The College Hill Independent V.29 N.9

the college hill A BROWN/RISD WEEKLY NOVEMBER 21, 2014 | V29 N9

independent

MANAGING EDITORS Alex Sammon, Lili Rosenkranz, Greg Nissan NEWS Sebastian Clark, Kyle Giddon, Elias Bresnick METRO Rick Salamé, Sophie Kasakove, Cherise Morris ARTS Lisa Borst, Eli Pitegoff, Erin Schwartz FEATURES Matt Marsico, Sara Winnick TECHNOLOGY Patrick McMenamin SPORTS Zeve Sanderson SCIENCE Connor Mcguigan FOOD Sam Bresnick LITERARY Kim Sarnoff, Leah Steinberg EPHEMERA Mark Benz X Layla Ehsan, Sara Khan, Pierie Korostoff LIST Polina Godz, Megan Hauptman DESIGN + ILLUSTRATION Casey Friedman, Ming Zhen COVER EDITOR Jade Donaldson SENIOR EDITORS Tristan Rodman STAFF WRITERS Mika Kligler, Will Fesperman, Stephanie Hayes, Jamie Packs, Dash Elhauge STAFF ILLUSTRATORS Andres Chang, Caroline Brewer, Brielle Curvey, Margaret Hu, Lee Bernstein, Ben Ross, Maya Sorabjee WEB Edward Friedman COPY Mary Frances Gallagher BUSINESS Haley Adams COVER ART Jade Donaldson MVP Kyle Giddon

VOLUME 29 | ISSUE 9

NEWS 2 Week in Review

elias bresnick & sebastian clark

3 Like a G20 kyle giddon

METRO 5 Love is in the Thayer kalie boyne & tom sullivan

7 Hometown Heroes eli neuman-hammond

FEATURES 17 Irons in the Fire camera ford

ARTS 9 The Pale Kingdom lisa borst

SPORTS 8 Quitting

zeve sanderson

TECHNOLOGY 14 Cyborg Club

malcolm drenttel

EPHEMERA 13 The Ore’groin Toast burlington throat factory

LIT 15 Three-headed Boy andrew j. smyth

FROM THE EDITOR S Hello This is Thomas and i will like to ask if you do dragon tattoo...and i want you to draw an Dragon tattoo 6 or 5 inches with full color and a maximum of 3 hours on each person and i want you to get back to me with the total estimate for 5 people because i have a party coming up on the 21th of November and i also want you to know that the people who will come to have the tattoo will come with a private transportation driver... and i also want you to know that i will be making full payment with my credit card information to charge for all expenses i want you to get back to me with the type of credit card accepted and i also want you to know that i have attach you the picture of the tattoo... and i would like everyone that is coming to have the same tattoo for all. and i also want you to get back to me with your cell phone number and shop address so that i can have your shop information complete with me so that i can forward to the driver who will drop the people to your shop to have the tattoo.

Best Regard.

–DBZ

X 18 Plink, The Fish taylor beldy

11 Musical Shepherd greg nissan

P.O. Box 1930 Brown University Providence, RI 02912 Letters to the editor are welcome distractions. The Independent is published weekly during the fall & spring semesters and is printed by TCI Press in Seekonk, MA.

THEINDY.ORG // @THEINDY_TWEETS

WEEK IN

by Sebastian Clark and Elias Bresnick illustration by Pierie Korostoff

DISPLACEMENT

In Kindergarten, we called it “gimme, gimme.” Now we call it privatization.

OPEN SEASON The Tanzanian government backtracked this week on its promise not to sell 370,000 acres of Maasai land to the Dubai royal family. In April of last year, the parliament of Mizengo Pinda struck a deal with the Ortelo Business Corporation (OBC), a company set up by an affiliate of the royal family, to sell off almost half of the Loliondo Game Controlled Area (LGCA) with no compensation to the 40,000 Maasai it would displace. The Dubai royal family plans to use the land as a reserve for big game hunting.

The previous deal was scrapped in response to an avaaz.org petition of 1.7 million names called “Stop the Serengeti Sell-Off.” The logic seems to have been to let international pressure subside before, again, proceeding.

This time 1 billion shillings ($579,565) was offered to the Maasai, not as a lump-sum but as an investment through development and infrastructure projects. Activists among the Maasai community rejected the offer, but the eviction order, which requires they be gone by the end of the year, still stands.

Samwel Nangiria, co-ordinator of the local Ngonett campaign group, said: "One billion [shillings] is very little and you cannot compare that with land. It's inherited. Their mothers and grandmothers are buried in that land. There's nothing you can compare with it.”

The LGCA is a 4,000 sq km gap between the Serengeti National Park and the Ngorongoro Crater that is vital to the sustenance of the Maasai community. The pastoralist practices that sustain the group require an extensive spreading of population in order not to exceed the carrying capacity of the land. At a time when both the Maasai and their livestock are growing fast, the Tanzanian government have framed the selling of the land as a conservation effort, invoking a “fortress conservation” model, which necessitates an exclusion of all human presence to resuscitate “indigenous geography.” It is believed the Maasai can no longer manage the land they have occupied for 400 years, while a gun-toting royal family, bent on hunting and taxidermy, can.

Maasai activists argue that while they can continue to manage the land, any compression of Maasai territory in Tanzania amounts to cultural genocide — an intentional destabilizing of their practices that will result in a demise that will seem of their own doing. —SC

BUNDLE UP If you’ve never heard of Cliven Bundy, he’s probably worth at least a quick Wikipedia search. A cattle-rancher and native of southern Nevada, Bundy has been engaged in an ongoing dispute with the federal government since 1993. As any law-abiding farmer knows, if you want your cows to graze on public land, you have to pay a fee. But Bundy, a non-believer in the tax, refused to pony up the dough for over two decades. Accruing fines of over one million dollars over a twenty-year period, Bundy’s case burst out onto the national scene this past April when the feds came to collect their money. In a move reminiscent of a bygone era, Bundy and a mass of hundreds of armed militia supporters refused to capitulate. Declining to pay the tax and refusing to have his cattle confiscated, Bundy and supporters decided to challenge the federal government head on. The situation progressed to a precarious point, ultimately concluding in an armed standoff between federal agents and the group of farmers. But the outcome was unexpected—Bundy and company won out. The federal agents decided not to engage, claiming the issue just wasn’t worth the bother.

The federal government downplayed the significance of the moment. But might one farmer’s refusal to pay a federal tax have wider significance? Bundy’s case was extreme, but across the west coast there appears to be a push towards privatizing previously federally owned land. Utah was the first state to embark on this course. In 2012, the state’s Republican governor, Gary Herbert, signed a law demanding that the federal government transfer to the state more than 20 million acres owned by United States taxpayers.

The recent effort towards privatization has been called a renewal of the “Sagebrush rebellion,” a movement in the ‘70s and ‘80s that called for more state and local control over local land. Since federal land holdings in the American West can include between 20-85 percent of a state’s area, the issue has become extremely contentious.

The costs of managing these lands could bankrupt state governments. Over $3.9 billion was appropriated for federal wildfire management alone for the 2014 fiscal year.

If successful, the push towards privatization could dispose of national forests, conservation lands and open spaces across the west coast. Notorious congressman Ted Cruz (who else?) has recently taken up the rallying cry: drawing up an amendment that would prevent the federal government from owning more than 50 percent of the land in any state.

At this point, the shift still seems unlikely; but as long as an unknown farmer can best the federal government on a land dispute, let’s not get too comfortable. —EB

NOVEMBER 21 2014

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CHECKING IN WITH THE G-20 LEADERS

by Kyle Giddon illustration by Margaret Hu Last week, political reporters across the globe who use the adjective “embattled” whetted their typewriter keys as the ninth annual G-20 summit kicked off in Brisbane, Australia, bringing together embattled heads of state and embattled central bankers from the world’s twenty largest (embattled) economies. Now, in an article that is half public-policy treatise, half gossip column, The Indy is here to fill you on what’s been occupying the G-20 leaders both at home and at the summit:

During the meetings, Brazilian police arrested 27 people as part of a continuing corruption investigation. Three state governors, six senators, and dozens of congressmen from Rousseff’s leftwing Workers’ Party have been implicated thus far.

