Post- April 14, 2016

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contents

editor's note Dear Readers,

upfront features 4 • taking a break 6 • the fountain's curse 8 • the great job search

lifestyle 10 • the point at which we live 12 • sprung 13 • ned declassified 14 • food, fun, food, friends, food 16 • lights, cameras, magic 17 • an unplanned road 19 • the game of language

arts & culture 22 • spring weekend artists 25 • soccer and saxophones 27 • zayn—mind of mine 28 • flashback

staff

Editor-in-Chief Yidi Wu Managing Editor of Arts & Culture Abby Muller Managing Editor of Features Monica Chin

Arts & Culture Editors Liz Studlick Mollie Forman Features Editors Lauren Sukin Halley McArn

Managing Editor of Lifestyle Cissy Yu

Lifestyle Editors Rebecca Ellis Claire Sapan Corinne Sejourne

Managing Editor of Online Amy Andrews

Creative Director Grace Yoon

Welcome to Spring Weekend! By now it’s Thursday, and (at least for me) the Spring Weekend experience will already have started. If you’re a die-hard fan of some of the artists coming, you had nothing left to do but celebrate after the lineup release. If you listened to “Trap Queen” a few times, but are fairly serious about Spring Weekend for the music, you’ll already have listened to the music beforehand. If you at least want to mouth along and bounce rhythmically when Friday comes along, you might’ve gone to a few listening parties. And if you’re just in it for the sex, drugs, and the experience of being very young (and you’re one of our loyal readers), flip through our Spring Weekend edition for artist bios and everything else for which you read Post-.

However, I would be derelict of duty if that’s all I said before I signed off to return to my own Spring Weekend. The sky will be blue and the sun will be bright and the music will be loud and the day will go on without you. Readers: stay protected, stay in a group, test your drugs, and remain hydrated.

Best,

Yidi

Copy Chief Alicia DeVos Serif Sheriffs Logan Dreher Kate Webb Head Illustratrix Katie Cafaro Staff Writers Sara Al-Salem Tushar Bhargava Katherine Chavez Loren Dowd

Rebecca Forman Joseph Frankel Devika Girish Gabrielle Hick Lucia Iglesias Anne-Marie Kommers Joshua Lu Ameer Malik Aubrey McDonough Caitlin Meuser Emma Murray Spencer Roth-Rose Ryan Walsh Joshua Wartel Claribel Wu

Staff Illustrators Alice Cao Peter Herrara Jason Hu Beverly Johnson Jenice Kim Emma Margulies Michelle Ng Mary O’Connor Emily Reif Yoo Jin Shin Cover Jenice Kim

upfront

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features

taking a break

figuring out hometown

HALLEY MCARN features section editor There’s something comforting about being home, and I’m reminded of that this week. My spring break is being spent mostly in my bed, or talking in the kitchen with my parents, or watching “The Office” with my brother. I hate myself for this laziness. I should be at the gym, or getting on that huge list I made of the readings I need to catch up on (reading catch-up lists are silly and will never amount to anything, but that never stops me from making them).

And then there’s the larger environment I’m in. This is what makes me feel lazy and trapped: I’m in a small town, and all of these people know far too much about me. I know too much about them. It’s suffocating. I go to the grocery store and see my ninth-grade English teacher and a girl I used to work with at the movie theater in town. I avoid Mrs. White, but the girl is harder to evade. She checks me out at the register, and we engage in polite conversation. I ask her how the theater is: she tells me it’s fine and fills me in on some gossip on the new management. I tell her I’m happy that things are going well for her.

Are things going well for her? I wonder if she’ll be working there next year. I wonder if we’ll still have stuff to talk about then, when she checks me out at the Price Chopper again. A few preppy college guys are in line behind me making a beer run. There is a part of me that doesn’t want them to associate me with her. I made it out of this town, I want to say. I hate this part of myself.

I drive home and listen to shitty radio. On the way I pass the movie theater and see the people I used to work with on the bench outside, killing time between showings. I was never really a part of that, never really included. I remember how tired my exchanges with them made me.

Each of us was somewhat jealous of the other’s side of things, but also somewhat justified in their dislike. After all, there were moments when I thought of myself as better than they were. I’m sure there were times when they thought that they were better than I was. They were probably right. One of them sees me, and I wave at them from my car. I don’t look to see if they wave back.

Once I get home there is a safety. My parents are on the couch, each reading, and my brother is in the dining room doing his homework. I sit with him and watch his pencil move over paper.

He’s sleeping in my bed this week, and has been for some time since I left for college. I take my sister’s old room, while I wonder if being in that room is the same for him as it was for me when I

slept there. It’s at the southernmost point of the house, and the sun hits it first in the morning.

It’s the warmest, brightest room in the house; in the spring it’s filled with ladybugs, drawn there by the sunlight. I’ve always hated them, the way they smell and the way they fly around, but my brother isn’t like that. He doesn’t like it when I kill the ladybugs. When he sees one he’ll leave it be or bring it outside, so it can crawl around in our backyard. My sister and I always joke that he’s the only good one of the family. Every night when I’m home he comes in and gives me a goodnight kiss on the forehead. He did that every night when I was still living here. I hope he’ll do it forever.

I wonder if he wakes up everyday to the sun and is excited to go to school and see the same people over and over again. I wonder when he’ll get sick of his life here, like I did before I left.

Maybe that doesn’t have to happen. I watch the deliberate scratching of his pen and his concentrated focus on the paper beneath him, and I realize that I never want to see disillusionment on his 14-year-old face.

I am being selfish. Maybe I am the only irreverent person in this town. In my time all I heard was people gushing about what kind of a community we had here. A real family. I don’t know if I can really believe in this anymore.

Most of the time I wear that badge with pride. I don’t need this place to feel whole. But that is a fiction I’ve carefully crafted when I feel that I have nothing to hold onto in a town that’s supposed to feel like family. I can tell myself that this environment simply isn’t for me. But I’d be lying if I said that understood how this place could be for someone. I want to ask the check-out girl, the kids on the bench, my little brother, my parents: Is this it? Are you okay with that?

And at once I am everything I hate about this town. Sure, I concede that I was born in the position to be able to question my environment and to want to eventually move on from it. I have a family who cares about me and the means to get an education and find a career that I love in a different place that I love. This is a privilege that is not available to everyone here, and it divides me from others. But I just I can’t fathom a life here, just like they can’t fathom my disappointment with town in which I grew up. This gap will never be reconciled it seems. I see two halves of the whole of our town floating apart from each other, both shrouded in misunderstanding. Can’t anyone else feel this?

I walk outside and up the hill of campus.

This is a college town. To most people in the town, the students are a source of income and resources, but also of annoyance and disdain.

They’re typically wealthy, from larger towns, and immediately leave town upon graduating.

To them, this town is only a pit stop for now, and later a place to reminisce with nostalgia on their college days. The people here recognize this fact and use it to discredit these students as disconnected from a true way of life. Is that what they’re going to do to me? Wipe me out, as if I never really lived here? Am I allowed to see this town as anything more than a place I’ve lived?

The view from the top of the hill is comforting. The green folds of land on the horizon are crashing into each other, while the sun sinks complacently into the mix, perhaps in the hopes of quieting the conflict. These hills will always be at odds with each other. But the sun’s effort is successful, and as shadow falls on the valley, they resolve into each other, silently coming to rest on the backs of each other. The angry orange of the trees dotting their surface is dull now, only to be awakened again tomorrow with the arrival of the sun. But for now, all that is left of the struggle is a silent and single strip of quiet black hill. A few lights dot the hill, but otherwise the town is asleep. I think that this is what defeat looks like.

The next day is better. I find myself trying to remember things about this place before I head back to school. It’s nice to look out my window and not just see buildings but trees and hills, to leave my door unlocked, and to have pleasant conversations that don’t mean anything when I pass someone I know on the street. I know I’ll miss these things when I’m back at school.

I won’t be coming back here this summer; I jumped at the chance to stay and work in Providence rather than spend more time on the bench outside the movie theater. I’m going to spend time in a town that feels more freeing, with people who have yet to really understand me. I know that I’m a different person now that I’ve spent time away from this place, but I don’t know if I could come back here and risk slipping back into whoever I was when I lived here. I know that I’m not free from all of the blame, but being here makes you concerned with a lot of things that don’t matter. It makes you talk about people and things that you don’t or shouldn’t care about. It makes you wonder what other people are saying about you, and you stay up at night

features

wondering if you’re even coming off in the right way. Who do these people think I am?

That last question is one that followed me here, and I’m afraid I’ll never really be able to shake it. Sure, it’s freeing to move to a new place and have a clean slate, but the pressure of the creation of “who I am in college” is what I wasn’t prepared for. It’s the weirdest thing to keep living as you did in your hometown but now with no one knowing your family, or your brother and sister, or what you like to do or talk about. When I met new people I felt it necessary to share with them that I grew up in a town of

4,000 other people, that I graduated in a class of 48 people. I’m out of my element, was what I was confessing to them. In the moment I saw it as a cool fact about myself. I’m special, I thought.

No one here has a claim to my experience. I offer a unique perspective. What I was actually saying: I’m scared. I’m still scared.

I imagine I’ll have something new to say about my relationship with this place every time I come back. With each passing month away from this place I am more different. That’s natural, I get that. All that I can hope for is a better understanding of what it is about this town that

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makes me react with such a confusing blend of suffocation and comfort, disdain and nostalgia, longing and contentment. But until then I’ll be floating away from here. Not forever, just until I can offer my town something new.

Illustration by Soco Fernandez-Garcia

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features

the fountain’s curse the life and death of edgar allan poe TUSHAR BHARGAVA staff writer There are two portraits in wooden frames, resting on a dusty shelf, in the corner of the room. A man with mismatched eyes. A woman with hair in curls. Edgar Allan Poe and Sarah Helen Whitman,” the tall librarian leading the tour points to them.

She pushes her large spectacles back and continues, “We don’t have nearly enough time to go into the full story, but I’ll give you the briefest of outlines.” Standing at the

back of the room between two white-haired ladies, I take out a small notebook from the pocket of my shirt. I place the tip of my pen on the paper. tiny black dot forms and then grows as the ink starts to spread: a beginning.

I first heard of the Providence Athenaeum in “The Brown Reader,” a collection of stories written by Brown graduates about their time in college. The story, “Number

One Tofu Scramble with Johnny Toast,” referenced a popular rumor: the curse Edgar Allan Poe had placed on the drinking fountain outside the library. Of course, I wanted to go to the Athenaeum then. I convinced a friend to come along—“Do you want to see an accursed fountain?”—but I didn’t tell him what the curse was. That required a lesson in history.

Sarah Helen Whitman knew Edgar Allan Poe from his writing. Poe too was aware of her. Their romance started when, for a Valentine’s Day party, Sarah Helen Whitman wrote a poem addressed to him, “To Edgar Allan Poe.” Poe replied with a poem of his own, “To Helen.” “What he forgot to mention,” said the librarian, crossing her arms over her chest, “was that he had written the poem years ago for a completely different Helen.” I found myself warming to Poe— such economy was familiar. My last year of high school, I applied to 12 colleges with the same essays and only the name of the school changed. I wonder if the admissions officers saw through the subterfuge? Sarah Helen Whitman did not. And three months later, Poe arrived in Providence.

The drinking fountain was made from stone. Engraved in granite, in Gothic script, the legend: “ Come here everyone that thirsteth.” A rusted metal spout stuck out from the middle of the fountain. There was a new steel drain at the center of the basin.

