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upfront
Editor-in-Chief Yidi Wu Managing Editor of Arts & Culture Abby Muller Managing Editor of Features Monica Chin Managing Editor of Lifestyle Cissy Yu Managing Editor of Online Amy Andrews Arts & Culture Editors Liz Studlick Mollie Forman Features Editors Lauren Sukin Nate Shames Lifestyle Editor Corinne Sejourne Copy Chiefs Lena Bohman Alicia DeVos Serif Sheriffs Logan Dreher Kate Webb Her Grey Eminence Clara Beyer Head Illustratrix Katie Cafaro Staff Writers Sara Al-Salem Kalie Boyne Katherine Chavez Loren Dowd Rebecca Forman Joseph Frankel Devika Girish Gabrielle Hick Lucia Iglesias Anne-Marie Kommers Joshua Lu Hannah Maier-Katkin Caitlin Meuser Emma Murray Jacyln Torres Ryan Walsh
contents 3 upfront
editor’s note Dear readers,
reluctance and a concert Lauren Sukin
I was in a cab out of a nightmare recently. It had arrived twenty minutes late on a chilly and damp day. I was already late. The cab driver steered with his left hand and held his phone in his right, looking at it every minute or so. He drove quickly and--I thought-a tale of two families swerved whenever he looked at his phone. I sat back in my seat and Rebecca Ellis silently hoped that we would not crash, warding off gruesome images of gore and viscera, straining to be the kind of person who would say something. I did not. We ended up fine. But I would like to note that if we had crashed, it would be because I wasn’t assertive enough. influences Section Editors of Lifestyle (The reckless cab driver would clearly be at more fault, but I would be dead, and that would be neither here nor there.) the other castle There are many moments where it seems that we are merely Lena Bohman playing witness to our own lives. Recall when you lay on your bed this afternoon, drifting between drowsiness and sleep, attempting to read through your notes before class. Recall the moment when you why can’t my life be like an episode of sat, silent, in your exam room, unable to articulate the explanations that had appeared clear to your small mind mere minutes ago. Recall “friends”? the time you could not find the words with which to be understood Chantal Marauta to the person who knew you best. the “female climber” dilemma The line between spectating and acting often parallels the line Emma Murray between fiction and reality, as you’ll find in this week’s issue. The uncomfortable, unsatisfactory, and seemingly unending moments in our lives can appear surreal. Yet it is in those moments that it also love, sex, and other unhappy things becomes most apparent that there is a reality to your existence that is Joshua Lu unlike any other experience you may be privy to: You cannot always will the ending you want to see. You cannot vote on it like American Idol. You cannot walk to the upbeat, trendy, romance section of the bookstore. There is a cost to each of your actions. But in seeing the top ten price of things, you may see the value of what you have bought. overheard at brown spring fling Best, GY
4 features 5 lifestyle
6 arts & culture
7 arts & culture 8 lifestyle
Yidi
Staff Illustrators Yoo Jin Shin Alice Cao Emily Reif Beverly Johnson Michelle Ng Peter Herrara Mary O’Connor Emma Margulies Jason Hu Jenice Kim Cover Peter Herrara
From right to left: Yidi Wu ‘17, Abby Muller ‘16, Monica Chin ‘17, Cissy Yu ‘17, Amy Andrews ‘16, Liz Studlick ‘16, Mollie For- man ‘16, Lauren Sukin ‘16, Nate Shames ‘17, Corinne Sejourne ‘16, Lena Bohman ‘18, Alicia Devos ‘18, Logan Dreher ‘19, Ellen Taylor ‘16, Kate Webb ‘19, Katie Cafaro ‘17 If you want to see your photo here, contact post.magazine.bdh@gmail.com.
upfront
3
reluctance and a concert pop culture isn’t for everyone LAUREN SUKIN section editor of features
I don’t listen to music. Or, that’s how I explain it. The reality is that I do listen to music—mostly to drown out other sounds—but I don’t particularly like it. What I really mean when I say that I don’t listen to music is that I don’t care about it, that no, I haven’t heard of your favorite obscure band, or if I have, I don’t remember (the latter being probably more likely). In fact, I can’t tell you the names of any top songs right now, and I can’t tell Katy Perry’s voice apart from Miley Cyrus’s. I even had to Google Miley Cyrus to make sure I spelled her name right (although to be fair, I did have it right; the signature red squiggly line on Word is what made me second-guess myself ). It’s not that I don’t have access to any music, either. I have about 600 songs on my iTunes account, a substantial portion of which are classical music and at least one of which is an MP3 of my rabbi singing my bat mitzvah portion from seventh grade. But I also don’t have Spotify, Apple Music, or even a Pandora account, and most of those hundreds of songs were given to me by various friends and exes who, aghast at my lack of musical knowledge, tried to educate me. Each one believed that if I just heard the right song, the edgy enough track, the clever enough lyrics, that I’d find my musical bearings. So far, it hasn’t happened. But that’s okay. Hey, I did play cello for a while. I know at least some rudimentary musical theory. Unfortunately, I am similarly inept in other cultural spheres as well. I can name sports teams from my hometown, Atlanta, but I don’t know which sport belongs to which team. I am mildly knowledgeable with regards to soccer, but that’s just about all I can say for myself on the sports front. When editing an article on baseball last year for the Brown Political Review, I suggested the author make a sports pun—only to realize my joke would fall flat, since it had to with hockey, rather than America’s National Pastime. This summer, I even had to read the Wikipedia page for baseball before going to a minor league game with the company where I was interning, a project I undertook in the hopes that I wouldn’t embarrass myself when my boss inevitably asked my thoughts on the game. He did ask. I probably embarrassed myself. In August, my parents took me to my first-ever football game, a preseason contest between the Seattle Seahawks and the San Diego Chargers. We arrived late and left after halftime; my dad and I agreed that the best part of the whole experience was the marching band. Or maybe the soft pretzel. And it gets worse. I didn’t finish read-
