Post- 3/9/17 by Post- Magazine

MAR 9 – VOL 19 – ISSUE 17

In this issue...

Portraits, Pirates and Painting

Editor’s Note

Dear Readers,

FEATURES

What color was that dress anyway?

To Fulfill a Vendetta

I say blue and black. I’ve even watched that video where they change the lighting and then they’re like “See, look, this is how other people see it!” But I never see it as anything but blue and black. I guess I’m immutable that way. Or my eyes are.

Musings on My Senior Portraits

I am thinking about dresses today because today is the day they told us would be the day without women. My mom called me to say she wasn’t going to work today, and that I shouldn’t either, to show my solidarity with women who are less fortunate than I am. When it came time to report to my job, I thought for a long time, and then I went.

5 LIFESTYLE The Essential Chore

Flavored Vodka and Cheekbone Glitter

Oil on Canvas

Figuring out how to balance this new lifestyle of revolution I was thrown into last November with my need to stay afloat in this new adulthood deal is something I’m not sure I’ll ever master. I hope you’re all having an easier time than I am. But even if you’re not, enjoy this week’s Post-!

Post- Board Editor-in-Chief Monica Chin Managing Editor, Arts & Culture Joshua Lu

Managing Editor, Features Saanya Jain

Arts & Culture Editors Taylor Michael Josh Wartel

Features Editors Claribel Wu Kathy Luo

Managing Editor, Lifestyle Annabelle Woodward

Copy Chief Alicia DeVos

Lifestyle Editors Jennifer Osborne Celina Sun Creative Director Grace Yoon Art Director Katie Cafaro

I’m still not sure why. I thought about the student loans piling up in the back of my head, and the textbook and food expenses draining from my bank account day by day. I thought about the centuries of sexism that our nation is built upon, and I thought about the women— of color, low income, disabled, trans, LGBTQ—who face so much every day. And I thought about the individuals who depend on me to do my work, and I thought about the intersection of those groups, and I wondered if I should do tsome math to figure out how exactly I could maximize the good I was doing for the least well-off, and then I was already late, and I remembered my student loans again, and I went.

Assistant Copy Editors Zander Kim Alexandra Walsh Layout Chief Livia Mucciolo Layout Assistants Yamini Mandava Elizabeth Toledano Cover Katie Cafaro

Best,

Monica editor - in - chief

7 ARTS & CULTURE Before Moonlight

La Dolce Vita

To Fulfill a Vendetta “I once sang ‘Would You Be My Butterfuck?’ in the Quiet Room of the John Hay,” Emily said. “There are no more sacred spaces.” I stared at Emily with a familiar, speechless admiration. We were sitting in the lobby of J. Walter Wilson on red plastic chairs around a small wooden table. In the distance, I could hear the muffled sound of the University Hall bell tolling. But I was far away from this clockwork world of classes and homework and midterms; I was on treasure isles and distant shores; I was on wooden boats which smugglers rowed with muffled oars — I was with the Pirates. The Pirates are an a cappella group at Brown, and while I do not enjoy their singing, which is discordant, I do enjoy the tales of their exploits, which are endless. Emily, the erstwhile captain of the Pirates, was telling me about their latest adventure: obscene Valentine’s Day chanties. For ten dollars, the Pirates would publically serenade your friend, lover, or enemy with a vulgar song of your choosing from their repertoire of chanties. “This is even better than Corgigate,” I said. “I know, right?” Emily said. Emily has blond curls, blue eyes, and a smile, which is disarming. Cat, Emily’s pirate alter ego, wears a tricorn hat that covers her blond hair, a plastic cutlass that dangles dangerously from her waist, and a grin, which is discomfiting. I watched as Emily pulled out the tricorn from her backpack and affixed it at a suitably rakish angle. “I am going to take over the Pirate booth in the Blue Room,” Cat said. “You should drop by and buy a chanty for someone you want to embarrass.” “I don’t hate anyone enough,” I said, peeling a banana. “There must be someone,” Cat said, and with a wink, she left. I sat there, eating my banana, my feet resting on a chair. Emily’s words had stirred a memory I couldn’t quite recall. But just as I was getting up to throw away the banana peel, I remembered. * * * My sophomore year at Brown, I roomed in a double in Caswell Hall with Cormac, a skinny history major with tousled sandy hair. The room was picturesque, with a wooden floor and a bricked-up fireplace. Cormac had hung a Betsy Ross American flag on his wall. “This is not patriotism,” Cormac had said, “This is history.” I was skeptical of this avowal because I had woken early one morning to see Cormac, clad only in his blue boxers, his hands on his hips, his nose upturned, posing in