There were orange cigarette butts next to the drain. Yellow leaves. A green discoloration had set in around the basin—near the drain, around the edges, on the spout—and there was no water.

Poe was poor. At the time, no one made a living by writing alone, and Poe’s stories sold for little. Sarah Helen Whitman was a wealthy widow. Poe courted her, and soon they were engaged. “They would sit here, in the Athenaeum, and discuss poetry and stories,” said the librarian. “In the next part of the tour you’ll see some of the books Poe checked out from the Athenaeum and one on which he scribbled his signature.” I stopped taking notes in my little notebook and looked around. We were in the Art Room. The walls were lined with portraits and photographs, marble busts were placed around the room, a few gilt-edged paintings

features

hung on the wall, and two large windows overlooked the rest of the library. The tall shelves filled with books, the warm light making the planks of wood glow like embers. Looking out of the windows, onto the mezzanine, I could see two heads bent over a book, and I heard the sound of laughter--distant, but not forgotten.

“So tell me,” my friend asked, digging his hands into the pockets of his jeans, “What is this horrible curse?”

One of the conditions of the engagement was that Poe—who had a drinking problem—would abstain from alcohol. And one day, while Poe and Sarah Helen Whitman were sitting in the Athenaeum, a messenger came. He gave a slip of paper to Helen. The note said that Poe had been drinking the day before—he had. Helen read it and left.

Later she broke the engagement. Poe, heartbroken, prepared to leave Providence. It was then he placed a curse on the fountain. I imagine him standing tall and alone on the Athenaeum steps, a dark silhouette in the purple evening sky, his lips moving, saying the words that no one would hear, but soon everyone would know: “No one who drinks from this fountain will ever leave.”

And then, kneeling, tilting his head slowly, bringing his lips closer to the spout, drinking the cold water. If we should believe the stories of the guides of the Providence Ghost Tour, Poe still hasn’t left.

I kneeled beside the fountain and ran my finger along the stone basin. It was dry. My friend, who had just heard the story of the curse, mimicked the teller’s teeth chattering and said, “Let’s go. I’m cold.” My finger traced another pattern in the basin. “Tushar, there’s no water there,” he said. He kicked a pebble towards me. As I slowly got back on my feet, I saw in the distance Carrie Tower and the green rusted hands of its clock, not moving. And I knew why I had come: I too was on the run, from time’s scythe.

“Poe died a year after he left Providence.” The librarian looked at the painting again. I followed her gaze: the wild hair, the set-apart eyes, the drooping moustache, an unmistakable air of sadness. “He didn’t lead a very good life,” the librarian said and then began to recite a series of Poe’s misfortunes. I stopped taking notes. This was not a happy ending—and I’m not good with the other kind.

The ungraspable thoughts started on a Friday night. I was standing outside 315 Thayer, a large Gothic house that Brown renovated into several small dorm rooms, waiting for my friend Mario to open the door. Every Friday at 10 p.m. we’d watch an episode of “Hannibal,” and since he was the one with Netflix and a big TV, I was the one outside in the cold. I rubbed my hands together and sent him another text—“Hur-

ry up or you won’t need a show about murders.” And then another—“There’ll be a corpse at your doorstep.” And the last, my fingers too cold to type, a primal plea—“Mario!” There was no response so I sat down on a bench next to the house, facing the street, and burrowed my hands in my jacket pockets. A few cars passed by. A herd of freshmen, headed for a party. Then, for a while, no one. I checked my phone again for a response. There was none. When I looked up I saw a girl in a dark jacket crossing the road, her face hidden under her jacket collar, only the tip of her nose visible. She looked familiar and I looked closer and immediately regretted it—C, a girl I used to like. As she neared my bench, I considered jumping into a nearby bush, but it looked thick and prickly. I imagined getting stuck in it and the Providence Fire department having to rescue me: a fireman human-chain pulling hard to dislodge me.

While I was letting my “I dare not” wait upon my “I would”, she walked by without recognizing me. As I watched her go, black lines passed in front of my eyes. Some came closer and touched, others went apart, separated. I remembered the choices I had made—leaving Delhi and the shade of the banyan trees, sitting at a different table than my freshman friends in the Ratty, unpinning a hand-drawn birthday card from my wall—saw each fracture the lines into many.

And sitting on the iron bench in the moonlight, I felt something very close, something infinite, something almost found, and when I suddenly turned—at the metallic click of the door unlocking—I thought I heard the crumbling of other worlds.

A mother. A father. A brother. I am in the Rare Books Room of the Athenaeum, standing in front an exhibition called “Poe & Providence,” making an inventory of all the things that time took. His money (lost gambling), his furniture (burnt to keep away the cold), his fiancee (engaged to another), his foster mother (taken by an incurable disease), his wife (taken by the same disease). I pause to think of the rest of the list. I see the librarian, dressed in black, and remember the end of the story: “When Poe died, Rufus Griswold appointed himself as Poe’s literary executor. Griswold, who hated Poe, wrote a memoir in which he depicted Poe as a madman who wandered the streets, muttered to himself, and was addicted to alcohol and drugs. Sadly many people still think of Poe that way.” I dig my nails into my palm and complete the list: A reputation. A life’s work. A life.

Since my tour of the Athenaeum, I return there most nights. I find a desk between the books, place my taped-up laptop in the center, disable the internet, and write.

I write with my sleeves rolled up—not tidi-

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ly, but unevenly with crooked creases that would make my mother frown. If someone were to see me writing—with my untidy sleeves—they would probably think I was in a hurry, or running to meet a deadline before the library closes. But I am not. I can still sense the passing of time, and hear, whenever I pass Carrie Tower or the Athenaeum fountain, the quiet whispers of the invisible stream, but there is something else now—the memory of a glass wall reflecting light and the presence, almost imperceptible, of an oar.

For all that time took, did it give anything in return? I say the question aloud, but no one hears me: The Rare Books Room is full of people talking and laughing and examining, well, rarities. I am distracted and wandering around aimlessly when the exhibit lights reflect off the glass wall and a drawing on display catches my eye. I step closer, say, “Excuse me,” to a hand-holding couple, wait for them to disentangle, and slip past until I am in front of the lit glass cage.

Inside, a letter Sarah Helen Whitman wrote to Stéphane Mallarmé, in beautiful long flowing cursive—“After Poe’s death and Griswold’s memoir, Whitman began to write in support of Poe and his legacy,” a smile stretches the librarian’s paper-skin, “And this is where it becomes a true love story for me. She found allies: exchanged letters with Mallarmé and John Henry Ingram. She published a book to refute the criticism of Griswold. Sarah Helen Whitman made sure that Poe’s legacy was not forgotten.”

The first page of the first publication of “The Raven”— Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door— Only this, and nothing more.”

Inside, the drawing of a raven by Manet, a friend of Poe, for the cover of Mallarmé’s French translation of “The Raven”—hundreds of dark black strokes, the soft feathers of the bird animated, almost alive.

Inside, the only gifts of time.

And standing in the middle of a swirling crowd, I lean my head forward till it touches the cool glass, and I stare and stare and stare.

Illustration by Katie Cafaro

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features

the great job search navigating the future at brown LAUREN SUKIN features section editor “I’ll figure something out,” I heard myself say. I stared at my toes. I wiggled them—just to make sure I still knew how to do that. I did.

“I’ll figure something out,” I told myself, wondering what it was, exactly, that had gotten me into this mess in the first place. The chair was cold against my back.

I wished I was wearing a sweater. But that didn’t change anything, in the end. Most wishes don’t.

Then the topic of conversation changed—quickly, all too happily—and I sat there disconnected from the ebbs of talk around me, pretending to chew a bite of my food long after I had swallowed it.

I remember that dinner specifically, that feeling of being unable to be present, lost in my own anxiety about life in general and where mine was going. We were supposed to be celebrating my friend’s recent job offer.

Like many of the people I knew, he was going somewhere great; he deserved it. And I wish I could have more properly celebrated.

But I was lost. The rest of the world had it together, and I didn’t know what classes I wanted to take, much less where I would be at the end of the semester. I felt stateless, confused, and, worst of all, alone.

I wasn’t alone, of course. Not just because I had friends and family to support me, but also because I wasn’t the only senior going through this moment of personal crisis. Yet it was hard to open up, especially when the numbers of other jobless students around me were fast dwindling.

That is one of the things I wish I had been more prepared for at the end of last year. I knew, of course, that my job search would be different than that of many of my friends. I knew that as someone not set on a track towards working at a big bank or tech firm, I wouldn’t be recruiting in the fall, and I likely wouldn’t have any offers before I went home in December. What I didn’t fully realize is how my isolation would feel and how few resources I would have to change that.

After the dinner, I attempted to make an appointment with CAPS, thinking that they should be familiar with this particular brand of senior stress. But after four unanswered and unreturned phone calls, I gave up.

I remember deciding in the fall that, al-

though I would be attending few, if any, recruiting events, I would start my job search early. I revamped my resume a dozen times, wrote draft upon draft of cover letters. And then I went to the CareerLAB. During my time at Brown, I have had blissfully few interactions with CareerLAB. I made an appointment once during my sophomore year, I believe, during which I got very little advice. An advisor read over my resume, declared it “fine,” explained that CareerLAB has students who do that kind of thing, thereby implying that I didn’t need to have taken up her time, and sent me out of her office.

My appointment in the fall was scarcely better. I chose the next appointment I could attend—which was a month out— and showed up with my resume and a list of questions. The advisor I saw gave me some solid pieces of advice on my resume, at least, but they were tailored towards my graduate school applications. He noted at the end of our talk that this revised version wouldn’t work at all for my job applications, but rather than answer my questions about what would work, he just said to come back in a few months. It must have been his lunch break. When I asked what resources CareerLAB had for humanities and social science students looking for jobs, he asked if I wanted to work for a hedge fund or be a consultant. “No,” I said. “Then basically, we can’t help you,” was his reply.

So I asked him how to contact former Brown students in my field, but rather than direct me towards Brown’s own tools, he told me to search LinkedIn, saying it was “sometimes accurate” and that Brown’s databases were, to put it more nicely than he did, pretty useless.

He also suggested I talk to professors, as if CareerLAB itself shouldn’t be bothered to help students find careers unless they were tracked, fitting perfectly into recruitment and interview schedules already set up through the organization. I should note here that the professors whom I have talked to have been invaluable; I just wish that the burden did not fall entirely upon them.

I wish that someone had told me years ago how little support there would be for students like me at this stage. Why doesn’t Brown have more easily accessible ways for

students to find alums in their fields? Why isn’t CareerLAB prepared to offer students (at least, students outside of the CS and econ departments) support? Why isn’t job counseling in general more available and more useful?

For me, the question of where I will soon be is now, fortunately, settled—mostly. I was lucky enough to get into several Ph.D. programs, which I had been hoping for all along. Now, my hardest decision will be deciding between my options, and I am infinitely grateful that that’s the case.

While the news of my graduate admissions has certainly diminished my stress, it doesn’t improve the situation at Brown overall. The important thing is that there are still seniors who don’t have jobs, and juniors who won’t have jobs right away next year, and so on, and so forth. Where is the logistical and emotional support for these students, the support that Brown promised us we would have when we arrived?

For those seniors who are left wondering what the future holds, I just want to say that, even when it seems like everyone else has had their plans set for months, you’re going to be okay. You will find something that works for you. You will be happy. To those of you who will be going through this process soon, know that it can honestly be difficult at times. Like anything worth its weight, it will take effort and strength. But you’ll get through it. And I hope that, by then, Brown is more prepared to stand behind you than it was for me.