ing the Harry Potter books, and I only watched the movies, or most of them at least, because a close friend of mine was obsessed. (After several movie nights with friends this year, however, I am proud to say that I have now officially watched the whole kit and caboodle of them.) But I’m still behind on watching just about everything else. I don’t have a Netflix account, and I rarely watch TV, much less ever finish a whole series. Once, in high school, I watched all of “Lost” rather than studying for exams. That has to count for something, I tell myself. Then again, I still don’t understand most of the plot lines that happened in that show. Then again, I still studied for those exams enough that I probably could have fit in another series if I’d really tried. And to cap it all off, my advisor recently told me that I really ought to watch “The West Wing” before I can be considered a proper political science student. I definitely do miss a lot of references in class. I understand that there’s something important about being culturally literate (and not just in terms of being able to tell a Gauguin from an Anquetin). Yet, in spite of myself, I find it very difficult to care. There are only so many hours in a day. I don’t have much of a desire to spend them searching for the next great tune, not when there are friends to see and places to go (and homework to complete and a thesis to write and a job to acquire). And so, it was much to my surprise that this year I finally enjoyed a concert. One of the few bands whose music I do own is Of Montreal. Telling of my interest in the band, in the first draft of this article, I couldn’t remember the name of the group and instead wrote Of Mice And Men. Nevertheless, I do own their music. An ex was a fan of them, maybe because they are (or were?) based in Athens, Georgia, and so I was gifted a handful of probably illegally acquired tunes (I didn’t ask), which I have since rarely listened to. I’ll skip offering a description of the band in order to save face with any readers (if it is not too late), but Wikipedia describes their current sound as “joyful noise recordings,” so do what you will with that information. They’re
definitely not that popular, at least based on the paucity of attendees at the Columbus Theater, so maybe I’m a hipster now. I do own three flannel shirts. But then again, I’m probably not—if the label is still in use at all. It requires a certain level of cool that someone who voluntarily checks the Federal Register probably can never have (until that someone is old enough to also be powerful, maybe, like Obama, who I think is probably cool). Anyway, I went to the concert because I had decided attending a concert was on my senior year bucket list. I went because it seemed like a normal thing for a normal person to do and enjoy. I went because it was my friend’s birthday and because she didn’t want to be a third wheel to the other two friends who had already decided to go. But before I went, I took a tequila shot, which—other than my inaugural drink at the GCB after my twenty-first birthday (hey, I didn’t order it)—I don’t think I have done since freshman year. At the very least, I can say that the concert was joyful and noisy (and might even have been recorded!). We arrived late enough to skip the opening act and to not have to wait long for the main event, both of which I consider great successes. The band promptly arrived on stage in amazingly flashy outfits, ac-
companied by backup dancers I can only describe as uncomfortably enthusiastic, with subtly subversive imagery projected onto the whole mess. Pictures of money and a woman spinning around a pole were interspersed with sordid-looking faces and psychedelic patterns that made the whole thing seem like a convoluted critique of capitalism that I liked, but didn’t quite get—and besides, we had all paid to be there, and two of my friends would soon pay for their T-shirts, sold by bored-looking employees who seemed to laugh, albeit without expression, at the very concept of monetary exchange. At one point in the performance, Donald Trump’s face flashed before the crowd, who roared back in what I hope was sarcastic and not sincere delight. I couldn’t hear the lyrics, and all of the songs, if they had ever been distinct beings, blended into one cacophony of joyful noises. But I was interested, and more importantly, I wasn’t thinking about the infinite list of things I had yet to do or about all of the adventures I could have had instead. What I was doing, standing there, watching a projection of a burning eagle flit across the face of the lead singer, was thinking about the band, my friends, the music, the visuals. What I was doing was thinking about how, in that moment, I was precisely where I wanted to be. Illustration by Michelle Ng
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features
a tale of two families navigating intimacy REBECCA ELLIS contributing writer
When I was younger, visiting a new friend’s home filled me with a thousand small thrills. I loved watching the way the family interacted. The camaraderie between siblings, the intense and inane knowledge each member of the family had about the others’ lives. I loved it for the same reason I spent most of my time as a youth in front of the TV watching Full-House marathons. I fantasized about familial love. I wanted it for my own. When I got older and gave up on ABC reruns, I found new ways to survey the happy family. I would weasel into dinner invites with friends and their parents. Outstay my welcome at their homes. Skim through their family text groups. I became an expert on the intimate nuclear family. There is no perfect family. But you don’t need perfect, you need loving. And from my research conducted at strangers’ dining room tables, I learned that all you need to be a loving family is constant communication—a live stream of updates on the same topics you cover with a close friend (love interests, grades, general dispositions of contentment or angst). A happy family is a clique you are granted access to as a birthright. My family was a happy family too, in the sense that we were all content. We worked hard, we socialized, we had family dinners at which homemade eggplant parmesan was served. But I would not say that just because we were all moderately happy individuals, we were necessarily a happy collective. I was happy, my mom was happy, and my brother was happy. But the seeds for this happiness were planted in various gardens outside the immediate family, and I think we were all a little more peaceful post-parmesan, when we could return to our disparate rooms. When I was seven, my parents divorced and my dad moved to upstate New York, removing my easy access pass for having a dad. And while he made sure to send his love in emails and call the house weekly, his fatal acceptance of the short end of the divorce stick gave our relationship a jagged edge. When my dad moved out, my mom picked up the reigns of the house flawlessly, as if they had been hers the whole time. She was a master of logistics and used the skill to organize every doctor checkup and teacher check in, while picking up two new full-time jobs along the way. By the time I was 12, she was juggling three jobs with two kids and one dog that needed to be taken to the vet periodically for bladder meds. Her event
