the masses in May of 2017. You might remember a post of a long-haired woman with sun-kissed skin, sitting poolside, sporting a basic red swimsuit—the problem is, that exact photo, that swimsuit, was EVERYWHERE. The company observed that the best way to gain traction was to have a viral post of some kind and with that, they launched a giveaway campaign for the previously mentioned piece of swimwear; little did they know that it would reach the amount of people that it did. The guidelines: anyone who reposted their photo of the swimsuit and tagged the company, within a 24-hour time period, would receive a free suit of their own—therein started the reign of the “swimsuit from hell.” Despite the ultimate scam that ensued (and an overly-obnoxious abundance of the post itself), Sunny Co Clothing’s marketing team had the right idea in mind: even if you can’t recall the company behind it all, if you had an Instagram account in spring 2017, you’re bound to remember the product that “broke” the platform, and that was their intention from the start. In the age of The Internet (as the 00s have so often been dubbed), everything has essentially taken a complete one-eighty, from the way we consume media, to the way we communicate, to the way we shop (note that it’s possible to shop directly from the Instagram app now). For the fashion industry, the dawn of the World Wide Web had been integral, especially with social media considered: slap your line’s seasonal bodysuit on an Instagram-famous model and voila: you’ve got a best-seller. But, what does this say about how we’ve evolved since being introduced to our favorite series of coded 1’s and 0’s?

As the print publication market is dying and hardly anyone binge-shops on the Q Network for obscure and ridiculously-priced jewelry, for emerging brands looking to get their start and find their audience—especially on a budget—turning to online techniques makes the most sense. With enough engagement after accumulating a decent following, it seems as though the need for an expensive marketing campaign, from billboards to commercials to print ads, is something of yesteryear. The digital revolution has introduced a new business-model

blueprint. blueprint From marketing techniques to buyer-seller relations to trend-documenting, online success expands further than simply having an expertly coded website and the best technology available. Social media, and namely, Instagram, has undoubtedly changed the game in a huge way, allowing companies to essentially live and die based on like-comment ratio as opposed to just revenue and unique website hits. In other words, if you’re not “poppin’” on the ‘gram, then what’s the point? The phenomenon of Social Media Marketing (SMM) is not unaccounted for; it’s been highly studied and commodified as a means to gather consumer behavior, brand awareness and attitude, and even brand commitment and loyalty (as noted in a 2014 study from the European Journal of Marketing, “Segmenting consumer reactions to social network marketing”).1 FashionNova, I.Am.Gia, Opening Ceremony, Poppy Lissiman: brands such as these have become somewhat household names, all due to their successful use of platforms such as Instagram. Social media’s emphasis on the “now” allows for as many as BILLIONS of views on whatever specific product you’re aiming to promote, especially if you’ve honed in on what has the potential to go viral. It’s a matter of understanding what tends to gain the most interaction from a “view-to-click” standpoint.

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For example, LPA, a Los Angeles-based direct-to-consumer woman’s clothing line, was started by Pia Arrobio after she witnessed Instagram’s power to drive sales while she was working for Reformation. Even before striving to start a line of her own, she had her own Instagram following, and when combined with her ability to design and hone in on what “works” from an Instagram standpoint, she was golden: “I was capable of marketing that product and I was capable of doing photo shoots with that product—and then I was capable of putting that product on people on Instagram who had influence,” she described in an interview with Fashionista.2

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The The rise of the “influencer” has ultimately changed just about everything, and fashion marketing especially so. Don’t lie; you’ve probably followed someone just because you thought they were hot—and that’s exactly what Instagram influencers thrive off of: their ability to draw people in with one, perfectly-timed, algorithm-friendly, branded post from time to time. If a brand works with an influencer with thousands upon thousands of followers at their disposal, if they’re wearing their pieces in a wittily-captioned post, promoting their brand on Snapchat, or even posting from the front row at their curated fashion show for this season’s line, they’ve practically hit the marketing jackpot. Thanks to the digital revolution, the more followers you have, the more power you subsequently possess, and this can largely be a bad thing, but for brands trying to reach as many eyes as possible, that’s far from a negative. It’s been noted by Single Grain that on average, businesses generate $6.50 for every $1 invested in influencer marketing, and with a staggering margin such as this, of course, brands would reach out to form partnerships with the next TikTok megastar.3 Why do you think so many people are aware of products such as FitTea, even if they haven’t tried it themselves?