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lifestyle

the point at which we live “perfect memory” and a train ride MONICA CHIN managing editor of features It’s 1:30 a.m., and I’m on an Amtrak, trundling through a generic Westchester suburb.

There are houses lined up alongside each other that look exactly identical, against a backdrop of tall, shabby apartment buildings with cages in front of their windows. In the distance is the skyline of New York City on a Saturday night, the ever-familiar spire of the Empire State Building, and the flickering dotted outline of the George Washington Bridge. There are 8 million lives out there, raging in their own directions.

Last night, I watched “The Notebook,” as one does. I spent most of the early-20s romantic comedy portion rolling my eyes but was cut deeply by one scene towards the end.

It was the moment when an old woman with dementia, for a single brief instance, sitting across from her desperate husband, remembers. You can see it flash across her eyes, and she reaches out to clasp his hand—she remembers him, her children, and a long, full life. She forgets again in an instant, but the moment hangs in the air.

Along the Hudson River, we roll past a massive cluster of high-rise apartment buildings, stretching like a forest out into black perpetuity. The woman’s haunting eyes float in front of me, flashing to sudden recognition before subsiding back to lost distress. There might be a time, I think to myself, when I don’t remember any of this ride.

My memory has always been a strange gift.

I have an uncanny ability to memorize—I am sure this is responsible for a good amount of the academic success I have had. I can remember, down to the minute, the majority of things that have happened to me since I was six or seven years old. I remember all of the poems I had to memorize for the poetry unit in second grade and every song I played in piano lessons through middle school. I remember every outfit I’ve worn, every book I’ve read. I learn lists of dates and facts after two or three reads, and can repeat back long lists of numbers without a second thought. Every moment of my life is subsequently stuffed into a filing cabinet, to be rifled through and referenced at will.

As I scroll through my phone, scheduling meetings for the upcoming week, logging into my bank account to check if I have enough money to buy coffee the next morning, and planning out my homework allocations, it strikes me just how much of my time I spend

thinking about my future, even though surely the majority of my brain space is taken up by piles and piles of vivid memories. So much of this semester, the sixth of my college career, has been spent focusing on the months and years ahead, bogged down with applications, interviews, emails, making contacts, losing weight—all with an eye towards a stable future.

I suspect that the stable future will never actually come, that when I’ve settled down with the picket fence and the 2.5 children, I’ll still be looking ahead to promotions, to financing my children’s college, to saving for retirement. When I get off this train, I will wait for a bus, then wait to fall asleep in my bed. I will wake up the next morning, check off some classes and meetings, and repeat, waiting for summer to come, so I can begin waiting for school to start again. I suspect that when these goals fade into obscurity, others will take their place. I will keep waiting as new goals, wishes, hopes and dreams spring forth and fall back.

What do we all wait for? What do we all work towards? If at the end of this road lies an old and rickety version of me who cannot remember her times tables or her husband or anything that has ever happened to her, when do I stop devoting my present to paving my way to a better tomorrow? At what point do I live?

When I’m on long train rides, in cafeteria lines, or in boring lectures, I’ll often keep myself entertained by rifling through the filing cabinet and pulling out memories to watch little videos in my head. My melancholy subconscious selects, at random, a painful breakup from the end of eleventh grade. I remember locking myself in a classroom, collapsing on the floor, and sobbing, pressing my forehead into the varnished leg of a wooden chair. I remember scribbling into a diary how much pain I was in, how I’d never be able to think or feel the same way again. I remember walking through the woods later that night, and I remember the patterns of every single leaf that I crushed underfoot. I remember the song playing on my iPod the next time I ran into him in the school cafeteria (it was “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”). But I realize, as I replay those memories to myself, that as vivid as they are, something is missing. I don’t remember the actual pain. I feel so disconnected from the Me who went for that walk, played

that song, that I have no recollection of what it was like to be her.

I flick through more memories: my first kiss with my boyfriend, hugging my parents goodbye at the train station, petting my dog for the first time in three months, sitting on a beach in Brooklyn at 2:30 a.m. and staring across the East River at the brilliant Manhattan skyline. I remember every sight and smell, but the memories are as clinical as a spreadsheet. I remember grey days in bed after the breakup, but I have no idea what my brain did to drag me from that hole to the present, to the peace of this train ride. I vividly remember living, but I can’t remember how or why I’ve lived in the first place.

I have always been terrible with change. I called my mother on the first day of my freshman year of college, sobbing that I wanted to go home. I cried equally hard on the last day of freshman year, unable to accept that it was over. Breakups send me spiraling into weeks of depression, growing distant from friends makes me a wreck, and every new dorm, new job, new life, brings mood swings and pain.

When those times become memories, my brain files them away in its cabinet, to be reviewed at convenience, but with their most crucial element missing. It’s the way my “perfect” memory fails me. Maybe that’s why every change, every loss, hits me hard each time. I remember every name I’ve ever learned, but sadness and loss are brand new to me, every single time. Every breakup is my first breakup.

But happiness is new to me too, as are joy, excitement, love. Every time I feel one of these emotions beginning to course through me, I feel like I’ve discovered a brand new, beautiful room in an otherwise familiar house. I realize, as I revel in the beauty of the city lights and the trees outside my window, on a train carrying me to the university of my dreams, that while I wait for events to file away, I live in the emotions. The burst of affection when I hug my parents for the first time in months, the swell of pride as I read over a poem I’ve just written that I know will be great, the beauty of a clear summer night sky. These moments are what I live for. These moments are too strong, too real for the filing cabinet to contain.

That said, if you ever need someone to remember a phone number, hit me up.

Illustration by Ruth Han

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sprung breaking a dry spell GY staff writer It’s astounding how, despite my qualms about the app, the mediocre experiences I’ve had, the friendships breached as result, and the number of times I’ve told myself that I’d stay away, I find myself downloading and using Tinder again and again.

To give my pitiful self some credit, each time I delete the app, I hold off longer before succumbing to the temptation. And each time I download the app, I am less engaged, get fewer matches, and become far less likely meet someone, if at all.

Alas, spring break rolled around, and because I was too lazy to make plans, I was bound to Brown.

For better or for worse, I had a week to kill.

I maintained my jaded attitude and was even upfront about it, writing on my bio, “It’s both amusing and sad how many times I delete and download this app…” Somehow, someone took the bait, and despite my relative indifference, I can’t deny that I felt a bit of thrill. Isn’t that what they all say, anyways?

Full disclosure: This is not a story of a successful sexual escapade but rather a series of bizarreness that occurred in the hopes for it.

The man—we’ll call him M—had quite the proposition: He was temporarily watching his sibling’s place in Barrington and helping with a minor renovation project, part of which entailed installing a Jacuzzi below the slanted skylight of a huge bathroom on the top floor of the house.

While the idea certainly sounded compelling, the execution went somewhat awry. Here are couple “highlights” of the night, if we can even call them that: Because the renovation was still in progress, there were couple kinks with the house. For instance, the Jacuzzi did not have hot water. M had to boil water and thus a long waiting time ensued.

There was no heating system installed in the large bathroom either, so trying to stay and bask in that Jacuzzi glam proved to be difficult.

We were engaging in a bit of foreplay around 2:30 a.m. when the question of a condom popped up—it turned out that he didn’t have one at disposal. So, a couple minutes later, we were driving down the highway in search of a 24-hour gas station, passing by the road sign that said, “Welcome to Massachusetts.” That’s right: We crossed over to Massachusetts and then came back to Rhode Is-

land at fucking three in the morning.

Remember that this house is technically his sibling’s. During M’s stay, he was sleeping on the couch of the living room. As such, we were left to sleeping on the floor of the living room (the couch proved a tight squeeze). Waking up with your naked body shivering against the cold wooden floor of a room with limited heating at 8 a.m. on snowy Sunday? Not sexy, not pleasant, and literally butt-freezing.

Since I mentioned the naked body, you may think this setup is ideal for cuddling and keeping warm. That’s quite valid, but I want to take this moment to clarify one thing: when a person is sleeping, or trying to, that is does not mean they are giving you consent to touch their body, even if you were previously engaging in a sexual activity. Maybe this notion stems from some “sleeping beauty” fetish, but it’s problematic and just not okay. While I bring this up in a quasi-humorous writing, I’m in no way trying to diminish the gravity of this issue.

I will matter-of-factly declare that the combination of the cold and the interrupted sleep left me feeling much more drained and sleep-deprived

lifestyle than even after my usual post-SciLi-all-nighter condition.

Aside from the more problematic aspects of the night, I guess I can take some comfort in getting and perhaps sharing some laughs from the hilarity of the story.

But as Moliere aptly writes in one of his plays, qui rit d’autrui doit craindre qu’en revanche on rie aussi de lui—he who laughs at others should fear that in return they will laugh at him. As such, my fellow Brunonians, I’ll conclude the tale with some words of caution/advice, especially taking into account the upcoming Spring Weekend:

I’m aware that most hookups, especially those at Spring Weekend, are spontaneous, but when possible, check the weather and bring extra clothes before you go off to your nighttime adventures.

You don’t want to end up basking in the somewhat warm night of weather in the high 40s and then wake up defenseless to the snowy, 30-degree weather. And because we live in unpredictable Providence, you know this can still happen even in April.

Be prepared: Have a condom ready at all times.

Especially if you arranged the hookup beforehand, wouldn’t it be more practical to have a condom at

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hand rather than to assume that your hookup is on birth control? Alternatively, if you’re so inclined, you’re more than welcome to go and buy a package of Trojan condoms at a Shell gas station on I-195 at any time of the day or night, which you might take for granted now, but when the situation arises, remember and you’ll appreciate it.

Always, always ask for consent, because consent is sexy and necessary.

Illustration by Katie Cafaro

ned declassified big macs & brotherly love REBECCA ELLIS lifestyle section editor People are always alarmed by my descriptions of Ned. They either think I’m being cruel or that my younger brother’s a blossoming sociopath.

Physically, Ned is cause for alarm. With an unprecedented metabolism, Ned can eat indiscriminately, and has never once broken out of the severely underweight section of the ‘BMI’.

Forever stuck with his lot in life of long, gangly arms and legs, he remains five inches taller and 10 pounds lighter than me—like a basketball player if all that was left was bone. He has a long eyebrow that stretches across his face and some-

times, if he’s feeling spiffy, he’ll pluck a few hairs in the middle, so it resembles, if not quite two individual eyebrows, certainly a singular crooked one.

Mentally, Ned is a volatile jumble of shortlived passions. His most recent obsession was the aerobes found in bottles of kombucha, resulting in the conversion of our kitchen into one large cell culture. The year before kombucha, Ned discovered candles, promptly turning our basement into a factory for outputs of “Ned’s Candles” —“a family-owned, organically-grown candle making business,” according to the website. Lemon-scented wax still splatters the walls, even though the business has since gone out of commission, and he now only makes candles “for private clients.” No one knows what that means.

Before candles it was cooking, and before cooking, it was hiking. The list goes on, with each passion bursting from thin air, shooting out into the sky and quickly fizzling out.

This is one side of my brother—the eccentric entrepreneur.

The other side of Ned maintains the same intensity, but instead of manifesting itself in organisms and wax, it comes in the form of strict moral stances.

No hair in the shower. No loud voices after 11. No using any towels on the right side of the bathroom. No touching his laundry.

If Ned were God, these would be his commandments. With the same intensity that caused him to fall in love with the perfectly risen angel food cake or create the ideal microenvironment for yeast, Ned sees these offenses as great moral wrongdoings.

