LET’S PUT OUR MINECRAFT BEDS NEXT 2 EACH OTHER: CAN THERE BE ROMANCE IN THE DIGITAL SPACE?
iana abrigo p. 36
THE REINVENTION ERA: A CELEBRATION OF ARTISTS WHO INNOVATED THEIR SOUND AND STYLE
Lochlainn Heley p. 38
FEATURED ARTIST MEDIA X QUEER
Creative: Vivi Baker p. 40
Design: Bella Recca p. 44
With these words, I wish to pay my respects to the traditional owners of the lands on which you live, work and study. The University of Melbourne is an institution spread across seven campuses that occupy the lands of many different traditional owners. We pay our respects to them all.
If you are on the Parkville, Burnley or Southbank campuses you are on Wurundjeri land. We pay our respects.
If you are in Shepparton or on the Dookie campus you are on Yorta Yorta land. We pay our respects.
If you are in Werribee, you are on the land of the Boonwurrung. We pay our respects.
If you are in Creswick, you are on Dja Dja Wurrung land. We pay our respects.
This place has always been and always will be Aboriginal land.
I invite you to contemplate the landscape around you and how it has been shaped by thousands of generations of dedicated custodians. First Peoples were the original scientists, artists, musicians, historians, legal thinkers, and our knowledges and ways of knowing have shaped every layer of our existence. As a guest here, they now shape your own existence. These systems of knowledge transfer and generations are ancient and unbroken across millennia.
Today, thanks in part to the elders and leaders of the past, we can now see a veritable renaissance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, representation and knowledge across this country. Good luck escaping these truths. Nothing fills me with greater hope for the future than the ongoing recognition and place of these systems and their talented trainees within this University. I believe it will harbour the next phase in this University’s long and storied history.
We acknowledge and pay our respects to these living communities for their constant care of this country and its inhabitants. We demonstrate our gratitude for the many elders and other leaders that work so hard to ensure we realise the privilege it is to share your Country with you.
As guests on this country, we must be reminded of the fact that sovereignty has never and will never be ceded and that the pursuit of treaty, justice and truth is ongoing. Farrago and the student media community stands with the Wurundjeri, Boonwurrung, Yorta Yorta, and Dja Dja Wurrung, and acknowledges and pays respects to the traditional owners of this country, wherever you might be reading from.
Jocelyn
76 Pink camellias
Eleanore Arnold-Moore
Ella Katz
Hayley Cheung
Rarasati Windyadini
Arunika Madina
Lexi Ren
80 Featured Photography
Lexi Ren COLUMNS
10 Different Perspectives
Luyao Shi
20 About in Melbourne
Meg Bonnes
26 As It Was: Brick by Brick: The Need to Rebuild a Nation’s History
Nicole
30 Even Dante’s Got to Stand in Line
Donna Ferdinando
32 The Unauthorised, Unorthodox, Unofficial Guide to Writing a Novel Under the Age of Twenty: Beginning, Middle, Neverending
Claire Le Blond
37 There is Something in the
We Do Not Grasp Into the Depths
Donna Ferdinand
51 Bleeding Marble: Daphne
Rhylee L.
52 Metro Disjunction: Cynical Literature, Unaffected Crowds
Ledya Khamou
68 Both Sides Now: Mariners
Hannah Hartnett
70 Hubert's Travelog: NGV
Yicheng Xu
72 CHRONIC: Life Circles
Helena Pantsis
78 重复 Existence in Repetition
Zhuzhu Xie
Carmen Chin
Josh Davis
Weiting Chen
Xiaole Zhan
COVER
Ashlea Banon
MANAGERS
Akash Anil Nair
Alexia Shaw
Eldon Lee
Iyaad Casim
Jaz Thiele
Joel Duggan
Lochlainn Heley
Maya Hall
Nishtha Banavalikar
Yuta Nakashima
Yvonne Le
FEATURED ARTISTS
Bella Recca
Vivi Baker
CONTRIBUTORS
Arunika Madina
Bella Beiraghi
Caitlyn Steer
Claire Le Blond
Donna Ferdinando
Eleanore Arnold-Moore
Elizabeth Browne
Ella Katz
Evelyn Thompson
Hannah Hartnett
Hayley Cheung
iana abrigo
Ieva Priedkalns
James Gallagher
Jessica Fanwong
Jocelyn Saunders
Joel Duggan
John Porter
Jordan Fenske
Jules/Julie Song
Kien-Ling Liem
Ledya Khamou
Lexi Ren
Liliana Mansergh
Lochlainn Heley
Luv Golecha
Michelle Yu
MJ Fujise Barnsley
Nicole
Rarasati Windyadini
Rhylee L.
Selina Zhang
Simran Khera
Stephen Zavitsanos
Taya Lilly
Thalia Blackney
Tyson Holloway-Clarke
Velentina Boulter
Wildes Lawler
COLUMNISTS
Claire Le Blond
Donna Ferdinando
Hannah Hartnett
Ledya Khamou
Nicole Yan Ru Lee
GRAPHIC COLUMNISTS
Helena Pantsis
Luyao Shi
Meg Bonnes
Yicheng Xu
Zhuzhu Xie
ONLINE COLUMNISTS
Jocelyn Saunders
Jessica Fanwong (Creative
Literature and Writing Society – C.L.A.W.S)
Breana Galea
NEWS TEAM
Alain Nguyen
Caitlin Hall
Chelsea Daniel
Churan Zhang
Dominique Jones
Elizabeth Browne
Hannah Vandenbogaerde
Joel Duggan
Julie/Jules Song
Laura (Ira) Green
Maham Mannan
Sasha Mahlab
Selina Zhang
Winnie Cheng
NEWS SUBEDITORS
Asimenia Pestrivas
Claire Le Blond
Joel Duggan
Katya Sloboda-Bolton
Linh Nguyen
Linh Pham
Marcie Di Bartolomeo
Max Dowell
Nicholas Eastham
Rico Sulamet
Samson Cheung
Selina Zhang
Stephanie Umbrella
Thalia Blackney
Thomas Gilbert
CREATIVE SUBEDITORS
Annabelle Brown
Breana Galea
Charlie Simmons
Chloe Pigneguy
Ern Syn Lee
Felicity Smith
Harvey Weir
Holly Mcpherson
Ilnaz Faizal
Isobel Connor-Smithyman
Jaz Thiele
Katelyn Samarkovski
Katrina Bell
Ledya Khamou
Livia Kurniawan
Mako Fujise Barnsley
Marcie Di Bartolomeo
Mary Hampton
Matthew Lee
Mia Pahljina
Nalini Jacob-Roussety
Olivia Brewer
Romany Murray
Ruth Jarra
Sybilla George
NON-FICTION SUBEDITORS
Annabelle Brown
Anushka Mankodi
Bella Farrelly
Breana Galea
Catherine Tootell
Charlie Simmons
Isabel Charlton
Jaime Tan
Judith Vu
Joel Duggan
Mary Hampton
Ola Wallis
Samson Cheung
Sara Vojdani
Tina Thakrar
Virosca Gan
STAFF WRITERS
Claudia Goundar
Donna Ferdinando
Edward Carrick
Elizabeth Browne
Georgia York
iana abrigo
Jordan Fenske
Kien-ling Liem
Meagan Hansen
Mira Manghani
Pamela Piechowicz
Sebastian Moore
Velentina Boulter
REVIEWS WRITERS
Alexia Shaw
Chelsea Daniel
David Nawaratne
Dimple Maholtra
Emma Xerri
Indy Smith
Isabel Charlton
Joanne Zou
Judith Vu
Katelyn Samarkovski
Linh Pham
Sybilla George
Tah Ai Jia
Tharidi Walimunige
Vanshika Agarwal
Victoria Winata
ILLUSTRATORS
Alexi O'Keefe
Amber Liang
Arielle Vlahiotis
Ashlea Banon
Crystal Wu
Duy D
Emma Bui
Felicity Yiran Smith
Harriet Chard
Indy Smith
Jacques CA
Jessica Norton
Jocelyn
Lauren Kimber
Leilani Leon
Lucy Chen
Manyu Wang
Meg Bonnes
Nashitaat Islam
Nina Hughes
Rachel
Radhika Paralkar
Thao Duyen (Jennifer)
Tina Tao
Nguyen
Zhuzhu Xie
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Gaius Kwong
Jennifer Nguyen
Nashitaat Islam
Nhat Duy Dang
Zhuzhu Xie
PHOTO & VIDEO TEAM
Adrian Wong
Alain Nguyen
Ben Levy
Chenyi (Yolanda) Liang
Karen Kan
Maehula Datta
Michael Sadegi
Smiriti Hosur
Yuyang (Angela) Liu
Yuyang (Kevin) Sun
FODDER BLOG TEAM
Bella Farrelly
Catherine Tootell
Claudia Goundar
Dimple Maholtra
Harrison George
Issy Abe-Owensmith
Ilnaz Faizal
Jessica Fanwong
Joanne Zou
Katelyn Samarkovski
Marcie Di Bartolomeo
Romany Murray
SATIRE TEAM
Alexia Shaw
Charlie Robinson
Julie/Jules Song
iana abrigo
SOCIAL MEDIA
Amelia Han
Bella Farrelly
Charlotte Chang
Elizabeth Browne
Katelyn Samarkovski
Maehula Datta
Nashitaat Islam
This magazine is made from 100% recycled paper. Please recycle this magazine after use.
Farrago is the newspaper of the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU). Farrago is published by the General Secretary. The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of UMSU. If you want to raise an issue within the union and with the university, please contact the President and General Secretary. president@union.unimelb.edu.au secretary@union.unimelb.edu.au
Illustration by Weiting ChenAs we usher in another year of Farrago shenanigans, what better way to kickstart it than to look to the past while dreaming up futures? Lush kaleidoscopes of cloud and colour. Dreamy pastels and dramatic chiaroscuri. Hands reaching but never quite touching. Secret histories tinged lavender.
This year, our theme for Edition One is Renaissance. It is nostalgia. Rebirth. Reinvention. Anything and everything in between. Edition One is a space for student writers and artists to recreate themselves and their work; a chance for us in the editorial team to start anew, with a clean slate and fresh perspective. Thus, we’ve curated the best that our motley crew has to offer to fill the subjects of Edition One’s pages, but we’d be lying if we told you it was anything other than an abjectly chaotic learning curve. But isn’t that what renaissance is all about? Making age-old mistakes, learning from the past, and moving forwards armed with uncovered knowledge?
In the Farrago newsroom, we’re looking to our predecessors for inspiration. You’d be hard-pressed to mistake today’s glossy news section for its broadsheet ancestors, but you’d be forgiven for thinking that the contents bear a striking similarity. Privatisation, staff cuts, and wage theft evoke the nightmare days of the Business Improvement Program; the cost-of-living crisis hitting students is just as at home in the pages of today’s editions as it was in the 1970s; and a live rerun of State of the Union is only ever one election away. Are we all doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past? Or can we break through into a bright new dawn; a renaissance? We don’t know, but we’ll report it either way.
The Creative Section is a shattered kaleidoscope—equally lush and shimmering as it is jagged and cutting. From nostalgic camellias in the Old Quad and impressionistic tableaus of Lygon Street at night, to an angular deconstruction of reading modern poetry and a macabre smudged-mascara funeral, the Renaissance envisioned by our contributors isn’t all rose-tinted.
No, Non-fiction is no longer just about publishing not-so-hot takes about politics that spark unnecessarily fierce debate in Facebook comment sections. Farrago’s non-fiction section looks more like new-age storytelling. We romanticise 5am train services. We debate the validity of Minecraft dates as a contemporary romance. We contemplate what a personal purgatory looks like—is it having your One Direction fanfiction from 2013 being read back to you like an audiobook on repeat for eternity? Only Farrago knows.
From this edition’s cover to its layout, our Design and Illustration teams have truly brought our publication to life. We’re always looking for new and exciting ways to tell stories through visual art, and we love to experiment with different styles, mediums, and techniques to bring our ideas to life. We hope you’ll enjoy the passion and creativity in the pages.
Just as the stories in Edition One embark on artistic odysseys in search of undiscovered universes and realities, we hope this edition marks the beginning of a brand new chapter in Farrago’s almost century-long history. After all, renaissance isn’t a simple return to the past; it’s a rebirth, a renewal. Gone are the archaic traditions and circle jerks of old, conservative white men—we’re heralding the renaissance of Farrago right here, right now.
MONDAY 06
11:30AM Queer x Southbank Collective
MONDAY 13
TUESDAY 07
2PM Trans Collective Feminist Action Collective
TUESDAY 14
2PM Trans Collective
2PM Activist building blitz for March 17 Climate Protest
MONDAY 20
TUESDAY 21
2PM Trans Collective
MONDAY 27
TUESDAY 28
2PM Trans Collective
WEDNESDAY 01
1PM Your world through a lens: a photography workshop with Rosa Spring Voss
WEDNESDAY 08
Women and Enbies of Colour Collective
WEDNESDAY 15
1PM Creative Neighbourhoods: a walking tour of Collingwood Yards
2PM Enviro Collective - A history of radical environment protest. Women and Enbies Collective
WEDNESDAY 22
Women and Enbies of Colour Collective
WEDNESDAY 29
Women and Enbies Collective
THURSDAY 02
2PM Enviro Collective - Can capitalism solve the climate crisis?
5PM G&T’s with the LGBT’s Enviro Justice Collective
THURSDAY 09
12PM Queer Lunch
2PM Enviro CollectiveWhy your keep cup won’t save the planet.
FRIDAY 03
11:30AM Queer People of Colour Collective
2PM Ace/Aro Collective
2PM Cherished deviancesPanel Discussion
FRIDAY 10
11:30AM Queer People of Colour Collective
2PM Ace/Aro Collective
THURSDAY 16 FRIDAY 17
12PM Queer Lunch
1PM Sound Explorations Lab
THURSDAY 23
12PM Queer Lunch
1 PM Sound Explorations Lab
2PM Enviro Collective
- Social justice and the climate movement
THURSDAY 30
12PM Queer Lunch
1PM Sound Explorations Lab
11:30AM Queer People of Colour Collective
12:30PM UMSU Enviro contingent to the National Day of Climate Action
2PM Ace/Aro Collective Women in the Workplace Collective
FRIDAY 24
11:30AM Queer People of Colour Collective
2PM Ace/Aro Collective
FRIDAY 31
11:30AM Queer People of Colour Collective
2PM Ace/Aro Collective
My name is Disha Zutshi (She/Her), your 2023 UMSU General Secretary. Here at UMSU, we are For Students, By Students!
Hey! My name is Hiba, and I am your President for 2023 :).
I am so excited to be your president and for what this role holds for me this year. I have been busy with Summerfest and O-Week planning to ensure that you all have a good start to the year. We have so many activities planned, not just at Parkville but also at Southbank. Make sure to check out UMSU’s socials to keep up to date with our events and our wonderful departments! We have so much in store for you this year.
By students for students! Come and speak to your UMSU representatives at building 168.
We are the peak representative body for all University of Melbourne students, and we do advocacy, provide legal help, run free events, provide free food and much more! My job in the union is to be the bridge between your student representatives and the University management. Summerfest has been hectic with multiple approvals for publications, but has also been an extremely exciting time seeing all the departments’ ideas come to life!
I’m super excited to see the new friendships and communities formed this year, and to see UMSU to spread its magic!
Feel free to contact me at secretary@union.unimelb.edu.au or visit me in Building 168, Level 2, Room 224 if you need any help or want to be involved. After all, UMSU IS THE PLACE TO BE!
- UMSU hosted the National Union of Students (NUS) Presidents’ Summit from 1-3 February, with student union leaders from across the country coming down to the Parkville campus for the conference.
- We are in the process of appointing our new CEO, after an extremely long process!
- We’ve passed UMSU’s budget for this year, and all our departments have finalised their plans and events for the year.
- We have welcomed multiple new staff members in the Union.
- We’ve sold out tickets to almost all of our Summerfest events.
- Hiba Adam (UMSU President) has started her interactions with our key stakeholders as well as her work in the University’s various committees along with other departments.
- The People of Colour Department started UMSU’s first Anti-Racism Working Group!
Hello everybody, wishing you all a very good start to 2023! I am Sanskar Agarwal, the President of UMSU International. My office is located next to the information desk on the ground floor of Building 168 and I am always down for a chat!
Being halfway through my term, I advocated for affordable and diverse food options in the New Student Precinct and am currently working with the University to install additional vending machines stocked with women’s hygiene products around campus. Over the next few weeks, I will be working on a Student Wellbeing and Mental Health Framework which aims to review and improve all existing mental health services available on campus such as Counselling and Psychological Services (CAPS), reviews to teaching and learning, and other resources aimed at improving the mental health of staff and students at the University.
