In This Issue Rekindled
NAOMI KIM 6
What's the Buzz?
CHARLIE STEWART 5
Tell Me How You Really Feel
ANNA HARVEY 4 KIA CATING 7
Not Gonna Be Pretty ROB ERT CAPRON 8
Portrait of a Senior on Fire
postCover by Katie Fliegel
FEB 21
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VOL 25 —
ISSUE 16
FEATURE
Tell Me How You Really Feel in praise of earnestness in an age of irony BY ANNA HARVEY ILLUSTRATED BY MADDY CHERR
M
erriam-Webster’s English Dictionary defines “earnest” as “characterized by or proceeding from an intense and serious state of mind.” The Cambridge English Dictionary definition is similar: To be “earnest” is to be “sincere and serious.” To be earnest is to believe in what you say, and to say it. To be earnest is to be the exact opposite of what this world—a world in which truth itself is up for debate—wants you to be. To be earnest is to not worry about starting sentences with the same phrase three times in a row because you want to get your point across. I want to get my point across. In contrast to earnestness, irony is generally defined as the use of words to convey a message that contradicts their literal meaning. Irony is at play, for example, when we joke about the thrilling weekend of essay writing we have in store. But there is another definition especially present in contemporary culture, both artistic and lived. This definition involves the deliberate construction of an attitude—written, performed, what have you—in order to signal your detachment from the subject or emotion at play. This “I watch The Bachelor, but only as a commentary on the vapidity of the American cultural imagination” type of irony is often used, consciously or
otherwise, to signal superiority. You, a Brown student, don’t watch reality television because you like it; you’ve read too much critical theory to simply like things. I don’t mean to attack any of my fellow students. I mean for us all to reflect on the tastes we’ve adopted during our time in college, to reconsider the way we treat each other, and to start moving beyond our brains and into our hearts. I am writing this essay because I am trying to figure out how I want to live, and I don’t think living ironically is it. In a 2012 op-ed for The New York Times, professor Christy Wampole argued that irony “is the most self-defensive mode, as it allows a person to dodge responsibility for his or her choices, aesthetic and otherwise. To live ironically is to hide in public.” To live guided by irony is to believe that directness is antithetical to true meaning—that saying, simply and honestly, what I feel will open me up to criticism that I'm not sure I can take. There is a gray area, of course. Some of us may start to like something ironically before realizing we actually just...like it. We may legitimately think irony is the highest form of humor and embrace it as a cornerstone of our attitudes in a completely forthright way. But I think most of us, consciously or not, adopt a kind of ironic posturing
that allows us to shield ourselves from judgment. Wampole argues that if irony is “a function of fear and pre-emptive shame,” then “ironic living bespeaks cultural numbness, resignation, and defeat.” This fear of showing the world who you really are is a real and valid concern to have. Still, it is one I am trying to overcome. I am trying to overcome this anxiety because I do not want to live as if my life is already over. I do not want to construct my life around the pursuit of "cool." I want to be fine with the way I am. I want others to be able to see that. It is easier for me to write this down than it is for me to say it out loud. It is easier to hide behind a computer screen than it is to look you in the eye and tell you I am baring something of my soul to you. Easier, and still hard. In 1993, David Foster Wallace wrote an essay about television and the American public. It was also an essay challenging irony. “The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying,” he writes, “is that an ironist is impossible to pin down.” Irony, Wallace claims, is predicated on the assumption that we don’t really mean what we are saying, which then makes it difficult to figure out exactly who we are. “Most likely,” Wallace writes, “today’s irony ends up saying:
Letter from the Editor Dear Readers, Rabbits poop. A lot. I’ve recently had the pleasure of becoming a pet owner, and with this comes the great responsibility of scooping out piles and piles of fibrous pellet crap. On the bright side, ever since my housemates and I got Theodore, we’ve amassed immense social capital, which, for me—someone who gets a small high every single time I am stopped on the street for small talk—makes everything so much sweeter. (I’m kidding; I love Theodore for who he is, not what he brings me.) For those of you who are interested in impulsively getting a pet during your time at Brown, I have a few tips. For one thing, be prepared to set a regimented feeding schedule that works with your class schedule. That is, if you have an 8:30 class and your prospective puppy expects to be promptly fed at 9:00 a.m., drop that class because you have bigger priorities now. And if you know yourself to be a procrastinator, well, all I can say is brace yourself for some more late nights because when it comes down to your problem set and cuddling up with your adorable new tortoise, you’ll inevitably choose the latter.
