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upfront
editor's note contents
Dear Readers, There is happy news this week! As you may have heard (or found out from last week’s Editor’s note, which was just a picture of me with the caption saying that I had gotten a job), I just received a job offer--a job offer that I love and have decided to take! My Editor’s Notes will be decidedly less pensive from here on out. I’m not saying that you should take all of my Editor’s Notes heretofore with a grain of salt, but I am saying I’ve had a significant change in perspective. Think about a time when you were forced to make a significant revision to your judgments: when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in 2008, or when Trump became the presidential candidate. For me, I would add a third item to this list: When I got a job offer. To be fair, I had a pretty decent shot at getting a job offer from some firm, if not the specific one that I ended up picking. But in the first few months of this year, I was entirely convinced that I wouldn’t get a job and that CareerLab should have a stack of cardboard boxes for people like me. And now that I’ve had my perspective changed on this issue, I’m going to go back to blithely being (unreasonably) anxious about other matters, like classes.
upfront features 3 • a dichotomy of queens Lindsey Owen 4 • from way down here Claribel Wu
Best,
lifestyle
Yidi
5 • to be a good neighbor Daniel Murage 5 • sunday sadness Charlotte Blumenthal 8 • hypothetical inventions Claribel Wu
arts & culture 6 • women on vinyl Daniella Balarezo 6 • the era of george watsky Spencer Roth-Rose 7 • senior slump James Feinberg
staff
Editor-in-Chief Yidi Wu
Features Editors Saanya Jain Claribel Wu
Managing Editor of Arts & Culture Ryan Walsh
Lifestyle Editor Alicia DeVos
Managing Editor of Features Monica Chin
Creative Director Grace Yoon
Managing Editor of Lifestyle Rebecca Ellis
Copy Chiefs Alicia DeVos
Arts & Culture Editors Joshua Lu Anne-Marie Kommers
Serif Sheriffs Logan Dreher Kate Webb
Please send your photos to alicia_devos@brown. edu!
Head Illustratrix Katie Cafaro Staff Writers Sara Al-Salem Daniella Balarezo Anne Cheng Pia Ceres Sarah Cooke James Feinberg Anna Harvey Katherine Luo Jennifer Osborne Lindsey Owen Rica Maestas Ameer Malik
Chantal Marauta Isabella Martinez Randi Richardson Spencer Roth-Rose Ananya Shah Celina Sun Alex Walsh Joshua Wartel Annabelle Woodward Xuran You Staff Illustrators Clarisse Angkasa Alice Cao Tom Coute Socorro FernandezGarcia
Ruth Han Diana Hong Jenice Kim Kay Liang Doris Liou Emma Margulies Michelle Ng Tymani Ratchford Natasha Sharpe Maggie Tseng Claribel Wu Yidi Wu Stephanie Zhou
Cover Claribel Wu
features
3
a dichotomy of queens lessons from meeting reality stars
LINDSEY OWEN staff writer illustrator KATIE CAFARO
Driving in Provincetown, Massachusetts, is not easily accomplished, especially for an anxious driver such as myself. My fingernails dug deep into the pliant, rubberized steering wheel as I tried to avoid hitting a stream of oblivious vacationing couples in pastel shirts. Interwoven with the tourists were various street performers. My gaze jumped between a sparkling Elvis impersonator handing out flyers and a drag queen in a tiny, three-wheeled clown car. Suddenly, my sister reached out for my arm and squeezed. “Brian Firkus!” she gasped. She clamped down with urgency. I kept my eyes fixed on the road ahead and gritted my teeth. “What the hell are you talking about, Brian Firkus? We’re here to see Jinkx!” Brian Firkus was the out-of-drag name of Rupaul’s Drag Race contestant Trixie Mattel. In drag, Trixie describes her look as “kabuki Polly Pocket”: in short, an overdrawn, Technicolor, beautiful, plastic disaster of a Bratz-doll face. Out of drag, Brian Firkus looks like the nondescript Banana Republic employee who opens your dressing room door while you try on a pantsuit. “BRIAN FIRKUS. BRIAN FIRKUS.” My sister was jabbing me now, pointing out the window, and I turned to my right. Sure enough, there was Trixie, clad in Bermuda shorts and a baseball cap. He was talking on the phone and leaning against the guardrail that marked off a parking lot. My sister and I gawked at him with what I can only imagine were the terrifying clown-grins of two fans caught by surprise. I could have sworn he made eye contact with me and gave me a tired, grumpy grimace. After we parked, my sister and I booked it over to where we saw Brian talking on the phone. He was long gone by the time we got there. *** The real purpose of that night, that three hour drive to Ptown on a Sunday, was to see Jinkx Monsoon, the season five winner of Rupaul’s Drag Race and the winner of our hearts. As a high school graduation present, I bought my sister Molly two meet-and-greet tickets to our favorite queen’s show. And when that day in August finally arrived, we felt honored to embark on that long drive to the Cape, blasting a Spotify playlist of Rupaul’s greatest hits the whole way. The theater where Jinkx performed was really a glorified pub with a 50-seat stage behind the bar. Molly and I passed it about five times, walking up and down the main drag (no pun intended) of Commercial Street. We finally decided to ask for directions, and we enlisted the help of a bored waitress, who was shuffling menus by the outdoor host’s podium. She directed us around the corner, up a gravel-paved alley to a very unmarked box office window. When the guy working there handed us our tickets, I asked him what time we should start lining up for the show. “Oh, you guys have the VIP passes. You can show up right at nine.” “Wait, really? Are you sure?” “Positive.” This surprised me. As a very fandom-involved person, I’m used to staking out venues for hours, scheming to push my way up to the stage, lurking by merch tables to catch a glimpse of performers. The idea that I could just waltz up to my seat at show time was completely alien to me, and I didn’t trust it. Molly and I returned to the venue at eight, just to be sure. We thought there would be a line around the block, but we were the very first. The two of us took our place behind the VIP red rope and watched moths flicker in and out of the bare bulbs above the box office window. Slowly, a few middle-aged men filled the line
behind us. When a bouncer came to let us into the venue, he looked right and Molly and me and said, “You two must be the meet-and-greet people.” He didn’t even look at our tickets. Inside, we were given a couch to ourselves about a foot from the stage and in front of the typical, folding theater seats. It became very clear very quickly just how conspicuous we were in this particular crowd: The remaining seats were filled with vacationing gay men, all with at least 20 years on the two of us, looking for a low-key night out. I’m sure they were casual Drag Race viewers, but I doubted they had seen Jinkx’s documentary. Or her Funny or Die web series. Or the YouTube videos she made with her friends in high school…. Molly and I were the weird nerd girls with a VIP couch. *** When the lights went down, Jinkx floated up the center aisle to the stage in a floor-length, tiered black dress and a curly red wig. Molly and I whipped our heads around to follow her path, surrounded by the soft upward glow of a spotlight. She sang David Bowie’s “Life on Mars?” The rest of the show exists only in the strange snapshots of my memory—I was too excited to retain it in one continuous scream. Early on, she took a long swallow from her water bottle and did a spit take which landed directly on my sister and me. I remember sending out a mass text to my friends that said something along the lines of, “JINKX SPIT ON ME I AM CLEANSED OF SIN.” The general response to this message was something like: “…ew.”
