post- 12/03/2021

In This Issue Memories Julia Vaz 5

Kaitlan Bui 4

Victoria Yin 2

Ode to Fictional

In the Places We Once Called Home

Pandemic Partners dorrit corwin 6

Wistful Whispers Adi Thatai 7

Finding My Voice

postCover by Jake Ruggiero

DEC 3

VOL 28 —

ISSUE 10

FEATURE

Pandemic Partners it pulled us together and broke us apart.

By VIctoria yin Illustrated by Connie Liu

This Q&A piece explores the narratives of three real, distinct relationships as they crest and trough

weeks, but I rejected him and we became friends. And by friends I mean platonic wives in denial.

Lazlo: We spent a lot of time together during our first year, studying on the Main Green and such. Then

before, after, and during the global pandemic. The

Lemley: We met at a party two years ago. I was

Covid hit and we got sent back home. We stayed in touch

development of these relationships coincided with the

in a glowing room and he was passing through it from

and I visited him a few times. And then it just happe-

emergence and spread of Covid-19, which left partners

the bathroom. He turned and looked right at me. He

ned that fall. I think deep down I was lonely because of

with no choice but to turn to each other, support each

shouted, “You’re cute.” I found him dancing in the

Covid. Like, if I didn’t want to date this boy a year ago,

other, and—towards the end—hurt each other. As

next room and we started making out. That’s how we

why now? But it felt right at the time. It was my first

the urgency of the virus and the memories of their

met. After that we started hanging out without having

serious relationship.

relationships pulse and ebb away, all three interview-

a structure. It was my first time meeting someone

Lemley: It started turning into regular meetings,

ees reflect on the beginnings and ends of it all.

not from an app. As a queer person that aspect was

seeing each other about twice a week. We would study

refreshing.

for our chemistry class together. I eventually asked

For anonymity, pseudonyms were chosen by the interviewees and are: Lazlo, he/him, queer; Lemley,

Lucy: We met at a party of sorts two years ago. Our

the age-old question: What are we? We talked and

he/him, queer; and Lucy, any pronouns, queer. The

mutual friends were pre-gaming in her friend’s dorm

both came to the conclusion that we wanted to be each

responses have been edited for clarity, length, and style.

room. At that moment, I felt as if I knew she would

other’s boyfriends. So we decided to call it that. When we

***

approach me when she did. She was wearing dark colors

first found out about the pandemic, it was heartbreaking

Take me back to the beginning.

and asked me about myself. We talked the whole night

for us. We were both in a really happy place. I think

Lazlo: We met at a party two years ago. I was drunk.

and she asked for my contact information. I invited her

it was harder for him mentally. All the things were

The LED lights were green. He was cute and confident

over a few nights after and we started seeing each other

aligning. And then the pandemic hit and we had to go

but still looked like a dork. He was flirting with me, and

every other night or so.

back home. It was a lot and we were multiple seas and

I kind of brushed him off. Then I ran into him on campus and we started talking. We dated for a few

Letter from the Editor Dear Readers, You get up today, reach for your coffee, hear some squawking in the kitchen, and realize, “Oh, those must be the French hens from my true love.” They hop over to the cooing turtle doves and cheerful partridges and you sigh, “This must be Christmas.” Or is this not your annual tradition? My holiday yearning does not reach Victorian England, as this would suggest, but rather the electric, clove-spiced air of a German Christmas market. For now, both are mere illusions to me, since in my seven years of studying German (with a lot of Freude, hold the Schaden), I haven’t been to even one American Weihnachtsmarkt, but I imagine them as strings of Wurst and plastic angel figurines.

Well, as you can imagine from a post- issue in December, there is both nostalgia and Christmas involved.

Feature is hitting home at the charred end of the semester with a bittersweet interview of three recent breakup-ees.

We relate, no more needs to be said. Meanwhile, one Narrative author reminisces on going back home after growing apart from it, and the other describes a fictional memory of John Keats. In A&C, one writer harkens back to Adele’s heyday in honor of her new album, while the other delves

2 post–

What happened after that? How did the pandemic affect your relationship?

time zones apart. But I think the pandemic brought us closer together.

into losing and rediscovering their connection with music.

Then, Lifestyle offers us advice on getting through finals by walking uphill and watching some Christmas classics.

At least I’m not alone in my wintry musing.

This is why I love post-: we are the starter pack of a smiley face. In fact, I gleaned this quote from the incredible Kyoko Leaman, who revolutionizes the color pink, makes jokes about the structure of the human brain, and will leap into the office in her pink Doc Martens next spring as the incoming EIC of this wacky wagazine.

Also why I love post-: “God, I wish I could forget it.”

“And what a special thing it is.” Prod is an evening marathon of quips, roasts, and gushing about our music faves. I don’t know what my Thursdays will look like without it, and I am deeply tempted to become a post- ghost, haunting the occasional prod next spring. But I am a big believer in ends and also getting rid of things, so I will snake-wriggle under the table and out the door, knowing that post- is carrying on its goofy mayhem in some nearby corners.