Argentina Axel Kicillof, Minister of Economy Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner remains hospitalized with a colon infection, so Kicillof, the counry’s 42-year-old chief economist, has stepped in. But back home, the left-wing Fernández de Kirchner is under fire for choosing to go to a private rather than public hospital, betraying, her critics say, her lack of confidence in the public health system that she has repeatedly praised.

European Union Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council Van Rompuy, a former Prime Minister of Belgium, has concentrated his four years in the EU presidency on efforts to restore the euro and combat climate change. On December 1, however, Van Rompuy will leave his post. When asked about his plans after politics, he said he will “give speeches on topics that interest [him].” Whether they’re worth listening to, however, is another story—UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage once described Van Rompuy as having the “charisma of a damp rag.”

France François Hollande, President Call the G-20 summit a needed exodus for Hollande. A recently released poll had his approval rating at a mere 12 percent, which a Google-translated article from Le Huffington Post called “more alarming news for the president and all the more grave evil.” The same translation would later conclude that “the distrust of the French Socialist Party strikes as the executive.” Oh, and, speaking of Le Huffington Post, do you know what they call a quarter-pounder with cheese in France?

Canada Stephen Harper, Prime Minister “I guess I’ll shake your hand,” Harper told Russia’s Vladimir Putin, according to Canada’s CBC News, “but I have only one thing to say to you: you need to get out of Ukraine.” A spokesperson for Harper said that Putin “did not respond positively” to the Canadian Prime Minister’s comment; meanwhile, a spokesman for the Russian delegation, said Putin’s response was: “That’s impossible because we are not there.”

Australia Tony Abbott, Prime Minister Tony Abbott, according to a commentator in The Guardian, “seemed a bit overwhelmed with all the heavyweights around him,” yet nonetheless allowed each world leader the chance to hold (and be photographed with) a koala bear. But it was in the closed-door meetings that Abbott got exactly what he wanted: a lucrative free-trade agreement with China that will reduce tariffs on key Australian exports, including infant formula and wine. In a speech to a joint session of Australia’s Parliament, China’s President Xi Jinping lauded the collaboration between the two nations and diagrammed his vision of the “Asia-Pacific Dream”—peace, prosperity, and openness, with Australia and China sitting at the fulcrum.

Germany Angela Merkel, Chancellor

China Xi Jinping, President “We have set two goals for China’s future development,” President Xi said in his speech to the Australian Parliament.

“The first is to double the 2010 GDP and per-capita income of urban and rural residents and build a society of initial prosperity in all respects by 2020. The second is to turn China into a modern socialist country that is prosperous, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious by the middle of the century.” While members of the Australian Parliament lauded Xi’s pro-democracy rhetoric, veteran China-watchers have said that Xi’s oratory will mask more of the same anti-dissident policies.

On Tuesday, Merkel traveled to Sydney to take a tour of the National Information Communications Technology Australia (NICTA) center, a federal hub of research in science and technology. But her stop there was a source of tension between her office and that of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, sources say, because the latter’s government has cut research funding across the board. Nonetheless, Merkel seemed to enjoy herself and spent some of her visit playing with model trucks. It is unclear if the trucks were that size because of the budget cuts.

Brazil Dilma Rousseff, President For Rousseff, the summit took the place of a honeymoon after a grueling reelection campaign, which ended with her narrow October 27 victory. But the world’s seventh-largest economy faces numerous economic problems including a growing budget deficit, falling industrial production, rising poverty, and sustained scandal at Petrobras, the state-controlled oil company.

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India Narendra Modi, Prime Minister According to several Australian newspapers, Modi pulled out a laugh line when addressing Aussie Parliament on Tuesday: “(As) the third head of the government you are listening to this week, I do not know how you are doing this. Maybe this is Prime Minister Abbott’s way of shirtfronting you.” Why this was a laugh line was unclear to this writer until an investigation could commence on local sports slang: apparently, in Aussie rules football, “shirtfronting” refers to knocking another player down to the pitch with a shoulder blow, presumably using the front side of one’s shirt.

the students, who were protesting discriminatory hiring by the government, were abducted by police and handed over to a drug cartel before being killed. As the investigation continues, Peña Nieto has defended his trip abroad at such a time, arguing that Mexico relies on foreign trade and investment. But his critics have followed him down under: in Hobart, Canberra, Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne, Sidney, and Brisbane, protesters took to the streets with banners reading, “Enrique Peña Nieto, you are not welcome in Australia.”

Russia Vladimir Putin, President While some Australian politicians argued against inviting him to the G-20 meetings, Putin was ultimately able to RSVP to Brisbane without sustained controversy. However, the Russian President made an early exit Sunday afternoon, returning home before any of the other world leaders by explaining he needed to “catch up on sleep.”

Davutoğlu, a 55-year-old diplomat and political scientist who assumed his office in August, sees opportunity for the group to tack in new directions. “The G-20 agenda in that sense should represent not only 20 countries but a global agenda,” he said in Brisbane, “Therefore the relation between G-20 and non-G-20 countries is as important as the relations of G-20 members.” Although the G-20 was founded in 1999 as a forum for cooperation in international finance, Davutoğlu wants to expand the group’s role beyond economics and into to issues such as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and terrorism in the Middle East.

United Kingdom David Cameron, Prime Minister Two weeks ago, the European Union hit the UK with a £1.7 billion bill toward EU general coffers, issuing the demand using rules from 1995 that found that the British economy grew faster than expected. Cameron, ranting against “technocrats and bureaucrats without a heart or a soul,” has insisted that he will not pay the charge, which amounts to £56 for every income taxpayer in the country, by the December 1 deadline.

The British PM has also spoken of immigration reform against EU guidelines, and with chatter of a referendum on EU membership in 2017, the union between the UK and the EU looks dicier each month.

United States Barack Obama, President Australia’s Tony Abbott, who once described climate science as “absolute crap,” resisted the American effort to put climate change on the G-20 agenda. But Obama turned the topic into the focus of his official speech in Brisbane. “You will recall at the beginning I said the US and Australia has a lot in common,” he said. “Well, one of the things we have in common is we produce a lot of carbon…which means we’ve got to step up.” Last Thursday, as Obama and China’s President Xi Jinping announced a bilateral agreement to cap carbon emissions, Australians mocked their government’s climate change intransigence by burying their heads in the sand at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.

Indonesia Joko Widodo, President Widodo, the son of a carpenter, is the first president of Indonesia not to come from a political family or a military background. Inaugurated just a few weeks before the summit, the 53-year-old appeared on the cover of Time magazine under the caption “A New Hope” and in his first major executive act cut the government fuel subsidy that takes up 16 percent of Indonesia’s budget. Although Widodo promises to use the new funds to improve infrastructure, education, and health, it remains to be seen what effect the slashed subsidies will have on the economy and the Kessel Run. Italy Matteo Renzi, Prime Minister With a weak euro, startlingly low worker productivity, and youth unemployment at 44 percent, Italy’s economy has been in need of a jumpstart for years. Enter Matteo Renzi, who has proposed a series of labor reforms that will repeal the country’s prohibition on firing workers in the absence of “serious misconduct.” While Renzi, who took office earlier this year at 39-years-old, has the backing of prominent economists, Italy’s largest unions have come out in opposition—at a protest last month, one million people filled the streets of Rome.

Japan Shinzō Abe, Prime Minister

Saudi Arabia Salman Bin Abdulaziz, Crown Prince In his G-20 speech, the Crown Prince turned to the geoeconomics of international growth, arguing that unrest in the Middle East has reduced investment both in the region and around the world. Each nation’s common economic goals, he said, require the international community to “cooperate and work together,” and while he urged a “fair and comprehensive” solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and an end to the crisis in Syria, he was less willing to elaborate on any specific policy prescriptions.

South Africa Jacob Zuma, President Zuma’s presidency has endured numerous controversies and criminal charges, including allegations of corruption and racketeering, as well as interfering in the aforementioned trials, public censure for failing to report his finances, an investigation into his failure to abide by the constitution, steep criticism over remarks that he would have “knocked out” a homosexual in his younger years, and a rape acquittal. By all media accounts, however, his trip to Brisbane was uneventful.

