Accepted by Libertas Magazine

LIBERTAS AC C E P T E D

vol . 2 3 , no. 2

SATREBIL LIBERTAS October 2016

EDITORIAL EDITORS IN CHIEF Alyssa Glover Samantha Gowing WRITING EDITORS Quinn Massengill Thomas Waddill DESIGN EDITORS Caroline New Elisabeth Anthony Hannah Fuller Maddy Page

L E T T E R F RO M T H E E D I T O R S This year, Libertas has decided to transition from calling ourselves a ‘Literary Magazine’ to an ‘Independent Student Magazine.’ We believe that too often on this campus, we create a disconnect between academia and art. By opening our title up to more than literature, we hope to create a space where multi-genre conversations can take place. In attempting to cultivate intellectual inclusion, it seemed only appropriate to have an issue on the topic of not only what is accepted, but what is excepted. From Samantha’s article about what professors view as safe spaces to Julie’s poem about what happens when the image reflected in the mirror does not align with our self-image, the Accepted Issue aims to explore the structured categories that exist and how they are formed. Bro. Kenneth explores the trauma poliece brutality can have on both the physical body and the psyche. India examines media representation and the struggle of reconciling being body-positive with her own insecurities. While all of the pieces in this issue are amazing in their own right, the issue is not just about the contributors. What about the readers? What about those of you that considered submitting to Libertas but did not out of fear of rejection? In Davidson culture, the struggle of acceptance and exceptence is one that we deal with every day. We’d like to thank our contributors for sharing their art with us, and we’d like to invite you, the reader, to engage in a dialouge with them. Remember, art does not end on the page. Sincerely, Alyssa & Samantha

Rebecca Pempek

Cover

Elijah Midgette

The Moth House The Bear The Window

I Come From Mammals Le dénicheur d’oursons, Paris

Caroline New

New Job

Thomas Waddill

Alternative Beauty Photos

India Gupta Hannah Fuller

The Satiation Within Ticket, Cappella Sansevero

Julie Bennett Jane McGehee

Wedding INNERMISSION Emerge

Erin Scott Eleanor Yarboro Jane McGehee

Do All Professors Secretly Use Trigger Warnings?

Samantha Gowing

My Two Cents Art

Bro. Kenneth Elisabeth Anthony

22, a Million: Gorgeous Burial The Girl on the Train Review

Thomas Waddill Lena Parker & Dakota Morlan

Libertas Staff

Meet the Libertas Staff

Jane McGehee

Last Word

special thanks to... Faculty Advisors: Zoran Kuzmanovich, Paul Miller (emeritus), Scott Denham (emeritus), Ann Fox (emeritus) Previous Editors: Meg Mendenhall, Michael DeSimone, Jordan Luebkemann, Will Reese, Emily Romeyn, Vincent Weir, Mike Scarbo, Vic Brand, Ann Culp, Erin Smith, Scott Geiger, James Everett, Catherine Walker, Elizabeth Burkhead, Chris Cantanese, Kate Wiseman, Lila Allen, Jessica Malordy, Nina Hawley, Kate Kelly, Zoe Balaconis, Rebecca Hawk, and Hannah Wright

Founder: Zac Lacy

Libertas belongs to the students of Davidson College. Contact the editors at libertas@davidson.edu

visit us online: https://issuu.com/libertasmag

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I come from mammals

The Moth House Hell itself, as an entity, giving quarters to the devil. The microcastle breathes murals, nature is poignant, And all of the lattice facades are based off of the pentagram. It’s what you expect – all of the Sons count in fives. The spirit has taken the form of an elixir And the beast is oiled with ammonia ether. On those furs are the greatest works of Goya and Klein; Yves blue and Saturn biting the child Christ gets devoured by ivory teeth Some have his face in the mouth. I slept in the belly of a woman and her luggage tasted like cancer. The language of hell is strictly tonal; I hear howls among humiliation. There’s especially rape in the negotiation of work: most of the people are contracted permanently! I slept in the belly of the devil and now we study prose. The fallen rise, it’s here they do it – Their energy is pristine and Their ambition is remembered and hermetic. Always he is guarded within breath of the Dante Quartet. The only Jew they read is Enoch And one more African than that. It’s all various unselected words and tickets most of what was displayed by the passionate Thelemites press watercolor onto the text of light. It’s all scandal beyond the gate It’s all feeling guilty Where time doesn’t work both ways.