While my parents were careful not to tread

on Ned’s finely tuned moral compass, I stampeded all over it. Forgetting to scrub the salmon crust from the pan. Hogging the family computer. Not making enough tea for two people. I was a kid—not terribly self-centered and not an angel. But Ned held everyone in the family to a higher standard. He took note of each affront.

Nothing was excused.

For the past ten years, Ned and I have been in a rut. Like spouses that can no longer understand why they’re living under the same roof, we have grown a resentment so thick we’re trapped in it. So constantly ready to attack that neither of us could let our guard down. It was a Cold War between siblings.

Then, last summer, a disarmament began to be brokered.

The negotiation was brought about by a new boyfriend, Sammy. I had officially started dating Sammy earlier in the summer, but had kept him away from my family, not yet sure what the reaction between the two forces would look like.

Once I was confident the two entities wouldn’t combust upon exposure, Sammy was ready to meet Ned. At this point, Sammy had already heard the usual spiel about Ned—stretchy-looking, candle-producing, heart-lacking. Sammy was braced – an irritable perfectionist with a proclivity for failed entrepreneurial exploits awaited.

But that version of Ned never arrived. Instead, he presented as a genius tenth-grader on the verge of a billion-dollar empire.

That summer, viewing Ned through Sammy’s eyes, I pressed the reset button on our relationship. I tried to watch out for his eccentricities, and instead of trampling all over Ned’s 10,000 commandments, I treated them with reverence.

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First one week, then two weeks, then three weeks went by under this new regime with no explosive yelling. I was walking on eggshells, but staying afloat.

Our summer went on like this in a precarious détente until one night in late August, when I found myself at home, hungry and alone.

Aggressive rap music from upstairs told me I was wrong. Ned was home and he was raging.

Feeling unusually isolated with all my friends having left for college the week before, I asked Ned if he would be interested in pausing the jam session and joining me for dinner. This had never been done in our 16 years of co-existing life.

When Ned said yes, he made history. The prerequisite that he would only go if we went to McDonalds was but a blotch on a picturesque moment.

And so, arms linked, we skipped off into the sunset of the golden arches, ready for our Big Macs and bonded for life.

More or less. The meal was delicious but it

was marked by awkwardness, not unlike what I imagine a first date to be like. Were we supposed to pay with separate cards for our $4 sandwiches? How did he know to ask for the special sauce housed underneath the register? Was it common knowledge that McDonalds’ freshest item was the Egg McMuffin because they cracked the egg on site?

These questions went unanswered. He got us a seat, and we ate our Big Macs in a silence peppered with small talk. I learned he would be taking his permit test soon for the second time, and he turned red when I brought up how he failed his last one. I learned he had a new girl in his life—another facially tinging subject. With that, our meal was brought to a prompt end.

Since the summer, Ned and I have exchanged around 30 texts. Topics we have covered include what we were getting my mother for her birthday, if I could please find him and give him the spare key, and will I feed the neighbor’s cats. A

few scattered expletives make an appearance.

We are still not close. As it turns out, 15 years of strife is not undone with one McDonalds dinner. Happy meals just aren’t that happy. But I gained momentum that day. While we may only be averaging five texts per month, that’s five more than where we were before. And I don’t want us to be the siblings that grow up and barely know each other. I’ve seen that with my mother and aunt in the sending of the annual Christmas card. The quick peck on the cheek at Christmas. The rushed birthday phone call.

Whether they don’t know each other or don’t like each other, it’s clear they are related in blood only. I don’t want this for myself, and I know this is likely my last chance. Once I graduate college, the chances of Ned and I ever being more than Christmas card acquaintances is slimto-none. And we’ll never again get to skip into the sunset, arms linked, bonded for life.

Illustration by Peter Herrera

food, fun, food, friends, food reliving spring break culinary experiences LOREN DOWD staff columnist While for most, traveling revolves around the discovery of new sights and cultural experiences, for me, traveling is about the food. Instead of exploring through tours of cities, nature, or ruins, I learn about places and people through dishes. Whether driving thirty minutes to the south shores of Rhode Island, flying to another state, or journeying to a foreign country, food is often a part of celebrations and values and is a great window to understanding the past and present of different places.

As we re-enter the world of routines and realities in the second half of the semester, many are left with spring break memories of vacations, friends, and, of course, food.

Some may have returned home for the familiar joy of parents’ cooking, while others may have traveled to new states and discov-

ered local specialties, and some may have even journeyed across seas and encountered new culinary experiences.

This break, I checked another adventure off my travel and food bucket list: I, for the first time, enjoyed Caribbean lifestyle and cuisine during my trip to Puerto Rico. Going in, I didn’t know much about Puerto Rican cuisine or, really, much about the place.

Swept up in the chaos of midterms, I didn’t have much time to research the country and its culture. I figure doing some investigation after the fact is better than none at all, and though I am by no means an expert after five days and a few Google searches, it’s enlightening to understand the history of what I was chowing down on.

The cuisine of the Caribbean island is a blend of Taíno, Spanish, African, and

American influences, the Taíno Amerindians being the aboriginal population that dominated the island before Columbus’ arrival. Many of the island’s traditional foods include ingredients like tropical fruits, plantains, coriander, seafood, and yampee (white yam). From the 16th through the 19th centuries, Puerto Rico was under the rule of the Spanish, whose widespread impact influenced Puerto Rican language, culture, and food. The Spanish introduced beef, pork, rice, wheat, olive oil, and sugar cane to the island. After the Spanish-American War, when Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States, some American influence crept into the island’s culture, resulting in today’s Spanish-American mix.

The locals call traditional Puerto Rican cuisine “cocina criolla,” and during my time

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there, I had the pleasure of sampling a few of the specialties. The most-talked about dish was mofongo, an Afro-Puerto Rican dish that was described by a friend traveling with me as a “gelatinous mound of starch.”

In reality, it is a deliciously flavorful dish of mashed fried plantains meant to absorb the sauces and condiments of the dishes with which it is served. The fried plantains are mashed with salt, water, and chicharrón (fried pork belly or rinds); formed into a ball; and dressed with olive oil or the broth of the accompanying dish. Sometimes the plantains are mashed with other starchy roots like cassava. Depending on the place, meat can be stuffed inside the mofongo or served on top. While popular with locals, it was also a dish tourists were highly encouraged to try.

I experienced mofongo as a side dish to a well-seasoned piece of barbeque chicken, but other friends tried the plantain dish filled with meats like shrimp, pork, or chicken. Though we had heard a lot about it, by the second-to-last night of our trip, my friends and I hadn’t yet tried the dish.

We were on an island off the coast of mainland Puerto Rico, and from the small selection of restaurants and eateries, we found Jiribillas BBQ. We got takeout containers that were filled with salty and tender roast-

ed chicken and mounds of mofongo doused in a garlicky olive oil. It was definitely a mild and starchy dish, but when paired with the dressing and heavily salted and spiced chicken, the flavors balanced each other.

Tacos and seafood dishes made up many of our other culinary experiences, and plantains were a recurring side dish to most meals. A few of the other dishes we encountered included empanadillas, meatfilled pastries that have roots in many cultures; ceviche, raw fish cured in citrus juice; and churros, strips of fried dough rolled in cinnamon sugar and served with chocolate dipping sauce. Many of the common flavorings in Puerto Rican cuisine were coriander, garlic, onion, lime, and oregano. I particularly enjoyed tasting familiar flavors in Puerto Rican dishes, like tropical fruits such as guava, mango, and even breadfruit, all of which were commonly used in the Hawaiian cuisine I grew up with.

Of course, no spring break trip is complete without drinks, especially given that Puerto Rico is the world’s leading producer of rum. Distilled from sugarcane, rum is a sweet alcohol used in drinks like the piña colada or mojito, or served alone, with fruit juices, or even with sangria. Depending on the distillation process, the alcohol ranges from white to amber to gold in color. White

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rum is most commonly used in drinks like piña coladas, which I learned were created in Puerto Rico around the 19th century.

The coconut milk, pineapple juice, and white rum frappe-style drink are hard to miss on the island. Mojitos, though they originated in Cuba, were heavily featured on menus and in the happy hands of tourists around Puerto Rico. Made by muddling mint, sugar, and lime juice, adding white rum, soda water, and ice, and mixing well, we found mojitos at dive bars and Bacardí factory tours. Even the drinks have a history behind them—of sugarcane agriculture, innovation, and social life.

I’ve constantly been advised by seasoned travelers that I should spend as much time as possible in the places I visit. Every time I return from a short trip, I recognize how true that advice is. Though the beach was relaxing, old town was interesting, and culinary adventuring enlightening, I felt as if I didn’t have enough time to fully enjoy all that Puerto Rico had to offer. I missed opportunities to try traditional flan, asopao gumbo, and fresh grilled fish. But who knows, maybe I’ll make it back one day for mo(re)fongo.

Illustration by Emily Reif

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lights, cameras, magic a q&a with seth watter and beth capper DEVIKA GIRISH staff writer For readers who don’t know about Magic Lantern Cinema, could you give a brief overview?

SW: Magic Lantern began as an idea in the mind of Ben Russell, who has gone on to become an internationally exhibited filmmaker. Together with Carrie Collier, a screenprinter and filmmaker, he launched Magic Lantern as a screening series in 2004.

BC: Magic Lantern is dedicated to experimental and underground media. I would say we have a very broad view of what experimental means; we are as committed to avant-garde filmmaking as we are to, say, political documentary. We’ve had people involved who are really interested in new media art, for example, so we’ve had a component of our program be very new- and digital media–centric.

But we’ve also had people who have a particular dedication to a 60s-70s moment of avant-garde filmmaking. So, how the programming is constituted just depends on who is involved.

How is Magic Lantern connected to Brown?

SW: For most of our existence, we’ve been lucky to have the continued support of the Forbes Center, the financial organ of the Department of Modern Culture and Media. We also receive some support from the Creative Arts Council at Brown, and we are just coming to the end of a grant from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, which generously awarded us $10,000 a year in operational costs for three years.

How did you get involved in the series? What is your current role?

BC: I started my PhD here in 2012 and I got involved immediately, partly because I’ve done a lot of film programming before. Within the Master’s program that I came from, at the [School of the] Art Institute of Chicago, I was part of a group that rejuvenated the experimental film series within the school, called the “Eye and Ear Clinic,” and found funding for it. I ran that for almost the entire time I was there. So when I came here, I knew

I was interested in film and media programming.

I’m currently the treasurer and also a co-organizer (along with Seth Watter and Faith Holland).

SW: I studied film as an undergraduate at SUNY Binghamton in New York (2005-2009). In 2008 I spent a summer as an intern at Light Industry, a screening space in Brooklyn that was brand new at the time. Their programming back then was really wild, involving a lot of guest curators.

I didn’t have the opportunity to program anything at Light Industry, so when I came to Brown in 2011 and learned there was an experimental film series called Magic Lantern, I immediately sought out its organizers, and started helping out in small ways by hanging posters, setting up for events, etc.

By Spring 2013, I was doing or overseeing about half of the programming. I usually call myself a co-organizer.

Why do you think it’s important that a space like Magic Lantern exists?

BC: I think it is important to encourage peo-

lifestyle ple to spend the time to watch film and video that is difficult and complicated. Experimental media helps push other forms of media into more interesting places, and it’s important to have spaces where it’s not just easy, necessarily, to watch something. So much of what we see in movie theaters just washes over you. Watching something with a more complex political and visual language is really vital to keeping us thinking in different ways.

