Incite Magazine - December 2012

INCITE MAGAZINE VOLUME 15 ▪ ISSUE 3 ▪ DECEMBER 2012

CREATION CARDBOARD FURNITURE, GOOGLE OFFICES, AND NAKED WRITERS PLUS ▪ CONTESTS, POETRY, ART, FICTION, AND MORE

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 3 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 1

ARTWORK BY NATALIE JACHYRA

EDITORIAL ▪ A MUSING Kate Sinclair, Editor-in-Chief

W

hen asked whether or not he subscribed to certain routines while writing, Arthur Miller simply

laughed.

No he didn’t.

Writing, Miller argued, is like walking around in a lightning storm with an iron rod in one hand and a silver crucifix in the other. There is no plan and no security.

That pretty much sums it up. The “creative process” puts artists at their most vulnerable, leaving them alone, tempestuous and desperately seeking salvation. Miller is not alone in his struggle. Most (perhaps all) famous artists describe similar experiences with their craft. Kerouac, for example, went through a period in which Incite Magazine is published six times per academic year by Impact Youth Publications, founded in 1997.

Entire contents copyright 2011-2012 Impact Youth Publications.Opinons expressed in Incite Magazine are those of the author(s), and do not necessarily reflect the views of Incite Magazine’s staff or Impact Youth Publications.

Letters of up to 300 words may be sent to incite@ mcmaster.ca; they may be edited for length and clarity and will not be printed unless a name, address, and daytime phone are provided.

2 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ DECEMBER 2012

(he claims) he only wrote during the full moon, and only after he had done nine “touch-downs” for the day. For Kerouac, a “touch-down” entailed standing on his head on a slipper in the bathroom and touching the floor nine times with his toes while remaining perfectly balanced for the duration. (I can’t actually imagine what this would look like but I have no doubt it is very awkward).

Whatever the “routine”, nearly all writers and creators go through certain steps or rituals before actually putting pen to paper. Whether these behaviours are regimented or whether they are spontaneous is not the point. For Miller, the lack of routine was a form of consistency in itself.

Likely Miller structured his writing around his emotional and mental state – allowing the art to dictate his routine rather than the other way around. Call it procrastination or preparation; an author’s “routine” activities are a critical step in the creative process.

Ritualistic behaviour helps artists to put themselves in that mental space where they can engage with the mysterious and become a conduit for their muse.

We complicate the artistic process

because we expect creation to feel momentous – significant in some way – and so we ritualize it to the point that we spend more time getting ready to create than we do in the actual process of creating. We don’t simply want to produce art, we want to really feel it, and so we wait for something (usually the last minute) to incite us into an intense and short-lived creative storm during which the product almost seems to create itself.

This month’s Incite deals with creation in all its forms – from the delivery room to the art studio. To honour the creation theme, Incite held its first annual “flash fiction” contest this month. In this man to man, keyboard to keyboard, outright Hobbesian struggle of the muses, competitors were asked to create a short work of fiction in just one hour. After an arduous selection process, the editorial team has settled on two winners: Cormac Donovan and Julie-Anne Mendoza, whose delightful (and disconcerting) stories have been published in this issue. We would also like to extend our warm thanks to all who participated in the contest, sincerely hoping that they will make it happen again next year.

CONTENTS 4 6 8 9 10 12 14 16

TED - OUR FAVOURITE TALKS The Editors TWILIGHT OF THE IDLE Chris Leckenby RATIONALLY IRRATIONAL Irena Papst & Nigel Pynn-Coates ON LIFE, THE UNIVERSE & EVERYTHING Julie-Anne Mendoza ARTIST PROFILE Livia Tsang ADAPTIVE DESIGN Sam Godfrey ART ATTACK - INTERVIEW WITH OLIVIA ROZEMA Ianitza Vassileva GHOSTWRITERS Julia Redmond

17 18 20 21 22 23 24 25

OUR GUIDE TO GRILLED CHEESE Devra Charney & Kaila Radan ARTIST PROFILE Natalie Jachyra AN ODE TO THE FUTILITY? Anthony D’Ambrosio I’M FEELING LUCKY Meg Peters ARTIST PROFILE Alicia Giansante THE ONE-HOUR STORY CHALLENGE Kate Sinclair ...

Cormac Donovan LEAVE MY BONES Julie-Anne Mendoza

26 27 28 30 31 32 33 34

POETRY Meg Peters LIGHTNING BOLT Stephen Clare NOAH’S ARK - PART II Kate Sinclair SCHOOLHOUSE ROT Matthew Bassett THE NAKED WRITER Sabrina Zhu BEHIND THE PAGES Sarah Kanko THE MIRROR OF OUR SELVES Aaron Grierson A PRODUCTIVE CREATION...A CREATIVE PROCRASTINATION Meg Peters

TEAM EXECUTIVE EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Jeremy Allen Henderson Kate Sinclair MANAGING EDITORS Mark Belan (Graphics) Irena Papst (Layout) Ianitza Vassileva (Graphics) ASSISTANT EDITOR Avery Lam (Layout)

CONTRIBUTORS WRITERS Matthew Bassett, Devra Charney, Stephen Clare, Anthony D’Ambrosio, Cormac Donovan, Sam Godfrey, Aaron Grierson, Matthew Ing, Sarah Kanko, Chris Leckenby, Julie-Anne Mendoza, Kacper Niburski, Irena Papst, Meg Peters, Nigel Pynn-Coates, Kaila Radan, Julia Redmond, Kate Sinclair, Ianitza Vassileva, Sabrina Zhu

GRAPHICS Mark Belan, Eliza Dunham, Alicia Giansante, Natalie Jachyra, Olivia Rozema, Brianna Smrke, Livia Tsang, Ianitza Vassileva, Christina Vietinghoff LAYOUT Sarah Conrad, Avery Lam, Irena Papst COVERS Mark Belan

CONTENT EDITORS Stephen Clare, Sam Godfrey, Matthew Ing, Sarah Kanko, Kacper Niburski Incite Magazine

@incitemagazine

ARTWORK BY ELIZA DUNHAM VOLUME 15, ISSUE 3 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 3

OUR FAVOURITE TALKS Susan Cain’s The Power of Introverts Kate Sinclair

“A widely held, but rarely articulated, belief in our society is that the ideal self is bold, alpha, gregarious,” Susan Cain explains in her TED talk. “Introversion,” she claims, “is viewed somewhere between disappointment and pathology.” Cain postulates that society has become ‘an extrovert’s paradise.’ She argues that with the advent of metropolitan living, the ideal of the professional changed. Our collective focus shifted from: ‘how can I be a person of character?’ to: ‘how can I stand out in a crowd?’ As someone who has always been quite introverted, Cain’s words really resonate. Like her, I’m of the belief that “it’s a very powerful thing to be quiet and collect your thoughts.” Charisma isn’t a universal trait: not everyone thinks out loud, not everyone talks on their feet, and not everyone networks. Cain argues that we shouldn’t have to. She urges introverts to harness their power and assume a different kind of leadership, one that emphasizes not flashy displays, but understated competence and integrity.

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Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice Eli Pariser’s Beware Online Filter Bubbles Matthew Ing

In “The Paradox of Choice”, Barry Schwartz notes that in modern society freedom has been defined operationally as the maximization of choice. The more options you have, the thinking goes, the greater the chance that one will maximize your welfare. But excessive choice leads to paralysis. It also elevates expectations: in a world of limited choice, it was possible to be pleasantly surprised. Today the best outcome is that the chosen alternative is as good as you expected it to be. Eli Pariser has a different take on choice in “Beware Online ‘Filter Bubbles’”. Google’s algorithms tailor search results to the individual, even when you’ve logged out. They determine what gets through the filter, and more importantly, what’s left out. Gatekeepers are necessary to pull order from the chaos of options. But which criteria should they follow? And who sets the choices in the first place?

William Ury’s The Walk from ‘No’ to ‘Yes’ Steve Clare

Ursus Wehrli Tidies Up Art Sarah Kanko

Art is messy. The creative process is often chaotic, but it is nothing compared to the clean-up required after the brushes are down and the room is covered in paint.

Ursus Wehrli addresses this mess in his hilarious TED talk about tidying up art. His mission is to organize modern art. He graphs the coloured squares of Paul Clay’s Farbtafel, he returns Jackson Pollock’s spilled paint into their proper cans, he analyzes Keith Haring’s work statistically, and he cleans up the mess in Van Gogh’s room enough so that somebody can at least vacuum the floor.

Between the descriptions of his tidied-up art, Wehrli spouts a stream of clever banter and hilariously quirky statements. And though this talk does not address any of the global issues often featured at TED conferences, it does leave the art world a more orderly place.

Conflict resolution is simple, but not easy, says William Ury. Ury is a professional mediator. He travels around the world resolving disputes large and small: from marriage spats to full-blown wars. His TED talk focuses on the importance of a third party in resolving conflict and “finding a balcony”: a new perspective from which to observe all sides of the battle. Ury focuses on the Israeli Arab Conflict (a timely topic as Incite goes to print). Here he speaks about Abraham’s Path, the route Abraham walked through ten modern day countries preaching empathy and reconciliation. Ury sees the path as the beginning of peace in the region: a balcony from which to remind ourselves that we are all brothers, and that we all, essentially, want the same things. Let’s turn “hostility into hospitality and terrorism into tourism.” Let’s find our balcony.

Poet Rives’ The 4 a.m. Mystery Kacper Niburski

I promised myself that I’d go to sleep hours ago. The walls creek.

My fingers ache. It’s four am. And I’m stuck sitting here, rewatching my favourite Ted Talk, “The 4 a.m. mystery” by the slam poet Rives. By stringing together the history of 4 a.m., with bleak references in comics, presidential autobiographies and a variety of notable births, Rives’ presents a parodic case for why artists have used 4 a.m., a time that is thought to be placid, inane, and rejuvenating, as more than just a trope: the ‘Giacommeti Code’.

Jump back to 1932 and you find Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture, “The Palace at Four in the Morning.” In that same year, Faren Young, a notable country superstar, was born. He later went to compose the song, “4 in the Morning”. The same day he died, Wislawa Szymborska accepted the Noble Prize in literature, 100 years to the day Alfred Nobel died. As Rives puts it, “Coincidence? No it’s creepy. Coincidence is like saying, ‘Hey do you know that the Nobel Prize was established in 1901. Which coincidently is the same year Alberto Giacometti was born.”

Of course, not everything fits so tightly. It isn’t supposed to because besides being a well-researched gaff, Rives swings his words like a waltz, keeping the audience entertained with what might be the most wildly unbelievable historic events in the world.

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 3 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 5

ARTWORK BY IANITZA VASSILEVA

TWILIGHT OF THE IDLE Chris Leckenby

T

he clock struck five. Father Jameson slowly pushed his chair back from the heavy wooden escritoire, closed his Bible, and rubbed his eyes. Even by his standards he felt unusually tired.

Fumbling in his pocket for the drawer key, he remembered a time when three hours of solid reading had seemed like child’s play. Now, every single page was a strain. He sighed.

Unlocking the right-hand drawer, he laid the Bible next to the only other item inside: a package wrapped in newspaper and tied up loosely with string, which, along with his Bible, was his most prized possession. He looked at it for a few moments and then took it out.

As he unwrapped the newspaper, the polished barrel of his father’s World War Two service pistol caught the light and shone brightly. He turned it over in his hands, fondling the rugged handle and running his fingers over the cold, smooth barrel and trigger.

For reasons he never fully understood, a strange calm always came over him the moment he felt the gun’s metallic coldness. But then again, since that was just one of the many questions to which he was afraid of knowing the answer, it was probably for the best.

He was, however, only too conscious of the irony inherent in a priest treating a killing machine as a sentimental object. And yet he just couldn’t bring himself to let it go – in part because he had long ago resigned himself to the reality that it would never again be used. In all the years he’d owned it, in fact, he’d never once so much as loaded it, let alone squeezed the trigger. Conduct associated with violence and risk taking was, after all, best left for men of action, not men of God. Every week at about this time he’d make a point of thoroughly cleaning and polishing it. But not today. Today he was expecting a visitor – a visitor who, he suddenly realized, had been waiting long enough already. Putting the gun away and getting up from his chair, he caught a quick glimpse of himself – of his wilted, jaundiced face – in the mirror at the opposite end of the room. He sighed again before exiting the study, locking the door behind him.