Tushar Bhargava staff writer

Michelle Ng illustr ator

A Night with the Pirates

front of the flag as if he were a latter-day Captain America. Of course, I didn’t say anything about this: Tact is the foundation of all successful cohabitation. Unfortunately, Cormac had the tact of a rhinoceros, but I didn’t find this out until it was too late. One night I brought a date back to our room. I had given Cormac prior notice that this could happen and had exhorted him to remove his boxers from his bedpost, where they hung like the hides of misshapen beasts. When I returned with my date, Cormac was gone and so were his boxers. There was still a lingering odor—Cormac hadn’t washed his bedsheets since the beginning of the semester—but I discreetly sprayed some Febreze and the odor disappeared. The date was going well, and we had just settled in to watch The Shawshank Redemption (Not the most romantic movie, I admit, but I had chosen it for its sheer length at two hours and twenty-two minutes. I felt that this was enough time for something to transpire) when Cormac entered the room. He squinted—we had shut off the lights, the better to watch the movie—and when he finally saw us, deeply ensconced in the blankets, the laptop resting precariously on my lap, he waved. “Hello kids,” Cormac said. I was gesturing frantically for Cormac to leave. I did this by wiggling my eyebrows, but it was too dark, and the gesture would have been wasted on him anyway. Cormac, meanwhile, had pulled out his guitar. With a quick leap he was standing atop the bed. My date and I cowered in the other corner. “I am now going to serenade the two of you,” Cormac said. He strummed his guitar and then started singing. The song he’d chosen was Get Low by Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz. Three six nine Damn you are fine Hoping you can sock it to me one more time (Get low, get low, get low) From the windows To the walls Here Cormac paused to act out the lyrics. He pointed at the window, then at the wall. Satisfied that we were keeping up, he resumed singing. The sweat drips down my balls Oh, the sweat drips down my balls Here Cormac pointed at his crotch, and then, fearing that we might have missed the subtlety of the lyrics, he pointed again. I am going to kill Cormac, I thought. I am going to suffocate him with one of his own odiferous boxers. I am going to break his guitar in two. Skeet skeet skeet motherfucker Oh, skeet skeet skeet motherfucker My revenges will be the terrors of the world, I thought. I am going to tell his girlfriend his laptop password so that she can go through his web history. I am going to wrap him up in his Persian carpet and roll him down the staircase. Cormac finally stopped singing. I was mortified and tried to apologize to my date, but she was in a hurry. “I think I should go,” she said, wrapping her scarf around her neck. “Got a problem set due Tuesday.” As the door closed behind her, I

turned to face Cormac, who beamed at me by Dar Williams.) as if he had done something clever. “Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. * * * My stomach felt crumpled, and my palms “So you did think of someone,” Cat said, were clammy. as I walked up to the Pirate booth in the “Okay?” Cat asked. “You’ll do it?” Blue Room. “Yeah,” I said, “Let’s do this.” Three pirates were sitting at one of the Cat smiled and gave me a thumbs-up. marble-topped tables of the Blue Room. “Alright guys, we have a sale,” she told They had a cardboard sign—Chanties for the other pirates. sale – ARRR!!!—and their cutlasses were “We’ll need three things from you,” the piled carelessly on the table. third pirate said. She hadn’t spoken until “I did,” I said. now and she had a deep, gravelly voice. “Here’s our list of songs for you to “The name—” I said. peruse,” a pirate said, handing over a thick “The time and place,” she completed, sheaf of papers. counting them out on her fingers. I started to flip through the list of “And the money,” the bro-pirate said. songs. Each page had the song title and “Don’t forget the money.” lyrics. The songs got progressively vulgar. I wiped my palms on my jeans and On the first page was the relatively innocu- reached for my wallet. ous Yestergay, which was an adaptation of * * * Yesterday by the Beatles and in which the “Where can one get a fine corset like protagonist of the song suddenly realizes that?” Cormac asked. that he is gay. I flipped the page. On the “Mister Sister,” Cat said. She was dressed second page, was the more explicit Pornin full pirate garb, including a black corset star, which was an adaptation of All Star by that was made of some shiny material. “I Smash Mouth and which extolled the viralways go there to get gifts for my friends.” tues of being, well, a pornstar. I flipped the We were in the Underground at page again. On the third page, was Rolling night. There had been a slight hiccup in in the Deep, which was an adaption of my planning: the Pirates didn’t serenade Adele’s hit song and which talked about before noon, and all of Cormac’s classes the dangers of syphilis. were over by then, so I had compromised “This is horrible,” I said. and dragged Cormac to the Pirate’s concert “Horrible?” the pirate said, looking under a false pretext. There was a bar top offended. “No, it’s beautiful.” along the side of the room and student Next to me a girl with long braids and paintings on the walls, but you couldn’t plastic spectacles was going through the see them properly as the lighting was dim. list of songs as well. She read the ones she The crowd was scattered around the room, found most amusing aloud. sitting in orange chairs and grey couches. “Ain’t No Cock Thick Enough,” she Cormac and I were sitting alone at a table. said, giggling. An unfortunate adaptation “What is this exactly?” Cormac asked, of Ain’t No Mountain High Enough by after Cat had left to gather the pirates. “A Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrel. pirate-themed a cappella show?” “That’s a real crowd favorite,” the “Sort of,” I said. “I’m here for an essay bro-pirate said. I’m writing for class.” I was sweating profusely. I had forgot“Oh, and what’s it about?” Cormac asked. ten to take off my jacket, and I kept look“It’s a revenge piece,” I said. ing over my shoulder to make sure no one “Indeed,” Cormac said, “Who is the I knew was around. I handed the dossier of victim? Her?” He pointed to Cat. songs back to Cat. “No,” I said, “You.” “I can’t do this,” I told her. Cat clapped her hands twice. “Hello “Why not?” she asked. everyone, thanks for coming! Welcome to “These are just too, too—” I stuttered. I the Raid on Love.” imagined the pirates lamenting about the The Pirates had outdone themselves. diminishing girth of penises in a packed Fully costumed—coats, corsets, pistols, lecture hall, and a balding professor, in the cutlasses, rusted keys hung around their background, clutching at his podium. I necks—and arm-in-arm, they sang loudly could get into real trouble, I thought. Just and lustily and tunelessly. when I’m about to graduate, too. “This is appalling,” Cormac said, trying “Listen, Tushar, let us handle this,” Cat to shield his face from the light, during the said, reading my thoughts. “If there’s any third song (“Why don’t you lube me up, trouble, we’ll take the blame.” lube me up, butterfuck baby”). “We’re the pirates,” the bro-pirate said, “It gets even worse,” I said. picking up and brandishing his cutlass. “This is a disproportionate response,” I was shaking my head and was about Cormac said—I had reminded him of the serto say no when I saw Ink-man. The shadenading incident in the intermission—during ow on the floor was wearing a pirate hat, the seventh song (“Ain’t no cock too big, ain’t and it turned slightly, as if to look at me, no cock too thick”), in which the Pirates had and then it looked away again. I cursed. begun to perform pelvic thrusts that were Ink-man is a character I’ve created encroaching on our personal space. to represent the stories that I tell myself “I mean what I did pales in compariabout myself. son to this,” Cormac said. “This is like using Ink-man is a shorthand for all that I a nuclear weapon to kill a gnat.” want to be but I am not. Cormac looked so anguished that I Ink-man is a shadow future. started to laugh. And as my laughter subI stared at the shadow on the floor, sided, I glanced at the floor, and thought and as Ink-man shifted, grew taller, disthat my shadow looked taller, more rakish, appeared, a thought came unbidden: Oh, and was wearing a pirate hat. I raised my how I long to dance, away, from the line. hand to feel my head, and Ink-man deTo stray, just a little bit, from the lights tached himself from my shadow, doffed his (slightly jumbled lyrics from the song Iowa hat, and then disappeared once again.