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Whatever you decide to do, I hope that you approach any of your future pets, pets of family, friends, or strangers, with open hearts. Our animal friends brighten our lives, especially around campus, and they deserve the utmost appreciation. This week, our writers also delve into an appreciation of sorts for the world around them. Our Feature explores the importance of appreciating sincerity in a time when irony has become a go-to response to the problems surrounding us. In Narrative, one writer begrudgingly comes to respect wasps, and another writer learns, through burnout, how to be kinder to herself. And in Arts & Culture, we have a piece appreciating unconventional forms of beauty through our music and another appreciating the value of small moments. And here’s to all our readers—from the whole post- team, we appreciate you.
Self-Care Habits for Midterm Season 1. Meditating 2. Eating fruit (if you want) 3. Eating cookies (if you want) 4. Going to sleep before midnight 5. Taking ECON0100 S/NC 6. Escaping to New York 7. Practicing kindness 8. Scheduling downtime in your GCal 9. Therapy dogs 10. Pretending like you don’t have anything to do…
Amanda Ngo Editor-in-Chief
‘How very banal to ask what I mean.’ Anyone with the heretical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like a hysteric or a prig.” I am asking you to tell me what you really mean. I am asking you to lean into banality because, sometimes, to risk sounding boring is the bravest thing of all. I watched the Taylor Swift documentary Miss Americana on Netflix last week. I was a huge Swiftie growing up; I have listened obsessively to each of her albums and started wearing red lipstick—now a staple of my makeup routine—in large part because of her. But, for the sake of honesty, I have interpreted every new release of Swift’s through a carefully hung veil of irony. I still like her, I will hastily admit! And yet I’m uncomfortable leaving it at that. I feel like I need to levy some sort of critique. She has to be a problematic fave. This critical eye proves—to others, but really to myself—that I have grown up and can view Swift affectionately as a relic of my middle and high school years, that I listen for nostalgia and nothing more. This critical eye also obscures how deep some of her songs still cut, and how much I still want them to. “We’re happy, free, confused, and lonely in the best way,” Swift croons on “22.” I am about to turn 22, and can think of no better sentiment to blast from my laptop speakers at midnight. I started watching the documentary in a voyeuristic way, ready to shore up my belief that I no longer need a pop star to articulate my feelings. For instance, I know now, having read it, that Romeo and Juliet is not the pinnacle of romance as Swift croons in “Love Story,” but a tale in which teenage hormones run amok and everyone dies. But, at the end of the documentary, Swift says something that made me change my mind about her. “I just want to have a sharp pen, a thin skin, and an open heart,” she says in the final scene as the camera jump-cuts between triumphant shots of her on the tours of the past decade. While watching the documentary, I started to recognize the hoops Swift has had to jump through in order to speak her mind as the adult she has become, and to appreciate the very real emotional truths that, however mediated by the celebrity machine, she still manages to sneak into her songs. That last line hit home because, sincerely, it’s what I want, too. I am not trying to assert my authenticity by positioning my fandom as a quirk, a chink in the armor of detachment, a way to prove that I don’t care about being cool because I can embrace something uncool. I like Taylor Swift, always have, even when I was trying my best to only like her ironically. If not the exact turning point, Miss Americana solidified my conviction that I, too, am built with a thin skin and an open heart, and that I care— so, so deeply—about keeping it that way. I have started telling my friends that I love them. I dance awkwardly in front of them, tell them about my dreams, and make stew for my whole apartment. I am corny as hell, and this is something I don’t care about changing—it makes what I say feel more true. I am saying thank you every day, scribbling a sentence of gratitude in my planner next to the date. I am opening my heart up and praying that it does not hurt as much as I fear it will. I am reminding myself that, even if it does, it will be worth it. It is worth it not to hedge my bets or dance around my meaning because, when I’m 80, it won’t matter whether or not that kid in my poetry seminar thought I was smart. What will matter is that I spoke up for what I believed, at the risk of looking stupid, and said it anyway. As I write this essay, I am listening to a live concert