The Bear

Poems by Elijah Midgette The Window by Jane McGehee

Leaves don’t run like any other animal, Over the bricks and cement. They maintain their form exactly. For the duration of their sprint, They propel each other, in great Honor and dedication, to reach Another place to lay and bake. One hovers and taps the brick every Half second to give a light, scraping Noise. When all running like infantry, it’s a Calming fragrance of melody. The sleepyheadedness of mugwort. You can only avoid someone until They die; then, you decide either it was worth it Or it was not. The leaves use Their walk to play a song. The bear gnaws at the flesh Around the hunter’s neck But no one will know he Is dead for another four days Let alone have the knowledge That he was in fact killed by The bear’s hunger.

Caroline New

Rabbits, rabbits. Mama’s past is biting boiling rabid at the heels, roiling rabbit-pulse thumping, thumping, thumping, blame the libido. Clay-stained wash-rag skinned knee souls and babes spitting babes at sixteen and smaller. Here on silted cinnamon roads hands feel real greenness. Sister, don’t take the pesticides unless they’re sugar-free. Then take them by the mouth, hold hands, hold your skirts, and take it by the mouth. I take it through the nose, here remembering as the gas station fills pore-sulci with soft salty peanut perfume and pickled pigs feet and pecans and slow tongues wrap around my wrists and I dip my fingers back—an unincarnation (but no damn shush child don’t speak such heathen verses things, we all end up in heaven) after hell. Here, hands end green clutching red-stained knees. Stolled soothsingers measure half-lives, rabbits dividing, dividing down to one more day-by-day by hot, humid noon human rabbits, rabbits, rabbits.

Le dénicheur d’oursons, Paris by Caroline New

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NEW JOB EXCERPT

The New Life thing was working out. With Haddie, it was almost like something had lifted, like, before, I was trying and trying to do something, to make something happen, and now I can relax. I thought I had fallen for her. She was great. Really strong, you know? I asked her about her hair one other day in the break room, why did she keep it so short, not because I didn’t like it because I definitely do but, you know, what made her do it. She said she didn’t actually have a choice in the matter, that this is as far as it’s grown since her last treatment, and I asked her about that and she told me that she had been sick but everything was okay now, I mean, look at her hair. She looks great. Everything is okay, she told me. Okay. A patient died that day. Sad, but you move forward. I was not in the room, but I had adjusted his catheter that morning, and while doing so had told him about my New Life. He seemed happy for me. It’s okay. I consoled his family as best I could, but this was coming – you do what you have to do and you move on. I prepared his body for exit and went on with my day. I administered drugs to patients, I talked to them, I spoke to families. That is the job of a hospice worker. That night Haddie and I went out to eat and even went to the mall and had a great time. We went into one of those photo booths and got our pictures taken together. Really great shots, you can see how we feel about each other in the photo. I remember her feeling the red curtain, clenching it for a second. She came back to my apartment afterward. This was about two and a half months in and we were going really strong, I tell you - good relationship, real healthy one, it was fantastic. She was sleeping over a lot. I put that photo on a frame on my kitchen table and then we watched a movie in my bed and then tried to go to sleep. ‘George?’ she whispered. ‘Yeah?’ I said. ‘It feels like we’re barely even alive.’ Haddie was a deep thinker, that is one of the things that attracted me to her. I didn’t always know what she meant but, hey, she was a smart one. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Like we’re barely on the other side of the line.’ I didn’t know what to say. Haddie was a deep thinker. ‘I mean, every day we’re around dying people, and then they die, we, you know, help them die. Every day we’re just surrounded by drugs and tubes and machines that are all about dying. It’s like it’s under my fingernails, George.’ Still didn’t know what to say. I reached out and held her hand.