In the middle of the show, a man from the crowd got up to get a drink. Jinkx called after him, “You better not come back unless you bring me a shot of Grey Goose!” About five minutes later, he returned, dutifully, with a drink for Jinkx, which he delivered to her on stage. “Oh, thanks,” she said. She gave him the once-over, eyebrow arched, crooked smile. “Muscle shirts are for muscles,” she muttered, and took a casual sip of her vodka. “Where my gays at?!” Her inquiry was met with a roar from the general audience. Cheers, whistles, waves of applause. “And where are my straight allies?” My sister and I gave each other sideways glances before cautiously raising our hands. The rest of the audience was silent. Jinkx snickered at us. “Wow. That was…polite.” She mimed our very lame hand raise and I bit back a flushed, red laugh. It’s a very odd feeling, to be entertained by your own embarrassment. And it didn’t stop there. Later, she launched into a bit about homophobes, saying, “I’ll show up to your ‘God Hates Fags’ rally walking a guy on a leash with a dog tail butt plug!” To this day, I could not tell you what it was about this particular joke, but I lost it. I doubled over laughing, and even I could tell my reaction was absurd. She pulled away from the mic and gave me an amused nod, as if to say, “Wow, you liked that one, huh?” I nodded back and gave her a weak, shaky thumbs up, my abs cramping. After the show, the audience filed out, leaving us by ourselves, sitting on our couch, having very little idea what to do. We hemmed and hawed, wondering if we should leave the theater, if Jinkx was outside, but a voice came over the intercom.
“Ladies! If you have meet-and-greet tickets, just stay put. Jinkx will be out in a minute.” The disembodied voice was very clearly that of Major Scales, Jinkx’s piano accompaniment. “Oh, okay! Thank you!” I called. I had no idea where he was, or if he could hear me, but I yelled my thanks anyway. There was an unsure pause. Then, a crackle over the speaker. “…you’re welcome.” When Jinkx came back onstage, she was giant and stunning. I was surprised at how much I had to look up at her, how much more-than-human she was in person as opposed to on TV. She devoured Molly and I in a huge hug, and my mind was suddenly erased of all the many articulate questions I had prepared for her, all my meetingmy-hero talking points. She complimented my Steven Universe T-shirt, and I melted. Molly presented Jinkx with a piece of fan art she’d painted as a gift, and Jinkx looked at it with rapturous eyes. One of the many Jinkxes my sister had drawn was a picture of her out of drag, at which she exclaimed, “Oh! It’s boy me! Look at that!” She jabbed the paper with a manicured nail. In the drawing, Jinkx was wearing an eye patch, one of her more memorable workroom looks on Drag Race. “You know, everyone thought I was nuts for wearing that. But I put it on because my contact fell out in the swimming challenge, I swear!” I found this story incredibly endearing. I couldn’t believe she felt like she needed to justify her outfits to us, the nutso fans who thought everything she did was perfect, who drove three
4 features hours to be here. “I thought it was a look!” I reassured her. Her eyes widened. She shook her head vigorously side to side. “Nooooo. It wasn’t.” After the meet and greet, Jinkx and Major offered to walk us out. She gently reminded me on the way not to forget my purse, hon, and I was once again floored by her tiny kindnesses. On the way out, I bought a T-shirt. I asked her to sign it, and she responded, “Of course, sweetheart.” Molly and I spent the drive home that night in a very contented silence, Jinkx’s The Inevitable Album emanating softly through the speakers. *** I went to my first drag show at age 18. It was hosted by my school’s Rainbow Alliance, but was mostly an excuse for very straight members of men’s sports teams to put on dresses and gyrate onstage. I found these acts to be misogynistic, transphobic, and, quite frankly, boring. I grimaced my way through them. But the event that night was hosted by a professional drag queen named Jenna Taylor. She was about seven feet tall and wore a tight pink sequined dress that shimmered like mermaid scales. She lip-synced to Lady Gaga’s “Applause” while she straddled one of the boys in the front row. I saw many of my friends squirm in their seats during this performance, visibly uncomfortable. But I was riveted. Jenna was the most dazzling,
glamorous person I had ever seen. As a woman, I’ve often felt that trying to reclaim my sexuality à la Beyoncé or Nicki Minaj or any other strong female celebrity has just, in practice, subjected me further to the male gaze, which is frustrating. I love glamour, and gaudiness, and femininity in the extreme. But I still fear that donning these traits I so idolize will make me complicit in my own exploitation. If I wear a crop top to a bar, there’s a fairly good chance some man is going to grab me without consent, and that’s a sad fact I’ve had to accept. This is why I find drag so appealing: It’s a way for people to be super glamorous and feminine and sexy, all while completely subverting the straight male gaze. Jenna Taylor grinding up against a straight man, in a sparkling gown and giant wig, is the equivalent of saying: “I am not pandering to your gaze, and it’s going to make you uncomfortable. But that doesn’t make me any less sexy. In fact, it makes me even more sexy.” *** If any Drag Race fan was asked to name Jinkx Monsoon’s archenemy, they would not hesitate to say Roxxxy Andrews. As Alaska said to Roxxxy on this season of All Stars 2, commenting on Roxxxy’s newly toned physique, “Obviously a diet consisting of nothing but hatred for Jinkx Monsoon does a body good.” I am not a fan of Roxxxy. Anyone who could
be mean to Jinkx, the human equivalent of a baby bunny, is not someone I’d care to know. But last Saturday, Ego, Providence’s gay club, hosted a meet-and-greet with Roxxxy. In the interest of journalistic exploration, I decided to attend. I wore my Jinkx T-shirt. Ego is a far cry from sleepy, beachy Ptown. There were three male strippers triangulated around a packed dance floor, and drag queens of all shapes and sizes. One dressed as a nun, two as Mario and Luigi (of Nintendo fame), and one with blue face paint and a Hello Kitty backpack. At one point that night, I had a stranger come up to me, throw his arms around me, and ask me to sing along with him to “Bad Romance.” I happily obliged. Mario was the one to grab a mic and interrupt the dancing. “Everyone with a wrist band can line up here to meet Roxxxy!” I pushed my hair back to make sure Jinkx was visible. As my time with Roxxxy approached, I started to get nervous. What did I have to say to this person? That I was a big fan of a queen she hated? But I didn’t have any more time to think: A bouncer cut my wristband and corralled me onto a bench next to Roxxxy. For my opening line, I finally settled on, “Hi, Roxxxy! You look gorgeous!” Which was true. Her hair was a sleek, shoulder length lob, and she wore an elegant, black, floor-length coat over a
nude bodysuit. Her legs went on for miles, and I was again shocked at how tiny I was next to this massive Amazon. She smiled at me, revealing two rows of blindingly perfect teeth. “Oh, thank you!” I took my place next to her, and we posed for the photographer. She put her hand on my leg. I had spilled a rum and coke on myself a couple hours before, and I was simultaneously embarrassed and pleased that she had to put her hand on my sticky rum leg. When the photographer finished, she turned to me. “What’s your name?” “Lindsey.” “Nice to meet you, Lindsey.” “It’s nice to meet you, too! You did a great job on All Stars.” This was not true, but I needed something else to say, and I couldn’t, in good conscience, tell her I was not a fan. Besides, it felt like the right thing to do. She was polite, and patient, and put up with meeting a line of 100 strangers, including unappreciative ones such as myself. “Oh, thank you, sweetie. I’ll see you around tonight, okay?” I didn’t see her around that night, but I left Ego with the distinct notion that Roxxxy was much more human than I had let myself believe when I saw her on TV. But you’ll never, ever catch me in a Roxxxy Andrews T-shirt.
