In This Issue
The Ascetic in the Attic
Naomi Kim 3
I Am Here
Amelia Wyckoff 2 Kaitlan Bui 4
Poetry is Everything I Don't Understand Annie Cimack 5
Peace, Love, and Music Nicole kim 6
Not Your Cultural Reset
postCover by Hee Won Chung
SEPT 18
VOL 26 —
ISSUE 1
FEATURE
I Am Here
The Invisible Labor of Migraines By Amelia Wyckoff Illustrated by Iris Xie
content warning: Sexism, medical racism
T
he fog usually rolls in around noon. My head becomes suspended in lukewarm air. My feet feel colder and my ears burn, just a little. The ache begins either with a pulsating, pounding pain or a dull buzz in the back of my skull. Once, my neurologist asked me to write down what my head felt like every day for a week. My journal that week included each of these adjectives: warm, full, compressed, distant, flat, light, heavy. On a good day, the pain in my skull is dull like the taste of swiss cheese. If it’s a bad day, light stabs my eyeballs with pixelated knives, forcing me to scrunch up my face and squeeze every muscle like I’m about to play a loud note on the trumpet. Migraines are reactions to waves of activity in the brain cells. When someone’s serotonin and estrogen levels dip or spike, their nerves can miscommunicate, leading the blood vessels on the surface of the brain to swell. The five senses become hyperactive during a migraine: Bright light, loud sound, strong smells, and even certain tastes can trigger migraines, or exacerbate them. Estrogen variation often contributes to migraines,
which are three times more prevalent among people assigned female at birth (AFAB) than men. As a result, the medical community has long considered migraines a “woman’s disease.” It is perhaps this descriptor that’s made it so hard for me to find effective treatment. Doctors regularly downplay and even disregard womxn’s symptoms. As a result, it can take years to diagnose womxn with common medical conditions. According to a study by the NHS, one in ten AFAB people suffer from endometriosis (when endometrial tissue appears outside the uterus, causing pelvic pain), but it usually takes seven or eight years to be diagnosed following symptom onset. Womxn are more likely than men to be given sedatives instead of appropriate treatment when in pain, and more likely to be wrongly diagnosed with mental health conditions. Medical bias disproportionately affects Black womxn, and migraine diagnosis is no exception: A National Medical Association study found that compared to Caucasians with headache disorders, Black headache sufferers are more likely to be underdiagnosed, undertreated, or misdiagnosed with depressive disorders. I’ve had migraines since I was six years old, when my abdominal pain migrated to my head. They
occurred about once a week until I was 16, when they began happening daily. The four years since have been filled with a litany of medications. I’ve tried the triptans (Suma-, Riza-, Maxi-), Amitriptyline, Aimovig, Emgality, Cambia, Nurtec, nasal spray, Melatonin, therapy, and an unfathomable amount of Coca Cola. At first, my doctor tried to convince me I only needed Melatonin: sleep and hydration would fix me. Admittedly, sleep has never been a priority of mine—but I had migraines even at age six, when my bedtime was 7:00 pm. And no quantity of water could calm my inflamed brain. Only my current neurologist, Kate, has been aggressive and inventive with treatments. But these prescriptions have never lasted. First came the triptans, which stimulate serotonin to decrease swelling. Each one worked for a few months, until my brain became “triptan non-responsive.” So, we upped the dosage until an EKG told us to stop. Next, I began injecting myself every month with a long and very expensive needle, which left my right thigh speckled with blue dots: Aimovig, designed to block the production or reception of a protein called CGRP. When my body developed a resistance, I switched to Emgality, another blocker. But this needle was so painful that injections made me vomit, so it was back to Aimovig, which alleviates my symptoms about twothirds of the time. When medication does work, though, it’s shocking and disconcerting. Kate prescribed Cambia, an antiinflammatory powder that tastes like licorice. I told her I didn’t like it; it made me dizzy and nauseous, the world a little too bright. She laughed and said, “I think you forgot what a clear head feels like.” My body was overstimulated by how much I could see and hear. I was so used to dullness that clarity was overwhelming, like walking out of a movie theater into a sunny day. In her essay, “In Bed,” Joan Didion writes, “All of us who have migraines suffer not only from the attacks themselves but from this common conviction that we are perversely refusing to cure ourselves by taking a couple of aspirin, that we are making ourselves sick, that we ‘bring it on ourselves.’” In elementary school, my migraines struck on Mondays at lunch time like clockwork. My then-neurologist shrewdly pointed out
Letter from the Editor Dear Readers, Ah, jeez. That’s a refrain I’ve picked up from my friend that’s been going through my head quite a bit recently. “Ah, jeez, Theo pooped on the floor again.” “Ah, jeez, this seminar is two and a half hours long and the professor is just staring at us now.” “Ah, jeez, I’ve reached the limit on my pod.” It strikes a perfect balance between tired and cares-enough-to-be-disappointed, which, honestly, is not a bad place to be in these unprecedented times (sorry). New normal, contemporary angst, corporate lingo aside though, the care people have really is awe-inspiring. From simply checking in with loved ones to doing grocery runs, donating to global mutual aid funds to gathering supplies for local organizations and protesters. It’s not easy—there’s much to be said about the emotional labor that goes into getting up and carrying on with our days, let alone working to make the world a better place. But here we are, here you are, doing it.
To kick off the semester, post- is supporting voices speaking through the change and unrest of the past few months. In Feature, our writer relates her experiences with migraines and how they’ve led to a reciprocal relationship of care with her mother. In Narrative, one writer shares how she dealt with the change of moving into her attic apartment, and the other redefines her relationship with poetry. In Arts & Culture, a writer looks to Woodstock to see what it can offer to grassroots organizing, and another writer grapples with how the appropriation of K-Pop has conflicted with her Korean American identity. We hope that wherever you are, reader, you also have found yourself dealing with change however you can. It’s been a rough year, and even though there really is no pause button on this spinning earth, do try to take in this moment of rest as you flip through our pages. You deserve it.