Musings on My Senior Portraits Honestly, the Whole Thing Made me Bitter Four years ago, as I went into school on a Saturday to get my high school senior portrait taken, I remember feeling an acute sense of anxiety. I had bought a new outfit for the occasion and gotten my hair cut and a fresh blow out the day before. This was the first school picture, I was told, that really mattered, the first that would truly represent our personalities and reflect something more than a generic marbled-blue backdrop and a cheap Photoshop job to spot out acne. In my experience, both in high school and college, that has certainly not been the case. The whole affair was fancier than 17-year-old me anticipated: They let me change outfits, they had me try on the cap and gown, and I even got to take a few pictures in the school courtyard against our campus’s lone maple tree. I left the session feeling pretty great, like my little corner of the yearbook would turn out glossy and (relatively) glamorous. I mean, c’mon, I had a tree! But then I saw everyone else’s pictures. People hired their own photographers for this shit! My poor little picture by the maple tree and the good lunch table looked incredibly pedestrian next to pictures in convertibles, on the beach, in piles of fall leaves. And that’s not even counting all the brilliant ones I saw online: People coordinating with their yearbook neighbors to make it look like they were high-fiving, people bringing their pets to support them in their poses as crazy cat ladies, people in banana suits looking apprehensive about their neighbor in a gorilla suit. And don’t even get me started on the senior quotes. There were people out there quoting Frozone from The Incredibles, and I was over here in a bland-ass pose, totally quoteless. I felt like I had completely and utterly squandered the ripest of opportunities for hilarity. Soon thereafter, I devised a plan for my college senior portrait. I would recreate the most iconic of school pictures: Lizzie McGuire’s. For those who don’t remember, Lizzie was forced by her parents to wear a hideous unicorn sweater, knitted by her grandma, to picture day. She changes into a cute top once she gets to school, but

through a series of mishaps, ends up with green paint splattered all over her nice outfit. So her final school photo is of Lizzie, covered in paint, proudly holding the ugly unicorn sweater up to the camera. Truly the coolest school picture in human history. By the time emails for Brown’s senior portraits started rolling in, I already had a unicorn sweater in my Etsy cart. When I opened that first email, I was beyond disappointed to read that we had to follow a dress code: “Please remember that your school’s yearbook requires students to be photographed in a jacket and tie, a sweater, or a blouse. Dress for this photo session is ‘business formal’— dress as you would to a job interview.” What the hell?! We’re all adults here! What happened to making our own decisions, especially since we’re paying for a yearbook! I mean, come on. Even my high school, where girls were routinely yelled at for wearing yoga pants, let us wear whatever we wanted. It hurt a little bit to be reminded that, at least to some degree, we’re commodities. We have to uphold some sort of Brown “image” for posterity, and that image doesn’t include unicorn sweaters and green paint splatter. College is touted by parents and high school teachers alike as the first time in a people’s lives where they can affect change for themselves. It supposedly marks a shift from a state of control to a state of freedom. You no longer have to sit through state-mandated curricula during state-mandated times in a state-mandated place. Instead, you can explore and grow and learn for the sake of learning. College