Stalking post-’s web presence (follow us it’s fun),

Olivia Howe

Editor-in-chief just for today HA!

Spotify Wrapped Red Flags 1. Top 0.01% of Mitski listeners 2. Using Apple Music 3. Publicly admitting to listening to the Glee cast 4. Sharing every Spotify Wrapped slide on Instagram 5. Listening to more than 100,000 minutes total 6. Having “Call Her Daddy” as your top podcast 7. Listening to less than 5,000 minutes total 8. Only listening to Albanian nationalist Dua Lipa 9. Broadway is your top genre 10. It’s only ASMR

FEATURE Lucy: We started spending almost every night

and more detached. I think the pandemic brought us

right. I was frustrated by the feeling of powerlessness,

together and going on dates and such. It was my first

closer but at the end there was a strangeness. During

though. I felt futile in my rejection. Now, I don’t know.

serious relationship. We went to the RISD museum,

the pandemic he went through a lot of personal changes,

I feel better than the beginning for sure. I didn’t know

built snowpeople, and made each other playlists. She

and he was caught up in it all, and sometimes I felt

how to exist without her. Now I do. I still miss her and

was afraid of being in another relationship but she said

undervalued. I guess it ended with a lot of problems.

love her, but I’m becoming more confident that I don’t

she trusted me, which made me feel good. We fell in

We were just having a lot of fights at the end about the

need her to be happy. I want to be friends but I’m not

love. We spent a lot of time in bed, not thinking about

stupidest shit, and we wouldn’t really know how to

sure she does.

anything besides each other. The pandemic hit and it

resolve it.

What would you say to them if you could?

Lucy: The end came fast and hard. One night she

Lazlo: I just miss the bond we had and I wish that

pandemic brought us closer together, too.

came to my room and told me she was breaking up

our relationship hadn’t occurred under the circum-

Tell me about the beginning of the end.

with me. Just like that. After everything we’d been

stances of Covid.

was really hard to say goodbye to each other. I think the

Lazlo: What caused our issues was losing ties with

through I was shocked. But she said I’d been hurting

Lemley: I would say I’m sorry. I think if you’re

friends from freshman year following the pandemic.

her. That she didn’t know how to say it. That I needed to

breaking up it’s never completely one sided. Even if I

With all of the Covid restrictions, we both felt pretty

change but that change is hard. I asked her for another

was the one hurt, I did do things to break his heart

isolated. It was our fault, but we fell back on each

chance and she reluctantly agreed. She broke up with

without even realizing it. I think towards the end,

other for support and ended up being codependent. It

me again not long after. I get the sense that she doesn’t

neither one of us had time to sympathize with the other

led to a lot of stupid, avoidable arguments, and a lot of

want to talk to me anymore. She said it’s the hardest

person and to understand how the other person felt.

unnecessary hurt. I don't think either of us would have

thing she’s ever done, that I was her best friend. She

Lucy: I would also say I’m sorry. I know I didn’t treat

behaved the same way if it wasn't the pandemic, if the

asked if I was proud of her for standing up for herself. I

her well towards the end. I feel sorry and guilty for being

social environment let us easily access other people.

said yes. Even though I was very hurt and very confused.

both the person closest to her and the one who hurt her.

It ended up ruining a special thing.

I would never be able to do what she did. Shouldn’t it be

At the end I told her I just wanted to make her happy.

something to be discussed more? Shouldn’t it be more

I suppose she thought I couldn’t at that point.

Lemley: The semester before last is when our dynamic began to change. We basically lived together

mutual? Well, beggars can’t be choosers. It’s over.

What do you look forward to?

and I think he started to resent me. When we came back

How did you feel right after? How do you feel now?

Lazlo: Boys.

the next semester he said that he didn’t want things to

Lazlo: When we broke up, I was literally all alone.

Lemley: I’ve been spending more time with my

be the same. I was taken aback. If that’s not what he’s

I had nobody to talk to. I was doing an internship that

friends which has been the best part. I feel like it allow-

looking for, then that’s not what he’s looking for, but

was going badly. I did not have the energy to even go on

ed me to allocate more of my resources to myself,

I think I was trying to hold on to that level of closeness.

Tinder or Grindr. I’d literally wake up, go to work, come

studying, and those around me rather than having to

He started to take me for granted and then I started to

home, smoke. It was just not a good time for me. I cried

funnel it into one person. I’m looking forward to living

take him for granted.

a lot. I was high like all the time. Now, I don’t want to

my best life during my senior year.

Lucy: I think I had some doubts early on. Does this

say I’m completely healed. I don’t think you ever stop

Lucy: I recently had a heart-to-heart with my mom.

person fully understand me? Can they? Do I even fully

missing the special bond you have with somebody, but

She told me to focus on healing myself and not jump

understand myself? I wasn’t sure. But I made myself

he’s not on my mind as much and I do ha sve my own

back into dating. Who would want to date someone so

as emotionally available as I could and I put in a lot of

healthy friendships with people.

mopey anyway? It was a backhanded comment but I

effort and energy to be there for her. That took energy

Lemley: Right after I felt like shit. Even though it

get what she was trying to say. I’m working on myself

away from my friends and I began to resent her a bit.

was a grown up, sit down situation instead of an on-a-

and I look forward to being the person on the other

During the pandemic it felt like everything was crashing

whim breakup, it still felt a little rushed. It felt unreal.

side—someone who is independent, confident, and

down all around us, but at the end of the day, we always

I was in shock and I was like, okay, later he’ll come and

comfortable in their own skin.

had each other. We did everything together. I did start to

be here with me. And then I realized that’s not going

***

feel a little bit suffocated. I suggested we take a break a

to happen, that there’s not going to be another time.