Take Care,
Amanda Ngo Editor-in-Chief
2 post–
Distractions During Zoom Lectures 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Staring at myself in my little narcissus window Texting my friends and watching their reactions in real time My cat asking to be let inside/let outside/let back inside Panning through participantsto see who I know Perpetually noticing my phone lying in the corner of my vision Looking up classmates I disagree with to deduce their political alignment Matching with hot classmates on tinder to start drama Examining others’ choice of room decor My parents walking into frame and asking what I’m doing Turning my camera on and off to to maintain an air of mystery
NARRATIVE that pattern. His medical advice: “Try to relax, honey.” Didion also references a “migraine personality,” a term coined by doctors to describe ambitious, perfectionistic women. Emotional disturbances like anxiety and stress are the most common triggers of migraines. Still, according to the American Headache Society, “In most migraine patients…psychological factors are important but are secondary rather than precipitating etiologic agents.” Stress and anxiety impact migraines, but a migraine’s root causes tend to be physical. Therapy has helped reduce my anxiety, but my migraines persist; relaxation was never going to cure me. As Didion observed, migraine sufferers are given the burden of their own care. During childhood, that burden was shouldered by my mother, a migraine sufferer herself. This is no surprise: Migraines are inherited genetically. My mother has them, and her mother had them before her. And now, me. Because our brains respond to barometric pressure, overcast days usually triggered both my mother and me. Even on those days, she would pick me up from school and help me up to my room, where I would undress and slide into my freshly-made, cool bed. She’d close the blinds and turn off the lights. I’d wake up to a fresh bottle of water and toast with butter (a safe food that wouldn’t upset my stomach) sitting on my nightstand. She did all of this while in her own excruciating pain. Today, I asked her what her migraines felt like over dinner. She laughed and replied, “Like someone stuck an awl through my fucking eyeball.” Once, on vacation, my mother spent three days in bed, consuming only water with mint and buttered bread. I would creep into her bedroom, poke her awake, and ask her what was wrong. My dad would respond, “Let your mother sleep, she’s sick.” My answer: “But mommies don’t get sick!” I couldn’t comprehend that my mother also needed care, rest, solitude. To me, mothering meant constant presence and forthcoming solutions. My mother’s migraines broke this myth. When my mother was incapacitated, the house would fall apart at the seams. My dad would try to construct a last-minute dinner (usually spaghetti and Rao’s sauce), groceries would not be bought, and bedrooms would not be cleaned. During quarantine, my mother and I have done the shopping, the wiping down, the Clorox-buying, the cooking, and the cleaning. My mother had a migraine last month, so my brother and I ordered takeout. My brother walked inside the house with the hot pizza box, plonked it onto the table and immediately started to eat a slice. I exploded, interrogating him: “Why didn’t you wipe that down? Did you wash your hands?” and quickly realized he had never watched me and my mother clean. He didn’t even know who was buying the groceries. Like domestic work, migraines are invisible to the untrained eye. My mother can take one look at me and tell that I’m hurting. She says I lose the sparkle in my eyes. As I’ve grown up, I’ve learned to notice what’s invisible. I watch her pick vegetables, work on her computer at the kitchen table, ask my brother if he’s eaten, attend Zoom meetings, do the dishes, and sometimes pause to take a deep breath. The two of us rarely agree, but I take her side in every argument against my father. When our heads hurt, we sit on her
bed at 4 p.m., drink Cokes, and watch HGTV as we massage our temples. Now, if she’s too tired to cook, I make her eggs for dinner. As an adult, I rarely feel my mother truly knows and sees me—but only she can recognize my migraine pain. Our mutual knowledge binds us together, even as my life has become radically different from hers. I am not naturally domestic. I’m a disaster in the kitchen, I’m messy. I don’t see the point of organizing my living space and I don’t like when other people tell me what to do. Still, migraines challenge my resistance to home life. Wherever I am—in class, on a date, at work—a migraine can always send me home. My headaches force me into a domestic space: They require that I be cared for. I’m terrified of this confinement and the dependence that comes with it. So, I grit my teeth and ignore my pounding head. I go to class, do my homework, even attend parties. Every few weeks, I collapse and sleep like Rip Van Winkle. As my stress builds, I forget to drink water, to eat vegetables, and like this, the cycle continues. My freshman year, I had a migraine that lasted 10 days. I let myself sleep through class on the first and second day, and forced myself out of bed on the third. On day six, I took a 10-hour nap—a short reprieve— but I didn’t let myself savor my newfound energy. All I could focus on was my absence: I missed a dinner with my favorite class, failed to turn in a paper. My stomach turned and head pounded as I sent out one apology email after another. When I missed yet another rehearsal, I cried and threw my bedding onto the floor. On the morning of the tenth day, I took an Imitrex (it didn’t work) and promised myself I would never lose so many days again. Aimovig’s slogan goes, “With Aimovig, you can say ‘I AM HERE.’” The drug’s commercials show mothers who can’t play with their daughters and aloof fiancées crying to their boyfriends. These ads make me laugh— they look nothing like me—but the slogan terrifies me. I am so afraid of not being here, missing school and work and life. I’m afraid my music will suffer because my senses are dulled. I worry my partners will grow tired of my exhaustion, and that I’m not as smart as I could have been. I asked my mother if she resented working while in pain. She said, “No. I never thought twice about it. We have responsibilities, I couldn’t let a headache slow me down.” Migraines, of course, are not mere headaches— they take over your entire body. Still, my mother and I both feel guilty for feeling pain, being absent. For needing care instead of providing it. In August I moved in with two of my closest friends. We’ve spent most of our time piled on our living room couch—until last Thursday, a cloudy day, when the air pressure kept me in bed. I was apprehensive, fearing what Didion describes as “the accusing eye of someone who has never had a headache,” but my roommate brought me buttery toast. I napped fitfully all day and couldn’t fall asleep that night. Instead, I listened to the movie my roommates were watching through the walls. I hadn’t called my mother since I moved, but I texted her, “my head hurts.” The typing bubble appeared and disappeared, and a few minutes later she responded, “I know <3.” I looked at the weather app; it was cloudy in Connecticut too.