I am also keen to collaborate with UMSU’s People
of Colour Department on their existing work in the general strengthening of anti-racism and in lobbying the University to increase awareness and reinforcement against racism in the University.
We’ll be starting a hot breakfast service to cater hot meals to students, especially for those who find themselves on campus from 9am to 5pm and are struggling with food security. Our program will run in conjunction with UMSU Welfare’s brunch service on alternating days. We are also working with the University on their own hot lunch service initiative.
We’ve also already started preparations for UMSU International’s Iconic Night Market which is scheduled for the Thursday after mid semester break. Can’t wait to see you there and at all other fun events we have planned for you this semester!
Please feel free to email me at president-umsuintl@ union.unimelb.edu.au with any queries you may have.
Hello! We’re Zodie, Helen, Jack, and Annalyce—your 2023 Southbank team.
We run a ton of events and programs at Southbank, including the Breadbin food pantry in the student lounge next to the library. We order new stuff every couple of weeks in semester and stock it gradually, so keep an eye out for when that drops.
Where else can you get free food? Glad you asked! We run weekly BBQs on Tuesdays during the semester and are also in the process of starting up a new breakfast program. We also run Queer, People of Colour and Disabilities collectives as autonomous spaces for members of these groups to eat, chill out, and discuss issues at uni.
We’ve had great chats with UMSU Advocacy on how to best support you, and with campus staff to make sure Southbank is ready for your glorious presence. If you missed our Southbank Garden party and all the goodies, you can still find a PDF of our Guide to Student Life on the UMSU website.
Be sure to check out the Music Students Society, Production Society, and Design Students Society for your faculty-based club needs. There are also many other clubs to be found by looking at the clubs listing on the UMSU website.
Questions? Concerns? Ideas? You can find us on level 2 of the Southbank library behind the massive double doors. If the lights are on, we’re probably around! Otherwise, you can find us in the following digital locales:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/umsusouthbank
Instagram: @umsu_southbank, or https://www.instagram.com/umsu_southbank/ UMSU Website: https://umsu.unimelb.edu.au/communities/southbank/ Email: southbank@union.unimelb.edu.au
Keep an eye on our socials, the UMSU website, and posters going up around Southbank campus for the latest details about free food, events, and campaigns!
It has been a busy year at the Graduate Student Association (GSA). Your independent GSA has been working on what matters most to our graduate students, a cohort comprising almost 60% of total enrolments.
In the last eight months, we have delivered the largest increase to graduate researcher stipends, almost 1000 online and dual-delivery subjects for graduate coursework students, security escorts in the hospital precinct, over 3000 free breakfasts, our largest Graduate Art Exhibition and have slated the return of Graduate Ball in November 2023.
Inside the organisation, we have seen the first election for our Faculty Council, the appointment of our new CEO, Sophie Valkan,
three new board members and our families officer.
The GSA is an entirely student-led organisation, which benefits greatly from the unique experiences that many of our student representatives bring to the team. Likewise, our incredible team of staff helps representatives lobby the University for changes in crucial areas, such as safety on campus, placements and assessments. Likewise, they help deliver our tailored events and incredible orientation programmes.
If you ever have any issues or questions, reach out to me at president@gsa.unimelb.edu.au.
Nestled along the Yarra sits a somewhat forgotten suburb and a similarly forgotten garden, adjacent to a somewhat unknown campus of the University of Melbourne. A quiet campus of green thumbs and greener grass. A campus with a pedigree of horticulture dating back to the mid-19th century. A campus that has carried this tradition while branching into the study of forests, waterways and grasslands.
The Burnley Department seeks to foster these interests while providing a safe, inclusive and supportive environment. Being a quiet, removed campus certainly has its positives. The vast gardens allow for a spot in the sun for the nicer days, or a meditative walk when the mind is full. The small campus size means it doesn’t take long for every face to become familiar; a community atmosphere where someone is always about to lend an ear or a hand. However, the bustle of Parkville comes with an abundance of services and amenities available to the students that Burnley is not privy to. For this reason, we at the Burnley Students Committee seek to provide as good an experience as a campus this size can offer. Get in touch if you have suggestions for student-led activities at the Burnley Campus!
In 2023, the Disabilities Department is seeking to raise its game by building an even stronger disability community at our u\University. We will be running weekly collectives, as well as ensuring that the Disabilities Lounge remains a goto location. We also have plans to report on ableism at the university as well as publish the Disabilities Department’s first autonomous publication. It’s going to be a big year—we are excited for what lies ahead for the UMSU Disabilities Department!
Hello darling readers! We’re Brittney (they/them) and Harley (they/he)—you may remember us from such Farrago editions as Farrago Editions 1 through 6 in 2022 (please read in the Troy McClure voice from The Simpsons). We are once again your Indigenous OBs for 2023! We are planning so many cute, quirky, and fun activities for our Indigenous students and will hopefully get to share details about some of them in the editions to come. We cannot wait to meet the new cohort of first-year Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and introduce them to the wonderful world of university life.
Heya! Welcome to another fantastic year by the POC department, I’m Mohamed, your People of Colour officer for this year! This year we’re planning on resuming all the great collectives we’ve done before throughout the semester, on top of having bigger and better events this year while advocating not just for the University’s POC students, but for the creation of a safer, more anti-racist university experience for you. Meet us at our first event of the year, our retro games arcade night, to meet some new people and find out more about us!
Hi everyone! We’re your 2023 Queer Officers, and we’re so excited to host amazing events and answer all your queer-ies in the coming year! We’ve been working hard to make sure your Summerfest and Semester 1 will be as fun as they can be, as well as making sure that all voices of queer students are heard by the University. You’re also welcome to attend regular collectives to make friends and chill with the community! Make sure to come meet us at the new, decked-out Queer Space (complete with new supplies) or visit us officers at our new office located in Building 168!
Hey folks! It’s your friendly neighbourhood Women’s Officers reporting for duty! We’re super keen to work with and for you this year to get some great things done for every woman, non-binary and gender diverse student at the University, and for your involvement in a Women’s Department that is intersectional, inclusive and activist.Lately, we’ve been busy setting up some super slay events and campaigns for the year—if you’re keen to get involved, drop us a DM or shoot us an email!
Hey everyone! We’re Arya and Tvisha, your Activities Officers for 2023!
As Activities Officers, we play a vital role in enhancing the student experience by creating and delivering engaging and diverse events and activities. Our role involves collaborating with student clubs and societies, managing UMSU’s events, and developing initiatives that foster a strong sense of community and belonging on campus. We work closely with the UMSU team to ensure the smooth running of events, manage budgets and resources, and provide excellent customer service to students. This is an exciting opportunity for us to make a positive impact on the student community, and help shape a vibrant campus culture!
Hey there! We’re so excited to be representing and supporting clubs in 2023! We’ve been busy preparing for the SummerFest Clubs Expo, making sure we can have camps this year and finding ways to support clubs in every way we can. So, look forward to a year with safer events, more admin resources, and more events for clubs’ committees to get to know each other!
We’re always looking for more ways that we can help you so feel free to reach out!
Contact Details/Socials
Email: clubs@union.unimelb.edu.au
Office: Level 1, Building 168 (Parkville Campus)
Facebook: @UMSUClubs
Instagram: @umsuclubs
Wanna kick some ARTS? Welcome to the Creative Department! We’re Savier and Abbey, this year’s Creative Arts Office Bearers. I know you’re only just meeting us… but what a crazy past few months it’s already been! Getting prepared for the year, we’ve been in many behind-the-scenes conversations to bring you the best (and most fun) artsy opportunities. Mudfest will be back in 2023, which means preparations for our department’s renowned festival are already on the horizon. Be on the hunt for some teasers about our theme this year via our events on Facebook. It doesn’t end here—we’re also getting acquainted with our lovely UMSU, UHT, GPG and Arts and Culture staff.
Wanna know more? Come see us in our office on Level 3 of the Arts and Culture Building—we’d love to say hi!
Hello everyone and happy 2023! We are your Education Academic (EdAc) OBs Mary Kin and Taj. We’re really grateful for the opportunity to serve the UniMelb community and are excited for an eventful year ahead! We’ve been trying our best to represent the student voice across University Committees the past two months and this will remain as our commitment throughout the year.
Hey Farrago readers! I’m Carlos, your Education Public (Ed Pub) OB for 2023. Ed Pub’s main focus for 2023 will be to campaign for the multiple issues impacting student’s ability to engage fully with their University experience, such as cost of living crises, lack of uni accommodations and services, decisions to get rid of dual delivery. These factors all compound one another to worsen students’ experience at the university. Our goal is to sound out about these issues and achieve meaningful outcomes by detailing how these issues impact the student experience through a submission to the Universities Accord—an important inquiry the government will run on higher education. There are many more things to come that are too much to write here—come by to have a chat anytime! The Ed Pub office is located in Room 222, Lvl 2 in Building 168; make sure to follow the Education Department on socials. We’re @ umsueducation on both Instagram and Facebook.
Hey, we’re James and Emma! We’re socialist climate activists! Did you know that the University of Melbourne invests millions into fossil fuel companies like Rio Tinto and ExxonMobil? They also partner with Lockheed Martin, a weapons company that profits from war and destruction. This year we’re running a divestment campaign demanding the university cut all ties with these planet-destroying companies. Meanwhile, the Labor government has green-lit 118 new fossil fuel projects—despite urgently needing to shut down the fossil fuel industry! We want to build a mass climate movement—starting with a National Day of Protest on March 17th (State Library, 2pm). Get involved with the Environment Department if you want to fight for climate action and social justice!
Hi Everyone! we’re Yashica and Ishita your welfare OBs for 2023. As we started our time in the office our motto for this year has been “There’s no better time than now”. And so we’ve been working on enhancing students’ experience across a broad range of areas such as mental health, food security and providing other crucial resources. This semester, preparing for the Summerfest and gearing the Welfare department for the semester 1 has been our biggest priority. We came up with Carni’well’ Welfare designed to provide students with a wholesome experience of socialising alongside fun carnival activities for the Summerfest. Additionally, we are elated to announce that the Union Mart is restarting in Union House and shall be ready to function at the start of the semester reaching out to as many students as possible. We hope Welfare brings the best experiences this semester!
Content warnings: References to death, racism, homophobia, no explicit detail
Djab Wurrung, Gunnai and Gunditjamara senator Lidia Thorpe has resigned from the Australian Greens, moving to the crossbench to lead the black sovereignty movement and speak freely on grassroots Indigenous activism.
The Greens came out in favour of the Voice to Parliament shortly after her announcement, although the party’s First Nations advisory group later made public statements backing Thorpe’s decision to leave the party.
The Albanese Labor Government has renewed Nauru’s designation as an offshore processing area after it lapsed four months ago, effectively reintroducing offshore detention.
The decision was made on the same day award-winning author, journalist, and former Manus Island detainee Behrouz Boochani was invited to speak at Parliament House.
On 6 February a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck west of the Turkish city Gaziantep near the Syrian border, followed by a second 7.5 magnitude quake in Kahramanmaraş nine hours later, causing widespread and significant damage.
Over 40,000 people in Türkiye and 6,000 in Syria have died, with rescue organisations expecting the death toll to rise further.
International aid to Syria was initially hindered by government restrictions on cross-border aid and US sanctions before both were eased to help the rescue effort.
The University of Melbourne has become the first university in Australia to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s working definition of antisemitism, as part of their four-part anti-racism commitment.
The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network slammed the decision, warning that the definition could be used to stifle Palestinian advocacy and legitimate criticism of Israel on campus.
The Chinese government’s Ministry of Education announced that on 28 January that degrees earned through online study at overseas institutions would no longer be recognised, forcing over 40,000 students currently enrolled online at Australian univeristies to return to Australia for face-to-face learning by the start of Semester 1.
Whilst students unable to get a visa in time can seek exemption from the rule change, the large number of students expected to return has fuelled a shortage of available rentals in the already-stretched market for student accomodation.
It wouldn’t be UMSU without a few resignations.
To date, the union has seen five resignations before the start of the academic year.
Councillors Sophie Baylis (Rebuild) and Ze Ming (Community for UMSU) resigned at the first Students’ Council meeting of the year, and were replaced by ticket appointments Conor Barnes and Kunal Dewani respectively.
People of Colour Officer Kyi Phyu Moe Htet (Community for UMSU) and Education (Public Affairs)
Officer Jemilla Kleinitz Lister (Stand Up!) resigned in December before the start of their terms, and Disabilities Officer Betty Zhang (Community for UMSU) resigned at Council 4(23).
Not counting resignations intended to cause a by-election or to be appointed to another position, this is the same amount of resignations as this time last year. Not a good omen.
The 2022 FIFA World Cup was held in Qatar from mid-November to mid-December, with Argentina as the victor and France as the runner-up (33, 4-2 on penalties).
Qatar’s selection as host country was controversial due to the abuse of migrant workers and human rights violations in the country, the criminalization of same-sex relationships, corruption allegations, and stadium alcohol bans.
Lionel Messi, who played his first World Cup in 2006, leading Argentina to the championship title in what he confirmed will be the last World Cup of his career , scoring twice in the final.
Kylian Mbappé, the 24-year-old French football prodigy, scored a hat-trick in the final, the second player ever to do so in a World Cup final match.
The 2023 Lunar New Year was celebrated on the 22nd of January.
For many cultures that follow the lunar calendar, this year is the Year of the Rabbit. However, Vietnam will instead be celebrating the Year of the Cat.
Reasons for the difference are unclear, but may be due to differing translations in folk stories, as well as the importance of cats to Vietnam’s agricultural sector. Happy Meow Year!
Written by Thalia Blackney and Jules/Julie Song. Additional reporting by the News Team.This article originally appeared online on 13 February 2023.
The Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) has initiated fresh legal action against the University of Melbourne over the alleged underpayment of casual staff in the Faculty of Arts and the creation of false or misleading records.
In court documents filed on Thursday afternoon, the regulator alleged that the University breached the Fair Work Act by failing to pay 14 casual academics in line with the rates dictated by their enterprise agreements for marking student work, instead relying on a “benchmarking” system.
The ombudsman alleges that the affected staff were underpaid between $927 to $30,140 each, totalling $154,424 in unpaid wages.
Instead of following the hourly rates set out in the enterprise agreement for marking assessments, the University is alleged to have based payments on varying “benchmarks” depending on the school in the Faculty. Some schools allegedly set their benchmark at “4000 words per hour” and in one instance at “one hour per student”.
Staff then had to enter hours worked into the human resources system in line with these benchmarks, rather than their actual hours worked.
The FWO claims that a corporate culture within the University that viewed benchmarking as an acceptable practice “expressly, tacitly or impliedly authorised” these underpayments, and that specific Faculty executives were aware of the practice.
In an email sent to all staff on Friday morning, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (People and Community) Pip Nicholson said that the University is “looking at the specific allegations very carefully and will respond through the relevant court processes.”
A University spokesperson told Farrago that all staff affected by the “historical issue” have already received backpay, and declined to comment further whilst the matter is before the courts.
Both Nicholson and the spokesperson made specific reference to the University’s ongoing wage remediation program, launched after details emerged in 2020 of years-long, systemic, and widespread underpayment throughout the University.
According to Nicholson, the University has paid out approximately $45 million in back payments to date.
The FWO also alleged that the benchmarking system continued despite complaints being raised multiple times with Faculty managers between 2016 and 2019.
As a result of this foreknowledge, the regulator alleges that the University’s actions constitute “serious contraventions” of their enterprise agreements with staff.
Under the Fair Work Act, “serious contraventions” are defined as breaches of the Act that the employer knowingly carried out, and were part of a systematic pattern of conduct.
Serious contraventions carry maximum penalties ten times higher than normal breaches. If found liable, the University would be fined $630,000 per serious contravention, and $63,000 per other
charge.
Professor Joo-Cheong Tham, assistant secretary of the Victorian division of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), said the allegations showed how the University has become the sector’s “wage theft capital.”
University of Melbourne Branch Secretary David Gonzalez also questioned the sincerity of University management in ongoing enterprise bargaining in light of the ombudsman’s claims.
“With the Fair Work Ombudsman’s filing today including allegations that management kept false or misleading records, our members keep asking how can we trust UniMelb management to do the right thing?”
The National Union of Students (NUS) also condemned the University’s benchmarking and alleged underpayment.
“How are students meant to receive a fair, in depth review of the work they have submitted when the University is forcing staff to work in ridiculously intense environments of 4000 words an hour or 1 student an hour?” said NUS President Bailey Riley.
This litigation against the University of Melbourne is one of two launched by the FWO in the past twelve months.