is seen as the symbolic end of other people controlling your life, and the beginning of you controlling your life. For me, at least, high school felt like four years of delaying gratification until I could get to that point of agency. As high school came to a close, I was looking forward to the freedom college would afford me. And while it did present a significant amount of freedom, that email about senior portraits made me realize that we’re still being controlled, just in more deceptive ways. Because Brown wants the faces we show the world to be presented in such a specific way, I couldn’t help but feel a little played. Maybe all the talk of independence and self-actualization was really just advertising: a ploy sent from the real world to trick us into conforming to the predestined track of high school, then college, then the workforce. The thought of dressing up as some caricature of a “real adult” for my yearbook photo made me feel like just a cog in a giant, industrial mechanism. I felt like I was being pushed out of a machine as a polished member of society, with any trace of my own personality or authenticity quickly wiped away for the camera. Honestly, the whole thing made me a little bitter. Not only did this make me feel like I couldn’t be myself and that I had to fit into some stodgy, professional box, but it also reminded me of the uncertainty I’m about to face in my post-grad life. High school ended in a sense of safety. The next four years of my life were decided, and definite, and contained in a concrete path. That meant I could spend the

small, transitional time of high school graduation doing whatever the hell I wanted, because I had the freedom to do so. But now, the future is uncertain. I have to look nice in my senior portrait because I have no job security, no planned next step. As I read over the dress code again, it felt like a stern, adult voice saying, “You don’t have the privilege of goofing around anymore.” I had my senior portraits taken last week and, unfortunately, I did not go dressed as Lizzie McGuire. I wore a black dress with tights and silver shoes. The whole process was fairly antiseptic, much more so than in high school. I sat down, filled out a form, and the photographer snapped exactly five pictures of me in front of that classic, blue-marbled backdrop. Being my bitter self, I didn’t spend the $4 for proofs on principle. Instead, I got low-res copies via email, which were distinctly lacking any of the charm or sentimentality I so craved. But even so, I refuse to accept the idea that I have to stop goofing off. The adult world is looming close over my head, but the spirit of Lizzie McGuire remains close to my heart. Even if I can’t literally wear a unicorn sweater in professional settings, I plan to do so metaphorically and exploit every opportunity for small rebellion that I can.

Lindsey Owen staff writer

Soco Fernandez Garcia

illustr ator

The Essential Chore

The floor is a sprawling desert of sentimentality, perfumed with the gentle smell of storage. Monumental walls of clothing emerge like remnants from a forgotten era, and pillars of archived birthday cards tilt precariously as items increasingly surface from the dusty depths of some wayward drawer. This is the site of an excavation, spearheaded by efficiency and practicality (but subconsciously sponsored by the emotive self). This is, in less metaphorical terms, the familiar scene of a halfcleaned room. Warning: those who encounter such disarray may experience tired sighs, waves of panic, and an immense feeling of obligation––or, alternatively, an inspired mind. Decluttering is difficult because it often involves the process of removal. Items have a certain weight, composed of both their matter and their mattering, so it is undeniably scary to let something go––to forget, so to say. What is this idea of forgetting, and why does it present itself as something so threatening, so calamitous? Room-cleaning has traditionally been vilified as an annoyance, a chore. It is a task usually put off until that terrifying, soul-stopping moment when the garage yawns cavernously and the sound of crackling mechanisms signals the return of a parental authority. The process of upending and rearranging a room’s contents (just to repeat the dreaded cycle in a few weeks or so) is understandably frustrating. This frustration usually occurs when there exists a trap of habit, birthed by a devilish and iconic pair: clutter and excess. However, isn’t that an alluring idea? To have an inventory of every

The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

object ever encountered, every thought ever conceived, every memory ever committed? * * * Humanity has many symptoms, one of which is a steadfast desire to hold on––with an anxious steely grip––to the past, in a way that is not as discriminatory as it often could or should be. But the tragedy is that a space can only hold so much at once, and when presented with limited resources, efficiency is essential. * * * A dusty old letter that sits in the back of a household junk drawer, with yellowing paper and yellowing meaning, offers very little to a person. But its saving grace is one brief criminal moment: In the middle of organizing and/or purging the local inventory, a folded edge surfaces from the domestic debris for the first time in months or even years, inviting the distracted mind’s attention and inspiring a pitied nostalgia (a likely situation, if the cleaning process is approached without intentionality). Archived items do indeed have a self-interested sirenic charm. The letter survives, like others of its sort, on the two minutes of attention it receives during the course of countless routine room-cleanings. These items are sentimental squatters, festering in the corners of physical and mental spaces. The process of cleaning is thus closely tied to time and value. As time weaves on, the meaning of a possession inevitably changes with each shift in context. The same applies to memories and thoughts––the idea of any person, place, or thing is in constant flux. Experiences build on other experiences, eventually giving rise to civiliza-

tions of sentiment that rule the mind. But even the most established civilizations are subject to death and forgetting, to ruins and rubble––and that’s okay. Empires fall, forests burn, and lobsters molt, in the natural interest of clearing the waste and making room for growth. So, perhaps this chore should be given some more credit in the grand scheme of self-realization. Perhaps cleaning isn’t as meaningless as it might feel, and forgetting isn’t as scary as it seems. Perhaps that handwritten card, from that a person that now exists in a toxic past, isn’t something meant to be kept. Clearing a physical space is an exercise in mindfulness, minimalism, and meditation. On microcosmic and macrocosmic scales, there exists a constant-

ly renewing cycle of discovery, meaning, forgetting, and release (yes, even in the seemingly mundane task of tidying-up). By prioritizing the most necessary and personally compelling possessions, the path toward efficiency––that is, one attuned to the mindful soul––opens up. When everything is kept with a distinct intentionality, there is room for the inhale and exhale of existence. There is room for the flow of Qi as a vital and dynamic energy. Stagnation (found in still water, messy junk drawers, etc.) is its adversary. Letting go of the past and its excesses frees up temporal and emotional space, allowing for the creative breath of life to trickle and gush and cascade through. Once clutter is evicted and forgotten, it becomes easier to discover and remember what is most essential.