from way down here smallness, shadows, and self-awareness
CLARIBEL WU features section editor illustrator YIDI WU
I remember sitting in my best friend’s muggy Everett dorm room, chin on my knees, knees against my chest. It was a familiar and comfortable pose that made me feel self-contained. Safe. She and I were in the middle of a heated discussion when, in the middle of it, she stopped— “Claribel, why do you always make yourself small?” I was a little taken aback. I’d never heard it framed that way, but I knew exactly what she was talking about. She meant the little things I do to, well, make myself little. To make myself non-threatening. “What do you mean?” “Well...things like inserting a but I don’t know at the end of each statement you make. It’s as if you’re always seeking to disqualify your own words. You should make a stronger case for yourself.” “Hmm…that’s true, I guess.” “There it is again. The I guess. The hmm. Everything about the way you speak has a tinge of indecisiveness. I never really hear you make any absolute, confident statements.” It was hard for me to respond in that moment, because I was now infinitely more self-conscious. Every conversational path that I mentally walked through, in my search for a response, ended in something that still resembled my usual habit of nuanced self-deprecation and submissiveness. I preface many of my spoken sentences with that infuriating hmm because it’s a way of giving myself more time to think about the least offensive, most tactful response. “Sometimes, I feel like you’re a bobble head. Even when you’re disagreeing with something, you voice it while nodding in affirmation.” I ironically found myself nodding along to that statement too, as I realized with disappointment that I was a bobble head. This is what I have constantly reduced myself to, in the interest of avoiding conflict and tip-toeing around confrontation. “What else do I do?” I ask, both curious about and afraid of what I would hear. “Let me think—yeah, the cadence of how you speak is very particular. Your vocal inflection goes up at the end of a sentence, and it makes your
words sound uncertain, as if you were asking a question. You also sprinkle in a you know pretty often, which makes people more inclined to agree with you. ” “I think it’s because I’ve lived my life with an inherent and deeply-rooted fear of conflict.” “You can’t always live that way. You can’t appease everyone. I know you like being a mediator so that everyone can be happy, but that can be emotionally taxing. Plus it’s not always productive.” I still think about this conversation from time to time. My mother had confronted me about this issue throughout my upbringing—about this hyperdocility—but it sounded different when I thought about it as “making myself small.” When my friend said this, I was forced to confront how this abstract habit had manifested itself in physical instances. I thought of my badly folded posture, and the way I liked to curl up and compress myself. I thought of how I avoided high heels in high school because I’d get sideways glances from the boys—a very literal way of shrinking myself down to make others feel bigger. How dare I damage their masculinity? I thought of how, in particularly crowded hallways, I would get thrown around like debris in an ocean current. I was always trying to make space for others if I could, and that often meant carving that out of my own space. I suppose the root of the problem is that I always thought of it as a good thing. And I still do, to a certain extent. I pride myself in being a good listener and an empathetic person, but every good trait comes with what I call a “shadow,” or the darker side to a perceived positive characteristic. Take candor, for example: There’s much to be valued in honesty and truth, but approached from a certain way, it becomes rude or blunt. It’s important to realize that shadows are natural and inevitable. They are always lingering, and at different times of the day they inch closer and closer to the light. There is no hard line: It is a gradient. For me, it is the constant tension between being agreeable versus submissive. But it’s difficult, even now, to distinguish the moments where one bleeds into the other.
“Funny, as a child I always used to let the other kids be the most ‘desirable’ characters or play with the best toys because I wanted to avoid upsetting them into the throes of a temper tantrum at all costs––I got used to playing the role of the sidekick. I found creative ways to enjoy inhabiting an alternative minor role, because I thought it was a cool thing that empowered me in a different type of way.” “That’s valid.” “Yeah, you know all the parents used to fawn over me, this amiable kid who ‘plays well with others.’ They’d always be telling my friends to ‘Be more like Claribel,’ and that made me uncomfortable––it put an imaginary space between us and made me feel like a typified goody two-shoes. There’s always a weird stigma.” “It’s sad that you put yourself down for something like that. I mean, that’s sort of flattering, right?” “In a way, yeah. That’s another thing my mom always accused me of: self-disparagement. Before I offer an idea or show someone something I create, I usually start or end with an apology. I’ll be like, ‘Hey, listen to this song I really like it! Well actually, don’t set your expectations too high. Sorry—if you don’t think it sounds good, I can change it.” It’s not a rare condition, though. I see it in a lot of people around me, especially women of color, because we have been cultivated in a society built on systematic mechanisms that seek to oppress our voices. So many of my friends are overly apologetic. Why must we always be sorry? Three tall white male athletes take up the whole of the sidewalk, and as I struggle to squish by, I bump against a shoulder. “Sorry,” I mumble. When I think of framing myself as a nonthreat, it begins to become a politicized issue. I have to question whether I am falling into a predetermined role that society wants me to assume and whether I am complicit in perpetuating the stereotype of the soft-spoken and submissive Asian woman. I’ve realized that this “shadow” of mine comes out when there is an oppressive force that I am in fear of offending. I reach an impasse when talking about this, because much of it is ingrained in who I am as
a person. It is in my self-deprecating humor, my distinguishing quirks, and the way I physically carry myself. It is evident as I write this, sitting on the fifth floor of the library with my back hunched over my computer and my legs folded against my body. How am I supposed to escape it, and is it even possible to? Like I said, shadows are a constant. You can’t run from them, and you shouldn’t try (I realize that sounds sinister, but it doesn’t have to). I’m on a quest to build myself again with a new sense of self-awareness. It’s an odd situation to write so vulnerably and explicitly about a fatal flaw, but this is me confronting myself. Confrontation: something I avoided not only with others but with myself. Being “small” isn’t always a bad thing. It has given me the ability to step back and make space for the people I care about, and not always in a way that sacrifices my own. It has taught me how to listen rather than constantly fight to speak. It has made me a humbler and hopefully more considerate person. The danger lies in the moments where I mistake shadow for light. A wise response from my mother: “Avoiding confrontation with others doesn’t mean you have to make yourself small. You can be self-assured and yet avoid confrontation in a gentle and understanding way. In fact, true empathy precludes one from making herself small in order to prop up the other person.”