The Ascetic in the Attic
St. Anthony of the Desert and Me by Naomi Kim Illustrated by Anna Semizhonova For a place so small, the off-campus attic apartment I moved into upon arriving in Providence had far, far too much to clean. The bathtub with suspicious black stains—mold?—and rust-colored marks. The sticky refrigerator with multicolored stains from drips and spills and splatters. The drawers and shelves (also sticky) scattered with crumbs and mouse droppings. The literal hairballs left rolling about on the bathroom floor. The unidentifiable food items left in the freezer. All my hours were spent scrubbing and rinsing and wiping and trying (and failing) to contain my distress and emotional turmoil. At night, exhausted, I sat down on the edge of my mattress to eat my microwavable mac and cheese. (In fact, I ate nothing but Kraft Mac & Cheese for two days, devoid of time, energy, or anything remotely resembling an appetite.) The ceiling sloped down so that standing was impossible in half the room, and the floorboards were so uneven that I had cut up pieces of cardboard to shove under the legs of the clothing rack left behind by a previous tenant. I eyed it and hoped desperately that the cardboard would be enough to stabilize it. I tried not to think about the moment I had finally managed to lug my fifty-pound suitcase up the narrow stairs and found myself face-to-face with the unmistakably DIY door—so crooked and cracked that the light shone through—and touched the doorknob, only to have it fall off. It was the kind of door that the Big Bad Wolf would have laughed at. A huff and a puff would have blown that door clean to Oz, where the Munchkins would have considered it inadequate even for firewood. Eating another mac and cheese in silence, I felt a bit like Sara Crewe from A Little Princess, living a scullery maid existence and consigned to the attic. Except Sara Crewe was saintly—so saintly that even as a child reading A Little Princess, I found her unceasing perfection annoying. Me, on the other hand? I was no Sara Crewe. She took things quietly and meekly and sweetly. Meanwhile, I cried for two nights in a row and again the third morning, unspeakably angry and simply overwhelmed by the dirtiness, the smallness, the unexpected housing group complications—all the problems piled up higher than the trash left behind by the previous tenants. I felt powerless. Antony of the Desert was no Sara Crewe either, but he was a saint. An officially canonized one. Last spring, I had read The Life of Antony for a religious studies class and had been startled by the extremity of his self-denial and withdrawal. Antony gave away all his possessions, sent his sister off to live with a community of Christian women, and withdrew alone to the desert. There, he spent his days physically battling demons, praying ceaselessly, and eating shockingly little. A bit of bread here and there. But instead of growing emaciated and weak from his fasting, he became strong both physically and spiritually. (Nothing like throwing punches at Satan to build your muscles, apparently.)
“We won’t get into my fantasies about Helen Mirren.” “My friend handed me an Altoids tin and said, ‘Would you like to try a curiously strong mint?’ … It was Molly.”
september 18, 2020 3
NARRATIVE
When he emerged from years of dwelling on the divine mysteries, Antony was transformed. Having attained a “passionless” state of perfect emotional equilibrium, he healed the sick, comforted the mourning, reconciled the hostile, and preached devotion to Christ, all through the power of God. As a Protestant, I didn’t grow up hearing much about ascetics like St. Antony. However, the saints play a much bigger role in Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, and when I finally learned about them in my classes at Brown I found the hagiographies—the lives of the saints—both fascinating and unsettling. But the stories of ascetics took on a new meaning when I found myself quarantined at home in March. Spending two weeks alone in my room and eating my meals from the tray that my mother left outside my door made my level of awe for St. Antony skyrocket. He had spent all those hours—all those days—all those years—in discipline and devotion. I spent my two weeks slowly melting into a puddle of goo, 75% of which was made up of all the peanut M&M’s I had eaten. Now, quarantined in an attic in Providence without a single peanut M&M (or my mother) to console me, my thoughts returned to St. Antony of the Desert. He had rarely left the desert; I, too, rarely left this attic, except to make two pilgrimages to the OMAC to swab the inside of my nostrils. He had wrangled demons in physical combat; I wrestled with an overflowing bathroom trash can which reduced me to tears when it spilled the previous tenants’ used pads and a clump of pubic hair. But while Antony’s body had grown strong, mine seemed to age sixty years so that I awoke too early from my fitful sleep, stiff and full of aches from all the bending and crouching that cleaning demanded. If I was an ascetic, I wasn’t a very good one. Antony had been so disciplined, had managed to achieve some kind of structure that kept him focused on his one allegiance in life: God. In my two weeks quarantined in Providence, I had just two seemingly unambitious goals—cleaning and keeping somewhat sane—but I was coming apart at the seams every other second. Antony’s transformation was, of course, miraculous, but it began to seem to me that the real miracle of his story was his survival. His persistence. His devotion, his discipline. The people of the early centuries must have looked upon Antony in awe, wondering what kind of divine grace powered his ascetic life. As my two weeks in quarantine went by, my efforts paid off. The attic became passably clean. My body remembered it was only twenty-one and slowly worked itself out of near rigor mortis and constant back pain. Blessed routine emerged shyly from my scrambled hours and nursed my sanity back to health, gave me a measure of emotional equilibrium. If I have been an ascetic, I have been a very imperfect ascetic of small things. I’m no St. Antony, but my miracle is my survival, 4 post–
too. It turns out that for me, grace is as simple as having a clean refrigerator, a clean bathroom at last. Grace is being free from disturbing flashbacks of filth. Grace is the view from the skylight window, full of sky above and greenery below. It is raining today, and I can hear the church bells ringing from somewhere down the street. I think of St. Antony in the dry, dry desert, praying and fasting, his faith loud and clear as the sound of those bells.