calendar read like it was meant for three. As a 24 hour professional, my mother exchanged intimacy for perfectly running cogs. Turning her professional prowess towards the family, she ran it like a factory line, with my brother and I functioning as the star outputs. If checked off as groomed, clothed, and in good health, we were deemed sufficiently packaged and sent out into the world. There simply wasn’t time for Full House intimacy. But then, I found a new family. Before I met the Koppelmans, I had been avoiding the Koppelmans. After dating their son, Sam, for a month, I still had not made contact with the other members of the family, and my constant coming and goings from their home were bordering on trespassing. I could already envision the moment one of them caught me sneaking into the apartment, shoes in hand and make-up smeared. I dreaded the moment appropriately. There were a few close calls. An illogical number of times spent hiding under the covers, for no reason other than “what do you say to a family whose son you’re sleeping with before they become the family whose son you’re dating”? Finally, after another few weeks of cat and mouse, in which the family begged me to come out of the woodwork—my lacy shirt carefully folded on top of Sam’s gym shorts, a fresh toothbrush added to the toothbrush holder—the time had
come to cease being the ghost of apartment 11B. On this particular morning in early June, the home glazed with a lazy Sunday residue, I did the right thing and walked into the kitchen instead of out the door. The kitchen is where the entire Koppelman family conglomerated, hovered over their laptops and various leftovers. I’d known this since I first started sleeping at Sam’s, always hearing voices emanating from the room, while I side-stepped it to get to the front door. But, this Sunday, for the first time, I had joined the Koppelman family in their natural habitat. Now, I was the strange voice in the kitchen. To the family’s credit, I didn’t feel strange. Rather, it was as if a random girl in Sam’s boxers was what they faced every Sunday. They even had food prepared for her. In a swirl of movement, I was dined and coffeed and complimented and offered Sam’s clothing, which his mom said would look better on me anyway. My head was spinning, but I was happy. So happy that I came again. And again. And by the end of the summer, that kitchen was a second home. Absorbing the banter of a family that knows each other, exposed to the intimacy of a family with everything on the
table and nowhere they’d rather be, I ate the cookie butter they offered me and felt pure contentment. So much pleasure at such a constant exposure level clouded my mind. I loved being fawned over and I basked in it like sunshine. But when I came out of the rays, I felt pangs of guilt that I was somehow cheating on those with my DNA. The guilt still cuts sometimes. But the pangs are padded by intense appreciation. Though she may not always have stuck around to reap the benefits, my mom did everything for me, and I know that. I would not be where I am, would not understand the complexity of humans in the way I do, without her. Just when I convince myself my mother is too distant, her screws pop off and the heat built up underneath her engine hits me in a rush of warmth. In these moments, I’m overcome with the reminder of all she has done and all she has put up with. And these small moments are enough. Illustration by Bev Johnson
lifestyle
influences
5
what have you changed your mind about? section editors of lifestyle Recall something that you’ve changed your mind about since coming to Brown. What brought that change about? Let’s see. Plenty. What can I put into words … I changed my mind about the Ratty. I used to hate the Ratty but now I love the Ratty. It’s so much easier than cooking. Going abroad and having to cook for myself changed that. And I guess how I think about cultural appropriation. Coming from Brazil, I didn’t mind if I saw people using things about Brazil. I didn’t care if it was accurate or not—I was just sort of glad that it was being recognized. At Brown, I realized that it can be harmful to other people. It’s more about using someone else’s culture while still marginalizing them. I realized this through talking to other students, and through the heritage series that the BCSC organizes. -Bruno Zuccolo ‘16 Before I came to Brown, I didn’t know any gay people. I had a lot of stigmas and bad perceptions about them based on where and how I grew up. I made a best friend freshman year, and he completely changed my worldview. My perceptions have changed by expanding my worldview, and I’ve learned to accept people for who they are. It sounds bad, what I thought while growing up, but I would have never known that it was bad before coming to college. And I think it’s good for me to admit. Now I try to share these perspectives with my family and people back home. - Anonymous ‘16