by my favorite musical artist, Julien Baker. Toward the end, she pauses to thank the audience. One of her favorite things about performing, she says, is the “inevitability of mistakes.” She says she has been fortunate in her life to make mistakes while performing “and daily be reminded how important it is to practice mercy with yourself, and use your mistakes as opportunities for growth, and opportunities to display graciousness.” Such vulnerability is an integral component of earnestness. Baker does not brush off her mistakes or shroud them in calculated humor; she owns them and, in so doing, facilitates a uniquely intimate connection with her audience that would not be the same otherwise. As she strums the intro of her next song, cheers erupt from the crowd before the whole theater submits to rapturous silence, secure in the understanding that Baker’s earnestness has brought them all closer together. Earnestness means approaching our lives with the fullness of our bodies. Earnestness means not thinking that using the heart to represent emotion is a cliche, because I really do feel my emotions in my chest. Leslie Jamison, in the last essay of her collection The Empathy Exams, writes, “I think the charges of cliché and performance offer our closed hearts too many alibis, and I want our hearts to be open. I just wrote that. I want our hearts to be open.” “Maybe it’s all gonna turn out all right. Oh, I know that it’s not, but I have to believe that it is,” Baker sings in her song "Appointments." I know that, objectively, bad things will happen—that is a part of being alive. Writing in Jezebel earlier this year, Megan Reynolds discusses her own initial hesitancy toward earnestness. “In my mind,” Reynolds says, earnestness "is a relentless positivity, a near-delusional Pollyanna who really, really believes that everything will come out in the wash when all signs indicate that it will not.” But regardless of how terrible things may get, I also know that I cannot live my life trying to detach myself from sincerity. I know that climate change will drastically alter the landscape I’ve grown up in; I know that I cannot trust the political process to accurately represent my vote, not when elections can be hacked. But I also know that it will do me no good—it will make me feel more hopeless—if I shroud myself in irony. Irony, to me, represents a way to pretend that I don’t care about much of anything at all, to live defensively and cynically even as I pretend to be living humorously. I think irony has a place in art, but I don’t think I can live my life like I’m the protagonist of a novel. Life is far messier than that. Reynolds revises her definition in this light, writing that “earnestness is about the conviction and not the message.” I can be earnest without abandoning the knowledge that not everything is sunshine and roses all the time. Maybe earnestness is about faith: believing that it is worth it to be sincere and fail rather than relentlessly dodging hurt through ironic living. I have to believe in things. I want to believe in them. That is my point.
What's The Buzz? reflections on nature's worst bastard BY CHARLIE STEWART ILLUSTRATED BY RUIHONG JIANG
I was at my now ex-girlfriend’s cousin’s wedding in upstate New York, looking at a wasp.
The wasp, dehydrated, was dragging itself across the tarmac toward the guard rail overlooking a small waterfall by the venue. Every time it tried to take off, its wings would sputter to life for a moment until, like a car engine failing to start, it dropped the half-inch back to the ground. I’ve never been good at killing insects. Each time I kill one, a pang of guilt hangs over me for three or four seconds too long to ignore. The exception to this rule has always been wasps, because they’re bastards. You already know this. The house I grew up in would get wasp nests in the attic, which was where my dad kept his old work computer. It was the only place 10-year-old me could play online video games and continue my early education in Russian insults, delivered to my ears in bit-crunched screams through a knotted pair of headphones. Every time a wasp got into the room, you'd better believe I bug-sprayed that yellowjacket motherfucker until it froze over, caked in white insecticide like a tiny Han Solo frozen in carbonite. In this version of the series, instead of being rescued by his heroic comrades in the next movie, each little smuggler had his petrified corpse flicked under the radiator by a squeamish Jabba the Hutt—out of sight, out of mind. Back in New York, the wasp was making slow progress towards the guard rail overlooking the water. Looking out over the barrier at the running river below were two men in gym clothes who must have been staying at the hotel. I didn’t know their names, but they looked like a Gary and a Paul. While I’m naming people, I’m also going to call the wasp Randall—which, as Recess