Poetry is Everything I Don't Understand and other quarantine dilemmas By Kaitlan Bui Illustrated by Gaby Treviño for real it is confusing, and what is the point what is a poem what is the aesthetic is there an aesthetic what am i not getting here what am i not rhyming here hello, help hello *** So, the legend is that I wrote my first poem on a piece of cardboard when I was six. “Legend” meaning my mom told me so and “six” meaning I scrawled everything in pink highlighter (I thought it was an aesthetic). Before you roll your eyes, I assure you, I was not a prodigy. I was just a kid obsessed with words. And who could blame me? Words deserved the clout! Books transported me to far-off places—places where I could be whoever I wanted without having to explain why. Questions let me explore more of the world (“Mom, why don’t butterflies make butter?”). My bedtime stories pinky-promised that all good guys emerge victorious. Of course, I was also obsessed with my library’s Reading Challenge prizes. (A free burger coupon? Say no more.) So when I handed my mom a freshly-inked piece of flimsy cardboard and heard, “Kaitlan, you’re a poet!” I responded with, “What? Hey, I’m a poet!” I’m a poet! At six, that meant carrying a bright red notebook and asking anyone within arm’s length if they’d like me to write them a poem. It meant titling things “Flower Hower Hour” and “Cat on a Mat” (not “in a Hat”—that would be copyright infringement), and trying out all kinds of big words. “Salvation,” from Bible drill.
“Literature,” from a library flyer. “Evergreen,” from my teacher’s wall art. One time, I barged into my dad’s boss’s office and exclaimed, “Hello! Did you know I’m a poet?” I plopped myself on her chair and then acted as if I was frescoing her portrait, only through verse. When I finished, she asked me if she could have it. “No,” I said simply. “It’s mine!” And then I proceeded to steal her candy. I could go on and on about my red notebook adventures—because writing was magic to me, and poetry the melodic portal. But at some point, the magic was lost. I’ve been increasingly confronted by how dry my imagination has run—how I’ve come to celebrate recognition over art. I am spun along the hamster wheel that is college, encouraged to be an output machine. Oftentimes, I don’t feel worthy of taking on the title of “poet.” And yet, the words trail after me like dream residue. Dan Hill sings, “I’m just another writer still trapped within my truth,” and I can’t help but feel he’s singing to me. I can’t run away from myself, or from the pressure—and the truth is, I don’t want to. Such is the burden of the artist, one that I have borne since I chose to take a pastime (writing) and turn it into a “profession” (majoring in English). In proclaiming myself to be a writer, I reconstructed my hobby into my work. And this process has been complicated, something like deciding whether or not I should date my best friend. It’s a leap my heart longs to make, but one that simultaneously puts a lot on the line. I’m left with two choices: forever or never. But what if the affection only stays for so long? What if I pollute the love that would otherwise remain? I do suppose there is a fine line between awe and fear, passion and production. At what point does magic become monstrous? *** When coronavirus hit, one of the many things that disquieted me was what I coined the “productivity paradox.” Scattered across the quarantined world were people who, on the one hand, claimed a lack of motivation and, on the other hand, an assemblage of resume-worthy projects. They binge-watched multiple Korean dramas but also interned at intense companies. They created websites, tutored, wrote manifestos. Then they preached it was “necessary to prioritize self-care,” so that even self-care became a productivity scandal. Someone might have even trained a monkey and won a Pulitzer for it (wait— Pulitzers are for books…??). On my part, this meant that the productivity guilt-monster from campus had followed me home. Here, it took on a new form intimately tied to my daily life, but it breathed down my neck all the same. Things I started for innocuous reasons—learning the guitar, updating a blog, watching Avatar: The Last Airbender—transfigured into one big, amorphous question mark: Were they productive applications of my time? I was writing poetry too, so…was poetry a productive application of my time? I began to think of my creative outlet in terms of checkboxes. This meant spiraling down a Google search rabbit hole of how to get my poetry published. I sat for hours scrutinizing famous literary magazines, only to feel more disappointed,
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ARTS & CULTURE lost, and insecure. What did lowercase letters mean? Why did nothing rhyme? How the heck do you translate “upstream, these shining limbs folding”? I reverted to telling myself that “poetry is everything I don’t understand.” I mean, I thought I had been writing it for fourteen years—but my work looked nothing like what I saw online. My rhyming limericks seemed like child’s play. Flower Hour? Really? Was I wrong to have called myself a poet at six years old? Was I even one at twenty? Defeat slowly wrapped around my ankles. I shut my computer, surrendered to another season of Avatar, and concluded that my work would never be publishable. The sticky need for “productivity” was overtaking my creativity, and I couldn’t run away fast enough. *** One day, as I was regurgitating my insecurities via Messenger, my friend texted that “the best artists are those who aren’t afraid to share from their hearts.” “You are UNSTOPPABLE,” she wrote. I’m not sure why, but three words have never moved me so much. “I am unstoppable,” I said to myself. And I was transported back into the body of a sixyear-old—which is to say, the same hand, the same mind, the same imaginative potential—that once proclaimed unawares, “I am a poet.” Or maybe I wasn’t transported back in time at all; it was simply a matter of reclaiming myself. Of acute self-awareness. Serendipitously (or providentially, I’ll let you make that poetic choice), another friend texted me a video about William Sieghart’s Poetry Pharmacy. The video features Helena Bonham Carter, Lucius Malfoy, and the Great British Baking Show host, all reflecting on the beauties of poetry. And as I sat there on my living room couch, simultaneously listening to the fish tank and Bellatrix Lestrange recite verse, I began to break down all the erudition of wordplay, all the inaccesibility caused by “artistic” competition, that I had built up over my time at Brown. Goodbye, classroom formality. Goodbye, essayto-essay deadlines. Goodbye, Zoom mute and unmute. Goodbye, you pressure of production. Because: poetry is not a product. Poetry is a practice, and a poem is an experience—with no prerequisites. Once we put the arrogance of “needing to understand” behind us—instead, approaching words with feeling and nonknowing—we become unstoppable. We are filled with an unspeakable lightness, and we grow aware of what makes us beautifully, (un)certainly human. Poetry is everything I don’t understand, wrapped in empathy and given a silhouette. It is the half-dream, the almost-makes-sense, the words on the tip of my tongue. *** “What even is poetry?” my brother asks me one lazy afternoon. “Here, read this,” I say, handing him my iPhone, open to the Notes section. “It’s a poem I just finished.” He skims it. “I don’t get it.” “You don’t have to.” “What?” “Read it slowly, without trying to understand.” “I still don’t get it.” “Here, give it to me,” I say. “Just close your eyes and don’t try too hard. See where the words take you.” He gives me a look of concern, as if to say, “Alright then, you English major.” But he closes his eyes in compliance, and I read the poem aloud. “What do you see?” I ask him after the last line. “Wow...I don’t know. Read it again.”