The first concerns allegations the University coerced two casual academics against requesting payment for extra hours worked, and took adverse action by refusing to offer one further teaching work.
This piece originally appeared online on 21 February 2023.
Although Victoria’s first criminal case of wage theft is set to be heard in February, experts say tertiary institutions are unlikely to be criminally prosecuted under the state’s recently legislated Wage Theft Act.
This comes amid the University of Melbourne’s record $22 million repayment to casual workers, and fresh allegations of wage theft made against Deakin University last November.
Professor Andrew Stewart, from the University of Adelaide Law School, says it will be much harder for larger organisations like universities to be held criminally liable under the Act.
This is firstly because prosecutors need to be able to identify specific individuals who intentionally enforced, or were at least aware of, wage theft practices.
But what Stewart calls the “diffusion of managerial authority, responsibility and knowledge” across universities means that numerous
departments all have different levels of oversight in the payment of staff.
“This is not to say that it’s impossible to establish the appropriate level of knowledge,” he explained.
“It’s just that it’s going to be quite a complex task ... can it be established that [wage theft] is a deliberate, deliberate practice? ... As soon as you talk about a bureaucracy, particularly one as convoluted and inefficient as you find at a university, that’s where it becomes hard for a regulator to be able to make out the necessary intent.”
Unions and staff contend that universities have nonetheless broken a contractual obligation to their workers, by failing to pay the proper wages owed under the annual Enterprise Agreement (EA).
“All employers are under an obligation to be capable of paying their employees correctly before entering into an employment relationship ... There can be no excuse for failing to pay their employees correctly,” the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) stated in its submission to the 2020 Senate Inquiry.
“Whether you call a failure to abide by a contractual obligation criminal, I cannot say, but I am sure it is a decided wrong of some kind, negligence at best,” said Dr Kerstin Knight, a casual tutor at the University of Melbourne.
But even in cases where necessary intent can be established, inconsistencies between state and federal legislation present another hurdle before any criminal charges can be laid.
The Commonwealth does not yet offer any criminal penalties for wage theft, with Victoria and Queensland the only states to have criminalised the practice so far.
“It’s inconsistent with the federal Fair Work Act for state law to impose a sanction which the federal law does not itself provide,” said Stewart.
“[So] it doesn’t seem likely that we’re going to see a lot of prosecutions brought against larger organisations, given the difficulties of establishing the necessary intent and the likelihood of a constitutional challenge,” he concluded.
While universities may avoid facing criminal liability under Victoria’s wage theft laws, Professor Stewart believes hefty civil penalties will still enforce greater compliance going forward.
“A combination of the Fair Work Ombudsman, the NTEU, the threat of court action ... There is no question in my mind that we have seen [civil consequences] having an impact,” he said.
Following successive wage theft scandals over the past few years, the University of Melbourne has indicated plans to decasualise its workforce, and discuss improvements to the EA with staff and unions.
“We are progressing work to reduce our unsustainable reliance on casual employment... And to ensure our employment practices are fully compliant,” said a University spokesperson.
The University has not provided any timeline or targets for decasualisation, but stated it would improve auditing processes and implement a new payroll system in its wage remediation program update.
In spite of efforts to improve compliance, Professor Stewart suggests cases of wage theft are likely to continue, due to chronic underfunding and understaffing of universities.
“The insistence by many universities of putting profits ahead of their current staff or students has almost inevitably created a climate in which it will be more likely that you will see some breaches in relation to payment practices,” he said.
For casual staff like Dr Knight, the University’s remediation programs and promises of greater compliance provide little reassurance for future payments.
“In my own case, there have been errors in calculating correct renumeration or work-loads in almost all semesters in which I’ve worked,” she said. “I don’t really want to be in a position to have to double-check everything, it feels awful ... But if you don’t query, you end up exploited for your trust.”
With a federal election, state election, and the first in-person University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) elections in two years done and gone by November, you could be forgiven for thinking that the rest of 2022 would be comparatively politically uneventful.
You would be wrong. Because for a certain breed of politician—the student politician—the National Conference of the National Union of Students (NUS) is the most important event of the calendar year, bar none. Here at Farrago, we don’t quite understand why.
The NUS is the peak representative body for all tertiary students in Australia. For a hefty fee, student unions can choose to affiliate to the NUS and use their combined resources to lobby governments, protest, and organise coordinated national campaigns. At least, that’s the idea.
In practice, the NUS has a mixed track record as a representitive and activist organisation, thanks in part to its governance structure—specifically, its National Conference, ubiquitously known as ‘NatCon’. This is where elected delegates from each affiliated union debate and set the NUS’ policy direction for the next year, and compete with each other for a number of coveted office bearer positions, almost always along strict factional lines.
The number and voting power of delegates from each union depends on the number of enrolled students at their university. As one of the largest universities with only a single student union, the University of Melbourne’s delegates are particularly important at the conference, holding the most votes.
Delegates vote by yelling out the name of their faction, and “up” or “down” depending on if they want the motion to pass or fail. If this seems to you like an odd way to run a million-dollar union, you’re not alone.
Just which factional names can you expect to hear shouted across conference floor? In past years smaller factions like the Grassroots Independents (‘Grindies’) and the Australian Liberal Students’ Federation have had a presence, but this year was dominated by three groups, each with a counterpart in UMSU:
Student Unity (Labor Right, the largest faction), who run under Community for UMSU on campus.
National Labor Students (Labor Left, the second largest), who usually run under Stand Up! on campus.
Socialist Alternative (revolutionary socialists, specifically of the Cliffite tendency), who run under Left Action on campus.
We could tell you about the policies, issues, and debates that characterised this year’s conference. We could also tell you about the chaos, abuse, and the fighting—verbal and otherwise. But we really don’t want to relive all of that, so instead we’ve invited representatives from each of the above factions to do it for us.
Josh Davis ran unsuccesfully for NUS Delegate in 2021. He is not aligned with any national-level political factions. Joel Duggan is too personally fulfilled to be involved in student politics.
Luv Golecha, Student Unity
We have all heard some crazy stories about what happens on the conference floor at NatCon, and I was extremely excited to experience it for the first time. Seeing politically ambitious students from across Australia who believe that the NUS is the biggest and best platform for students to raise issues that matter to them and should be heard by the government felt empowering.
From boarding the bus at Trades Hall to reaching Deakin’s Waurn Ponds campus and kickstarting the first day of the conference, I experienced a range of emotions almost as turbulent as the chaotic weather we observed on the drive down.
We spent hours poring over a 250-page long document of proposed motions and action plans, all put up by students across every department; from Indigenous to Queer, International and many more. Discussing and debating different ideas and ideologies gave me a better understanding and perspective on a lot of topics and concerns amongst the student body.
Across the 4 days, we had some wholesome moments, some logical and illogical discussions as well as a lot of heated debates. I did get a chance to be on the BizComm table—I mean the SnackComm table! The first days on BizComm were like an action movie, everyone fighting over every piece of paper! Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see someone eat any of the motions.
NatCon was a memorable experience, from speaking on motions, to being on BizComm, to travelling and interacting with everyone—big shoutout to Deakin and the NUS for the amazing accommodations and food across the 4 days of conference.
Luv Golecha attended NatCon as an accredited observer, and is a General Representative on UMSU Students’ Council.
I spent four days in a room with hundreds of students cosplaying as important and influential people. These were four of the most emotionally draining days of my life, where I sat alongside my comrades in the National Labor Students (NLS), mentally preparing for perpetual debates with Socialist Alternative (SAlt), and occasionally Student Unity. After being followed through courtyards by SAlt and screamed at for hours on end about how the NLS is no different from Student Unity, I have learnt a critical lesson that I will bring with me throughout the entirety of my StuPol career:
I have never been more secure in myself as a person, and as a member of the NLS.
You may be thinking, “how is it even possible to have your self-confidence whittled down to the bone by SAlt, and arise with any sense of security?” Well, brethren, here lies the very conceit of my piece. Textbook-definition harassment won’t get you far.
Entering NatCon, vapes in hand, NLS was prepared for countless debates regarding the University Accords, the Voice to Parliament, and the Australian Labor Party. The latter, I must add, was heavily criticised by the NLS. Climate change, refugee policy, protest laws, the Religious Discrimination Bill; we spoke out multiple times against the party, as the primary purpose of Labor Left is to make the party more progressive. This cannot be accomplished if we champion the ALP blindly and without nuance (sorry Student Unity, but not really). This was not enough for SAlt, who, like a broken record, continued to demand that we condemn the ALP. Which we continued to do. And they continued to yell. And we continued to regret ever getting involved in student politics, because seriously, what the fuck is this?
NLS spoke on many occasions about reforming SASH policy, unionising TAFEs, the importance of free education, and improving students’ welfare — including service provision! Yet, we were still being criticised for being conservative bootlickers. I can’t even begin to analyse the mental gymnastics there. After only a couple of hours of this abuse, however, I started to notice an interesting little aspect of our supposedly more left-wing counterparts. They are so far left that they’re right.
Continuing to prove the horseshoe theory correct, SAlt misgendered NLS speakers and refused to state their pronouns at the beginning of their speeches despite being asked multiple times to do so. They continued to use “LGBTI” instead of the proper initialism “LGBTQI+” despite, once again, being told multiple times that queer and asexual people exist. Siding with the Grassroots Independents, they also voted down an NLS motion emphasising the importance of safe spaces for autonomous groups, especially at universities. That should not have been a contentious topic. Despite condemning Liberal Party figures for speaking out against the Voice to Parliament, SAlt and the Grindies further voted down motions in support of it. How the tables have turned. How the horseshoe curves around.
All grievances aside, when not being abused, NLS are actually able to work together with SAlt to achieve something impactful. SAlt’s proposal for a National Day of Action was gladly supported by NLS during the (only) pleasant lunchtime we had, where we all sat down and worked through different methods of executing this protest. One-on-one, the Trots can actually be lovely. They can be effective. They can be normal, cordial people. We can vote on progressive motions together, and shut down Student Unity when they say shit like “HECS is best,” when we know that free and universal education is far better.
SAlt and NLS share a lot of similar values, and at the end of the day, we would love to be able to work together and get shit done. As long as that shit is accessible, and our discourse is productive.
It’s a lot easier to make change when you aren’t straight-up harassing people.
People were punched, curries were spilt, vapes were devoured, and I am so glad to be a part of NLS.
Evelyn Thompson attended NatCon as an accredited observer, and is a General Representative on UMSU Students’ Council
Socialist Alternative is Australia’s largest revolutionary socialist organisation, with clubs on all the major campuses and a presence in national student politics. We think capitalism is a rotten system that is to blame for every form of oppression, exploitation and injustice in the world. We currently hold the UMSU Environment Office, and we’re one of the major factions in the National Union of Students, holding the Education and LGBTI Offices.
We attend the yearly NUS National Conference to put forward our arguments for student unionism. This year, Socialist Alternative made two key arguments. First, the new Albanese Labor Government is no friend to students, workers or the environment. Second, the NUS needs an activist orientation to rebuild the union as a body that fights for students.
Our first overarching argument was that the NUS should oppose the federal Labor government. After eight months in government, Labor has failed to address the cost of living crisis, climate change, and the dire state of higher education. Much was made of the Albanese government’s commitment to a 43% reduction in emissions by 2030. However, this pales in comparison to the 75% reduction advised by the Climate Council to avoid catastrophic warming. Meanwhile, the government is pushing ahead with over 100 new fossil fuel projects.
The story is the same when it comes to Labor’s position on student and worker issues. Almost nothing has been done to ameliorate the rising cost of living, with Treasurer Jim Chalmers admitting that real wages will continue going backwards for at least another year, and welfare rates will remain below the poverty line, whilst the government maintains its commitment to the Stage Three tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy.
When it comes to education, Labor has done nothing to overturn the Liberals’ 2020 Job Ready Graduates bill or reverse years of funding cuts and sackings.
We think student unions should be activist organisations dedicated to campaigning for left-wing issues. Student unions control large amounts of students’ money, and have a platform to connect with students and broader society. These resources should be used to involve as many students as possible in activist campaigns.
At the University of Melbourne, we’ve successfully argued for UMSU to organise climate strikes and refugee demonstrations, oppose the far right on campus, and to take a left-wing position in support of Palestine.
The NUS has the potential to play a similar role on a national scale. However, as an organisation currently dominated by careerist Labor students, NUS is instead used for student politicians to collect a paycheck and network behind closed doors. But the NUS still has the ability to reach and mobilise huge numbers of students in united national campaigns; when it does this, it can hold real social power.
In 2014, when the Abbott Government set about defunding and deregulating higher education, it was the Socialist Alternative NUS Education Officer that successfully argued for a mass activist campaign against Abbott’s budget. The political climate created by this movement meant that fee deregulation was never introduced by Abbott – a huge win for students that would not have happened without Socialist Alternative implementing its strategy through the NUS.
The Labor factions, both NLS and Unity, have worked in tandem to implement a moderate, do-nothing strategy in the NUS. They have consistently argued that the way to change things for students is by lobbying the federal government and millionaire Vice-Chancellors, and campaigning to get Labor elected despite their criminal track record. They look to power in the boardrooms; we look to it on the streets. They want to sit down with the university bosses; we want to build a student movement to fight against them.
The main strategic argument put forward by the Labor factions at NatCon was for the NUS to join the upcoming Australian Universities Accord, Labor’s plan to bring Vice-Chancellors, governments, staff, and students together to “reshape” higher education. They argued that the Universities Accord provides a ‘historic opportunity’ for students to get a seat at the bargaining table.
Socialist Alternative argued against this. The government and Vice Chancellors work together to maintain profits at the expense of students and staff. This has resulted in universities boasting megaprofits while students are hit with higher fees, course cuts and mergers, and staff face widespread casualisation and sackings.
NLS often presents a “two-pronged” approach to student unionism. One being lobbying, the other activism. “You can do both”, they say. In reality, this promotes the illusion that students have a common interest with the VC’s and governments, while actively demobilising the student body. That these strategies are counterposed was most clearly illustrated at NatCon when Labor Left and Right alike moved to gag the 2023 Education Officer from publicly opposing the Higher Education Accords.
The only way we can win real action on climate change is by rebuilding a fighting climate justice movement. That’s why Socialist Alternative is organising a National Day of Action (NDA) for the environment on March 17. We think the NUS should play a key role in this, mobilising young people to oppose every new fossil fuel project and demand that not one cent be given to the fossil fuel industry. At UMSU, this will be a key focus of the Environment Department in Semester 1.
For years Socialist Alternative has been the only faction arguing for the NUS to take a left-wing, activist strategy. After being locked out of Office Bearer positions for two years, it’s a real step forward that in 2023 Socialist Alternative will hold the Education and LGBTQIA+ offices. We’ll be using these positions to run activist campaigns and call protests, and we encourage all students to get involved in the fight for climate and social justice.
Bella Beiraghi and James Gallagher attended NatCon as accreddited observers. Bella Beiraghi is a General Representative on UMSU Students’ Council, and James Gallagher is one of the 2023 UMSU Environment Officers.
Satan has applied for his first-ever leave of absence after being overrun with Taylor Swift fans desperate to sell their souls in exchange for concert tickets after missing out in the Ticketmaster debacle. “I thought I knew hell,” said Satan. “Then I met Swifties.”
Juvenal, head of Farrago’s Limbo office, spoke to some demons about their thoughts on the influx of new residents.
“Yeah it’s been a crazy rush on deals recently,” said Beezlebub while sticking a hot poker into a Lehman Brothers executive who helped cause the GFC. “We can’t even keep up with demand. There’s also only a certain number of seats in the stadium to begin with. We’ve had to start offering general admission in exchange for souls and people are still taking it. It’s not like we can magically make more seats; we’re not miracle workers. You’d have to go upstairs for that.”
Beelzebub went on to express concern about the huge influx of Swiftie souls. “I mean, these people willingly watched Cats just to see Taylor for a two-minute scene. What more torture can we possibly throw at them?”
The United States government has been rattled after an eventful week of unidentified balloons drifting into American airspace. After downing these objects, the US Air Force have decided they’re better safe than sorry, announcing new proactive measures to take out balloons before they get off the ground.
Sandra Dee, a mother from Chicago, told Farrago that her son’s 5th birthday was absolutely ruined by a $400,000 USD missile launching into the balloon gate she’d set up in her backyard. “They even took out the balloon animals,” said Dee. “The clown was absolutely devastated.”