Claribel Wu

fe atures editor

Natasha Sharpe illustr ator

Flavored Vodka and Cheekbone Glitter It is the first Friday of the semester, and I’m sitting with my back pressed against my friend’s dresser, laughing as she snaps pictures for her Snapchat story. I will end the night curled on top of my bed, crying more than I have in over a year. After a series of lighthearted jabs from my parents over break, we collectively concluded that I need to get out more. Get a little drunk. Be a real college kid. So I’m a shot or two in, and I feel good. We’re playing music and talking, and her other friend keeps telling me I’m cool. I’m not the kind of girl people call cool; I’m more generically “nice,” “sweet,” or “cute.” These friends and I joke that my alter ego is a 12-year-old altar boy from rural Ohio: Billy Olson, born 1949. This isn’t far from the truth most days, but tonight, I’m feeling a little more like Billy’s older cousin from somewhere big and bright, like Chicago, which isn’t actually that far off for a girl raised on the Evanston shore. * * * An hour later, we’re standing

on the steps outside the frat hosting the party. I’m wearing my parka, with my phone, ID, and keys safely tucked in the pockets. I shove my hands into the cool fabric and check to see if my belongings are still there. I do this more times than I can count as we move through the line, as if maintaining a grip on the plastic card with my picture on it might keep me from losing myself. * * * My hands twirl high above my head, my hips move in figure eights, and a soft smile plays across my lips. The room is dark, I can hardly hear my friends’ voices singing along to the kind of music I would never listen to on my own, and yet, I’m having a great time. I’m dancing, really dancing, the kind of dancing I was too scared to do until prom, and even then, only while glancing nervously at the other groups of teenagers I knew I’d probably never see again. A boy approaches me, moving closer and closer, and though I can’t see his face, I can sense his eyes following the movements of my limbs.

College Parties as Liminal Spaces

Anna Harvey staff writer

Katie Cafaro art direc tor

As my friends move closer to the stage, I inch closer to them until he pulls me back and asks if I want to dance with him. This has never happened before, and I agree, heart pounding faster and grin widening because I’m wanted. The bass beats in my chest as we move closer to the speakers, and the boy and I are stepping on each others’ feet, and he’s coming closer, closer, closer. He leans into my ear and asks if I want to kiss. I blurt that it will be my first time, and he says it’ll be his too (a fact I will later learn is a lie). His mouth is on mine, and my whole body freezes; I squeeze my eyes tight, and try to mimic his movements. His hand migrates lower and lower down my back, and I reach behind to pull it back up. I wonder how long this will last. I wonder if it always goes on this long. I will wonder for several more minutes until I finally pull away. * * * He asks me again. I know I was uncomfortable the first time; I know I don’t want a second, and yet, I say yes again because night me is different from day me, and I’m trying to be a real college kid. He pulls me in, and his arms squeeze my upper back, my arms. My stomach contracts as he grips tighter, he tells me to follow his lead, I lose sense of time and place. I am just sensation, sweat and spit and

Oil on Canvas This is the chaotic splendor of my painting’s origin. From the windows that line up between our houses, I stare at the neighbors eating dinner, observe the thoughtless bites taken amidst conversation and the children rolling baby carrots around their plates. I have alternated between doing this and watching The Office reruns for the past hour. Preschool art projects decorate their fridge, rife with the vibrant clutter of finger paint. I envy their confident completion, the way they hang like features in an art gallery. I am three pages of research notes, 12 thumbnail sketches, two ruined paintbrushes, and a practice painting into nothing, not even a blank canvas. The uncertainty of my selftaught knowledge of oil painting has inhibited any desire to actually make something. I retreat into the comfort of drawings. I watch another five speed-painting videos on YouTube. I read another article on proper oil paint technique. I wait until I’m sure that if I wait any longer I will never actually paint anything, which would only be slightly worse than completely butchering the piece. With a scattered outline of a plan, I pinch small quantities of paint from metal tubes. Splayed haphazardly on a palette, the concentrated pigments appear as if they’ve been divinely concocted, their stiff consistency perfectly rich and balanced. I cautiously follow online painting instructions

fear. It doesn’t stop, that’s all I know, it just won’t stop. After longer this time, I flash my eyes open and see my friends looking concerned. They have stopped dancing entirely and ask me loudly if I want to go to the bathroom, so I reach for their hands and they pull me out. * * * I burst into tears on a frat couch outside the bathroom, and they hold me there as a security guard looks on. I sob. I can’t stop. I’m too old for this to be my first time, I berate myself. I said yes. Twice. I should have known better. I wasn’t even that drunk. They lead me back to my dorm room, and I cry until my roommate comes home, and then I cry some more, and then I take a shower and go to sleep. * * * It’s two weeks later, and I’m feeling great again. I’m going back to the same frat, with the same friends, and I don’t care what happened last time. I’ve seen the boy a few times since then, awkward eye contact in the Ratty or between classes, but I just walk faster or turn to friends or plug my headphones in. He looks different in the daytime, and I guess I do too. I’m no longer scared. In my friend’s room, we take shots of flavored vodka that her high school friend visiting from Boston has brought with her. The alcohol drips out of the tiny bottles, sugary sweet,