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I do. This time around, he opens his eyes. “I don’t know…it’s like…a bzzz, bzzz, a soft glow, getting brighter and brighter...” He pauses. “...And then, pop.”
Peace, Love, and Music
Woodstock as our Past, Present, and Future By Annie Cimack Illustrated by Naya Lee Chang 2020 has been the 1969 of years. People are protesting in the streets, the president’s a crook, we’re fighting a soul-sucking war (this time against a pandemic instead of the domino theory), and for some reason, we want to send a man to the moon again. History is repeating itself in ways that we should have seen coming, and most of those ways are absolute garbage. That said, there’s one thing that came out of ’69 that I wouldn’t mind making a guest cameo in 2020: Woodstock. The Aquarian Expedition. Three Days of Peace and Music on a farm in Bethel, NY. Intended as a three-day music and arts festival for 50,000 people, Woodstock turned into a four-day festival for half a million. Fences were torn down, food and water were scarce, and mud was everywhere. In other words, a typical weekend for me. Of course, I understand the viral preclusions that prevent a music festival from happening in 2020, and if someone took my recommendation literally, I’d tell them to go lick a doorknob, but the sentiment stands. Personally, I feel like a cat who just got put in a washing machine and these last summer months have been the spin cycle. My joie de vivre has been permanently pressed out of me. How have I kept myself busy? Overwork and escapism. I would jump at a chance to hang out in a field with my friends and listen to some psychedelic folk music. What truly captivates me about Woodstock, however, is its spirit. I’ve discovered Woodstock for myself through documentaries and a steady exposure to the music that shaped it, courtesy of my dad. Because of his influence and whatever brain chemistry we share, I have my 65-year-old father’s taste in music almost exactly, which is a blessing and a curse. How much dad rock is too much? I’m getting dangerously close to finding out, and among my friends, I’m infamous for having what I’ll call a “mature taste” in music. When my dad was my age, he was a fan of Woodstock’s music, but actually attending the festival was out of the question. He was a teen from a pragmatic, working class, North Side Chicago family. No way in hell would he ever have attended this godforsaken hippie convention in godforsaken New York. And if given the opportunity, I’m not sure I would have either. The festival’s vibe may have been immaculate, but the actual event and facilities—not so much. I happen to be a fan of showering, real bathrooms, and lines instead of mobbing. Woodstock’s producers had safety to keep in mind because, realistically, they could only put so much faith in humanity. Who would keep the order? Who could possibly control what was, effectively, a small city that lacked food and toilets? You might be thinking it was the police. Close. It was actually a man named, and I wish I had the mental capacity to make this up, Wavy Gravy. He was a volunteer at a commune called the Hog Farm and ran what was dubbed the “Please Force.” In the end, Mr. Gravy did a stand-up job, and the festival was kept relatively safe. In this
overcrowded gathering of 500,000, people took care of their neighbors, and there were hardly any incidents of thefts, overdoses, or otherwise. And so, on August 15th, 1969—and with almost no plan for the next three days—the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival begins. On the first day, Richie Havens, a Black guitarist from New York City, kicks the music off. He runs through his set, but when he tries to wrap it up, he winds up performing so many encores that he runs out of songs and has nothing left to play. It’s a nightmare scenario to me, but I’m not Richie Havens. He, on the spot, improvs one of the most profound and iconic songs of the festival, “Freedom.” It’s a driving, heavily rhythmic song inspired by a spiritual from the African diasporic tradition called “Motherless Child.” It sets the tone for the rest of the weekend: wing it, but make something nice. Whenever we talk about Woodstock, we need to talk about Black musicians. None of the music played at Woodstock would exist without Black creativity (“Freedom” being a prime example), but the actual demographics of the festival don’t reflect this. In the beginning, Woodstock’s producers attempted to create a space for a more diverse audience by inviting (what they considered) a racially inclusive lineup of performers. However, Woodstock’s timing overlapped with the Harlem Cultural Festival, which featured a far more diverse slate of performers and a more familyfriendly culture. Also, this was the ’60s, and attending a music festival on a farm in rural New York didn’t hold the allure of “relaxing weekend fun” for everyone. Consequently, Woodstock’s location wasn’t conducive to the goal of drawing in a racially diverse audience. It became a festival primarily for white college students who had the means, time, and ungodly ability to survive on nothing but acid and rainwater for four days. But the idea behind Woodstock, of a place where everyone can get together and appreciate one another for their humanity, was revolutionary, regardless of its mediocre execution. And I feel like that’s what we need more of right now. The weekend rolls on from Richie Havens’ iconic first set. Acoustic acts come first: Arlo Guthrie, Ravi Shankar, Joan Baez performing at midnight while six months pregnant. (Notably absent was Bob Dylan. But, to be honest, when does Bob Dylan ever show up where he should? *cough Nobel Prize cough*) Their music is what I think of when I think of the benevolence and peace that so many young people of the time were eager to incorporate into their lives. Baez’s rendition of “Joe Hill,” a