Post- March 24, 2016

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upfront

Editor-in-Chief Yidi Wu Managing Editor of Arts & Culture Abby Muller Managing Editor of Features Monica Chin Managing Editor of Lifestyle Cissy Yu Managing Editor of Online Amy Andrews Arts & Culture Editors Liz Studlick Mollie Forman Features Editors Lauren Sukin Halley McArn Lifestyle Editor Rebecca Ellis Claire Sapan Corinne Sejourne Creative Director Grace Yoon Copy Chiefs Lena Bohman Alicia DeVos Serif Sheriffs Logan Dreher Kate Webb

contents 3 upfront all rhodes lead to providence Post- Editors

4 features lakeville Monica Chin

5 lifestyle why brown?

Rebecca Ellis the indian fairytale Yamini Mandava

6 arts & culture re-read, re-watch, re-listen Various

7 arts & culture soundtracks and sensations Claribel Wu

8 lifestyle top ten overheard at brown overthinking Kayla You

editor’s note Dear Readers, If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a day or two. If what you want is consistency, though, I’m afraid you’re out of luck.

This does not seem entirely fair on average.

Perhaps the weather has really varied a bit more in the past few weeks than it typically does in New England as a whole. But you can hardly blame us here at Post- for noting the fickleness of the skies this week. On Sunday evening, we had a snow warning (woe to all those who attempted to go to Jo’s past midnight, though we note that Baja’s stayed faithfully open). On Wednesday, the sun shone and creative Brown students emerged to juggle various things on the Main Green (a sure sign of good weather).

For those who aren’t old hands at layering, the changes in the weather must be unfortunate. But as we approach Spring Break and slog through the middle of the semester, the sky, sunny one day, foreboding the next, is a nice reminder: if you don’t like the weather, just wait a day or so.

As the weather goes, so goes life at Brown.

Best,

Yidi

Head Illustratrix Katie Cafaro Staff Writers Sara Al-Salem Tushar Bhargava Katherine Chavez Loren Dowd Rebecca Forman Joseph Frankel Devika Girish Gabrielle Hick Lucia Iglesias Anne-Marie Kommers Joshua Lu Ameer Malik Aubrey McDonough Caitlin Meuser Emma Murray Spencer Roth-Rose Ryan Walsh Claribel Wu Staff Illustrators Yoo Jin Shin Alice Cao Emily Reif Beverly Johnson Michelle Ng Peter Herrara Mary O’Connor Emma Margulies Jason Hu Jenice Kim Cover Mary O’Connor

From right to left: Yidi Wu ‘17, Abby Muller ‘16, Monica Chin ‘17, Cissy Yu ‘17, Amy Andrews ‘16, Liz Studlick ‘16, Mollie Forman ‘16, Lauren Sukin ‘16, Corinne Sejourne ‘16, Lena Bohman ‘18, Alicia DeVos ‘18, Logan Dreher ‘19, Kate Webb ‘19, Katie Cafaro ‘17 (Please send us a photo at post.magazine.bdh@gmail.com)

upfront

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all rhodes lead to providence editors on home POST- EDITORS

Someone, at some point, apparently, said “Home is where the heart is.” This week, we asked Post- editors about their homes. Whether you’ll be spending your spring break at home, Brown, or elsewhere, we hope you have a relaxing and warm few days, and we’ll see you in two weeks! -Monica Chin, managing editor of Features I moved around a lot as a kid. I was born in Beijing, China. I moved to Switzerland when I was five. Two years later, I moved to Indiana. One year later, I moved to Maryland. A year after that, I moved to Pennsylvania. I’ve moved twice more, and now my mom, my dad, and I live in three places: my mom in the Western suburbs of Philadelphia; my dad in Shaoxing, China; and I in Providence, Rhode Island. In light of all this I suppose it’s no great surprise that the concept of a home doesn’t resonate particularly strongly with me. I don’t mean that I don’t literally understand the pull of a home: I used to dream of a house with a white picket fence, a red wagon, a cat, a dog, and two children (I’m a single child). I demanded of my poor parents all the conventional trappings I associated with home. But now, miles away from both of them and every other place I’ve ever lived in, I’ve learned a kind of carelessness toward my surroundings. The brick and stone and glass walls around Brown are comforting in their familiarity, but they are just walls, after all. -YW

I grew up in a home in New York City; however, as most of this home was neither homey nor comforting, my real home became my bed. And, as childhood habits tend to do, this behavior has continued beyond the confines of New York City. In the dorms it wasn’t all that recognizable—the only place beyond my bed to spend my time was the desk chair that someone decided to make half-rocking chair, and thus a precarious perch for my fragile psyche—but now that I have an apartment of my own, it’s become apparent that I do, in fact, have a phobia of spaces beyond the confines of my mattress. I spend plenty of hours on the couch with my good friend the TV—but every time, before long, that little niggle of anxiety would worm its way into my stomach. And the niggle would become a wiggle. And all of a sudden I would be sitting in my own living room with a sand monster in my chest, roaring for the safety of my comforter. This isn’t a comfortable trait. I don’t enjoy feeling alienated in what is supposed to be my own space. And maybe one day I’ll grow out of it. But for now, if I have a mattress, a frame, and a nearby outlet, I’m home. - MF When I applied to Brown, I considered myself a Writer with a capital W and so I used each seemingly trivial question on the application materials to emphasis my writerliness. Looking back on it, I cringe. It’s trying painfully hard. If it had been my choice, I probably wouldn’t have admitted me; I would’ve written back and told me to throw out my thesaurus. But I still like my answer to the

question about where I called home: “I’ve lived in vibrant, sprawling Houston since birth, in the same quiet green house. As I’ve grown, I’ve discovered the city. As a child, the peaceful streets of my neighborhood; as a young teen, the winding, wooded streets near school; as a driver, the chaotic freeways and boundless possibilities.”

Not bad for weighing in at 299 of the 300 character limit. What’s surprising is how little of my impression of it has changed: Despite my new perspective after four years here, I still envision home as quiet green house, suburban sidewalks, wooded streets, freeways. I was expecting to have some moment of clarity during my last couple visits home, but I failed to realize that they would indeed be my last. After graduation comes apartment hunting and Europe and work with no time for a last trip to Houston.

My parents told me a week ago that they were going to sell my car, and two days later it was done. If I do indeed go back this summer, it won’t be the same in a literal sense—I’ll no longer be able to spend time on those concrete skyways, except as a passenger.