After two years of “Abenomics,” a collection of national stimulus programs designed to boost Japan’s weak economy, new data this week are showing that the country has fallen back into recession. In response, Abe dissolved the Japanese Parliament on Tuesday and called for early elections, framing the vote as a referendum on his economic policies. “There is criticism that Abenomics is a failure,” he said, “so what should we do?

Unfortunately, I have yet to hear one concrete idea.” Before next month’s elections, Abe will seek to restore confidence in his policies while the rival Democrats will promote rival stimulus plans.

South Korea Park Geun-hye, President

Mexico Enrique Peña Nieto, President

Turkey Ahmet Davutoğlu, Prime Minister

Peña Nieto’s government has faced continued denunciation over the public security crisis resulting from the kidnapping of 43 Mexican students on September 26. Authorities now say

Next year, leadership of the G-20 will rotate to Turkey, and

NOVEMBER 21 2014

Park, although less than two years into her presidency, is no stranger to the office. In 1974, at age 22, she was elevated to First Lady of South Korea after her mother was killed in an assassination attempt on her father, President Park Chunghee. While details on Park’s activities in Brisbane are slight, we know she encouraged a future trilateral summit between South Korea, China, and Japan as she has continued pivoting her country toward more open, globally minded foreign policy.

NEWS

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THEIR THAYER The faces of Thayer Street

by Kalie Boyne and Tom Sullivan illustration by Kalie Boyne photography by Tom Sullivan

+++ It’s impossible to miss the changes on Thayer Street. The deep black of smooth asphalt bears the bright white stain of a new bike lane. The chain convenience store Tedeschi is gone, and in its stead sits an empty glass-walled space at the corner of Thayer and Euclid. Gone too is the group of motorcyclists that once revved their engines in the parking lot. Whizzing buzzsaws and towering cranes erect the skeleton of 257 Thayer. In front of the Brown bookstore, pedestrians drink coffee on the benches of the newly installed parklet, a symbol of the freshly sterilized environment. Though the built landscape of Thayer is changing, its culture and image have always been defined by both the businesses and the people who use the street in their own unique ways. Some of these people have been around for decades, public fixtures amid the flurry of tourists, visitors, and students. They serenade with saxophones and harmonicas. They peddle art and offer political discourse. Others are less visible, arriving at dawn seven days a week to ensure that the trash cans are empty and last night’s vomit/Nice Slice medley is not on the sidewalk the next morning. These individuals contribute to the image and history of the street itself, carving out a living while adding to the street’s legendary vibrancy. In turn, Thayer provides them with a space to perform, interact, create, and learn.

Though steady streams of pedestrians pass these individuals on their way to class, work, meals, and bars, few have stopped to have a conversation. To understand the different ways individuals experience Thayer Street, we sat down with José, Maurice and James—an artisan, a musician, and a city worker, respectively—all long time mainstays of the corridor. Through these conversations, we learned about their history with Thayer and what the street means to them on an economic and personal level.

While seeking out individuals to talk to, we noticed that those who visibly work on Thayer Street are overwhelmingly male. Mary, a homeless woman who used to frequent the terrace next to Ben & Jerry’s (once Symposium Books), confirmed that the street was not a place where she felt safe.

She experienced harassment from pedestrians and police alike and had been physically attacked by law enforcement on multiple occasions. Her interactions on the street provide an example of how different people experience and utilize the space.

While most people spend money on Thayer Street, there are those who use the public space as a way to generate income. As Thayer continues to change, it’s unclear whether some of these individuals will be able to use space in the way that they do now. Even with his permit, José has been asked by law enforcement to relocate on multiple occasions. As Thayer continues to experience cosmetic overhaul, Maurice may be forced to take his harmonica elsewhere. With new developments aimed at students and big spenders on Thayer, those who make money without storefronts on Thayer may be at risk of losing both their livelihoods and their means of selfexpression and fulfillment. Though these individuals shape the image of Thayer, their stories are rarely heard.

You can’t miss him when you walk down Thayer Street. José, 60, won’t let you. From behind his table covered in necklaces and bracelets, he calls in Spanglish to potential customers. “Buenas tardes, caballero! How are you?”

José grew up in Catalonia, an autonomous region of Spain that borders France to the northeast. He is descended from generations of artisans and braiders. José studied in a French-Spanish school until age 13 in Barcelona, when he fled the Spanish dictatorship and moved to Paris by way of the Pyrenees. “I travelled the world with my backpack, and did my research.

Everywhere I went I saw braids and studied their structures.” In Montmarte—a district known for inspiring and housing generations of artists including Pablo Picasso—José slept on a mattress in a van without an engine and lived off the change left from fetching coffee and snacks for “all the big painters.” In 1988 he moved from Andalucía to San Francisco, finally making his way to Providence in 1992. He has been selling his work on Thayer Street for 21 years. When asked about the impact of the Thayer Street redevelopment, he responded, “I’m a businessman and an artist. I don’t care about what doesn’t give me a slice of the cake...The people who come to me are the people who look for me.” Amid the rows of jewelry spread across his table, José displays a piece made from what looks like rubber insulation. One day on Brook Street, he found long scraps of window insulation from the construction of 257 Thayer and wove them into an intricate bracelet. “I thought it was flexible enough and that it would be a good application of my art from little pieces…the leftovers. One cord. Nothing more, nothing less. It starts here and ends there.”

A laminated tag hangs from a green lanyard around José’s neck, right next to a leather necklace with his name braided on the end. He assures us that he pays his taxes and the dues for his permit. “I have the authority of the city,” he said. José appreciates the safety that Thayer Street affords with respect to other parts of Providence, but laments that “the police can give me a hard time whenever they want. It doesn’t matter if I’m here or there.” José usually sets up shop in front of Chipotle right next to his beat up blue minivan. He will occasionally remove a guitar from under his table and strum in the afternoon sun.

“This is my life…I come here very simply with arts and crafts just to get by.”

+++ For the past 23 years, Maurice has played jigs and reels on his harmonica outside Spectrum India. Though he profits off his performances, money isn’t the main reason he continues to play. “It’s my main way of keeping busy. I live alone, and I have to get out.” Maurice has always preferred the outdoors; he grew up in a town at the foot of the White Mountains in New Hampshire. Since the mountains were only 12 miles away from his home, he started hiking, fishing, and hunting from a young age. Maurice’s father played harmonica, so Maurice began to learn the instrument at the age of 10. His favorite song to play is “Saint Anne’s Reel.”

For Maurice, performing on Thayer Street is a way to stay outdoors and meet new people. “Every year, there’s always somebody different. People come from different parts of the country, different parts of the world. I speak French so I’m able to speak French with quite a few people, and there’s a guy from Spain down there who speaks French with me.”

Maurice enjoys seeing locals, tourists and students alike. A 75-year-old with an adult son who went to Brown, Maurice is rarely surprised by drunken college students stumbling down Thayer on the weekends. “I don’t point fingers. To give advice to young people, well, I’d say: do the best you can to enjoy life without getting in trouble. There you go. You’re not going to be perfect, because nobody is.” His interactions with others aren’t always positive; his collection bowl has been stolen five times and he was once attacked by a drunk man while performing. “He hit me in the mouth, he sure made my harmonica fly. It was right on this street, a couple years ago. I was standing here, not bothering anybody, but all kinds of people come up and you know, they think they can do whatever, because I’m like a totem pole standing there.” Yet despite the risks, Maurice has continued to come out and perform his songs for over two decades. Though he used to perform in Boston, the high cost of transportation led him to become a regular on Thayer Street. “I’ve done the best, I could, I know that. To enjoy life, being outdoors, I love that. I guess that’s one reason I’ve been out here all these years. I’ve done the best I can to enjoy life, that’s all I can say.”

+++ You probably haven’t seen James, 54, unless you’re up at the crack of dawn. He has only been working on Thayer Street for a year, cleaning the sidewalk and emptying the trash cans that span from CVS to Santander Bank. “I put my love into this,” he says.