and Monsters, Inc. have taught me, is the name of bastards. Paul was wearing neon blue sneakers. I watched Randall waddle under Gary’s right heel as he stood on his toes to get a better look at the wedding party. I was sure that any second he would lean back, putting the heat-stroked insect out of its misery. Instead, as his foot descended, Randall found a burst of fight-or-flight energy and managed to lift off just long enough to avoid becoming a grisly paste across the pavement. Exhausted, Randall dropped down on top of Paul’s shoe, and, perhaps looking for shelter from the sun or any passing colossi, began ascending toward the sneaker’s open top. People love bees. I think, had this wasp been a bee, I probably would have made some effort to nurse it back to health. I would have at least used a leaf to prod it in the direction of some shade. Alright, in reality I would have looked at it and felt mild pity before banishing the thought from my mind, along with any disturbing associations the death of one bee might summon in me: climate change, crop failure, man-made mass extinction, Jerry Seinfeld. But Randall the wasp wasn’t a bee. Randall the wasp was a wasp—king bastard of the insect world, a class of Animalia so rife with bastards that standing head and shoulders above the rest is sort of like being awarded the medal for least agreeable member of the entire Sith Order. I think it was because of my initial detachment from Randall—the sense that, of all creatures, this
“I just finished reading all of Dear Blueno…I guess it's time to work.” “How do you make a chicken-banana smoothie?” february 21 , 2020 5
NARRATIVE wasp was certainly not my problem—that I found myself watching in silence as the last segment of his twitching abdomen clumsily shimmied into Paul’s shoe. It was not long after I chose not to help the wasp that I found myself abandoning my allegiance to the animal kingdom’s co-bastard-in-chief: mankind. It was pure luck that, as I looked on, Randall crawled his way out the back of Paul’s shoe, unharmed, and began his waddling journey through his pint-sized desert anew. Paul did not seem to notice. One week later, I was on my way to work when I felt a stabbing pain. Initially, I thought I’d stepped on glass, but, lifting my shoe, I saw a wasp curled up between the two leftmost toes on my right foot. Without thinking, I grabbed him and threw him into the street. I took a step off the sidewalk to look down at my attacker, still curled up and wriggling in the road. This got me thinking two things: 1) Was this wasp stinging me today some sort of karma? If it was, was it karma for not helping the other wasp, or for not helping the man he could have stung? Is there any difference if helping others is the imperative? Or was God just punishing me for wearing sandals in September? 2) Ouch, fuck, my foot. Either way, I let him be. I think I have a newfound respect for The Wasp. It might not have the fuzzy exterior of a bee, or the good press, or the sense that if it did sting you, it was only out of noble, suicidal necessity. What the wasp does have is something more powerful: the ability to remind you to be slightly less of a bastard when possible through, if nothing else, its own bad example.
Rekindled
confessions of a recovering workaholic BY NAOMI KIM ILLUSTRATED BY ANNA SEMIZHONOVA
My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light! - Edna St. Vincent Millay, “First Fig” Dublin, December: overcast skies, deadlines looming ahead. They told me studying abroad would change me. They told me it would be exciting and rejuvenating.
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Instead, I am trudging down the street more slowly than I have ever moved in my life because just being alive feels so exhausting. I am sitting in the library for hours without speaking to a single person. I am staring at my laptop without the energy to proofread my draft. I am crying silently for no reason in the dark of my room. I am crying silently in a cathedral I’ve wandered into. I am Googling things like “sad and tired for no reason” and getting results about depression. Then, finally, I am home! Quickly, I realize I should be figuring out my summer plans like everyone else and reading all the books I’ve wanted to and writing now that I finally have time to and getting my sleep schedule back on track for the spring semester, and how has it already been two weeks since I got home and I haven’t done anything? But then— Then, we are eating dinner one night. My brother is talking about a trend in South Korea that emphasizes identifying moments of “small but certain happiness.” I realize that the things that used to make me happy just don’t anymore—that I have turned everything into work, and I am so, so tired of work. Then I am wondering if it is always going to be like this, all the rest of my life. Suddenly, I am crying.