SW: I do think there is something special about the social nature of moviegoing that is jeopardized by all our innovations in home viewing over the past 30 years. I think if you spend any amount of time with experimental cinema you come to realize that the traditional space of projection is itself a unique component of the medium of cinema, and that artists will exploit this space for the intense concentration and emotional impact it affords.

It’s a cliché to say that people go to the movies to escape from reality, but actually, I think a lot of people go because movie theatres are among the last spaces in modern life where you are expressly discouraged from being distracted, multitasking, and chattering inanely.

Some of your past screenings, such as “Black Celebration” and “Domestic Unrest,” have had a somewhat political bent. How central is political art and cinema to your programming?

SW: “Black Celebration” was obviously meant to be timely, drawing connections between the black liberation movements of half a century ago

and the climate of today. I was reading in Artforum last summer about the recently rediscovered work of Edward Owens, a young, gay, black filmmaker who was active for a brief time in the New York avant-garde of the 1960s. I remember feeling a sense of excitement because people of color have never been in the mainstream of what we call experimental or avant-garde cinema. So I had a desire to push my own curatorial practice into new territory, which also meant expanding somewhat the definition of “experimental” that Magic Lantern has generally adhered to. I asked Beth if she wanted to work on the program together, and we came up with the idea of focusing on moments of black insurgency. I’m really happy to have done that show.

What are some of your favourite Magic Lantern programs from recent years?

BC: There’s a piece that I actually hadn’t seen before I screened it—I was taking a chance with it—but it was a really amazing find. It’s a piece called “Killing Time” by Fronza Woods, and it’s about this woman who is trying to decide on the right outfit to commit suicide in. It’s a dark comedy, and it’s really, really smart.

We showed a piece called “Black Celebration” as part of our eponymous screening. It’s by Tony Cokes, who is actually a professor in MCM. The video is from the late 80s, and it’s a really incredible reflection on black protest as a form of refusal, in some ways. It includes scenes from the Watts riots

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set to a kind of heavy metal score. It’s a really interesting juxtaposition.

What Magic Lantern events can our readers look forward to in the next few months?

SW: Cassandra Guan, a graduate student in MCM, has put together a two-part event (April 6 and 7) with the legendary dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer. She’s showing two of her feature films, “The Man Who Envied Women” (1985) and “Privilege” (1990). I guess they would both fall under the category of “new narrative,” a genre of filmmaking that combined a more traditional narrative structure with formal or stylistic experimentation, and which emerged in the 1970s along with the widespread dissemination of critical theory and feminism. On the first night, Rainer is also giving a lecture on the contemporary artist’s position in society; each event includes a moderated Q&A with her afterward.

BC: On April 28, we have a screening on ecology and perception curated by MCM PhD. student Thomas Pringle. The screening is a collaboration with the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, and takes as its object those perceptual environments closed to the human but open to the camera and otherwise.

Illustration by Clarisse Angkasa

an unPlanned road silence, speech, and criticism CLAIRE SAPAN lifestyle section editor The alluring smell of freshly brewed coffee from Olga’s wafts by as I stride down the block, causing my stomach to churn with the grumbles and gurgles of lunchtime hunger. Despite these incessant pleas, I do not stray from my path; the pride I feel overwhelms any pang of hunger and I march on.

Admittedly, my pride borders on excessive as I walk down the block—I congratulate myself with each step, reminded of the time I am sacrificing, time that could be spent studying for upcoming midterms. My eyes remain glued to my destination: a beige, non-descript building at the intersection of Point and Chestnut.

At first glance, any walker-by would look over this building. I did, many times.

The dingy limestone slabs covering the exterior blend in with the concrete sidewalk, creating a taupe mass that almost asks to be overlooked. The two trees only further obscure the building, their branches shielding it from the high volume of cars speeding by on Point Street at every hour of the day.

Many times I have been a passenger in one of these cars, and many times I have passed by the concrete structure without second glance. I have sped by, Olga’s coffee in hand, too focused on my conversation or final destination to pay any mind to the beige bulk on the corner. Today, however, this beige bulk is my destination. As I near the building, the eggshell lettering is all I see and I wonder how I could have ever ignored it. The blue letters, obscured by the fern tree in front, read “Planned Parenthood of Southern New England.”

I had told some friends that I was going to Planned Parenthood later that day.

Each time, I was greeted with uncomfortable silence—not a long period of silence, but just enough time without a response for palpable awkwardness. The silence would then be followed by a faint, sympathetic smile and a vague exclamation: “Oh! Ah… ok.” I then try to relieve my friends’ social unease, “Oh no, just to volunteer.” Their discomfort dissipates, replaced by a full-

blown smile and a booming endorsement: “Ooooooh! Good for you!” After the third of these conversations I realized I should probably just spare everyone by prefacing my announcement with an explanation My friends’ awkward responses were somewhat unsettling. I had forgotten that abortion, even amongst my extremely liberal friends at Brown, is a widely avoided subject. Over various conversations in the Blue Room and the Rock about Planned Parenthood, although abortion was the subject, the word itself was never uttered. We skirted around the topic, using silence as a supplement.

I undoubtedly would have been no better in such a conversation; I too would have engaged in awkwad sitried to avoid using the word abortion amongst the sleepy crowd of students waiting for their morning coffee in the Blue Room. What strikes me as odd, though, is how vocal (most) Brown students are, my friends and myself included, about abortion when it comes to poli-

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tics. We vehemently criticize any ‘pro-life’ politician, unafraid of who is listening. We protest, loudly and proudly, against those in Washington trying to defund Planned Parenthood. We post statuses, articles, Instagrams, tweets telling our hundreds Facebook friends that we are pro-choice, and that they should be too. Why, then, when abortion becomes personal, do we opt for silence?

As I neared the Planned Parenthood building, I became aware of three people positioned at the foot of the steps leading up to the building. They seemed fairly harmless from afar, dressed in jeans and tee shirts, standing casually: I assumed they were pedestrians or patients. As I walked closer, the posters propped up next to them on the street corner came into focus: one was a photo of an infant with ‘Murder’ written in red block letters, and the other read ‘Let God Plan Parenthood.’ These people were neither pedestrians nor patients, they were protestors.

My position was unmistakable, as my shirt made me a walking Planned Parenthood endorsement: florescent pink with the words “I stand with Planned Parenthood” printed across the front. I braced myself the worst, preparing to be bombarded by these three people with hateful slurs, castigations, sermons about how people like me deserve to be in hell. As a volunteer for Planned Parenthood, I am not allowed to speak to the protestors for legal reasons.

Instead, I am instructed to remain silent.

I stiffened my back and puffed my chest, attempting to exude my pride for being a Planned Parenthood volunteer. I walked head held high toward the cement mass, unafraid and unabashed. Reaching the stairs, I braced myself for the vitriolic indictments of hateful evangelicals. Instead, however, in front of me stood three average looking people—two women, one man—clutching colored prayer beads. Their eyes did not meet mine, but rather remained on their hands, where they continuously rolled the prayer beads around their palms. I paused for a second, words rushing through my head, questions forming in my throat, all eager to be vocalized. I wanted so badly to converse, to question, to explain. Instead, I followed instructions, remaining silent, waiting for my admonishment.

It never came.

I turned up the steps to enter the building. As my back faced the protesters, one muttered, “Abortion is murder.” I wanted to turn around, but I kept walking.

This interaction was one of the first in my life where I have been forbidden to speak. Most of the time I am allowed, even encouraged, to share my thoughts. I

wondered as I sat in Planned Parenthood if silence could be a virtue, if my not speaking were more noble than engaging in argument with the three protestors. I questioned (like Brown constantly encourages us to do) the importance of silence, contemplating whether it was underutilized at Brown.

My answer was a resounding no. I believe the opposite: Speak up. After I was forced to engage in silence, I realized what a privilege it is to be able to articulate a point of view, engage in what is all too often glibly referred to as ‘meaningful dialogue.’ Silence allows us to avoid complicated issues.

It allows us to ignore what matters. Silence permits those on opposite sides of critical issues to remain unchallenged, uninformed about others’ passionate beliefs. Raise your voice, even if it is in a sleepy crowd of students at the Blue Room or with stalwart protesters on the steps of a controversial institution. But with that privilege comes a responsibility: Be prepared to listen. *This article is not affiliated with Planned Parenthood; these ideas are my own.

Illustration by Ruth Han

arts & culture

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the game of language on learning not to know SPENCER ROTH-ROSE staff writer My worst fear in Spain starts with someone walking up to me on the street. It doesn’t have to be at night, or on an empty street, or anything like that. I can be walking to class on the brightest, most spectacular Granada morning, but if I see someone coming towards me, I brace myself for a surge of my least favorite sensation.

ME: (Trying to avoid eye contact) ¿Sí?

THEM: (Releases rapid string of heavily-accented Spanish, omitting any and all sibilants, swallowing syllables, and finally screeching to a halt with a question or phrase that could be about absolutely anything, since context is a pipe dream at this point) ME: (Eyes wide, completely lost, never to return) No sé, ¡lo siento!

(Sprints away) THEM: (Thinking, noting my retreating form) Ahh, should have guessed he was American by those non-fitted pants.

In retrospect, the decision to study abroad in Spain after not having touched el español since high school may have been a little rash. Certainly the first few days in Granada, the hilly southern city known for the Alhambra and other remnants of a rich Moorish history, gave me a taste of what is charitably known as culture shock. For me, whose only knowledge of the language was buried under five semesters of American Studies, it was culture oblivion.

Spain is remarkable in that it packs just as much regional diversity as we have in the United States into an area less than the size of Texas. The north—rainy, verdant, and cool—is geographically practically a different country from the mountainous south: dry, shade-your-eyes bright, almost tropical in the summer. Most Spaniards identify with their comunidad autónoma (CA), i.e. their province, more strongly than with Spain as a whole, which makes the term Spaniard itself less useful than you’d think. With the local pride comes a wide array of sociocultural differences: food, celebrations, clothing, language, and more.

This is important to the tragicomic one-act above because regional accents are par for the course. Though you can drive the length of the country in a day, the Spanish you’ll hear that morning in the northern CA of Asturias sounds nothing like the Spanish that would greet you in

the evening in Andalucia, the CA that spans the entire southern coast of the country. This is not to mention the three regional languages spoken in various CAs in the north (the Portuguese-like gallego, the French-like catalán, and the literally nothing-like euskera), but even the generic brand Spanish at hand (el castellano) gets morphed and twisted to the point of unrecognizability in the mouths of its speakers.

Andalucia happens to be the CA where I’ve been living since January, in Granada, its “heart.”

The city’s gorgeous—the streets and sidewalks are paved with the shiniest stones, and it only ever rains for long enough to rinse them of whatever debris (wild orange peels, wax from the candles of Easter processions) may have accumulated since the last spritzing a couple weeks ago. The route I take to class, the one that fills me with such misplaced fear, leads me through communist graffiti–lined alleyways and up a foothill of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, so that I can just make out their snowy peaks over the tops of the sycamore trees in the distance.

All of this beauty is, of course, forgotten the instant the interaction with a local begins. The shreds of memory from my AP Spanish class (“subjunctive uses the opposite ending”; “estar is for states of being, ser is for characteristics”) are no match for the combination of the pace of the words and the nearly incomprehensible Andalucian accent. It’s as if they’re speaking while trying to extract the pits from a mouthful of olives— which, admittedly, might be true at any given moment. “Gracias” becomes “grathia” in el andaluz. “Más o menos” becomes “maomeno.” And my name, Spencer, already unheard of in Spanish for the s-beginning digraph at its start, becomes “Espenthe.” I’d feel bad for my host mother if she hadn’t already taken the initiative of dropping the names and simply referring to me and my roommate Blake as “los chicos.”