‘I dunno,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’s just the cancer talking.’ My hand must have gotten cold or something because she said, ‘I mean, my experience with it. I’m fine now, George, I promise.’ I squeezed her hand and then we fell asleep. Or I did, I couldn’t speak for her because I was asleep. I hope she slept. She was up before me though, I know that. That morning, she asked me why I left Little Rock, and I told her. *** All day during work the next day I thought about what Haddie said last night. It’s true, we are around death a lot, it’s our job, it’s what we do, we are Here to Help. If I’ve learned anything from A Noble Profession: How to be a Hospice Worker and Caretaker and Stay Happy, Healthy, Carefree, and Great, it’s that work stays at work, it’s that there is life beyond the hospice building. Still, what she said got to me, it sort of hit something below, struck a chord, like somewhere inside. Somewhere under the surface I guess is what I’m trying to say. Below the surface. This is how things were for about ten months. I worked and Haddie and I got closer. Patients came and went in waves like usual. I saved up and bought a briefcase that I started to

Every day we’re just surrounded by drugs and tubes and machines that are all about dying. It’s like it’s under my fingernails, George. take to work with me. In it I kept A Noble Profession: How to be a Hospice Worker and Caretaker and Stay Happy, Healthy, Carefree, and Great, a copy of the Hospice Honor Code for Nurses and Caretakers, and paper. One day I decided to take her out to dinner, a nice one, you know. It just felt like the kind of day to do it because she seemed down about something. Even Deb asked me about it (Drughead John had been fired already). I said I didn’t know and she just kind of shrugged and went back to doing whatever grumpy things she does. ‘I’m taking her to dinner tonight, though,’ I said. ‘Good for you,’ she said. She could be cold, Deb. I told Haddie the plans at lunch and she just kind of nodded. I am not going to lie, I mean, I was taking a good chunk out of my paycheck for this - I wasn’t mad, but, you

know. Anyways, I told her to be ready by six, I’m usually a late eater, but that day, that day I decided to eat earlier. Work let out and I got in my car and drove home, because Haddie drove herself that day. I remember pulling up and the asphalt under my feet feeling like fire. I changed into those khakis and ate a bagel with peanut butter, I put on a dark blue polo shirt, I combed my hair, I read some of a book, I went and got gas and had a short conversation with the man behind the counter, I went to Haddie’s house, she got in my car, we went to dinner, she was abnormally quiet, she ordered the crab cakes and I got a hamburger with sweet potato fries which are my favorite kind of fries, I asked her so what’s up, and she told me that it was back, it doesn’t look good, I don’t have long, I am sorry that you are with a person with an expiration date. *** It’s like God decided for me to be an experiment. Haddie went downhill for four months, her skin got really pale, treatment was going as well as it could have gone, which is not very well, and then things went from bad to worse. One day at work (it was just me, Deb, a person named Denny, and John, who got rehired after going through AA) I was organizing the drugs according to the New Standardized Method for Drug Organization in Hospice Centers (NSMDOHC) and Deb comes in, disgruntled, worried. I asked her what was wrong and she said go look in room 3, and I go in there and there’s Haddie, on the bed, the newest hospice patient, and the only thing that I can think is that this is strange, this is strange. Someone shouldn’t have to see that, you know? Everything was thin. But I did. And furthermore John tells me that they are assigning me to this room, that maybe that is best, that I will help her die, that’s the right call, you know, thanks John. But this is my job. I go in and she’s asleep and I check her vitals and make sure the appropriate amounts of drugs are flowing into her body. She is stable but looks about twenty years older. That night I go home and then I wake up with my head on the kitchen table on top of my briefcase early, early in the morning. Here is the thing, though, the strangest thing: I take the photo booth photo of us, you know, the one I mentioned that we got on an earlier date, and I took it out of its frame and put it in my briefcase, because that made me feel relieved. Now there’s just an empty frame on my kitchen table with just cardboard brown behind glass. I make eggs and go to work and now that my other patient has died it’s just her, so I am in her room, asking her if she is comfortable, if she needs anything I would be happy to get it.

‘George,’ she said. ‘Do you feel it?’ ‘What’s that? Do you need more air conditioning?’ ‘No,’ she said. ‘The thing about death.’ I go and feel her forehead and I get her a damp rag and lay it on. ‘Ring the bell if you need anything,’ I say, ‘Mrs. Gardner.’ I am in the lunch room reading A Noble Profession: How to be a Hospice Worker and Caretaker and Stay Happy, Healthy, Carefree, and Great when John walks in. ‘How are you?’ he asks me.