This is normal. Virtually everyone I know is leaving behind a home at home and a home at school. But I’m feeling strangely ungrounded without the grounding loops of highway and my portable metal-and-plastic home. -LS I was sick this week. I woke up Monday morning with cold sweats and some kind of vengeful headache and just a general confusion about what was happening to my body. I wanted nothing more than to call my mom and tell her I couldn’t go to school today. She would call in sick for me, bring me saltines, and I could spend the day evading responsibilities and cuddling with my dog, maybe even getting through a solid half-season of “Arrested Development.” The college version of a sick day proved to be much more depressing: It consisted of me slurping down some lukewarm tea at the V-Dub, shivering my way through classes, and upon getting back to my dorm room, bleakly staring out upon the parking lot outside my window while anxiety over undone work slowly but surely intensified in the pit of my stomach.

I’m going to go home for break and it’s going to be really, really nice. And even though I’ll be doing everything I’ve dreamed of while at school—sleeping like a normal human being, finally catching up on every Netflix obligation I’ve ever had, eating my dad’s pancakes—I know I’ll just be wanting to get back to Brown before break is over. For sure, there’ll be more sick days, depressing Ratty meals, and times when I need to get away from here and get back to somewhere I can claim to understand. But there is something to be said for figuring out how to live in a place that I don’t understand.

On days when my body gives up, I’m reminded of how untethered I truly am, and it feels kind of nice. It’s a home that stays with me. -HM

It might surprise people who know me now, but I didn’t used to be such an ardent defender of my home state. Before I came to Brown, I liked Delaware, but I didn’t need to talk about it all the time, because everyone else I knew also lived in Delaware—what was there to say about it? When I got to Brown, I knew some things would be different: I had to get used to giving out my area code when exchanging phone numbers with new people—who knew that some states had more than one area code?—and adjust to accounting for sales tax (which is honestly still the bane of my existence). But growing up in my little Delaware bubble didn’t prepare me for how little information people outside that bubble would have about the First State. During my first weeks of college, I heard all kinds of wild comments about Delaware’s existence: My new classmates told me they thought Delaware was in New England, near Chicago, or that they didn’t even know it was a state. My freshman roommate confessed several months into the semester that when she first got the email about us rooming together, she read “Roommate State/Country: DE” and thought that I hailed from Denmark.

Upon introducing myself to new people, over and over again I heard: “Wow, I’ve never met anyone from Delaware before!” And so a Delaware evangelist was born.

Ever since those first few weeks at Brown, I’ve made it my mission to increase the Delaware knowledge of every person I know—a feat that’s not hard to achieve when most people’s starting knowledge is zero. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, so it makes sense that my devotion to Delaware has only grown since I’ve moved away. But it’s more than that. By spreading the Delaware gospel to my friends (who listen to my proselytizing with more patience than I deserve), I’ve shared some of the things I treasure most about my home: the occasional Joe Biden or Aubrey Plaza sighting, free Rita’s water ice on the first day of spring, the beautiful beaches in the southern part of the state. Friends come up to me now sometimes and say, “I read/saw/heard this thing about Delaware, and I thought of you.” And I smile, happy to have succeeded in my First

State Awareness mission, and happier still to be reminded of home. -AA Marilyn opened the front door quietly at 2:42 p.m. But Jeff heard the key turning and awoke from his comfortable mid-afternoon slumber in the easy chair by the indoor plant. The indoor plant, what an odd detail. Yes, but now it is apparent exactly what type of people these are—the type of people who keep indoor plants and are sure to water them regularly, the type of people who never forget to set their coffee pot the night before, the type of people who got a dog before they had children to make sure they were ready. On this day, the first day Marilyn ever woke Jeff from his daily 2:17—2:46 p.m. nap between lunch and afternoon snack, everything changed. Surprised at his rude awakening, Jeff let out a grunt and an oof and struggled his way to standing. With a glance and an eyeroll, Marilyn made her way to the kitchen.

Jeff tried to recover. He tried to regain his semblance of normalcy, even though the balance had been thrown all out of whack; his entire day was now four minutes off, and he desired the extra four minutes of sleep he was missing. It would take weeks for his sleep time to regain an equilibrium. Nevertheless, he followed Marilyn—no, trudged after Marilyn into the kitchen.

“Busy day at the lab?” Jeff asked. A pause. Another pause. Marilyn’s mouth hung agape. Jeff had broken their number six unspoken house rule: leave work at work. (Their first five, in order, are no socks in bed, spaghetti every Thursday, double bolt the door before bed, never neglect coasters—condensation is evil, and always, always floss before brushing.) Jeff would not be deterred.

“How was the lab today? Get anything done?”

Marilyn realized it would be that kind of night.

“No, I went to the lab and got nothing accomplished,” she snapped. Jeff recoiled. His sleep deprivation and resulting irritation was seeping into his actions. Marilyn continued: “Well, if you really want to know, today was precisely okay. Very okay.”

“Well, what’d you do?” Jeff asked, figuring that it couldn’t hurt to sink himself

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features

deeper—a hole is a hole, right?

“Today was rather different, actually,” Marilyn said. Ah, the root of the day’s issues. “A group of school children came to see the lab. We showed them around and had a scavenger hunt. They had to take pictures of lots of lab materials: flasks, ammonium, Bunsen burners, burettes, you know.” Jeff did not know.

But Marilyn was on a roll like butter and could not be stopped now. “Then, we had them dissect a pig.” Her voice turned hard, and Jeff realized where she was headed. “They were doing great, labelling all the different parts. They got all the easier parts—head, hooves, mouth, lungs—with no trouble, and they focused well on the harder parts like the kidneys and trachea.” Marilyn paused. “But why am I telling you this?

You already know what the real problem was.”

Jeff did, and walked to the fridge.

Opening it, he pulled out a jar and spoke: “Home is where the heart is.” -AD I was always homesick as a kid, and I was homesick as a first-semester college freshman. I cried a lot that first month; I remember tearfully explaining to a near-stranger that it wasn’t that I missed anything specific about home, it was that I missed everything. My parents, my sister, my dog, my room. My street, my friends, my crappy old desktop computer. Driving to high school. Familiarity.

Everything that makes something feel like home; everything it means to know a place.