But my scene partner on the street doesn’t know I’m not Spanish or that I can only follow a conversation if I have a sense of the topic to begin with, or that I have to rehearse even the most basic stuff in my head before uttering anything. I can’t stand feeling lost or dumb, but it’s unavoidable here. I promise I’m a real human in English!

I want to yell over my shoulder. Then I remember I’d probably mess up the indirect object pronouns, and decide to keep my mouth shut.

This feeling of dysfunction, of inoperability, is something to which I’ve been trying to grow accustomed. As much as I can’t stand to say I don’t understand something, or to ask someone to

repeat something more slowly, sometimes those maneuvers need to be embraced. I haven’t quite accepted that it’s better to collaborate to reach understanding than to smile blankly and nod and feign clarity and wait for the end of the interaction, but I’m getting there. Conversations with Spaniards aren’t confrontations, I try to remind myself. We’re all on the same side. Make mistakes.

Get messy.

Though my friends are basically all American here, I’ve met a few local students with whom I go out for tapas occasionally (appetizers that are served free with any drink—I’m getting nostalgic already). I always make sure to bring another person from my program so it’s not just up to me to carry the conversation, and it’s always easier when the topic is of mutual interest to everyone (“¡Qué casualidad!” I exclaimed when José turned out to be a fellow Gryffindor after taking the Pottermore quiz), but by the second hour of straight Spanish, it simply becomes the new normal. Not understanding everything becomes painless, acceptable, even admirable. I can’t say half the things I’d like to say, and I’m still unconvinced any of my personality comes through, but hangouts like these make me hopeful that I’m on my way to being a functional person in Spain.

The secret? It’s all a game. Play by the rules of the language, and get rewarded with a smile of comprehension and a response from your teammate. Begin the cycle again. Repeat for however long you’d like. Remember that everything is casual, low-stakes. And keep in mind the hidden truth of this game of language: no hay ningún perdedor. There are no losers.

Illustration by Stephanie Zhou

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arts & culture

fetty wap blame it on the brandy RYAN WALSH staff writer In 1738, King Louis XV of France granted a royal accord to winemaker Rémy Martin, securing for the grape grower exclusive planting rights in the fertile department of Charente.

Nearly three centuries later, in 2013, American rapper Fetty Wap formed his upstart Jersey rap crew, “Remy Boyz 1738,” a gesture towards “Accord Royal 1738”—a 1991 commemorative Rémy Martin brandy bottled in celebration of the firm’s royal foundation. According to Fetty, 1738 is “the finest urban liquor,” the most expensive bottle at his local liquor store.

Just say the words “seventeen thirty-eight,” and you’re sure to ring a bell with anyone under the age of 30; however, that person probably won’t be thinking of mid-tier French brandy.

Rather, at the mention of those magic numbers, most people will think of the intro tag from Fetty Wap’s 2015 viral chart topper, “Trap Queen,” a bumping rap-ballad about cooking crack with

your significant other.

Originally released in March 2014 on Soundcloud as a low-key, free-style tune, the record eventually came to dominate the airwaves.

Fetty’s signature wobbly yodel was broadcast nationwide, peaking in early 2015 as Billboard Hot 100’s Number 2 song. Riding a tsunami wave of internet fame, Fetty was able to snag a nomination for hip-hop magazine XXL’s 2015 Freshman Class, a sought-after list known for launching up-and-coming rappers.

Born Willie Maxwell II in June of 1991, the now ubiquitous trap star is surprisingly humble, often insisting that he’s just lucky to be here.

“This shit doesn’t happen to people where I’m from,” Fetty Wap says in his online bio. “A lot of people don’t get the opportunity, so I’ma be a superstar until my star don’t burn no more.”

Deriving his stage name from fetty, a slang term for money, and wap, a diminutive of rapper Gucci Mane’s nickname “Guwop,” the soft-spoken New Jersey native’s most defining feature, apart from his characteristic warbled timbre, is his missing eyeball.

As a child, Fetty suffered from congenital glaucoma, a condition that obstructs fluid drainage away from the optic nerve. Doctors eventually had to remove Fetty’s damaged left eye. Forgoing a glass prosthetic, Fetty opts to leave his left eye socket bare, which exposes the whitish-pink tissue left behind after his enucleation surgery.

Understandably, nothing really fazes Fetty anymore. Having lost an eye and gone platinum all before the age of 25, the rapper has—for lack of a better term—seen it all. The only thing that actually bothers him nowadays is balancing his newfound fame with fatherhood. The rapper has a five-year-old son and a newborn baby daughter.

And even though Fetty is probably a very loving family man behind closed doors, his hit single, according to him, “doesn’t have anything to do with love, really.” Rather, as the rapper revealed to Maxim in 2015, the song you’ll hear tweens chanting in supermarkets is really just about breaking the law and having some fun while doing it.

Illustration by Katie Cafaro

mac demarco fool of rock RYAN WALSH Here’s a recipe for Canadian multi-instrumentalist Mac DeMarco: 1) Mix one part John Lennon with one part Beach Boys, slowly mixing in a heaping tablespoon of David Bowie and Steely Dan. 2) While listening to folk music off the soundtrack from the 2013 Coen brothers’ film “Inside Llewyn Davis,” stir in a packet of organic, ethically-sourced honey given to you by your stoner friend, Travis.

3) Bake for a couple decades or so using only the warmth of California sunshine and Viceroy cigarette smoke, and finally, once you’re done tie-dyeing your socks, 4) Let cool and serve chilled.

And there you have it. You’re ready to sing like 25-year-old Mac DeMar-

arts & culture co, Pitchfork Media’s red-headed, gap-toothed “Best New Artist” of both 2012 and 2014. Shaggy-haired and bearing a striking resemblance to Mad magazine’s coverboy Alfred E. Neuman, the songster was also a shortlisted nominee for Canada’s Polaris Music Prize, an award granted annually to the best full-length Canadian album on the basis of “artistic merit, regardless of genre, sales, or record label.”

Although he didn’t win it, the alternative award seems fitting for DeMarco, a British Columbia– born, Alberta-raised musician who, in advance of the release for his most recent 2015 instrumental album “Some Other Ones,” hosted a public BBQ listening party at 153 Morgan Avenue in Brooklyn. In a nondescript backyard, DeMarco tossed out hand-grilled hot dogs to fans on the condition that they donate to a local food bank.

Born Vernor Winfield McBriare Smith IV, the goofy singer is named after his great-grandfather and former Canadian Minister of Railways and Telephones (really), and he’s been playing in bands ever since high school. Some former act names include The Meat Cleavers, The Sound of Love, and

Outdoor Miners.

After self-releasing 500 copies of his album “Heat Wave” in 2009 under the name Makeout Videotape, Demarco moved operations to Montréal where, after failing to breakout out as a solo artist, he resorted to participating in medical experiments for money and paving roads with a construction firm. On the road, he earned himself the title “little bitch” from his co-workers because of his low muscle mass.

However, just when all seemed for naught, DeMarco’s 2012 EP “Rock and Roll Night Club” caught the attention of independent, Brooklyn-based label Captured Tracks, which signed on for a full-length album. That collection came out later the same year under the title “2.”

In 2013, DeMarco released “Live & Acoustic Vol. 1” a live album recorded at the Converse Rubber Tracks studio, also in Brooklyn. At the end of his track “Eating Like a Kid,” DeMarco playfully apologizes to the crowd, saying “I’m sorry to all the party people for slowing down the vibe, making it all relaxed … I’ll drink any one of you motherf*ckers under the table after I’m done, mkay?”

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DeMarco’s 2014 album “Salad Days” kept on with the same psychedelic, slacker-rock vibes of first two albums, and it went on to become Canada’s second most played album of 2014.

DeMarco kept it coming when 2015 rolled around, releasing a summer album titled “Another One,” which debuted at the top of Billboard’s Rock chart and snagged the 25th slot on the Billboard 200. A slowed-down, upbeat project, DeMarco’s fourth studio album calls to mind the Beatles’ 1965 album “Rubber Soul,” famous for its lilting vocals and sitar-soaked background notes.

Hailed as a lovable jackass and a bohemian scumbag, Mac DeMarco is the guy who always makes the middle cup on the first try in beer pong.

He’s the guy who wakes up with a half-eaten slice of Domino’s in his hoodie and offers to share it with you. He’s your awful best friend who always needs a ride, but who you never leave behind because he’s the hungover goofball you need to brighten your Tuesday morning.

thundercat

hip-hop’s secret weapon takes center stage

LIZ STUDLICK a&c section editor Read up on Stephen Bruner, and it will quickly become apparent that he plays well with others. The man behind Thundercat is a true behind-the-scenes jack-of-all-trades—singing, playing bass, and producing for a list that includes Flying Lotus, Childish Gambino, Kamasi Washington, and Erykah Badu. His most high-profile work, however, is on Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp A Butterfly,” the most critically acclaimed album of 2015 (as calculated by Metacritic). Bruner played bass on two tracks, produced three, and helped write five. His oversized, funky bass pushed out Kanye West, John Legend, and Nicki Minaj to win a Grammy for single “These Walls.”

Given these accolades for projects helmed by other artists, there’s a tendency to downplay Bruner’s career as Thundercat, which lacks the same celebrity name recognition. This is a huge mistake. Bruner’s three solo albums are both atmospheric and energetic (and, of course, available on Spotify). Bruner displays a musical fluency, both in his crate-digging and his mastery of the bass, that allows for deceptively intelligent play. There’s a seeming effortlessness that comes from knowing exactly what you’re doing, and he coasts on that feeling to infuse

old-school funk and soul sounds with modern electronic instincts. His work is a knowledgeable, jazz-like meander through genres, turning up the energy with more traditional voice-centered tracks but mostly content to float melodically through.

Some of his themes may be dark—take recent death-focused album “The Beyond / Where Giants Roam” and two “apocalypse” mentions in titles—but his work adds layers instead of slowing down, a melodic brood that switches between weighty and ethereal.

Bruner wields his bass less like a traditional background instrument and more like a weapon in its own right. This ranges from the ’70s squelch that propels tracks like recent single “Them Changes” to a laid-back but bold center line that forces songs to mold around it. Expect some epic bass solos, which I hope will be appreciated by a crowd not typically expecting technical mastery. His singing chops and multi-instru-

mental skills will also provide great moments for a more jam band-type performance if he chooses to go that route.

Thundercat albums can be so smooth and conducive to afternoon study sessions that it seems difficult to imagine him stirring up Spring Weekenders before Tinashe. His time slot early on Saturday afternoon, which I typically reserve for sitting under a tree far from the stage, may be the perfect setting for his chiller vibes. But tracks like blast-from-the-past “Oh Sheit It’s X” prove that Bruner can do dance-y, and the power of a full live band will give his set an extra boost.

Illustration by Soco Fernandez-Garcia

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arts & culture

tinashe

on blunts, dicks, and the greatest performer today

JOSHUA LU staff writer If you’ve been to a party in the last 15 months or so, you’ve probably heard “2 On” and, by extension, Tinashe’s lovely voice as she sings about—what, exactly? What does it mean to get 2 on? It’s a question that you don’t really think about when you’re at the party, but instead when you get home and you’re sober enough to ponder such troubling issues. Interpretations have varied from smoking two blunts at the same time to taking two dicks at the same time. The true meaning is probably the least cryptic one: If you love to get it on, you should really love getting 2 on, as in getting more than one on, since two is greater than one. It’s just basic math.

