Float Literary Journal

float Issue 01 / Fall 2020 / Explorations Of Happiness

o l l e h o l l e h h o l l e h

o l l e h o l l e h o l l e h *

splea m n u from ing the s y a e w t a ss, giv explor e g e n to . al ers f happi journ can be d a e e o r sy Th lows a world opia. t fanta l a t u o at ha l th off int rsonal on of w a n r t u i pe a jo and floa r own percept s i i s t r he Floa ealitie find t apes ou o r h ant hance t lity s a c the ndividu i how

ruby colwell rachel jiang ankita datta jeff carrillo

con ten

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My Utopia

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Books To Make You Feel Good

The Mundane Secret To Modern Happiness

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23.

Travel Is Not How You Find Yourself

Video Game Music

08.

Virtual Reality And Escapism

Rio’s Sunflower

Arcade Fire

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17.

Why Escapism Is Not All That Bad Radio Head

How To Escape The Rut Your In

By My Name Is George

My Utopia

My “utopia”, my perfect place, my “dream world” would be something not too way over the top like flying spaceships, or robots bringing me drinks. It would be a very quiet, calm, and peaceful place where I can actually hear my thoughts, and individuals are all treated fairly, and everyone isn’t afraid of sharing their opinions about life or society without getting bad looks from others.

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I’m not saying I’d be living in a cube or anything like that. Of course the water would be always deep blue, the weather would be not too hot but occasionally cool, the skies would always have puffy clouds and bright blue skies, and the stars would shine the most brightest at night.

in the middle of the night without having to think about something dangerous happening to you. A place where you can go to a park and hang out for several hours without having to think about a hundred different things that run through your head constantly.

My “utopia” would be a place where it would be safe to walk outside Artwork By Jema Stock

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By Dylan Yono

Video Game

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world to escape to

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Music

I pl as a in t earl game ing the coul nal menu of t play stag many Pump

I ha much sinc For pion and to w just anym sens evok ing beat

Even stra list Calm seri vide and a be eo g comp

layed video games as much any other kid growing up the GameCube era. My liest memories of video e music come from play“Sonic Adventure 2” on Dreamcast, where you ld listen to the origisoundtrack from an extras u. I was particularly fond the hip-hop songs that yed during the Knuckles ges; God only knows how y times I listened to the pkin Hill theme song.

adn’t thought all that h about video game music ce then, until last year. years I had been a chamn of “lo-fi beats to relax study to” when I needed wind down, but lo-fi beats t weren’t doing it for me more. Still, I craved that se of comfort lo-fi beats ked. I started listento hybrid video-game-lo-fi ts like “Zelda & Chill.”

ntually that turned into aight video game playts, like “Relaxing and ming Music from Chrono ies.” YouTube’s suggested eo algorithm went to work, before I knew it, I had eloved rotation of vidgame soundtracks and music pilations.

To this day I can’t remember a single stand-out song from any of the lo-fi beats playlists I once cherished, but the melodies of numerous video games I’ve never even played somehow managed to fill up filing cabinets in my brain. In past times of stress and anxiety, I’ve turned to video games to escape and I’ve turned to

music to escape. But now, in a present time of great stress and anxiety, I turn to a combination of both — I find myself wanting to escape into those filing cabinets of video game music.

Does that make video game music one of the greatest forms of escapism?

VGM is not a genre; it’s

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something bigger than a genre. There’s something about it that sets it apart.

One of the most popular videos by YouTube user Seth Everman is “music genre: video game,” in which Everman improvises tunes reminiscent of VGM. “He somehow made this sound like every game and no game at the same time,” one user commented. “why do I feel nostalgic for a game that doesn’t exist” another user commented on a sequel video. So if VGM isn’t a genre, what separates it from other types of music?

like, if I’m doing a fire-themed compilation, then I just need to go over as many fire levels as I can and see what music plays in them,” Vapidbobcat explained. “But sometimes I like to try my hand at more ‘abstract’ themes, and in this situation I simply take a look at what feelings I’m trying to convey, and what video game songs are good at conveying that feeling (in my opinion).”

VGM has the power to transport listeners to another world in a way that’s unique from other types of music. It can trans-

“He somehow made this sound like every game and no game at the same time.”

“I’ve always had the habit of keeping a copy of my favorite songs from each video game I play, and over the years that has resulted in me having a pretty big library of music,” Vapidbobcat wrote in an email interview with The Michigan Daily. “That is likely a big reason why I’ve been able to do this for so long without running out of ideas.”

Vapidbobcat’s VGM playlists tap into the versatility of video game soundtracks by crafting a specific aesthetic.

Often these are seasonally themed, like winter or holiday music; other times they’re more novel, like “Nintendo elevator music.”