nonthreatening. My friend is applying highlighter to her cheekbones, rubbing the glitter in until it blends with the sheen of her skin. She looks beautiful. Captured in a Polaroid photo that her roommate takes for us, we look like a team. We look unstoppable. * * * This party is different from the last one. There’s less dancing, more sitting on couches and talking. I don’t do much of the latter; instead, I feel myself turning inward, thinking, noticing. I start to feel empty, something I’ve noticed happens to me when surrounded by lots of people, enveloped in dark and smoke and the haze of blue light emanating from cell phones used as mirrors. I don’t feel like myself, so I notice everyone around me. There are girls in tight shirts with the same sparkling cheekbones on flushed faces reflecting light as they turn their heads. Things move slower here: Speech is slurred, every body relaxed except mine. It feels like an in-between space, a liminal space, as my Shakespeare professor last semester would have called it. “Relating to a transitional stage of a process. Occupying a position at, or on both sides, of a threshold or boundary,” according to Dictionary.com. Everything and nothing is happening at the same time. People act nothing like they would during the day, yet perhaps they

are more themselves than they’ve ever been. I will be able to pick out these faces over the next week, in the Ratty, in the Rock, and they will look entirely different and exactly the same. * * * In my room at the end of the night, I sit on my bed, wet hair dripping down my back, and I think about parties. I might still be a little drunk, or just tired. Either way my head feels light and my eyes heavy. I don’t know if the conclusions I’m drawing make any sense. I feel confident that parties, especially college parties, have some kind of liminality to them. Memories are made in the heat of the moment and then pushed aside to make room for class notes and paper deadlines. They come back at night, in the adrenaline-filled sprint up to the next party the next weekend, where new people are encountered and remembered or forgotten depending on how many substances are coursing through bloodstreams across the room. Faces blur into one another until seen in sunlight, separately. Nights extend into early mornings, into mechanical showers at 3 a.m. and dreamless sleep until early afternoon. We exist in this in-between space fueled by flavored vodka and new makeup, and I wonder why it seems like everyone except me has made peace with the gray.

If I Wait Any Longer I Will Not Paint Anything and mix them with linseed oil and titanium white to create ideal hues. Before they are fully combined, the substances resemble condensed galaxies, swirls of paint particles suspended in pale space. I prepare a canvas, stretching fabric over a wooden frame, applying thick layers of gesso. Even a small canvas intimidates as the effort required for painting becomes abruptly evident in its fresh emptiness. I hold the brush over the cotton expanse. I begin to paint. The process of oil painting is a moth stumbling from its cocoon contorted and wet-winged. It falters, fumbling over prior forms, and shakes itself free with great spasms of intuitive movement. Without the slightest certainty that it might ever become something more, a painting is first a dot, then a line, and then a thin layer. The thick fluid settles stubbornly onto the canvas, its wet surface easily perturbed and quickly muddled by the addition of further color. For several days the layer is maddeningly malleable with a single movement capable of compromising the entire expanse and prolonging the entire affair for days more. Still, with each new application of paint the work becomes a fresh image, a tentative development of intention. As the process goes on, I abandon all formalities, drown out my preconceived notions with the In the Heights soundtrack on repeat. The

painting begins, however deliberately, to expose me. Muscle exhaustion reveals itself in the inconsistencies of coloration. Concentration disregards the accumulation of paint smudges by the various fingerprints along the edges of the canvas. Personality adds hints of color, slowly creating a comprehensive tone. Passion molds the sharp crests of the final brushstrokes. Relief signs

its name on a corner of the canvas. The creation becomes a collaborative discovery between paint and mind, a new dimension of each contributor realized with every careful move of the paintbrush. I wonder if the painting is too large to hang on my own fridge. I wonder if this is how oil painting is intended to be.

Sydney Lo staff writer

Katie Cafaro art direc tor

Before Moonlight

Twenty minutes into Medicine for Melancholy, Barry Jenkins’ debut feature about two young African Americans fumbling through San Francisco after a drunken one-night stand, Micah (Wyatt Cenac) discovers that Jo (Tracey Heggins), the woman he just spent the night with, lives rent-free in her rich, conveniently-out-of-town boyfriend’s house in upscale Marina. “Is he white?” he asks her, a hint of accusation in his tone. When she asks, icily, if it matters, he responds, “Yes and no.” It is the first of Medicine for Melancholy’s many political gestures, and its pointedness catches you by surprise—it feels oddly out-of-place in a film whose loose, peripatetic narrative, structured around the ruminative conversations and long silences of two strangers wandering through a city, seems to aspire to the easygoing mumblecore of Joe Swanberg and Richard Linklater. However, the dissonance of this moment is less a function of the craft of the film and more a function of its radical novelty: Its insertion of racial politics into a cinematic tradition whose signature product—low-budget, verbose, and naturalistic films that are “about nothing”—is inseparable from the middle-class whiteness of its characters and settings. Medicine for Melancholy was made on a tiny, $13,000 budget and reproduces the formal conventions of mumblecore, but it is decidedly about something. Specifically, it is about being black and indie in a culture where, as Micah drunkenly rants towards the end of the film, “Everything about being indie is tied to not being black.” His frustration is directed at San Francisco’s hipster music scene—“punk, folk, or whatever is not on BET”—that both he and Jo identify with, but its self-reflexive indictment of indie film culture is unmistakable. Take, for instance, Linklater’s beautiful Before Trilogy, very frequently invoked as a comparison (and influence) in discussions of Jenkins’ film. In an interview with Filmmaker Magazine, Jenkins says that while he had watched and loved the first two iterations of Linklater’s trilogy before