I come from Mexico. One day I went to a talk on colorism. I realized then that that’s a very big problem in Latin America. It wasn’t until I came to Brown that I recognized that problem back home. I needed to step away from home to notice something that had been happening right in front of me. -Natalia Moriel ‘18 I used to think that I was special, and that would be enough to get me a high station in life. Then I started taking pre-med classes and saw how hard all the other students worked and how successful they were, and realized that what matters is what you do with your innate aptitude. Then I started thinking I was faking it and didn’t belong here. But, in talking to others who shared the same experience as me, and recognizing their success, I sort of stumbled on this concept of imposter syndrome, which changed my belief about “faking it.” - Eric Nguyen ‘16 I used to think it was so important—as far as academics go—to have it perfect. To know everything perfectly. But I think while being here I recognized that sometimes enough is enough, and that you can be successful without being the best. I’m not sure when I realized. I saw that the people who were happiest were the ones who were balancing it all, not sacrificing everything for the grade. -Julia Dewey ‘16 I guess just the way I approach people. I’ve learned to be more patient when it comes to making friends. I came in thinking I would be really
happy making just one really good friend but now I’ve broken out of the best friend mentality. I can just enjoy the friends I have and know that I’ll find a best friend eventually. -Jo-ann Huynh ‘19 One thing I’ve changed my mind about while at Brown is how I feel about people who smoke weed every day. Because I think that it isn’t correlated with ambition, or aptitude for success, or intelligence, or being responsible. Well, maybe not the last one, but for the others, the correlation isn’t as strong as I thought it was. And if anything now, I’m just envious of people who do that every day. I don’t hate so hard. -Daniel Smith ‘17 My opinions about LGBT issues have changed a lot, both because of Brown and because of the environment of the East Coast in general. Before coming to Brown, I wasn’t against the LGBT community, but it just wasn’t something I cared about. Some people were part of it, but I wasn’t part of it, so I didn’t care. But Brown students are really open-minded, and I’ve had more opportunities to learn about LGBT issues, and coming out of Brown, those are things I would fight for now. -Amanda Tran ’15.5 I used to think it was a wonderful thing when it was snowing. No more. Snow is slippery, snow is wet, snow is dry. Snow gets everywhere, tracks mud into the dorm, into the carpet, onto my bed, through my shoes. I have to protect everything
except my face. Even my face I have to protect from the wind, the snow, the gusts. It’s still a fairy wonderland when the first snow comes down, but after it builds up for more than one day, I’m done with it. My motto used to be: If it’s gonna be cold, it might as well snow. Now, it’s: If it’s gonna snow, school should be cancelled. -Alicia DeVos ‘18 So I transferred here right after the Ray Kelly thing. When it first happened, I read the news coverage and I was like, “Oh yeah, that’s great, they’re anti-oppressors,” and then I came here and I totally changed my mind about that. The amount of times people have tried to stop other people from saying things they don’t like, just … I initially interpreted it as very anti-oppressor, but now it seems like those people are essentially pretty totalitarian. I don’t think they’re as liberal as I thought they were; these days I’m pretty vehemently opposed. -Emma Starr ‘16 Illustration by Katie Cafaro
the other castle
living down the block from decay
LENA BOHMAN contributing writer I live down the block from an enchanted castle. It has a turret. It has ivy. It even has a picturesque magnolia tree, which swoons over a small stone bench. As I write, in the first part of March, the tree has just exploded into a million pink flowers. But the spell is slowly breaking, and not in a good way, like Sleeping Beauty’s castle after the prince. In 2003, one of the windows in the turret blew out in a storm. Birds live in that room now. The roof has slowly started to shed tiles, and now, walking the dog past, I can see sunlight through the attic window. Last week, the city put up fencing to keep people off the sidewalk, as the chimney began to collapse in another storm. Abandoned houses aren’t terribly uncommon in this neighborhood; in fact, I live behind one. But this house isn’t empty. Someone lives there. In some ways, this is a common story—one that Democrats point to as evidence of our broken social net and that Republicans uncomfortably ignore or declaim. A man, who has no close family or friends and no job, lives alone in an old house. He is unable to keep it up. Maintaining an original slate roof is a dying skill; people charge a lot. He is perhaps not “all there,” according to
my neighbors. And yet, this cliche fails us, because people did try to help him. There’s the neighbor who offered to fix his window, free of charge. There’s the young man who comes to mow his lawn. There’s another neighbor, who fancies himself a local real estate mogul and offered to buy the house. It was a good offer. Again and again, he refused help. And now we have reached this state, where the city will probably condemn the house. Everyone asks, “What should we do?” (or, more quietly, “What could we have done?”). As my mother says, he clearly can’t go on living there. The house may collapse. But still, as my father points out, he has nowhere to go. No one wants to see an old man wind up homeless. Is it even ethical to force help on someone who so emphatically doesn’t want it? Even my father, the philosopher, doesn’t seem to know. And me, what do I want? I want to time travel, to stop this whole problem before it began, to end the suffering before it started. But I was all of eight in 2003. I left those worries to the grownups. Now I am grown up, and I still feel eight years old, peering voyeuristically through a blown-out window as I drive
by, and I don’t know what to do. The present is untenable and unpardonable, but the options presented by society are worse. We live in an era of activism, a lot of it murky. Stop war, Kony, Obama, Romney, Santorum, whatever. But a lot of times the most intractable problems are the smallest. I feel like I should be able to do something for this man, who has lived so close to me all my life, but whose name I don’t even know. His problems go far beyond anything I can offer: a “Hi” when I pass him on his way to Bread Co., maybe a cupcake passed on through a neighbor. So when I pass his house, I look at the hole in the roof and think about Eden’s gates closing. I wonder how long until the inevitable. Such an enchanted building.