lifestyle
5
to be a good neighbor when to or not to intervene
DANIEL MURAGE contributing writer illustrator RUTH HAN
On this particularly quiet Friday summer night, I am in my room on Gray’s Inn Road, London, going through Tinder profiles, carelessly swiping right in the hopes of getting a match. I have only made 10 matches since I moved here a week ago. My Tinder love life has always sucked. I text them, but they never text back. Now, I just use Tinder to pass the time, swiping right without even looking at the pictures or bio in the hopes of increasing my chance of getting a match. It doesn’t work. Then the neighbors who live on the floor above me start at it again—the bickering, the shouting, utensils knocked about, heavy footsteps on the ceiling.
“Fuck you bitch!” “Slut!” “Motherfucker!” and all the other commonplace vulgarities seep down into my room below. I am quiet and remain on my bed, looking at the last picture of a beautiful girl who claims to be from Romania. She says she is in London for only a week. I swipe right again, but I get a notice that my swipes are over. I read her bio—Andra from Romania, in London 4 a week visiting friend and looking for hookup. I bite my nails and spit on the carpet floor, then press the spit into the carpet with my heel. “Fuck you!” the neighbors scream. I stare at my phone screen, bored and angered at my neighbors’ nightly fights. I seem to be the only one who hears them, despite the fact that I live on the second floor of a three-story building in central London. These fights have been going on since I moved in. This time I decide I will not intervene. The first time I overheard them, it was on a Monday morning at 2 a.m. and Joanna, my neighbour, was crying loudly. When I went to the third floor in anger, begging for quiet during such ungodly hours of the morning, Joanna came to the door, makeup washed off her face by the tears running down her cheeks, lipstick marks on her neck, hair disheveled. “Fuck you! Mind your business,” she said, giving me the middle finger.
I end up putting on earplugs and going to sleep. The next day, I see Joanna walking downstairs. I figure this is an opportune moment to talk to her, so I invite her to have coffee with me. “Fuck you!” she says. Realizing my efforts to establish dialogue are futile, I vow to call the police the next time I so much as hear a whimper from her room. She looks at me with contempt and slowly walks down the stairs, cursing. Later in my room, I ruminate on all the things that I want to tell her, how I might help, how I might offer solutions to her nightly fights. I want to tell her about women of Nyeri—women who don’t hesitate to hit their husbands’ skulls with a machete. I want to tell her about Wanjira, my aunt in Nyeri, who, upon getting called a girl by a married man, threw a pot of boiling water at the poor man, and then followed him with kicks to his crotch and slaps to his head. I want to tell her about Nyeri, where men cower at the sight of women. But this is London and Joanna said fuck you and, for the rest of my stay, Joanna and her partner dared not to so much as breathe loudly lest I hear them and call the police. Surprisingly, on my last day, as I was leaving for the airport, Joanna offered me a ride to the train station and, for the first
time during my two-month stay, I get to have a conversation with her. As we talk, she mentions that she is a doctor and that she is going to bite her partner’s dick off one of these days. As I exit her car, she looks at me straight in the eyes and assures me that she is a grown woman who knows how take care of herself. At the train station, I go to my Tinder account and mindlessly swipe right. This time, I get a match—Joanna. I look over the bio and photos and am certain that this Joanna is my neighbour. But I don’t text her. Now, as I sit in my dorm recalling these summer incidents, my conscience haunts me. I debate what I should have done, the role that I should have played to help Joanna from her abusive partner: Should I have called the police? Would my stories of women from Nyeri have helped? Did the fights resume after I left? Is Joanna safe? Did she ever bite his dick off? In the hopes of having a clean conscience, I decide to talk over the matter with Joanna. Since my only contact method for her is Tinder, I fire off a message: “Hi Joanna, how are you doing? How is life on Gray’s Inn Road” I ask. Her reply is quick: “Fuck off!”
sunday sadness a reflection on moments gone by
CHARLOTTE BLUMENTHAL contributing writer illustrator JENICE KIM
I am only slightly embarrassed to admit that I recently cried while walking onto an airplane listening to some mainstream folk. It wasn’t a full out sob by any means, but a couple sizable tears truly rolled down my cheek during my walk from the gate to seat 29A. I wasn’t mourning any great loss or suffering any great tragedy. I was simply boarding a plane in San Francisco bound for the East Coast, heading back to Brown after spending a long weekend with my stepsister. It was a perfect weekend—we ate ice cream every day, we went for hikes, we saw the Head and the Heart (aforementioned mainstream folk) on a grassy hill in that perfect Northern California temperature. It was a picturesque 72 hours. But there I was, ending my glorious sunshine, beer-filled weekend walking onto a plane crying. It was that Sunday sadness we all know. You’re nine years old, and your dad is cooking dinner while the sky turns from blue to pink to black. The past two days of cartoons and playing games are over. The week has come to an end, and the next one is barreling right at you. Soon that will be gone too. Sunday evenings are a moment to be still, to think about what’s coming next and what you have left behind. Sometimes weeks gone by included impossible tests and heartbreaking moments that we are thrilled to be rid of.