Instead I say ‘We do what we can to survive,’ quoting a line from A Noble Profession: How to be a Hospice Worker and Caretaker and Stay Happy, Healthy, Carefree, and Great. ‘Fine,’ I say, all business. ‘Just doing some reading.’ He sits across from me and just kind of looks at me, it was a little weird, but hey, John was kind of a weird guy. He sits there just kind of spinning his AA coin in his fingers. ‘Are you Christian?’ he asks me. I look at him. You can imagine that this is pretty awkward, not exactly the kind of lunch I was expecting to have, you know? ‘Uh,’ I said. ‘Have you been saved? You should try praying,’ he said. ‘Will do,’ I said, just kind of wanting to get him away. ‘If I learned anything in AA, it’s that the Lord Jesus Christ, Our Savior heals all wounds, and you can be whoever you want to be, and he will accept you, no matter where you come from or what you’re going through. The Holy Trinity will come down and infect you with — ‘ ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Her breath,’ he said. ‘It’s so — ragged.’ I looked at him. What a weird thing to say. I didn’t know whether I liked drug addict John or evangelist John more. I want to say ‘Are you kidding?’ Instead I say ‘We do what we can to survive,’ quoting a line from A Noble Profession: How to be a Hospice Worker and Caretaker and Stay Happy, Healthy, Carefree, and Great. You know…

Thomas Waddill

LIBERTAS, Vol. 23, No. 2

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a l t e r n a t

v e

“I think think there’s something to be said for those who not only love themselves, but who are loud about it.” Article by India Gupta Photos by Hannah Fuller

Model: India Gupta

it’s difficult for me—someone who critically studies gender bias in media— to admit that I continuously struggle with my own concepts of self-worth, confidence, and beauty. I think, as with a lot of things, knowing something on a theoretical, intellectual level and understanding and feeling it on a personal level are frustratingly difficult to reconcile.

images are more powerful than we give thought to. it’s hard to argue with an image. I can’t always explain its pull. it wasn’t until I saw freida pinto in seventeen magazine that I stopped bleaching my hair or hiding my skin from the sun. even now, in college, if I hadn’t encountered social media icons celebrating their own skin, shape, & sexuality, i’m not sure I would have ever learned that I could do that myself.

I think there’s something to be said for those who not only love themselves, but who are loud about it. if women and girls are ever going to make it out of a world that constantly sexualizes, misrepresents, and abuses us, I think we’re going to need 7

LIBERTAS, Vol. 23, No. 2

that.

e a u t y LIBERTAS, Vol . 2 3 , No. 2

Ticket, Cappella Sansevero by Jane McGehee

the

satiation within “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” I want to meet the sad, sorry, sliver of a woman who cooked up that phrase and give her a swift kick to the face because she’s right. And I assume it’s a she, because studies have shown that women think they should be skinnier than men actually prefer them to be. But that’s beside the point because Women are skinny for themselves. To feed those voices within. For the one that says “You aren’t good enough.” Or maybe for the other one that says “You are so close. You can do it.” Sometimes it’s for the one that yells “Go to hell you fat ugly whore.” Yep, that one’s a bitch, but she hangs around. People on the outside, they don’t give you the gratification you need. The praise you deserve. The real reward comes from the satiation within. I’ll tell you, there is nothing sweeter than the sensation of lying awake in bed at night, unable to fall asleep because of the gnawing inside. A rabid raccoon trying ravenously to claw its way out of your vacant stomach. And after time, the clawing stops. The raccoon himself filling the void he has created. And there’s nothing so savory as sucking in in front of the mirror, then exhaling only to find your tummy protruding a mere centimeter from its squeezed state. Though, each time you taste such satisfaction, something surely substantial is squished out from your ever decreasing mass. Perhaps it’s just pudge. Perhaps it’s your pride. Perhaps it’s the real and valuable truth that there are things far more important than physical appearance. But no matter. At least there is now less space in which the voices can reside. And what’s more, there is nothing quite as rich as seeing your frail, bony, wafer thin self in a pretty little picture. Seeing your sunken cheeks, your twizzler neck, the shadows made by your protruding clavicle. Knowing full well that you could eat a cheeseburger if you wanted to and it wouldn’t change your appearance one teeny bit. Looking at the skeleton you’ve become and acknowledging that this is all there is. No secrets, no voices, no anger or sadness or feeling. Just flesh and blood and bone. That’s it. Because that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? Isn’t it? You don’t eat the cheeseburger. You don’t even want to. Because nothing. nothing. tastes as good as skinny feels. Julie Bennett 9

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Wedding INNERMISSION Erin Scott

With what fervor she attacks her frizzy hair and bats her nose with a powdered brush. She’s not the bride or even bridesmaid, she’s neither friend nor family of either of the happy pair. She’s one of their 500 guests. She’ll know almost no one there, but that’s true anywhere she goes. She’s been at the mirror for an hour now. Most of the others are still in their hotel beds around town. She’s determined to look nicer than any of them for this, her first wedding.