*** I didn’t know what being burned out meant until then. Sure, I knew what being tired or unmotivated or stressed felt like. But this—this was something else. Studying abroad itself is not what burned me out. It was spending five semesters, both at Brown and abroad, with a self-berating mindset of I should be working and I should be more productive and I should be doing more. I held myself to a strict sleep schedule, which involved getting up early to get things done, and I held myself to it even during breaks so I wouldn’t get out of the habit. I jam-packed my to-do lists. There was no reason to stop working if it meant being on top of my readings—they were endless, so I figured I might as well get ahead if I miraculously had the chance. When I wasn’t working, I was restless because surely there was something I was supposed to be doing. I made lists of things I needed to do during breaks—pieces to write, books to read. I was determined not to waste time, and as time went on, the category of things that counted as “wasting time” expanded. I didn’t just burn my candle at both ends. I set each side on fire with a flame torch, attached dynamite, and wondered, “But is this really enough?” In an Opinions column for the Brown Daily Herald last October, Anna Kramer ’20 wrote that Brown has embraced and endorsed the unhealthy mentality of “do it all — and more.” Overcommitted overachievers, we are burning our candles at both ends. Maybe the short-lived light that results is somewhat lovely—Brown was, after all, ranked as one of the happiest colleges in America—but we too often end up the way candles do: burned out. Maybe this is why Brown is also often ranked as one of the most stressed universities in America. Here—and everywhere, really—work is not only a socially acceptable addiction, but also one that is encouraged and admired. We dedicate ourselves to work, classes, and extracurricular activities—all of it. We admire the people who work a lot. We’re proud of being busy. It feels like busy people are the ones who are somehow doing it all, the ones who are going to go the farthest, the ones taking the most advantage of being at a place like Brown. And if I’m not busy, then surely I’m not doing enough. And I never quite felt like I was doing enough—which is perhaps part of why, even as I grasped that I was burned out, I found it so difficult to
ARTS & CULTURE accept. I didn’t have enough reason to be burned out, did I? I felt almost embarrassed: What would people think if I, an English concentrator, was burned out? How could I be burned out if I wasn’t pre-med or CS or engineering or anything that people typically consider difficult? I didn’t have hours of lab to cram into my schedule or the MCAT to prepare for or a consulting firm I was competing to get into. But I knew, as I sat there crying at the dinner table, that I was undoubtedly burned out. That I couldn’t keep going on like this in the same way. *** Providence, February: sunny days and gray ones, mid-semester quickly approaching. They told me studying abroad would change me, and they were right. I still have to-do lists. I still have club meetings and work shifts and classes. I still feel, sometimes, the urge to be working and the worry that perhaps I’m not doing enough. But I also remember my parents watching me cry and telling me the things they quit in college when they were tired. I remember the exhaustion, the weariness, the terrifying feeling that I might just get stuck in this deadness if I didn’t change something. This semester, I allowed myself to drop an activity I think I should be doing. I am trying to stop saying should all the time. I stay up at Jo’s on a Friday night and say crazy, sleep-deprived things. I decide spending meaningful time with people is going to be the most important thing to me in the long run. I wake up late one Saturday just in time for brunch with friends. I try to be kinder to myself about not accomplishing this or that, about when I get up and go to sleep. I let myself stop working sometimes and sit in the bean bag in our suite just to talk. I watch a movie with a friend in the middle of the week. I “waste time” by making art on my own. And I think maybe this is a lovelier light than the short-lived midnight blaze—this softer, quieter, steadier glow.