It’s almost four years later now, and it’s the end of March, and I’m two months away from graduating. When I went home that first time freshman year, I remember driving around my town loving that I knew every building

and every road. (Metaphorically speaking. My sense of direction is very bad.)

When I go home now, it’s—nice, but that’s about it; I’ll always have a deepseated fondness for the town where I grew up, but mostly it’s my family that I miss now.

For the first three semesters of college, I deliberately said “I’m going back to my room” at the end of the day instead of “I’m going home.” In my fourth semester, the distinction stopped feeling quite as true. Over winter break this year, when people asked when I was heading back to Brown, I kept catching myself saying “I go home at the end of January.” This is where my life is now; I know every building and every road.

(Again, a metaphor.)

I might never again spend more than a few days at a time in North Carolina.

After May, I’ll never spend longer than a weekend at a time at Brown. I try not

to spend too long thinking about either one of these things, because both make me sad in different but powerful ways.

I’m not that homesick kid I was four years ago, but I’m still bracing myself a little for the missing to hit me again.

With time, though, anywhere can become familiar. I’m not sure yet where I’ll be next year, but wherever it is, I’m looking forward to learning every road.

-AM Illustration by Clarisse Angkasa

lakeville

on small towns

MONICA CHIN managing editor of features The first thing you notice when you’re entering the rural, heavily agrarian, and chilly tri-state area of Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts, is that the buildings are all old. Some of them are indeterminately abandoned, sporting chipping paint, dangling shingles, and boarded windows, while others have been refurbished to a synthetic colonial splendor. As you drive farther from the Massachusetts turnpike, with its blinding streetlights and neon billboards, chain restaurants and Old Navy outlets along the sides, the roads become darker and narrower. The dividing lines disappear, the pavement grows uneven, and you begin to meander through alternating quilt patches of forest and cornfields.

The journey to my house is how I always imagined a Pony Express journey would look. You drive down long, empty stretches of road, over rolling hills, and

through evergreen forests. Every so often you come upon a town, passing by an inn, a tavern or two, little shops with handwritten signs hanging from their doorknobs reading “open by chance” or “please knock.” A bend, a four-way stop sign, over a hill, and cornfields again.

Lakeville is a run-down gas station, an abandoned firehouse (the volunteer fire department moved—I have no idea where they are now), a few restaurants, a post office they’ve been trying to close since before I can remember, a bank with a tired-looking ATM on the outside, and that’s it. Rarely can pedestrians be seen “downtown”—if they harbor any sort of desire for an outing, they’ll almost certainly have ventured an hour to the nearest large town, two hours to a mall, three hours to a city, anywhere that isn’t here. Lakeville is a place that people my age leave.

My college friends always balk when I tell them about my rural, small-town life. They’re incredulous when I tell them that I spent grades one through 12 with the same group of 30 students, that I had to learn to repair a lawnmower my freshman year, and that I had to drive a tractor throughout my school parking lot to pass a required class. That must have been so awesome, they say with wide eyes.

The truth is that it was not awesome.

Driving tractors and planting seeds and building shelves and boxes is as ordinary and expected in a small rural town as reading books and solving equations is in school. I went through the motions the same way everyone around me did, checking off my ag-ed and tech-ed requirements along with math, chemistry, and everything else.

The truth is that I never fit in. I somehow evolved to crave academic discourse from an early age. I loved politics, philosophy, mathematical proofs. I didn’t particularly care for the outdoors and often elected to read the New York Times online in my classroom over playing outside at recess. As I entered the world of the internet and began to connect with students from fancy suburbs and big cities, the resentment began to pile up. I wanted their debate teams, AP classes, college counselors, school newspapers, electives delving into social justice or economic policy. I wanted a town with a mall and museums and a group of hyper-intellectual friends to argue about theories of morality with. As I got older, I began longing for clubs and bars—Tinder is somewhat useless when you’ve known everyone within 20 miles of your house since you were five. By my 18th year in Lakeville, I had come to feel stifled in my high school class of 80 and my town of 900, which was 93 percent white. I counted down the days until I could get out and see the world.

My house is on top of a steep hill, at the end of a road that winds through a series of pastures, rotting fences, and old, crumbling wells. My room is adorned with faded, flowery wallpaper and lace

curtains, both of which have been present there since long before I occupied it. The windows overlook our wooded backyard, which is decidedly less wooded each time I come home. I’m not sure if it’s us or our neighbors who keep taking down the trees; for some reason, more and more of them need to go.

I’ve slept in the same bed since I was five years old. The floor that used to be covered with books and stuffed animals is now covered in boxes and suitcases. I don’t live here anymore. I live somewhere else, with tall buildings and dirty buses and traffic lights. My friends all took AP classes in high school. Their parents are doctors, lawyers, or both. They eat out with their parents’ credit cards and have paid internships in big cities this summer. I finally got out, after dreaming of doing so for so many years. So many of my classmates are now living and working there—I left without a glance back.

It took getting out to realize how much a part of me Lakeville will always be. As I sit in my lecture on the sensedatum theory of perception, I remember burning my fingers while welding metal boxes in a courtyard. While accepting a debate award at the front of an auditorium, I remember herding escaped cows across the baseball field and back to their barn. Every time I walk across the Main Green and see the ivy enveloping the sides of the buildings, I remember shabby, graffitied textbooks with no covers and attempts to use graphing calculators with cracks down their middle. As I write papers on 20th century literature, I remember stocking shelves for hours on end at a grocery store where only two of the cash registers worked. I am viewing my new life with a constant awareness of the privileges it carries, of the wave of luck that carried me to it. I never fit into that world, but I’ll never truly be part of this one. These days, I’m almost proud of that.

Thank you, Lakeville. I’ll be back soon.

Illustration by Stephanie Zhou

lifestyle

5

why brown?

finding passion in providence

REBECCA ELLIS lifestyle section editor I feel like I’ve walked onto a TV set.

Walter Simpson sits laughing in the courtroom.

A recording plays—it’s Walter talking to a detective on the phone, taped on December 15th of last year.

“Do you have a twin out there?” Detective Sergeant Greenough asks.

Hearing this question again, one month later, amuses Walter. Were Walter a twin, then his twin might have been the one Brandi Pisani picked out of a photo lineup as the man who sexually assaulted her. It could be the twin, not him, sitting in front of a judge with red handcuffs clamped to his wrists.