Other times, they are weeks of belly laughs and perfect sunny days. Whenever I think of the happy moments behind me during a Sunday afternoon filled with homework and banality, just like this one spent flying away from a serene San Franciscan weekend, I can never help but wish I was back in the sun, back in a moment when I felt full and weightless all at once. I want to be back in a moment I know I can never have back. When I reached my seat, I tried to make the tears stop. I looked outside the plane window at the men in neon orange throwing bags and waving their arms to usher through the trolleys of people’s suitcases full of favorite sweaters and cheap souvenirs they had bought to try and hold on to a moment in time. And I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t stop mourning the passing of my life. I had spent the weekend with West Coast sunshine warming me from the inside out. I had spent the weekend having silly, important, instructive conversations with a person who loves me so much that she grabbed me and told me so in the middle of a decent mainstream folk song. But the weekend was over, and I was on a plane. I could write it all down and remember it piece by piece, but that feeling of fullness and stillness and life lasting forever was over. I can go back to San Francisco to visit
my stepsister another weekend, but it won’t be the same. I won’t be 20, and she won’t be starting grad school, unsure of what is next, content to be frozen in time. I can go back to the place that gave me the summer of a lifetime, but everything will be different. There won’t be exactly the same people in exactly the same places in their lives, needing exactly the kind of love that I gave them. I will be someone slightly different too. I will need a slightly different kind of love. I can go back to the exact spot where a boy I adored touched my hair and told me he wanted to know what goes through my head when I get quiet, but he won’t be there. I can go home and watch my dad cook dinner in the kitchen I grew up in as the sky turns from blue to pink to black, but it won’t be the same. The color on the wall will be slightly darker and the silverware will be in a different drawer, and I will know my dad is not a superhero but a person. I can sit there and be still with him and feel full and safe in the kitchen I grew up in, but the kitchen and I will have changed. I am not nine anymore. These moments are gone. I can think of them, long for them, feel lucky that I had them, but I can’t bring them back. Instead, I can only wait for the next moment or
weekend or afternoon when I will feel like I’m made of beer and ice cream and all the people who have ever loved me. It will come again soon, I told myself as we began our departure from San Francisco. Sunday is always a departure. In theory, it is the first day of a new week, but somehow it always feels more like a departure from the previous week, an endnote. Especially when you’re leaving behind a weekend of utter bliss, or leaving behind a place that served you so well, or a boy who made you feel so warm. Especially when you’re nine. By the time we reached cruising altitude, my eyes were finally dry. I started the song over from the beginning.
6
arts & culture
women on vinyl new trends for an old medium
DANIELLA BALAREZO staff writer illustrator CLARISSE ANGKASA
The author would like to note that “women” in this piece includes gender nonconforming people as well as female-identifying people. The first record I ever played on a record player of my very own was Joan Baez’s “5.” Joan Baez, for those of us who weren’t alive in the ‘60s and aren’t history buffs now, is a legend. I won’t tell you why—you can Google it. Baez had a protégé whom most of us probably know, who also happens to have very recently won a little award called the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature. You ever heard of Bob Dylan? Guessing the answer to that question is yes. Baez was the person who discovered the now ubiquitous folk singer, essentially making him the artist that would later become the “voice of his generation.” The two wrote, toured, and performed together. And they famously dated. So why don’t we know the woman behind Dylan? Baez’s vinyl was the cheapest one I could find at my local record shop back home. I had been thinking about how the first thing to ever sound out of my first record player’s speakers had to be something really special. I’d always pictured myself listening to “the perfect record” (something folk, indie, or classic rock) as the sun set over my old bedroom. The mental list of what my collection would look like was precise: The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Vampire Weekend, Bon Iver, Two Door Cinema Club, Simon & Garfunkel. But when I went into the shop, I
didn’t buy records from any of those bands. Maybe it was because of how expensive those records were. Or maybe it was because, as I rifled mentally through the lyrics and albums, bios, and fun facts, I realized that not a single person I listened to was like me. Most of the other artists in the store weren’t like me, either. These artists and bands had no women. So, I picked up Joan Baez’s “5”.. Seeing all male artists was kind of an odd thing, a weird moment of dis-identification. And once the moment passed, I just picked the only album I could afford, which also happened to be the only artist who was a woman. After listening to the first 30 seconds of the first track, I cried for about three rotations and subsequently became obsessed with Baez and vinyl records. I also became obsessed with that weird feeling I had at the record store of not seeing women on vinyl. Pitchfork reported in 2014 that more and more people are buying vinyl; about 6.1 million vinyl records were sold in that year alone. The same Pitchfork report showed that fewer than one million vinyls were sold in 2006, compared to the six million plus of 2014. I interviewed several Brown students who listen to vinyl records, and every single one of them mentioned that listening to vinyl was kind of like “a novelty.” Of course, this method of listening to music is anything but new. But clearly, there’s been resurgence. The Telegraph reported that the top albums on vinyl for 2015 were all classified as classic rock, folk rock, alt rock, or indie rock. Only seven of the top 20 best selling vinyl albums were from “new” bands. The bands that competed with “classic” vinyls were: Arctic Monkeys (with two albums in the top 20), Daft Punk, Royal Blood, Adele, Jack White, and Amy Winehouse. The data reflects what my interview subjects were saying: Most of them noted something special about these genres (with the exception of Daft Punk)––something about rock/indie records sounding
best on vinyl. Nearly everyone mentioned one or some combination of three bands: The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Simon & Garfunkel. Many mentioned Dylan, Bowie, Pink Floyd. And, most of them didn’t mention women. In Telegraph’s list of top selling vinyl, only two women were listed. But neither were in the top 10, and one of them was dead. When I originally started thinking about women and vinyl, I thought about the people who I knew listened to physical records. I noticed two groups: dads/uncles/grandparents and young girls. There was a generational gap. There are people who listen to records because that used to be the only format available, and there is the new generation who listens to this “novelty” format because it’s vintage. Urban Outfitters claimed in 2014 they were the biggest vinyl record dealer in the U.S. This declaration was later debunked by Billboard, but the fact that such a claim was remotely credible to the business and music industry proposes interesting implications. Clearly, young people are buying vinyl records. And they’re doing so in enough numbers that every Urban store and Urban online are stocked up with a bunch of records. This young group, if we think about our nation’s demographics, is comprised of at least 50 percent women (but likely more, as Urban often caters to female consumers). And according to the charts, these young women are buying Arctic Monkeys, Pink Floyd, and Radiohead—not Beyoncé or Ariana Grande. Is there a trend here? Do women who listen to vinyl not listen to women on vinyl? I’ve not found empirical data on this; vinyl record sales are not broken down by gender. But what if they were? Would we notice, like I suspect, that most young vinyl listeners are women? And would we see that they seem to connect with Vampire Weekend better than they do with Katy Perry? In my own collection, I have almost exclusively male artists. I’m not sure why. I’m a feminist; and I don’t believe that men make better music than women. Yet somehow I wasn’t buying women’s music on vinyl. Was it just me? I decided to talk to a number of people, specifically women,
who listened to records. I asked those people what they listened to, without specific instructions or questions about gender. I noticed trends, some of which I’ve talked about already. Primarily, most of them had similar taste in genre. But also, most of them got started listening to vinyl because of their fathers, grandfathers, and brothers. Many of them had record collections passed down to them, and when they bought their own records, looked for that same rock/indie/alt genre. There were a few exceptions, but the rule was indie/rock. And, within that, most everyone listened to dudes only. In the end, I can’t say definitively that a gender bias exists within the realm of female vinyl listeners. There’s just simply not enough data. Rather, I’m just trying to think about how women interact with the vinyl record format. Perhaps the best insight I can offer comes from talking to the female owner of a local record store here in Providence. At first, she told me she didn’t notice a difference in the gender of her customers. (She only said they were usually young, perhaps because of the store’s closeness to a college campus.) She also said she didn’t notice the gender of the bands she sold the most (The Beatles, Vampire Weekend, Bob Marley, Pink Floyd, Billy Joel). We finished our conversation, and I stayed in her to store to sift through a bin of discounted records. About half an hour after the interview had ended, she approached me and said, “You know what? I hadn’t really thought about it before, but I think when I was young, it was really intimidating to go to these record stores. There were always old men, and they thought they knew everything. But now, girls can listen to records, too. It’s less intimidating. That’s actually really cool.” I think it’s really cool, too. And I hope it only gets cooler for me, personally, as I actively choose to listen to more women on vinyl. Thank you to Ali Murray, Laura Valle, Olivia Watson, Keri Brooks, Julia Cahill, Matt Cooper, Claudia Jones, and What Cheer Records + Vintage.