Not Gonna Be Pretty
questioning conventions of beauty through music BY KIA CATING ILLUSTRATED BY YUAN PU
“Emmylou”—First Aid Kit I was 14 when I first heard First Aid Kit—two Swedish sisters who initially found fame via a Fleet Foxes cover on YouTube. Gotta love the internet. Soon they started writing their own country/folk ballads, and I was transfixed. They were the indie alternative to Taylor Swift that my aspirationally “edgy” (but actually incredibly sappy) teenage self needed. Sure, they were singing sentimental love songs inspired by Johnny Cash, but there were still enough people who hadn’t “discovered” them yet for me to maintain my imagined “not-like-other-girls” status (cue eye roll). *** “Hem of Her Dress”—First Aid Kit Cut to six years later, and I am at their concert in Boston. I am also not the pretentious hipster goddess I’d hoped to become when I was 15. I’ve stopped listening to them as much, having traded in crooning Swedish women for the likes of Vulfpeck and Beach Fossils (okay, still pretentious). I accepted an invite to the concert in hopes of reconnecting with an old friend. But sitting there in our 30-dollar third row seats, I realize why I’d fallen in love with them so many years ago. It was the imperfection of it all, the rawness
of Klara’s voice (at one point she nearly screams into the microphone), her lyrics pulling us into a painful breakup before the horns take over in “Hem of Her Dress.” Despite the harmonies and technical prowess, there was a realness—even an ugliness, at times—in their voices. The low register they sang in—lower than that of any female pop star I’d heard on the radio—paired with just-barely-reached high notes, challenged all I’d learned in my high school choir. It challenged what I thought women should sound like, what was “marketable.” I found in their music a synthesis of intimacy and assertiveness, the likes of which I’d rarely heard before. First Aid Kit was my introduction into the world of artfully strained vocal chords, crying into microphones, and making music that defies what is considered “pretty.” *** “Don’t Wanna Fight”—Alabama Shakes This, of course, had been done before. Dive into any classic blues or soul album and you’ll find powerful and raw voices of women going back half a century, telling their own stories of pain and heartache—think Nina Simone. Long after I was swept off my feet by First Aid Kit, I experienced the visceral ache in the voice of Brittany Howard, guitarist and lead vocalist of Alabama Shakes. I was angry about a lot of things around the time I first listened to them. Most of the personal frustrations boiled down to my gender and what it meant within the context of family, my friends, my romantic interests, and my efforts to socialize on a Friday night. For so much of my life, I had wanted to be thought of as “pretty,” and not simply in the physical sense of the word. No, “pretty” is a mode of being. It is being ever-kind and courteous, intelligent enough to be interesting but charming enough that the intelligence isn’t a turnoff; it’s not scowling when random men smile at you in public, and it’s being effortlessly joyful in the pursuit of pleasing those around you. My first year of college was the first time I realized how much of my “personality” was actually devoted to trying to embody this perfection. This is decidedly not what Brittany Howard brings to the table. Listen to “Hold On” or, better yet, “Don’t Wanna Fight,” and you won’t be met with a smile. That’s not to say that she isn’t kind, or joyful, or fucking awesome in almost every way (which she probably is). But it is to say that her voice is not accommodating. It dominates. And it is brimming with sadness, and frustration, and anguish, to the point where she shrieks the song into being. It is powerful, and certainly not pretty. *** “715 - CRΣΣKS” — Bon Iver But what about the dudes, you ask? Of course, male artists have their own norms of sound, their own set of expectations imposed on them of what makes “good” music. There’s less of a preoccupation with them sounding and being “pretty,” but there are other limitations on which emotions should be expressed sonically (and how) in order to produce a commercial hit. Hip-hop has been largely responsible for bringing transgressions against these platitudes to the mainstream. Kanye, Cudi, Kendrick, Childish— all bring a wide array of vocal maneuvers and musical styles to their work. They give us panting, yelling, and eerie falsettos—all attempts to communicate something that can only be felt. They don’t simply express emotions; they also elicit them, and the music becomes a collective experience. I felt this recently, sitting in my room, smoking a joint, and listening to Bon Iver (otherwise known as Justin Vernon). Remember him? Indie darling famed for “Skinny Love” turned experimental collorator? Definitely not hip-hop, though he and Kanye did collab on “Lost in the World” way back in 2010. Anyway, while