James works from 5:30 AM until 9:30 AM, Monday to Friday, and from 5 AM to 10 AM on Saturday and Sunday. Then he goes home to rest in Cranston before heading to his part-time jobs in the afternoon. “I’m a homebody. I don’t go out at night. It scares me.” Still, he prefers this work to his life before he became a legal resident. “Coming here isn’t easy. We come to fight and work.

We don’t come to steal.”

James emigrated from Colombia in 1988, waving goodbye to the rampant cartel violence in his home city of Cali. “There was a lot of injustice in Colombia,” he says. Until 2007, James functioned on roughly three hours of sleep every night. Back in Massachusetts, he would rise at 5 AM to work at a bakery making cookies until 3 PM. From 4 PM until 11 PM, he worked in a restaurant in downtown Boston. Then he would ride his bike to his next job, where he washed cars until 2 AM. “They paid us what they wanted. They weren’t fair to us.”

However, his efforts were not in vain. In 2000, he finally saved up enough money to finance the trip to the United States for his brother, his daughter, and her mother. He had jobs arranged for them before they even arrived. In 2006, James married a Puerto Rican woman and became a legal resident. “Everybody thought that I was doing it to get my papers,” but James assures that they were in love. “My life changed. Suddenly there were more opportunities. You know that an immigrant doesn’t have as many opportunities at first. I couldn’t buy a car because I didn’t have credit. Now, I can speak freely. I’m no longer afraid of the police.”

His street cleaning job provides him with relative stability and purpose, but it isn’t always easy. People often knock over the heavy metal trashcans that line the street, and he struggles to put them back in place the next morning. “That thing weighs a lot...

People need to think more. I don’t care if they throw away trash. I get paid for that, but they need to be more conscious. They’re young adults and need to appreciate things.” He has even picked underwear from the flowerbeds that line the new parklet in front of the Brown Bookstore. James loves to talk, and it motivates him to do his work well. “I don’t know much English, but I just like to talk to people. I keep learning.” People occasionally give him coffee in the morning and thank him for cleaning up Thayer. “When you’re working and people acknowledge you, it motivates you to make the place look nicer.”

As the redevelopment of Thayer Street manifests itself in new buildings and public infrastructure, there are other institutional changes that are influencing the lives of individuals. According to the City of Providence’s Thayer Street Planning Study, the Providence Police Department will expand the hours and scope of foot patrols and enforce regulations on the use of public space. The decision makes murky the future of the street’s buskers, preachers, and panhandlers alike. Certainly, the climate of the street has changed right along with the buildings themselves. In order to understand the human effects of the Thayer Street redevelopment, it is important to learn who these individuals are, where they come from, and how they shape and are shaped by their experiences on Thayer Street.

KALIE BOYNE B’16 and TOM SULLIVAN B’15 never even went to Tedeschi.

José and James’ interviews were translated from Spanish into English by the authors. All interviews were edited and condensed for clarity.

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NOVEMBER 21 2014

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FACING EVICTION

by Eli Neuman-Hammond illustration by Pierie Korostoff Last month, I biked down to Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE) at 340 Lockwood Street for a public forum on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s foreclosure and eviction policies. Unfamiliar with housing issues in the city, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I got there. Walking in the door, I was greeted by a friendly, chatting crowd, members of which promptly directed me to an array of food that people had brought. I grabbed a bite and took a seat surrounded by signs ranging from “Housing is a human right,” “Reduce principal now!” and “We shall not be moved!” A large banner promoted the Tenant and Homeowner Association, a subsidiary of DARE that supports people fighting foreclosure and eviction from their homes. Among the people advocating for a better housing system, and struggling with the one in place, were born Americans, immigrants, Rhode Islanders, Massachusetts natives, Army veterans, and Native Americans. The event was bilingual, with a translator interpreting for Spanish speakers in the audience. Many walks of life were represented; all of them are affected by the ongoing wake of 2008’s housing crisis. People sometimes speak about 2008 as if it’s history, but as one man remarked, “The crisis is far from over.” At the front of the room sat the night’s main speaker: Nick Retsinas, a Providence resident and Harvard professor, present in his capacity as a member of the board of directors of Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) established to expand the secondary mortgage market in America. Fannie Mae, whose full name is the Federal National Mortgage Association, is a byproduct of the New Deal era; the smaller Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) was established in 1970. These GSEs created liquidity by purchasing mortgages from lenders, which allows those lenders to hand out new loans to new homeowners. Simply put, Fannie and Freddie are huge mortgage-trading enterprises, whose ties with the federal government lend them extra security in the ever-fluctuating world of finance.

The enterprises do not create mortgages, but rather purchase and underwrite loans originated by institutions like banks and credit unions. Thus, they serve as middlemen between these institutions and homeowners. Together, Fannie and Freddie purchase or guarantee 40 to 60 percent of all mortgages originating in the United States.

Despite Fannie and Freddie’s pervasiveness, most of the community members in the room first learned about these institutions when they got served with an eviction notice, courtesy of Freddie or Fannie as plaintiff. The inaccessible language these institutions speak is a huge problem in this country. Many of the foreclosed or evicted persons I heard speak at the forum could have avoided their housing nightmares had they been more financially literate. But as first-time homeowners, foreign-language speakers, or simply trusting people, they fell prey to predatory lenders and got lost in the labyrinth. People weren’t just falling through the cracks in a flawed system—they were being pushed into them deliberately by opaque and misleading practices.

One man from Brockton, Massachusetts, who was in the middle of a battle for his home, shared his story at the forum.

After expressing his amazement at how many people are in similar situations, he described how predatory lenders helped to dig his family into a huge financial hole:

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"I’m a veteran, I served the country of the United States of America for 10 years, and I’m finding out: I can’t keep my house. My wife got predatory loans. All she wanted was to take out money to fix her roof, she had water leaking in her bedroom, in the house, just a leak—and predatory loaners came and told her 'Take out $35,000! To fix the roof!' And then, all we needed for the roof to get fixed was only $4,000.

But, oh no, 'Take out 35!'—and she doesn’t know, she says, 'Ok, but that sounds like a lot because I already spoke to the people who are going to fix the roof, and they said all they need is four thousand.' They said, 'Oh no, you’ve got to pay the attorney’s fee…' And she’s like, ‘I didn’t know I needed an attorney to fix the roof.' 'Oh yeah! You know why…' These are the tricks of the trade that they use on people who are first-time homeowners, they don’t know."

People like this seek out solutions from people willing to work with them, despite trouble meeting their financial obligations. They hope for loan servicers who understand the realities of unemployment and who are willing to reflect critically on what makes sense for a bank and a client, rather than simply applying rigid policies. The same man who spoke about his roof described how at one point how he and his wife owed their bank just $15,000, and they were able to come up with two-thirds of this amount, but the bank refused to work with them. Instead, they coldly informed him that they were not playing around, and that they wanted the house.

Nick Retsinas, despite representing one of the institutions that has been a nightmare for so many, could not offer practical solutions. It was a recurrent theme that while Retsinas could relay these peoples’ stories to the powers that be, and while he could do his best to ensure that Freddie implemented the policies it espouses on paper, only the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has real decision-making power when it comes to issues they care about. When Retsinas’ understanding of Freddie and Fannie’s policies clashed with their realities, there was little to say except: “I can’t tell you why, I don’t know.”

Freddie and Fannie came under the conservatorship of the FHFA after the 2008 financial crisis, during which both companies collapsed. At that point, these quasi-government agencies, which had been built as private corporations with government sponsorship, were taken over by the government.

Now, the United States Treasury owns 79.99 percent of their stock and has put it under the control of the FHFA. The director of the FHFA makes all decisions regarding Fannie and Freddie’s policies on principal reduction and similar issues. So Retsinas, although on Freddie’s board of directors, was present only as a sympathizer, a speaker, and a listener.

Two issues in particular are important to those fighting for their houses: no-fault evictions and principal reductions.