As he made his way down the stairs and across the nave, he took care to stay close to the wall. Sunset was still another half hour 6 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ DECEMBER 2012

away but already the church was so dark that he could barely make out the objects just a few feet in front of him. He also took care to walk slowly, since his robe, faded and frayed with age, was so long that it threatened to get tangled up in his feet unless he moved in short, low steps. Three years ago, after conducting a service, he had forgotten to take such precautions and tumbled down the pulpit, dislocating his shoulder in the process. It was certainly not his finest moment. The memory of that embarrassing episode still made him cringe.

Aside from the visitor he was to meet, Father Jameson knew he was quite alone here; the rattling of broken floor tiles provided the only interruption to the otherwise smooth echo of his footsteps.

He took genuine pride in helping people, and confessionals were usually, therefore, his favourite part of the job, but on this occasion a strange and irrepressible sense of foreboding seemed to dog his every thought. A knot of nervous, impatient tension was welling up inside him – this would be a very painful confession. At the same time, however, he was ready to acknowledge that all of that pain would be absolutely necessary, and so his goal at this point was just to exercise as much patience as he could and make the whole ordeal as expeditious as possible. As he opened the door to the confessional, a large splinter snagged his robe and jerked him back, but he broke free, tearing a small hole in the sleeve. He grimaced, but eventually entered, took his seat, and slid back the divider.

“Tell me your sins, my son.”

“Um…well, first of all, I’d just like to say thank you for taking the time to meet with me…”

“Look, cut to the chase, would you please? I don’t have much time here. You’re lucky I remembered to come at all, in fact.”

“Right, sorry. It’s just that I’ve had a lot of things on my mind recently and I thought maybe some outside counselling would do me good.”

“Fine. Lay it on me.”

“Well it’s just…um…have you ever wanted…no, sorry…do you ever feel as though you’ve just…wasted your life? As though huge

chunks of it have been devoted to fruitless endeavours?”

“No, not really.”

“Oh…” There was a brief silence. Father Jameson pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled forcefully. He was regretting his words already.

“So basically what you’re telling me is that you’re depressed?”

“Well…yes. Basically. Although I think it goes deeper than that.

Which is to say that…um…I don’t think this is a temporary state.

Rather, I think it’s more of an existential crisis so extreme that it’s been preventing me from…”

“You think too much!”

Another awkward pause interrupted the dialogue, with each man now acutely aware of a certain irritation in the other’s voice.

“Look, why are you being so rude to me?”

“I’m like this with everyone. You’re no exception, trust me.”

“I…” “But don’t change the subject. If you’re depressed, then tell me how you made it to this appointment. Something must have made you get out of bed this morning.”

“Well I do have a job to do.”

“Right, okay…what else?”

“Uhh…well, that’s about it.

Work’s pretty time-consuming, and only rarely do I ever have the energy for anything else.”

“So then work is all you live for?”

“That’s…a good question, actually. I don’t know. I mean, I’d like to think I live for more, but… there are many moments when I really don’t think I do.”

“Well maybe the time has come for you to broaden your horizons a little bit.”

“Yes, yes, you’re right. I know you’re right. But it’s always easier said than done.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Excuse me?”

“Of course it isn’t. Why should it be? What’s there to hold you back?”

“Um…well…it’s a big step.

It takes a lot of courage to embrace the unknown, and I’ve just…never been a fan of things I can’t control.”

“Nothing in this life is controllable, and to base your Weltanschauung upon such a principle is to endorse both nihilism and misanthropy.”

“So then where am I supposed to go from here?”

“You can start by finding a new hobby. Something – anything – to get passionate about.”

“But I already have hobbies. Lots of hobbies, actually, and…”

“But they’re not fulfilling, right? That is where you were going, wasn’t it?”

“Well I…yes.” came the answer, either side of a protracted silence periodically interspersed with the sound of suppressed whimpers.

“Okay, in that case I can tell you haven’t been listening to anything I just said.”

Father Jameson gritted his teeth. The words spoken by the voice on the other side of the screen had struck a chord and his patience, fragile on the best of days, was really wearing thin now.

“Listen, you’re obviously at a critical impasse. You’re dissatisfied with your life and yet you lack the willpower to change it – clearly a superficial solution won’t suffice. Rather, what you need is a total overhaul of your entire value system. Scrap what isn’t working and build a new foundation, embrace the possibilities of the future, of becoming, and, if nothing else, quit being so damn afraid!”

“Yeah well that may be easy for you to say and do, but it’s not for the rest of us.”

“That’s a huge discredit to your personal potential, and you’re only fooling yourself with such lip service.”

“I’m starting to think this confession was a mistake.”

“You only say that because I’m not telling you what you want to hear.”

“Oh? And what’s that?”

Silence.

“Come on, why don’t you tell me, since you obviously know everything!”

“You want me to forgive your sin of idleness. And that’s not going to happen.”

Silence.

“But…why not? I asked to meet with you because they said you were the only one who could help me…If you can’t then who can?”

The penitent’s voice trembled with such force as he spoke those words that he clearly couldn’t keep his emotions at bay any longer.

“First off, there’s a difference between help and forgiveness, especially in this case.

Second, no one can help or forgive you unless you’re first willing to help and forgive yourself.

Let’s face it, I can only tell you what to do. Beyond that, it’s up to you to take the initiative.”

“You’re right…you’re right.

I guess I just…need time…to change.” the man, choking on his tears, replied.

“Well luckily for you it’s never too late to change, so good luck with that.”

Frank Zimmerman exited the confessional. Stroking his moustache with one hand, he strained his ear back towards the door. Even through the wood, Father Jameson’s crying was still clearly audible. “Stupid priests. They just don’t get it,” he thought to himself. “But THAT is one especially stubborn son of a bitch.”

Smirking, he lingered a few seconds longer and lit a cigarette.

Then, suddenly, the wailing stopped and he heard the confessional door slam loudly shut. Deep in thought, Frank Zimmerman didn’t bother to investigate. Any interest he’d ever had in this whole affair had long since disappeared, and now that his work here was done he could think only of his plans for tomorrow.

Throwing his cigarette on the ground and extinguishing it with his foot, he turned and headed briskly towards the exit. Unbeknownst to him, however, Father Jameson was no more than a few yards behind – almost completely unrecognizable without his robe on, which now lay in tatters by the door of the confessional. It was not quite dusk and, while the nave was now pitch black, there was just enough light along the hall for them to find their way.

Aside from the visitor he was to “meet, Father Jameson knew he

was quite alone here; the rattling of broken floor tiles provided the only interruption to the otherwise smooth echo of his footsteps.

He took genuine pride in helping people, and confessionals were usually, therefore, his favourite part of the job, but on this occasion a strange and irrepressible sense of foreboding seemed to dog his every thought.

“

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 3 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 7

RATIONALLY IRRATIONAL Irena Papst & Nigel Pynn-Coates

Y

ou use numbers every day. Most intuitive are the counting (natural) numbers, and they come to us so easily that they seem to be independent of our mathematical imagination: one apple, two dinosaurs, five golden rings. As mathematician Leopold Kronecker famously remarked, “God made the natural numbers; all else is man’s creation.” Even going one step further and considering fractions is relatively intuitive; how do we share one apple among two friends?

Halve it. These numbers are called the rational numbers.

More esoteric are those numbers that can’t be written as fractions, the so-called “irrationals”. The most famous of these are pi, e, and the square root of 2, but we struggle to find more concrete occurrences. How

number one was especially beautiful. It can be seen as the building block of counting numbers, since you can generate any natural number by adding one to itself enough times.

So which shape could be more beautiful than a square with side length one?

It’s simple, symmetric, elegant, and has an area equal to its side length: the exquisite number one. Moreover, it relates to the Pythagorean theorem, the group’s most wellknown contribution to mathematics. Yet it was precisely the connection between the unit square and the theorem that turned the Pythagorean world upside down. Its inhabitants discovered the unit square had an inherent ugliness; the length of its diagonal is not a rational number, or in other words, the square root of two cannot be expressed as a

ARTWORK BY IANITZA VASSILEVA

can we divide one pie into pi pieces? What exactly is the square root of two apples?

Who knows?! Despite an apparent lack of “reality” to these numbers, they pop up very naturally in geometry, one of the most concrete branches of mathematics, as we’ll see shortly.

For the Pythagoreans of Ancient Greece, numbers held a mystical significance. They were intimately connected to Pythagorean views on music, nature, and the fabric of reality. In fact, Pythagoras said that “number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and demons.” Though convinced of their sanctity, the Pythagoreans had no conception of anything beyond the rational; they thought all numbers could be represented as fractions.

Not only did they believe that numbers were somehow pristine, but the Pythagoreans also felt some numbers were purer than others. For instance, they believed the 8 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ DECEMBER 2012

fraction. According to legend, a student proposed this idea while at sea and Pythagoras was so upset he threw him overboard!

For a mathematician, it is not enough simply to assume that irrational numbers exist; it must be proven. Axiomatically, the square root of two must bepeither rational or irrational. Let’s assume that 2 is rational. We want to show that from this assumption, we can deduce a contradiction (a nonsensical result), and that therefore we were wrong to p initially posit that is rational.

Then we can 2 p conclude that 2 must actually be irrational. p Since we have assumed that 2 is rational, it can be expressed as the ratio of two numbers, a and b, written in lowest terms (we have factored out all p common factors).

Mathematically speaking, 2 = a/b, and by rearranging, a2 = 2b2. A number is even if it is a multiple of 2, so a2 is even.

Thus a itself must be even, since the square of an odd number is odd. Since a is

even, we can write a = 2c and substitute that into our equation. This gives us (2c)2 = 4c2 = 2b2, so b2 = 2c2. By the same argument as constructed for a, b is also even.

But, we assumed that a and b had no common factors, and we have just shown that a and b are both even, so 2 divides both of them. This is our contradiction!

Therefore p our original assumption that 2 pis a rational number must be wrong. Hence 2 is an irrational number. Quod erat demonstrandum.

What have we done in this proof? We used a standard technique - proof by contradiction - and facts about even and odd numbers, to prove a very powerful result about the existence of a different kind of number. You may be thinking to yourself, “Sure. Cool. The Pythagoreans were nuts for numbers and the square root of two is legitimately irrational. But what does this all have to do with creation, Incite’s theme this month?” What’s so creative about this proof and, more generally, about math?

Let’s switch gears for a moment and think about music, a discipline which is widely seen as very creative. Jazz musicians, for instance, often improvise during performances. Arguably, this is artistry at its most imaginative, creating on the spot, and inspired by the rest of the piece being performed.

Although musicians craft a completely new musical statement when improvising, they are not creating out of nothing. Instead, they use the original piece to inform their improvisation, and draw from a pool of musical techniques and phrases that they have developed over time.

Similarly, we have proved a completely new fact about numbers, but like a musical improvisation, it did not come out of nothing. We drew from our pool of mathematical knowledge and techniques, using facts that we already knew about numbers along with a standard proof method, and integrated these in the context of this problem to create new knowledge.

It is precisely this process that is at the core of a creative act: using various tools to inventively utilize prior experience in a different setting. But, as we just saw, this is at the heart of mathematical proofs, and mathematics itself! Mathematics truly is a creative discipline.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

ON LIFE, THE UNIVERSE Julie-Anne Mendoza & EVERYTHING

When he’s not teaching kinematics to undergrads (and kindly volunteering his time for an interview with one of them), Dr. Chen is deeply engrossed in the world of nuclear astrophysics. A cursory look at his list of publications confirms that his work is complex stuff. In conversation with him, however, it takes on almost poetic significance.

Here are some of his thoughts on life, the universe, and everything.

JAM - If you had to describe how elements are formed in stars in as few sentences as possible, how would you do it?