slow, melodic ode to a man murdered in the 1930s by corporate bosses for defending the rights of his fellow workers. It’s a beautiful metaphor for the sentiments of the students and teens living in fear of the draft. Their government had let them down, and it is unfortunately reminiscent of how I, and many others, feel today. I’m assuming you share my opinion unless, of course, you’ve enjoyed 2020 so far and don’t mind the global pandemic, institutional racism, and climate disasters. I’m pissed, to sum it up. The sheer greed and lack of human compassion that’s on display every day in this country, dripping down from the top, is disgusting and infuriating. What’s worse is that there’s no authority to turn to because those very same institutions are turning a blind eye to the public. I’ve realized that it’s up to the people to uplift and advocate for themselves and each other; there’s no guarantee that anyone else will. As the Black Lives Matter protests have gained more attention this summer, this has become painfully clear. This frustration is part of what makes Woodstock so resonant to me. Woodstock was about artists echoing the voice of the people, having your neighbor’s back, and giving a big ol’ middle finger to the powers that be. september 18, 2020 5
ARTS&CULTURE
Not Your Cultural Reset Imperializing Attitudes in American Kpop Culture By Nicole Kim
The first night of Woodstock, the weather begins to reflect the tempestuous feelings of the artists as a huge rainstorm descends on the festival, causing more mud and chaos. The music gets more electric and psychedelic. We get artists such as Santana (who forgets he’s in New York and verifies with the audience during his set), Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, The Who, and Jefferson Airplane. The music from these performances smells like weed and tastes like shrooms, but what I like about it most is that it allows itself to be angry. Janis Joplin doesn’t care what you think, and when you listen to “Try,” you fully understand that. It’s not a traditional love song in terms of melody or cadence, and the lyrics are more stream-of-consciousness than poetic. It’s a five-minute-long scream where Janis is imploring herself to keep trying to show her man “love with no control.” To me, this is a better kind of love song, one where the singer is not only deeply in love, but militant about taking action to make her love felt. I like that she’s taking responsibility and being proactive, that she’s not expecting her relationship to fall together blindly like a fairytale. That’s my number one pet peeve in rom-coms: the deus ex machina crap where they run into each other years later in Paris and realize they’re soulmates. What are the odds? Janis Joplin is giving you great relationship advice (in a way only she can), and she’s also making a powerful point about life in general: you can’t expect a reaction, whether it be love or social progress, without an initial action. Isaac Newton can quote her on that. The last performer is pushed until Monday morning due to rain delays, and by this time, most of the crowd has gone back to work or school. Jimi Hendrix, a man whose person, talent, and genius cannot be overstated, plays the “Star-Spangled Banner.” He’s playing the nation’s anthem, but you can also hear a warzone, complete with the sounds of bombs falling, sirens, and a snippet of “Taps.” It’s the anthem being forced to reflect the brutal realities that nationalism and American exceptionalism try to justify. Hendrix, who was briefly a soldier before embarking on his career as a musician, never specifically said that he meant for his rendition of the anthem to be viewed as a protest song. That said, it’s largely seen as one. The Vietnam War disproportionately impacted Black men, who were drafted, assigned to combat units, and killed at levels that weren’t reflective of U.S. demographics. It’s a clear-cut example of the racism that’s permeated American military institutions for centuries. Hendrix, as a Black man, is making a political, anti-war statement, whether explicitly intended or otherwise, and he’s doing it on a guitar. I can’t even play an F chord. 6 post–
Hendrix’s performance was one of the most famous moments of Woodstock, and for good reason. My favorite moment was not a specific performance, but rather a short speech made by the farmer on whose land Woodstock took place. Max Yasgur was a dairy farmer and veteran, the antithesis of the type of person you’d think would support the goings-on of a psychedelic music festival. And, in all honesty, he had a right to be angry: his land was trashed and his community was furious at him for opening the hippie floodgates. Still, Yasgur didn’t unleash a tirade against the half-naked lovefest happening on his lawn. Instead, he left the crowd with this: “The important thing that you’ve proven to the world is that a half a million kids—and I call you kids because I have children that are older than you are—a half million young people can get together and have three days of fun and music and have nothing but fun and music, and I–God Bless You for it!” Max Yasgur affirmed to everyone watching around the world what the festival goers already knew: Woodstock was a testament to brotherly love and proof of concept for a peaceful future. And now, I want to bring us back to today. What happened to that peaceful future? Where’s the follow-through? Those kids on Yasgur’s farm went back to work and college, moved to the suburbs, and pursued the white picket fence. What else could they do? Woodstock was a kind of utopian experiment, but it wasn’t sustainable. The festival was full of political ideology, but not political action. Still, I believe the hippie counterculture’s idea to emphasize brotherly love, peace, and art remains hugely relevant today. I’m excited by the potential that we have when we work together—or as Woodstock has shown me, camp out in a field and sing together—and I’m cautiously optimistic that we can get to a better place by taking conscious action and speaking out in ways that aren’t entirely performative. Someday, I hope, we’ll see ourselves as a house united. The hope that the Woodstock generation brought about is still important, and their songs are still resonant. I love and will always love this music. It’s a snapshot of history that I’m seeing reflected back in many ways today, and I’m grateful that I have art to help contextualize my feelings. I’m even more thankful that I have a dad who showed it to me and that this is something that bridges the gap between our experiences. As a generation, I have full confidence that we’ve come farther and will go farther than the counterculture movement of the ’60s. History may be repeating itself, but that doesn’t mean that we have to listen to it. We’re putting on our shirts and shoes, we’re going to work, and we’ll be all the better for it.