La Dolce Vita Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita has become a classic of Golden Age cinema. Released in 1960, it stars the suave Marcello Mastroianni as Marcello Rubini, an influential journalist living amongst the glitterati in Rome. Throughout the film, he searches for love and happiness in a glamorous world he believes will bring him satisfaction, and in his quest he gallivants with beautiful, wealthy, yet emotionally lost women played by screen sirens like Anita Ekberg and Anouk Aimée. The film won the 1960 Palm D’Or at Cannes and the Oscar for Best Costume Design, with good reason: It was one of the sleekest, most tastefully made films that dealt with an otherwise

Thoughts on Barry Jenkins’ Debut Feature he made Medicine for Melancholy in 2009, he wasn’t trying to make a “black Before Sunrise.” Which begs the question: Is it even possible to make a “black Before Sunrise”? Any acknowledgment of race—or even class, for that matter—seems antithetical to the fantastical nonspecificity of that film. Though Before Sunrise and Sunset are often celebrated for their chatty realism, Jesse and Celine are anything but real: They are figments of our Euro-romantic imaginations, floating transatlantically and ahistorically, their half-ironic, half-earnest banter consisting of airy nothings. The characters are so abstracted from the political, that the personal—consisting of anodyne musings about love, life, and self—is able to inhabit the entire universe of the film. In one of the rare, brief moments in Before Sunset when their conversation turns to the state of the world around them, Celine rattles off a list of grievances so broad and impersonal they sound like a parody of “woke-ness”: “We’re moving all our industry to developing nations to get cheap labor free from any environmental laws. The weapons industry is out of control. Five million die every year due to preventable water diseases. So how is the world getting better?” Medicine for Melancholy’s Micah and Jo do not need to look any farther than their hometown for proof that world isn’t getting better. As they traipse through San Francisco, making stops at the Museum of African Diaspora, an affordable housing coalition meeting, and a rock concert, they are forced to confront how the city’s rich black heritage coexists with the rapid gentrification that has whittled its African-American population to just seven percent. Captured by James Laxton in starkly desaturated, soft-focused montages set to indie rock, the city is not just a landscape here, but a sensation: at once historical and ephemeral, oppressive and beautiful. “How many of us do you think there are?” asks Micah at one point, wondering what proportion of the city’s minuscule African-American

Devika Girish staff writer

Clarisse Angkasa illustr ator

population identifies as “indie.” It becomes the question that drives their day-long courtship, born not out of some spontaneous chemical attraction but an almost desperate desire for companionship with someone who gets it. The couple’s flirtations through the course of the day are characterised by a push and pull, a constant second-guessing of motives, culminating in an argument about interracial dating: Micah chastises Jo, once again, for dating a white guy; Jo scoffs at his assumption that being black is enough to bring two people together. There is something dubious yet beautifully vulnerable about his attempts to guilt her into spending time with him and her conflicted yet willing adultery; it is a slow-burning exposition of how the burden of identity and the fear of assimilation muddy even something as instinctive and pure as desire. Like the French New Wave filmmakers Jenkins often cites as inspirations, he operates in two registers in Medicine for Melancholy: discursive and narrative. The film’s romance is constructed as a polemic between two points-of-view about race—Micah, consumed by questions of self-definition and social identity, represents the

“pro-black” perspective, while Jo purports to be comfortably post-racial, rejecting the idea of limiting oneself with definitions. The negotiation between the two, played out in little debates and gestures in the course of the film, parallels Jenkins’ own attempt to find a cinematic common ground between the personal and the political to tell an unassuming indie story about two people that is also a story about identity, place, and history. But the film reaches its apex when, in a Godardian interlude as brilliant as it is inelegant, Jenkins completely upends the balance: As Micah and Jo look in through a window at a community meeting about affordable housing, narrative gives way to pure discourse. The housing-rights activists are filmed in the style of a television documentary, as talking heads deliberating the hard facts of gentrification, while Micah and Jo recede entirely from the diegesis for a few minutes. It’s the only moment in Medicine for Melancholy when the two characters, struggling to be both one thing and another—hipsters and black youth, insiders and outsiders, lovers and political actors— are allowed to step out of the film’s polemic and simply, invisibly, spectate.