But with no twin to his name, Walter is the one shackled in Courtroom 8 of the Licht Judicial Complex listening to the State’s evidence against him. Ill-at-ease, Walter attempts to hide the chains under his slender fingers, but his grey sweater and boat shoes continue to mark him an outsider in the sea of stern dark suits and oxfords.

The scene is unfolding one block from the Rock. If you go to the first floor of the library, and head to the back window, you will see a brick building peeking out on Benefit street, almost identical to the surrounding buildings, except for an elegant marble entrance. Students may pass by on their way to Benefit Street Café, the RISD library, or Den Den, depending on their angle of origin. At least, these are the times the building has appeared in my peripheral vision.

But I never knew it was anything besides a

beautiful brick building on a street known for its beautiful brick buildings. Now, on a school assignment to report on a trial, not only had I learned of its identity as a courthouse, but I had made it inside the building, inside Courtroom 9, and, in an unexpected advance, all the way to the jury bench, where the judge told me I’d have a better view. All I had had to do to gain access was flash my Brown ID to an aging cop. Even that, he told me, was a courtesy. Anyone can enter the courthouse. Just don’t bring a gun.

Now, as I sit nervously in the jury bench, Walter sits notably less nervously in front of the judge, watching the detective explain why he has been charged, once again, with first-degree sexual assault, and will likely be sent back to start what will be his 29th year in prison.

Walter looks around the room. Wooden pine cones hang from the ceiling, a remnant of the Italian heritage of Federal Hill, symbolizing abundance and quality.

Walter likely doesn’t know the antiquated meaning behind the pine cones. But, attuned to irony as he is, surely if he learned, he could find some more sordid amusement in the symbolism.

To the judge, the attorneys, and the detective, working toward the lofty pursuit of justice in a room with carved walls and gilded trimmings, abundance and quality are appropriate motifs for their lives. But to an ex-felon about to commit the rest of his life to a jail cell, they are hollow words. In fact, the whole event is hollow for Walter. Even I knew the trial was devoid of meaning

and this was my first time seeing a judge outside of Judge Judy.

Walter never had a chance in life. Since getting released from jail, he had been unable to get a job and his home life was so shaky he slept with a knife. This isn’t an excuse for what he did. But it is a critically shaky foundation that was but a footnote in the trial.

I left that three-hour long court appointment confused and alarmingly disillusioned for 11 a.m. on a Tuesday morning. Sandwiched between my Blue Room bacon, egg and cheese breakfast bagel and my 1 p.m. afternoon class in Watson, I had taken a ten-minute walk and witnessed something disconcertingly real. The horrors of sexual assault and the endless cycle of recidivism were being played out every day, essentially on Brown’s campus.

But I had asked for this insight, planting the seeds for it in my Banner schedule. I wanted not just a degree from Brown, but passion.

Last year, I embodied the trope of the lost freshman. I would look at Brown’s course catalogue and feel like I was drowning in the ocean of class offerings. I picked inefficiently and all of my classes ended up exclusively involving my sitting in the back of a large lecture hall. It did not matter if I was there. The entire semester could have been done remotely, submitting Canvas posts from my dorm room. By the end, it was.

I questioned my need to be at Brown, to be at college. I struggled to stay awake during class, drawing all the information and interest I could

from the dry assigned texts, only to never be asked about them again. It all felt meaningless.

I thought college just wasn’t right for me. But, everyone else seemed to be thriving. So, I decided to try something new. I intentionally picked classes that required heavy out-of-the-classroom work, classes that let Providence feel like a petri dish, not a trap.

Now, I feel this passion each week, not just from my court class, but also from all of the community-oriented courses I placed in my cart.

As new assignments pop up on my syllabi every Monday, I head back down to the courthouse, to Kennedy Plaza, to parts of Providence I’d never heard of until this year. What I’m learning is no longer something I’m reading on Vox, in the back of a classroom when I should be taking notes; it’s something that smells like old wood and spits fiery dialogue. It’s something I’m interviewing policemen and business owners about. It’s real and I care.

This passion is what I’ve learned differentiates a good class from a bad class, a good college semester from a bad college semester. When I find classes with real world application, I feel fulfilled, angered in a way that makes the future seem important and imminent, and I feel content. I need to be here.

Illustration by Peter Herrera

the indian fairytale

as sponsored by the public transportation corporation of delhi

YAMINI MANDAVA contributing writer I was in second grade when I discovered the only dream I would continue to harbor for the next 11 years. My life changed one morning at 8 a.m. when a classmate walked in crying. Second graders are not a particularly sensitive breed, and our class fit the mold: We loudly pronounced the crying classmate a “baby,” a “girl,” and a “nincompoop.” Two of those descriptors are demographic identities; none of them are insulting. Within the next hour we were told the auto rickshaw that the boy and his siblings took to school had overturned while speeding.

Auto rickshaws are three-wheeled public transportation vehicles(read: taxis) that always look just slightly unstable. They’re made mostly of plastic, but sound like rusty rattle toys. When their rickety engines are pushed beyond 15 miles per hour, they shudder and give up. We’d all heard stories of rickshaws overturning and had questions about the particular mechanics of the gruesome incident.

My friend and I proceeded to spend the next 30 minutes discussing the position in which the auto might have landed, figuring it was either tipped onto its side or flipped over completely onto its roof. We decided that both options were plausible, but we wanted to know which of the two had happened to the “nincompoop” we kind of knew. The celebrity had been mobbed by our class, and we thought it was inconsiderate to ask him about the minutiae of his near-death experience. However, curiosity eventually trumped sensitivity, and we soon discovered the rickshaw had toppled over sideways. In that moment, my

dream was born: to see an auto rickshaw flip upside down. Ever since, I have carefully watched any auto rickshaw that has crossed my path.

Although I have an admittedly strange desire to watch a rickshaw overturn, I am unafraid of riding in autos. There is something innately Indian about my attitude towards potential fatality: In India we study danger, examine it under our smudgy microscopes, discuss it at length with angry gesticulation, and finally decide to live as we had before we even were aware of this danger. In 2012, for example, when a 22-year-old woman was violently raped and left for dead in a neighborhood in Delhi near where we lived, we were presented with statistics: Delhi was the seventh most unsafe place for women in the world; one in six girls in Delhi will be raped in their twenties. However, despite this horrific incident, we continued with our daily routines as if nothing had changed—mounting busses, taxis, all modes of public transportation without second thought.