Written by Tyson Holloway-Clarke
When I was in primary school I got jumped by a group of older students. They knocked me to the ground, kicked me, and crushed me against the asphalt. I had been in fights before, and even lost some. I was a rough kid that had a rough childhood. But I came from a family of fighters. My father had countless fighting stories that I learnt as a child. Fighting was more than normal, it was virtuous. So when that group of kids got the better of me, my young ego was bruised much worse than my body was. My single mother was at a loss, I refused to rat them out. I knew snitches get stitches, and this was between me and them, no one else. Later that week, in a fateful moment, the knocker rapped our front door and a man in a gi1 signed me up for karate lessons. At eight years old I started a lifelong journey of martial arts, and many, many more fights.
A few years later, I saw the Rock Lee versus Gaara fight in Naruto. It was one of the numerous classic fights that anime put to sound and light. The colours were vibrant, the characters fascinating, and the sound and action engrossing. Yet it was the spirit of the episode that stood above all else, elevating it to the cultural touch-
stone it is today. For fans of the series, and indeed Japanese culture, those immortal scenes represent one of the paramount examples of the fighting spirit trope.
Tropes are funny things; they represent the familiar patterns of our stories but they are more than just stories. The fighting spirit is real, I’ve felt it bubble and boil in my chest as it invigorated my body and cleared my mind to focus on a singular, violent, task. It appears in story after story as a boon to the hero in need, allowing them to do the impossible. It renders flesh untearable, bones unbreakable, and violence inescapable as the hero surpasses expectations. Goku’s ascension to Super Saiyan status is perhaps the most famous example of this. As he avenges Krillin, his fallen best friend, and ends Freiza’s reign of terror it is clear to the audience that nothing will spur Goku on more than protecting his loved ones.
It is in the fine print of these moments that we learn what the fighting spirit really is. It always sits within us, waiting for you to make a choice to fight. Then, the spirit moves you.
What frustrated me most about getting jumped back in the day wasn’t the hurt, the randomness of it, or the unwarranted nature of the attack. No, I could deal with all of that. What burnt me up the most was that I knew each and every one of those kids, and I knew in my heart (even if I was wrong) that if we lined them up I could beat all of their asses back, to back, to back, to back. But instead, they jumped me like cowards and I didn’t stand a chance. In the lawlessness of the playground, I lamented the lack of honour. I made a choice, I was never going to find myself in that sort of position again, curled up in a ball, protecting my head and organs. I would make myself as lethal as possible, so when anyone tried such an attack again, I would be ready, I would fight, and I wouldn’t give up. I wanted to fight. It was in my blood; I was born to fight. I was even named after Mike Tyson. My fighting spirit had awakened. For Rock Lee, he had to prove his potential. For Goku, it was vengeance and love. For me back then, fighting was my identity, my ego.
As I grew, I enjoyed nothing more than putting bullies in their place. The friends I made standing up for people in highschool are still some of my best friends to this day. But as time went on, I began to learn that you cannot solve every problem in life with violence. Not every girl is impressed with how hard you can punch, or how many judo throws you have perfected. Sure, some are, but there is more to life than fighting.
At university, I learnt hard lessons on grief and violence. In mourning I had to reconcile my own relationship with, and love of fighting. I routinely watched people have their arms and legs mangled, their necks twisted and strangled and their brains separated from consciousness with every imaginable technique. Yet, I could not stomach the thought of it happening to the ones I cared for and loved. I had become a monster capable of great evil, of ending a life and perpetuating our endless cycles of violence. I had hurt people and been hurt in return. In my mind it had become all the same, violence is violence. When faced with the dark, endless, abyss of unknowing that is death, I flinched. I thought I saw my reflection. There could be no greater affront to one's spirit than to snuff the light out of another. Yet, my passion was learning, practis-
ing, and mastering every which way that I might do. I was repulsed at and offended by my own pursuits, as I was confronted with the wrongness of my thought and life's work.
In time, working my way out of this pit of despair and self-hatred, I returned to the mats. I did what I knew, even if my heart was not in it. I donned my gi, tied my belt and bowed as I stepped on the mat. Reunited with the men who would shape my character, our bodies moving in the unique rhythm of jiu-jitsu. We danced together in pain. I looked out across the mat and saw the familiar focus and drive one might see during training. Initially, it chilled my blood to see these faces of violence.
But I also saw other things. I saw a teenage girl, wrestling her way to the top position against a man more than twice her age and nearly double her weight. I saw two competitors putting each other through their paces, testing their alacrity. I saw a beginner, in a baggy oversized and borrowed uniform begin to put together the basic movements they would need to eventually master if they were to learn this complicated but beautiful art.
For the longest time my fighting spirit was about domination, about supremacy, about glory and about finding truth through competition. Where I was challenged, I must rise and conquer. Those were the follies of a younger, less time-worn man. While the skills stay with me, they are a last resort. My yearning to prove myself has largely passed. Now I train out of a love of learning, and to deepen my understanding and appreciation.
For my money, there is no greater art than the martial, and no braver artist than the fighter. For the beauty of fighting is not in the moves, or the results, but in the spirit of the people who do and the courage they show to be more than themselves, even if but for a brief moment.
Zac Efron, Ryan Gosling, Penn Badgley, Ross Lynch and Evan Peters—what do all of these men have in common? For one, they’re all examples of wildly successful, conventionally attractive A-listers dominating the contemporary film industry. They can be found on the covers of GQ, Times and Vogue Magazine, on billboards promoting designer brands like Hugo Boss and Gucci, on red carpets of almost any major movie premiere, and, of course, in TikTok fan edits made to whatever ‘slowed+reverbed’ thirst trap song is currently trending. Essentially, these celebrities epitomise much of what society deems desirable in men, with individuals such as Efron even being heralded the “ultimate embodiment of modern masculinity”1.
Yet strangely enough, what these men also share is that they have all played serial killers at some point in their careers.
The romanticisation of serial killers has become an increasing issue in contemporary culture. Words such as ‘charming’, ‘attractive’ and ‘charismatic’ have often been used to describe murderers in the media, with a recent analysis of over 120 online articles2 by Eastern Kentucky University revealing that such killers are widely sensationalised in the news. It doesn’t end here—many infamous murderers have even become the eponymous ‘anti-heroes’ of numerous movies, TV shows and podcasts, with advertisements projecting their faces across millions of Netflix homescreens, posters and more right alongside some of Hollywood’s most famous stars. One may argue that by telling these stories, victims and their families are given a voice. Yet, when entertainment spins
solely on the axis of their trauma, are we really giving the victims a platform, or simply twisting their very real and harrowing deaths into perverse spectacles for our enjoyment? Why are we not naming these documentaries and shows after the victims, if the intention truly is to empower those affected?
It seems like society has always taken a morbid interest in homicide: for example, up until the 19th century, people could buy tickets to public executions. However, this fascination has only worsened over time, with the extreme obsession, and sometimes even sexual attraction towards serial killers now even having its own name: hybristophilia (the most famous example of which resulted in large groups of so-called ‘groupies’ turning up to a 1970s serial killer’s trial having dressed up like his victims3). Currently, more than 52% of Americans enjoy true crime content4, with the proportion of Australian consumers expected to be even higher5. A 2022 Netflix series ‘Monster: The *insert name of serial killer not worth mentioning* Story’6has even recently surpassed over a billion views.
There are a couple potential explanations for this unnerving societal fixation with crime and death. Forensic psychologists posit that it could be a way to satisfy our inner adrenaline junkie without having to put ourselves in any tangible danger7. Additionally, they have also claimed that the disproportionately female demographic targeted by true crime content could also be linked back to issues such as internalised misogyny and trauma, with their interest in true crime functioning as a socially acceptable way for them to indulge in their darkest fears.
Yet, this growing interest in serial killers and true crime could feed into the already narcissistic tendencies of these criminals and incentivise their horrendous behaviour. While the intention of these true crime shows may be to denounce them, studies of serial killers convey that the majority of them are driven, at least in part, by infamy and their desire to shoot from anonymity to public headlines by any means necessary. One particular murderer in the 1970s even notoriously wrote to his local TV station asking, “How many people do I have to kill before I get a name in the paper or some national attention?”8
With violent crime on the rise9, can we really risk glorifying murderers and entertaining their desire for widespread infamy? By encouraging audiences to view the world from the skewed lens of a serial murderer, we are inherently inclined to sympathise with them and even justify their actions. A University of Texas study in 201310 run by more than 164 undergraduate students showed that participants who watched true crime content involving murderers and/or criminal activity were less punitive in nature and much less likely to support capital punishment.
Where do we go from here?
After the tragic Christchurch shootings in in 2019, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern vowed never to speak the name of the perpetrator, urging the public to instead “speak
the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them … we, in New Zealand, will give [him] nothing—not even his name”11. Essentially, she proposes that the country make him “nameless”. I firmly believe that this is the way forward.
While the names of serial killers will inevitably still be traceable if people search hard enough, by refusing to mention the names of these criminals, we strip them of their infamy and re-centre the narrative around victims.
While the United Nations Human Rights Charter12 states that every human being has a right to a name, identity and nationality, the actions of these individuals indeed push the boundaries of humanity and raise the question: do they still get to be human, or are they simply monsters at this point? Is it fair to grant someone the same rights they so callously stripped from others? Indeed, it is arguably more just to treat them like the monsters they are, like blank and empty creatures lacking both name and identity.
For those killers whose names are already ingrained in the zeitgeist, the narrative should be altered so that the victims’ names are the ones we uphold. Over time, these killers will fade into nothing more than an irrelevant side character in a still tragic, yet much more empowering and hopeful story. Gradually, we will make serial killers nameless.
1 https://ww.fashionnetwork.com/news/hugo-boss-names-zac-efron-as-the-new-face-of-hugo-man,766132.html
2 https://encompass.eku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1635&context=etd
3 https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/what-is-hybristophilia
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-01/ted-bundy-why-the-serial-killer-attracted-female-fans/10763676
4 https://today.yougov.com/topics/entertainment/articles-reports/2022/09/14/half-of-americans-enjoy-true-crime-yougov-poll
5 https://creammagazine.com/2022/03/29/australians-are-the-biggest-followers-of-true-crime-series-a-recent-study-reveals/
6 https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/dahmer-monster-ryan-murphy-
7 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/school-thought/202102/4https://time.com/4172673/true-crime-allure/
8 https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/publications/cjm/article/social-
9 https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/violent-crime-rates-byhttps://www.aic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-05/tandi359.pdf
10 http://hdl.handle.net/10106/24134
As It Was
I yearn for the past.
No, not in the ideological sense of wishing for “the good old days.” Instead, I yearn for the literal and tangible. More specifically, I yearn for buildings—immovable objects that bear witness to our history and serve as a reminder of the past and a caution of the future.
This desire for brick-and-mortar is not novel to me. It’s rooted deep within my childhood and the city I call “home.”
Growing up in the Philippines, I spent countless days wandering the halls of brutalist buildings whenever I accompanied my father and grandparents to their workplaces. I recall the musty smell emanating from their decades-old carpets and drapes. These formidable concrete structures may seem like imposing eyesores to some, but they remind me of home. Though dim and chilly due to their small tinted windows, the buildings’ seemingly impenetrable walls always made me feel safe.
Brutalist architecture became the favoured architecture style in the Philippines during the mid-century, a time of economic, political, and cultural reinvigoration of post-war life. Having suffered the insurmountable loss of life and infrastructure during the country's occupation and campaigns for liberation, the Filipinos were eager to rebuild.
With their distinctive small windows, thick walls, and concrete details, Brutalism was the obvious choice. It was cost-effective, abundant, and functional. Its materials and style could withstand the country's unrelenting downpours and scorching heat. Scattered throughout the nation's capital, Metro Manila, visitors are greeted by grandstanding concrete fortresses, from churches to concert halls.
As much as I cherish these concrete edifices, I fear their time is limited.
Older buildings are increasingly under threat of demolition.
Nicknamed “the Pearl of the Orient,” the Philippines was the shining star of the Pacific during the early 20th century. Its ports and bays were clogged with foreign and local vessels. Cities were aglow with the lights and laughter leaking from the grand ballrooms, theatres, and sports facilities.
This era of decadence was abruptly cut short by the Second World War. During this time, Manila and its neighbouring provinces were active war zones subjected to aerial bombings and on-ground combat, resulting in the near pancaking of its infrastructure.
If you walk through the Philippines’ central business district, between luxury apartment buildings and hotels under construction, you can glimpse a scene of its past. Buildings once considered state-of-the-art aesthetic gems have now fallen to disrepair, covered by a film of grime and sympathetic nostalgia.
This is not singular to this area. Venture further out to the historical “barangays,” a Filipino term akin to a village or administrative district, and you will see a similar sight—historical buildings abandoned, graffitied, or in the process of being demolished.
Landmarks and buildings that were spared this fate are not necessarily in a better position. Take the historical walled city of Intramuros, for example. It is perhaps one of the most culturally significant remnants of the nation's 300+ years of Spanish occupation, and a site of extensive bloodshed during the Japanese occupation in the Second World War. Many of its centuries-old buildings are now masked by commercial billboards and tarpaulins, strangled by a web of telephone poles, and gutted from the inside out.
I am not alone in this trepidation—online you will find swathes of articles mourning long-gone buildings and institutions that dot thousands of Filipinos’ fond recollections.
For the lack of historical preservation in my home country—which I hold so dear—I can’t help but feel pangs of envy when walking the streets of London or Rome, where throngs of tourists and locals are able to appreciate the same views as their ancestors. To touch the walls of the Pantheon or skim through the books at the State Library Victoria is surreal knowing generations of people have done the same.
The last 150 years of Filipino history is marked by suffering, determination, and victory. As the generations that lived through these historical events begin to pass from this existence, what remains are the buildings that bore silent witness to progress and change.
Regardless of one's beliefs or motivations, we owe it to those who toiled and innovated for the future to preserve their past and rediscover the nation's history. Emerging generations also deserve to learn about the past through physical relics of what once existed.
Perhaps if you share the same sentiments as me, regardless of where you live or where you’re from, more active participation is needed. Visit your local historical buildings, museums, and sites, especially those that are family and community-run, knowing that they may be financing their preservation out-of-pocket or are wholly reliant on donations. Sign petitions and raise awareness in support of these sites. Finally, do your research and get talking. We owe our history and identities that much.
Written by Michelle Yu
“The length of the outspread arms is equal to the height of a man; from above the chest to the top of the head is one-sixth of the height of a man; the maximum width of the shoulders is a quarter of the height of a man.”
And the maximum width of the waist is an eighth of the woman.
“The foot is one-seventh of the height of a man; from below the foot to below the knee is a quarter of the height of a man.”
From the knee to the hip of the woman is to be covered by cloth at all times. From knees to ankles is to be covered by stockings.
“The root of the penis is at half the height of a man.”
Her breasts, not smaller than both hands clasped together. It is well into the 21st century. Let us begin.
First, the Vitruvian Man would be a woman. In this permutation, we have dispensed with the typical, nude masculine subject (with its vulgar depiction of an unapologetically erect penis, like those found in Michelangelo's painting, The Creation of Adam, and his marble sculpture, David). As to the nature of this depiction, is it oil on canvas? Watercolour? Decidedly, it is a picture with a filter, perhaps of exaggerated eyes and rosy cheeks. Let us determine the details. Is she clothed? How much? Is a woman who wears clothes a woman empowered, or is it one who is wearing none at all? Does makeup perpetuate unreasonable presentation standards, or is it a weapon of self-esteem? Will she keep her hair short or long? Shave it?
“The distances from below the chin to the nose and the eyebrows… are equal to the ears and to one-third of the face.”
Her eyebrows, symmetrical and even. The length of her eyelashes, not shorter nor more sparse than those of a giraffe’s.
Will she groom herself this way? Nonsense. Let her choose what she wants, and it will be the right choice.
But what if those choices and judgements are not her own? Impossible to choose for herself, when women's shirt sleeves and necklines are eight centimetres shorter than men's; tighter, smaller, higher. Delicious skin. But then again, what if it gives her satisfaction, power and confidence to wear a crop top and
short shorts that may or may not fully cover her derriere? Even if she chooses not to do so, finding clothes that align with your values is difficult, especially when there are 20 different types of short shorts in the trendiest fabrics and colours, and the ones with the length you’re looking for are just too plain and never on sale.
Accompanying his drawing of the Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci writes, “… the measurements of man are in nature distributed in this manner, that is four fingers make a palm… four cubits make a footstep, 24 palms make a man and these measures are in his buildings.”
And these measures are in every TV show, Instagram reel and clothing store.
Why does this Vitruvian figure have to be a man or a woman; one or the other? Does it matter what gender they are? I guess not—but what about the stretching and tearing of childbirth of womanhood; the feeling of vulnerability in dark and deserted places and streets; the incomparable, mortal fear of a singular sperm making its way deep into her body and undiscovered until it’s too late? And not to mention the 18 years of labour, taking care of a being whose cries and needs will be uniquely hers to bear, for who shall stay home and take care of the kids? Is it the father who will be denied financial independence, personal growth and appreciation for their work; who shall miss out on professional success and a thriving career?