Eleanor Yarboro

I gasped my mythic mouth to gaping sank down before the sink willed my walls to wake up to themselves asked myself if I was ready to reel my real beauty in I can say it to myself, now: I’m only sure enough about my name to write it in sidewalk chalk I’m only sure enough about myself to be what I expect I’m only here long enough to contemplate: Am I here? Am I enough?

Emerge by Jane McGehee

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D O A L L PRO F E S S O R S S EC R E T LY U S E T R I G G E R WA R N I N G S ? Well, all the good ones do, at least. Dear professor reading this article and immediately shaking your head back and forth with eyes wide and eyebrows raised, waving your arms a little too franticly and saying, “Oh no, no, not me. Oh, I wouldn’t use trigger warnings, dear LORD, no!”: I would like to invite you into a conversation about trigger warnings, in which we cease to obsess over this oh-so-feared, buzz-word terminology and start to think about what students are really asking for in their classrooms. Fall semester, 2015. The same year that The Atlantic released an article titled “The Coddling of the American Mind,” I decided to do an interview-based, qualitative research study on the state of trigger warnings on Davidson College’s campus. I completed in-depth interviews with six professors and six students, asking them questions about how they define trigger warnings, whether they use trigger warnings, and what trigger warnings can (or fail to) accomplish. My interviews with professors usually went something like this: When I asked about what a trigger warning is, they would often respond immediately and with a concisely packaged definition. Many of the same synonyms—“heads up,” “disclaimer,” “alert”—came up repeatedly across different professors’ definitions. As I listened to these initial descriptions of trigger warnings, it felt almost as though the professors were reciting lines they had read somewhere. After talking about the definition, I would ask the professors whether they used trigger warnings in their classrooms. A few said they did, but many denied their use of trigger warnings. One professor, who felt firmly against trigger warnings, challenged the notion of them, asking, “how effective are they . . . to adequately address the material? Once trigger warnings are shared and media is consumed, then what?” Instead of trigger warnings, she liked to use the phrase “verbal signposting” to describe how she addressed to the class that difficult content may arise. But what is the difference? What does this professor’s form of classroom leadership look like and how does it differentiate from those professors who do use trigger warnings? In this case, I would argue, it differentiates hardly at all. A student in this same professor’s class described classroom scenarios to me in a positive way: “She names our discomfort when we won’t name it ourselves,” the student said, “and she also names our silences. It helps set the class at ease.” The student—herself a vocal proponent of trigger warnings in the classroom—felt that her professor handled difficult content in the classroom well and allowed students the space to openly talk through their discomfort. How was a student so in favor of trigger warnings content with a class led by a professor so against them? My suggestion would be that, much to this professor’s chagrin, the professor was using implicit forms of trigger warnings to guide her classroom discussion. She did not explicitly label anything a “trigger warning,” but they were still present in the classroom: she called out material that may be uncomfortable before students had to confront it, she would note when she saw discomfort in the classroom, she asked guiding questions, and she helped walk students through scenarios that otherwise may have shut them out from the conversation. The professor may not have used a single sentence at the beginning of her class which included the exact phrase “trigger warning,” but she still implemented the concepts behind trigger warnings—concepts of preparing students for what they will encounter and acknowledging the discomfort involved in particular conversations. Fall semester, 2016. University of Chicago’s Dean of Students, Jay Ellison, releases a welcome letter to incoming students in which he states: “Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not ac11

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cept so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.” On a basic level, the Dean seems to have some fundamental misconceptions about the ideas he’s referencing. Trigger warnings are not the same as censorship. They do not address “perspectives” or political standings that are “at odds with [a student’s] own,” but rather preempt material that could incite traumatic or panic-inducing feelings or memories for students. They do not inherently, as the Dean suggests, cause students to opt-out of discussions rather than opt-in. This language of opting-out and opting-in came up often in my interviews last year. Most often, especially in my interviews with students, trigger warnings helped the students to feel ready to enter the conversation. One student told me, “I generally like having a warning, ‘cause then I can—I find class goes better after. So I could choose to be a part of the day.” One professor, whose class material was often difficult for students, realized that using them allowed her to push conversations even further. “Because of the things that were triggered from the class content,” she said, “I realized, okay, I have to be strategic about this.” She then developed methods of preparing students and working through the difficult parts so that conversations were more productive than they had been previously. A different professor told me a story about a time when her trigger warning did lead to a student’s decision not to come to class that day. At first, she regretted using the trigger warning, because it caused the student to opt-out of the discussion. As she reflected further on it, though, she told me about the ways she wished she had handled the situa-