We look danger in the face, bob our heads ambiguously in its general direction, and then continue to live our lives under the ridiculous assumption that this danger did not and even can not see us.

This irrational response to danger is our only mechanism for survival. For those of us outside the infamous bubble of the 1 percent, perhaps the greatest danger we face is caused by the inhabitants of the 1 percent bubble. There is no limit to the power exercised by those in this bubble. In Delhi, everything and everyone can be bought—everything except for the will of an auto rickshaw driver. Drivers in Delhi have attained

spiritual transcendence—the same transcendence that many young white people, eating roots in remote ashrams in the Himalayas, seem to think India is all about. These drivers attribute no value to material possessions: They have found the avenues to express their most true selves.

The surfaces of an auto rickshaw in Delhi resemble the top of my MacBook: Neither is a practice of minimalism. The windshield is layered with a plethora of colorful stickers, so many that the driver is forced to peer through a small opening free of stickers to see the road. The black tarp on the back is covered with advertising banners, often for products like fairness creams and muscle building protein powder. The walls of the auto itself are also decorated, laminated with various pictures of popular Bollywood actors. I have learned to sit exactly in the middle of a seat—sandwiched between photos of the shirtless male actor and the actress awkwardly bending over. While my hair becomes a tangle of dust and sand from the strong wind blowing through the car during the ride, the actors’ hair remains perfectly coiffed.

In creating the Human Development Index, a composite statistic of indicators of development that is used to rank countries into four tiers of development, the United Nations Development Program has consistently said that one of India’s greatest failings is the economic gap between the wealthy and the poor. Apparently, they’ve said it to everyone but the auto drivers.

Luxury cars in Delhi seem exempt from the law; theypass through standstill traffic, ignore

red lights, speed through congested alleyways.

Nothing can slow these posh drivers down, except for an auto rickshaw driving 15 miles per hour in front of them, straddling two lanes on the expressway. Auto drivers resist the wild gesticulation coming from those inside the $250,000 cars and the aggressive fist-shaking of their chauffeurs cursing loudly from inside the sealed car. These taxi drivers remain unperturbed—they are steadfast and dependable. Their autos, however, are not.

As India takes significant steps toward lower rates of emissions and safer public transportation, I see that soon the auto rickshaw will become obsolete. The air in Delhi will no longer lead the world for most polluted, and fewer children will suffer from the trauma of being tipped over on their way to school. Though this change will undoubtedly be beneficial for the general health of the country, the nation will inevitably resist it.

They will begin by criticizing everyone—the politicians who supported it and those who opposed it. But they will eventually learn to bob their heads ambiguously at the thought of the threewheeled disaster we let roam freely on the Indian roads for decades.

I look forward to lamenting the loss of the fabric of the Indian middle class in the way my parents describe Ambassador taxis and my grandparents describe walking. This lamentation may come at a price: I may never see an auto rickshaw flip over, and that may be okay.

Illustration by Jenice Kim

6

arts & culture

re-read, re-watch, re-listen a conversation

VARIOUS have wanted to see live for so long, and now I’m finally seeing it,” and the next time was like, “Yep, I’ve seen this before, cool.”

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length and includes mild to moderate spoilers for “Gilmore Girls,” “Titanic,” “Love Actually,” and “Inside Out.” For the full conversation, go to post.browndailyherald.com.

Amy Andrews, managing editor of Online: Today I want to talk about this idea I’ve been calling “repeatability”—that is, rewatching movies or TV shows, re-reading books, re-listening to music, etc. To start off, I want us to go around and talk about our philosophies of repeating. Are you a person who re-reads books, re-watches movies, relistens to music, that kind of thing?

Abby Muller, managing editor of Arts and Culture: When I was younger I used to re-read everything constantly. If I went to the library, I would try to re-read the books before I returned them. Anything I got before sixth or seventh grade, I probably re-read like … upwards of five times, probably more.

And Harry Potter most of all, obviously.

Gaby Hick, Arts and Culture staff writer: Well I mean, I think every single person has re-read Harry Potter. And if you haven’t there’s something wrong with you.

AA: That’s just a given.

Chantal Marauta, Arts and Culture staff writer: I’ve never read Harry Potter.

AA: Oh my god.

GH: Okay, so you’re leaving. [Laughter] Music is definitely its own category, because I would say if I like a song I listen to it maybe 10 times in a row. And maybe I’m particular, but I’ve also seen movies twice in a row. I really like “The Breakfast Club.” “Little Miss Sunshine” I’ve watched 14 times. There was a specific period of time when that movie was very meaningful. Books—John Irving’s “Hotel New Hampshire,” I’ve read at least four times. But I think it’s also because I have a very poor short-term memory, so I just forget and I read them again and it’s like experiencing the story a whole other time.

CM: The only book that I found myself sort of gravitating towards again and again is Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell To Arms,” just because it has this really detailed description of Milan, which is my hometown, so by re-reading it, it kind of takes me back.

I’m more of a really bad re-watcher of movies, especially chick flicks, just because I get stressed very easily, and if I’m in a mood one night, I’ll want to watch a movie—I’d rather know how the movie ends or how it progresses so I’ll know if it’s going to make me

feel a certain way or I’ll know what to expect.

AM: I was trying to think of specific movies that I know I’ve seen a million times, and there are only a couple that occur to me off the top of my head. “The Last Airbender,” the M. Night Shyamalan version of Avatar, is so bad. It’s like maybe the worst movie ever made. I have made a lot of people watch Avatar with me because it is one of my favorite pieces of media ever. And I feel like, to emotionally get over having finished this beautiful, wonderful story, the best thing to do is to watch it be butchered as horribly as possible for the entertainment value. So I’ve made a lot of people watch that with me.

GH: You’re so sadistic.

AM: Everything else I re-watch is mostly for the comfort reason. But that one is to torture my friends.

GH: What about the repeatability of something like a show? Say, a ballet. Because I’ve seen “The Nutcracker”—the first time my mom took me I was four, and apparently I stood up in the middle of the first act and said, “When are they gonna talk?” really loudly. But I’ve seen it every year since. I can recite it. Well, there’s no speaking.

AA: Can you do the dances?

GH: Absolutely not, because I’m an uncoordinated person, but I know exactly what happens every minute. And the music, obviously, is the same—bless you, Tchaikovsky.

AA: Do you feel like it changes? Like, do you appreciate it more now that you’re older, or is it more like, nostalgia? Do you see the same production every year?