I cannot stand by and let these exclusively womanly pains and struggles be erased. And right now, the label of ‘woman’ is the only thing that gives these trials existence and validation, as meagre as its provision is.
And now, back to the question of whether the Vitruvian woman is dressed. Ladies, why are you complaining? Isn’t it a freedom to wear little clothing? As little as you want. You no longer have to cover up with long pants and long-sleeved shirts. Not too little clothing, however, because then you would be a slut.
You know what? Fine. Maybe men should have this right too—to wear little clothing. I’m sorry you have to wear long pants and business shirts all the time. I'll just have to get used to the hairy legs and stripes of pubic hair peeking from your waistbands. For the sake of equality. Hang on, why aren’t you expected to wax too?
Sheehan Karunatilaka’s novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida starts with its eponymous protagonist dying and waking up in a visa office. On the best of days, and the worst of days, a typical Sri Lankan visa office is a bureaucratic nightmare. It is an amalgamation of emotionless expressions, droning voices, never-ending lines, and an absolute lack of any sense of direction. Karunatilaka's envisioned afterlife is no different. The office’s employees are less like guiding angels and more like confused drifters. Curiously, Karunatilaka’s Purgatory mirrors Sri Lanka itself, just as the Garden of Eden mimicked biblical paradise.
It is indeed significant that this visa-office-afterlife is a direct reflection of Sri Lanka in the early ‘90s. The first soul Maali Almeida meets is Dr Ranee Sridharan, a slaughtered journalist. The second is a mother, whose sari is caked in blood, cradling an apathetic child. The sheer number of souls in the afterlife is casually exemplified in, “These days? There’s a corpse every second. Sometimes two.” The novel’s plot has no Heaven or Hell. Rather, the afterlife is a pseudo-purgatory of brutally murdered people, and endless waiting in queues. As Karunatilaka admits, “Lankans can’t queue. Unless you define a queue as an amorphous curve with multiple entry points.” Having experienced suffocating Lankan queues myself, I wholeheartedly agree with Karunatilaka’s choice in his novel’s literary afterlife.
Traditionally, however, conceptions of the
afterlife rarely resemble a bureaucracy. The Heaven and Hell opposition is the immediate (and highly Christianised) afterlife we recognise. But what of literary afterlives like those of Karunatilaka, and, most notably, Dante Alighieri? Karunatilaka’s afterlife has no basis in religion at all, and Dante, while he draws on Christian theology, writes his own biblical fanfiction of what Heaven, Purgatory and Hell look like. In a commendable moment of self-insertion, Dante travels through the nine circles of Hell, and each tier of biblical Purgatory and Paradise. Interspersed in the narrative are classical and historical figures favoured by Dante himself, and certain people whom Dante apparently had decided to subject to an eternity of self-indulgent, sadistic literary torture.
Interestingly, like Karunatilaka’s visa office, Dante’s circular Inferno and conical Paradiso are reflections of his sociocultural and political context, as well as his own personal desires, hatreds and feelings. It is no mistake that Dante’s own animosity towards certain people in his community is reflected in The Divine Comedy by straight-up chucking them into the circles of Hell in a truly elaborate fantasy revenge plot. Or that his heroes—Homer, Ovid and Cicero—, while consigned to Hell due to their status as pagans, do not suffer and, instead, play the roles of guides and advisors. This portrayal of Dante’s heroes in The Divine Comedy is indicative of a society that did value classical thought, but not so much the classical artists’ ways of life or beliefs.
Yet another literary hell tailored to one’s fears is that in the myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus’ personal hell is the result of his feelings of pride and ambition. Having attempted to arrogantly cheat death by literally capturing its deity, Thanatos, he is consigned to eternally roll a boulder up a slope. Thus, he is destined to have his pride pricked every time the boulder refuses to rest at the summit, and his task must begin all over again. On a more personal note, my hell would plausibly reflect my aversion to cringe, which I developed during my teenage years. Therefore, I can think of nothing worse than eternally reading shitty One Direction fan fictions with a lack of paragraph breaks. The creative liberty bestowed upon literary hells and personal hells, however, attests to the fact that not only are literary and personal concepts of the afterlife psychological phenomenon that reflect “the nature of the human entity and its relationship with the world”, but also “imaginative spaces” based on reality that can be “filled as we wish” (Gee, 2020).
What of eternal paradise, however? What of eternal gardens, milk and honey, angels, harps, and white clothing? Hans Christian Andersen’s little match girl is whisked away from the frigid cold and poverty of her situation by an angel. At the last moments of her life, visions of what her life could have been—warm firelit dinners, mended clothes, love, and laughter—burn through the light of her matches. In that version of paradise, she finds comfort. If literary and personal hells are a tapestry of the relationship between man and the world, and spaces for venting revenge plots, grievances and nightmares, then is not a literary and personal paradise a safe space for one’s comforts?
References
The anchor of Dante's journey, the literal voice that shoves him away from the edge of insanity (and stupidity) is Beatrice, the woman whose love and familiarity are a soothing balm and a guiding hand throughout the circles of Hell. She appears in all the biblical splendour of Heaven, and she is certainly no canonical saint. She is present in the narrative by Dante's own imagination because, though he may adore the company of the classical greats, she is his constant comfort and anchor point. Thus, in his creative work, she is the source of his own eternal paradise. In fact, Dante yearns not to join the ranks of Heaven, but to rather join Beatrice in the ranks of Heaven (and he certainly doesn’t wax poetic about the rest of Heaven’s population).
Milk and honey, palaces galore and the richest food may all be well and good. But for some, perhaps an eternity of a quiet house in the countryside à la cottagecore would be bliss. Or maybe the hype and bass of an eternal rave may curry another’s favour. As for Karunatilaka’s Maali Almeida, eternal paradise is not for him. Who would wish to spend eternity in a visa office anyway? His personal paradise is to reject whatever administration runs the afterlife. He instead chooses to pursue photographs he had taken throughout his career, photographs that could collapse political structures with decades of concrete foundations. This pursuit doesn’t bring him eternal bliss, peace, riches or contentment. He instead chooses to experience eternity unravelling closed ends and typing up old beginnings. Karunatilaka’s idea of paradise is a controversial one, but it’s more paradise than one can hope for. It isn’t every day, after all, that the dead receive the opportunity to finish their unfinished business.
Gee, Emma., ‘Introduction’, Mapping the afterlife: from Homer to Dante (New York, 2020; online edn, Oxford Academic, 21 May 2020), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190670481.003.0001, accessed 17 Jan. 2023.
Written by Claire Le Blond
The first step to writing a novel?
Don’t.
Put the pen down. Throw your notebook across the room. Preferably in the direction of a sibling (if you have one). Log out of your computer, be it laptop or desktop, whether it be Apple or otherwise. Shut your phone off. Go outside. Touch some grass. It won’t bite. Most likely. Go to a beach, preferably one that isn’t Bondi. Boil some instant ramen. Learn a new language. Tell your family you love them. If you don’t, lie. Lie well. Lie without overexaggerated glee or trivialised carelessness. Lie with your voice, whether it be harsh as the skid of rubber shoes against gravel or sickly saccharine like canned pineapples, and not with your body, your untamed body, the sculpted blades that harden from your shoulders and the curl on your fingers against your palm. Lie with honesty. Tell your family you love them and let the lie sink in the air like the weight of a quill on unblemished paper…
I’m doing it again aren’t I?
I’m writing.
Unfortunately, if you’ve come this far, you’re probably planning the same. Most likely already doing the same. Naughty, naughty.
It’s a treacherous journey, let me tell you. If you seek a guide or at least a helping hand, then I would recommend looking elsewhere. A library, filled to the brim with the coloured stories that are willing to hold your hand as you walk down a path littered with tarnished ideas and half-decayed creations. A spot in the outback, at least several daydreams away from these blinding cities where you can still see the stars that we feeble humans have been spilling stories from a seemingly limitless basin, a cascade of inspiration dripping down the ink-black sky in white gold revelations. A back alley, the type the trams can’t touch, where walking shoes are necessary to brave the cobblestoned, vomit-stained terrain. If you’re like me and wear glasses – that are never clean no matter how many times you spray them – perhaps look closer. Refrain from squinting, offer a careful glance. Take a step. Take it back. Take two more forward and keep going.
Full disclaimer: you won’t find a novel here. You won’t find it there either.
That story won’t be with you just yet, lovingly prepared and bundled in brown paper at the end of an overturned alleyway accompanied with a slightly out of tune overture. If it was that easy, I’d be out of a job.
Contrary or even opposite to what is usual or accepted, you’ll find nothing but the urge to break from tradition. To confirm the idea, to bring life into the dead words left on unapproved pages from childhood. To take the notebook you threw across the room, transplant the words inside into an avaricious word document, and create the novel you sought to find.
Maybe you’ll find that story. Maybe the story will find you. It’s nearly always mutual, from the beginning to the end and occasionally in the middle. For that story will never be done with you either.
Stories don’t have graves nor funerals. Memorials to words long written decay at the speed of plastic, minute pieces floating around brain matter. Daydreams are infected by the story, lingering like memories, haunting remnants of long forgotten Pinterest boards and missing persons posters for characters who still found a way to exist in you outside of the pages you raised them on. Stories. Don’t. Leave.
I should know. For those of you doubting my authority on the issue of novel-writing, your suspicions are correct. I am not to be trusted. The person I used to be, worked on a project that amounted to approximately 210,000 words over the span of five-ish years. That project was completed alongside full-time study, regular volunteer work, and swim training five times a week as an attempt to keep myself “sane” when in reality, the effect was likely the opposite (it’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me). That project remains unpublished to this day.
And the story that grew from that project is stuck with me to this day.
Stories don’t leave. Sometimes, I wish they would. Only sometimes, though.
Frankly, the real trick to writing is notoriously simple yet impossible, while also being cliché to the level that you will throw this edition of Farrago across the room when you read it. It should be noted that I consciously and subconsciously refused to subscribe to this trick while writing the drafts for this column, let alone my own larger works.
The first step to writing a novel: Don’t give up. .
As a child, I was always captivated by the early morning. Whether it was my birthday, Christmas day, or just an ordinary Sunday, I always felt this extreme excitement in waking up before the sun rises. It feels as though you are the only person around to witness such a fragile silence. A silence that fades away with every car that chugs down the highway.
Maybe my life would be easier if I just got my license and whizzed around in a car, I think to myself, when my alarm goes off at 4:45am. Stumbling out of bed, I begrudgingly dress myself in smart casual wear before resentfully marching down the street to the nearest train station.
But as I walk out onto the street, I’m reminded of that same delicate beauty that only exists in the quiet hours of the early morning. The station car park is empty; not in a creepy way, but tranquil way, as if the space itself is far away, off in dreamland.
For a single moment, everything is still.
There’s five minutes till my train arrives, but I don’t bother putting headphones on. It’s not completely silent, but I take the time to take in the sounds that momentarily cut through the silence. It’s too early for any bird-chirping, but the trees they’re all resting in rustle in the wind. I can hear the occasional car in the distance and the dedicated, solitary cyclist huffing as he climbs the hill. There’s a low humming of undercurrent electricity emanating from one of the nearby buildings and, if I listen hard enough, the faint purr of a stray cat.
By the time I board the train, the current population of my carriage consists of myself, seven tradies, one passenger dressed in scrubs who has fallen asleep, and what appears to be two best friends heading home after a big night out.
The world outside the carriage remains fast asleep, and I can tell everyone inside the train is envious of such slumber. Well, almost everyone.
One of the tradies is watching something intently on their phone. They haven’t put headphones in so the entire carriage can hear the obnoxiously intense theme song for whatever Game of Thrones-inspired show is playing. The speakers on the phone appear to slightly muffle the sound, but not enough to save my ears from picking up on the obscenely incestuous sounds that seemed to have travelled across the half-empty carriage.
I make eye-contact with a few of the other passengers—we don’t know whether to laugh at the salacious sounds or show our frustration over its interruption of the quiet. Eventually, one of the older tradies walks over and says,
“Hey mate, do you mind putting headphones in or watching ya show later? I’d like to enjoy my breakfast without hearing all those crude sounds coming out of your mobile phone.”
A sudden swell of stillness returns to the carriage, but it doesn’t last for long. As we pass through each stop, the sun slowly starts to ascend further into the sky, and the early morning mumbles digress into waves of chatter throughout the same carriage.
As I look out the window, I notice a positive correlation between the sunrise and the number of middle-aged women in Kathmandu puffer jackets, walking their dogs. At this stage, the train is starting to collect more school-age children. One’s even attempting to carry a double bass through the door, whilst the remaining gaggle of students are dreading what I assume is an early morning cross-country run.
By the time I reach Flinders Street, that early morning tranquillity has vanished. There are phones buzzing and motors revving. Up the escalators, I’m being pushed and shoved by various bodies clad in suits, clutching briefcases. The mystical ambience of the early morning has been replaced by a strident atmosphere. Until the tranquillity returns, early tomorrow morning.
Written by John Porter jpport@student.unimelb.edu.au
The wind that shakes the pages before me moves the grass in one great chorus of dance. The word “snap” fades into the distance as the sudden thud of a football breaks the peace. My awareness of the beauty before me pushes against my recognition that such scenery is only made possible by an ongoing genocidal project. A giant plane soars above my head, my mind transported to the images of war that fuelled a childhood obsession. The sun slowly sinks lower and lower with the shyness of a kid peering over the neighbors’ fence. Such peaceful moments are completely alien from the violent intrusion of metallic birds from the sky. Their wings spread deep across the horizon, rounding beyond the treeline until only their roars are left.
Out of sight, but not out of mind, a continual awareness of war contradicts my everyday life. Colonial amnesia on steroids. The battlefield has been supplanted by the sporting one, yesterday’s grand final oozing with history and pomp. The grand final parade, a uniquely victorian spectacle, reminding me once again of the whiteness of this sporting world. The endless veneration of geelong’s success accompanies analysis of the role played by the players’ farms, all without mention of the stolen histories of those very places they retreat to once the celebration dies down.
The success of white life comes at the cost of Bla(c)k life, torn asunder from family, community, land, and love, so that we whites can sit here 250 years later and be able to believe we are not living in any great war. What idiocy, what whiteness. The maxim that declares colonisation “a structure, not an event” falls deaf on our english ears. While I don’t have the planes of WW2 or the drones of Afghanistan above my head, I do have the grass beneath my feet as a present absence, a lifeless testimony to genocidal invasion. essendon and moonee ponds, both colonial jewels atop rolling hills so that a topology of violence can be maintained from above. The rich alluvial soils made possible by millennia of Wurundjeri-willam care presented a liquid temptation seemingly worthy of spilling blood, John Batman’s own sheep having feasted on the western banks of the maribyrnong. Even on grass, the antecedent to any such sporting spectacle, a colonial spectre lingers.
The control inherent in the history of grass mirrors the triumph of “Man” over nature imbued with all its feminine implications. To rape, to pillage, to seize by conquest is to be a man, to be white, to be a colonist. It is your duty. And so it is no wonder that Bauman chooses the gardening metaphor to surmise the Nazi project. To prune the “aryan race” of its excesses is to fulfil the fascist demands that exist well beyond the borders of the German state. The borderless nature of white supremacy transcends any barriers placed upon it, and in so doing mirrors the flights of capital. No wonder that colonists love fences, demarcating between what is ours and what is not. Borders, boundaries, binaries—the colonial toolkit par excellence. The insidious world of white supremacy has not gone quietly into the night, but now hides under a veneer of diversity, neoliberal multiculturalism, and strength in difference discourse, with that difference only ever on white terms.
They say diversity itself is a white word, meaning anything other than the white individual—the universal center of subjectivity. The metropole will always dominate the colony, and the wealth that is on display everywhere here in this colonial crown of “melbourne”, was always and will always only be made possible by blood. The toil of Chinese miners in the victorian goldfields, South Sea Islanders blackbirded onto plantations, and First Nations shearers, stockmen, and domestic servants stolen from country—theft on an industrial scale whose history continues in colonists coffers and is obfuscated in the names of homes, stations, mines, rivers and all manner of towns littered across the nation.
Territory itself becomes a parcel to be allotted into many individual holdings, the land beyond wellington in NSW akin to the mississippi river in the USA. Anything westward is the great untamed wilderness in the colonial imaginary, the frontier conditions replicated in canada, australia and the united states. These movements sung under the euphemism of “dispersal.” Never before had the poetic capabilities of the english language been mobilised in service of such violence. Language shapes the world and its mastery enables the colonial policing of who can be accepted into the category Human. Cook’s lie of discovery becomes the basis on which Terra Nullius rests, a lie mobilised in the continual dispossession and dehumanisation of First Nations peoples. The distortion of language and history lives on in the great denial of the reality of this place. And even if white people do know the names of Myall Creek, Breelong, Coniston or other such massacre sites, they claim innocence in their workings.