“In some cases it is easy,

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port listeners to the world of a video game, or the world of VGM on YouTube, a world where fans can find community through cool covers and compilations.

Early VGM composers had to be extremely creative out of necessity. That led to music that was rich in melody with a lot of thought put into making it catchy, memorable and interesting to listen to over and over

d e t ”

again. Music rooted in the style of early VGM is undoubtedly the fanfavorite among the VGM community. The cynic in me attributes that to nostalgia, but there is something special about the simplicity of this style. New indie games with pixel-art graphics and chiptune-inspired soundtracks — Undertale, Shovel Knight and Celeste to name a few — are huge with young kids, even though tenyear-olds today are far removed from the 8-bit era.

Nowadays there is no limitation to VGM. Because of an abundance of storage, most modern video games utilize pre-recorded songs, much like playing an MP3 file in the background. This has led to a shift in emphasis throughout the industry away from simple, melody-driven music to more cinematic, movie score-esque soundtracks.

This change in VGM is part of a greater trend of video games trying to imitate the cinematic grandeur of film, a trend that’s creeping into television as well.

Nonetheless, a lot of modern VGM still retains this emphasis on melody. Why do so many fans still feel so attached to the VGM of the 8-bit era?

Why are modern soundtracks inspired by this era the most beloved? Why is the aesthetic so popular, even with children who are too young to be nostalgic for it?

Admittedly, I’m no different — the 8-bit aesthetic has become my favorite too, and it even started me on a retro video game kick. There’s something comforting about playing the original “Sonic The Hedgehog” or “The Legend of Zelda.”

They’re not realistic or immersive video games, yet those are the worlds I want to dive into most when I’m fed up with life. There’s universal comfort in a world bound by limitation, and maybe there’s comfort in music bound by limitation, too. Is complexity a curse? Is simplicity freedom? Do the tenyear-olds have something figured out here?

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One way or another — in cinematic style or classic Nintendo fashion — VGM will always be transporting its listeners to a new world. So as I struggle to cope with the changes I’ve faced in light of COVID-19, I find myself falling into the camp of a Vapidbobcat listener, escaping to a simpler world, finding comfort in Animal Crossing music against the ambience of a crackling fireplace.

But I find just as much solace in this new world I’ve started dipping my toes into, the world of the video game music community. Video game music is more than just one of the greatest forms of escapism. It’s a medium that has borne melodic masterpieces from the minds of world-class musicians. It’s an artists’ alley uniting an impassioned community. It is a grand avenue for a great escape.

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“It is a grand avenue for a great escape.”

By Jeff Barton

WHY ESCAPISM IS NOT ALL THAT BAD

For me, escaping from some of the mundane things in life is like pressing a reset button.

It’s a break from some of the hardships and misery life can bring.

For me, my escapism and distractions are no longer drinking and procrastinating for hours on end. It is no longer spending hours on the internet looking at meaningless things.

Now, it is running, working out, and writing. It is working on improving my life. Even though they may not be classified as normal entertainment, those are two things which I use to escape.

I also don’t allow myself to get distracted like I used to. I focus on what needs to get accomplished and don’t let distractions get in the way.

Your time is not wasted when you fill your day with activities which mean the most to you and add value to your life, and there is nothing wrong with escaping for a bit every day.

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books to make you feel good /9

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3 1 2 4 5

The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck

Happy

A collection of poetry and prose. Compiled by Robin Barratt.

A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life.

Written by Mark Manson.

Joyful

The surprising power of ordinary things to create extraordinary happiness. Written by Ingrid Lee.

The Happiness Project

Getting Unstuck

A year-long experiment to discover how to create true happiness. Written

by Gretchen Rubin.

How dead ends become new paths.

Written by Timothy Butler.

Getting Back To Happy

Change your thoughts, change your reality, and turn your trials into triumphs. Written by Marc Chernoff.

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irtual reality nd escapis

By Gigi De Baere

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With virtual reality, anyone has the opportunity to create their own world, completely customizable to their whims, pleasures, and darkest thoughts. For someone who may have very little control in life, virtual reality offers an attractive substitute to the real world.

Distractions from the so-called drudgery of daily life are nothing new. People have been using literature, music, magazines, TV to escape for millennia — and this is probably for the better. It’s alarming to think about what the world would look like if there were 7 billion bored and unstimulated humans.

Virtual reality offers an even more powerful, real-time immersion of all the senses, allowing the consumer to truly shut themselves out of the present moment.

For the first time, there could be a world of 7 billion preoccupied and absent humans.

HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY RADIO HEAD

Artwork By Pam Wishbow

“I’M NOT HERE, THIS ISN’T HAPPENING”

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By Mehreen Kasana

The Mundane Secret to Modern Happiness

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Artwork By Stephanie Ho

Sometimes loitering is less about fleeing the confines of your room and more about escaping yourself. Self-discovery often takes place during these simple, unremarkable moments.

You may chance upon a new sliver of yourself while walking through a park, dawdling on the sidewalk after fetching the mail, or turning the corner on the street one night.

And while it may not be able to put a permanent end to existential dread, roaming around is said to have a positive impact on one’s mental health.

A Stanford study showed that people solved their problems better when they were given a chance to walk.

A California State University study similarly noted that people who walked were more likely to express optimism — or at least a sense of resolution — in adverse times. These studies make sense. As most of our interactions become abysmally transactional, an aimless walk is refreshing because it asks nothing of its participant except to get up and get out.

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By Leah

Rio’s Sunflower

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Filter the p erfect shade of the foren Not too brig oon sun, ht, not too d ull.

For with eas e and carefr ee thoughts, You let the sunbeam-driz zling fairie As the beaut s play y reflected i n your retin as.

c view: lored oaks i n e c s co urs this estnut s of yo h s c e Capture r t d n n r u he bu art s Where t ained sweethe s of waltz. st at rs, And mud three-four be he skies . d corne s n t a h g s t u e n o s th iri Dance i la strokes of squited r suncrashed i d o r y u a o f y you The Cr anvas o al view from c e h t her Paint e perip h t s i d.

This ur worl o y s i This Let your kn ees down to your sore f Be engulfed eet by the chas ms of the b As the smil ewildered g e makes it rass, way to your Callused fin plump sprin gers from g g lips; uitar strin Twirl and t gs wist the bl ades, Cutting thr ough flesh And green a nd red and blue and ye All sorts o llow, f color cam e spilling from your p layful brui se.

s mic view of your From this panora erland, Of a wonder wond of clock ver, Where the ticks ut time and fore ho ug ro th er ow nfl Follow the su ty of that stem: au be e th is is Th A key to escapism lovely world.

To a well-dreamt

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* this

is the unorthodox solution

By John P. Weiss

How To Escape The Rut You’re In /1 7

Artwork by PiyaPong89

We need to make room for the unexpected. The unusual. The different. In other words, if you want to escape the rut you’re in, you need to: Embrace the power of randomness.

Embracing randomness is a bit like Thomas Frank’s advice to “branch out and explore new things.”

The difference is that exploration is an overtact, whereas being open to randomness is more acquiescent.

Random stuff happens to me all the time, but I’m paying closer attention now because often there are creative hints and doors worth opening. For example, the other day I was in the bookstore walking through the fantasy/sci-fi section on my way to the art section. Had I made it to the art section, I predictably would have explored landscape art books. But something random happened.

I brushed past a book in the fantasy section, causing it to fall. The book was titled, “The World of the Dark Crystal.” Curious, I picked up the book and thumbed through it. The artwork blew me away.

The book showcases the gorgeous conceptual artwork for the film “The World of the Dark Crystal,” by the artist Brian Froud. Froud is an amazing artist best known for his Faerie drawings and paintings. His work was influenced by the late artist Arthur Rackham, and I immediately fell in love with his sketches and paintings.

This random event, and the discovery of Froud’s artistry, led me to purchase several of Froud’s books and begin exploring my pen, ink, and watercolor artwork more deeply.

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By Brianna Wiest

I love to travel. If there were a list of the top three things that I would like to do in life, to travel more is among them. Over the past few years, I have traveled a lot, and thoroughly enjoyed every second. I went to Italy multiple times, took my sister to Paris, went to Indonesia with my husband. I’ve been to the other side of the country and back multiple times, with many stops in between. I’ve taken road trips and camping trips and beach trips and a honeymoon. We have even more planned this year, and the next.

I figured I should begin with that specific disclaimer so that you did not assume this was a manifesto against traveling. I love traveling.

But I also understand that traveling does not necessarily make me a better person. It has absolutely not been the medium through which I have “found” myself, and I think we should stop telling people that you have to escape to soul search. Becoming who I am has been a process of deep self-inquiry, reading, and mindfully changing my habits… all of which I’ve done most effectively when I wasn’t distracted by an exciting trip.

Self-awareness doesn’t strike you on the Almafi coast. Confusion doesn’t clear when you get far enough from its source. Your soul isn’t on the other side of the world. The virtue of travel is that it exposes you to other cultures, people and ways of life. It helps develop a global mindset, it puts things into perspective. It’s exciting and fulfilling in its own way. It’s also a status symbol. It sets you apart. It makes you nomadic, and interesting. It can make you think you are beyond the norms your peers have fallen beholden to.