Coda: I wrote this essay—my crazy old coot essay, as my then–English teacher called it—in my senior year of high school. Since then, what was anticipated has come to pass. The city did in fact condemn the building, and move the man living in it to an institutionalized setting. He lived there for a summer before dying. Since then, his relatives—a sister and son who emerged in the last months of his life—have been desperately trying to disown responsibility for the house, which is probably now rotted beyond repair and a bigger hassle than it’s worth. I looked up my mystery man’s name on property records. His name was Warren Scott, and he lived down the street from me for 17 years. Illustration by Katie Cafaro
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arts & culture
why can’t my life be like an episode of “friends”? the struggles and revelations of a tv fanatic CHANTAL MARAUTA contributing writer We are part of a generation that collectively finds wonders in the world behind our screens. I know this from personal experience, as I’ve been blown off for the evening countless times by a friend who claimed they were “busy working” and instead ended up catching up on the last season of “How I Met Your Mother” and wishing they were part of Ted and Barney’s squad. Far from taking this ditching personally, I understand my friend’s struggle. I, too, have blown off friends in favor of obsessing over television shows and pining after the captivating lives of my favorite characters. But when does an obsession become unhealthy? At what point does wishing we were inside our screens turn into simultaneously forgetting to enjoy life in real time? My fixation with the ‘90s classic “Friends” is a perfect example of the effects of such an obsession. A quick recap for those who haven’t seen it: “Friends,” which ran from 1994-2004, was a comedy that followed the quirky misadventures of a tight-knit group of twenty-somethings living in New York City. Despite their ups, downs, and numerous hookups, the bond between the six friends grew stronger each season. Watching it play out, I was always envious of their adorable friendships. They helped each other through relationships gone awry (Chandler and Janice, anyone?); they didn’t let each other settle for anything less than they deserved (seen in the episode where the friends swayed Joey out of being Al Pacino’s “butt double” in a film); and lastly, they found joy in being together, and could completely be themselves around each other. Although of course the show was scripted, their conversation flowed naturally and I could never help but notice how present they all were—never during an episode did they check out mentally to watch TV or stare at their (archaic) computers. So why was it that after an hour of conversation at dinner, my own friends turned to their
phones to send Snapchats, check Instagram, or scroll through their Facebook feeds? Were our lives that uninteresting that we had so little to tell each other? After considering this for a while, my cloud of envy cleared, and I came to terms with something that should have been painfully obvious to begin with. It’s difficult, or maybe even nonsensical, to compare a group of real people to six stock characters on a television show. Each of the characters on “Friends” embodies just a handful of personality traits, and all six actors have to play their roles to the extreme in order to achieve a comedic effect. After spending a month binge-watching all ten seasons, I came to the conclusion that the major reason all six of them got along so well was that they were all very different. Though they had similar interests, they had distinctly diverse personalities and levels of intellectualism. They each had a differing perspective on any given subject, and as a result they enjoyed hearing each other’s polar opinions. Phoebe and Ross’ opposing views on evolution led to intense, enlightening conversations on the subject, and Chandler and Monica’s contrary ideals with regards to relationships made it easier for them to counsel each other in the first four seasons. Meanwhile, as real people, we are never as one-dimensional as TV characters. Nor do we usually interact with people who are our opposites—since we’re multidimensional, it’s hard to find someone who is so totally different from us. What’s more, we usually hang out with people who have similar tastes and interests to ours, because these are people we can easily converse with. After all, who, in all honesty, would want to spend an afternoon trying to explain the meaning of long words such as “omnipotent” to a man like Joey Tribbiani? You would never have a proper conversation, and probably lose your mind! So if the characters of “Friends” are always
ready to have hilarious, sparkling conversations, it’s only because they’re written that way. We, meanwhile, are our complex, human selves. We need time alone to relax in our own little worlds and recharge—to withdraw into our phones for a few minutes. Not every minute can be on-point and social: alone time is important, and it’s probably unhealthy to spend as much time with people as the characters on “Friends” (and other television shows) do. I know that if my loud guy friends barged in on me at seven in the morning shouting that they were “gonna borrow some food,” I would throw my lampshade at them. Thus, I’ve come to appreciate the fact that I do not live the exciting yet chaotic life of Rachel Green, and that I can go about my day as I please. On a more serious note, the first few months of my first semester at Brown have shown me that though life is partly what you make of it, happiness is also largely determined by how you respond to what actually happens. It’s easy to expect life to pan out like a movie before you, but it’s not actually possible to be constantly having the time of your life with your friends. There is no continuous laugh track to keep your energy up, and you might even end up being part of multiple “squads” amongst whom you divide your time and attention. Life gets complicated and incredibly busy, and unlike Monica or Phoebe, you don’t live through a single storyline per day. You have multiple storylines, whether they be personal or academic, and very few hours to live them out. So I’ve learned to accept that and go through life without constantly formulating a plan in my head and without believing there is specific way I
should be conducting my college experience. I’ve decided that if I don’t want to have dinner with the squad one night, I won’t. And if I feel like acting like a bitch because I’m tired and stressed, I will. After all, I’m only human. Breaks from people and activities are essential, because though those things offer time for recreation, they can be stressful too. If an activity that I usually adore begins to seem like a chore, I take a step back and lose myself in my favorite shows, forgetting about life for a little while. Brown’s countless clubs and activity centers have provided me with the tools to craft an exciting and social Brunonian experience, but it’s my job to distinguish when it’s time for me to take advantage of these opportunities and when it’s time to relax. Still, I’ve made a promise to myself to always pull my head out of my computer screen and embrace life as it is. In the real world, we don’t have a screenwriter to write in our cues for laughter and a happy ending—that job is up to us.