GH: Yes, the Toronto Ballet. It kind of marks the beginning of Christmas, going to see it. It’s interesting because it used to be just my mum and I. And now it’s my cousin, who’s a little girl, my aunt, my mum, and I. So the people who have come to see it grew.

I guess in the same way as what you’re saying, showing the same movie to a number of people—it’s not just for me.

AA: Maybe going along with live shows and moving into the music direction, is concerts. I don’t know if you guys have ever seen like the same artist more than once, but one of my favorite bands is the Decemberists, and I saw them in Boston last spring and then this past fall, and it wasn’t as exciting the second time. The first time was so like, “Oh my god, I’m seeing these people that I

CM: I saw Paul McCartney live almost five years ago. And towards the end of his concert he sang “Hey Jude,” and there was this back-and-forth with the audience where he was like, now the girls, now the guys, and everyone was just singing along cause everyone knows the lyrics to “Hey Jude,” and there were fireworks, and it was just a really big spectacle. And it gave me goosebumps the first time I was there watching him. I’ve re-watched his concerts online, and I’ve got all his concert albums, and every time I listen to “Hey Jude” there’s always the same backand-forth. I thought that I’d get really tired of it after a while, but every time it never fails to give me chills. It’s just a really powerful moment, because it’s Paul McCartney singing with the audience, and Paul McCartney is just this big legend.

GH: I studied chorus and voice when I was in high school, so if I hear someone sing something and I really like the way they do it, I just listen to that moment over and over.

Which gets a little obsessive. And then my roommate comes home and is like, please stop listening to that song. But it’s also the duration thing. Because you can’t just sit down and start a book, unless it’s a short book, and read it over and over, because there goes 50 hours. But a song, it’s three minutes. I mostly re-read articles, because they’re quick.

AA: I have a list of YouTube videos that I like to watch because YouTube videos are short. I literally have a folder in my bookmarks called “Pick-Me-Up,” and it’s all YouTube videos. A lot of times I’m like, “Well, I’m sad, I want to watch “Parks and Rec,” the greatest show of all time.” But I don’t have enough time to watch all of “Parks and Rec,” so I will watch a clip.

GH: Poems are nice to re-read too.

AM: What’s your go-to poem?

GH: Well, there’s this thing you can do on the Poetry Foundation website where you can browse by theme or topic or feeling. So there’s one that’s “love,” and then “unrequited,” “break-up,” “at the start.” So if you’re feeling in a particular mood you could do that. My go-to is Mary Oliver. Probably my favorite poet. She’s very grounded in the natural world. She’s very easy to read. e. e. cummings. Pablo Neruda, if you’re feeling particularly ready to mingle. And then T.S. Eliot.

AA: I’m not a fan of T.S. Eliot at all. But I have read some T.S. Eliot poems… so I know for a fact that I wouldn’t go back to those.

Do you ever watch a movie, read a book, and are like, “I never want to go back to this again,” either because it was bad, just objectively bad, or something that’s good in whatever way, something that you’ve enjoyed, but for whatever reason you don’t want to ever revisit it again.

CM: My dad loves old movies—I guess the Italian version of Charlie Chaplin, his name is Totò. Basically they’re all these old black and white movies, they were filmed in

the ’50s, ’60s, and it was just a completely different form of comedy. I don’t really enjoy most of his films, but once I was watching a film with my dad. And it wasn’t a film that I would go back to, because I didn’t particularly enjoy it, but I enjoyed the experience.

It did make me laugh, it was a night that I was in the mood to maybe try something new, and since I was with my dad, it kind of brought us closer.

GH: A movie that I saw that I would never watch again was “Titanic.”

CM: I was going to say that!

GH: Not because I thought it was sad, but because I thought it was so stupid that she couldn’t move over on that piece of wood.

AA: Yes, oh my god. You are so right.

There’s so much room on the goddamn door.

GH: I mean, we all know what’s going to happen. The ship’s going down, hello history. It takes hours to get there, and you build it all up, and then she throws the necklace back in the ocean like a dumbass! When she already let Leonardo DiCaprio drown and turn into an ice cube! Don’t watch it. Spoiler alert, it’s bad.

CM: I guess the theory is, just because it’s one of the highest grossing movies of all time, it’s a classic.

AM: Yeah, I’m going to watch it at some point.

AA: It’s worth seeing, I think— GH: Never.

AA: But it’s funny you say that, because I was thinking about sleepover movies, because I’ve watched that movie at at least four or five sleepovers in my lifetime. The other movie that I’ve also seen a million times at a sleepover is “Love Actually.”

CM: Oh my god yes.

AM: I have not seen that either.

GH: What? Colin Firth is in it!

AA: Colin Firth is A-plus. But the first time I saw it, I watched it with my four best friends from high school, and now every Christmas we watch it, and like every time we have a sleepover. And I’ve seen it so many times that it gets worse and worse every time I see it, because I just see more and more problems. The first time I saw it, I was like, “Oh, look at all these beautiful romantic love stories, it’s great,” and now I watch it and I’m like, “Alan Rickman’s character sucks.”

CM: The girl that sleeps with the hot secretary person and then her brother calls— AM: This movie sounds like a lot.

AA: Yeah. There’s a lot of really problematic stuff in it. A lot of the gender politics are weird, and there’s weird slut shaming— there’s a whole lot of weird stuff that I wasn’t aware of when I was seeing it the first time because I was younger and I was like, “What a cute movie.” Now that movie is so tied up

arts & culture in my friend group that we watch it all the time and I could basically quote the whole thing, but I also kind of hate it.

GH: Yeah, I’m re-watching “Gilmore Girls” because now it’s on Netflix. Rory’s first boyfriend is Dean, and when I watched it the first time I was like, “Oh my god, he’s the cutest person ever.” And I re-watch it and you’re like, “This is an extremely psychologically abusive relationship,” and I don’t understand how I ever thought this was okay. I mean, I’m much older now.

AA: I was also thinking about “Gilmore Girls,” which I watched for the first time last year, and then I re-watched it again recently.

But I was watching the seventh season, and I actually had to stop watching it because it was getting too close to Rory’s graduation from college and she keeps freaking out. She’s like, “What am I going to do? I don’t know what I’m doing next year.” Rory’s literally living my life right now. But also everything turns out okay for her, which is positive, but I don’t know if everything’s going to turn out okay for me. So it was hitting a little bit too close to home, and I kind of had to stop and be like, I’ll come back to this after I graduate and get a job and know that my life—while not as great as Rory’s, probably—will still turn out okay. Last year when I was watching it, I didn’t care that she was graduating from college, because I was like, graduation’s

so far away.