No-fault evictions are when foreclosed tenants or homeowners are evicted from their homes, despite their ability and willingness to pay rent to the foreclosing bank. Both Rhode Island and Massachusetts have laws that prevent no-fault evictions, but Fannie and Freddie continue to evict residents, explaining that state laws do not bind them in so far as they are appendages of the federal government. Steve Meacham, an organizer-activist at the non-profit City Life, which works to educate homeowners and fight for better housing policy, notes

that he sees 130 people coming in weekly with foreclosure and eviction issues, many of which are at no-fault, and many of which are at the hands of Freddie and Fannie. Retsinas, taken aback, responded, “It is my understanding now that both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac offer to every existing tenant the ability to rent; I am not aware of no-fault evictions, to your point. I am aware under the Freddie Mac program, which I can speak to definitively, that they offer the rental option, but that it has to be rent at fair market value.” Evidently, and regrettably, this policy has not been enforced on the ground.

Retsinas and Meacham’s narratives are irreconcilable, and the 50 or so people who’ve shown up to this forum are damning evidence for the latter.

The issue of principal reduction is vital to foreclosed homeowners and tenants. Principal reduction is a form of debt release, in which a bank lowers a homeowner or a tenant’s mortgage. The reduction must be reported as income, and is thus subject to taxes. The idea of principal reduction is to write mortgages down to their real value if the value of the house drops. It operates under the basic principle that a thing is worth what it’s worth, and should reflect changes in value.

Principal reduction can help people avoid defaulting on loans, and allows them keep their homes.

Principal reduction has sparked controversy for a few reasons. Banks have been afraid to implement principal reduction because they feel that thoughtful debt-forgiveness could easily turn into dangerous permissiveness. It’s a moral hazard not to teach a lesson to homeowners who fall behind on their payments. Then again, this logic was not applied when the federal government bailed out Wall Street, which was essentially a form of principal reduction. They were not held accountable, which is certainly a moral hazard, but their debtforgiveness was defended on grounds of their being “too big to fail.” The narrative went that if they had been allowed to fail, the economy would’ve collapsed, and the whole country would have suffered. This is a defendable story, but the radical lack of regulation following the bailout is not, and neither is the hypocrisy that poor, working class families were, and continue to be, held more accountable than these banks. In this story, working-class families don’t seem to count as a part of the country; when they are barred from the same form of debt forgiveness offered to massive financial institutions and forced out of their homes, they are allowed to fail. “This is not the America I dreamed of,” said Ronald Ramiami, a Haitian immigrant who was deceptively convinced to purchase a house he could not afford.

Edward DeMarco, former director of the FHFA, was a staunch opponent of principal reduction. DeMarco also opposed the practice of selling properties to non-profits that would then sell those properties back to their owners at fair market value. This buy-back practice is de facto principal reduction, so DeMarco had Freddie and Fannie stop working with organizations like Boston Community Capital, even though these partnerships were working quite well for the banks and homeowners. In December 2013, President Obama appointed Melvin Watt as the new director of the FHFA. A hopeful Retsinas reported that Watt is working on pilot principal reduction and buy-back programs, although these plans have yet to be enacted. The dialogue around principal reduction is at least a step in the right direction.

Even when a homeowner cannot afford to buy back their house or rent from the foreclosing bank, there is an opportunity to create affordable housing out of the property.

Non-profits are often willing to buy foreclosed properties and turn them into affordable housing for new tenants, a much better alternative than letting plots sit vacant and decay. As Rhode Island State Senator Harold Metts observed, there are houses right down the street from DARE that are foreclosed and occupied by gangbangers and heroin addicts, instead of the families that have been pushed out. This has a negative effect on the properties, along with the surrounding community. Also, after the 2008 government takeover, Fannie and Freddie were supposed to give .4 percent of their profits to the National Housing Trust, a non-profit that supports affordable housing projects. Since 2012, they have been making substantial profits; enough that .4 percent of them would have generated more than $500 million for the National Housing Trust. Unfortunately, this transaction has not taken place. As Retsinas said, it’s up to the government, and more specifically the director of the FHFA, to decide where Fannie and Freddie’s profits go.

Complexity is one of the biggest problems of our housing system. If homeowners and tenants cannot easily understand the way money flows in the housing market, they will be subject to the whim of those who do. Economic literacy should be a huge priority, along with actual simplification of the housing system. Perhaps we can integrate basic financial skills into public high school curricula, putting the ability to responsibly rent, build credit, and balance a checkbook among the canon of practical skills that we emphasize to our children. Right now, organizations like DARE and City Life fill this gap, and often they do so ex post facto, educating homeowners and tenants because bank servicers have not proven trustworthy teachers.

ELI NEUMAN-HAMMOND's B’18 biggest problem is also complexity.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

SET, JUMP, RELEASE Reflecting on a basketball career

by Zeve Sanderson illustration by Caroline Brewer thinking, and the class environment wasn’t all that suitable for the unexpected and uncontrollable crying fits that plagued me. Shooting produced in me what yoga couldn’t: the calm that sets in with intense concentration. Set, jump, release. Set, jump, release. Set, jump, release. Some nights, I cried while shooting; others, I screamed; but most nights, I silently shot for hours, went to sleep, and shot for a bit more before heading to morning therapy.

In a way, basketball saved my life. It obviously wasn’t just basketball—there were my parents, my sister, my therapist, my two best friends. But those nights shooting elevated my psyche in ways I still can’t quite understand. One night, I went outside to shoot and envisioned the grass was the hardwood of a college arena; the trees were screaming fans; the 500W lights were the television cameras. I knew it was a childish dream, but it’s also when I knew I was starting to recover: for the first time in nearly three years I imagined a happier future.

When I re-entered school a year later, this time at my local public school, I spent nearly every lunch period on the court, just like I had a decade earlier. I’d take a ball out of my backpack and quietly find an unused basket. Set, jump, release. Set, jump, release. Set, jump, release. The anxieties of acclimating to a new school waned with every shot. Incidentally, perhaps, the byproduct of all that shooting was that I became pretty good at it. I ended my senior year one of the top scorers in Southern California, was named to the Los Angeles Times All-City Team, and began looking to fulfill my dream of playing in college.

I was recruited by a handful of schools and ended up playing for two years at NYU. An injury freshman year put me out for the season, but after a summer of rehab, I worked my way into the rotation and played significant minutes as a sophomore. When I decided to transfer to Brown, my first stop was the basketball coach’s office. I walked-on, played my junior year, and found on the team some of my closest friends here. +++

When I was young, I played basketball in the winter, soccer in the fall, baseball in the spring, flag football in the summer.

Soccer required too much running; baseball was painfully boring; football was for much larger children. So when my friends reached their late single digits and began settling on the sports they wanted to commit themselves to, I stuck with basketball. It was less an affirmation of passion than an aversion to everything else.

What started as a chance athletic decision blossomed into my youthful raison d'être. As a quiet bibliophile in the cruel world of prepubescent boys, the court was where I found myself. I was tall and coordinated and had an inexplicable knack for being in the right place at the right time. I may have been the last one to be invited for a sleepover, but I was always the first pick in a schoolyard game.

During those years, basketball became a self-reinforcing mechanism: the more often I played the better I got, the better I got the more social capital I accrued—so I played a lot. I joined a traveling club team, which required that my parents shuttle me to the distant corners of Los Angeles County for practices and tournaments. Suddenly, my life became a journey from court to court, and everything else faded away as mere scenery. I switched out my khakis and polo shirts and jellies for shorts and t-shirts and sneakers. I wore sweatbands all the time. I insisted that my parents keep a basketball in the trunk. +++ Then I stopped playing. I was 15. I had left my first high school because of unrelenting bullying and was miserable at my second. That year, my sister developed a neurological disorder that left her unable to walk or talk for nearly half a year, and both of my father’s parents died. I began taking antidepressants that left me tired all the time. It took all of my energy to get myself out of bed to go to school, let alone go to practice or play a game. I began cutting, which forced me to

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change in the bathroom stalls to hide my disfigured legs and torso. I tried to keep on playing, though, because depression had taken everything from me, and I wasn’t going to let it take basketball. But it did. One game, I ran from the bench to the locker room and collapsed in the showers sobbing. I used a safety pin I found on the ground to cut, wrapped my legs in toilet paper to slow the bleeding, washed my face, and ran back to the bench. Sorry, Coach, bad lunch.