This summer, amidst the global pandemic, I found refuge in three things: my iced Americanos, my canine and non-canine sisters, and Seventeen, the thirteen-member boy band that I love with all my heart. At the end of June, the Pledis Entertainment K-Pop group released their seventh mini album 헹가래 (Heng:garae). The Korean title conveniently describes “the act of a group of people standing in a circle and throwing an individual up into the air repeatedly (i.e. at sporting events),” a perfect symbol for the triumphant celebration of youth that is captured in the six tracks. My form of escapism in July and early August was bopping to the sweet longing on 좋겠다 while strolling through my Northern California neighborhood. And when wildfires rendered those walks impossible, I sang away the stress of living in apocalyptic smog to “My My.” Listening to Seventeen’s music always leaves me feeling better than before. Their songs, composed primarily by Woozi, a member of the band, combine beautifully poetic yet easy-tounderstand lyrics with simple instrumentals in a range of genres, from pop to hip-hop to EDM. Each of the thirteen members, whose names I can list off on command (in age order!), has a special place in my heart, and it’s the variety of their voices, styles, and personalities that makes Seventeen such a vibrant and loveable group. Growing up in an immigrant household, I was surrounded by Korean music and television. In preschool, my mother borrowed episodes of my favorite show 동물농장 (Animal Farm) from the video store each week. The cassette tapes, carrying tales of brave mother geese and kittens rescued from rooftops, made the long journey across the Pacific Ocean before arriving into my waiting hands, around one month after the episodes had originally aired. Once the cassette player had been switched out for DVDs, my family streamed trending K-dramas through illegal links found on MissyUSA (essentially Reddit for Korean moms, except more powerful). And on our way to the Korean side-dish store or driving to swimming lessons, my sister and I enthusiastically belted along to Sistar, Super Junior, and Girls Generation with the CDs we purchased from Hankook Market. It wasn’t until middle school that I experienced Korean music being played outside the context of my home life. I was sitting with two friends at our usual lunch spot when I heard Psy’s “Gangnam Style” being blasted through the speakers. The student council members at my school curated the lunchtime playlists, and this was one of the only instances that I actually recognized a selection. I was even more surprised to learn that many of my classmates had viewed the music video, which featured the comedians and celebrities I regularly watched at home, and were learning the iconic “horse dance.” In the following weeks, “Gangnam Style” resounded from all of the radio stations I usually pretended to listen to. A mix of amazement and confusion accompanied me as the song’s popularity spread. Suddenly, Korean music was cool enough to be played at middle school dances (which, in retrospect, maybe isn’t that cool…). The part of my life that I had always categorized as my “immigrant side,” to be shamefully hidden away when out in the
ARTS & CULTURE open, was being included, and even welcomed, in my “American” life. Even after Psy’s success, however, I continued to hate being asked about my music taste. Teenage me would shrivel up in fear and give a nondescript answer, deathly afraid of being read as some weirdo who liked “boys who wear makeup” and “girls who act like children,” terrified of being seen as “other.” I told my friends in my high school’s K-Pop club that I thought Korean music was too “manicured” and “overproduced” and enthusiastically hated on Twice, BTS, and other popular third-gen groups. Attending a predominantly white and wealthy school didn’t help, and in my spare time, I desperately scrolled through Spotify playlists in hopes of becoming a “real hip-hop listener.” And it wasn’t only the people who thought Korean music was “exotic” and “weird” that stressed me out, but also the adoring fans. Non-Korean enthusiasts would talk to me in broken 한글 (Hangul) and even tell me that they wished they were ethnically Korean too, as if that was some sort of compliment. Scrolling through my Instagram feed, I often encountered comments that were written in Romanized Korean: Englishified Hangul words like ‘saranghae,’ ‘oppa,’ and ‘chingu’ made me cringe. Usually, I simply laughed or replied back in Romanized myself, unable to pin down the uneasy feeling in my belly. Witnessing the Hallyu Wave gain more and more traction in what is currently known as the United States has been a troubling experience as a Korean American. K-Pop has become strangely incorporated into American culture in recent years. BTS is a household name, tops the Billboard charts regularly, and attends awards shows alongside artists like Halsey and H.E.R. The group even spent this past New Year’s Eve in Times Square, forgoing their invitation to a Korean broadcast network’s performance. Korean entertainment industries eagerly market toward the profitable American audiences, stopping in most major cities on international tours and running Twitter ads that read “Learn Korean with BTS!” Yet, there remains a veil of entitlement and “othering” through which Korean music is received and discussed. In interviews, American hosts ask Korean guests why they can’t make songs in English, as if that’s the obvious next step in their career. Singers are expected to give beaming reviews about performing at venues like Prudential Center or the Rose Bowl. Furthermore, popular groups are given nicknames like “the Korean Beatles,” and the genre itself is described with phrases like “adult candy” that undermine the seriousness of the music and play into the exoticization of Korean people. I’ve even witnessed American artists who work with Korean musicians mispronounce and misspell their collaborators’ names after the joint performance (would this ever happen with a white collaborator?). And any K-Pop