the era of george watsky two kids grow up together
SPENCER ROTH-ROSE staff writer illustrator KATIE CAFARO
January 17, 2011 A kid from San Francisco posts a video on YouTube. His name is George Watsky, and he can rap fast. The video’s title says as much—and after going viral on Reddit, the 90-second clip of this white kid spitting in a slight lisp over Busta Rhymes’s “Break Ya Neck” gains 100,000 views in a day. A kid in Providence watches it and connects. Hard. July 23, 2012 The kid from Providence, having downloaded every available track of Watsky over the past 18 months,
convinces his mom to drive him and two friends to Northampton, MA, where Watsky is playing the Iron Horse Music Hall. It’s Watsky’s first tour, coming on the heels of his first album and mixtape, and playing this 250-seat venue near Smith College is all part of a dream come true. He hangs around outside the space before the show, meeting the fans and signing autographs. The crowd is dedicated—they’re so few in number that each one is totally and uniquely obsessed. The kid from Providence has made a huge sign with a Watsky lyric on it that makes the rapper chuckle. He signs it and they take a picture together. Then Watsky goes onstage to rap fast, sweaty and hoarse, sublime. March 1, 2013 @gwatsky just realized youve just about single handedly gotten me through high school...so thanks...ill try to make it up to you somehow idk.
Sometimes Watsky even responds to the Facebook posts that the kid from Providence writes on the fan page wall. The kid screenshots every one. March 12, 2013 Watsky releases his second album, Cardboard Castles. It’s yearning and incisive. At times, it walks the line between rap and poetry, including a spoken-word track where his voice catches at the end as if he’s about to sob. Now more than ever before, Watsky shows himself to be a kid just trying to make sense of the world, of the comedy and the tragedy and the beauty and how they’re often the same thing and how weird is that? Cardboard Castles reaches the top of the iTunes Hip-Hop/Rap charts. April 1, 2013 The kid from Providence has his first bro-
arts & culture ken heart, and he isn’t quite sure what do about it. He’s been listening to Cardboard Castles on repeat since it came out. I don’t care/ where you’ve been/ how many miles/ I still love you. You know how music feels more real when you’re under emotional stress? The kid does, and he takes the train up to Boston to the Paradise Rock Club with a couple friends to see Watsky on his second tour. It’s the greatest concert he’s ever been to. He screams himself hoarse, screams out his feelings along with 932 others who all feel the same bizarre connection with the skinny rapper on stage. Watsky crowd-surfs directly over to him as he’s filming during the encore, and they do a weird kind of spoon-y hug thing before someone grabs Watsky from on the balcony and pulls him up until he’s standing upright on the crowd’s hands, socked feet crushing the fingers of the kid from Providence and maybe fracturing a couple but it’s okay, the kid’s literally holding up his hero. October 11, 2013 The kid from Providence has stayed in Providence for college. Good thing, because Watsky is stopping in Pawtucket on his third tour! The
kid grabs a new friend from another dorm who likes his music, too, and they take the bus out to the Met. After the concert, Watsky sticks around to talk to anyone who wants to meet him, and many of the attendees do. He signs the kid’s phone case and the kid tells him that his music has helped him get through a hard time. Watsky seems touched, but the kid realizes that he probably gets this a lot. Watsky’s music is the kind of music that attracts the kind of people who use it to get through a hard time and then tell that to the artist himself, like they’re special. July 25, 2016 College has mostly gone by, and during those years the kid from Providence, who now likes to think of himself as worldly, has expanded his music taste beyond the scope of such sophomoric pursuits as Watsky—or so he thinks. This summer he’s interning at the Arts & Culture desk of a weekly newspaper. He can pitch whatever he wants. And as it happens, Watsky has just published his first book of essays, How To Ruin Everything, and his fourth album, x Infinity, is due out next week. The kid can’t pass this up.
One thing leads to another, and he’s soon picking up a call from a number with a San Francisco area code. A familiar voice, lisping a little, is on the other line. The kid blacks out for 45 surreal minutes, and by the time he comes to, he’s produced a feature interview for the New York Observer with George Watsky. July 26, 2016 From the same Twitter account at which the kid from Providence used to tweet incessantly, from the same Facebook account from which he used to screenshot any interactions he had with Watsky, the article “George Watsky Learns To Ruin Everything, Still Raps Fast” is being shared with 145,000 followers. October 23, 2016 Watsky is playing the House of Blues in Boston for his international x Infinity tour. He packs the place; 2,500 fans chant his name during any lull in the show. In his own estimation, it’s his biggest show ever. In the audience, standing up by the bar, drinking a Sam Adams that he’s recently become allowed to purchase, is the kid from Providence. He hadn’t planned on going, but Watsky’s publicist comped his
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tickets and now, here he is. He’s standing next to that same friend from the concert at that little venue in Pawtucket freshman year—they’re looking at the absolute rock star up on stage and wondering: Just when did George Watsky became a rock star anyway? The rapper’s always had the devotees, but this is something else. This is that same passion that permeated the Iron Horse, the Paradise, the Met, but it feels bigger than the venue now. The show is no longer an enclave for a community of Watsky fans huddled together in the back of a bookstore, no. It’s a straight-up arena concert. Watsky’s realized his dream. And that means he can’t stay afterward anymore and talk to everyone who wants to meet him. That’s okay. The kid from Providence shakes his head and smiles. He’s thankful he’s been able to come along for the ride and maybe even be a tiny part of it. His path may diverge from that of the fast-rapping kid from San Francisco now, may have been diverging for years, may never have converged at all except in his fanboy mind. But isn’t that what connecting is all about?