That spring, my parents sent me to a rehabilitation program. The doctors put me on Lithium, which forced me to sleep 14 hours a day. Therapy, food, sleep, repeat. I gained over 20 pounds in four months. I rarely touched a basketball.

Two years of psychotherapy, three months in rehab, a dozen medications, frequent visits to acupuncturists and Eastern herbalists: nothing worked. I was a 15-year-old cutter preparing to take my GED. +++ It was a cool Los Angeles night, and my father carried up a box from the minivan to our backyard: two industrial-grade 500W lights fastened to a lime green stand. He set them up, flipped them on, and a wave of light covered the makeshift basketball court we had set up nearly a decade earlier. He got a broom to brush the branches and leaves off of the rim and brought me outside. We didn’t really say much that night: I shot, and he rebounded. The next night, we silently did the same. And the night after that, and the night after that.

When I was at my worst, which was almost always late at night, I’d cut; but, suddenly, inexplicably, I stopped. Instead, I picked up a ball and went outside to flip on the lights. My backyard was mostly grass with a long strip of uneven cement tiles, a nearly impossible terrain to practice anything that required much movement. But I could shoot. Set, jump, release. Set, jump, release. Set, jump, release. It became a kind of meditation. In the yoga classes my mom sent me to, they’d tell me to focus on my breath. But yoga allowed for too much

This semester, I began struggling with symptoms of depression for the first time since high school. I realized, in some devastating reversal, basketball was one of the causes. My coach, though friendly off the court, was derisive on it. It became hard for me to hear what the fuck is wrong with you that many times without starting to think something might be; difficult for me to enjoy myself when every mistake was met with a slew of denigrations; impossible for my psyche to remain stable when everything I did was such a disappointment.

And the whole production of playing in college changed my relationship to the sport. College basketball is about winning, about extracting as much performance out of the body as possible. The process is important—the weights lifted, the sprints completed, the shots aired—but only inasmuch as they come together in victory. To fully buy into the program required that I buy in on those terms. Shooting was only important to the team if the shot went in. And as I fought not to descend towards my fifteen-year-old self, I didn’t want to care whether the shot went in. I just wanted to shoot, to feel the calm I had found in my backyard lit by the 500W lights my father carried up from the minivan.

When I was thinking about quitting, I couldn’t escape that image of myself, eight years younger, standing in my backyard shooting and dreaming of playing in college. It was basketball that got him through it all: that helped him stop cutting, that forced him to lose the weight gained from medications, that allowed him to get through class, that reminded him what it meant to be hopeful. And that kid wanted to play in college, I thought, wanted to be a successful basketball player. How could I quit? I went into the gym to shoot and think it over. For hours, I repeated that three-step motion again and again just as I have for the past eighteen years of my life. Set, jump, release. Set, jump, release. Set, jump, release.

Suddenly, I realized what that kid wanted more than anything was not to be a great basketball player, not to make a gamewinning shot, not to be on television. What he wanted more than anything then is what I want more than anything now: to be happy. Set, jump, release.

ZEVE SANDERSON B’15 can be found playing intramural basketball on Monday nights.

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SKETCHING THE OUTLINES Thoughts on The David Foster Wallace Reader

by Lisa Borst illustration by Ben Ross

Last week, Little, Brown, & Company released The David Foster Wallace Reader, a sort of Greatest Hits collection of some of the most acclaimed and best-known works (both fiction and non-) of a writer who, in the six years following his suicide, has become one of the publisher’s top-selling names. Curated by a long and impressive list of “advisers”—among whom are counted authors like George Saunders and Jonathan Franzen, as well as Wallace’s mother, college roommate, and others who knew him personally— the Reader ostensibly aims to present a singular, centralized guide to Wallace’s works, spanning early experiments in fiction written during his undergraduate career through his later nonfiction magazine work, frequently harrowing short stories, and excerpts from his three highly acclaimed novels.

“The purpose of this David Foster Wallace Reader is simple,” write Karen Green, Bonnie Nadell, and Michael Pietsch—Wallace’s wife, agent, and editor, respectively— in the Reader’s introduction: “to gather in one volume a selection of the most celebrated, most enjoyable, funniest, and most remarkable work by this always-remarkable writer.” Scanning the book’s table of contents, though, it’s difficult to parse exactly what a reader familiar with David Foster Wallace is meant to get from The David Foster Wallace Reader. Given the widespread accessibility of Wallace’s works already, the act of arbitrarily compiling, abridging, and re-selling them seems at best unnecessary, and at worst in opposition to Wallace’s central concerns.

Since his death, Wallace has become, to many readers, a kind of preposterously brilliant, voice-of-a-generation sort of figure, revered on college campuses for his innovative synthesis of radically clever, postmodern irony with a hyper-sincere, astoundingly empathetic approach to almost endless varieties of human suffering and guilt.

I’ve heard him referenced endlessly in English classes, witnessed students wearing shirts advertising institutions that only exist inside his fictional worlds, seen his sentences tattooed on people’s bodies. Once, at a party, I watched two students deliberately select a copy of Infinite Jest from a bookshelf, roll a joint on its iconic clouded cover (the novel, it’s worth mentioning, is pretty directly about substance abuse), then place it back on the shelf next to the Pynchon and Gaddis against which it’s frequently measured.

I’ve personally fallen pretty far into the DFW obsession hole too: barring a select few of his more esoteric publications (there’s a short book somewhere about the semiotics of hip-hop, or something, and a monograph on the concept of infinity), I have— and I say this with a certain mix of pride and cringing privileged guilt—read just about every published DFW work you can find in a bookstore or on the licit and illicit ends of the Internet. I’ve written four or five papers revolving around a particular essay on television and critical theory that he wrote in 1990. Once, Wallace’s wife, Karen Green, came to Brown to read from her 2013 book about his suicide. I skipped class to go, cried in the dark in the McCormick Family Theater, briefly shared a bench and a platter of red grapes with Green at the event’s reception, then left without speaking to her, heart shaking, tangentially star-struck.

All of which is to say that I’m not totally sure whom The David Foster Wallace Reader is trying to reach. It seems that Wallace has historically ranked alongside folks like Captain Beefheart and Willaim Gass in a weird, elite category of artists about whom people either seem to care intensely, fervently, cultishly—or very little. Lacking much of a casual fan base, then, Wallace’s works, shortened and compiled, present an odd sort of paradox: a hefty, pricy hardcover, the Reader is designed to fit in nicely on a shelf next to Infinite Jest and Oblivion and A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again—but at the same time it’s not much more than a diluted and abridged paraphrasing of those widely revered works, ostensibly offering little to the existing reader. +++ The David Foster Wallace Reader clocks in at just over 950 pages long, nearly approaching the notorious heft of Wallace’s colossal 1996 novel, Infinite Jest. It’s divided into three sections: Fiction, Teaching Materials (a short collection of syllabi and handouts on grammar from Wallace’s career as an undergraduate writing professor at Pomona

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College), and Nonfiction. Maybe every third or fourth selection is followed by an afterword, a little two-page write-up by a friend or colleague of Wallace. Perhaps because they’re sandwiched between Wallace’s own works—which, on the sentence level, are pretty nearly virtuosic and (as Wallace once self-identified, sheepishly, in a letter to the novelist Jonathan Franzen) “linguistically calisthenic”—these afterwords are, by and large, not very good, offering such maladroit critiques as “This is the book’s saddest passage” and “I will never think of tennis in the same way again.” By far the most salient piece of criticism is the introduction to the Teaching Materials section, written by Sally Foster Wallace—DFW’s mother. Like her son, Sally Foster Wallace is an English teacher, and her descriptions of Wallace’s passion for grammar are decidedly charming.

“We were fond of groaning about composition and decomposition,” she notes; “grading and degrading”—as are the included teaching-related email exchanges between them: “I handed my papers back yesterday, and saw a burning effigy outside a frat party last night that looked a bit suspicious,” Wallace writes to his mother.