They can dispassionately recount events with the chill of a surgeon, able to divorce themselves from the systems that killed those men, women and children, the system which makes their life and all their loved one’s lives possible. They can uphold that distance by an argument towards “time.” But time is not a tsunami that effaces history. As Marx puts it, the living inherit their conditions “directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past.” The narrative production of history and the silencing of its terror constitutes our very subjectivity.
Where is the room for reckoning here? It is the reason ghosts become important. The ghosts of that violence are still with us, in the white mind or the colonial city, all around, everywhere, all the time. If we don’t listen to those ghosts, white people will continue the abusive structure of white domination. In this game the end goal is not life for some—it is death for all. White supremacy takes no hostages, and it will kill white families as it is doing today at the hands of men, its most loyal servants. The rapturous anger of a husband who raises his fist at his partner or children is but one variation on the great theme of white abuse that litters Western history. The raising of a fist, the raising of a foreign flag on a beach, or the raising of an extended right arm towards the führer all descend from the same logic: a failure to recognise this keeps the wheels of whiteness spinning. It is our duty once we realise the violent path it takes on a systematic and individual level, to turn our own wheels against whiteness itself. For it must be destroyed if I am to live.
Written by Jordan Fenske
Have you ever felt oddly connected with a character in a story? While writers craft their stories using their own biases, beliefs, and their own perceptions of the state of society, it is up to you, the reader, to form your own opinion of the story being told. Writers are able to use their work as windows into the lives and time of the people they write about. While characters in classic literature are often fictitious, they still embody the values—good and bad—of the society in which they live. Through time, many characteristics in society have evolved, but there are some eternal qualities about human nature and the human mind that authors draw comparisons to certain values to emphasise and explore.
One tale that’s as old as time is the concept of popularity. In classic literature, this is usually seen as social class. The lesson we often learn from these characters of high notoriety is that they would do anything to maintain their status, which often leads to their demise. In S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, she depicts a society divided into two rival groups: the Socs and the Greasers. The Socs are the socialites who are the epitome of the upper class while the Greasers make up the lower class. Despite the characters in the novel being all quite young, even they display the true horrors spawned from class differences. The story follows a group of Greasers who believe themselves to be outcasts of society; kids who do not fit in because they are not as well off or educated as the Socialites.
Modern-day media portrays this issue often, suggesting that money equals power and media allows us to consume content from celebrities such as Mr. Beast, the Kardashians, and Elon Musk, with their main draw being their wealth and lavish lifestyles. We, as a society, admire these people and the idea of materialism. Both Hinton’s Socs and modern-day celebrities are respected solely because of their status. Similarly, classic literature will describe characters who don’t necessarily fit into the social mould as troubled, weird, or irredeemably different. Holden Caulfield from The Catcher In The Rye, for example, is a very controversial character—beloved by many readers but essentially hated by the rest of the characters in his story—for his outlandish traits and nonconforming nature. People, especially youth, have a tendency to cast out those who do not fit in and may even go as far as bullying them for these differences. These characters and people show that for centuries, humans have really valued societal acceptance and we as people, especially when young and easily influenced, mirror these desires found in literary characters.
Literature also teaches us to value courage. Who doesn’t love reading a story about a brave person who defies all the odds and succeeds in the end? While many of us have never fought to regain a throne, survived a zombie apocalypse, or escaped a city overrun by violent AI robots (at least I haven’t), we admire the bravery these characters possess and hope to instil some of that within ourselves. In Jane Eyre, Jane herself defies what society and her superiors dictate a woman should or should not do. Displays of early feminism in classic literature and media have carried on into modern-day movements. Margaret Atwood’s infamous The Handmaid’s Tale recently made massive appeals in the media as Americans cite it in support of the recent overturning of Roe v Wade. Society values the evaluation and discrimination of the text where women are portrayed simply as child bearers of a heavily patriarchal society. Literature where women are described as strong and fearless still empowers modern-day women.
Likewise, classic literature teaches us that no hero can be perfect; it sets realistic standards for how to be brave. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag understands the wrongs he and his fellow firemen have committed against society by concealing knowledge of the past and actively works to reverse the censorship of literature and the media. With contemporary issues such as the Ukraine, Iraq and China conflicts, where governmental bodies censor media from the outside world, the value of information and the people who stand up for their freedoms is omnipresent. Literature shows us examples of literary heroes who challenge their governing power in the fight for the greater good. In the monochrome world depicted in Lois Lowry’s The Giver, Jonas, a young boy who learns the knowledge of what the world used to be, seeks to educate himself and the rest of his society on what is being kept from them. In his fight, he goes against everything he has ever known. This courage allows him to change and potentially even save the world. He, along with the other courageous characters aforementioned, have become outstanding role models for people today. As people, the values we uphold inevitably shape what determines social standing. Classic literature has the power to shape these values, but can also teach us the errors in them. By learning from these texts, we’re able to take away valuable lessons from the characters’ mistakes, successes, and goals to prevent the same tragedies from happening in our world.
Long gone are the days of meeting a romantic interest in a coffee shop or book store. Long gone are the days when rain was the indicator of an emotional climax between two lovers (think The Notebook or Megamind). Long gone are the days of bearing boomboxes outside windows or yelling, “But daddy, I love him!”. I guess the latter could still happen–granted you’re telling daddy you’ve fallen for the moderator of an Animal Crossing server on Discord.
Often, when we consider romance, we turn to Shakespearean sonnets or films starring Julia Roberts as their female lead. However, as we make the gradual shift to a more digitalised society, we have to consider how the face of romantic relationships is changing. The very concept of ‘e-dating’ exemplifies this. When I say e-dating, I’m referring to a form of long-distance relationship where the partners involved develop their connection exclusively online. This means no secret rendezvous in which you’re greeted with a gentlemanly kiss on the hand, unless this happens to be occurring at the pizzeria on Club Penguin Now, that doesn’t sound like anything ideal and I suppose no one’s going to be writing a sonnet about it any time soon. Besides, there are a few qualms about e-dating that would irk the average classic romance enthusiast.
First of all, there are obvious concerns for safety. Yes, because “Kyle” is conveniently 19 years old the moment you say you’re 17. Even though he was reminiscing about the first time The Simpsons aired only a few moments ago. And “Kyle” might not even have your best interests at heart. For all you know, he’s only into you because you remind him of his favourite anime waifu (who reminds him of his mother). Beyond that, e-dating lacks a physical aspect often critical in romantic relationships. We inherently want to be felt, to be touched, to be known down to every birthmark and every scar. That’s a tad difficult when you and your e-person are divided by a dusty laptop screen. However, the most jarring predicament of these online relationships might be one of authenticity. Can we even consider a relationship formed online as something real?
I mean, since everything is occurring in digital space, we can disregard it without a second thought, right? With the rising omnipresence of digital technology and spaces, we have to acknowledge how social media changes social customs. In comes terms such as ‘digital dualism’ and Nathan Jurgenson’s ‘IRL fetish’. The former refers to how we delineate a significant distinction between the
online and offline worlds—with the latter being considered as objective reality. However, this distinction is false. Our refusal to believe so comes from that aforementioned ‘IRL fetish’ where we believe being logged off is better because it means we’re living in the here and now. However, to put it frankly, the here and now involves digital technology, and anything that occurs online happens to be just as real as anything that occurs offline. Even when hidden behind a profile picture of Kermit The Frog, the person you’re talking to is still a person. This person has history and interests and flaws. Therefore, you will still be perfectly capable of developing feelings for them. The only thing that differs is the way you connect with them, when your relationship is based online versus a traditional, offline affair. Even then, those ways of showing love aren’t inseparable.
Though I met my first boyfriend at a Theatre Sports competition (let’s not talk about it), a lot of our relationship occurred online, especially since we lived on completely different train lines. At that time, I was a fifteen year old girl with no geographical prowess. But even if I didn’t know how to use Google Maps, I was a prodigy when it came to Instagram. We texted, called and were heavily reliant on technology to maintain our relationship. Back then, the epitome of romance was being tucked under my blanket, the blue light frying my eyes as we texted about David Attenborough at 2am.
To some extent, he and I weren’t any different from my friend’s friend and her e-boyfriend whom she had met on Roblox. According to my friend who had sat next to her in class, being present when they were on calls “felt just like third-wheeling”. They played games together, watched shows together, discussed their futures together. Even if they weren’t exchanging kisses under the stars, they demonstrated their affection towards each other in ways that left them both satisfied. I mean, is chivalry dead or is it just telling your e-girlfriend to hop on the private voice channel on Discord? Regardless of whether romance takes the shape of a text message or not, it still remains as a way of saying to each other, “Let me be human with you.”
So let’s call until one of our devices combust, send each other cute memes attached with the text “us?” and most importantly, let’s put our Minecraft beds next to each other for romance’s sake.
Content Warnings: references to violence, murder and killing; minor references to animal cruelty
All you had of this creature were its eyes, and while they would make an intriguing artistic composition—framed as they were by limp strands of putrid algae—they would not look well in a gallery. They looked up at you, unblinking; mooned and milky. Transforming this creature into a thing of beauty would be tricky. You had had a Raphaelite Ophelia in mind; an alabaster being rising from the recesses, lazily lounging upon the mossdrenched, lichen-spotted granite circling the water; rivulets crawling down a corpse-like arm and pooling at the foot of an elbow.
Frankenstein and Dracula were beings made tangible by the ink of their stories and the monochrome shots of a clacking film reel. Universal Studios were one of the first to notice the commercial goldmine these creatures could trigger in the 1930s. Contemporary storytellers are not too far behind. The likes of Predator (1987) or Jordan Peele’s Nope (2022), fully utilise the trope of the creature to induce fear and introduce the unsettling in their storylines, and therefore in their respective audiences. The creature is often otherworldly: think the clam-shaped killer of Nope; the ethereal, unnerving intensity of Dracula’s gaze. Or they are positively feral. Think of the creature (Ghost? Bible-esque demon?) in 2022’s Smile, driven by a need to consume the trauma it inflicts on its victims through the body it possesses. The otherworldly creature is manipulative in carrying out its goals; the feral creature, more often than not, leaves a trail of gore in its path. Sometimes, in a truly delicious twist of writing, the creature is both manipulative and leaves a trail of murder in its path.
Years ago, the water had housed all manner of koi, carp and whiskered catfish. You would have liked to mix amber tones and paint them into contrast with shattering light. Instead, you had the smell of putrid algae and questions. A water habitat suggested a reptile; an amphibian perhaps, if it relied on the surrounding water monitors for sustenance. You leaned further down. Your hair gathered algae at the tips. A sinuous worm slid up your spine when the eyes shifted at your movement. You would declare its name with paintbrushes, palette knives and Latin calligraphy; a stamp upon the novelty of your discovery.
The horror of the creature lies, of course, in this exact combination of intelligence and ruthlessness. They simultaneously emulate humanity and the lack of humanity. Jordan Peele’s underground doppelganger in 2019’s Us, for instance, wears a human visage, yet their erratic movements, their underground home and their static communication set them apart as the erratic ‘other’ creature, to fear and unsettle (it doesn’t help that they are nonchalant about serial murder as well).
Whatever visage the creature wears, or the storyteller forces them to wear, it makes them a palatable, digestible commercial item.
The creature would be rigor mortis-cold if you touched it. It would not be enough to see it for yourself. Visions were fragile and flimsy at best. One could not deny, however, the physical undeniability of touch. You thought it might be half serpent. Perhaps it would have the scales of a fish, the eyes of a cat. Could water creatures produce horns? Some part of it must be humanoid, of course, but the rest would be myth.
The creature’s legendary status and animalistic features dresses it up in otherness, and therefore, it is established as something to be killed or exploited. Man is given permission to encroach upon the creature’s territory. The doppelgangers must be murdered lest they murder you; Dracula must be removed from his ancestral castle lest he massacres a village. The audience revels in their sense of pious justice—yes, in killing the creature and in violating its territory, they had done the right thing.
“Right” is subjective, unfortunately (for the moral stickler). Nope features a chimpanzee, exploited for years at a sitcom set, embarking on a murderous, frustration-fuelled rampage against its show-business captors. Who is right here, then? The captive ape, or the human it murdered? Who is the ruthlessly intelligent creature here? An animal finally enacting painful revenge before a posse of cameras, or a human forcing said animal into cages and corsets for the sake of a cheap laugh?
You chose to forget the scar running down the length of your arm. You got it the last time you chose to break the surface of the water and grasp into its depths. It was obvious what had given you that scar, but this time you had come prepared. Leather gloves covered your hands, and you had a camera, a sketchbook, a net and a knife ready on the damp grass beside you.
Or perhaps take 2022’s The Menu. The chef is very much human, yet he orchestrates the mass murder of every wealthy client, food critic and restaurateur who dared encroach on his passion for cuisine. Sure, he decides to murder them by turning them into roasted, chocolate-covered s’mores, but really, who is the monstrous creature here? All those people who were exploited without remorse, or an apathetic, resentful man born of that lack of remorse exacting his rightful revenge?
Right and wrong, moral and immoral, black and white; they are all subjectivities all drowning in buckets of grey. It is just so interesting to see the stickler, however, forget that man is creature too, and insist on dressing up the “animalistic” in black and the human visage in angel white.
Really, you shouldn’t have been so surprised. You should have expected the hand to reach out to yours, just as your fingertips brush the water. For it was a hand: calloused, knuckles, fingernails, chipped and digging into your wrist. It was a torso rising from the depths, sagging and bare. It was a neck coiled beneath a head from which sprouted matted crimps like your own. And really, how could you be so shocked when it begins to dive, and the waterline rises with every inch of your descending skin?
For artists, there is nothing more inspiring or potentially fatal than a comeback. Audiences hate witnessing the crash and burn of beloved artists; yet, in spite of reservations, the chance to hear the old and new sounds of a favourite band is a dream fans hold close to heart. But, while the effort to revive old tunes is colossal, a musical rebirth doesn’t just exist as a reunion tour after a decade’s silence, even if that is how we’ve come to know the comeback .
The perception of a musical rebirth as a return to a ‘classic sound’ is far too simplistic. It seems—even during an artist’s career—audiences tend to confuse constancy with continuity. What listeners truly desire is to hear continuity across a discography, thus listening to the same artist at different points in their lives. Constancy undermines that growth and leaves us music that is bored of itself. Not every artist should feel the need to reinvent the wheel, but if the comeback is viewed as another ‘next step’ rather than a return, then maybe it would be easier for audiences to celebrate the beloved artists who re-enter our lives.
For Farrago, here is Radio Fodder’s list of notable artists who have hit reinvention-era gold.
Honourable mentions:
The Wiggles
Their popularity has grown with fans who now flock to concerts and adults-only shows as though they are five years old again.
Shania Twain:
While fans adored Twain’s impressive strides into mesh pop, rock and glam, rock and pop critiques have regularly disavowed her style. She is unique for the sole reason why she didn’t change—we did.
The explosive joy from fans following the release of the brothers’ 2019 reunion album Happiness Begins was unmistakable, not to mention the surprise approach to their reunion with commercial pop. After their 2013 break-up, Nick and Joe appeared to signal some semblance of adulthood in the pop–R&B–soul scene, but songs on Happiness Begins, namely ‘Sucker,’ re-present the classic Jonas Brothers set-up of drum-bass-guitar from their old albums and passionately display their artistic growth with self-aware lyrics and a 2019 staple of stripped back beats to create headbanging momentum. It’s a full circle reunion that finds new joy in a genre they once left behind.
Beyoncé’s Lemonade opens in the middle of the realisation of her husband’s (rapper Jay-Z) infidelity and breaks the once-cardinal rules of albums inspired by the vortex of family drama. Instead of hiding her outrage, Beyoncé turns the album into a cinematic testimonial that borrows from the lyrical styles of indie rock, in order to frame her emotional turmoil as a captivating narrative. Though she would return to traditional hit-making on Renaissance (2022), the audacity of sampling Led Zeppelin into the country strumming ‘Daddy Lessons’ and even doing away with her perfectionist control of ‘realness’—as she puts it in ‘All Night’: “nothing can be real”—makes Lemonade her own version of a reinvention era.