AC - How stars shine and how heavy chemical elements get made from lighter ones are really two sides of the same coin. As a star shines, it’s making heavier elements that subsequently get redistributed into space.

Those redistributed elements are the matter out of which new stars and planets are born, eventually leading to human beings.

JAM - Approaching the origins of the Universe scientifically is sometimes described is un-poetic and dry. Do you agree?

AC - I think that when a scientist looks at the origins of the universe and of the elements, there’s a different kind of beauty that he or she will look for and identify.

It will be qualitatively different from the beauty of a painting, a photo, a sunset, or a water wave, but it’s not different in that it evokes a sense of wonder, admiration, and awe for what you’re looking at. It’s coming from a different source, but it’s still beautiful.

JAM - Are there any misconceptions regarding the birth of the elements that you’d want the public to better understand?

AC - Our best framework for understanding where the elements came from is that stars

are born, evolve, die, and eject some of their material into space, and that this process happens over and over again. That’s how our Sun and our Solar System were made.

Everything that we’re made of was essentially cooked up inside a star.

I like the idea that we’re made of stardust. I don’t know if it’s something the general public keeps in mind, or if it’s the most scientific way of putting it, but there it is.

I think that there are far more wild misconceptions about black holes. People have this idea that they sort of wander around space sucking things up, and that’s not true.

tribute something to that.

Altogether, my chat with Dr. Chen was very enlightening. He confirmed that the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is not going to make a black hole, that the “The Big Bang Theory” gets it right, and that it is possible for a physicist to be both pragmatic and poetic.

ARTWORK BY CHRISTINA VIETINGHOFF

JAM - Research into astrophysics and cosmology doesn’t seem to have the same tangible, practical applications as some other areas. Why do you think students should be interested?

AC - One argument is to say that the knowledge we gain, even apart from any foreseeable technological usefulness, is still valuable in and of itself because it adds to the body of knowledge that humans are amassing on what’s out there, on what reality is. Of course, depending on which taxpayer you’re talking to, that may or may not fly. Another argument is that one rarely knows in advance which discoveries in basic research will lead to applications in the future. Governments in tougher economic times need to prioritize, so this question is a tougher one. I don’t envy the people on those committees. Certainly in Canada, the funding system seems to work pretty well. Canada strikes a pretty good balance when allotting funds between established researchers and newer ones, and between applied and pure research projects.

JAM - What are your personal reasons for undertaking origins research?

AC - From a personal point of view, there’s something rewarding about putting a lot of effort into discovering how a small part of the universe works, and being able to con-

While the math behind stellar evolution might be daunting, the ideas, at least the way Dr. Chen communicates them, are very accessible. On the whole, I think there is something hauntingly poetic about the fact that we’re all made of stardust (or cosmic nuclear waste, whichever you prefer).

“

D

r. Chen is an Associate Professor with the Department of Physics and Astronomy at McMaster. In addition to his research, Dr. Chen teaches a third year Origins course on the creation of elements. Incite writer Julie-Anne Mendoza interviewed him about his work in the field.

“ I like the idea that we’re made of stardust.

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 3 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 9

Cheers

Elopement 10 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ DECEMBER 2012

Push & Pull

M

y grandmother, widowed in 1958, was practically forced to come to Canada from China by my uncle and his wife in the mid-eighties, dragged away from her home and her friends for a new, prosperous life in Canada. My uncle, who was an architect back in Hong Kong, was told that he had to return to finish a job before he could permanently apply as a Canadian citizen. He went back, my aunt going along with him. My grandmother was left alone, not knowing any English, in an entirely foreign country. In 1985, my father, who had been working at an advertising company in Columbus, Ohio (and who had been dating my mother, who was also working in advertising in Cincinnati a few hours away), called her up to check on how she was doing. She told him that she was feeling sick, that she’d been drinking a lot more, that she was developing ulcers and that she thought she was going to die. So my father decided to go up to Canada to make sure she was alright. He and my mother decided to enter Canada as a legally married couple, so instead of waiting a week for the marriage license in the state of Ohio, they drove next door to Kentucky, went to a Justice of Peace’s house, paid two men in Hawaiian shirts five dollars each to be their witnesses and got married then and there. And then by the time they got to Toronto, my grandmother turned out to be fine and threw them a wedding party. Since then, my parents continue to be very happily married and my grandmother has taken up the persona of the Tony Soprano of Scarborough––a widely respected tai-chi teacher and mahjong expert.

M

y older brother used to be the victim of severe bullying as a child. Growing up as the only Chinese family in a predominantly white suburban neighbourhood, we were both subject to varying degrees of racism at a very young age, though we didn’t really understand it when we were kids. My brother, who was also diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome at a young age, has since managed to overcome all those childhood obstacles and has obtained his BFA in illustration. He’s got an impressive client list that includes several high profile bands and wants to open his own silkscreen shop in Toronto in the near future.

Livia Tsang liviatsang.net

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 3 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 11

PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIANNA SMRKE

ADAPTIVE DESIGN Sam Godfrey

T

he chalk on the doorframe of my family’s home never got too high.

Being exactly average height, I thought that the world would be a little more accessible because of my stature.

Yet the windows require a stretch, food on top of the fridge becomes forbidden fruit, and many shelves in my room are uncharted territory. Fortunately for me, all these problems can be solved with a step stool (or at the very least a precarious stack of books).

As I said: fortunately.

For many, the world presents much more serious environmental obstacles.

Take for instance a person born without legs. Aside from the obvious challenge of merely getting around, more subtle barriers arise as well. For Raven, a sixth grader in New York, one of these annoyances was the seating at school. The typical desk-chair at the school she attends seats her at eye-level with the surface of her desk. Despite being paralyzed from the waist down, Raven accurately describes herself as “very very independent,” taking it upon herself - with the help of some volunteers – to not only make equipment to help herself at school, but also her entire class.

Finding the seats to be uncomfortable 12 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ DECEMBER 2012

and slippery for herself and classmates, she went to the Adaptive Design Association (ADA). ADA works to provide environmental adaptations for those in need by helping them to create customized equipment and furniture out of cardboard. As their mission statement puts it, they challenge assumptions about “disability,” and strive to ensure everyone achieves their full potential by building child-specific models.

The ADA was established in 1998 by Alex Truesdell. She was inspired to found the association after her aunt lost the use of her hands in an accident. Initially, the organization made small modifications to doorknobs and drawers and stove knobs in her aunt’s home, but it has since expanded into the cardboard construction industry. With Raven, ADA constructed 60 seat wedges, to make them more comfortable, as well as some stair-structures so that Raven can be seated comfortably in class, at the computer lab, or at a table in the cafeteria.

The wonderful thing about cardboard construction, beyond its surprising durability and light weight, is its simplicity and affordability. If you have the know-how and an idea for an adaptation design all you really need is white glue, scissors, lacquer,

and, obviously, cardboard. This means that people around the world, regardless of socioeconomic status, can afford to adapt their environment to their specifications.

Kit Frank, an occupational therapist who learned cardboard construction from theADA in New York, now provides workshops for people who work with “differently-abled” children in communities like Otavalo, Ecuador. “You can make an endless amount of adaptive equipment for children and adults with a limited amount of tools and materials.” Frank also realizes that people who attend her workshop will be able to go out and perhaps host their own workshops, using their talents to create jobs and opportunities in other communities.

Brianna Smrke, a third year Arts and Science student here at McMaster, first heard about adaptive design (AD) two years ago while attending a workshop at Ryerson. At the time in Ryerson’s Early Learning Centre (ELC) there was a threeand-a-half-year-old, Zoe Ross, born with a chromosomal defect that slowed her development. One of the effects of this was that Zoe could not sit or stand on her own, and this prevented her from interacting with her classmates, playing, and gener-

ally being integrated into her pre-school.

Working with ADA though, professor Jason Nolan and ELC teacher Alison Gaston, constructed some equipment for Zoe. This allows her to sit amongst her peers, gaining social and intellectual skills as well as strengthening her core muscles.

Ryerson has since opened an Adaptive Design studio in their Experimental Design + Gaming Environments (EDGE Lab).

Smrke’s first project was building a meditation bench, and she’s been hooked ever since. Alisha Sunderji, fellow third year ArtSci, was enlisted by Smkre after hearing her talk about it, and the two of them formed a working group at OPIRG. The working group, in addition to having hosted some cardboard furniture workshops on campus, has created a three unit sustainability course to be offered next term.

Smrke and Sunderji empathize with the special-needs focus that inspired adaptive design, but stress that the exercise is rewarding in more than one way.

There is something empowering about modifying the environment you live in. Seeing an opportunity to make a change where you live, to make something more accessible or cohesive, and then effecting the change with quite literally your

own hands, is gratifying. Smrke stresses the importance of manual labour, a rarity for many at university, and the satisfaction this gives.

“We want it to become part of student life on campus,” Sunderji emphasizes, describing a student centre with studentmade cardboard furnishings, and open space for people to work on AD projects. If people feel as though they have the ability to modify their environment, they’ll actually start changing it.

Sunderji’s first project, along with Smrke, was the construction of a bench that now sits in their living room. At first apprehensive of the durability of cardboard, Sunderji assured me that, much to her own surprise, it’s rather sturdy when properly assembled. She also expressed how deceptively light the pieces are, for usable furniture.

Today, companies all over the world construct and sell cardboard furniture. Les Cartonistes, a Parisian company, is jus one example. Many of these organizations offer workshops for both training and independent creations, and many of the resultant student-made works are impressive and innovative.

With all these benefits, it’s hard to

understand how adaptive design doesn’t already have a strong presence at McMaster. Sunderji explained that right now, some of the biggest challenges to making this a more prominent force on campus are things like the sheer amount of time it takes to cut pieces of cardboard. When making something like bench out of cardboard cross-sections, it’s not unusual for there to be hundreds of necessary pieces. Luckily for Smrke and Sunderji, their housemates were kind enough to help out with the cutting, but it’s definitely not the most effective division of labour.

Right now they’re learning to operate some of the woodwork machines on campus, as a means of boosting their productivity.

The accessibility and affordability of adaptive design makes it a valuable tool for being able to help a large assortment of people coming from varying communities and lifestyles. It forces people to become more deliberate consumers, constantly making them stop to ask “What do I want?

What do I need?” And then taking it upon themselves to devise answers, and results, for these questions.

There is no reason for us not to adopt adaptive design.

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 3 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 13

PHOTOS COURTESY OF OLIVIA ROZEMA

ART ATTACK Ianitza Vassileva

O

livia Rozema is a third year Studio Art student at McMaster University who focuses on sculpture. In the following interview she talks about what inspires her to create and her strange (and often dangerous) process of making art.

IV - What inspires you to create?

OR - Mostly I go out into the world and am inspired by what I experience and touch and feel on my travels, by the details of everyday life that many people overlook. My

1

neighbour brought some plaster to the construction site at his house, and I might have trespassed followed him onto the site. The walls were made of plaster and it was beautiful so I stole some of it and made it into a sculpture (1). Another source of inspiration was from a pipe I dug out of my neighbour’s yard. It was a beautiful rusted pipe and it led to an entire series of ceramic sculptures (2).

You’ve got to go out with an open mind because there is beauty absolutely everywhere. Often people do not notice the rotten old stump of the tree sitting there, or the paint peeling off a brick wall; they ignore the world around them. When you open your eyes and reach out and touch things (I touch a lot of things I shouldn’t touch), it suddenly adds a new dimension to everyday objects.

When you take them out of their context they become art. It’s a really tactile experience for me. When a physical object is in front of you it comes to life, especially when you are working with sculpture.

IV - Is there a particularly influential part of your world?

OR - My home is very significant. I live on a farm at the edge of a forest, so I have the ability to just leave my house and be in na-

14 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ DECEMBER 2012

2 ture. I can walk through the trees whenever I feel the need. There are a lot of old barns and farmhouses around which are great places to scavenge. As of late, my work has become increasingly concerned with the aggrandization of found and discarded items, both natural and man-made.

IV - So it seems like you’re a bit of a collector as well…

OR - A packrat, for sure. I have a barn full of old things I’ve collected over the years.