I was sitting on the floor, his song “715 - CRΣΣKS” came on. Like many of the songs on 22, A Million, this one sounds…weird. Definitely not pretty. The album is chock-full of dissonant chords, unexpected brass instruments, and cryptic song titles. But “715 CRΣΣKS” is unique in its lack of noise. It’s nothing but Justin Vernon’s voice. The voice—and I can’t even really call it his voice because it’s been distorted and amplified to the point of unrecognition—is desperate, pained, imploring, and completely unencumbered by any external melody or beat. It’s just him, and I get goosebumps every single time I hear it. *** Nothing about this is new, though. So what’s so special about the handful of indie artists whose music lacks the polish and production of a Billboard Top 100 bop? It’s not that the music is better; who am I to judge “good” art from “bad”? It’s just that I happen to like what I like. But there is something important about artists who expand the range of acceptable sounds, acceptable registers, and acceptable emoting. Note: emoting. Not emotion. All music deals with emotion, the good, the bad, the ugly. But not all music portrays such feelings in ways that are familiar, intimate, and perhaps even a little bit too close for comfort. Not all music invites its listener to scream, howl, and rage along to the melody. Not all music allows for people to just be really fucking weird, and messy, and imperfect. So why care? Because we’re at Brown University. And though it may be the “chillest” among all its fancy Ivy League brethren, the fact remains: The drive and desire for perfection is everywhere. It's what got many of us here. So, when walking across our picturesque campus, seeing other Type A’s speed walking to their next networking events (which will inevitably lead to lucrative consulting careers), it can sometimes feel like all we are capable of doing is smiling, raising our hands in class in hopes we’ll say something groundbreaking, and being fun and open— but not too open—when letting people know just how fucked up we sometimes feel. And god, so much apologizing. Listening to artists who don’t apologize, who don’t posture, who don’t fit a particular mold, who allow themselves to not sound “pretty,” can help us work on the exact same things: learning when not to smile, when not to show off, and when not to act the way others want us to act. february 21 , 2020 7
ARTS&CULTURE
Portrait of a Senior on Fire on friendship, love, and dwindling time BY ROBERT CAPRON ILLUSTRATED BY ASHLEY CHUNG
Valentine’s Day has passed and the end is nigh. I don’t speak of heartbreak, let alone any impending apocalypse: I refer to the t-minus-three months until the Class of 2020 passes through the Van Wickle gates for the second and final time. A certain poignancy, a melancholic sense of the inevitable, has cast a cloud over my beloved campus. Each drunken dash to Jo’s, each harrowing warning of “Caution: Bus is Turning” is but a last-minute addition to what will soon be the archives of our college lives. Naught to do but accept my fate and enjoy the last glimmers of half-fledged adulthood as best as I see fit. As I...see fit. Huh. What do I want to do with my remaining days? I’ve already made a Brown Bucket list; it’s admittedly a paltry one. The single, measly activity I can think of is getting shitfaced in our local Shake Shack (yes, they sell wine, and yes, you too can do this). But what next? Spend as much time with friends as possible? Finally find a way inside Blueno’s hollow interior? Focus on classes? Truthfully, I’ve always been a nostalgic person. I’m prone to passionate rants about childhood shows and the genius of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy. Half the songs I listen to come from iconic scenes in movies; I boot up Spotify not to uncover new singles but to find comfort in familiar hits, to reminisce about the moments that left me with my jaw on the floor. I cannot help but want to memorialize my time at Brown, to condense the myriad feelings and experiences this place has given me into a single set of objects, a select series of photos, carefully curated three-to-four minute blasts into the eardrums. And now I find myself longing to uncover as many of these mementos as possible, even in the midst of the very moments I strive to preserve. Of course, such strategies do little but offer flickers of what was first felt. For all our technological innovation, for all our methods and means of memorialization, we cannot replicate the past, relive the moments, reexperience the magic. So what can you do but thrive in the moments you have? Exist fully in the present? Live as if you “know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them” (thanks, Andy Bernard)? And then, when you do leave those good old days—leave them in the past, and take what is possible into the present? For they never quite die. We cannot let them. Two weeks ago, I saw a film that changed me forever. IFF’s advance screenings have always been exciting for me; my little film snob brain loves the idea of seeing a movie earlier than most other people. In