The pandemic created unique circumstances that

few times but she refused. There were needs we couldn’t

There’s not going to be a text saying he’s here. Since

changed the way people exist in relation to one another.

meet, I think. Things we couldn’t fully understand about

the initial shock I’ve just been riding out the wave of

The interviewees established romantic connections

each other. Things we ignored because of how much

getting into my own routine again. I feel a lot better

that were magnified by a public health crisis; their

we loved each other and needed each other. Things we

now, especially since he texted me Happy Thanksgiving.

narratives highlight both the strength and fragility

didn’t know how to talk about. The spaces between the

I still love him. But I also resent him for a lot of things.

of human connection. All interviewees believed in

words in our story were large.

It’s kind of a mixed bag.

and relied heavily on their partner which increased

What happened at the end?

Lucy: Right after, I actually felt good, because after

intimacy and, in some cases, resentment. This period

Lazlo: Basically we were just tired of fighting

we broke up I begged her to stay the night and she did.

of human history will forever be intertwined with

with each other. What led to our breakup wasn’t a

We watched Netflix until late. We woke early because

their relationships––that shared experience will stay

consequential fight in and of itself; it was just, we don’t

she couldn’t sleep and we talked. I wept sporadically.

with them forever. It is with the stories and lessons

think we should keep going. We’re codependent.

I asked her if she thought we could be together in the

they learned from these pandemic partnerships that

Lemley: After he distanced himself, I also distan-

future. She said maybe. She said that we need to be

our interviewees step forward into the next chapter of

ced myself. Semester after semester we became more

different people. I still think about that. I think she’s

their lives.

“I should learn welding—for the cows.”

“Last week I decided I want to experience being rejected. Today I am deciding I want to experience mockery.”

My mother, a Russian Doll Painted face Hand-carved by the Republic’s people Only to have her aspen shells smashed & splintered by drunken fists.

To protect her remaining layers She sits on the top shelf Collecting dust I, a porcelain Nutcracker clumsily repaired with tacky glue Too contorted to serve its intended purpose But not enough to retire from performing.

Every time the pieces fit differently And yet still a frivolous interpretation Of an already neglected appliance —Athena

redenvelopestories.net Our identity is where our best stories come from.

Stories from the Asian community at Brown University covering relationships, self-acceptance, career paths, food, politics, and more, read in three minutes or less.

December 3, 2021 3

NARRATIVE

In the Places We Once Called Home on this earth, we live many lives

by Kaitlan Bui Illustrated by Joanne Han Even as the first flakes of snow settle atop the dim street lamps, and even as the winter moon swallows the sun, I feel like I am falling into something warm. I have been since late August—falling, that is. Falling deeper and deeper into something like gentle love.

In the mornings, I wake up before my alarm rings. After scrolling through late night texts, answering some and ignoring others, I tap open Spotify and shuffle to the bathroom. I pass by Sarah’s room on my way there—the birthplace of all our 3 a.m. conversations and the unraveling of our deepest secrets. I know Sarah is still home if her bunny slippers face her bedroom door. I always find myself hoping that they do.

Each time I return to our rickety, splintering flat after class, I am full of tender hope. As I jam the gold key into the gold lock, and then the silver key into the silver one, I wonder if the berry-scented candle Sarah burned before class is still lit. (This is the Walmart candle she proudly chose. Sarah says the one I like smells like a man, even though it’s clearly labeled “Hidden Springs.”) I am happiest, though, when I take off my shoes and hear music wafting from the kitchen. Kitchen music means that our tiny pockets of free time have overlapped.

It means that we’ll eat each others’ fried rice, and Shabu Shabu noodles, and never want to leave. *** I used to wonder how my parents did it. How they built new places called home, drifting between countries and zip codes and people they loved. How did they manage to raise two children from new ashes, passing on faith in “home” even when they did not fully believe in it themselves?

Yet here I am, building new homes also, toeing 4 post–

disbelief and fondness, overwhelm and eagerness. I suppose it’s a bittersweet thing for me to say—and perhaps for my parents to hear—that in this snow globe city of Providence, I have never felt more at home.

But as lovely as the quaint New England landscape is, I don’t think it’s what makes this place home. Certainly, my affection for the string-hung traffic lights and the charming red brick buildings has deepened over the years (made perhaps even more magical by the pandemic wait), but these scenes are not the ones that simultaneously shatter my heart and sew it back together. In less than two weeks, on my plane ride back to California after my last first semester in college, I won’t really be thinking about the pretty East Coast snow. *** I know I shouldn’t be thinking about the things I miss at all, at least not yet; graduation is half a year away. But I am writing about home, and home is made of the things we miss.