It’s terrible.

IV - Why do you like to use these kinds of materials?

IV - If these lost objects are beautiful, why do you remove them from the context in which you find them?

OR - I see a lot of beauty in natural and lost items. By taking them out of their context I hope to show other people realize that beauty can be found in unexpected places.

I don’t kill things though. I find them and I move them from the environment. I have a lot of driftwood and pipes and dead bugs.

OR - I like to recall the history of an item.

When you see a bone, you just think “oh that’s a bone”, but when you simulate the environment that it was originally in, you’re reminding everybody that it used be a dog.

With the pipes, you can look at a pipe and say” it is just a pipe”, but it used to be an

integral part of an important system.

IV - Why do you sculpt?

OR - I came to a realization last year: why struggle to create the illusion of something when I can make it? I could paint beautiful pipe, but it would just be a painting. If I actually make a pipe, I would have something physical that people can touch and hold and that’s a really important part of my work. The tactile experience is important to me while I am making my sculptures, so it should be important in the final piece. So the viewer can experience what I experience while I was making it. Touch is so important to sculpture. Everybody should touch everything!

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 3 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 15

ARTWORK BY IANITZA VASSILEVA

GHOSTWRITERS Julia Redmond

P

eople have always thought that JFK was a brilliant orator. After winning the 1960 election against Republican candidate Richard Nixon, Kennedy, the youngest president elected to office, prepared to give his inaugural address.

And at the ceremony in January 1961, he delivered one of the most famous lines in twentieth century history: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” But were these really his words?

Although it was delivered by Kennedy, the speech was actually crafted by Ted Sorenson, Kennedy’s speechwriter and political advisor. Sorenson later pointed out that Kennedy played a big role in the writing of the address, but never said who it was who came up with this famous line.

This may be a pretty high-profile example, but JFK’s “Ask Not” speech is one of countless works produced by a ghostwriter. Sure, speechwriters are just one kind of ghostwriter, and Sorenson is only a single example still. But this is just one instance of an increasing appetite for writers who offer their words, but not their name.

It’s not just politicians who employ ghostwriters; many celebrities, for example, choose to hire people to write their autobiographies. This is never a widely advertised fact; instead, this process is often dubbed “collaboration.”

One of the media’s favourite such instances of late involves a writer named Valerie Frankel. (Never heard of her? That’s the point.) She is the woman responsible for immortalizing the life of Jersey Shore’s 16 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ DECEMBER 2012

Snooki in print. Unfortunately, this was an illfated mission from the start. Clearly Snooki could not, or would not, have penned an autobiography herself; she claims to have read only two books in her life. But with the magic of ghostwriting, she was able to create A Shore Thing, a memoir disguised as a novel. To the surprise of no civilized people anywhere, the book sold only 9,000 copies in its first month. Thankfully, this shows us that the general book-buying population has some sense of taste (or that no Jersey Shore fans frequent bookstores).

But there’s still something a little unsettling about ghostwriters, whether it be the world of celebrity autobiographies or presidential speeches. Take Jon Favreau, for example. As a new college grad, the (rather attractive) Massachusetts native worked for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, but then he went on to earn a role as Obama’s chief speechwriter. Relatively little known in the media, Favreau reached the spotlight in early 2009, at the time of Obama’s inauguration. Some news outlets scoffed at his youth—he was in his midtwenties during the campaign. The Guardian, a British newspaper, ran a story on Favreau (a.k.a. “Favs”) before the inauguration with the rather sassy headline “Words of history ... crafted by 27-year-old in Starbucks.”

I suppose it might be unsettling to people that the words of politicians aren’t their own. But talented speechwriters write to sound like the politician, so when we hear them speak, we don’t notice anything off about it. In the end, does it really matter where the original words came from?

In politics, perhaps, ghostwriters are a necessity. In the literary world, though, it seems gratuitous to have writers produce work, only to get no credit. But it happens all the time—and it sells. People will read books they enjoy, whether or not they’re predictable or formulaic. Remember the Nancy Drew books? The covers say they were written by a “Carolyn Keene”—this was actually a pseudonym used by a number of ghostwriters who produced the series. The books are no less respected for it, and the kids who read them are no less inspired than they would be if they had been penned by a single author. Having a ghostwriter allowed the series to continue for a long time, and for the publisher to continuously make more money.

Through all of this, I have to wonder— what’s in it for the writers? They get no credit for their work, save perhaps an acknowledgement on one of the inner pages.

In many cases, they write formulaic novels, giving them less room to be creative and take risks. And they could even end up in a situation where they have to write about Jersey Shore. It’s not about the glory, since they get none. So perhaps it pays better than writing your own books, or the job is more stable. There’s certainly a demand for ghostwriters, as there’s a whole market of people who want to write but can’t. But is the ghostwriting industry simply a business, or is it part of a larger trend, a decline in our standards of writing and our desire for fresh and exciting books? I’m not sure—you’ll have to ask the girl who was hired to write this.

OUR GUIDE TO GRILLED CHEESE Devra Charney & Kaila Radan

W

hile studying surfing the web one evening, we came across a recipe for a grilled peanut butter and jam sandwich. Tired of reading and rereading the same sentence in our Econ textbook, we proceeded to click on link after link of gourmet grilled cheese recipes before deciding to try one out. When we got home from class the next afternoon, we assembled the necessary ingredients for our peanut butter and banana sandwich and put them on the grill. Upon taking our first bites of the melted goodness, we started thinking about other sandwiches we could create.

We found inspirationg by the surprising array of gourmet grilled cheeses in Hamilton. Below are some of our favourite recipes so far.

We’ve included one for every meal, as well as your classic grilled cheese. Under each recipe you can find its professional equivalent located in Westdale or downtown Hamilton.

Anytime Grilled Cheese: Traditional For our first grilled cheese, we decided to go with the tried-and-true old-school white bread and cheddar cheese. We also added shredded mozzarella in order to enhance the flavour. With little to no preparation time required, this quick creation has all the comfort of your childhood. In order to make it taste even more like home, try dipping it into a hot bowl of tomato soup.

Ingredients - 2 slices white or whole wheat bread, 1 tbsp salted butter, 1 slice orange cheddar cheese,1 tbsp grated mozzarella cheese Café counterpart - This simple yet satisfying favourite was inspired by My Dog Joe’s three-cheese Panini ($3.95).

Served on a nine-grain bun with garlic mayo and ketchup on the side, this classic with a gourmet flare is sure to meet your grilled cheese standards (My Dog Joe, 1020 King Street West in Westdale).

Dinner: Hearty and Satisfying This can easily be thrown together on a busy school night when you don’t have a lot of time to prepare a full meal. We crumbled old cheddar onto Havarti and added thinly sliced mushrooms and onions. All together, this created a substantial sandwich that was not too overpowering.

If you’re feeling industrious you can grill the vegetables ahead of time, even caramelize the onions. We put them on the sandwich raw though and they softened from the heat of the grill.

Traditional ketchup is a suitable dipping option.

Ingredients - 2 slices sourdough bread, 1 tbsp salted butter, 1 slice Havarti, 1 slice crumbled old white cheddar, 2 button mushrooms (thinly sliced), 1/8 white onion (thinly sliced), 1 tbsp ketchup Café counterpart - A little out of the way, but the Baltimore House is worth the trek to downtown Hamilton.

Their Ulalume: Pear Grilled Cheese ($7.00) combines thin slices of pear, creamy Havarti and caramelized onions on rye bread (Baltimore House, 43 King William St. betweem Hughson and John Streets).

Breakfast Grilled Cheese: The Elvis with a Twist Not only is this our first creation, but it is also the only one that does not involve cheese.

Searching up Elvis Presley’s famous grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich yielded a recipe that includes bacon, but we decided to tweak his original by leaving this out. In order to compensate, we added in cinnamon raison bread to give it an extra kick. Although we initially made it for lunch, we figured its sweetness is better suited for breakfast. Dip it into real Canadian maple syrup for an added treat.

Ingredients - 2 slices cinnamon raison bread, 1 tbsp unsalted butter, 2 tbsp smooth peanut butter, ½ sliced banana, 1 tbsp real maple syrup Café counterpart - Hamilton’s most famous food truck, Gorilla Cheese, has a wide selection of creative sandwiches.

We tried the Cheeky Monkey ($6.00), a combination of Nutella, Peanut butter, and sliced bananas on cinnamon raison bread. Although it is messy, it is the perfect choice for anyone who loves peanuts and chocolate (Gorilla Cheese, Curbside Hamilton, check gorillacheese. wordpress.com for location schedule).

Lunch: Sweet and Savoury Apples and cheese are a go-to snack for many, so they seemed a natural choice for this lunchtime specialty. The tartness of the apple balances rich cheeses like Havarti and Gouda. Rye bread holds it all firmly in place. If you want the apple to soften in the grill, make sure to slice it thinly. Try dipping your sandwich into raspberry jam for maximum flavour fusion.

Ingredients - 2 slices rye bread, 1 tbsp salted butter, 1 slice Havarti, 1 slice aged gouda, ¼ honeycrisp apple (thinly sliced), 1 tbsp raspberry jam Café counterpart - Arguably Westdale’s most upscale restaurant, Bean Bar has high quality food and a welcoming atmosphere. From their grilled options, we recommend the Apple Paradise ($11.00). White or multigrain Panini style bread is stuffed with a decadent combination of butter and cinnamon, baked apple, mature Canadian cheddar, and a hint of maple syrup (Bean Bar, 1012 King St. West in Westdale).

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18 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ DECEMBER 2012

Natalie Jachyra nataliejachyra.tumblr.com

M

y name is Natalie Jachyra and I am an emerging artist currently attending McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. I am in my fourth year working towards a double major in Honours Art and Honours History. My artwork investigates the relationship between digital documentation and the created image and how these elements maintain a connection to reality and familiarity while being manipulated physically and digitally. Through printmaking, painting and digital methods, the imagery that I use consists of unnatural perspectives and reflective effects, which are applied to images of the urban lifestyle and landscape. My work’s subject matter pertains to the contemporary world, images of geographical points and lifestyles that are familiar in the 21st century. Growing up in Toronto and Mississauga, Ontario, various aspects of the cities and the urban lifestyle become apparent in my subject matter.

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 3 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 19

AN ODE TO THE FUTILITY? Anthony D’Ambrosio

O

nce upon a time, in a land far away, there lived a good guy and a bad guy. The two battled until the good guy emerged triumphantly and restored peace to the land. All lived happily ever after. Sound familiar? Let’s try another. One day, Jack meets Jill. They fall in love, but after a series of complications, they break up.

When it seems as though all hope is lost, Jack realizes his mistake and makes it just in time to stop Jill from boarding a plane to another country. She takes him back with open arms and they spend the rest of their lives together.

Believe it or not, but I did not create these grand tales entirely on my own. I regret to inform you, dear reader, that beyond heroism, love, defeat, and retribution,

stories are actually very simple, and dare I say, uninteresting. In fact, no story is truly original. No movies are truly imaginative. No novel is, well, novel.

Christopher Booker was the first to identify the phenomenon. In his work titled The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, Booker claims that every story can be reduced to seven plots. They are: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. Some tales follow only one of these story lines, whereas others are combinations. The implication of Booker’s work is simple—no matter how hard one tries, it is impossible to create an original plot.

Does Booker’s hypothesis change the ARTWORK BY IANITZA VASSILEVA

20 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ DECEMBER 2012

way we view literature? I had previously been under the impression that The Lord of the Rings trilogy was a brilliant saga that intertwined many subplots to produce an intricate and novel fictional word. Now, because of Booker, I see it for what it truly is: “The Quest”, sprinkled with a bit of “Voyage and Return”. How foolish I was for spending a month and half of my summer reading 1500 pages of War and Peace when I could have simply been told that it is about a man finding love during a war. And how dare J.K Rowling deceive readers across the globe into entering a realm of imagination for a simple rags-to-riches quest. Thank you Christopher Booker, you have single-handedly shattered my enjoyment of reading.