Almost three decades since Alanis Morissette’s ‘90s post-grunge record, Jagged-little Pill, the Canadian singer proves she knows how to toe the lyrical line between raw and thoughtful. While Morissette has always been known for her poignant lyricism, she decides to take a step back on her tenth studio album The Storm Before The Calm to rely on instrumental-heavy tracks. The lyrics that do appear on songs like ‘purification- the alchemical crunch’ are golden touch stones that hone in on the singer’s meditation of stillness. The soft blend of haunting vocals, sparse piano chords and electronic strings is claustrophobic yet achieves a serenity that Morissette yearns for coming out of COVID.
Since 2013, Miley Cyrus has dedicated herself to the freedom of hip-hop to better express herself. The Nashville protégé’s 2019 single – which follows her 2013 Bangerz album – is a resigned yet yearning track that signals the end of her decade-long search for self-hood. ‘Slide Away’ is out of this era, taking after the slower songs by ‘90s British rock artists. The single blends hip-hop drums, forlorn strings and a buttery smooth guitar into a piece that deals with the singer’s hurt from her break up with Liam Hemsworth. It is raw, authentic and voids the notion of tabloid fodder.
This is perhaps the most unique slot on this list. In the two decades since their break-up, the former Blink-182 drummer has since managed to cement himself as one of the most influential musicians in the rock scene. Instead of releasing a typical solo comeback, Barker sought to reinvent himself as a producer and artist by putting his talent behind tracks like ‘I Think I’m OKAY’ with Yungblud and ‘Thought It was’ with Machine Gun Kelly. It’s becoming clear that Barker is the key reason Blink-182’s songs have continued to remain staples of the rock genre long after their dissipation.
inward. The musical and lyrical threads across each song tell a stunning, meditative story that we had yet to see from Swift prior to its release. Most surprisingly, Swift’s chance at self-introspection later inspired her own retrospection at her past albums, which prompted her to re-record them. Swift has very clearly done the homework on herself and is bringing with her an era that reconnects with the innovation behind all her albums.
After the release of Bowie’s Reality album in 2003, many fans assumed the veteran artist had unofficially declared retirement. It was an unexpected surprise then that in 2013 they put out The Next Day, an album they had created in near total secrecy. The record itself would qualify as a typical comeback if it weren’t so different from his back catalogue. Unlike the majority of their discography, TND is stripped of unsettling eeriness; they knew how much they’d been missed and instead cultivated a collection of songs that radiates warmth. What Bowie channels becomes a passionate ode to ‘70s melancholy, interpolated with references to their 50-year career.
No Shame is Lily Allen’s fourth studio album overall and first post-divorce. Her 2013 album, Sheezus, teetered on the edge between cutting points on gender and irony, however unfortunately had little to say. In No Shame, the blunt hold-the-bubble-gum singer brings forth a wonderful layer of nuance by deciding to lend an honest focus on her own embarrassments rather than the ones she sees around her. It’s quite unlike divorce albums in that way, as Allen chose to write about her own setbacks. The level of brash bluntness is there—still intrinsically Lily Allen in style—but now with the evolution into starkness.
9. Arctic Monkeys’ Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino (2018)
Although the Arctic Monkeys have grown since their first handful of New York shows, they are never too far away from their hair flipping, teen energy despite having been around for over two decades. Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is a conceptual record inspired by sci-fi films and literature, likely drawn from lead singer Alex Turner’s passion for reading, which he first discovered during his first bouts of touring and writing. It’s a totally unique transformation from 2013’s AM in concept and narrative, as after five years of silence the band gave themselves the chance to show off their true colours as a harmonious collective.
10.
It’s official, Taylor is the new comeback queen—sorry Cher. Fans are likely to name 2013’s Red as the Taylor Swift comeback album, seeing as it served as her redesigned break into the pop market. Her innovation era, we argue, would be her recent Folklore album. A surprise alternative-folk album, heavily driven by narrative, that came from her using her own lyrics to look
From the wistful stylings of Because The Internet and Kauai, Childish Gambino introduces a soulful reinvention in their follow-up project, Awaken My Love. The album is an ostentatious throwback to ‘70s R&B, but not without its fallbacks. Songs like ‘Have Some Love’ and ‘Stand Tall’ are forward in their R&B inspirations, however with the added flair of cartoonish accents—which largely arrive in the form of zany cackles, vintage clavinet and greasy guitar slides—Gambino delivers a clear message of self-awareness regarding his own experiences of these references outside of his era. The result is a carefully curated dance album rife with nostalgia, that somehow meshes humour, sensuality and outlandish futurism.
Content Warning: References to death in no explicit detail
I am staring at the k c a b of my mother’s head. It is a map she carries with her. There are always fewer pins holding her hair up than I think there are—mostly it’s only two, sometimes one if she’s done it in the car, one hand on the wheel, clip between her teeth.
She has done her hair in twists like this for years and years. Before children in body, in home, before mortgage, before death and sickness slid under the door, all quicksilvery and crackling. When she appears on FaceTime wearing her tortoiseshell sunglasses, I know it is because she has been crying. She nurses her orchids like sickly children. When I go down with the flu, she tends to me like an orchid. The orchids she inherited from her grandmother are called Dancing Ladies. Sometimes she wears delicate dresses. Sometimes I watch her dance.
(1) Orchid
(2) Woman
(3) Mother
I wonder what would happen if we gave the babies to the orchid—all that rioting colour to the mother—if we drowned the woman in breastmilk.
What if the woman grew roots, real ones.
What if the mother got to burn those tired and soft brown shoes.
What if we put flowers in the woman’s hair?
Hairpins in the petals?
When she picks me up from school there is an apple on the dashboard and her sister is on speakerphone. It is like their lives are one braided, endless conversation with small breaks in between for life. The space between them is cramped with secrets, beetles on their backs, glinting in the afternoon sun, overturned river stones. Baskets of vegetables going slimy with unuse. I wonder if my mother does her hair like that because she keeps her sister there. I wonder what fraction of her life she has spent cooking dinner. The plane of her cheek in that afternoon sun looks so heavy I want to press my hand up and under, I look at her and I tell her in my head, I hear when you can’t sleep I tell her, I’m sorry you spend so much time awake I tell her, you are not from a past life. She cannot hear me because I do not say it out loud and because she is on the phone.
The ocean croaks: H O L D M E
Pin-in-a-jar still s o q u i e t as it churns its glass and rock as it
weeps and thrashes
the clouds, after a time, split and turn the soft inside of their wrist toward me needlework, tumbling
I won’t ask chest thundering against the sand always harder
breathless
and when the clock in the kitchen frosts over with my brother’s rage blue heat spilling over
how I hold the great spaceship of his body until he splits and turns the soft inside of his wrist toward me
until his white rabbit chest puffed and risen relaxes and descends, punching dough stretched and folded cubicles of breath bread in a clean cloth catching the breeze waiting for his gravity to kick in young and tall and asleep underwater rising in warm air(hair)air(heir)air(hare)
Neat-as-a-pin ooded in reputable light
The perfect place to: catch start watch allow
(found poem)
there are no wrong decisions – just wetlands, disguises
a soft touch underfoot
tranquil at lands
a house-like jawbone
the perfect place to: raise a much-needed family
caravans and boats greet you immerse yourself in cosmopolitan light
an idyllic lockup
there are no wrong decisions thoughtful, practical, expected
there are an abundance of wrong decisions decisions that need you
are you sitting proudly!
Are you in the sun room!
Are you nestling at in the wrong months!
Are you cooler easy pleasant
Warm, proportionate, and within easy reach
Are you perfect and ooded!
A fire has gone to bed and the peas and beans are up and about
Once I was so small, I fit inside my father’s jacket while he wore it
Once I was running around while the sun went down, like I had lungs and believed it, like I meant what my feet said
Once as a child I got so sad I thought Christmas would just stop happening
and I was half right
And the other half is a glass ornament I can’t believe isn’t broken yet don’t touch it please I said please can you not touch it
Heliotrope
Content Warning: Minor references to blood
Let me hear it
Let me know
I listen in midst of a universe
Deaf, ears pricked, black Mouth agape to swallow pet sacred mystery.
Not yet, Not yet
Let me hear it
Over my flea’s din
Snickering and scratching
Against futile prayer, irate
I tear at my itching eyes cowed sightless.
Not yet, Not yet
Let me hear it
My time is short
My love, he touches me gently
With earthly hand and primate face
So like my own, wrenched up, Harshly hook-angled and drained of blood incomprehension.
Not yet, Not yet
Oh, let me hear it
Past my own voice shrieking, Diatom chatter, blinking polyps, Masticating and defecating
Through dusty concrete throng. My hands reach for immensity, that nothing to know.
Let me hear it!
Not yet, Not yet
s c a t t e r e d
How to read?
[This seems to be the question modern poetry demands of the reader.]
s t a n z a s
l i t t e r t h e
p a g e
Hat comes to equal ^ in the modern poetic parlance.
/ Take this poem for instance:
Read the first line, read it again :||
See how a line like that could repeat ad infinitum
If you followed the directive, you would be no better off than Sisyphus. /
The rule of thumb is to “read everything on the page” or YOU WILL FAIL THE EXAM!
But—
Maybe you misunderstand. Poetry is not an examination
Just an endless flow of decisions. This way, or that? Where to start? Where to stop?
/
The musical notation doesn’t help, it alienates half the readership. Is that an emoji?
Your understanding informs your reading of the poem.
Often it is annoying.
You don’t want your reading companion to be a thesaurus — too heavy to take on the train.
But sometimes a poem sounds nice and shimmers in your mind.
You sigh — exhausted (?) bemused (?) annoyed (?)
Tagline for desperate English teacher: “Reading Jane Eyre would be less effort!”
Midday’s blistered tongue of light bends through white crests. Descending the cliff path, I watch a senior group in vests and velcro as they try to paint the scene into stillness. A futile gesture for a cove so alive, tail-chasing. Where even the easels shift from toe to toe.
Your distant figure flickers and melts in air currents. Mesmerising, until you loom large, and I must avert my gaze to the elbow-jerks of dry grass. Approach with eyes on the sand ratio (less grey, more yellow) and the chew of ocean on shore. Soon though, as our sundrunk friends wave me over, I am blinking back in your direction, searching for a smile. What I get is an oyster, same as all week. Curved-edge mouth with expression hidden between folds of shell, impassive.
I swim out to float past the break, and watch the painters atop the stone wall, guardians of shade. Trek up and down the beach feeling salt-heavy and nervous. The cove is in a constant state of reinvention, there is no moment for rest. Girlish limbs untangling over crisp packets and paperbacks, swapping carnival-coloured sarongs, sunscreen. The slow inhalation of every wave. The tug of water at my feet, breeze across my cheeks. The buzz of bugs which irritate like secret nothings we’ve exchanged and I’m trying to brush away at the neck, where they might stick. I love you. I hate it when you lie to me. I need you. Maybe one day.
When evening conversation blows in, I lie as a beetle in sand, trickling warm dust through fingers, making and breaking little mounds. Eucalypt scent crawling down the coastline coaxes the first pale stars onto the beach. Come here you say suddenly, legs spread. You’re shivering, I’ll warm you. Before either of us can think twice, I crawl beneath your outstretched towel and sit between the muscles of your thighs. We would be curled like lovers if not for the fabric separating the press of my shoulders and your sternum. It casts a dim pink stain across the air of this enclosed world, and I try to imagine such a tender colour entering and exiting your lungs as they move behind me.
You laugh callously with someone about their boyfriend. Your grip, tight on my arm, is like that of a mother, and I begin to feel chided, the sulky child that spoils with misbehaviour. Even so, it is important to stay still as cold sand presses an ache into my spine. If you forget I’m here, this moment might have time to expand into something like understanding, or old affection. But there are calls for dinner and you are up again, shaking off sand. Bouncing to the front of the procession home, while I dawdle in disappointment, collect a forgotten hat.
Back on the path, I spy the painters through the blurriness of receding light, their work still on display. It sends a jolt of concentration down my neck. They have done what I thought impossible. It must be surrealist how the torn green gush, the empty space, the suffocating layers, and wheeling blue can be made to have a heartbeat, a breath. Caught in smile, I am stupidly pleased. Somebody is coming towards me; I think it is you and my heart drags against my ribs. I want to show you this art, want to talk about how it has captured fluctuation in place and person. Want you to see that we are just like this, messy and formless but so very alive, and don’t you feel that too?
Under a torch beam the face is only the owner of the hat, grateful and skippy. Linking arms, they move with me to inspect the art, comparing it to a recent exhibition in the city. One foot, two foot, and I’ve stopped listening. I am left back on those canvases, knocked over and quietly spilling.
no lilies, please. lilies are bleeding stars, and i will never see the stars again. they drop tasteless powder on the piano and my coffin; both too narrow to fit the shadows of my family. my grandmothers cannot forgive themselves for outliving me; both die at the door, in apology. my sisters cannot make any noise; they have wailed already like beautiful banshees. father remains composed, but still misses me dearly. i never saw him cry; he will later, secretly. but my mother is still latched onto me, holding my hand. her mascara runs our fingers black. knelt by me, she tells herself “my little man’s hand is warm.” only that can calm her down.
tomorrow is my funeral.
There are seven gods
In every sticky piece of rice
Clinging to the smooth slopes
Of my small ceramic bowl
As I pluck them each
Seven by one
Between chewed-up wooden chopsticks
I whisper a thanks to the spirits
That so generously grew every grain
In the same way I whisper
To my body each day
Promises not to remain
Motionless in curtain-covered daydark
When I keep my vow
I am greeted by cicada song
The ebbing dissonant melody
Reminds me how to move
How to live
Every other day
So young and healthy
Such wasted potential
Stalks wilting in the paddy field
¹ My mother told me
² Wasteful, more than one deserves
Darling, you betrothed me. I wedded Death.
I had believed in volition unbounded until the day of golden eclipse was I free was I still my own to be.
Vacuous blunder I looked away from the meadows beyond from the grass that hugged my feet and into your eyes those crystal beads glistened in pious fervour as mine flooded poison lead yet with eagerness you drown in me and pledged such sanctimonious love fervid devotion relentlessly the blank sheets you’ve filled in gold paint your holy scripture did not come to lustrate but to slaughter me. You chased to hunt incanting sacred writings from your book as I ran towards the waters the womb that once held me the home I’ve always returned to when sun falls my fail-safe.
But I collapsed before shallow rim
you came to touch my body exposed desperate I reached last breath fingertips barely dipped water surface the sod I knew rooted into me vines climbed wrapped around my limbs and swallowed me.
Howls of lament wept a heart submerged you embraced my trunk caressed the bark I now have for skin plucked my laurels and crowned them upon your head
Darling your vicious profession Love has killed me.
At least in Death I am reborn my demise has freed me once more and for eternity.
The sight of Dymocks’ adult fiction section is all too familiar: Cynical millennial fic and award-winning short story collections plague the bookshelves. The covers are all bright, in primary colours, as if marketed to kindergarteners, with corporate-style animated figures or anatomical slices of a mouth, an ear, an eye, on the foreground. Thin spines, rarely reaching over three hundred pages, with the titles toeing the line between pretentiousness and Buzzfeed-level attempts at relatability (There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job, Send Nudes, No Hard Feelings…). The stories are light enough to not waste your emotional currency, for which you are probably already running low. I have read some of these books, but I cannot recall any emotions that they stirred in me. They blur together, like pedestrians weaving dumbly as one amidst the blinking traffic lights, no distinguishable faces within the crowd.
To not completely depress myself, I gravitate towards the authors that have made me feel something. I linger in the ‘M’ section, searching for Moshfegh.
Ottessa Moshfegh writes characters for you to dislike. In Homesick for Another World, love-sick men stalk single mothers, carers call their mentally challenged patients slurs, and soon-to-be-fathers abandon their pregnant wives for a holiday. All the stories are backgrounded by the apathetic face of crumbling city infrastructure. In a cafe, you can be a pervert, wedged up by the window to people—watch, to lust over and criticise strangers in equal measure. It’s difficult to pretend that it matters. Moshfegh fits disturbing statements within ordinary sentences, the minimal, matter-of-fact syntax usurping the confessional nature of the admission. “Sometimes I stick my finger down my throat” is given the same importance as “I was always picking at my pimples”. The nonchalant tone forbids any epiphanous relief that may come from confession. It reminds me of seeing ancient cathedral structures refurbished for corporate office space, the sacred confessional defaced by an uncaring, atheist city. I want to shake my paperback until it says something true. Moshfegh, what do you even believe?
I witness the same indifference in my daily commutes, when a homeless man begs for spare change in the corner of a train carriage, promising “I’m gonna get clean this time, I’m gonna make it right”. But we, the passengers, are all suddenly preoccupied with our phones, or the windows displaying the passing grey slates of station after station, and he may as well have been a ghost. One woman silently hands him two gold coins, nodding dismissively at his gushing thanks, and turns her head toward the window—her chin is stoic, mouth unsmiling, as if she’s ashamed of her own kind gesture.