Surely, I will miss this rickety, splintering Providence flat, and Sarah’s bunny slippers (especially when they face her bedroom door), and the Pedestrian Bridge in all its nighttime glory. But more than those material scenes, I will miss the memories and the people they metaphorize. I will miss the meals our ragtag group whipped up together, nose-goes for prayer, roasting each other and then going around the table sharing appreciations. I will miss sleeping mere yards away from friends who are always down for the latest conversations about love and life and family, who buy me almond croissants/ apple pastries/muffins/literally everything good, and who purchase carrots for me without wanting me to pay them back. I will miss the moments of quiet in which I, extrovert extraordinaire, learned to breathe, rest, and pray in solitude.

Yes, I will miss the ways that this place—on a physical map, called “Providence”; on my Apple Maps, called “Parked Car;” in my twenty-one-yearold heart, called “home”—has shown me how to love.

These strangers steeped themselves in my humble, otherwise bland life, and chose me to be their home,

too. We grew, together, into something like adulthood. We fell, together, into something like love. *** I called my mom the other day and asked what she has been up to.

“What makes you happy nowadays?” I asked.

I asked if she eats out with my aunts and uncles or if she goes to the movies with my dad, now that both my brother and I have gone away to college. She only laughed.

“I wake up early now,” my mom told me. My mom gardens and cleans the house, and she has been volunteering at a food drive. She recently bought a new juicer, which she uses to make drinks out of leftover food drive items.

“Dad is really nice to me, too,” she said, and that made me wonder about the people we call home.

“And I teach at a citizenship class for Vietnamese people,” and that made me think about the homes we help others build, sometimes realizing it, sometimes not.

“Oh no, I feel so old!” my mom laughed into the phone. “You ask me what makes me happy and these are the answers I give you. I feel happy doing things like cleaning up the house and making fruit juice. I’ll make fruit juice for you when you come home, okay?”

And I wondered, bittersweetly, about how much home has changed since I left it, how much my mom has changed, and how much I have too. I ponder the new people my mom has learned to love, just as I reflect on the new people I have learned to love.

Or, rather, the people that have always been here, who we have learned to love anew.

As I write now, in this creaky old Providence house whose lease will expire too soon, I realize that building a home does not mean collecting pieces of others and storing them away. I used to believe it did—that homes were built on accumulation. Perhaps building a home means, instead, freely giving pieces of ourselves away, leaving them in the unexpected corners of the world. And maybe we cannot ever truly build homes anyway. Only places we call home.

NARRATIVE

Ode to Fictional Memories in which i’m john keats writing a poem

by Julia Vaz Illustrated by Joanne Han "If you really want to scare yourself off, just think that every breath you take gets you closer to death, and there is no way of stopping it."

I watched my Comparative Literature class on Zoom, gulping coffee in anaphora. The camera on the classroom, in a different country, was in a strange position: I could see the faces of all the students, but not the professor's. I can only guess what her expression looked like as she discussed John Keats that afternoon. What I do know is that she brought our attention to the counting down of our remaining breaths, saying "that's one" and "now two"' as we inflated our lungs in synchronicity. Her voice shifted into a soft whisper, a silk curtain swaying on a spring morning. I scribbled the moment down on a postit; how it happened in between verses of Ode to a Grecian Urn. I’m holding that neon note with my index and thumb now, considering what poetry has made me consider. After that class I became obsessed with Keats: the man who passed at twenty-five, wrote fifty-four poems, and thought imagination to be the supreme human quality. His awareness toward pain, toward separateness and loneliness, slipped into my essays, conversations, and even unconscious behaviour as I dreamed of shattered white stones, spilled wine, and floods within museums.

Sometimes it seems as if I don't have enough memories to account for everything I've ever felt.

Reading Keats is one more collection of emotions I’ve never experienced on my skin, but in a part of me that feels ancient and has asked the same questions—What is beauty? Why is art both my passion and nemesis? Is mortality the punishment or the blessing?—a thousand times to no avail. So, as

the tea brews and I count my breaths, here is a memory I do not have, but that John Keats might. *** The nightingales woke me up again. Their song oozed from the dewy trees into whatever dream I was having, and my eyes fluttered open. I stared at the dark ceiling, indifferent to the silence of the house, or the smell of fresh flowers announcing that spring had reached its full bloom that night. My entire body ached from the cold, and again, I felt like an uncarved block of marble. Again, I felt an insurmountable loneliness at the thought that one more day needed to be lived. If I leave now, crossing the meadow into the deep woods where the birds hide, will the fog engulf me like time does? Will laying in the moist earth make death less appealing than it is right now, in this bed? No, I have written that poem before. “Do I wake or sleep?” I sleepwalk, into the remains of my mortal days.