But why stop at the seven plots that he mentions? Surely we can further reduce our stories by creating even vaguer classifications to the point that they can encompass almost anything. If you think hard enough, you might realize that all tales can be divided into only two basic plots: ones that involve a unicorn, and ones that do not.

Sorry to ruin it for you, but surely there is no purpose in reading anything if you already know it either will or will not describe the trials and tribulations of a unicorn.

Perhaps I am being too hard on Booker. He probably did not mean to entirely discredit human creativity, and I’m sure his book is very informative. But even if there is merit to his categorization of plot, it is without purpose. Tales can be simplified in an infinite number of ways, but each is as arbitrary and useless as the rest. Plot is not the only element of a story. Just because two stories share a similar narrative doesn’t make them the same. It is how authors develop their characters, set the tone, connect subplots, and relate to the reader that makes a story creative. There are an unlimited number of ways to weave a story together – therein lies the true originality.

We must also consider the imagination of the reader. Two people can read the same story but came away with entirely different understandings. Combining the creativities of both author and reader yields a limitless creative potential. Stories have the power to inspire an individual or influence an entire culture. There’s no sense in diluting their plots to the point of absurdity. Booker makes an interesting point, but we should not let his categorizations change how we feel about the stories we love.

I’M FEELING LUCKY

ARTWORK BY AFFILIATE (FLICKR)

Meg Peters

G

oogle is a multi-billion dollar enterprise with a veritable monopoly in the search engine business (seriously, when was the last time anyone “Asked Jeeves”?). Although the company is still young, having only been established in 1998, Google has proven to be one of the most innovative and profitable businesses in the world. Beyond finances, Google is likely to continue growing as an integral part of western culture. In fact, the verb “to Google” was recently added to the Oxford English dictionary.

Google’s success stems from its unorthodox methods for encouraging collaboration, creativity, and team building. The global headquarters in California is exemplary of these methods, designed to look and feel like a college campus. There are over 25 cafeterias on the Google Mountain View campus, including vegan, gluten-free, local, organic, and fair trade options. Café 150 is one example. This venue serves food made exclusively from ingredients cultivated within a 150-mile radius of the campus. Moreover, no paper money is collected or exchanged in the transaction because employees are free to take as much or as little food as they require in order to complete their work. In every office space, there is a snack food and espresso microkitchen where employees can enjoy fresh, locally roasted, fair trade espresso beans delivered each week. In a mini fridge next to these areas, there is an assortment of various kinds of milk, including soy, almond, coconut, and cow. The snack food is replenished every weekday, with locally produced granola bars, chips, and dried fruit, as well as refrigerated yogurts, and less

healthy alternatives.

Of course, with all this free food available on campus, Google recognizes the importance of keeping their employees physically fit. There are seven fitness centers on campus, as well as a bowling alley, a climbing wall, and a beach volleyball court. The campus itself is also big enough that offers employees and visitors the option of riding scooters and bikes from one office to the next. Google also supplies “conference bikes” which fit up to seven people per vehicle. Groups can ride the bike from one place to another while discussing “work” and enjoying fresh air as they travel from meeting to meeting.

Visiting Google Headquarters as a university student is a lot like visiting Disney World as a kid. Each of the conference rooms has a specific name, including Zaragoza, Table Mountain and Mowry Slough.

The buildings each have their own personality, with employees encouraged to put up their own decorations. For the most part the décor is a mix between engineers trying to be artsy, and pictures celebrating Google’s victories. There is a slide that attaches the upper level of one building to the main floor.

Stan, a life-sized replica of a Tyrannosaurus Rex welcomes any visitors walking through the main courtyard. One wall is a mosaic of all the celebrities who have visited the headquarters, figures ranging from Barack Obama to Lady Gaga. A few of the offices have office pets, including a turtle named Franklin. Employees are encouraged to bring their pets to work, especially dogs.

The Google store is meant mostly for visitors, but employees are nonetheless given a thirty percent discount from the piles

of YouTube, Android, and Google branded merchandise that the venue sells. Once a month, employees are given an additional discount on specific pieces of experimental equipment. In the past, Google employees have had first dibs on Android phones, as well as other Android products. Additional toys are available for experimentation, including the Google Maps booth, previously referred to as the “holodeck”, where anyone can pick up a joystick and zoom into a 3D image of anywhere on the earth or the moon.

The Google employee culture is one that encourages an ongoing dialogue between workers and their superiors. Weekly TGIF celebrations encourage team building and a friendly relationship between everyone in the office. Google gives employees the freedom to branch out, collaborate, and create their own projects. They also recognize the value of play in work and work in play. The ideal Google staffer is flexible, creative, and collaborative.

Google has designed its headquarters so that employees have positive experiences of work. At the end of the day, some don’t even want to go home. It is not an exaggeration to say that Google employees can live on campus. There are shower facilities available, comfortable rest areas, and anything else you might need or desire.

Although the offices are technically closed on weekends, your employee card will get you into your own office building, and you could hypothetically keep food in the microkitchen area. If it weren’t for the free shuttle buses with Wifi access to and from the Bay area, many employees would probably stay overnight and on weekends. I would.

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Alicia Giansante aliciagiansante.tumblr.com

22 â–Ş INCITE MAGAZINE â–Ş DECEMBER 2012

M

y goal for this painting was to capture a moment of peace or freedom. The figure has a lot of problems or issues, and in falling away from them, expresses a desire to leave them behind, if only for a moment. I believe we all strive for peace or freedom in one form or another.

ARTWORK BY IANITZA VASSILEVA

THE ONE-HOUR STORY CHALLENGE Kate Sinclair

I

n early November, Incite launched its first annual one-hour story challenge. The idea was to challenge writers to produce an original work of fiction in just one hour.

Of course, getting writers to “compete to create” was appropriate given this month’s theme. To further drive the point home, we set certain parameters for the writers. The story had to begin in a delivery room and end in a bell telephone booth. And yes, the delivery room setting was a rather painful nod to creation theme.

This year’s contest winners were Cormac Donovan and Julie-Anne Mendoza. We are publishing both stories, because, not only because are they each excellent, they are also radically different. We feel that this just goes to show that, even when operating under the same time constraints and responding to the same prompts, stories can evolve in radically different, and in this case, opposite ways.

We asked the winners to comment on their experience. Here’s what they said: KS - How do you feel that the time constraint altered the creative process?

CD - It cut out the procrastination phase, which usually composes about 96.57% of the process of producing a piece of written work. I should actually be working on an essay right now, but am instead procrastinating by responding to these questions. So right now, this is a huge spike in efficiency for me.

JAM - The time constraint forced a kind of uninhibited writing that I’m not used to, but ended up really enjoying. I normally like to outline things very carefully before I start

writing, but being pushed to write quickly meant running with whatever ideas came first. I think that writing so impulsively probably leads to a story that reveals a lot about its writer. At the same time, I kind of hope that isn’t true because given that my story wasn’t exactly optimistic.

cooler.

JAM - Spontaneity is almost a requirement for a challenge like this. It was terrifying for the first minute or two, but it became a lot easier and a lot more enjoyable once I stopped second guessing myself and just ran with my ideas.

KS - Were you surprised by the story you came up with? Why do you think you came up with the stories you did?

KS - In what ways do you think this type of writing exercise is useful/instructive?

CD - Not really, I was an extremely ugly baby and that’s something I’ve been trying to cope with my entire life. This story was just another one of the many attempts I’ve made over the years to reconcile myself to my former hideousness. It did not work, and I continue to be crippled by shame.

JAM - I definitely didn’t go into the challenge expecting to write something so bleak, and I didn’t notice how terribly dismal it was until I was about halfway through writing it. I’m not entirely shocked, though, because I’ve made a habit of twisting instructions around as much as I can. My first instinct was to turn the theme of creation on its head and write about destruction, and the rest just followed.

KS - Did you find the challenge difficult, or do you think that it allowed you to be more spontaneous?

CD - It was more fun than difficult. And if by “allowed” you mean “forced” then yes.

That said, spontaneity is not always a good thing. I got so caught up in worrying about the time limit that I forgot to make my story about wizards, which would have been a lot

CD - It’s great because it’s a low stakes project. You know that you’re not expected to come up with anything too subtle or insightful, so you can just write something down knowing you won’t be judged too harshly.

Then again, it feels terrible to let an unedited piece of writing out of your hands for other people to read. If I were to rewrite it, lots of things would change. But at least the editorial staff of Incite allowed me to edit out the spelling mistakes for the final copy. Where it says “gouging” it originally said “gauging”, which doesn’t make any sense.

JAM - Writing with any kind of constraint is useful. The only way to improve is to push yourself out of your comfort zone, and having not only a time limit, but requirements for both the beginning and end of the story as well as a mandatory word bank was definitely a challenge. I left feeling like a stronger writer.

KS - Would you like to see Incite Magazine hold similar events in the future?

CD - Ya for sure. Again, it was fun. I recommend it to EVERYONE. JAM - I would absolutely love to do this again.

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 3 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 23

ONE-HOUR STORY CONTEST WINNER

...

Cormac Donovan “

T

his child is born in this modern-day delivery room in some General Hospital in some mid-sized city to this really well-matched newlywed couple who are understandably excited and nervous, in a healthy way, for the arrival of their precious blessing-of-a firstborn.

But they are, perhaps again understandably, disappointed—nay, shattered—to find that their firstborn is no ordinary child, and not in a good way. For this child is completely, profoundly, unbearably, and imposingly ugly. So much so that neither the mother nor the father (let alone any of the doctors or midwives) can look right at him for any extended period of time. And so although most people these days would agree that we shouldn’t look down on other people just because they’re hideous, and that being hideous isn’t a personal shortcoming, but rather beauty is in the eye of the beholder and different cultures have different but perfectly equally legitimate standards of what constitutes an attractive person, and so our judgment that someone is a terrible eyesore isn’t in anyway an actual, substantive, objective indictment of their appearance, but rather just some subjective, learned response constructed through our childhood culture’s rote, normative conditioning, and that the idea that this child is genuinely deficient in any way is as antiquated as cell phones with external antenna—you can’t argue with the fact that this child’s, shall we say, perceived hideousness creates quite the practical hurdle to the smooth operation of a modernday delivery room’s proper functioning, whether that hurdle be normatively constructed or otherwise. You see, so much of what doctors and healthcare professionals do is reliant on their looking at the person in need of care. Once the doctor had extracted the poor, cursed thing from the mother, he took one look straight at it, point-blank, emitted a kind of throaty, honking sound, the likes of which none present had ever heard before, and just flopped it down on the mother’s newly flaccid, unpregnant torso, umbilical cord still attached at both ends and afterbirth still unbirthed. The mother, upon catching sight of little Igor (as he was soon to be christened, which was poor judgment because he also turned out to be devastatingly stupid, and the school children, along with many adults, took twisted pleasure in carving him up with nicknames like Igor the Ignoramus), in turn began to squirm and writhe, seemingly forgetting the pain she had just had been in only a moment before, and actually ended up just kind of shunting Igor off her own oily body and down onto the foot of the hospital bed. The father had procured a pair of scissors, presumably the pair meant to be used to sever the umbilical cord, and had raised them in an Oedipal gesture of sheer resentment for the burden that sight had just recently become, and was being restrained by the doctor, who had turned his back on the child. Though he later claimed that preventing the father from gouging his own eyes out was a duty he assumed upon taking the Hippocratic oath, he had a secret, niggling knowledge that he was in fact trying to wrestle the scissors out of the father’s hands so he could destroy his own eyes and escape the possibility, once and for all, of ever beholding the child again himself. The midwives were by this point howling like crazed monkeys, although Igor never really raised much of a fuss himself. In fact, throughout his entire life he was blessed with a sunny and resilient temperament, which ultimately led him to a long, fulfilling career teaching the newly blind how to cope with their disability.”

The voice on the other end stopped talking at that, and I just hung up the phone. Who prank calls a phone booth?

24 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ DECEMBER 2012

ARTWORK BY IANITZA VASSILEVA

ONE-HOUR STORY CONTEST WINNER

LEAVE MY BONES Julie-Anne Mendoza

I

died in a delivery room.

