TOE TAGS
TOE TAGS
Goodbyes for the Indy’s class of 2022 In an Indy pick-your-fighter scenario, MMC would max the levels out on multiple criteria: magnetic charm, maravilhosa cantora, model of compassion. She’d do it all in her default rose-patterned dress. MMC, just like unlocking a new character at the end of a great journey, I lucked out on becoming your friend. I discover so much in the smallest decisions that you take along the way: how you turn down a Snackpass deal for the chance at a prolonged conversation over a cream cheese bagel, how you would rather let your love shine once and shine bright in unforgettable shades of pink and green than be anyplace. MMC, there are countless precious viewpoints that only you have occupied. Thank you for showing me all the different ways of straying from the path, stopping for conversation, and resuming your stride with a new friend by your side. -ATCB
before i knew ATCB, i knew they were rooting for me. not because i was special, or because i had earned it, but because they so clearly and fundamentally believe in the goodness of people that they celebrate everyone around them. and then, suddenly, ATCB was everywhere, a reminder that indy MEs twerk on stage, that poets scream bad bunny lyrics, that water can pick you up and carry you for miles but it also sometimes begs to be cupped in your overlapping palms. this is when i learned that to be friends with ATCB is to be dancing. by that i mean: you will be truly, deeply, and lovingly seen, it will feel like it is meant to be, and every once in a while you will glance at how ATCB moves and try to mimic the floating, romantic, grace with which they navigate the world. you will hear chirps and know they are robins. you will believe that the clouds can rain coffee. you will be here. -MMC
We’ve all gotten very used to not having to go far to walk with RG, read with RG, write with RG, talk with RG. How, after all this, could RG go? We at the Indy have a list of demands for this outrageous situation we find ourselves in:
DESIGN & ILLUSTRATION ISAAC MCKENNA
Can we have a little more? Could it be after games and books? After coffee and a sandwich? After movies? After one more round of edits? After music and your poems? After another show? One more long drive? Another illustration for an article? Another chicken man in Philly last night? Another
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listen through? Another set of reads? RG has let us push it back an issue before, could we try that again? Could we draw for a heart for our RG Barille? Like most RG fans, we only need a small eternity, just enough for another spin around the park; is that so much to ask? Just a little crust of garlic bread?
To encounter IA is to sit beside one of the foremost Taylor Swift scholars, to find poetry in the quiet of early dawn but also in sweaty palms and puddles that linger after a windswept rainfall. The cadence of her voice lulls over grass crested hills, frolicking towards home. No one else holds sisterhood so gently in her pocket as she laughs one beat staccato and lets the giggle
carry over the room. IA, to know you is a gift, handwritten notes and pop songs, eternally bounding homeward, stretching out beneath the sun. I am grateful you have let me lean on you, and that you are so generous with your soft gravity. v and our lives are brighter, warmer, and ever so slightly sunkissed by your presence in them. -AJ
After all that, potentially, and a few more things, could we maybe play a game of chess and have a little lunch? -LN
Anyone close to AF has witnessed her dogged meticulousness, a commitment to the particularity of even the smallest and subtlest of things, a devotion to the just so. AF’s just so-ness is not a bland perfectionism or obsession––it is not an involuntary urge for lack of control. Rather, AF is executing a directorial vision; she is the auteur of the AF cinematic universe. The three defining attributes of the auteur are technical competence, stylistic continuity/distinguishability, and interior meaning. There is no doubting the technical brilliance in AF’s execution of her life-as-film. It’s evident in the exactness, the just so-ness, of all things in AF’s world; when it comes to putting it together, she couldn’t do better. Nor could one question her distinct style and sensibility (so-called “consistent swag”), unfaltering and coherent day-to-day through her art, writing, and general demeanor (and outfits). Finally, the auteur’s work contains interior meaning –– something like a worldview, an interpretation or approach to being; in AF’s case, it is an expressive soul, cumulative across everything she makes, does and is. It’s the overlapping center of the multitudinous Venn diagram that is the AF life-opus. Naturally, AF’s interior meaning is difficult to pin down, but it derives primarily from her steadfast adherence to principles, penetrating curiosity and perceptiveness, immense intellect, and infallible emotional intuition. Anyone close to AF must realize that they are in some sense part of her world. That is, if AF the auteur opts for your company, she has written you into her cinematic universe, and this was a very careful choice––you should be honored. -JS
THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT
TM, we are so lucky that you joined our crew this semester. It has been too short and oh so sweet! And in honor of that, here is a short and (hopefully) sweet farewell poem: Equanimous craftsman, you Cut carefully through papery blocks of persimmon and indigo hues Wedged colors vibrate Before our eyes. And your pictures offer to their textual twins a gaze. -SJ