I have started to doubt myself more. I understand my poetry to be uncouth, shamed by its lack of elite polish—the payment certificates to justify the knowledge I possess. Who am I—beyond uneducated, unprepared, unhappy—to bask in the sun of the traditions of the powerful? Still, here I sit, even before having breakfast, under a window on a table assigned to my work, covered in books and papers scattered by my desperation to fake prestige, attempting to write. Maybe that is the stain of hope some have claimed to find in my poetry; the stain my pen seems insistent on making, despite my best efforts. Still, I write, even if the words bear no worthy name.

A friend introduced me to the paintings of Claude Lorrain. He said, since I was so enamoured with Beauty and the Greeks, that I would appreciate the warm pastoral landscapes of idyllic existences. And I did—as a lover tasting bittersweet heartache, that is. For a long time I have tried to articulate the power of imagination, how it allows for doomed humans to conjure everlasting beauty.

I have gazed upon centuries-old art—forever static, forever perfect—and felt enthralled by their grandiose nature. After my death and the collapse

of everything that characterized my experience, the statues of the ancients will continue to look ahead with the same icy eyes and absence of breaths; tangible gods among mortals. Museum corridors were a lesson on the conservation of spirits. Those divinities were manipulated by mortal hands, by a mind with a finite number of days. Yet, parallel to those feelings, a sadness just as enduring runs in my veins at the sight of art. With each year launched into the abyss of memory, the art I so admire becomes a reminder of my own failings. Its inhuman perfection now repulses me; its immunity from pain and change, but most of all, the impossibility of inhabiting the forever-warm paintings, of becoming an old statue, only maimed in body. I don't think I will live enough to grow past my suffering, to shape myself into someone that writes more than paraphrases. The utopias of my imagination have turned cold, like tombstones buried under snow. I wrote that Beauty is Truth, and now I want to burn those letters. I do not know truth, and beauty only mocks my sin: a contemplator who wishes to be contemplated. Watching what will outlive me, I am old. I am ugly. I am washed away.

I write a poem to a Grecian Urn. I hide a heartbeat in its rhyme scheme.

The sun sets and rain falls. I sit at the dinner table and every conversation reminds me of someone I miss: my mother, my father, my sister, myself.

A few chapters of a French novel are read and then goodnights are shared. In my room before going to bed, I catch my reflection in the water basin on the dresser. My mouth is wine-stained, purple and blue mixed across a pale canvas, and, behind me, beyond the dim light of candles, is only darkness. I remember the ancients had two different conceptions of the beginning of time. Hesiod wrote that, before existence, there was only kháos: an infinite abyss of voidness. Ovid’s poetry narrates the opposite— kháos is a great shapeless mass of all that exists. If we are destined to return to the beginning, is that the ultimate question? Is death emptiness, or everything at once?

December 3, 2021 5

ARTS & CULTURE

Wistful Whispers adele's 30

by dorrit corwin Illustrated by Joanne Han I’m on the commuter rail back from Boston when the clock strikes midnight on November 19.

A hush falls over the conversation I’m having with my friends. “The album is out. I can’t listen to it,” one of them says. But I’m ready. I’m told that’s because I’m much more even-keeled than the rest of my friends—one album won’t ruin me emotionally— but I think it’s more a testament to my decadelong Adele obsession, and to my trust in her to draft a brilliantly diverse project of much more than signature power breakup ballads. Her music has never made me sad, no matter how minor the chords or devastating the lyrics—only introspective and inspired—and the ceremonial first listen always leaves me without words.

My friends and I agree to wait until we are back in Providence to immerse ourselves in 30 on our own. The second I walk in the door, my roommates are ready to press play. From the first breathtaking swell of strings in “Strangers by Nature” I feel transported to Oz; an impeccable ode to Judy Garland, this opening track sparkles as I open the exquisite storybook that is Adele’s fourth studio album. *** The audible glimmer brings me back four Novembers ago to the shiny black ball gown Adele wore when I saw her perform live in Austin, Texas, on her 25 tour. I can hear the stardust and see the spotlight hitting the highlight on her high cheekbones. I feel the warmth radiating through my 15-year-old body after the chills that precede it, like the calm after a storm. I taste the sweetness of her sultry vibrato dancing through the arena.

I remember leaving that show completely content with the possibility that I might never see Adele live again, and that she might never release more music. Every time she disappears for a couple of years in between projects (an impressive feat for 6 post–

such a high-profile and beloved artist in this day and age), I respect her mystique more and more. It’s not that I wouldn’t welcome a million more Adele songs, but rather, that each and every album feels utterly complete and so rich with depth and power that it is able to satiate and inspire me for months and even years beyond its release.

Adele’s debut album, 19, was released two days before my 7th birthday, but I don’t remember its songs entering my musical vernacular until a few years later. There are tracks on that album that I still continue to discover and rediscover; as I grow older, it grows with me, and I find new meaning in her words and runs.

I more vividly remember 21’s entrance into my world. It colored my pre-teen years with vibrant memories of my friends and me belting “Rolling in the Deep” and “Set Fire to the Rain” whenever they came on the radio, one of our poor mothers behind the wheel, wishing she had earplugs.