my two cents Inside the meds healing my soul And inside you know the feds playing their role Incarcerating like a female ovulating daily But even when we protest They still can’t hear our say We really are the strongest race alive on this muthafucka Beat us to the ground but we thrived on that muthafucka Never really was the one to rise to a muthafucka Nowadays that’s how you stay alive in this muthafucka I hate cussing but that’s better than bussing A clip even a chick And then that leads to something else Life or possessions either way you know that something melts Kinda like my smile when momma picked up that leather beat But she beat me so the cops wouldn’t Either way I’m going out I just know the box wooden And I know my whole squad popping like the rocks could Never really had bad intentions always thought good White people see a black man they just thought hood Never really saw the hunter coming like the fox could Only see the barrel when it’s right up on your block So I pause for a second

by BRO. KENNETH A minute An hour then I fade away Watching as another black life gets laid to waste But that’s a daily Just like you getting mail And the daily disadvantages of not being pale I walk up on the water like I’m Peter I’m running for my life like I’m Carmelita Jeter Jetting to the better thoughts Better days Better hearts Better praise To the king cause when this life over I ain’t trynna stay Sad enough sometimes I dread the sunrise Do I gotta live another day with tears in my eyes Fear for my life Or fear for my brother’s Getting heartfelt text messages from my mother It’s like the peace in my heart is the victim of a looting I’m leaving this piece unresolved like police shootings

The professor may not have used a single sentence at the beginning of her class which included the exact phrase “trigger warning,” but she still implemented the concepts behind them. tion differently. She wished that she had invited the student to her office to talk through the conflict, or further encouraged the student to think about how the conversation could be structured to accommodate for the student’s reactions to triggering material. This professor’s thought process demonstrates a shift from an either-or framework—either you use trigger warnings or you don’t—to a framework in which trigger warnings represent complex classroom dynamics that can take place in a plethora of different forms. Of course, some forms of trigger warnings may be better than others, and each classroom will vary from the next. But to write off a student’s request for accommodation of their particular needs and sensitivities—that is, to write off the use of trigger warnings altogether—would create a classroom setting accessible only for those most privileged not to experience any form of distress or trauma from class material. And such an exclusive classroom does not seem to me like one capable of cultivating the “fundamental strength” of “diversity of opinion and background” that both I and Dean Ellison would so like to see in college and university classrooms across the nation.

Art by Elisabeth Anthony

Samantha Gowing LIBERTAS, Vol . 2 3 , No. 2

22, a Million:

e’ve been waiting five years for Bon Iver’s third effort, 22, a Million, and W on the final Friday of September we finally were able to plot a third point on the

map of frontman Justin Vernon’s artistic trajectory with the project. Before I go into it, though, let me just say that it’s stunningly, heartbreakingly, confoundingly gorgeous. Do yourself a favor: sit down, close your eyes, and listen through it if you haven’t already. All of it. You’ll notice that, from its beginning, it sounds different than what you’d expect from Bon Iver – you won’t find the hushed falsetto multitracks over layered lo-fi acoustic guitars. In fact, you’ll barely even hear any acoustic guitars at all, save for the one in the beginning of 29 “#Strafford APTS.” Any initial sense of familiarity that comes from this song, though, departs quickly with the opening lines; “Sharing smoke / In the stair up off the hot car lot” is an image jarringly at odds with the snowbound, sylvan aesthetic Bon Iver cultivated with For Emma, Forever Ago, Blood Bank, and Bon Iver, Bon Iver. An overriding formal theme of the album is a rejection of what we’ve come to associate with Bon Iver – they seem to be indulging in the kind of conscious fan-alienation (or, at least, expectationdisruption) that we’ve come to expect from acts like Frank Ocean or Kanye West, whom Vernon claims as both an inspiration and good friend. The album repeatedly indulges in the kind of teasing of a gratification that never manifests. We were primed for this right off the bat with the first pre-record release. The first single, given to us back in August, includes slightly altered versions of the first two tracks: “22 (OVER S∞∞N) [Bob Moose Extended Cab Version]” and “10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄.” The former is a beautifully melodic three minutes of major-chord vocal layering, drifting through melancholic but vaguely hopeful flurries of saxophones and samples lighter than air. The next track is, in a word, jarring – my friend Peter Bowman described it as sounding like “the noisy undoing of some enormous machine.” But this is the new Bon Iver ethic: innovate, search, change, and, hopefully, become. Or, maybe more accurately, find some kind of becoming. When we thought we had him down as a crooning, falsetto voice in the woods of Wisconsin after we heard “Skinny Love and “Re: Stacks,” we found out we were wrong with Bon Iver, Bon Iver. When we thought we had him down, next, as a rocking troubadour obsessed with geography and location after we heard “Perth” or “Towers,” we now find that we’re wrong with 22, a Million. “Those will just be places to me now,” sings a searching Vernon in “33 ‘GOD’.” Even on the level of this album specifically, if we developed impressions of a fluttering, triumphant effort after the first track, those impressions are complicated by the anger and dissonance of “10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄.”