“2 On” was likely engineered to be a meme and was thus a bit of a fluke. It was an effective fluke (and an effective meme, given the funny interpretations) because it made Tinashe, if anything, an interesting up-and-coming artist to follow. But “2 On” was not the best representation of Tinashe’s potential as an artist. It rode hard on the ephemeral dominance of DJ Mustard, whose now-dated production surely aided the success of “2 On.” Tinashe largely acted as backup; her voice wasn’t the strongest as she drifted throughout the track, singing about blunts or dicks or

tink

god knows what. The song’s still catchy, but it doesn’t really show off what she could bring to the table.

Granted, such a task is probably impossible. Tinashe is often compared to Janet Jackson, whom she paid tribute to at last year’s BET awards, not only because of their musical similarities—atmospheric instrumentals, albums full of interludes, a lot of explicit and seductive songs—but because there are few artists in history who match their abilities to dominate a stage. “Tinashe sounds like she sings while running on a treadmill,” one YouTube viewer commented on her Good Morning America performance of “All Hands on Deck,” and it’s true: Tinashe’s voice is always strong, despite what “2 On” would make you think, and her dancing was on point, easily putting to shame the majority of today’s pop stars.

It’s not just her skills as performer, though, that put Tinashe on another level entirely. “Aquarius,” Tinashe’s debut LP, is full of songs that are meticulously crafted for whatever people are doing on Friday nights: partying (“All Hands on Deck,” “Watch Me Work”), crying (“Wildfire,” “Far Side of the Moon”), fornicating (“How Many Times”), or crying while fornicating after the party (“Pretend”). She raps, she

belts, and she shows off her pitch-perfect falsetto, sometimes all in one song (“Cold Sweat”), and the multifaceted nature of the album is required listening for anyone who thinks the comparatively frivolous “2 On” is all she’s capable of.

Because there is no justice in this world, Tinashe has not been able to continue the success of “2 On” with her recent singles or “Aquarius.” That hasn’t stopped her from giving it her all; she’s had tons of jaw-dropping performances and amazing collaborations (“Player” with Chris Brown, “All My Friends” with Snakehips and Chance the Rapper, and “Drop That Kitty” with Charli XCX and Ty Dollar $ign are all songs you’ll likely hear on Saturday) that’ll make you want to dance your ass off. In the meantime, go watch any Tinashe performance and get hyped for when she gets on stage on Saturday and absolutely murders it. You’ll be more than getting it on. You’ll be getting 2 on. Let’s roll.

Illustration by Clarisse Angkasa

millennial rap, ready to take on the world

JOSHUA LU Tink’s arguably greatest song is “Ratchet Commandments,” an adaptation of Biggie’s “Ten Crack Commandments” that Tink released in early 2015.

It’s got everything you could ask for: clever, incisive lyrics, themes of female empowerment, and a Mean Girls reference (“Y’all can’t sit with us,” she croons in the chorus). Upon first listen, she does sound like a mean girl, but she’s just being real. Her advice has merit: Don’t go to the club when you’ve got bills to pay, don’t flirt with taken men and be forced to take on the role of side chick, and don’t spend that much time on Instagram trying to show off to dudes. The song ends with her taking shots at men; she goes after deadbeat and dishonest fathers, saying they need to earn more money and spend more time with their daughters. The song primarily targets women only because she knows they deserve more than the men they often end up stuck with—she wants better for

them, you see.

Tink turned 21 last month, meaning she’s younger than a quarter of the people she’ll be performing for on Friday. Her age often shows in her music, but in a good way: “Ratchet Commandments,” for example, is as good a guide to living life as it is a depiction of the modern independent woman. Following that, you should check out “Million,” a contemporary love story whose essence is encapsulated by its simple yet weirdly endearing hook: “There’s a million, million, million, million reasons why I fuck with you.” The song’s mixture of glitch-hop and sultry vocals—Tink is damn good at both rapping and singing—is a winning formula reminiscent of classic R&B; the Aaliyah sample only enhances its reverent feel.

That’s still just the tip of the iceberg, because for an artist so young (have I mentioned she’s just 21?), she’s got a massive collection of jams already. Make

that six mixtapes worth, from house-influenced bop “Wet Dollars” to emotional ballad “Treat Me Like Somebody.” It’s through these mixtapes that she got the attention of Pitchfork, who called her “unpredictable in a rubberneck kind of way,” Epic Records, who signed her in 2014, and legendary producer Timbaland, who’s guided her mixtapes and will likely aid her albums to come.

But there’s no rush to plunge into the amazing material Tink’s already birthed to the world. Just wait for Friday for her performance, which is sure to showcase her myriad talents, her amazing songs, and her electrifying stage presence. Once that’s finished, however, please prepare your iTunes accounts for the following Sunday. Her long-awaited debut LP “Think Tink” will be released then, and it’s time to bring this rap savant to the top of the scene.

arts & culture

funkinevil

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disparate duo bringing house into the future

JOSHUA LU Funkinevil, a duo known for zany interpretations of house music, has a tricky time slot as the openers for this Spring Weekend. While organizers want to get the party immediately pumping, they also want to make the starting minutes accessible for stragglers and those still a little too buzzed to know what’s going on. Funkinevil is an ideal opening act, even if you’re unfamiliar with these names. They’re no strangers to clubs and underground life, nor to high-energy venues above the surface.

Despite the fact that they’re a duo, they’re perhaps best identifiable through their independent work.

On one side of this duo, you have West Londoner Steven Julien, also known as Funkineven, and on the other side, you have Detroit artist Kyle Hall,

who unfortunately lacks a cool pseudonym. Hall’s latest solo album, “From Joy,” exemplifies how his eclectic tastes—mixing disco, electropop, jazz, and more—can take on house music and bring it to new heights. The album is aptly titled; Pitchfork described it as “warm but approachable” in its imaginative fervor. Funkineven is a lover of house music as well, but he infuses his songs with hip-hop, soul, techno, and synths upon synths. Throwing these two together in the Large Hadron Collider that is the music business sounds like chaos, but the resulting calamity is some of the best house music out there today.

Unconvinced? Try out “Ignorant,” a song off their second EP as a duo, which is as eccentric as the duo in its boogie-fied house production. It’s six-and-a-half

minutes of threadbare beats, an incessant snare drum, and a restrained bassline, all of which smolders then flares up into a fire of pure, funky energy. Or check out the intro to their first EP “Funkinevil Night,” which is as sparkly and hazy as a Lisa Frank-styled sunrise.

Funkinevil will be unfamiliar to the majority of the people crowding the Main Green as the Spring Weekend concert kicks off. But their music, while definitely strange and different, has an underlying vigor and emotion that’s at once relatable and galvanizing. Try to not be late, lest you miss an electrifying opening.

soccer and saxophones

an argument for making/doing/writing

AMY ANDREWS managing editor of online I grew up in a family of serious sports fans, but that caring-about-sports gene somehow didn’t get passed down to me. That meant I spent a decent amount of time as a kid doing my best to tolerate sporting events, mostly baseball games—I brought a book to pretty much every baseball game I can remember going to before the age of eight or nine. Despite not liking to watch sporting events, I was a pretty sporty kid, and it was around that age that I started playing softball and bringing my glove to the Wilmington Blue Rocks and Phillies games we went to during the summers. Having a glove meant there was a possibility that I could catch a fly ball if it came my way, and that (admittedly very small) potential made me a hundred times more interested in baseball than I had previously been (read: zero). But what really got me sold on baseball as a spectator sport happened a little bit later, when my dad taught me how to score games. Entering the stadium, I would get a scorecard and that tiny golf pencil, and then every single moment of the rest of the game— every strikeout, every steal, every home run— required my focused attention. Apart from the late game breaks when I would relinquish my card to my dad’s safekeeping while I went to acquire soft serve ice cream (eaten, of course, out of a miniature helmet), I felt as though I were

actively participating in every moment of the game. Suddenly, I had ownership—something was personally at stake for me.

That may be a selfish way to think about sports or any other kind of popular culture, that it only “matters” if I can be involved somehow.

And coloring in little diamonds to indicate runs is by no means the same as scoring runs yourself. But what I’ve realized over the last few years is that actively participating in the things I enjoy—whether those things are playing sports, writing stories, or making music—makes me happier than just watching those things go by.

This realization has hit me in two opposite ways in college, in two different parts of my life.

Of two of my favorite hobbies—playing soccer and playing the saxophone—I didn’t plan to continue either in college, but one I came back to almost right away, and the other I’ve been noticing how much I miss. Sports were a constant presence in my life from when I first started playing on a Kiddie Kickers soccer team at the age of five or six. In high school, I was a varsity athlete—my senior year, a varsity athlete in two sports, a fact that actually seems impossible now considering the fact that I have set foot in the Nelson exactly twice in almost four years on this campus. I didn’t really think of myself as an “athlete,” but soccer was an integral part

of my identity. When I got to college, though, that part of my identity instantly disappeared.

I was a soccer player for more than 10 years of my life, and suddenly, I was not. I didn’t anticipate that change being hard to cope with, but the absence of organized sports in my college life (minus the occasional intramural) has plagued me since I first noticed it freshman year. Because of this, I’ve decided that my number one goal post-graduation is to join an adult rec league.

(Okay, my number two goal, because my number one goal is to find a job.) I’ve been to a lot of football, basketball, and hockey games over the last four years as a member of the Brown Band, but I’m still a soccer fan—and soccer player—at heart. When I’m actively playing sports again, not just watching them, I may not feel like an athlete—I think the stage of my life where that term could apply has passed—but I will feel more like myself.

I shed my “athlete” identity when I started college, but I’ve kept my identity as a band nerd—though my musical involvement on campus now is much less serious than my high school musical endeavors. I started playing the alto sax in fourth grade and continued all throughout high school. Classical music wasn’t something I listened to outside of the band room, but I found myself making up words to

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section

arts & culture the “Jupiter” movement of Holst’s “The Planets” suite and singing them to my friends, constantly whistling excerpts from a long, slow Russian Christmas piece, or loving a piece we played my freshman year called “An Irish Rhapsody” so much that I helped convince my band director we should play it again my senior year. These are pieces of music I never would have discovered or felt passionate about on my own—my brother and I grew up listening to the Beatles, a constant stream of the one classic rock station always playing in my dad’s car, and my mom’s vast iTunes library of popular music from her adolescence and college years. But I grew enamored of intricate melodies starring the alto saxes (my chosen instrument), tricky sixteenth-note runs that took weeks of practice both inside and outside the classroom to master, and the beautiful way a second alto part harmonized with the first. Spending one class period a day for weeks at a time on the same few pieces of music made it feel as if those pieces, my specific parts, belonged to me and my fellow high school musicians. And so, naturally, I was possessive of them and I loved them in a way I never would have anticipated when I first picked up my sax as a nine-year-old who basically only cared about the musical stylings of the Backstreet Boys.

Today, almost four years since the last time I played my saxophone in a concert band at-

mosphere, I don’t listen to symphonic band music much anymore. When I do, it’s when I go to wind symphony and orchestra concerts at Brown to cheer on my friends who are performing. At these concerts, I’m always happy to hear my friends perform beautifully, but when the concert ends, the music I heard has almost always left little to no impression on me, because I haven’t spent time with those pieces of music, practicing and learning them by heart. Watching my friends make music, I’ve realized, is not the same as making it myself.