Three years later when I began taking voice lessons, I wanted desperately to sing the songs I had been belting for so long from 21, but my voice teacher was famously an Adele gatekeeper. She despised the fact that every alto thought she could cover Adele (“VERY FEW people do Adele well,” she would say), so I kept quiet. The day she brought out sheet music for “Make You Feel My Love” was a moment of pride and triumph like no other. From then on, singing Adele’s music brought me closer to its sentiments; the notes were in range, but I spent significant time grappling with the lyrics and letting go of my bottled up emotions while singing them.

It’s strange to think that 25 was the first Adele album I consciously awaited and listened to from start to finish upon its release, the proper way to listen to an album. Even now, I still find something new each time I return to it, which is why it’s almost unfathomable that it was released six years ago.

I love that Adele has stuck with naming her albums by age–the simple numerical titles mark time going by in both her life and mine (as I’m sure is the case with many of her devoted fans). In the blink of an eye Adele is 30 (now 33), divorced with a son, and living in Los Angeles, and I’m about to

turn 21. Her formulaic album titles have aided in my confrontation of each of these significant ages; as I grow older, I am able to more closely realize and empathize with the content of these albums. I am also provided with a rare opportunity to reflect upon the gaps between Adele and myself, and to philosophize what my life might look like at 25 or 30. A song like “When We Were Young,” while not entirely applicable to my life as of yet, already feels like it will fit perfectly into my narrative when I’m 25.

As Adele shared so candidly in this Rolling Stone article, 30 had everything to do with timing. If she had waited any longer to release it into the world, she wouldn’t have released it at all. That is a clear testament to how intimately linked her artistry is with her identity and life story.

An open letter to Adele’s son about her divorce from his father, I was expecting 30 to be devastating and gut-wrenching. Instead, I found it empowering and defiant. No song better encapsulates that energy than “My Little Love,” in which jazzy undertones combine with conversations captured between Adele and her son Angelo to create a dignified sense of intimacy and care.

30 feels like Adele is whispering directly into my ear. Its production is unapologetic, prioritizing authenticity over perfection at every turn. I hear her swallow, sniffle, and breathe in the middle of phrases in a way most producers and coaches would frown upon. In “To Be Loved” Adele flexes every muscle and tone that makes her Adele, but she also boasts a tremendous amount of unfiltered control—over her voice, and over her emotions—both of which take tumultuous twists and turns throughout the album. Her signature vibrato, runs, and growls give way to the sound of her voice literally breaking. “Let it be known that I tried” she sings again and again, until she physically can’t anymore. And that’s exactly the point. *** After that brick wall of sound, my roommates and I are absolutely floored. We’re curled up into balls on our living room carpet, not quite sure how to move on with our evenings and our lives. And then, all of a sudden, comes another song… 30 should

ARTS & CULTURE have ended there; that’s my one complaint. I love “Love Is A Game,” but I don’t love it last. It belongs somewhere in the middle. The Disney-esque bookends are not fitting for a story that doesn’t have a fairytale ending.

Regardless, I’ve now listened to the album four times through, and with each listen I discover fresh moments of shock and wonder. Unlike when I first become acquainted with other artists’ new projects, I am able to pick out each song easily from the first few chords. These twelve tracks are harmonious— they coexist peacefully and strengthen each other— but no one song is like any of the others. As one of my roommates put it, Adele is without a doubt the most talented artist of our generation. It’s an honor to be 13 years behind her, and to have grown up at arm's length from her current struggles, yet enveloped in the art they inspired.

Finding my Voice the art of singing along

by Adi Thatai Illustrated by Rachel Lee I think I melted this summer. I think I first knew some day in mid-June. I woke up particularly sweaty in the third-floor apartment in Fox Point that I was subletting for the early summer, the plants on my desk drooping under the weight of the heat. Only one of my plants could withstand the summer fever, a little knobby moonglow I had named Emanuel.

Mama always told me to never keep succulents. “It’s bad luck,” she said. I remembered her voice when I found Emanuel in that plant store on Gano. I don’t know why I ignored it.

I walked out of the apartment that morning, jostling my headphones into my ears while I put on Jai Paul or Phoebe Bridgers or Lauryn Hill or the Carpenters or whichever favorite artist had come to mind. As the noise filled my head, I pictured the sun’s sizzling rays crawling into my hair and down my scalp. I remember thinking that the boundaries between my skin and the world had dissolved. I was no longer sure of the distinction between myself and the air, or myself and the lifeless sidewalk under me. I walked the June skies of College Hill in a haze, my inner landscape a desert devoid of feeling but saturated with overthinking.

Suddenly, I pulled my headphones out. The music stopped, giving way to chirping birds and roaring engines. I furrowed my eyebrows as it dawned on me. I don’t like music anymore. Shit, I don’t even sing along anymore.

Looking back, I guess I would call it depression.

A year of relative isolation, moving five times, and a messy relationship would do that to me. Honestly, I didn’t really give my mental state much attention.

The racing, anxious, overthinking mind and the complete lack of fulfillment and personal growth were my new normal. I didn’t really realize its significance until that hot summer day that I stopped writing and reading, that I didn’t find things that funny or joyous, that I honestly didn’t feel anything anymore. *** Music has been my heart since freshman year of high school, when I started playing the trumpet seriously. I used to tell people that all I needed to be happy was good food, good people, and good music.