Gorgeous Burial

a music review by THOMAS WADDILL It’s like he’s trying to outrun us. This evasion is a big part of my understanding of the album. One of his elusive strategies has merely just an effort to conceal himself from us physically; before the release of 22, he told reporters that any publishing of his visage is off-limits –“faces are for friends,” he explained. The other kind, though, and the kind that I find most intriguing, is what I see as an effort to sonically bury his own voice. He makes liberal use on the record of a machine called the Messina that he enlisted his sound engineer, Chris Messina, to invent after playing around on Francis and the Lights’ Prismizer. The Messina is a device that tracks the pitches of voices and instruments and can distort and harmonize with them in real time. Justin performs with this thing. I’ve seen it in action. It’s unbelievable. The Messina is used on pretty much the whole album, but it’s especially showcased on the third track, my favorite of them all: “715 CR∑∑KS.” It’s just Justin and the Messina – you can imagine him sitting in his snowbound studio in Eau Claire, singing solitarily into a strange black device that’s making it sound like there is a constantly growing number of Justins singing his words through the walls of a different dimension. Listen to it, find his voice (if you can) amidst the vocorded choir, and find one word to describe it. My word would be buried. He’s enfolding himself in digitized versions of his own voice. As he multiplies himself, we lose track of the original Vernon. Similarly, later on the album, the cacophonous transition from “21 M♢♢N WATER” to the euphoric “8 (circle)” threatens to totally inter him as distorted, crescendoing saxophones claw away at Vernon’s sinking voice like Circonians mobbing Orpheus. Where’s he going? To where is he disappearing? In my arborological understanding of my own complex of artistic influences and understandings, this album has been coupled closely with Radiohead’s 2000 masterpiece Kid A. The similarities between Kid A and 22, a Million are striking and, I think, have gone largely unnoticed. Both are albums that broke multi-year silences from groups that achieved rapid success after 3 records of aesthetic similarity – after establishing a “sound.” Both were the fruits of a radical change in direction, almost a repudiation of the relative styles that made the bands internationally famous. And, further, the directions are similar – both bands seemed to look away from the guitar and towards the computer. Finally, I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that one of the most popular tracks from Kid A – my favorite track – is called “How to Disappear Completely.” I would argue that both albums are efforts on the part of fundamentally introverted frontmen to deal with the bewildering discomfort of international media attention. 22, a Million is, in short, Bon Iver’s Kid A. Without Kid A’s introduction of Radiohead’s new direction, I think it’s arguable that we wouldn’t have gotten the breathtaking, enigmatic A Moon Shaped Pool back in May. If that’s true, then I can’t wait to see what Bon Iver will give us over the next 16 years.