And maybe that’s a little bit of why I joined the Brown Band. I didn’t know that I would miss making music after high school—I felt fine about my initial decision to leave my saxophone at home and pursue other extracurriculars at Brown. But stumbling into the band, tentatively showing up to those first few rehearsals freshman year, playing songs I already loved—like “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” and “I Want You Back”—I remembered how much I loved playing music with other people, people who would soon become some of my closest friends on campus. And the same thing happened with songs we played that I’d never heard before joining the band—my unconscious tendency to constantly whistle the second alto part from “The Impression That I Get” or “Karn Evil 9: First Impression - Part 2” has been pointed out to me repeat-

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edly by numerous friends. Again, it’s not the specific songs that appeal to me—it’s that I associate all these songs with fun times and good friends and the joy of the act of making our own music.

There’s something to be said for engaging in culture, for creating it and participating in it rather than passively consuming it—though to be fair, I do a decent amount of passive consumption of media and pop culture as well. But that passive consumption leads to active participation: Watching sports made me want to play them. Hearing music made me want to make music too. (Also saxophones are loud and shiny, which I was pretty into as a nine-year-old.) It can be really difficult in college to remember to make stuff, especially because there are so many things already out there in the world for me to consume (Netflix is both a beautiful blessing and a torturous curse). And it is (relatively) easy to watch a soccer game, listen to music, read a book. But I need to remind myself to do the harder thing, to remember that part of the joy and the privilege of existing in this world is the ability to make things. I have a brain and a heart and a body that all allow me to write, to run, to make music; I need to remind myself not to let them go to waste.

Illustration by Jenice Kim

zayn—mind of mine

the first to go solo is the first to struggle

JOSHUA LU staff writer In May of 2014, a video leaked online of One Direction bandmates Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik riding in their tour bus and—gasp!—smoking marijuana. Besides some over-dramatic headlines, a flurry of apologetic tweets, and a couple meltdowns from diehard fans whose beloved faves were suddenly problematic, nothing really noteworthy followed.

The only damage done was that the implied was finally undeniable: Behind the family-friendly mask of boy-band-hood, Zayn and Louis were, in fact, 20-something-year-old dudes.

They made the same bad decisions typical of 20-something-year-old dudes, for better or for worse.

Much has happened since then, and the boys’ coming-of-age saga is reaching its final stages.

Louis has become a father. The band has officially gone “on hiatus” (read: disbanded), and their farewell single “History” has long left the radio.

And at the climax of this bildungsroman, there’s Zayn: breaking up with long-term fiancée Perrie

Edwards of Little Mix, ditching One Direction in the middle of their tour, and finally releasing his debut album, “Mind of Mine.” Zayn’s time as a solo artist lies in stark contrast to his time with One Direction; in an interview with Billboard earlier this year he talked openly about smoking sativa, calling it “creative weed.” He said it unapologetically. After all, he’s a 23-yearold man—who cares?

“Mind of Mine” is an album best viewed as another entry in a list of coming-of-age albums, crafted in that awkward time period between trying to have fun as a teenage pop idol and trying to be taken seriously as an adult. Notable recent entries include Justin Bieber’s “Purpose” and Nick Jonas’ self-titled album, both released in the last two years, although the most apt comparison for Zayn, in terms of career trajectories, would be to Justin Timberlake’s “Justified,” released in 2006 after the termination of N*SYNC. Albums of this nature deal with adult-ish tropes (heartbreak, disillusionment,

sex) and historically serve as excellent opportunities for reinventions as mature artists.

The problem with “Mind of Mine” lies, then, in Zayn’s strain to be taken seriously as a grownup artist and shed his boy-band image. This is because, more often than not, he oversteps into self-parody. The album’s lead single “PILLOWTALK” is a dirty love song laid over a combination of trap and alternative R&B, and while the production is satisfyingly gritty and atmospheric, the lyrics aren’t much more than combinations of antonyms that conveniently rhyme.

They give the semblance of conflict, but do little more. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing—not much is expected by way of pop lyricism. But for all of his effort to be edgy and artistic (see: the music video, which is a hallucinogenic orgy of “artsy” ideas and bad execution), the surprisingly vanilla nature of the song belies the image he’s trying his best to build. It’s not that different from his One Direction stuff, in the sense that it’s an inoffensive pop song that’s instantly acces-

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sible and far from thought-provoking.

Songs like “BoRdErZ” and “TiO,” the latter of which is an acronym of “take it off” and not about Spanish uncles, saunter into somewhat creepy territory as Zayn fawns over the glory of the female body. Some lines are awkwardly amusing; “I’ll get her wetter than ever,” he boasts on “wRoNg.” The song is a collaboration with Kehlani, who follows up with some non sequiturs: “I go out of my way to treat you / But I can’t be a teacher / Because I’m a problem with problems.” The titles of many of the other songs are perhaps the best representation of Zayn’s misplaced over-ambition. They’re bizarrely capitalized, as if written by a middle schooler pRetEnDiNg tO bE dRuNk oN tHe

iNtErNet. (The fact that there’s actually a song titled “dRuNk” does not help his cause.) Edgy? I mean, sure. Mature? Definitely not.

The best quality of the album is Zayn’s fantastic voice, and the songs that manage to employ it well tend to be the album’s strongest. “PILLOWTALK” is one of them, and promo single “LIKE I WOULD” is prime for the clubs, with his strong timbre commanding the dance floor.

The lush intermission “fLoWeR,” sung entirely in Urdu, similarly frames his voice beautifully.

Yet the messy production of other songs frustratingly distracts from his vocals, like the fuzzy nothingness of “tRuTh” or the drab “lUcOzAdE.” On the opposite side of things, “fOoL fOr YoU” so relishes in Zayn’s voice that the instru-

mental backs off, and he ends up sounding like a discount Michael Bublé.

“Mind of Mine” is a middling album that so desperately wants to be something more. It functions well as a showcase for Zayn’s voice, but falls short of accomplishing much else, and in an industry filled with pop powerhouses who occupy similar roles on the radio—the aforementioned Jonas and Bieber come to mind— Zayn may find trouble in securing his niche in the world of pop. To his credit, the greatest triumph of “Mind of Mine” is that it largely succeeds in dissociating his current act from his past stint with One Direction. The album’s greatest failure, however, is that it leaves Zayn without much direction at all.

flashback

a lightning-fast run down memory lane

AMEER MALIK contributing writer The only TV series I’m trying hard to keep up with right now is “The Flash.” For every other show I watch, I can wait until I have enough time for a binge, but I want to watch “The Flash” as it airs on the CW. There’s just something about it. When I watch it, I feel like I’m watching a comic book that has come to life.

It’s a superhero story, and the premise matches what one expects from the genre.

The main character, Barry Allen, faces childhood tragedy when his mother is killed, and his father, wrongly framed for the murder, is sent to jail. With his parents gone, Barry is taken in by Detective Joe West and his daughter Iris, who become his foster family. Many years later, Barry obtains the power of super speed after being injured in a city-wide disaster, the result of a major piece of technology at S.T.A.R. Labs malfunctioning. With help from his new friends at S.T.A.R. Labs, Caitlin and Cisco, and the support of Joe and Iris, Barry hones his new abilities and uses his powers to do good as the superhero The Flash.

It seems like typical superhero stuff, and to echo the opinion of several critics, the show does not shy away from its genre elements—it embraces them. It doesn’t try to ground its zany science-fiction elements in reality, and it doesn’t have the heavy psychological weight nor the gritty tone of recent

pieces of superhero entertainment (some of which have been great, but some of which have been mediocre). The show is energetic, exciting, and happily over-the-top; illustrative examples include (spoiler alert) a huge telepathic gorilla being a supervillain and The Flash acquiring the ability to run so fast that he travels back in time.

When I watch the show, I feel like I’m watching a Saturday morning cartoon, the kind I used to watch when I was little. In fact, I loved everything superhero when I was younger. Maybe the show speaks to that part of me, the young Ameer who loved superheroes so much that he asked his mother to drive him 45 minutes just so he could get a copy of a Batman comic. Maybe the show speaks to the child who had such a wild imagination that he often pretended as if he had superpowers. I would often picture myself fighting bad guys in wild scenarios as the sidekick of a superhero I really liked.

It was a nice way to step out of reality for a little while.

In some ways, my love of superheroes actually could’ve been a response to feelings of helplessness I had when I was little.

I think many of us get our first lessons in powerlessness, in impossibility, when we are young. Something happens, and we realize that there is nothing we can do to change what has occurred. This could be the death

of a loved one or a terrible accident—something that we wish we could do something about, but sadly cannot.

When we are little, we also first encounter forces that we can’t overcome because of how young we are. The people around us might push us to conform to certain ways of acting that go against who we are. Or adults in our lives might, instead of caring for us, take advantage of their power over us to hurt us. Growing up also introduces us to our own personal limitations, like struggles in academics or difficulties in physical activities.

As a child, I felt powerless for several reasons, some apparent at the time, some revealed thanks to the knowledge and awareness I possess in the present. Maybe the young Ameer imagined swinging between skyscrapers with Spider-Man as a way to cope with feeling helpless.

But unlike the limitations that all humans share, the other barriers we face when we are younger can be overcome; we just might not realize this at the time. We might confuse circumstances that we cannot alter with those that we’ll be able to actually change one day. When we’re little, it might be hard for us to imagine that we will grow older and get stronger, that we will be able to resist the people around us when they pressure us to act in ways that

arts & culture

conflict with what we want to do. When we are very young, it might be hard to see that the adults in our lives will have less power to affect us in the future, and that we can overcome personal limitations through hard work.

I think superhero fiction speaks to a yearning inside the child, a desire to stop feeling helpless and instead change the way things are. If Superman can stop a runaway train, then maybe you can stand up to the jerks in your life.

I wish a show like “The Flash” were around when I was younger. So many of

its characters have faced great hardship and tragedies in their lives, but the good guys don’t let their pasts prevent them from doing what is right. Barry does not let his past stop him from being optimistic, hopeful, and in constant pursuit of his objectives: improving his abilities and being the best hero he can be for his city. The characters without powers also devote themselves to noble goals, such as striving for justice and developing helpful pieces of technology.

Like Barry, the characters without powers are heroes.

Maybe, with “The Flash,” the young

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Ameer might’ve realized that he didn’t need powers to make a difference. Maybe I would’ve felt less helpless, maybe I would’ve had the same optimism, hope, and confidence in my own abilities then as I do now.

So I keep watching the series not just for nostalgia, not merely for the superheroics. I watch because of its portrayal of good people, who have suffered, who have felt pain, who nevertheless strive to do good.

Illustration by Diana Hong

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topten

performers we wish were coming to Spring Weekend

1. beyonce 2. martin o'malley (we hear he's a sick guitar player) 3. lonely island 4. the 2012 olympics usa women's gymnastics team 5. carly rae jepsen 6. the bear bones playing slide whistles 7. what cheer? brigade for both nights 8. the cast of glee 9. alicia devos (email her at alicia_devos@brown.edu!) (she's so talented) 10. nicki minaj

10/17/14 - sexicon

If I see something, I say something.

My dad is not a peasant, so I can’t forgive him.

You can get 2,900 pencils for $138.00. I can’t tell if that’s a good deal or not.

I hear he has a sick six-pack for a seventy-year-old.

ine ach

Hooking up with your friend’s sibling isn’t an exact science, but I thought I’d shed some light on the subject.

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