Millennial fic is an undemanding sub-genre. Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life by Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle is but a string of witty one-liners, a series of unstructured, everyday observations with no solutions, like a depressive scrapbook. Everything is tongue-in-cheek and ironic and ironically tongue-in-cheek, all of it funny and none of it making me laugh. With the trendy elimination of traditional formatting, such as quotation marks or chapter markers, style seems to be platformed to represent a sleek, aesthetical emptiness.
Of course, millennial fic can be excitingly subversive and cruelly blasé in its bluntness, like your beloved cat dropping a rat’s carcass at your feet, yet ultimately it is lazy. Its social commentary is limited and theoretical. Sally Rooney characters discuss communism in vaguely positive terms, smirking at each other like it’s an inside joke, Normal People’s Marianne joking about whether Connell would live in a matriarchy. After all, the nothingness which sets the thematic foundation of new adult fiction is a contrasting state to the anger which motivates revolutionary change. Rather, such nothingness is an entryway into plush, excusable complacency, similar to the urban blasé attitude.
Yet, is there a simple value in accurately reflecting our burnt-out, post-capitalist society, as the genre’s modernist and postmodernist predecessors did? I certainly did not read James Joyce’s Dubliners in search of moral solutions, so why should I assign millennial fic such a heavy burden? At the same time, the Melburnian streets are littered with protestors, a commotion of stampeding feet and rhythmic chants. In the silent aftermath, we wake to no legitimate change, the upper houses of government as cold and imposing as the city’s skyscrapers. Is it enough to merely see something horrible and point at it? Eventually, you need to do something about the dead rat stinking near your feet.
In Dymocks, I pay for a novel I recognise from social media as a popular “sad girl book”. On the tram, I hug the paper bag to my chest and hope that the book’s edges leave a mark through my clothes; I hope that it bruises the numbness.
Content Warnings: References to dysphoria, violence and suicide
i have learnt to twist the knife for the new holes in my leather belt. the bony bits of my waist (though they are like little shivs)
are not enough to fit and hold up my bell-bottom jeans. and now the holidays are here, but still, they will all converge:
the science teacher will perch me up on a sharp hook. the students will take notes on my giant limbs and pin-thin neck.
they will not be able to distinguish between the teacher’s pointing stick and my sternum that weakens, caving with every wrong answer.
and even when i hook myself (my bell-bottom jeans as my noose) they will look at me with pride, and say: “at least now they are held up.”
gravel streets with rain-washed pavements, colossal glass trees that have no leaves, zooming insects on asphalt floors spun by metal gears, engines roaring:
a concrete wilderness where madness, noise and craze run rampant
where it’s not unusual to lose your way, where new alleys spring in every lane, stare too long at the glaring lights and your senses will be forever distorted
that light you see is not a light but a reflection in a mirror
The City is a wild insatiable beast that consumes all of its inhabitants
you don’t live in The City The City lives in YOU!
Written by Jocelyn Saunders
I look Through you and still You stare.
I still My face and still You stare.
I sit. Your fingers. Your ribbon. My neck. Dirty fingernails scrape.
I adjust The flower wilting In my hair.
You placed it there.
I lift My head. The ribbon-tar Stains on my neck.
I avoid Her gaze. The gaze of Lovesick bouquets.
I’m sick of lovesick bouquets.
I wear These little Soft leather, cream heels
“Seductively”
“Seductively falling off.”
I am this Renaissance-white cloth Folding purity.
I am this Black ribbon Marking, subverting.
Photography by Lexi Ren
Content Warning: Passing reference to murder
I didn’t ignore your calls it’s just that my phone ran out of charge because I use the flash so I can see where I’m walking when it’s raining and dark just so I don’t stomp on any snails that are trying to make their way home. They’re just like me so instead I walk into a bush or a tree because I can’t see because I’m blinding myself and I really think doing that is so much better than being a murderer, especially if it’s murdering someone like me someone with a place to be.
Written by Jessica Fanwong
explore child but beware of what locked door you break through—and which blue tunnel you climb into
of what other world you might discover waiting for you on the other end of the passage— explore and discover, keep Cat by your side and don’t lose sight your only companion and guide— see the table laid with tonight’s dinner see the cannons shoot fairy-floss soft and brightly coloured— quick!
the show is starting take your seat you won’t want to miss the flamboyant trapeze girls flying and chanting Hamlet …“oh, what a piece of work is a man?”… that fairy-floss tastes even sweeter than it looks
that childhood behind locked doors wouldn’t it be nice to stay there forever?
see it, see all child, it’s way past your bedtime —though your parents may be too busy to say goodnight—
the little mouse might lead you back down the blue tunnel to bliss, to warmth, to candy canes and chocolate pudding and you might never want to come back.
see it, see all enjoy yourself, but don’t lose your buttons, don’t lose your sight, though the lights are bright, don’t lose your wits don’t lose your Cat don’t lose your eyes but most importantly don’t lose your buttons!
never accept a deal from your other mother who will offer you to stay here, forever, in this utopia
don’t accept; though it may be tempting those eyes are uncomfortable, the stitches more painful than flu shots, but more importantly, you’ll never never be able to go back, even if you wish to… and what good is a utopia that can’t be seen?
but explore, child, the key is in your hand, the door is yours to open, the temptation is yours to suppress— don’t be blinded but go, you won’t be a child forever, and the door is tiny for a reason.
cora–cora–coral–line–call–a–line–
In my dream the kite gets away.
Outside the dream, in the junkyard, the boys are playing with a homemade bow and arrow. I am walking the dog, watching them shyly. The smaller of the boys doesn’t use the bow, opting to hurl the arrows like little spears. The larger one sticks his chest out. He is stronger, more competent than his brother. Already, he has seen his next mark.
The kite is flying low. She has just migrated from the south, after many months over restless waters. She is lovely, I think. Oily-feathered with large black eyes. The boy draws his bow, takes aim and releases. He hits her square in the wing. She pauses, suspended, then plummets to the junkyard floor. We are all watching her, me and the boys. She is alive. Flapping about, mixing her blood with the dirt.
“Boys!” I huff. They look up, noticing me for the first time. “Look what you’ve done!”
I can see myself. Middle-aged, scolding. A ring of fat around my middle. I know the older boy thinks I’m fussing.
“I didn’t think I’d actually hit it,” he says.
“She’s still alive.” The younger boy is very pale. “We didn’t kill her.”
“Yes, I know,” I say, knowing they have. “Go away now, and I’ll take care of her.”
“Okay,” says the older boy. The younger nods. They collect their remaining arrows and leave.
I crouch down, close to the bird. She is very still now, her great eye shining up at me. I wrap her in my cardigan and gently pick her up. She stiffens. Her heart moves fast, like all small animals. Bill, my dog, whines, wanting to continue with the walk.
“Not right now, Bill,” I say. Then I hold the kite fast, and take her home.
When I was young, I didn’t have a dog. I didn’t have a brother, or a homemade bow and arrow. The other children weren’t cruel, but they were guarded. I was not a part of things. Merri mostly spent time with her siblings. I liked their colouring, how they would flush violently at any change in the temperature or conversation. It was Merri who asked me, one day on the school grounds,“Do you always play by yourself?”
I flushed. “Yes… mostly.”
“Oh.” Merri matched my blush. “I was on my way home… you can walk with me, if you like.”
“Oh.” I didn’t live anywhere near Merri. “Yes, sure.”
She gave me a hand up and I followed her into the scrub that surrounded our school. It had been raining, and the bush resembled a swamp. Merri skipped ahead, rambling about her siblings and a new book she was reading. I lagged behind, listening dutifully. The mud was thick and always smelled vaguely human to me.
We came to a clearing, where Merri paused. “Look, a fairy ring!” A circle of mushrooms had nosed their way out of the earth.
“I’ve never actually seen one before.” I crouched down next to the ring. My grandmother had spoken warily of them, a slight door between worlds.
“I think these are the edible kind.” Merri knelt next to me.
“You know how to tell them apart?”
“It’s not so difficult.” I thought of my mother, something about stalks with frills and whether or not the head of the mushroom bleeds blue. “You just have to make sure the cap isn’t dark underneath.”
Merri picked one of the mushrooms, breaking the ring.
“Like this one?” The mushroom was pinkish, as though flush with blood.
“Yes.” I turned away from her, towards the bush. A magpie had settled close to us, cleaning its beak on a low-hanging branch. I recalled the phrase renal failure, something about spending long hours in a hospital chair. I turned back to face Merri. “But we should probably show it to my mum, just in case.”
Merri was already chewing, the long stem of the mushroom disappearing into her mouth. I bit my lip. This was probably fine “We should keep walking,” I said, moving toward the scrub.
Merri moved to follow me but soon paused.
“Merri?”
She opened her mouth, as though to answer me.
“Merri!”
Merri trembled, then began to seize. I panicked and grabbed her head, trying to make her be still. Her lips turned bluish, her face mottled like a bruise. The magpie began to warble. Its cry was strange and sad, its throat so different to my own. Eventually Merri kicked less, then not at all. I eased her head down, then from the clearing. It was dusk, and I could feel the night beginning to stir in the scrub around me. Wallabies thumped the ground with their tails and fruit bats cackled madly in the canopies above.
I ran, my breath matching my heart, till I got home.
I set the kite down on my table. She thrashes wildly, between periods of complete stillness. My eyes linger on her wing. The skin is thin, and taut over the bone. It reminds me of papier mâché. The arrow has pierced her upper wing, close to her body. It is perfectly shot through; she will never fly again.
We never spayed our cats. They got in heat every spring and slunk home in the summer, their bellies lightly swollen.
My mother would drown the kittens. She’d take them out back and hold their kitten-heads under the laundry sink till they stopped yawling. I wasn’t supposed to watch.
One year, my mothers’ eczema was bothering her more than usual. Her skin was terrible—it split open every year in the heat. She delegated the kitten drowning duties to my father, who held the kittens under until he couldn’t stand it anymore and let them spring out, alive, onto the laundry floor. My mother calmly collected the kittens and drowned them in the sink, while my father watched. She knew how to see things through.
I walk out to the laundry and fill the sink. Bill whines at my heels. I leave the water running, then return with the kite. She is awkward to hold, her bad wing stretched out at an odd angle. She watches me calmly, her large eye fixed on my form. I steel myself, then hold her head firmly under the water. I hold her until her lungs burst and the pain ebbs away. And I cry, openly, because I am so angry with those boys. I cry because I cannot bear the lost potential of a bird who will never migrate home to the south.
A number of whales beached themselves the year Merri died. The local fishermen took the bones, and leaned them against the mouth of the pub. Now every patron who walks inside the pub walks inside that year, as part of me has lived for every year after. Marveling at the brevity; waiting for grace.
I breathed in little seeds
So my lungs would fill with flowers
Now sweet poppies and orchids
Bloom scarlet red with alveoli
Rose thorns cut and bleed
Sunflowers grow and tower
Above my face, through my lips
Reaching through damp soil to light
The foliage sings with bees
Underneath, I gently cower
When someone finally digs
Naught remains, but bones to bite
In the garden you may lie
And at last, know true respite
I am imagining the tiny droplets of water spawning, pressing up against the circumference of airtight steel, deprived of air under the equatorial heat and pressure of their own culinary universe. The pressure cooker. Once. Twice. The third time I hear the existential scream from the stove, I scuttle over to the kitchen to free the hydronic organisms from their prison of pressure. Press, twist, lift. A billow of steam settles on my glasses.
I was often sick as a child (or often diagnosed) and had grown to form an association between dribbling noses, cramping tummies, pounding heads and the sounds and smells that came from the kitchen as my mother cooked khichdi. “I can make it with my eyes closed”, she would tell me. And it was true. Her hands would occupy themselves in a kind of well-practised dance, a rhythmic routine, as they washed pellets of yellowish dal and pearly rice, measured water with the trusted unit of a knuckle, and seasoned with salt, asafoetida, and turmeric.
The resulting bowl of khichdi was visually striking; golden from turmeric, yet humble in flavour. My mother would drop a dollar-sized dollop of ghee on the mountain of rice, and I would eat around this melting pool of gold, slowly inching my way towards it. They say that in sickness, bland things somehow taste better. I can’t say if this is true. But soft, hot khichdi sliding down a sore throat always convinces me of the said gustatory powers of sickness, at least for the duration of the common cold.
I can’t remember the last time my mother made me khichdi as I complained about this hurting arm or that throbbing head. If I knew when it was the last time she cooked me khichdi, I would have swallowed each spoonful slowly. I would have turned off the TV.
I hurriedly take a tissue and wipe my glasses. Something looks different. Something doesn’t look right. Did I add enough rice? Did I use the right dal? Was I meant to use my pointer knuckle or my thumb? Should I have used more turmeric? Can turmeric go off? I spoon the lumpy, pale khichdi into two bowls and set them down on the dining table. My mother has her fingers pressed to her temples when I go to call her for dinner. I put my arm around her shoulders and lead her to the dining table.
How could a different pair of hands create something so inconsistent from the same five ingredients? While one part of me will never stop meditating on this mystery, in some odd way, I also feel relieved that I will never be able to replicate my mother’s khichdi. It reminds me of the wonders that my mother, exclusively, is capable of.
When I leave home, I am confident my mother will make sure I pack a pressure cooker. But I don’t think I’ll use it much. For khichdi, I’ll be home.
Written by Eleanore Arnold-Moore
breathe in a Robert Browning soliloquy, reminding me this is all I wanted. Not pinch me “am I dreaming?” but release me, “let me stay in the dream.” This is the dream. Isn’t this the dream? The reverie where gilded mouthfuls let me breathe the lives of thousands, shameless in my greenery, quench my loneliness but not my lake of lethargy. I laboured through those ‘pearly’ gates and found them standing free, Ladon’s blood lapping at my feet, but now, sometimes I miss his em-ber-ing.
I entered Elysian Fields of half-known faces and never enough sleep to forge new dreams, and forgot the garden would need tending. Another paradise lost to fatigue. My hand-me-down Eden not quite fitting as the serpent’s hisses start to sound sweet. Even the Hesperides made to leave, Atlas’ expectations impossible to meet. Will I ever pause to be?
But longing flowers in the old quad, it stops the dreams from slithering out of reach.
Warning: References to drugs and alcohol
I sit in a cocoon of electronic buzz, yellow lights and lime seats. The hum holds me. It’s dark outside and bright inside.
Silent intimacy between strangers (shoulder to shoulder, bum to bum).
We rattle past bar windows where friends huddle into each other, against the night. Their conversations wade through warm wine. The Alderman’s vines stretch down to embrace dart smoke and air kisses that lin- ger. A city’s entanglement.
Public is out there.
But in here it’s private.
I’ve caught the number six tram most days this year. I map the human contours of my landscape on my way home.
Adulthood is not new to me. It’s almost been five years. The drinking/driving/voting line we draw between childhood and adulthood has always felt arbitrary. But tonight, it washes away entirely.
On a tram by myself. On a Sunday night. I put my feet on the seat opposite me. Not enough to make it dirty for the next person who’ll sit there, but just enough to feel like I’m doing something I shouldn’t. A nod to little me.
I’m high on beer and mushies and music and friends.
The stories Holly told, and the giggles that rippled between Kev and Nadja—I carry them home proudly like a painting from kindergarten. Nonsensical yet precious: fridge magnet status.
I step into the cold air at Stewart Street and huddle into my red scarf. It has the same paisley patterns that mum wore in photo-albums from her twenties.
I wonder if adulthood seemed as far away for mum when she wore reds and purples and danced along to Cocteau Twins.
Elizabeth Fraser’s vocals swoop through me and set me on my way. Shoegaze/stargaze/melancholy/nostalgia. More precious nonsense.
Little me would be in awe of my independence. My eyeliner, my beer-drinking, my blue-tooth headphones. All things that have slipped from novelty to normal in the past half-decade.
In the years when bellies stuck out with pride, Sunday nights meant Shrek pj’s hanging in front of the fire- place. Warm green cotton (polyester?) for Ethan and I to slip into after baths.
I smile. Will I always carry a part of her with me? Where does mum stop and where do I start? An umbilical cord of memories.
At rockpools, Mum would stare at the critters with me. She would crouch, steadying my fidgety legs. “If you keep still, you’ll notice all the life moving around you”.
I stand on the corner of Albion Street and I’m still. I feel a yearning—half warm, half ache—for the time when adulthood was a fantasy.
I’ve seen all the critters of Lygon Street tonight.
Photography by Lexi Ren
UMSU and the Media Office are located in the city of Melbourne, on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to their elders—past, present and emerging—and acknowledge that the land we are on was stolen and sovereignty was never ceded.