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Travel Is Not How You /1 9

It’s How You Escape Yourself But none of those things help you understand who you are, though they are all enlightening in their own ways. If traveling does fundamentally change you, it’s only because you’ve done some important self-work while you were there. But it’s work you can do anywhere, and very few people actually get around to it when there’s a new city to explore and world to get lost in.

Have you ever met someone who has come back from a long trip abroad, suddenly clear on everything that they need to change in their lives, and ready to begin once the jet lag has worn off? Of course you haven’t. Because it usually doesn’t happen that way.

Traveling helps you temporarily forget about your responsibilities and terse relationships and the problems you have yet to resolve. It is a way to insert something new and exciting into your life. Though there’s nothing wrong with that, we shouldn’t forget that traveling is, quite literally, a means of taking your necessities and running away — albeit temporarily—without much consideration for what’s waiting for you when you return… which is your life. Emerson kind of said this when he said traveling is like taking “ruins to ruins.”

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“Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.”

“Traveling is There was an article a number of years ago that was quite popular, fool’s paradi by a writer named Kellie Donnelly, The Hardest Part of Traveling That Nobody Talks About, in which perhaps for the first time on a Our first journ large scale, she said what everyone experienced and so few people ever said: The hard part is that you come home. You have to return, discover to us eventually. You have to settle somewhere. Or you don’t. You can spend the entirety of your life moving from place to place. Or you indifference can, but you should not expect that your problems will not follow you there. places. At ho In conclusion, she wrote: “once you’ve done your obligatory visits I dream that for being away for a year; you’re sitting in your childhood bedroom and realize nothing has changed.” Jamie Varon, the CEO of Shat- Naples, at Ro terboxx, is someone who has lived abroad, traveled extensively, and just last year picked up her life in L.A. to live in Europe with her husI can be intoxi band. (They spent the summer in the South of France, and they’re now in Cannes, getting ready for their next move.) However, she’s ed with beau transparent about the year she spent prior to her travels that she, well, got her shit together. She paid off her debt, started healing and lose my s her self-image issues, and found real freedom… but only because she dealt with her reckoning first. ness.”

“Traveling as a means of escape doesn’t work. You’re still you whether you’re marveling in front of the Eiffel Tower or not. In fact, traveling to escape often exacerbates the problems, because then you’re unhappy in front of the Eiffel Tower, disappointed and thinking this was supposed to solve your problems,” she tells me. “I think travel enriches a life in a big way, because it expands your mind.

Traveling has made me a more empathetic person, a less cocky American, and traveling has humbled me… but it’s very hard to see those parts of travel when you’re not right with yourself.”

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She continued: “When what you really need to do is tell yourself the truth, build up the foundation of your own life with good, healthy habits, and find a way to be happy no matter where you are in the world. Travel becomes entirely different when you’re not using it as a crutch. I cleaned up my life before I traveled and it was the best decision I ever made. I wanted to enjoy my life instead of be stuck in the mess of it wherever I go. I wanted to know myself and what made me happy before I went out and searched for it. That was everything to me. And, it has made the experiences richer, the gratefulness deeper, and the joy much more pure.”

sa ise. certainly adds value to your life in that it offers you experineys Travel ence. Unique experience. Experience that could very well shift the that you see the world and your place within it. Experience that s theway could very well tell you something about customs and norms and you’d prefer to live. Maybe you’ll come home with some of the e of how habits and language you learned. Maybe you’ll have an interaction impacts you forever. Maybe you stuff a few souvenirs into a ome that suitcase and call it a day. t at Regardless, none of those things actually do what most people say“Invest in figuring the is going to do, and that’s make your real life better. If I travome, travel eled when I had relationship issues, I still had relationship issues hard stuff I was gone. If I traveled when I was anxious, I was still anxious icat-when when I arrived. (In fact, traveling while things weren’t going well out first and home almost always made it impossible to really savor the trip.) uty, atTravel was a distraction, because it was more the idea of it that later, me feel better than the actual doing of it. I’m so glad that travel I sad- made have gone where I have gone. I hope that I will be able to explore so much more of the world as the years go on. But I also hope thatwhen you it can be better communicated that traveling is not the means in which you will discover your soul. Whenever you go, there you arecan be self— and you find yourself where you meet yourself, which is anyaware and where.

Invest in figuring the hard stuff out first and travel later, when youstable and can be self-aware and stable and at peace. Or travel while you do it, I don’t really care, just don’t expect a long flight and tight suit- at peace.” case and days wandering and looking at things to be a salve to your wounds. It is often more a distraction than it is the healing.

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“Sometimes, I wonder if th world's so sma can we ever g away from th sprawl?” /23

Arcade Fire

Artwork By Harry Vincent

Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

, he all, get he

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HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY

float ruby colwell