There wasn’t much of it left by the time the whole dying thing happened, to be quite honest, but I’m going to call it a delivery room anyways because I just like the irony of it. People aren’t supposed to die in delivery rooms.

I’ll rewind. There was an explosion. There was an explosion in the pediatrics wing of St-Mary’s hospital, and I was only in there because it was my first day as a surgical intern and I got off on the wrong floor. Tried to find an operating theatre and ended up standing in an empty delivery room that got blown up.

I don’t think anyone’s figured out what caused the explosion yet.

There’s still a whole lot of chaos, people running, people screaming, and me, floating in what used to be a delivery room and looking down at my own broken body.

It’s not exactly what I was expecting, this whole out-of-body experience thing that followed the back of my head being blown off.

I’m not religious, and until now, I didn’t believe in an afterlife. But I’m still here even though most of my skull isn’t, so clearly I was wrong.

A particularly high-pitched scream is enough to tear my attention from the mess that used to be my arm, and before I can even process the thought of how to turn a non-corporeal body, I’m facing the opposite direction, looking through what used to be a wall and

ARTWORK BY IANITZA VASSILEVA

into the neighbouring delivery room. There’s a pregnant woman sitting on the bed, screeching her head off and pulling wildly on the hand of a guy I assume is her husband. He’s sprawled on the chair next to her bed, and the corner of his head has been bashed in. His chest is still moving, he’s still breathing, but I don’t think he will be for long. There’s another guy trying to calm the lady down – her dad, judging by the way he’s talking to her – and boy does he look like an older version of the first, shrew like and small, with oily hair and impressively bushy eyebrows. Freud would be so pleased.

There’s blood on the woman’s bed. She’s still attached to the monitor, by some strange miracle, and I can see that her pressure’s dropping fast. She’ll probably lose the baby.

There’s a honk, loud and obnoxious enough to break my focus and send my field of vision spinning until I’m not even in the same room. I’m just outside the hospital, or at least, just beyond the broken remains of what used to be the exterior wall, facing a car. Blue sedan, Toyota Corolla, actually, same car that – My heart stops. Stops again? Does this not-body even have a heart? I can’t even begin to process that because Liam, Liam, Liam.

The blue sedan, the Toyota Corolla, it’s the same car he drives. Not his – his has a long scratch along the passenger side door that he hasn’t bothered to get touched up since his ex keyed it last year – but the same one. He was supposed to be meeting me for lunch, would have been arriving at the hospital at the same time the explosion went off, and now all I want to know is where he is.

As soon as the thought crosses my mind – find Liam – I’m flying. Flying through walls and through people and through a fire truck that’s just pulled up in front of the hospital until my heart says there, and I lurch to a stop. I’m in a telephone booth, the one on the very edge of the hospital parking lot. There’s Liam’s Toyota, parked a few yards away with that ridiculous scratch, and here is Liam, hanging on to the phone because he dropped his cellphone in a lake, and he’s staring at the keypad, holding a ring.

My boyfriend, who came to meet me for lunch on my first day as a surgical intern is holding a ring, and I’m here watching him call me while my body is lying broken in a delivery room, next to another delivery room where a woman is about to lose her baby right next to her husband who is probably dead by now.

I should be alive. I should be alive, and I should be saying yes, and wearing that ring. That man should be alive, and that woman’s blood pressure should not be dropping, and she should not be losing that baby.

My heart is breaking. I don’t even have a heart anymore, but it feels like it’s breaking. Liam has folded the ring into his fist and he’s leaning his head against the glass of the telephone booth and there are tears on his cheeks, and distantly, I’m aware that my cellphone is probably going off in that delivery room, playing that ridiculous KPop song that was on the radio when Liam first kissed me.

It’s too much. I don’t have eyes to close, but I wish that they would, and my vision goes blank. Not dark, just blank. I’m about to meet my creator, I guess. Or maybe dissipate into thin air. I feel a tug on my insides (do I even have insides?), and the back of my mind says this is it. Something must be beginning, because at this point, I don’t think there’s anything left to end.

VOLUME VOLUME 15, 15, ISSUE ISSUE 33 ▪▪ INCITE INCITE MAGAZINE MAGAZINE ▪▪ 25 25

Success Meg Peters

Party Dress Meg Peters Party dress; glass of wine; my lipstick sticks to the rim; Your smile From across the room, zoom.

Shift my weight from one heel to the other; another sip; a glance Your arm around another Another lover, not me.

An arrow in my side; my dress smaller than before; my heels taller Your smile Her laugh; her party dress; glass of wine in slender hand Another sip; gulp; run.

To be compared to my past self is cruel.

Wear yourself thin On your sleeve (“did you lose weight?”)

Under your eyes (dark circles, “did you get a black eye?”)

Take time by the throat; choke; cough out nothing Let nothing cough out you.

Write under the guise of good intentions Pretend to be pretentious Pretend to be loved; pretend to love Let others stand in wonder At the long list of things you wished you’d done All the while asking, “how does she do it?”

Do it every day.

Obsessions Meg Peters Spinning disbelief and the stars that blew back the west wind I watched your face float by as I rolled away A sweet goodbye as I pulled, begging you to stay Half a whisper, half a lie, and every glass of water clear I waved away the present, pushing for the past A little madness, but reality was never sane.

Stilettos have me off balance as I bounce past your smile Those eyes, a little sheepish, a little unsure Repeat after me: don’t look, don’t ever look back.

Turned to ash and salt on my rough tongue A little string trailing my raw neck And the refrain: “I want you back” Obsessions line our walls, our shelves, my mind Sweat spilling over darkened dustpans Peel the pieces of you off the floor Beg for more, muscles aching from the effort A little vulnerability can build your strength.

I’ve got you hanging off this cliff Half a body dangling in disbelief I have your smile bottled on my bookshelf I’m kind; your mind is yours.

ARTWORK BY IANITZA VASSILEVA 26 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ DECEMBER 2012

ARTWORK BY ALICIA GIANSANTE

LIGHTNING BOLT Stephen Clare

T

he old man stared at the empty page, and the page stared back.

He felt his resolve collapse—more of a release than a break. Leaning back in his chair, he sighed wearily and rubbed his stiff neck. His eyes turned to the window through which he had so often glimpsed that elusive inspiration, but now they saw only grey clouds gathering on the horizon. The world refused to speak to his soul.

Well, sometimes one needs to inspire oneself. The man rose from the comfortable desk chair that had so often been the launching pad for his creative ventures and crossed the room to a ceiling-high, roomwide bookcase. A thousand colourful spines reached out to him, begging to be read; but, as always, he had eyes for just one. The rough cover of the nondescript green book felt familiar beneath his wizened fingers. He paused for a moment as a sequence of memories flashed through his mind: a hot yellow beach, a windy day in the park, a sunset at sea; these recollections now as much a part of the book as the poems printed inside.

A purple ribbon was slipped gently between two pages near the middle of the volume. With care, almost reverence, the man traced its elegant curves to the page that it marked and thumbed open the book. As he read, a smile spread across his face, genuine but hinting of melancholy. It was his favourite passage, a sure way to rescue himself

from this creative stagnation and be transported to a new perspective, a new mindset in which to write. So often had he surfed along the poem’s graceful musings that he really didn’t need to see the words anymore, as they were forever etched into his brain.

Still, he liked the feel of paper beneath his fingers, enjoyed the fine lines of letters on the page, and rejoiced in the way a few strokes of ink could be turned into beauty and emotion and love.

That simple that was myself, half conscious, as though each moment was a page where words appeared; the bent hammer of the type struck against the moving ribbon.

The words were Ruth Stone’s, a poet whose process was as inspiring as her work. She described her writing as an external force, a thundering, violent storm of a poem that she didn’t create so much as capture. It shook through her before exploding onto the page.

She felt she merely channeled her poems, acting as a vessel through which they flowed from the macrocosm to the Moleskine. The man was always amazed at the delicacy that emerged from such a vicious process.

He knew that he did not share Ruth’s lightning bolt creative spirit. He was more cyclical than spontaneous and more endurance than ecstasy. His writing was the tide to Ruth’s tsunami: slow, inevitable, rhythmical. On some days, the tide stayed out and

the page stayed blank. On others the moon drew closer, and his characters and plots jumped through his hands like electricity, burning their stories onto his brain and paper. The process felt somewhat unalterable, either coming or not. Sometimes, though, the man felt he could nudge the moon closer and coax the ocean onto shore.

Often he did break those mental blocks.

He took inspiration in nature and called upon other authors. Even things as subtle as a bird arcing across his backyard or a particularly beautiful passage he’d never noticed in an old book could stir up a creative storm within—an exciting stream of new ideas that could sustain his writing for days. That was the essence of his work. By reconnecting with the familiar, he looked upon the unknown.

This had been an important realization for him. Inspiration is not a static target—it’s always moving, shifting, and there are myriad ways to approach it. For Ruth Stone, it was an unstoppable force thundering across the fields outside her home. For the old man it was the graceful swoop of a jay in the morning fog.

For me, it’s more of a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces are all the same colour.

There’s a way they connect, but I can only find it through painstaking struggle – constant shuffling and reshuffling until finally, thankfully, the tabs and blanks click together. Ordo ab chao. A whole from scattered pieces.

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 3 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 27

NOAH’S ARK ▪ PART II Kate Sinclair

A

fter the sacrifice Noah went to wake Christopher Robin. Oddly, the door to his son’s room was already open. Mr. Noyes marched up to the door with his usual bravado only to trip over his daughter, who lay crumpled in the doorway.

“What the –CHRISTOPHER?” Wilbur, who was by now quite tired of this whole routine, extended his arm politely as if to say How do you do? Noah slapped the pig’s hoof out of the way, seized his daughter, and slammed the door in Wilbur’s face. Frantically, he yelled for his wife.

Mrs. Noyes was in the room next door, indulging in her daily gin and tonic. Hearing her husband’s voice, she involuntarily flinched.

“Yes, dear?”

“Come out here. We have a SITUATION.” “Oh?” She replied lightly.

“QUICKLY.” Reluctantly, Mrs. Noyes hid her flask and bottle back under the floorboards, smoothed out her apron and stepped into the hallway.

“Well?”

“Nora, I need you check on your son.”

“Christopher? Let the boy sleep, Noah. You remember what it was like being that age.”

“This is important Nora, just do it.”

Sighing she opened the door.

“He looks fine, Noah. He’s dressed and everything.”

Noah stared at his wife in disbelief.

“You don’t really mean to say that you don’t see anything at all…off about him?”

“Nothing at all.” She replied serenely.

“But his head.”

“Hmm?” “Well…it isn’t his.”

“He’s changed a lot lately, you’ve been preoccupied.”

“Not so preoccupied that I wouldn’t have noticed my own son change into a fucking pig.”

“I really don’t see what the fuss is all about. He’s perfectly fine.”

“I want my son back, not some disgusting hybrid.”

“Things haven’t been right with us for a long time.” Mrs. Noyes replied sadly. “Now go in and talk to your son.”

“Nora – that’s not my son.”

Ignoring him, Mrs. Noyes opened the door and ushered her husband inside. She picked up Fern, and followed him through the entryway. Christopher Robin’s room had certainly changed since the last time either of them had been inside. His old toy collections were gathering cobwebs on the shelves. Meanwhile, the desk and walls were covered with sheets of mouldy, yellowing paper.

Etched in pen and ink and charcoal, animals pounced and darted across every page.

From the corner, Wilbur watched the family move awkwardly through the room. So engrossed were they by what they saw, they seemed to have forgotten all about him. Fascinated, Wilbur watched Noah sift through stacks of drawings.

Noah stood transfixed by one sketch in particular. It seemed to be depicting the transformation of a monkey into a human through

a series of intermediate forms. Noah had to admit, it was cleverly done. It looked almost as though the monkey was stepping into ever more sophisticated bodies, finally acquiring human form at the end of its metamorphosis.

Noah flipped through the rest of the images. They were all alike: one species next to another, the similarities between each emphasized in meticulous detail. The last sheet in the pile depicted the leg of a horse, the paddle of a porpoise, the wing of a bat and the hand of a man, all constructed in the same pattern, with the same bones, in the same relative positions. At the bottom, Christopher had scribbled: I can no longer believe that man is the result of a separate act of creation.