senior slump the impossibility of following oneself
JAMES FEINBERG staff writer illustrator SOCO FERNANDEZ GARCIA
As a preface—did you see, Hail, Caesar? (That’s a tricky sentence to write, incidentally, since the stylistic typography used by the Coen brothers for their most recent directorial effort is actually Hail, Caesar!, which is a devil of a thing to try to end an interrogative with, but there you are.) If you did, statistically you probably didn’t like it—it got a C- in opening weekend CinemaScore polls. In the interest of fairness, the New Yorker’s Richard Brody called it “scintillating” and “uproarious.” But let’s be honest—if you don’t really like the Coens, the whole thing was over before it began. The reason the Coens (whom I, incidentally, like quite a bit) have been able to work with big studio war chests but are still trusted enough to make weird and wonderful movies that work outside the traditional story beats of establishment Hollywood is because they’re usually that damn good. But the fact that Hail, Caesar! is by any standard difficult to watch, and the fact that as a rule the Obama-era Coens don’t make movies that score below 90 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and that Hail, Caesar! did, makes it worth wondering—is giving auteurs the freedom they need really warranted? And do
we even have auteurs anymore? You can time them like clockwork. Look at four of the greatest screenwrit-er/directors to emerge in the last 25 years—the Coens, Quentin Tarantino, and P.T. Anderson. All released their best-received films within four years of their feature-length debuts (Blood Simple, Pulp Fiction, Boogie Nights), and all three wide-released their worst-received movies ever in 2015 (Anderson’s Inherent Vice, Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, and Hail, Caesar!). These movies were pretty well-received by any normal standard. The lowestrated, Inherent Vice, has a 74 percent “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But Anderson hadn’t gotten less than 86 percent on any of the three movies he made before that. Vice also flopped hard, as did Eight and Caesar. Complaints were similar. Anthony Lane, in a mostly positive review in the New Yorker, said Inherent Vice was “exasperating” and failed to “wrap up.” Scott Marks, in the San Diego Reader, said Hateful Eight was “underdeveloped” and “could have easily lost an hour.” And Colin Covert, in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, called Hail, Caesar! a “long, rambling shaggy-dog story.” And, perhaps most important for prestige-Hollywood, Vice and Eight combined for a grand total of no Oscars. Hail, Caesar! was only released in February, so the jury’s still out. But I’m skeptical. The downside of the largely beneficial scenario whereby writers/directors of a certain stature attain full control over their work is the length of their leashes. Critics have said of nearly every modern auteur has had written about them that they are capable of getting away with things no other director would “because of the respect they engender” (Variety article about the Coens from February). Anyone who is allowed to freewheel too long is bound to exhibit a decline in quality of work. (Otto Preminger spent years railing against the restrictive production code of the Golden Age of Hollywood—and he was dead right. But under the code, he made The Man with the Golden Arm, Anatomy of a
Murder, and Bunny Lake is Missing—all films made as a form of rebellion. After the restriction was lifted, he made Skidoo. Go figure.) The current landscape gives us three curative ideals, all writer/directors who have also had some of their greatest box office successes in the past two decades: Wes Anderson, Woody Allen, and Richard Linklater. Wes Anderson got his experimental, critically uncertain period out of the way in the middle of his career, back in the mid-to-late 2000s, with his two worst-received films, The Darjeeling Limited and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. The three films he’s released since then, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, and The Grand Budapest Hotel, have stuck to a few simple formulae. They’re released every three years. They all stick to similar themes to which the director clearly relates. And most importantly, they were all either released outside the traditional awards season or did not make an active play toward that arena whatsoever (but still got a total of 14 Oscar nominations). Anderson’s films are often lampooned for leaning on recycled subject matter and visuals, but to the extent that that’s true it’s only because his vision is total. This is not only because he is a genius but also because he paces himself—he takes longer, more regular breaks than many of his counterparts in Hollywood, including, say, P.T. Anderson, who used to take five years, but has condensed it to two. Wes Anderson gives himself a regular three-year planning period before every project, allowing him the specificity to design his intricate worlds. Quentin Tarantino is currently thinking about making a “six-part podcast” about film in the 1970s. This is what happens when you don’t regiment your downtime. Woody Allen makes a movie a year—he’s made 47, with another on the way in 2017. You can call that crazy, and you’ll be pretty much justified. But it’s resulted in a new social attitude toward a Woody Allen film that judges it less as a work of cinema and more as a peek into the current life of the film-
maker—how’s Woody doing this year? And that creates a different standard under which he’s capable of releasing little meandering gems like this year’s underrated Café Society. If I knew another Coen brothers movie was coming a year after Hail, Caesar!, I’d be a lot more forgiving. So yes, Woody Allen makes a lot of bad movies. But he’s also released four Rotten Tomatoes “fresh” films in the past eight years. Neither Tarantino nor P.T. Anderson can say that. If you didn’t see Hail, Caesar!, you definitely didn’t see Everybody Wants Some!! (two exclamation marks), Richard Linklater’s 19th film, from March. It flopped at the box office and starred precisely no one (important—Linklater trusts actors implicitly but doesn’t rely on them, as Tarantino does). It was, however, a critical darling: Jake Coyle of the Associated Press praised Linklater’s “light touch.” (Remember Colin Covert and the “long, rambling” Hail Caesar?) Look at the context. Linklater hasn’t made a movie with a budget over $10 million since 2008. Keep in mind that this isn’t a director who’s indie because he has to be; this is the man who made School of Rock, until recently the highest-grossing musical comedy of all time. And he’s choosing to make delightful but little-seen films like Bernie alongside finishing up admirably ambitious projects like Boyhood—and come out of it with innumerable awards and, remarkably, fully intact street cred. He goes small—not always a bad idea. Thus, to sustain a following as a writer/ director in today’s Hollywood, it’s necessary to set clear, long-term creative goals and stick to them. I don’t know if the Coens or Tarantino or P.T. Anderson or Damien Chazelle or Nate Parker have plans, but it’d be nice to think they do. Or at least, nice to go see a Coen brothers movie I can actually talk to people about more than 10 months after it’s released. I can dream, can’t I?