In the same vein, the age of the influencer has not only affected HOW to sell, but also WHAT sells. Celebrities such as Rihanna and Gwen Stefani have the ability to start their own businesses and sign major brand deals largely because manufacturers recognize that star power sells and understand that people are more likely to buy from people that they trust and recognize (even if solely from behind a screen)—the same can be said about influencers. With a large following on social media, influencers have the ability to thrive as business moguls simply because of their products’ association with their name and “brand.” For example, Kylie Jenner released her own cosmetics line at only twenty-one, and it helped make her the world’s youngest “self-made billionaire”—her name’s legacy, largely made due to the media, has allowed her to thrive and has tempted people to want whatever she’s promoting simply because it’s something that she made and personally endorses. It’s uncertain whether Kylie Cosmetics would sell as well as it does if it kept its formula but was sold under some anonymous Jane Doe’s name. Despite Despite the financial positives that social media presents, there’s an inherent amount of pressure attached to the “age of the influencer”—once you’ve reached that ever-coveted status and have all eyes on you, at least from a digital standpoint, how do you keep the ball rolling? In a general sense, we’ve stumbled upon an age wherein a person’s image and likeness has become a commodity on its own—if you’re going to find fame online, you have to be prepared to essentially “sell yourself” and find ways to keep people 147 interested in what you’re “selling,” no matter the cost. Success by online standards can come and go in the blink of an eye, and as a person or company that’s thriving on an Internet basis, you have to be prepared to navigate that ever-changing, ever-demanding landscape. Generally speaking, manning a start-up and reaching the masses isn’t as simple as bus stop ads or Super Bowl halftime commercials, as the old blueEndnotes print suggested: in understanding how impactful so1. Romão, Maria Teresa, et al. “Leveragcial media is and in utilizing influencer techniques ing a Luxury Fashion Brand through Social Mesuccessfully, any start-up might have the ability to dia.” European Research on Management and become the “next big thing” overnight. Business Economics, vol. 25, no. 1, 2019, pp. 15–22., doi:10.1016/j.iedeen.2018.10.002. 2. Mau, Dhani. “The Rise of ‘Instagram Brands’: How the Platform Is Leveling the Fashion Playing Field.” Fashionista, 2 May 2018, fashionista.com/2018/05/instagram-fashion-brands-business-model. 3. Haran, Raghav. “How to Grow Your Business and Brand With Influencer Marketing.” Single Grain, 13 Sept. 2019, www.singlegrain.com/content-marketing-strategy-2/ guide-influencer-marketing/#what-is-influencer-marketing.

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threw our adolescent bodies backwards into the burgundy couch cushion, our laughing mouths open so wide we forgot to breathe. The feeling is mutual. The sunlight exploded from the windows, exposing the living room. And we didn’t throw our bodies back in laughter just once—we did it repeatedly. The cartoons that streamed through our huge TV never lost our attention. My brother and I watched a lot of things growing up, the majority being animated shows. Plato once said, in reference to children’s developing minds, that one should, “Direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.” I found truth in this observation. Blue’s Clues first aired in 1996, though for me, along with the rest of Gen Z, it feels like it’s been

around since the beginning of time. As an interactive show for kids, it makes them feel involved. The planned pauses, ready for kids to answer, were the epitome of inclusivity. It is the perfect step toward getting kids to be more observant. One thing I never noticed at the time was the show’s significance in my life; I didn’t know how much I needed it, until I didn’t have it anymore. The same blue animated dog and the host, Steve, in his green striped shirt. The daily notebook, always pristine. Steve ready with a fresh unused crayon. I didn’t know it at the time but there is a consistency to Blue’s Clues that is just good. Reminiscent. As Plato and many other philosophers have recognized, repetition, in a way, as an acknowledgement of previously held knowledge, offers liberation and creates an amazing feeling of self-reliance and memorization. Aristotle says that it’s normal to have friendship, as a selfsacrifice to another person. Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends didn’t just teach me how to make friends; it taught me what makes a friend. Friendship isn’t all planned meetups and poster child interactions. Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends is about a boy who visits a foster home for imaginary friends, a place the imaginary friends go when their person outgrows them. Then there’s Bloo—a solid cerulean figure with eyes--the boy’s best friend and the reason for his visits to the home. The