Everything is interconnected.

We are formed, not by the hand of a Creator, but by the changeable forces of Nature. Through flood and fire and famine, the human form has been wrought.

Life endures only to change. Our origins are imprinted in our form. We bear the signatures of cosmic violence and desire.

Our history is in our bones.

Though we are sculpted by the Natural World, we imagine ourselves above it.

How small our exploits seem in the face of indomitable nature!

We have failed to domesticate the wilderness.

Behold, man has fallen.

Reduced to self-imposed captivity on an ark he prays to his gods for false freedom.

Let it rain.

Let nature rise up against us.

God is great. Blessed be His creation.

Noah choked, putting a hand out to steady himself. He thrust the drawing to his wife.

Nora walked over and accepted the paper her husband extended to her. As she read, she was overcome by an insurmountable feeling of dread.

Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was the perpetual swaying of the ship. But she was beginning to feel decidedly ill. What if there was no cosmic plan? What if, shut away on the ark, they were headed toward collective obliteration?

They were headed toward collective obliteration.

Looking up from the sheet, she registered her purple-faced husband, her beastly son, and her unconscious daughter. Could this be the future of civilization? Why had they even built an ark in the first place? Masters of nature, they had lost all comprehension of it.

“Well? Say something. Is it mad or isn’t it?” asked Noah impatiently.

Mrs. Noyes swallowed hard.

“Completely mad.”

Just as she said it, there was a deafening crash. Noah turned to his wife.

“What - ?”

Behold, man has “fallen.Reduced to

self-imposed captivity on an ark he prays to his gods for false freedom. Let it rain.

Let nature rise up against us.

God is great.

“

28 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ DECEMBER 2012

In the bowels of the ship, Aslan was on the move. Up the stairs and through the hatch, he led his forces. 1,001 creatures charged full-throttle out of their cages and into the fray. Up, up, up they surged, collectively gathering momentum. Templeton sat perched on the lion’s shoulder, proudly directing him through the twisted maze of corridors and to the captain’s quarters.

Mrs. Noyes looked again at her son’s message.

Like the word of Nostradamus revealed.

Things fall apart.

She looked over at Wilbur. Of course she knew this was not her son, but she couldn’t decide whether he was fully an animal either.

Maybe he’s both. Maybe we all are.

As the ruckus downstairs intensified, she smiled at Wilbur.

If only I had time to get the gin.

Noah was not handling the situation well. Spluttering and yelling orders that no one else could hear, he was doing his best to construct a barricade by pushing the bedframe into the entryway.

The centre cannot hold.

“NORA!” he roared over the sound of the stampede. “DON’T JUST GODDAMN STAND THERE – DO SOMETHING.” But Nora couldn’t hear; she was resigned to her fate. Patiently, she awaited the inevitable while her husband paraded uselessly about the room.

In spite of Noah’s best efforts, the lion surged through the entryway with a deafening crack. Wilbur squealed in terror as the mob tumbled in.

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

The ensuing battle was very gruesome. It didn’t last very long.

It was a decisive victory for the animals.

Noah, outraged at any spectacle of disobedience among God’s lesser creatures, launched his best offence.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

“IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER,” he bellowed, turning red and waving the sacrificial knife hither and thither, parrying blows and trying to slice anything that crossed his path. But Aslan’s forces were not to be overcome. Noah soon found himself forced into a corner, abandoned. Looking around helplessly, he spotted Wilbur standing nearby. Seeing the pig, he let out a roar of anger.

Surely some revelation is at hand.

“YOU!” he screeched in disbelief.

Seizing the creature by the collarbone, he pinned it against the wall and, with one decisive swing, lopped off its head.

Nora wailed mournfully and fell to her knees. Aslan roared. Templeton hurtled himself through the air and into Noah’s face, latching fiendishly to his hair and chattering wildly, spit flying everywhere. Two great apes seized Noah in a tight vice. Silence fell and Aslan spoke.

“Beasts of the land, sea and sky; this is a decisive moment in the history of our kind.

No longer shall we be oppressed and downtrodden by outsiders divorced from their better natures.

Never again shall we be caged or

forced onto streets of concrete.

Today is the beginning.

Let us be free.

Let us use our liberated bodies in any way possible.

And move, unimpeded, to the proper rhythms of the world.

Let us not claim ownership over nature.

Let us take our place in the natural order with wings unclipped and hooves unshod.

The New World is come.”

After a slight pause, the animals roared in unison, whooping and cheering wildly for their new king.

“TO THE CAGES!” the Lion yelled. Together, they marched the three prisoners, Noah, Fern, and Nora, to their respective cells.

Ceremoniously, each family member was locked behind bars. Aslan stepped back and surveyed his work. It was good. Grinning, he looked around at his fellow animals.

“Ecce Homo – Behold Man!” He roared.

A chorus of animals thundered their approval.

Surely the Second Coming is at Hand.

Aslan padded back upstairs to survey his new domain.

Stepping onto the deck, he was surprised to find that the sky had cleared.

Slowly it dawned on him.

They were exactly where they had started, tethered to the pier in Shuruppak overlooking the bustle of city streets.

Bleakly, he cast his head up at the barren sky.

And wished for rain.

ARTWORK BY MARK BELAN

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 3 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 29

SCHOOLHOUSE ROT Matthew Bassett

B

ook Review - All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture, and Education by Ken Robinson We live in a world where new discoveries are made faster than ever before and where human access to information is ever expanding. You’d think these changes would be reflected in our current education system. Sadly, they are not. The fact is, the system we use today was designed for a different age. We are still using a model developed to suit the needs of a society in the throes of industrial revolution, and as

researchers like Sir Ken Robinson explain, it fails when applied to the current generation.

Robinson states that societies should reform public education for economic and cultural reasons. He seeks to answer two questions: (1) How can we tailor education to the 21st century given that we cannot predict the economy at the end of next week? And (2) How can we educate our children so that they have a sense of cultural identity in spite of globalization? Robinson argues that we have to stop looking ARTWORK BY ELIZA DUNHAM

30 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ DECEMBER 2012

to the past for answers. We cannot resort to precedent. In order to assume a productive role in the current economy, young adults need a different kind of skill-set.

They cannot merely memorize. Versatility, creativity, and other transferable skills are essential in the current economy. Moreover, Robinson argues, we have alienated millions of children by implementing a dated curriculum. He explains “we are getting our children through education by anaesthetizing them when in fact we should be waking them up to what they have inside themselves.”

During the industrial revolution, creation was seen as a linear process; a production line if you will. Things were categorized based on their date of manufacturing, their quality, and their purpose. It is one thing to apply this mentality to the manufacturing process, but what about to human beings, what about to children? This is the reality of our education system. We group children by age, dump them on a conveyor belt, and wait for them to be spit back out again. We aim to create a standardized product. Robinson states, “If you are interested in the model of education, you do not start from this production line mentality.” This ideal of conformity is causing chaos, and he believes we need to go in the opposite direction.

I believe the main issue with the current system is that students are not being taught how to accept failure. When studying frustration, you learn that it often arises when reality does not fulfill expectations.

Without an understanding the inevitability of failure, students are frustrated by a world where success is seldom and defeat unavoidable. I think we find children expressing this frustration as anger towards their peers and society.

So is there hope for future generations? Robinson tells a story of changing paradigms in which divergent thinking and creativity are celebrated within the education system; a system that promotes individuality within collaboration and tradition within innovation; a system that encourages hard work and perseverance. In our changing world, this vision is not inconceivable, and I hope that I live to see to see the day in which my children are freed from the restrictive need for conformity. Change is calling. The only question is whether or not our society is willing to adapt.

ARTWORK BY ?????

ARTWORK BY IANITZA VASSILEVA

THE NAKED WRITER Sabrina Zhu

this project, Hartmann hopes to “push the boundaries of the author/reader relationship” and states that, given the way her stories tend to take on a life of their own, she is excited about “seeing what unfolds with everybody else”.

The Dragon Lords (a fan-suggested title) is currently a 15-chapter novel-in-progress spanning four Google Docs. Viewer overload still makes it lag during live writing sessions, so audiences are often directed to a back-up page that reloads every five minutes. Although this does takes away a bit from the whole “live” viewing experience, thousands of fans still wait for updates from Hartmann’s Facebook and Twitter accounts indicating the date and time of her upcoming sessions. While she has indicated that, ultimately, the story is hers, the opinions of

around the “Viewers world will be able

to observe every word as it appears onscreen in real time.

“

I

n The Emperor’s New Clothes, Hans Christian Anderson tells a tale of two swindlers who boast of their ability to weave a beautiful fabric invisible to everyone unworthy of the king’s presence. The king readily hires them, anticipating both the fine clothes and the prospect of identifying the unfit and foolish. Predictably, the so-called weavers have no such talent, and the king is left merely naked, not clothed in invisible robes. Not wanting to appear unfit or foolish, though, everyone from the king to his ministers to the common people pretends to admire the “splendid colours” of the “fine cloth”. As his majesty parades through the streets without a stitch of new clothing on, everyone maintains the pretence until a young child finally points out that the king is, indeed, naked.

Anderson’s classic tales have been retold for centuries and, like many other beloved pieces of literature, seem to set an impossible standard for the budding authors of today. It almost seems like the great and the published might have actually discovered a special fabric that generates good writing, invisible to all the average scribblers who are still trying to untangle their threads. Two months ago, a seasoned author set out to disprove this theory by stripping down before the public – metaphorically, of course.

As of September 12th, 2012, Silvia Hartmann is known as the “Naked Writer”. Her latest fantasy novel, The Dragon Lords, will be drafted entirely on Google Docs, where the public can watch live writing sessions and give on-the-spot opinions, suggestions, and criticism. Thanks to the power of the Internet, viewers around the world will be able to follow the drafting process from beginning to end, observing every word as it appears onscreen in real time. Through

her readers have affected the creation process. For example, three days after the project began, there were already complaints about the sexual content of the novel (the author admits that she had just finished reading Fifty Shades of Grey). A poll was subsequently put up asking, “How sexy do you want The Dragon Lords to become?”

50% of voters stated, “Don’t care, just write the story!” So she did. And there is still a parental advisory note regarding adult themes and subjects written in red above every document.

The Naked Writer Project has been called many things – “brave”, “inspired”, “pointless”, and “a money-grabbing gimmick” to name a few. Regardless of how the public may view Hartmann’s endeavour, it cannot be denied that the project demystifies the writing process. Professional writers don’t have invisible robes or superpowers that enable them to sit down and write a presentable plot from start to finish. Hartmann, who has more than twenty publications under her belt, still pauses in the middle of awkward sentences, deletes ideas that don’t quite work out, and remains guilty of typos, clichés, and comma misuse.

Right now, The Dragon Lords consists of many short paragraphs, is missing a few quotations marks, and doesn’t look anywhere near ready for publication. By “baring it all”, Hartmann confirms that the creation process really does start in the same place for everybody.

According to Wikipedia, even Anderson made some last-minute changes before publishing The Emperor’s New Clothes.

It was actually at the printer’s when he was inspired to bring the wise child into the story. While the reason for this remains undetermined, some trace it back to an incident during his childhood when he was standing in a crowd with his mother waiting to see King Frederick VI. What he blurted out when he finally saw the king might be similar to how most readers react to Hartmann’s blog: “Oh, he’s nothing more than a human being!”

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 3 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 31

ARTWORK BY IANITZA VASSILEVA

BEHIND THE PAGES Sarah Kanko

T

here is a certain irony about being unable to create a piece about creation.

Given the assignment to write about creation, I sat staring at an open document on my screen. My mind was as blank as the page before me. The déjà vu was overwhelming. I recalled all the papers and articles I had written in the past. All had started out as equally daunting blank pages. Now, each of those pieces have been completed and saved as documents somewhere on my hard drive. What were once equally blank pages are now pages filled with paragraphs of (usually) coherent sentences. How does the process begin?