Illustration by Emma Marguiles
the “female climber” dilemma the paradoxical nature of recognizing “first female ascents” EMMA MURRAY staff writer In 2013, Chris Noble published “Women Who Dare,” a collection of profiles of America’s 20 most inspiring women climbers. Falcon Guides, the publisher, called it “a celebration of feminine beauty, athleticism, wisdom and skill.” The compilation of so many anecdotal experiences paints a comprehensive, and inspirational, account of the trials and accomplishments of women climbers. But through this book, these women’s impressive athletic feats are highlighted against the backdrop of a traditionally male-dominated field. By stressing female achievements, we’re also reminded that women have yet to achieve equal status with men. By celebrating a culture of separate recognition, the equality gap between sexes is only perpetuated. Women and men have participated in segregated athletic events since the dawn of competition. In many cases, like running or swimming, this makes sense: There are biological and physiological differences that make combined participation infeasible. Team sports like soccer and basketball
begin to blur this clear distinction when it becomes harder to measure technical skill over physical strength. Rock climbing, however, may be the closest we can get to a level playing field between men and women. The combination of skills required to be a successful climber transcends the typical biological and physiological constraints. Brute strength is undoubtedly part of the requisite for success, but so are factors such as flexibility, vision, wingspan, boldness, problem solving, and endurance—factors that do not come from biological designations as man or woman. Nonetheless, historically climbing has been considered a male activity in the same way that land exploration, mountaineering, and fieldwork has traditionally fallen to men. Most climbing routes are tagged with recognition for the person who completes the “first ascent” or “first free ascent”— that is, whoever reached the top of the climb first with or without help from extra tools. Starting the 1980s, as a broader wave
arts & culture
of feminism rippled through the Western world, the “first female ascent” became another staple of celebration as women grew more prominent in the athletic sphere. Steph Davis, a world-class climber and one of the women profiled in “Women Who Dare,” admits in her foreword to the book, “I’ve been uncertain of how to think about the concept of women climbers,” because “that label strikes me as a pot with very thick walls.” Davis likens identifying as a woman climber as no different from putting herself in any other kind of category. “Living within labels and categories keeps us within the pot, where everything is great until our roots are crushed up against the walls. Then freedom comes only from smashing the pot to send off shoots in every direction and grow freely without restriction.” “Rock and Ice” editor Andrew Bisharat captured the current conversation about singling out first female ascents in his early October 2015 article, “The Curse of the
First Female Ascent”: “In other words, if the underlying context is that this woman achieved something only after a man or men achieved that same accomplishment before her, then aren’t we implicitly reinforcing the concept that women will always be a few steps behind the dudes?” This isn’t to say that women are only completing climbing routes after men. Climbing icons like Lynn Hill and Beth Rodden have successfully established climbs long before men could. In Hill’s case, she was the first human to finish the hardest free climb in the world during the 1990s, a route just shy of 3,000 feet of the most challenging technical, vertical rock on El Capitan in Yosemite that takes on average three to five days to complete. Plenty of men and women have repeated it since then, yet no designation for “first male ascent” exists. In 2008, Rodden established another route in Yosemite that still hasn’t been accomplished by a man. Bisharat brings up a fair point that, for
both men and women, it’s often insulting to have your gender attached to your profession (“e.g. ‘male nurse’” and “woman doctor”). Qualifying someone’s title by including their gender is suggesting it’s unusual or not to be expected. This isn’t a new thought. The exact same case can be applied to race or sexual orientation. Comparable discomfort is drawn between statements like “my black neighbor” or “my gay mailman.” This uneasiness suggests that quantifiers like gender, race, and sexual orientation should come secondary to a person and their profession. Is this any different for athleticism? Sasha DiGiulian, widely considered the most successful climber, either male or female, of this generation, however, does appreciate the designation of first female ascents (of which she’s claimed an impressive amount) because they “flag the progress of women’s achievements” and “are necessary to encourage progression.” To her, they serve as inspiration.