friendship Aristotle speaks of is shown through Foster’s Home: friendship is proven to be shown to be attainable and reachable at a young age. However, Aristotle talks about how friendship is in the exception of honor; I think Foster’s Home refutes that in that it is brave to put yourself out there and share even just a little of yourself with someone. Aristotle explains that the best of friends are people that don’t seek happiness in each other, but can find it within themselves and share that happiness with each other. Monsters Inc., too, very much “breaks the fourth wall.” The monsters under our beds are the things most children fear. Seeing the process that took place behind the scenes of a movie, more often than not, ruins it for us; discovering the unknown takes the magical essence away. Monsters Inc. made the monsters under my bed evaporate. Sullivan, a hairy blue monster with purple dots, had to play the part of a monster and present himself to children in a frightening way; it was his job. Little do they know that monsters can empathize; seeing as these Monsters have to amp themselves for the fright, so closely related up up the for fright,

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to exercise actors that are known to do before going on stage—it’s all an act. Through Epictetus’s theories on life and the idea of what Seneca represents, that we are our fears since we are the makers, they ultimately say fear is a man-made thing to put over ourselves or another man. Like the anxiety that comes with the unknown, we choose to look further. Monsters Inc. alleviates these imaginary fears that weigh so heavily upon us. Imagine if we didn’t have that lifted off of us. What we would be like today? What would we be like today?

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As I work my 11 to 7 retail job, I’ve seen a lot of cartoon characters, day in and day out. There’s one guy that has glasses like the old man from Courage the Cowardly Dog—round grey wire frames. I see a lot of kids come in, developing the crucial life skill of paying their way. They come in with all this expectancy of seeing their parents pay. Handing me the well-used five, perched between two fingers like a cigarette, elbow on the counter, becoming a model of their parents. I smile, take the five and thank them. They take their merchandise and walk away. Though, not all of us are like that. I was filled with anxiety when faced with walking up to a cashier on my own at first. I couldn’t do it. I eventually had to come face-to-face with the realization that I didn’t have a choice. I had to do it. This was a building block. I had to walk up to the register and face Sullivan from Monsters Inc. Hand over my debit card and swipe. Done. “Would you like your receipt?”

The

cashier asks. “No, I’m good,” I mutter. Not so scary after all. I am independent now because of the lessons I gained from the things I was able to see. I can’t forget what I have— it is what built me—the foundation of my blueprint. Blue’s Clues will always leave me with the knowledge to explore, and Bloo from Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends still fills me with empathy, but also a sense of creative inspiration. I need the lessons still, but I don’t need the cartoons as much anymore. I’m almost complete. Almost finished. Not quite yet ,though. I’m still in the process of learning and building upon these lessons, but I know the past that shaped me is still here. We walk around holding our lives and histories in our hands. We can’t entirely trash all of our learning experiences. Amnesia doesn’t do anyone any good; it just leaves blank spaces on your map. One wrong step and you might fall into a hole. In your hands, you file things away; you don’t use them as much but you might one day need them. The past is like a mentally written history of ourselves.

When I got older, my mom gave me my file. A dark green filing cabinet folder that held everything that basically made me me. Though we’ve constantly recycled things out of it, making room for newer things I’ll need; it’s always been my file, though at first, I wasn’t the one putting things into it, my mom was. I never actually put anything into it until I was in elementary school, and of course I had to take things out to make room to put more inside of it. The arts and crafts had to leave to make room for the transcripts and financial documentation. Upon moving out, my mom handed me my file. “It’s yours,” she said. Though my file isn’t filled with all of the cartoons in the world, it’s not colorless. Growing up changes a lot of things, but I think it’s just as important to look back and laugh and learn and remember. I feel as if there is that one point when the animation has to leave you and you have to take a step up through that door. Through the door of a building, your building. Cartoons brought the genius out in me, the familiar 2D lines mapped out the beginning of my education, and from there I went up. We all start somewhere. Never lose that, never lose sight of your foundation. of your foundation.

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Copyright ÂŠ 2019 em Mag. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from em Mag except in the case of crediting both em Mag and the artists. Should you have any questions pertaining to the reproduction of any content in this book, please contact emmagonline@gmail.com. Cover illustration by Grace Huang Article titles by Pixie Kolesa & Reagan Allen Book design by Chloe Krammel & Reagan Allen First edition printed by Flagship Press in North Andover, MA. 2019. Typeset in Broadsheet and Balboa Condensed from Adobe. Website: www.em-mag.com Instagram: @emmagazine Issuu: em Magazine

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