Like the majority of the afterwords in the Reader, though, existing criticism of Wallace’s works has historically been pretty lacking: D.T. Max’s 2012 biography of Wallace, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, was not particularly well-received, criticized as anemic and unnecessary, and David Lipsky’s account of a 1996 road trip with Wallace, published four years ago under the title Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, was largely considered a fairly transparent moneymaking endeavor. In the absence of much new critical insight, then, one wonders whether The David Foster Wallace Reader might fall into the same legacy-squeezing trap. +++ That the Reader is a pretty obvious attempt to cash in on what’s got to be Little, Brown, & Co.’s crowning jewel is a significant source of my unease about the project.

Like clockwork, one or two new books by or about David Foster Wallace have been published every year since his 2008 death, and—propelled, some argue, by the media attention his suicide stirred up—his books have sold posthumously in unprecedented numbers. In an essay published in The New Yorker, Jonathan Franzen wrote of the aftermath of Wallace’s death: “People who had never read his fiction, or had never even heard of him, read his Kenyon College commencement address in the Wall Street Journal and mourned the loss of a great and gentle soul. A literary establishment that had never so much as short-listed one of his books for a national prize now united to declare him a lost national treasure.”

And it’s true that something like an obscure, early-career essay about free will simply would not have been a lucrative posthumous publishing endeavor if there wasn’t an existing community of prodigious buyers—many of them, I’m going to posit, young, liberal, well-educated Americans raised in a media-saturated culture that seems to all but implore both postmodern cleverness and the foray into anxious sincerity—for whom Wallace has, in death, become something between a soothsayer and a martyr.

In the past few years, as universities have begun offering undergraduate classes on his works, and as plans for an upcoming biopic about his life (oddly starring Jason Segal as Wallace) have surfaced, it’s become pretty clear that Little, Brown & Co. is well aware of Wallace’s extensive and endlessly hungry audience—and the publishing house, it seems, has been increasingly desperate to dig up unpublished or uncollected works, milking Wallace’s corpus for everything it’s worth.

But what’s frustrating about The David Foster Wallace Reader, for the well-versed Wallace fan, is that just about every essay or excerpt or story in it has already been published—and, indeed, they’ve mostly been established as contenders among Wallace’s best-known and -loved works. The selections in the Reader, for the most part, aren’t obscure, back-catalogue ephemera; they’re essays and stories, like 1996’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” or 2004’s “Good Old Neon,” that are already being read and reread and emailed to loved ones by countless anxious, sincere, college-educated millennials. (Conspicuously, “This Is Water,” the commencement address Wallace

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

delivered at Kenyon in 2006 and perhaps his single most-known work, is absent from the book.)

The Reader, in fact, contains only one previously unpublished work aside from the short selection of teaching materials—a story called “The Planet Trillaphon As It Stands In Relation To The Bad Thing,” which Wallace wrote during his junior year at Amherst College. (Weirdly, though, the story—while a pretty clearly autobiographical account of Wallace’s experiences with depression during college—takes place not at Amherst but at Brown University, making the whole thing hit even more uncomfortably close to home than usual, for yours truly at least.) While a salient foreshadowing of the themes and styles that would ferment into Wallace’s later, better-known work, “The Planet Trillaphon” as an entire anthology’s sole new piece is all in all pretty lame, and, I think, pretty symptomatic of the Reader’s most obvious flaw: that, much to my own and my peers’ personal disappointment—and, evidently, to Little, Brown, & Co.’s—Wallace’s canon has at this point been pretty much thoroughly milked. +++ Books by or about David Foster Wallace published in the six years since David Foster Wallace’s 2008 death: This Is Water (2009) Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace (2010) David Foster Wallace: The Last Interview (2010) The Pale King (2011) Both Flesh and Not: Essays (2012) Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will (2012) Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Biography of David Foster Wallace (2012) MFA vs. NYC (2014) (contributor (but, like, a pretty central one)) The David Foster Wallace Reader (2014) +++ There’s an unfortunate sort of person who will sneer hard in your direction if you admit that your only exposure to Bob Dylan is through his Greatest Hits album, or that you saw the Jeff Koons retrospective at the Whitney but aren’t familiar with the rest of his work. And maybe it’s true that there’s something sort of painful about a Best-Of collection: an oeuvre distilled seems to suggest that we’re incapable of wading through a particular body of work ourselves, that we need an elegant $35 guide to help us out.

In the case of David Foster Wallace, this assumption feels particularly off-base, mostly because his works are 1) relatively recent and widely available, and 2) not overwhelmingly extensive. Author-specific anthologies, I’m tempted to posit, are for daunting, disparate, un-tackle-able bodies of work from long ago, ones that would be impossible to cobble together from the display tables at your university bookstore. Anthologies are for H.P. Lovecraft and early American folk music, not for a body of work you can download in one click from any number of illegal places on the Internet.

An anthology also—and this is where The David Foster Wallace Reader, for me, really begins to find itself in a sticky spot—necessarily gestures toward a certain mission or ideological project within a particular corpus. There’s a reason, I think, that author-specific anthologies are almost never published during the lifetime of the author in question. By definition, an anthology is externally curated; it’s an attempt by a third party to shave a large body of work into something cohesive and neat and small. It necessitates deliberately imposing a unified meaning onto a body of work that may or may not contain linear ideologies or belief systems.

The selections in the Reader are organized chronologically within each of the book’s three sections. Thus, the pieces are meant to walk us through the major ideologi-

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cal trends across Wallace’s career, allowing us to watch his voice and concerns develop in real-time: within the Fiction section, for example, we see his prose progress from the Wittgenstein-influenced, heavy-handedly metafictional preoccupation with linguistics in 1987’s The Broom of the System, to the maximalist sincerity of Infinite Jest, to the sadder, more internal, less flashy style of his last short stories and the unfinished novel The Pale King. The book’s chronological structure, though, risks presenting this progression too neatly. Wallace’s corpus contains ruptures and breaks; spanning several decades and combining and traversing forms, it changes its mind several times across its lifetime.

As part of a postmodern lineage of theory-informed fiction alongside writers like Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo and, more recently, Franzen and Jeffrey Eugenides, Wallace’s works—indebted as they are to a critical tradition that is by definition skeptical of metanarratives—resist linearization. Thus, statements like this one by novelist Hari Kunzru, in the afterword for the 1988 short story “Little Expressionless Animals,” present an odd paradox: “The word expression is dulled from overuse. This is the story in which twenty-five-year-old Wallace sharpens it up and cuts into a topic to which he’ll always return: the difficulty, the near impossibility—as he sees it—of interpersonal connection.”

It’s true that, throughout his works, Wallace stressed the crippling limitation of written communication: “What goes on inside,” he wrote in the mostly autobiographical 2006 story “Good Old Neon,” “is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant.” But by that token, assigning to his 20-year body of work a singular ideological project beyond this idea seems beside the point: if to write is to necessarily be misinterpreted, then what does it mean to be curated, abridged, and packaged into a neat hardcover? +++ I worry that it’s just as antagonistic and pointless and anti-DFW to make sweeping, too-neat generalizations about the archetypal David Foster Wallace reader as it does to make them about The David Foster Wallace Reader. Many of the David Foster Wallace readers I know are intensely devoted anal completists who very nearly attended Pomona College, can quote the story “Incarnations of Burned Children” verbatim, etc., etc. At the same time, though, posthumous presentations of Wallace’s work have positioned him as a sexy sort of public intellectual, a Cobainianly sensitive monument in death. Six years after Wallace’s suicide made him a household name, we’re at a point at which merely having a copy of Infinite Jest on your bookshelf is a bit like having Neutral Milk Hotel in your record collection: it’s a major generational touchstone, an easy display of cultural capital.

Given the cultural space that Wallace has come to occupy—and doubtlessly will only continue to grow into, as his works increasingly enter the realm of required reading within the American university—I wonder: What does The David Foster Wallace Reader offer to the existing reader? What might it offer to someone unfamiliar with his work? Does reading the arbitrarily designated “best” 200 pages of Infinite Jest count the same as having read the whole huge thing? Will anyone know but you—and furthermore, does that factor into what and why we read? Is it an asshole move to even ask?