Sometimes, when I’m in a good mood, I still think that’s true.

The album that first touched me, the album that started it all, was West-Coast cool-jazz trumpeter Chet Baker’s 1956 album Chet Baker Sings. The quiet collection of saccharine love songs was perfect for 15-year-old me, hopelessly and entirely in unrequited love. I Get Along Without You Very Well, I Fall in Love Too Easily, and My Ideal were my favorites, if that doesn’t say it all. Baker sings on each track, his breathy, empty voice with its fragile vibrato mirroring his melodic and delicate trumpet solos. My own frail singing voice matched perfectly when I sang along, and I knew I wanted to sound like that.

“You have to find your voice,” my trumpet teacher told me in one of our first lessons. “That’s the heart of soloing in jazz. You like Chet Baker, right? Listen to how similar his trumpet sounds to his voice. Same with Louis Armstrong. You don’t need to sing well, just sing.”

So, it began. In the shower, on walks with my dog, driving to school, even in class, I started humming tunes from Chet Baker Sings quietly and badly to myself or belting them outright. My love for music came from feeling the pleasant melody of It’s Always You vibrate in my chest, making my heart skip a beat. I don’t feel that I know a song until I can sing it through, and the first album I could sing every little moment of was Chet Baker Sings.

Sometimes I couldn’t hear the difference between my own voice and Chet Baker’s. I liked it that way.

Through high school and early college, as I found my place as a trumpet player and a novice shower-belter, music became everything for me.

Music became my self-expression, how I felt most comfortable sharing my feelings, how I understood the inaccessible recesses of my heart. Jazz was my first love, but I quickly branched out into other genres: R&B was next, and then hip hop, and then reggaeton, and then indie rock. When I started listening to my mom’s favorite bands from the ‘70s, music became how I understood her life. When my dad showed me his Hindi Walking Songs Spotify playlist for his pensive walks, music became how I connected with his thoughts and emotions.

My best friend Danny called me this June, and before I could say hello, he rapped the entirety of Macklemore’s first verse on Can’t Hold Us. As we cry-laughed upon his finish, he asked me to sing or rap a verse of any song. I couldn’t remember a ingle song.

I thought again, I don’t like music anymore. *** My summer cooled down in a day—I took off from the hot Boston tarmac one July morning and landed in a frigid, foggy San Francisco that afternoon. I was moving to S.F. for the rest of the sum-

mer to spend time with my newborn niece, my oldest sister Pallavi’s first baby. Before I left, everybody repeated the same thing. “Pack warm. Mark Twain once said that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” I made sure to dig up my sweaters and pants.

When I landed, my middle sister, Shreya, was waiting for me outside the airport in her little blue Subaru. She brought me to her cold apartment near Cole Valley—I was subletting the empty room before she found a new roommate.

“Mama and Papa are already at Pallavi’s, it’s a quick walk across Golden Gate Park. You should shower, take a nap, and meet me there.”

A couple hours later, I put on a sweater for the first time in months and shivered my way across the park to see my two-day-old niece. I watched the low fog roll over the homes cobbled into the San Francisco hills. I felt goosebumps on my skin, the sweater wrapping me tight and drawing a clear border between my body and the air. I got to Pallavi’s home, my mom opening the door. She gave me a hug and smiled, “Make sure to be quiet, Papa is putting her to sleep. Baby Lily is just beautiful.”

I walked inside to see my dad holding a little bundle in his arms. I watched him circle and rock slowly around my sister’s family room, baby playthings scattered about. I heard him singing quietly to Lily, his voice delicate and off-pitch. He kept repeating one verse of an old Hindi children’s song over and over: Re mamma re mamma re Re mamma re mamma re Sun lo, sunata hu tumko kahani Rutho naa humse o gudiyon kee rani Oh uncle, oh uncle, oh Oh uncle, oh uncle oh Listen, I’ll tell you a story Don’t be upset at me, oh queen of dolls My dad interrupted his singing with a quiet whisper. “Do you want to hold her, Uncle? She’s asleep.”

He passed all of Lily’s six pounds into the crook of my elbows, her face poking out from the folds of her blanket. Her eyes were closed, and her nose twitched as she stirred a little. My heart swelled and my stomach jumped as a rush of love and emotion swept over me. She was so sweet.

“She’ll wake if you don’t sing,” Papa told me. I protested and he insisted. I began to sing the refrain my dad had been singing, the melody thrumming in my chest against Lily. She twitched, smiled, and settled at the sensation. I kept singing long after she fell asleep.

December 3, 2021 7

LIFESTYLE The next morning I took the San Francisco Muni to work. Even though I wore the thickest sweater I had, the wind bit my skin during my walk to the stop. I sat on the trolley looking out at the Bay, the city’s muted pastels and lush greenery passing me by. I thought about Lily and the smiles on my whole family’s faces. I began to sing quietly to myself.