GH: So far.

AA: Now it really is not.

Lastly, if you have one story of a thing you’ve seen or read a bunch of times or like if you have one thing that you know is the best of its thing in the world because you’ve read it or watched it ten million times and want to recommend.

My favorite TV show, which I already mentioned, is “Parks and Rec.” It is the best show of all time, and that is just a fact. But my favorite episode is this episode called “The Fight,” in the third season, where Leslie and Ann, who are two of the main characters, have a fight and they get drunk on one of their coworker’s alcohol that he invented, and everyone in the whole office gets drunk and fights and it’s hilarious. It is the funniest episode of all time. And I’ve seen it like 30 times, so many times that I actually have most of it memorized. Or not most of it, I have the opening scene memorized, some other parts memorized. My dream is to, someday, when I myself am drunk, give a performance of this episode— AM: I’m holding you to that.

AA: —where I just perform a one-woman

show of this episode, just me doing all the parts. But that’s my go-to thing to watch anytime I’m sad. Or happy—I had to make sure I wasn’t just associating it with sad things, so I watched it once when I was happy and I still loved it. It will never get old.

AM: I’ve seen “Avatar” in its entirety, like straight through from beginning to end three times, plus various episodes more times. I am trying to give it a little bit of a pause right now because I want to preserve its emotional power. But there are a couple episodes that I don’t count in that and go back and re-watch all the time. One of them is the episode right before the finale—the third season is a lot of plot but has this one filler episode that is just a goofy recap of the entire series. It’s hysterical, it never fails to make me laugh.

7

not really all that hard in the grand scheme of things.

On a lighter note, “Spirit: The Stallion of the Cimarron.” Fantastic movie. I remember the day that my mom brought home the CD soundtrack, back in the 1870s when we still used CDs.

CM: A song I like to listen to on repeat: I’m kind of an old soul so I listen to a lot of Frank Sinatra because his voice just relaxes me. There’s this one song by him called “All the Way.” When you first listen to it you think, “Oh, it’s him singing about a woman, you know, crooning, a love song.” But then every time I listen to it I pick up something new in the lyrics, like a metaphor or a lesson he’s trying to teach. And they’re very, very simple lyrics so it’s not really taxing on your mind, so it can calm you down. ListenGH: My favorite article to re-read is prob- ing to “All the Way,” it definitely taught me ably—just because it’s short, and it always some lessons about love, forgiveness, and just reminds me that I need to work on writing, dealing with people you love without letting but it’s called “Thanksgiving in Mongolia,” them get under your skin or with trying to it was in the New Yorker by Ariel Levy. It’s get under their skin. Basically, re-listening to not cheerful—she is with child and then she’s it helped me learn about a whole other aspect a journalist so she’s on a plane to Mongolia, to relationships and to love that I didn’t really and then she gets there and she miscarries, think about before. and it’s a really well-written, very moving piece. It’s the piece I like to show to people AA: Okay, great. Thank you guys so much when I say, “Look, this is what writing can for doing this. The end. actually do.” I just like to re-read it sometimes to remind myself that suffering is relaIllustration by Emma Marguiles tive and the things that I think are hard are

soundtracks and sensations right vibes for the right times

CLARIBEL WU staff writer Have you ever heard a song for the first time and thought, “Whoa, this is the perfect song for ______”? The perfect song for walking on the beach when the waves are violent, dark, and frothy; for watching the sunrise on a rooftop that you’re not allowed to be on; for when you’re in the car with your friends, windows down, lights streaking past in a neon blur.

Certain moments fit so perfectly with certain songs that they leave you feeling some sort of existential synchronicity with the present. What I love is that this differs from person to person. We’re each a collection of different human experiences and predispositions. If our lives are motion pictures, then we each have a different soundtrack.

I find it interesting to listen to a song that someone considers “sipping coffee on a breezy afternoon” music. I might vibe well with the image that they assign to it, or I might think that the song has more of a “walking through an empty museum, lights dimmed for closing hours” feel. Regardless of my reaction, I can momentarily dive into that scenic sensation and glimpse a reflection of that individual.

The following songs are glimpses into how I perceive some moments that I have encountered or have yet to encounter. I’ll admit that my music isn’t for everyone, but feel free to share the moment with me or get inspired to make your own soundtrack. It’s an intriguing, almost intimate, way to get to know someone or to have others get to know you.

The playlist I put together has definite nostalgic undertones, which are manifested in moments that range from the mundane to the remarkable––both of which are equally important to our human experiences. If you do choose to engage in the following moments, try listening to the song once without my commentary. Then, you can compare your interpretation to what I wrote and see the similarities and differences.

Spotify playlist available at http://tinyurl. com/zrdyzq6.

“Space Song” –– Beach House { Exultation } For a night where you hike to a vantage point that your friend heard about in some questionable area. There’s a little bit of fear and a little bit of excitement, and then your breath is taken away when you see the blanket of glittering street lights beneath you, stretching for miles and miles. You’re standing shoulder to shoulder with your friends, and you feel how fragile and real the present is.

“Affection” –– Cigarettes After Sex { Intimacy } For when you’re fighting with the one you love and you’re sitting together in a tense silence.

The air is heavy and suffocating. But then they look over at you with those familiar eyes, and something electric and amazing happens. That anger melts away into a begrudging, inevitable feeling of affection.

“Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second” –– STRFKR { Optimism } For those clear bright mornings when everything feels possible and you’ve got a confident feeling in your chest. You walk down the street, and things somehow seem clearer and more interesting than they did yesterday. You feel like skipping down the streets and randomly bursting into song, like Joseph Gordon-Levitt does in “500 Days of Summer” after a night with the girl of his dreams.

“Hear The Noise That Moves So Soft and Slow” –– James Vincent McMorrow { Peace } For when you’re inside a cafe and the snow begins falling gently outside and everything seems more hushed as you observe and appreciate this little act of nature. You take a sip of

your hot chocolate, burn your tongue a little, and turn back to the earthy smell of your library book.