MEET THE NEWEST LIBERTAS STAFF MEMBERS: that I kept hearing in pop culture and then went to check out the groban merch store and found this hilarious pink women’s nightshirt that had two thumbs pointing to the wearer of the shirt and the caption “this girl loves josh groban” that I Thomas Waddill likes: thought about buying and givsleeping in dirt, hollow wood/ ing to someone who doesn’t like strings, frank reynolds, mornjosh groban (does anyone nowaings, putting “all my friends” days? I guess “this girl” does, by lcd soundsystem on repeat, ha) but then thought better of barbecue, long drives it and left the website and never went back - the point is that I dislikes: adverbs, linkdin, and the am now haunted by josh groban fact that I went to josh groban’s ads (many of them specifically website ONE F*CKING TIME for this pink women’s nightjust to see whose name this was shirt) that will not go away, and it’s really bringing me down. If Hannah Fuller’s face is bewilderingly unfamiliar, it’s because she’s been frolicking in Paris for a year getting super Frenchy. Now at Davidson, Hannah is a busy little worker bee (not to be confused with Queen B) who gets shit done. She is especially good at doing shit better than you. But just because Hannah dresses better, writes poetry better, kisses Dan Black better, and is a better Creative Director of Libertas than you, doesn’t mean she’ll be happy about this being advertised in her bio. So don’t hate Hannah. When Hannah grows up (in approx. 8 months), she’ll get your shit done, too.

If you want Caroline New to do something, just tell her not to do it, which is probably why she will always have a crazier story to top yours. She gets excited about podcasts, art, and curry powder (not in that order). As a senior anthropology major, Caroline has a strong future ahead of her as either a famous writer, a renowned academic, a farmer, or a moonlighting circus performer, but most likely all of the above.

Movie Review BY LENA PARKER & DAKOTA MORLAN

The Girl on the Train

A trio of New York women (not Londoners as Paula Hawkins wrote in her bestselling novel which this movie is based upon), are pulled together by a mysterious disappearance in this slow-moving, suspense film. If you are hoping for the wild twists and thrill of Gone Girl, then Girl on the Train does not even come close. However, if you would simply like a cinematically-beautiful and voyeuristic view into a tangled web of alcoholism, adultery, abuse and police investigation, this film may be able to redeem itself for you. : Watching it without reading the book first, I : after reading the book: Though the film thought it could be a regression back to that 1950’s hysteric stayed true to the novel, it struggled to convey the housewife/baby madness/the men are the reasonable ones. same messiness and complexity of these women’s However, I was pleasantly surprised (but not that surprised) inner turmoil, and was forced to settle for much more that it was in fact aimed to flip that trope on its head. So blunt portrayal of these women. Having already I give it one thumb up for feminism (but it was not that known the plot twists, the only value was in a good groundbreaking), and give it a yawn for horror. That cinchuckle from the corkscrew scene (if you’ve read/ ematography though. It made me want to be in the movie. seen Girl on the Train, you know). Which is probably not a good thing. LIBERTAS, Vol. 23, No. 2

Lena

Dakota

Maddy Page is a

freshman from Charlotte, NC. But not a normal freshman. She’s a cool freshman. She is also terrified of chickens and would like to ask that if you find her, please tell her where she is.

Elisabeth Anthony is a sophomore from Winston Salem, NC who wants to be a studio art major (hit her up if you know a good advisor) because without art, the Earth is just ‘Eh’. She is unapologetically enthusiastic about the miracle of life and her best (and only) ab workouts come from a good ol’ fashioned fit of giggling. If you ever see her walking through campus with a scowl do not be alarmed – that is just her thinking face. She is probably pretty great. A hint for getting on her good side: food and a sincere one-on-one convo are a great place to start.

LIBERTAS, Vol . 2 3 , No. 2

LIBERTAS last word Office of Admissions and Financial Aid

Dear ____________, (name)

Congratulations! On behalf of the Board of Trustees, the President, and the faculty, staff and

____________, it gives us great ____________ to offer you a place in the Davidson College class of (person on campus)

(emotion - noun)

20___. (year)

Davidson is well known for the outstanding ____________ of its faculty and students and the (characterstic - noun)

extraordinary success of its ____________. We are convinced that you would add significantly to this (aspect of campus life)

____________ tradition. With all the students applying for only ____________ places in the Class of (adjective)

(large number)

20___, the selection process was extremely competitive and we commend you on your achievement in (same year)

____________. From all that we know about you, it is evident that you will contribute significantly to (hobby)

this ____________ institution. (adjective)

As you take time to celebrate your well-deserved ____________ and contemplate the (noun)

____________ years that lie ahead, please remember that we are ready to ____________ you in any (adjective)

(transitive verb)

way we can as you make plans to ____________ at Davidson. (intransitive verb)

Once again, heartfelt congratulations and best wishes! Welcome to the Class of 20___!

(same year)

Sincerely, ____________ (campus celebrity)

Davidson College Box 5214 Davidson, NC 28035-2105 704-894-2201 | FAX 704-894-2105 www.davidson.edu