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lifestyle
topten
well i’ve been around a cat today so don’t smell me A: you picked up some girl’s journal in the rock? B: i thought it could be a tom riddle situation
emojis
1. the “talk shit, get hit” no mouth smiley 2. the “I love you but I don’t love you” yellow heart 3. the “am I uncomfortable or just really happy” cheesin’ face 4. the “look I have hands” guy 5. the “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” monkeys 6. the “I could’ve chosen to be lucky but didn’t” three-leaf clover 7. the “fly home, buddy, I work alone” solitary airplane seat 8. the “you’re trash” man throwing away garbage 9. the “time is a social construct” oddly specific clock sequence 10. the “this is fine” upside down smile
hypothetical inventions where thoughts go to rust
CLARIBEL WU features section editor illustrator MICHELLE NG
“I’d like to imagine that somewhere, somehow, there is a huge warehouse full of hypotheticals—inventions that never came to fruition, solutions that were never tested, and interesting thoughts that were eventually forgotten,” Lin said. As usual, she clutched a greasy bag of Auntie Anne’s pretzel bits, intermittently eating a few in between sentences. Lin and three other friends sat on the edge of some unimpressive mall fountain. Behind them, curtains of mist fell so gently that the droplets seemed to move in slow motion. “I say so because they have to go somewhere, right? Once you think of something, you assign it some sort of temporality. You birth it with your intention.” Lin’s friends looked at her, and she could tell that they were too exhausted to participate in another one of these discussions. That never stopped her before, though, so she pushed on: “There are so many limitations to what we can do in this plane of existence. I’m interested in the idea of limitless possibility, and what someone would do with it...What sort of hypothetical inventions, for oddly specific purposes, would you all create?” It was a question more difficult than she had expected it to be. It took a few minutes for people to think of ideas, which ranged from the mildly absurd to objects that you could probably find at Bed Bath & Beyond’s “As Seen on TV” section: Boris quietly offered, “Hmm, how about– a very tiny and gentle roomba for cleaning new piercings. It roams your skin eating up the debris.” He rubbed his infected ear self-consciously. Jessica chimed in, “Something that infuses soap into your shower water. Something to smooth out my bills so that they’re always crisp and fres–” “INVISIBLE EAR PLUGS! Nobody will know if they’re in or if you’re just tryna ignore someone,” Mark interrupted. Lin responded, “Well I mean nobody’s stopping you from making that claim now.” “A radar that will sense when a person you are potentially attracted to is nearby, so that
you never embarrass yourself.” “Why is that something you need Mark— do you embarrass yourself that often?” “How about a double-sided knife, you know, sort of like a kayak paddle, that lets you scoop peanut butter and jelly without getting a new knife.” “Dude, I’m pretty sure that exists already. How about a self-cleaning butter knife so that you don’t have to clean in between different spreads. That’ll subvert the whole sauce paradigm.” “Bacon-wrapped bacon.” “Uhh you could literally make that anytime anywhere. I’m thinking there should be a toaster, a round toaster, built specifically for bagels. It’ll even have a hole in it for full toasty coverage.” “A Pez dispenser, but for sliced bread.” “How is it that our conversations somehow always end up being about bread?” “Some kitchen device where you put in garlic, butter, and all the other fundamentals and out comes garlic toast. Instant. Garlic. Toast.” They all laughed. “A blow-dryer with built-in gel for maximum morning efficiency.” “A blow-dryer that toasts marshmallows.” “A yoga mat that lets you levitate while you meditate. I call it–,” Boris gestured a rainbow with his hands, “The Leditate.” “Virtual Reality class, for those pesky 9 a.m.s.” “A stealthy contraption that runs up your hoodie and lets you sleep during lecture.” “A spigot that you can easily insert into fleshy gourds for your Halloween party pumpkin punch bowl.” “Relevant.” “Reusable floss” “...Again, nobody is stopping you from making that a reality with regular floss.” “Very small automatic air vents for your glasses so that you can drink hot beverages and not look like a nerd.” The conversation eventually spiraled off into severe tangents as the four of them made their way back to campus. As soon as she re-
turned to her dorm room, she shed her layers and decompressed. It was 1:35 a.m., and Lin’s mind buzzed with the energy of all the potentials she’d gathered from her friends. The day’s exhaustion had caught up with her, and through heavy half-lids, the light from her desk lamp wavered and pulsated. Lin surrendered to the feeling—sleep claimed her. In her dream, she found herself standing in a canyon of shadowy aisles that stretched infinitely, vertically and horizontally. It looked like the Hall of Prophecy from the Department of Mysteries in Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix. But on each shelf, rather than delicate whispering orbs, there were chaotic piles of gadgets and trinkets. In a brief moment of lucidity, Lin understood that she was in a mentally constructed warehouse filled with runaway thoughts and unacknowledged creativity. The air was stale with dust, and only a bit of blue fluorescence from the fixtures above filtered down to the murky depths of the warehouse ground floor. She passed by a nameplate that read: Boris Ram. Above, his tiny skin roomba milled around aimlessly. Lin grabbed it and placed it on her arm. It tickled its way through the smooth terrain and left her feeling lightly exfoliated. She thought it was interesting that so many of the inventions her friends proposed were of a relatively practical, normal nature. With limitless possibility, there had to be something a little more other-worldly. She set off on a hunt for the extraordinary. Lin rounded the corner and stopped at the site of a huge metal box. Near it, she saw her brother’s nameplate. Ah! She remembered now. Sometime in the past, he had wondered about an invention that could simulate the feeling of being underwater without the usual drawbacks of getting wet and not being able to breath. He should have been born a fish; he spent much of his childhood in water. She opened the hatch and entered—immediately, she felt submerged in a delightful sense of buoyancy. The world around her was a transparent dark navy, with miniscule glimmering lights suspended in space. She could
just as easily have been at the bottom of the ocean as in the middle of deep space. Lin’s ethereal plunge pulled her back into a waking state. She kept her eyes shut tight, still latching on the remnants of that magical feeling. She couldn’t help but feel a bit sad about this whole place, the untouched inventory of dormant ideas. It was just a dreamscape she created, but in “reality”, was there a place for all these thoughts to go? Or did they just disappear into the void? Was the warehouse real simply because she had dreamed of it? Most importantly, could she return? What a strange feeling it is to rediscover a fragment of an idea because a word, smell, or image triggered it. Just moments before, it was fundamentally nonexistent. In a week or so, her friends would probably forget most of that conversation. She would probably forget most of it too. New thoughts and conversations fill in everyday, adding to the haphazard clutter in people’s brains. It seems almost arbitrary, the thoughts that pop into people’s heads at these odd times. Lin came to the quiet conclusion that she couldn’t be so sentimental about each and every creative thought that passed through her mind. She climbed out of bed. The New England cold had seeped into her room, and everything felt damp. As she put on her jacket, the cool sleeves felt slick like water.