any event, I walked into Granoff on a last-minute whim fully prepared to watch yet another beautifully shot but emotionally distant period piece. I walked out utterly spellbound, convinced I had just seen what was nothing less than a meditation on the meaning of why we make art and the connection fostered between its subject and its creator. To avoid spoilers (I would never, ever spoil this for someone else), the narrative follows an aristocratic woman named Héloïse who refuses to pose for a portrait; its impending delivery to her Milanese suitor is but the first step toward a forced marriage and the complete loss of what little autonomy she has on a small island off the coast of Brittany. When a painter named Marianne arrives on the island and begins to work on a portrait in secret, she and Héloïse quickly find themselves embroiled in a passionate—and utterly forbidden—affair. If you’re sensing shades of Call Me by Your Name, you’re absolutely right; the two films are very much two sides of the same coin. But Portrait takes a divergent approach to its central romance through a melancholic examination of its inevitable dissolution. From its opening frames— in which an apprentice of the now-older Marianne questions the history behind a spellbinding painting of a woman staring out into the night—the audience is immediately positioned to experience what follows as imbued with a sense of tragedy. The film’s world will not allow its audience the luxury of hope any more than it will its characters. Yet this could not matter less. To spoil this film is not to provide a Wikipedia-style summation of its story. No, what matters here are the particulars. The little details, the blink-and-you-miss-its, the moments where the connection between two souls on this giant rock hurtling through space defies all laws of science, society, class, and world order. It is a film where a smile cannot help but make you smile. Where a glance conveys sentiments incapable of being expressed through words. Where each successive draft of a painting, each slight variation in position and portrayal, shows further progression toward total understanding of the person before you. EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Amanda Ngo
“Now if you’ll excuse me, a video titled ‘not a musical about a founding father Act 1’ is calling me.” -Danielle Emerson, “bootleg access” 2.22.19
“Nigella Lawson is arguably the paragon of home cooking, especially in an era when all Food Network seems to show are high-octane competitions involving wicker baskets filled with rooster feet and ostrich eggs and far too much puree.” -Anna Harvey, “bring on the butter” 2.23.18
FEATURE Managing Editor Liza Edwards-Levin Section Editors Alice Bai Erin Walden Staff Writers Gaya Gupta Anna Harvey NARRATIVE Managing Editor Nicole Fegan Section Editors Michelle Liu Minako Ogita
In short, what makes this film sing is its journey, not its destination. I, a 21-year-old child in man’s clothing, would never dare attempt to define art in broad strokes. But I believe this film truly succeeds in capturing the flickers of passion that drive both the subject and artist of its titular portrait, such that when we finally see the finished product—its function in the “outside world” little more than a commodity to “advance” Heloise’s station in life— we have been granted access to the beauty that fostered its development, even as the purpose behind its creation proves to be little more than transactional. The Milanese suitor will see only the end product. We, the audience, have been given the true gift. Perhaps the “best” art is that which transgresses this boundary, that which allows for subjectivity and personal history to intermix with the initial intentions behind its creation. I think of my own writing, my desperate attempts to capture the seismic shifts in worldview I have experienced over the past four years. The need to convey my newfound understanding of the world. Hell, in this very article, the pressure to capture what it is about Brown that causes me to hold it so dear. And at the end of the day, despite all my abstract and sprawling monologues about the cosmos, I find that what I really wish to tell you about are the flickers of life I have seen in others. The look of gratitude at the end of a long day of shooting film. The shared sense of exhaustion over coffees at Blue State. Giggles and goofy smiles in response to the amazing punching power of a mantis shrimp (look it up, it is insane). These moments are not planned. Not orchestrated. They are spontaneous, unexpected, and utterly profound, like the helpless smile of a woman who cannot help but love another—even as their paths forward demand otherwise, they have shared an experience. They have lived. I will live. I will love. I will find a way into Blueno’s hollow interior. And most of all, I will know that I am doing my best in each and every one of those stupid, infuriating, beautiful little moments that make up a day on College Hill. For we cannot relive them.
Staff Writers Kaitlan Bui Siena Capone Danielle Emerson Jordan Hartzell Naomi Kim Anneliese Mair Kahini Mehta ARTS & CULTURE Managing Editor Griffin Plaag Section Editors Olivia Howe Maddy McGrath Staff Writers Robert Capron David Kleinman Julian Towers
LIFESTYLE Managing Editor Caitlin McCartney
SOCIAL MEDIA Head Editor Paola Solano
Section Editor Christina Vasquez
Editors Cecilia Barron Tessa Devoe
Staff Writers Eashan Das Lauren Toneatto COPY Copy Chief Moe Sattar Copy Editors Kyoko Leaman Aditi Marshan Emma Schneider
Want to be involved? Email: amanda_ngo@brown.edu!
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HEAD ILLUSTRATOR Gaby Treviño LAYOUT Co-Chiefs Amy Choi Nina Yuchi Designers Joanne Han Steve Ju Iris Xie WEB MASTER Jeff Demanche