content that is uploaded to the Internet is immediately flooded with comments asking for “English speaking please” and “Where are the English subtitles?” These occurrences might not seem very harmful on the surface, but the problematic aspects of American K-Pop culture stem from larger patterns of anti-Asian racism and the history of U.S. imperialism in Asia. Korean music isn’t considered as authentic or legitimate as American music because it’s made and performed by Asian people. And Asian people and culture are still exoticized and dehumanized to this day, just as we and our culture have been in the past. We are objectified, fetishized, and exploited because we aren’t thought to be as intelligent, as emotionally capable, or as human as white people. And these imperialistic attitudes are reflected in K-Pop culture. White people (and plenty of non-white people indoctrinated into whiteness) practice a mentality of white saviorism and American exceptionalism in the ways they talk about Korean artists and fans. The Korean people are characterized as one formless mass of ignorant and conservative racists, queerphobes, and sexists in the white imagination. So when a K-Pop celeb speaks out in support of gay people or Black Lives Matter, they are overindulgently praised all over the Internet for “teaching those Asians the superior values of the liberal West.” In reality, these condescending comments applaud the artists for overcoming what is perceived as their (inherently flawed) Koreanness and getting closer to realizing their truest, whitest selves. This was the case when Jo Kwon, a member of the well-known ballad act 2 AM, talked about embracing a genderless image in the singer’s musical career. Western fans militantly demanded that Jo be referred to with they/them pronouns, completely ignoring the fact that there are no gendered pronouns in the Korean language. Nor did Jo ever claim to prefer a specific pronoun in English, a language that Jo does not even speak. At the same time, Korean men have been exoticized for years because they wear colors, styles, and makeup that is viewed as feminine through the lens of Western gender norms. This instance demonstrates how the “social justice” crusades claiming to “save the Asians” are really more focused on centering whiteness and white supremacy than on productive and respectful conversations. To quote my sister, “I don’t think the way forward is for white people or Westerners to try to educate Asians on how not to be racist when their own countries invented white supremacy.” Like in so many other forms of cultural consumption, many white people are too willing to use people of color as entertainment while ignoring how their whiteness is implicated in the oppression of BIPOC. In the case of my people, South Korea has a complicated relationship with what is currently known as the United States due to lingering histories of war and imperialism and the continuing U.S.
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military presence. This past and the power dynamic between the two countries cannot be blissfully ignored by Americans who choose to partake in K-Pop and then feel entitled to make judgements about Asian people. Nor can the U.S.’s history of Asian exclusion and continuing discrimination (which has become more blatant during COVID-19) be conveniently forgotten. K-Pop is not a “neutral” space where these histories we have inherited are removed from the picture. Clicking open my Spotify this morning, I’m pleasantly surprised to find that Joshua and Dokyeom, two of the vocalists of Seventeen, have collaborated with Pink Sweat$ on a remix of the singer’s “17.” Touché. The track begins with a pleasantly thrumming bass that’s joined by warm percussion and Joshua’s soft and flirty voice, then DK’s earnest and sorrowful singing: “널 만난 그날 부터 시작이 된 건 가봐… 서툴던 나를 받아준 널 품에 안고 싶어 난…”. The Korean and English lyrics mingle together, creating a special kind of resonance: “이 손 놓지 않을게. 지금처럼 내 곁에, 영원히 머물러 줘 when we’re ninety-two the same as seventeen.” Pink Sweat$’s loving and nostalgic vocals blend well with the members’ voices into a sweet and soulful melody that has me swaying in my chair before the start of my first Zoom meeting. I find a retweet on Pink Sweat$’s account from one hour ago: a photo of DK and Joshua making V’s at the camera while wearing blush pink sweaters and coral lipstick, accompanied by the Pink Sweat$’s comment at the top: “MY GUYSSSSS” with teddy bear emojis and hearts. All of the comments near the top of the thread are in English and can be categorized into (1) ecstatic joy and 팬심 (literally, fan’s heart) or (2) thanking Pink Sweat$ for “the collab with our boys,” “for working on the collab with them,” “for making this possible.” I’m very happy for 지수 and 석민, but I’m also saddened, wondering why this has to be positioned as an “opportunity” that was graciously granted to them by the American music industry, when they are already such talented, successful, and beautiful artists on their own. I started listening to Korean music again when I entered college, after a long hiatus and much selfintrospection. My short-lived flirtation with “real hiphop” (another site of whiteness ignoring inherited histories—see above) had been rather unsuccessful, and I now recognize it as a violent, albeit valid, attempt to pursue “belonging” in this settler-colonial society. Diving into the warm embrace of Mamamoo, Suran, and Day6, I’ve become acquainted with the part of myself that flutters with joy at Wonwoo’s witty rhymes and swoons to Hwasa’s sultry vocals. I’m learning that I don’t need to turn away from my own Koreanness—it is whole and human, all on its own. *special thanks to my sister Michelle for helping me think through the ideas in this article and offering many insightful suggestions.
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