7
Bisharat ultimately concludes his article with his disagreeing opinion: “By following in men’s footsteps and seeking out [first female ascents], women are automatically setting themselves up to always be one step behind.” While this opinion posits the lamentable possibility that women will forever lag behind men, in the wake of Hill and Rodden we can’t forget that not all women are faltering a step behind. Just this year, 14-year-old Ashima Shiraishi, became the youngest person, either male or female, to climb a grade of 5.15a, the beginning of the hardest climbing grade, which only a few athletes in the world ever accomplish. She’s running dozens of steps ahead of everyone, leaving men and women alike in her dust. She’s an inspiration as a climber, not as a female climber. Illustration by Emily Reif
love, sex, and other unhappy things a night with pop star tove lo JOSHUA LU staff writer
When I think of Sweden, two things come to mind: furniture and indie singers. Ignoring the former for now, consider Robyn, the 90s and 00s star turned critical queen, beloved now by hipsters and poptimists alike. Then there’s Lykke Li, whose mainstream relevance amounts to a song for “The Fault in Our Stars,” and iamamiwhoami, a duo known by critics for their artistry and by the Internet for their weirdness. Of course there’s ABBA, the iconic seventiesera group best summed up as the Ikea of pop music, and Zara Larsson, a new artist with a few European hits already under her belt. But by and large, the primary exports of Sweden’s musical landscape are of the indie variety. It’s difficult to place Tove Lo on this spectrum of Swedish singers. Recall Lo’s breakout hit, “Habits (Stay High),” a narration of a jilted ex-lover’s need for drugs, clubs, and raunchy sex to keep moving forward in life. Described by Lo as autobiographical, the song is not only darker and weirder than the efforts of her fellow Swedes—the lyrics discuss binging on Twinkies, “greasy” hookups, and eating dinner in bathtubs—it also became a hit in America. Lo cemented her image with the success of “Habits,” which topped the pop radio chart and peaked at #2 on the overall Billboard Hot 100, the highest for a Swedish song since 1994. Despite her success, Lo is not necessarily a popular figure in America. She hasn’t reached the heights of her peers who broke out at similar times, such as Meghan Trainor and Ariana Grande, who rode the success of their singles to pierce the gates of celebria. American notoriety is not necessarily the ultimate goal of anything, but her indifference is unusual. Indeed, Lo doesn’t seem to really care about success in the States; while her voice is a constant presence on the radio, she spends little time in the USA. She attends few red carpet events and graces few magazine covers. She has a few interviews here and there, but when she does deign to appear on American soil, it’s typically to perform. Tove Lo stopped by Providence on her Queen of the Clouds Tour to perform at Lu-
po’s Heartbreak Hotel on Friday, October 16. Perhaps as a sign of her relative anonymity as a celebrity, everyone in attendance said her name wrong: Tove Lo is pronounced too-veh loo, not tuhv or tohv or luh or loh. Lo has said she doesn’t mind what people call her, claiming she’d rather not educate people on Scandinavian linguistics wherever she goes, and while waiting in line, I was treated to a smorgasbord of incorrect pronunciations. When the show was a bit late in starting, a chant of “Tohv! Tohv! Tohv!” broke out. It was in-effective in enticing the singer out. “Queen of the Clouds,” her debut LP that gave the concert its name, is a concept album divided into three parts: The Sex, The Love, and The Pain. Based on her music, none of them sound like happy experiences. “My Gun” (The Sex) weaponizes coitus as Lo asks her lover to “do it gently”—a futile plea, since guns only have one setting. The images described in “Not On Drugs” (The Love) are bizarre and hallucinogenic, making the titular claim questionable and her pleas ineffective. The aforementioned “Habits” (The Pain) is more focused on the depression that fuels Lo’s hedonism than it is on her time at the club, with her wavering voice personifying her stumbles and falls. The set list was primarily songs from “Queen of the Clouds,” and Lo scrambled the order of the songs for her concert, dissolving the three conceits into one gloomy showcase. Sad doesn’t equal drab, however, as Lo sang with conviction, even excitement. She cracked jokes: “This is my first time in Providence, and as they say, you never forget your first time,” she said as the synths of “My Gun” died down. “I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say that here, since there’s no age limit tonight. It’s a little different back in Sweden.” There was nobody more excited to be there than Lo. She bounded around the stage, gyrating awkwardly yet hypnotizingly. She encouraged our yells during “Scream My Name,” demanded that we point fingers during “The Way That I Am,” and flashed her breasts right before
the final chorus of “Talking Body.” She belted her way through the concert, the stage lights in a never-ending explosion of color about her. Despite the subject matter of her songs, her joy was nearly palpable. “We’re going to do some sad ones now, since we can’t only do happy ones,” she said after about an hour, a coy smile on her face. The remark struck me as odd. None of the previous songs had been particularly cheerful, and as the night progressed, it became increasingly difficult to discern what she considered happy and what she considered sad. Either Lo has the worst emotional barometer in the world, or there’s something else at play. I took one video that night, of the closing song, “Habits.” When I watched it later, I was disappointed; my phone had stripped the performance of 95% of the sound, leaving a strained Lo barely audible over a growling bass. But unmistakable was her grin as she looked out into the crowd, faithfully singing along to the saddest song of her career. Perhaps Lo’s source of happiness was not the songs themselves, but in confronting them on the stage and experiencing a personal catharsis. Performance as therapy is not an unfamiliar concept, but to see it executed so subtly, yet so effectively, gave me pause.
Maybe that’s just another symptom of Lo’s strangeness. After all, little about her is conventional. She’s a songwriter who weaves pain into paeans and love into elegies. She’s not quite indie, not quite mainstream, and she uses her stardom to be heard and not to be seen. She’s a performer who paints heartbreak in searing technicolor, who sings of sadness and loss with a smile on her face. There’s something admirable in that, something interesting, something that’s managed to capture the attention of a legion of fans. That’s all she seems to care about, anyway. Tove Lo just wants you to scream her name, even if you’ll scream it incorrectly, and for one night in Providence, in a crowded room at Lupo’s, there was only one name on everyone’s tongue. History will inevitably forget that night, that tour, those songs and that singer— but I doubt she cares at all. To understand Tove Lo, her complexities and contradictions, all you have to do is listen to her music. Then will you eventually stumble upon her greatest lyric, hidden away as her mantra: “I sing to the night, let me sing to you.” Illustration by Mary O’Connor
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lifestyle
Right away, we thought of insecticides. I have no time! I’m going to sleep for 26 minutes. You look like you have a normal forehead to me... Hey, are you here for the ink blast enema? I feel like that too low-hanging fruit. Or too weird-hanging fruit. This dog is me IRL: not having any of it. For the group presenting on masculinity and pornography, please do your best not to make this too graphic. We don’t want a BDH article about this.
hot post time machine “When I say I ‘found myself ’ prostrate in Room 8 of the cheapest local tanning salon, what I mean is that I drove half an hour in a blizzard to spend money I’d allotted for school books to knowingly and deliberately expose my hoo-ha to a gumsmacking middle-ager armed with three-inch long, fake eyelashes and an equally long wooden spatula.”