“Daibutsu” –– Sunbeam Sound Machine { Relaxation } For when you’re lying outside on the grass and the sun peeks through the leaves of the tree that you’re under. A warm breeze glides over you, carrying the smell of spring and indiscernible conversational noise. The moment is dreamy, and the song blends perfectly into the background ambience as you watch the indifferent clouds drift past.

“Director” –– The Antlers { Despondency } For when you’re trapped in an existential crisis and you only have the energy for lying paralyzed on top of your covers, earphones in.

You’re looking up at your ceiling with unfocused eyes, and the melancholy drone of the singer and the instrumentals wash over you. It’s a self-inflicted spiral into hopelessness, but you

indulge in that feeling anyway.

“Puzzle Pieces” –– Saint Motel { Anticipation } For when you’re on a roadtrip to the beach and you finally arrive at the sandy parking lot.

You swing the car door open and let in a gust of refreshingly briny sea wind. Everyone piles out and stretches, grabbing towels and beach umbrellas; a general buzz of excitement and anticipation permeates the air. The sand is hot and coarse on your bare feet as you take your first steps, so you grab your friend’s hand and run all the way to the cool relief of the shore.

These are the feelings and vibes that I get when I listen to these songs. I’m a mild person with a mild music taste, so I acknowledge that this specific soundtrack isn’t relatable to everyone. But isn’t that the whole point? Each person has a unique soundtrack, and that’s a beautiful concept.

Illustration by Diana Hong

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lifestyle

My grandfather was a total dickhead. Like, I was 9 and adults would come up to me and swear at me about him.

You don’t want to hide the pirates at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean.

I shouldn’t hate people I don’t know, but I hate her.

How can something be neither fuzzy nor bald?

We accept Bear Bucks, but we don’t happily accept Bear Bucks. I can’t talk to bears!

“What’s the best place you’ll ever live?” “On the bodies of dead children, in a tower of diamonds.”

hot post time machine

One minute, you’re like, “Yeah, we’re just friends,” and the next you’re pining after it with a Twilight-y fixation.

Weird. ravenous rapture -03/17/2011

topten

places to go on spring break

1. cancun 2. puerto rico 3. the void 4. helinke, the lost city of the ancients 5. mister sister 6. the white house easter egg hunt—show obama your stuff 7. alicia devos’s house (email her at alicia_devos@brown.edu) 8. hell (at least it’s warm!)

9. a kit kat factory—the perfect place to have a break 10. wilmington, delaware, the greatest city in the world

overthinking “can we still be friends?”

KAYLA YOU contributing writer Is there someone in your life who would have rap battles with you, draw Mother Buddha in class, meditate during class break, write lots of poems in traditional Chinese, and use magazines as notebooks?

Most likely not. Because she is the most unique person I’ve ever encountered in my life.

Back in high school, we were really close friends. I always admired her for her distinct personality and her whimsical mind. We shared a mutual understanding so strong that whenever we read each other’s essays, we knew what the other person was implying with her metaphors and opaque symbols. Reading her essays was my favorite activity of all time.

But like all good high school friends, we were separated over time. She went to Hong Kong, I went to the states, and I haven’t talked to her for months.

Now, I’m finally going to see her in person.

I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long. I can’t wait to see her! I want to know what she looks like now and hear everything that happened during her first semester in college and in Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, however, under the excitement and euphoria, I can sense the disturbing presence of fear and reluctance. What should I say? How should I behave? What if we can’t laugh together anymore? What if we both fall into awkward silence? What if… What if we’re no longer friends?

I can’t lose her as a friend, and I really want to relive our closeness, so I must be funny and impressive today, at least in front of her.

When I spotted her hiding behind a bookshelf, I could feel the anxiety gradually building up in my body. Taking a deep breath, I called out her name.

“Hey! I know you’re there.”

She revealed herself, smiling mischievously at me. To my relief, she looked surprisingly like how I remembered her, even with her changed hairstyle and new glasses. It was good to know that she

hadn’t changed much, or I would have no idea how to deal with the “new” her.

We started talking about food and school and everyday stuff, and I tried everything I could to be friendly: I laughed at her simplest jokes; I made quirky comments on her stories. I wanted to show her that I was really glad to see her again, that I still felt the same friendship. But as we talked, I started to notice that something was a bit off, as if we were two people who were different from before but still pretending to be the same.

We strolled between bookshelves, stopping to talk from time to time.

“I haven’t read much recently. I just buy books and never pick them up again,” she told me.

Oh, no. She used to read books in class all the time.

Then, the chain of doubt began: I started to notice more differences in her.

She seemed less mature and more bubbly, which made me even more nervous. The distance between us grew more and more obvious, to the point where we were both standing silently in a crowded subway, not knowing what to say and fully aware of the awkwardness between us.

“Let’s tell each other a story.” She suggested.

“Ok.” I smiled at her.

“You go first.”

“I… I don’t have any stories in mind.”

In fact, my mind went completely blank at that moment. The disappointment on her face was too obvious to ignore. The worst thing was finally happening: I was boring her. Our happy times together only existed in my memory now.

“Goodbye! See you soon!” When I turned away from her, I could no longer hold the smile on my face. I was disappointed, but unable to tell why. I remembered someone once telling me, “You can’t force friendship.” When something wasn’t right, there was nothing I could do to fix it. So I might as well accept the sad fact that we were probably drifting apart.

A few days later, I found myself unable

to acknowledge the fact that we were no longer friends. What makes two people friends anyways? I suppose it’s the mutual appreciation. I liked her personality and wanted to have her as a companion. That hadn’t changed for us, so in this sense we were still friends. But why did I feel so awkward and unnatural when talking and spending time with her?

Then, I remembered an idea from philosophy class: the paradox of pursuing pleasure. It sounded absurd when I first heard it, because it basically claimed that if you want to get pleasure out of an activity, you will never get the pleasure.

What makes you happy is your full attention to that particular activity. Thinking about it later, I began to see how it related to my life.

“There are three things that will only get worse when we try harder: falling in love, falling asleep, and trying to look natural.” Some things in our lives are not meant to be overthought. I guess the same can be applied to friendship. I spent too much time worrying about our reunion and focused so much on making her happy that I was making myself uncomfortable around her. My goals for myself made me stressed out and anxious.

It was good enough, I decided, to simply be in her company.

Without a second thought, I reached for my phone, unlocked it, typed “Do you have any plans this week?”. Then I hit send. Without rephrasing.

Illustration by Yidi Wu