This month, I write a “meta” article. In painstaking detail, I describe the making of an Incite Article, tracing the production of the magazine from its “blank page” stage all the way to the final product.

Every month’s issue begins with The Meeting. Usually held in BSB, these meetings are a whirlwind of brainstorming ideas, claiming topics, and dubious chalkboardwriting. The resulting list of clever and interesting ideas then becomes the framework for the magazine. Writers sign up for ideas, editors discuss deadlines, content, and word count — thus the chaotic process begins.

Some claim that their Incite pieces just write themselves. Legend has it that one writer fell asleep with his laptop under his 32 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ DECEMBER 2012

pillow and woke up the next day with a brilliant article already written and edited. Other writers have to put a bit more work into the process. Some turn to modern literature or popular culture for inspiration, others to drugs. Hallucinogenic are particularly popular, though the resulting articles are often too surreal to include in the magazine. Because of this, drugs are discouraged. (Well, that and other considerations like illegality and health risks).

The most popular method of writing an Incite article can be likened to a game of croquet: each idea or sentence is a swing of the mallet at the croquet ball. Sometimes the ball goes through the little metal arches, but most of the time it whizzes erratically off course. It is only when the ball is hit through each of the arches that the game is finished.

Likewise, it is only when each idea and each sentence go through the arch of coherence that the article is finished.

Every article has to start with a core idea. With no basis from which to start, the piece would just be pages and pages of gibberish. From this idea the writer must move on to the next step: research. As fun as it is to make up stories about nonsense, they are not as interesting to read as those that are actually based on global events, discoveries, or ideas. Once the writer has done sufficient research, the writing of the actual piece can begin. In theory… But in practice,

once the writer has done sufficient research the piece tends to get forgotten for a few days as the writer is overwhelmed by the numerous other demands of being a university student. And then as the deadline looms, the writer must return to the piece, trying to ignore the guilt of procrastination. With prior research and preparation already done, the piece itself is relatively easy to write.

Once a piece is written it is sent to the editors. This step is of critical importance; a missing comma in the description of a family dinner can be deadly when the impatient granddaughter shouts “let’s eat, Grandma!” and a forgotten capital letter in the piece about the young squire who helped Uncle Jack off his horse can radically alter the story’s meaning . It is the job of the editorial team to ensure that Incite has no parricide or unnecessary lewdness. Editors are an important part of the writing process, especially since, as Jarod Kintz wrote, “There Are Two Typos of People In This World: Those Who Can Edit And Those Who Can’t.”

The ordeal is over when the edits are done and the issue is sent to the printers.

Once printed, editors must (literally) shoulder the burden of distributing the magazine to stands across campus. If you’re like me, this is a Sisyphean struggle. Needless to say, we all breathe a sigh of relief to see the magazines nested safely in their racks. And then The Meeting is scheduled again.

THE MIRROR OF OUR SELVES Aaron Grierson

J

ean Piaget was a 20th century psychologist and philosopher famed particularly for his theory of cognitive development. Against the prevailing wisdom that children think in the same way as adults, Piaget proposed that we progress through a series of cognitive stages of development.

Development is adaptation: as children have new experiences, they must incorporate them into an existing structure or mode of thought. Either the new information is assimilated into the existing view of the world, or the view must be changed to accommodate it. When it comes to developing a personality, children are like a mirror and a sponge squished together. I use this combined analogy because while a child’s behaviour reflects what she sees around her, she also internalizes these experiences until they become an integral part of the personality.

It may sound basic and quite simple.

In many respects, it is. Piaget’s theory has been critiqued, expanded and modernized by all sorts of thinkers. For brevity’s sake, I won’t get into the details. Instead I will look at some of the theory’s complications, and provide examples that may make us question just how easy it is to see ourselves in this light.

The first difficulty that I have with Piaget’s theory is that he fails to acknowledge the influence of groups. Typically, an individual belongs to several groups at any given time.

In social psychology, a group is conventionally defined as an aggregate of individuals displaying some degree of social cohesion, such as a common goal or sense of unity. If you are a core member, then you are likely to have assimilated the characteristics of the group. Their influence leads to personal change, either as the group evolves or as individual relationships progress. Piaget would likely suggest that because of socialization, assimilation does indeed occur, and even beyond childhood. From this mirror theory we can look at a somewhat different conceptualization of identity: internal and external.

Once your cognitive abilities have fully developed, you become more than just a mirror and a sponge. You grow to be able to affect other people in the same way they can affect you. The result is a sort of circular duality, in which we are affected by, and impact others, through projecting our thoughts about them in a social setting. But how to escape this cycle of influence? Is it even

possible? If not total escape, is it at least possible for an individual’s internal conception to be the dominant one?

Celebrities are good exemplars of this particular dilemma. Surely at least some of them are more defined by how they want us to see them, rather than how the public perceives them? Lady Gaga comes to mind.

At least in her early days, she seemed constantly to defy expectations and social conventions. While people may expect her to be weird, and perhaps just as much identifiable by her fashion as by her music, her persona carries well beyond the stage, into her personal life.

Nevertheless, I would say it’s her constant innovation and re-engineering of her image the public wants or hopes to see.

While the “private” identity of such a public figure may not be in line with our typical con-

ception of internal identity, it hardly seems reasonable to conclude that Lady Gaga’s identity is determined purely by external factors. Not that I can comment on her internal factors. I have no idea what goes on inside anyone’s head but my own.

Even before writing this piece, I believed that the internal is subjugated to the external concept of identity. Socialization and “mirroring” certainly exist, but it is highly improbable that an individual will inculcate societal expectations and experiences to the point of identical replication. Perhaps my thinking is just as absurd as expecting people to be able to understand our internal characterization. After all, it’s impossible to read minds and get everything about a person correct.

It’s important to bear in mind that your friends can be affected as much by your personality as you are by theirs.

ARTWORK BY ALICIA GIANSANTE

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 3 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 33

A PRODUCTIVE CREATION...

O

ne does not simply “write” an essay.

The “creative” process is far from easy. I don’t know about you, but when I sit down to work, I browse the Internet, call my mom, call my dad, text everyone I know, make a sandwich, do some online banking, and *then* I write a sentence.

Needless to say, I’ve had to develop a few strategies over the years to streamline the process. Here are a few of them: Plan As much as it seems like a good idea to put every task off to the very last moment, even the most creative and intelligent people have the capacity to crumble under pressure. Instead of falling into the void of procrastination, give yourself the time you need to complete your tasks. Take it one step at a time. Don’t get scared by deadlines, just remember their existence. Take each day as it comes, and get one thing done after another. If you’re studying for a final, allow yourself to plan out the amount of time you need to study enough. For studying, it’s integral to take breaks, so don’t forget to plan those in as well. For a paper, the same goes. As much as you’d like to be able to write an A-grade paper in a couple of hours, (and as much as it might be possible) forcing yourself to write within a time constraint many not be the best idea.

Pause: Don’t Listen to Stress Breathe. You might be stressed today, but your stress isn’t helpful. In fact, if you just breathed for a second and started on task one, you would realize how doable everything is. You are in university for a reason, because you enjoy working in this field.

You’re good at it. You can complete this task. Stress just takes away from your potential. Just repeat the following: “I can do this”, “I can do this”, “I can…”

Take Care of Yourself Eat right. Exercise. Sleep. Don’t drown yourself in coffee and pizza and pretend that Sophomore seventeen is a thing… it really, really isn’t. The truth is, your body and mind are more connected than you’re willing to admit. If one fails, the other will suffer. If you find your grades slipping, maybe it’s time to start checking your diet, your exercise (or lack-there-of), and your sleep schedule. Sleep is especially important around exam time. It’s no secret that sleep 34 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ DECEMBER 2012

deprivation is detrimental to productivity, so remember to schedule at least six hours for some shut-eye.

Cut Out Distractions... to a point Unfortunately for your deep relationship with your computer, you should probably take a break from Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Reddit if you want to be productive.

Even the streaming sites you so enjoy might be destroying your productivity. If possible, keep your laptop closed and study on paper. That failing, try downloading Rescue Time (at rescuetime.com) – this is a useful app that tracks your computer activity and gives you a weekly score out of one hundred.

This having been said, creativity can be sparked by outside sources, so don’t allow yourself to live in a hole. Coffee shops and busy libraries may not be the worst places to do work. If studying with friends helps you focus and reduces your stress level, try to schedule a get-together.

Get Help One of the most important parts of ARTWORK BY IANITZA VASSILEVA

the learning process is the realization that you don’t know everything and you need someone to help you learn. There are plenty of resources on campus to cater to your academic needs. Your professor and TAs hold weekly office hours, have an email address for small questions, and are there for your benefit. Introduce yourself, ask questions, be willing to work through them. Not only that, but the student success centre holds workshops galore to help you write essays, study, and build your resume.

Collaborate A second set of eyes can be invaluable! A peer editor can check over your work and make sure that you don’t misspell words like “misspell” and can break you of your bad grammar habits (sorting out you “it’s” from your “its”). Friends can help you come at a mathematical problem from a different angle (pun intended). Study buddies, study groups (think Community), and study sessions can relieve stress and allow you to reach no height of productivity and creation.

...A CREATIVE PROCRASTINATION Meg Peters

I

f you *must* procrastinate (and let’s face it, we all will), who is to say that your wasted time shouldn’t also be productive? Yeah, maybe you won’t get your essay done, but you could learn critical skills that will help you develop as a person. Check it out: Learn to Knit Knitting is easy, cheap, and relaxing. It works your hands, while allowing your mind to run wild. It requires just enough concentration to make studying while knitting nearly impossible, unless you call conversation study-time. There are many YouTube videos that can teach you how to start a row and knit a simple scarf. You could also box up your scarf and give it as a Holiday gift!

Teach Yourself How to Solve a Rubix Cube

For 15 dollars (or less!) you could be the owner of your very own Rubix Cube, a challenging puzzle. Whenever you give up trying to solve it, there are a number of videos online that can teach you the solution. After some practice, you could show off your nerdy skills to all your friends, and boast your prowess as a Rubix Cube master.

Go People Watching Sitting in a crowded area and listening in on conversations can be disturbing, entertaining, and confusing. Every once in a while, you could learn something.

Write a Letter and Mail it Don’t let the Postal Service go obsolete! A letter can mean the world to a loved one. Show you care. All you need is their address, and Google Maps ARTWORK BY IANITZA VASSILEVA

can give you their postal code. Write a fantastically romantic letter. Colour the envelope. Perfume it. Enclose a mysterious object. Send it.

Create an Elaborate Library Scavenger Hunt Step one: pick a library on campus (or multiple libraries!)

Step two: look up 5-10 related books, and record their library codes on pieces of scrap paper.

Step three: Insert each scrap of paper into one of the books, creating a chain of books that the founder must follow. Leave a paper in the last book saying “congratulations! You win!”

Step four: challenge a friend to complete your scavenger hunt.

Follow a YouTube Trail Start with a favourite video, and see where the connecting clips on your sidebar can take you. This works best with hipster music, but can also work with funny clips. You would be surprised by what connections you can make and what crazy videos you’ll find. Be entertained.

Get a Makeover If you ask nicely, the cosmetic person at Shopper’s Drug Mart will do your makeup for you. Especially if you pretend to be interested in a specific product, this could mean a few minutes of fun colours, mascara, eyeliner, and lipstick. Pretend you’re picky about lipstick colour, and this could go on longer than a few minutes. If you’re really daring, spend 10 dollars on a pair of fake eyelashes and ask a merchant to glue them on for you. Sit and wait. Watch the transformation unfold. Be further entertained.

Experiment with Food Go to the grocery store and find a fruit, vegetable, or other food product you have never heard of, or tasted before. Go home and research how to cut, cook, and/or prepare this food product.

Enjoy the taste of procrastination!

Prank Emails Create fake email address. Enjoy hours of hilarity.

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 3 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 35

WRITE ▪ DRAW ▪ PHOTOGRAPH ▪ EDIT ▪ DESIGN CONTACT INCITE@MCMASTER.CA Incite Magazine 36 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ DECEMBER 2012

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