bushwack
-02/12/2011
topten
classes we wish we could’ve preregistered for
1. ENGL0001: Exploring Chapter Books 2. MCM3600: Hegemonic Dialects: Hegel, Phallocentrism, and You (Bourgeois!) 3. PHP0100: Defense Against the Dark Arts 4. VISA0300: Psychoceramics 5. MATH0∞00: The Limit Does Not Exist 6. COLT1600: Whales and Their Tales: Cetology’s Impact on Literature 7. ATLA0300: Advanced Firebending 8. PHIL2060: Why Does God Allow Suffering? 9. ECON1020: Free Market, Free Stuff: Studies in Dismantling Capitalism 10. ENGL0930: Intro to Creative Nonfiction
spring fling the bittersweet evanescence of senior scramble GY contributing writer To you— I dread the next series of words because what’s the point of writing, to what end do I write, reminisce, when it will change nothing of the present, of your absence? But if I don’t, if I put this off any longer, my memory will fail me and either I’ll let its pieces fall through the cracks, or each time I revisit, I’ll distort them, and whatever was real will turn into fiction, a figment of my own imagination. Maybe it’s already happening. Maybe in the end you’re just a boy and I’m just a girl and this was just a thing, a fling, a transient happening, fleeting and slipping from our hands, its traces disappearing into the clouds, nothing more. But I hurl these words to record its existence before it dies, even though it’s already dead, so that it can at least exist in this alternate universe where it is as real and true as it could have ever been. It started off as a “canonical” (his word) dance floor make out, a one-timer, a breeze that would have left only a minute impression and nothing more. Given that it was at the Senior Scramble party, I didn’t expect anything to develop from the encounter. But the next night we found each other again at the Disorientation Dance. It didn’t take long before he asked to dance with me. Within minutes we were kissing again. It was dizzying, disorienting, thrilling. Nothing made sense while everything spiraled out of control. Yet, when he whispered how he wished we had met sooner, somehow I replied confidently, “Hey, we still have five or six days left. Let’s make the most of it.” So we did, starting off with a coffee date, followed by a lot of talking and sharing at cafes or around the campus. Among other things, he really got into talking about his family, explaining how all his younger brothers were still pre-adolescents, how he was essentially a third parent they could treat like a punch bag, which he was totally okay with. As I listened and observed the way that he described his brothers—as crazy as it
may sound—my gut reaction was this: that whoever ultimately marries and has a family with him would be an unbelievably lucky person. And that, of course, would not be me. It was beautifully disgusting, or disgustingly beautiful—take your pick, it’s awful either way. Maybe that’s not the best example of what made him special to my eyes. Maybe anyone else besides him could have easily talked about his family and his dedication to them. Maybe anyone could have said exactly what he told me, or something else but with equivalent zeal, about family or some other subject of his interest, at a different time, a different place, and would have held as much power over me. But the truth of the matter is, it was him, there, a few days into our first meeting and a few more before my move-out and his graduation, staring off but giving me side glances at intervals to make sure I was still listening, with his crooked smile inching up his left cheek sporadically, while I was imploding with utter awe and sadness, while I had no other choice but to silently and almost masochistically listen to his words. I didn’t know—and still don’t know— whether I should feel blessed or cursed about learning to admire him and then to let go to him, all within a week. The last day we saw each other, we went to see PW’s production of “Into the Woods.” I couldn’t help but blush when, seducing the Baker’s Wife in the woods, Prince Charming wraps his arms around her waist as they sway their bodies in sync. Later, Cinderella confronts the prince about his infidelity. As they part ways, Cinderella declares that, as dreamy as it was to be his wife and a princess, she ultimately cannot fulfill that role. The talk of the magic dying, leaving the woods and facing the reality, stung like sharp jabs at my stomach. Witnessing and recognizing the odd parallel between what was on stage and what I was going through in real life suddenly amplified the theatricality of the latter.
I didn’t want to doubt the sincerity and depth of his feelings for me, mine for him. But none of that could compete against the impermanence. In the end, our shared experience happened within the boundaries of this Senior Week. And perhaps, in that sense, all our supposed investment was just part of this show, and soon it was time to close the curtains. As we left the woods of PW, each of our heavy steps felt like a step closer to our end, to our reality. When we reached my dorm, I asked him feebly if I would see him again. Though he answered affirmatively, his words sounded so empty that I knew this was the last time. As the campus transitioned from the reckless Senior Week ra-ra-ras to welcoming family, friends, and alums, all culminating to the graduating senior’s big day, I quietly made my transition out of the campus and out of the affair. It would have been nice to dance with him at the campus dance; it would have been nice to see him proudly walk through the Van Wickle Gates and be embraced by all his family members, classmates, mentors, and friends. But I didn’t want to squeeze myself into this picture where I didn’t see myself fit. Maybe I was of some use to him during the week. But my role was done; now it was his weekend, his moment. All that was left for me to do was to trickle away. But after a few days I had a second thought: I never even congratulated him. So I texted him and thanked him for the time we spent together. He wrote back, saying, “I was touched by the bits of connection we shared, and I’ll be sure to cherish thoughts of you for a while to come.” Though the actual experience we had was confined to certain boundaries, I take comfort in thinking that the memory of those bits and that while can be as boundless and timeless as I—we—would like them to be. Illustration by Katie Cafaro