Re mamma re mamma re… *** I called Pallavi the other day, squeezing my phone between ear and shoulder as I folded laundry on my bed. Dim sunlight fell through my dorm room window and landed on my skin as warm cotton ran softly across my hands, thawing my icy fingers.

An unexpected wail of delight and a giggle buzzed in my ear. My mouth widened into a grin.

“Lily’s really found her voice this week,” my sister explained. “She talks to me now, in her own way.” I could hear Lily smiling through her little noises. I think I had forgotten that you can hear when someone’s smiling, even a little baby.

I hung up after we finished talking, and I put on Chet Baker Sings. I sang along to every note.

Christmas Cable Classics

by Alexandra Herrera Illustrated by Anna Semizhonova Here we are in the final stretch of the semester!

One of the reasons why I’m partial to the fall semester is that we end with the anticipation of the holiday season. It’s time to queue “All I Want for Christmas is You,” the Mariah version of course, and make the trek through Providence’s icy streets, made all the less abysmal by the wreaths, lights, and ornaments hanging from buildings and street lamps. To help you get into the festive mood, here’s a list of throwback movies and holiday special episodes that still stand the test of time!

Lizzie McGuire “Aaron Carter’s Coming to Town” Season 1 Episode 7 I mean, what gets more “the early ‘00s” than Hilary Duff in a Christmas special with a guest appearance by Aaron Carter? Yes, I’ll admit I bought the entire Colourpop and Lizzie McGuire makeup collab and it was well worth it. Lizzie McGuire just possesses that kind of hold over people. As expected, clever plots and shenanigans ensue as Lizzie, Gordo, and Miranda attempt to sneak onto the set where Aaron Carter is filming his new Christmasthemed music video. Pop culture fact: This episode led to Hilary Duff and Aaron Carter dating in real life.

Unfortunately, he dumped Hilary for Lindsay Lohan, instigating the infamous feud between the two teen idols.

The Polar Express Now, this is an absolute classic! Some of my fondest childhood Christmas memories involve seeing this movie every holiday season with my family in 4D and freaking out during the special effects.

Grab your hot chocolate and get ready to embark on a journey to the North Pole with a boy named Billy, who doubts the existence of Santa Claus. Billy rides the Polar Express to the North Pole, not without incident, and learns what it truly means to believe.

Up to you to find out what that means if you haven’t already seen this gem.

The O.C. “The Best Chrismukkah Ever” Season 1 Episode 13 The only word that properly describes a show that has its own word for a holiday is iconic.

Chrismukkah is just about as legendary as The O.C. itself. The product of Seth Cohen’s attempt to marry together his parents’ different faiths, Chrismukkah is the super holiday that possesses twice the impact EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Olivia Howe

“I envisioned my own struggle through the eyes of the Savoyards, who were prevented from scaling Geneva’s walls because one woman poured hot vegetable soup on their heads.”

—Minako Ogita, “Au Revoir, Switzerland” 11.20.20

“A perfect union of sound and image, the creation of raw energy. The sense of being alive.”

—Robert Capron, “Teens and Tens in the ‘10s” 12.6.19

FEATURE Managing Editor Alice Bai Section Editors Andrew Lu Ethan Pan ARTS & CULTURE Managing Editor Emma Schneider Section Editors Kyoko Leaman Joe Maffa

of any normal holiday. In this episode, Seth introduces his new adoptive brother Ryan to his festive creation, complete with Santa hat kippahs. I highly recommend watching each season’s Chrismukkah special!

Elf Arguably the best live-action Christmas movie ever made and I’ll stand by that. Another childhood classic, Will Ferrell perfectly portrays the naive, optimistic elf Buddy who discovers he is human and that his biological father lives in NYC. Of course, Buddy wants to learn more about his past. However, growing up in the North Pole, Buddy isn’t exactly accustomed to city life. If you want a light-hearted, comedic film to kick off your holiday season, this is the one! I still wonder how candy on top of spaghetti actually tastes.

While these are only a few of many holidaythemed films and TV specials, I think these are some of the best ones to either rewatch or experience for the first time. Whether alone or with friends and family, bring plenty of kettle corn and hot chocolate.

I hope the rest of your semester ends on a high note. Happy holidays!

NARRATIVE Managing Editor Siena Capone Section Editors Danielle Emerson Leyton Ho

Copy Editors Katheryne Gonzalez Samuel Nevins Eleanor Peters

LIFESTYLE Managing Editor Caitlin McCartney

SOCIAL MEDIA HEAD EDITOR Tessa Devoe

Section Editors Kimberly Liu Emily Wang

Editors Kelsey Cooper Julia Gubner Kyra Haddad Chloe Zhao

HEAD ILLUSTRATOR Joanne Han

Want to be involved?

Email: olivia_howe@brown.edu!

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COPY CHIEF Aditi Marshan

CO-LAYOUT CHIEFS Jiahua Chen Briaanna Chiu Layout Designers Alice Min Angela Sha STAFF WRITERS Kaitlan Bui Dorrit Corwin Danielle Emerson Jordan Hartzell Alexandra Herrera Ellie Jurmann Nicole Kim Liza Kolbasov Elliana Reynolds Adi Thatai Victoria Yin