The Importance of Living in the Here and Now distasteful subject. It wasn’t until I’d thought about the film a little more that I realized just how much it related to real life. Halfway through the film, we meet Marcello’s sophisticated friend Steiner, whose spacious home, graceful wife, and loving children are the envy of the protagonist. Marcello, in turn, routinely cheats on his own overly clingy girlfriend yet cannot seem to find the love he so desperately searches for. Steiner is friendly, wealthy, and moves in a pleasant social circle. To Marcello and the audience, it seems as though he has the perfect life. During a dinner party, he takes Marcello to his children’s bedroom. As the young ones sleep Steiner

shares with Marcello his dread that his children will grow up and see the world for all its horrors and injustices. As a man who presumably lived through the Second World War and has vivid memories of those turbulent times, he expresses fear of the fickle nature of peace. However, it is not until later that the audience realizes the extent of his trepidation. A few scenes after Steiner’s statement about fear, Marcello receives a call asking him to rush to Steiner’s apartment, as the latter has been found dead. Steiner had shot his two children in their sleep, and then shot himself, showing how his superficially “perfect life” was actually a well-constructed facade.

This sudden change in the course of the narrative shocked me. Despite all his privilege, Steiner not only committed suicide but also murdered his children. The film depicts this insane act as a culmination of boredom: Steiner had lamented to Marcello that his life had already been set out for him, didn’t present anything exciting or new, which is why he lived in his thoughts and worries. He just sat in his spacious, beautifully furnished apart-

Chantal Marauta staff writer

Claribel Wu illustr ator

ment doing absolutely nothing. Steiner was a paranoid over-thinker, which is something I can relate to on a personal level. When I have nothing to look forward to—no new obstacle to surpass, no new challenge to take on—life becomes dull and boring. Then, when the boredom kicks in, the existential crises ensue, and it all goes downhill from there. Everything I do, and every new challenge I try to take on, I do because it takes me further into the future and helps me slowly figure out where I want to go. But what happens when, like Steiner, we’ve reached our future and achieved everything we’ve ever wanted to achieve? What happens when we’re so used to running, climb-

ing, and pushing ourselves that we don’t know what to do with ourselves once we’ve gotten to where we want to be? We work throughout high school to go to a good college; we work throughout college to get employed; and we work our butts off in jobs we— possibly—hate just because they pay well and will “take us somewhere.” So what happens when we’re “there” and have no other end goal in mind? Nothing new to work toward or to look forward to? What if we’re so conditioned to thinking about the future, that when we actually get there, we don’t know what to do with it? In the end, is there really a perfect life? We all have general images of where we want to be in 20 years,

Things better than a summer internship 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8

A paid summer internship A winternship #innovate #getahead A summer internboat Literally nothing, because what besides a summer internship could truly diminish your feelings of complete insufficiency? Turning up the heat on Trump A lemonade stand “3WW” by alt-J Playing baseball every day until Hamilton “Ham” Porter hits a signed Babe Ruth ball over the fence and then you’re screwed Working at a local amusement park and falling in love with Kristen Stewart until you find out that she’s really dating Ryan Reynolds Listening to the Beach Boys on the beach until you reflect on your beach privilege

whether it’s married with children in a pretty suburb, lounging back in a spacious office in a high-rise building, traveling on the road with a successful band, or whatever else one has in mind. In La Dolce Vita, Marcello wants to live the lives of movie stars and aristocrats. Through his job he gets to go to their parties and truly experience their world. However, after sleeping with multiple beautiful women and partying with influential men, he remains frustrated and dissatisfied. He is the most sought-after journalist in Rome and is treated like a VIP, yet in all the glitz and glamour he’d always been fascinated by, he still does not find what he is looking for. The end of the movie sees a drunken Marcello stumbling out of the frame with a group of famous actors and their entourage of escorts, as lost as ever. The thing that terrifies me about this ending is that his character doesn’t find a satisfying conclusion: He never seems to achieve true happiness, despite having socially and professionally gotten to where he wanted to be. What if we spend our whole lives working towards a goal, only to get there and realize that it’s not what we want at all? Does that mean that all our time and efforts have gone to waste? I don’t have a straightforward answer to all these frustrating (and depressing) questions. However, watching Marcello’s and Steiner’s dissatisfactions made me realize that no matter how well-off you are, and no matter how happy you may seem, there is always going to be something wrong. It’s

inevitable that we find ways to bitch about life or to be sad about something or another. But Fellini’s characters prove that there’s no point in perpetually worrying about the future, and there’s no use in being frustrated at not achieving every single goal you’ve envisioned for yourself. This is because your “perfect” vision for the future may not be so perfect after all. Everyone has a sort of dolce vita (good life) in mind, but we have to remember to take life one step at a time and appreciate the dolce vita we already have. If you have air in your lungs, clothes on your back, and food on your table, then you already have a lot to be grateful for. Most of all, if you have love in your life, whether it be familial, friendly, or romantic, it’s important to appreciate it everyday. Though it was an artistically fabulous film, La Dolce Vita taught me an important life lesson. It’s fine to have goals and to aspire to an ideal because aspirations give you something to work toward. But if passion becomes obsession, you will never be satisfied. Why? Because there is no perfect life. There’s always going to be something wrong, something missing, or something lost. Wherever you go, whoever you become, you will inevitably feel lonely, confused, and a little bit hopeless, because it’s in our nature to feel these things. So stop pining after perfection that doesn’t exist. Live life while you’re here, and appreciate the beauty in the simple everyday. Once you do, you’ll realize that you, too, have a variation of la dolce vita.

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“Did you go to the live Shrek re ading la st night? ”