LISA BORST B’17 is a household name.1 1. Though not factually accurate—which is to say, one supposes Lisa Borst is not a household name, rather a name that has been used in a number of households, which, though in itself not inconsequential, certainly does not merit any special decoration—this very inaccuracy is what grounds this byline.

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TAKE IT FROM THE TOP: THE TURBULENT EVOLUTION OF MAMA COCO’S

by Greg Nissan illustration by Layla Ehsan

It’s easy to wrap oneself up in the cushy utopian promise of music on the Internet: almost anyone can release an album or recruit a fan-base without the aid of some slick-suited corporate appendage. Democracy at long last, you might cry. But the sites that communities of musicians can’t do without—local venues, studios—are never free from the fluctuations of real estate, the biblical farces of weather, from pesky neighbors and roach infestations.

I first encountered Mama Coco’s Funky Kitchen, a recording studio and collective (in the loosest sense) in Brooklyn, while looking for a place to turn my jangly bedroom jams into an album. I’d remembered the studio’s founder and mutton-chopped ringleader, Oliver Ignatius, from his high school band, and a quick perusal of the studio’s website highlighted the odd nature of Mama Coco’s: gear-wise, a professional studio, but with the relaxed comfort of a home setup. To date, 89 artists have recorded at the studio, which is about to host its 38th showcase.

The studio is in the midst of its most recent rise from the ashes; a catastrophic flood forced the crew to find a new home, and they’ve spent the last three months building a recording studio from scratch. I talked to Ignatius on the phone the other day about the history of Mama Coco’s, the challenges that a DIY project faces in such a cutthroat scene, and the litany of disasters that propelled the studio into ever better iterations. What follows is his saga, in his words.

Basement Bugs

Origins In high school, I had this experience of having my own music defiled when I was recording it in the Hysterics. It was an experience of being on the other side of panes of glass, powerless to affect the situation. It ended up in a series of very complicated weird hang-ups when it comes to music.

I sort of just laid down and dropped off for a couple years, taking a lot of drugs and traveling around the country, doing a lot of meditation and a lot of thinking. Just being insane for a while. At that point it was not in my mind to do anything. I thought I might end up a monk somewhere. I didn’t really think I was going to come back. But I did. And I came back to New York, ultimately because everything else ran out of gas on the West Coast.

Bedroom Squawks I needed to make some money and had this idea: I could create a minor safe haven for me to work, and maybe I could offer the same service to other people. People could come in and know that their vision would be respected. The priority would be helping them realize the musical goal that we came to understand mutually.

What would be a safe and easy way to do it that didn’t feel sterile or uncomfortable?

So I took the little bit of money I had and bought some barebones garbage equipment, set up a very minor little workspace in my bedroom, and started recording a couple people in there. I remember the first session I did, I was frantically reading up on how to record drums that day and pretending I’d done it before.

We were just in a bedroom, so it felt comfortable. It was a weird set up; at one point we had the room bisected by this huge rope and black curtains that hung from the ceiling to the floor.

There was enough room for a drum set and a desk with a computer and a little rack here, some small amps over there. It was really small.

Coco [Oliver’s cockatoo and the studio’s namesake] was in the room and she was always screaming. If you go back to the really early Mama Coco’s stuff, you can find Coco’s screeching her blood-curdling wrath at certain points into the drum tracks. [laughter]

The bedroom was getting bad—we couldn’t live. So we went down to the basement one floor below, which had six or seven foot ceilings. It was reaaaally low; some people couldn’t even stand up all the way straight in there. There was all kinds of dust and plaster and cockroaches and shit falling in through the ceiling at all times, so the first thing we did was roll a big blue tarp over the whole ceiling, which then became this really weird reflective thing that didn’t sound very good.

It was a bigger space, so once we were in there it became feasible to track bands live. We started going around to the back laundry space just to get a little isolation. It was pretty low-tech. And there was a very serious mouse and cockroach problem all the time so that was pretty grim [laughter]. Every second, we were hoping that the dogs wouldn’t walk around upstairs, because if they did it would compromise anything we were recording. And the neighbors, by that point, were bugging.

That basement actually suffered a couple of floods while we were there. Bernadette and I were actually in Africa with our families in summer 2011. I got an email from a friend letting me know that the space had severely flooded. There had been a big rainstorm and all the water in the back had pooled and then poured in through the grate in the basement. It wasn’t the most catastrophic, but I think that was the worst flood we ever had. The water came up like 10 inches, pretty extreme. Luckily we had some friends, people who were in Ghost Pal mostly, who ran in and got everything out of there. Pretty much everything was saved. Then we had a flood repair crew come in and they fucking stole my laptop. I lost the entire Ghost Pal album sessions to Nathan Jones is Dead, which were all on my laptop. It was a while before I could bring myself to admit to them that all the work was gone. For a while I was like, “I think I have it somewhere…” even though I knew I didn’t. But we regrouped and did it again. And then again.

That was the first of three versions of that album that we recorded.

Fecal Matters In winter 2011, I was recording with Goodman for his first self-titled EP. And there was a pipe leaking. A bunch of water started to pool, so we called the session and got a plumber in. [laughter] The plumber came in and discovered that there was an obstruction in one of the sewage pipes. I was standing at the top of the stairs to the basement looking down as he unscrewed the pipe and fucking feces just exploded everywhere. Onto the drums, onto the amps. Shit was just spewing out everywhere. There’s been a lot of trying moments, but that was one where all you could do was just stand there and laugh, you know? There was nothing you could do, it was just too funny. So we got the shit off everything and that was OK.

Those really early sessions were more about the music than the technical process. We were doing a lot of thinking, like, when people come in, let’s start getting them drunk, get them relaxed enough to get something good. Then that would come out badly, so we’d try something else.

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THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

The Big Build The thing that really necessitated the scope of this project was that we found this space finally after a month or so of looking. But it was right above a wood shop. They were sawing down there and we didn’t really know about the noise until after we signed the lease. We were in a situation where we were just fucked enough to do something about it. So we learned how to build a soundproofed studio, and that’s what we’ve been doing for the last three months or so.

Moving into McDonald So then we found the space on McDonald Avenue. I really can’t stress enough how grim it was when we got there. Horrifically dungeon-like.

There were stains everywhere, the whole place was filthy, and it obviously hadn’t been inhabited in a really long time. There was a grave in the corner, which, most people who have seen it still believe that’s what it was—a grave in the corner. There were exposed roots and grass all around the side of it, coming in through the floor. You couldn’t get paint to stick on it at all.

We were right across the street from Greenwood Cemetery so it seemed highly plausible that there could be a grave there. Why not? There was a ghost, a woman in a blue dress that was seen by me a few times, seen by another couple of people a few times. I definitely thought it was connected.

It’s crazy how fast this is moving. I used to dream maybe someday we’d build our own studio. As recently as eight months ago, I thought, maybe in five or 10 years, that’s something we could someday do, but probably not. That’s the thing about this whole process. It reflects back to the origin of the studio, it goes to the beginning of the collective and the community, it goes on and on and on. I’m really a big believer that, for this and for me, the only way to do it is through evolution. I’m not a guy swept into the active mind. I don’t think you can really put your foot down and decide to do something. But what you can do is allow things to happen.

We did an Indiegogo campaign to raise money, which was great, and a lot of people came out and filmed these testimonials to support the studio. We wanted to reflect the rich vibrant community of people here and I think we got something like 60 of them shot. We ended up at 32 thousand at the end of the campaign. Then we spent more money than that. I’ve been running around the last couple of months pulling every miracle I could think of, you know, begging people for loans. I’m going to be pretty severely in debt for the next few years, but that’s OK [laughter].

The construction has been done by the community, that’s the amazing thing. 69 people have helped out at least once. The first night we thought we’d just hire a recording studio contractor with the money we raised and just get it built. Then I found out they were all quoting 200 grand, 40 grand for the plans alone, so at that point we realized we were going have to do it ourselves.

At every point through the process we’ve been working with a professional carpenter on the team. He’s essentially supervising and teaching us all how to do things that we don’t know how to do. Then the labor has been all musicians. I did not consider myself to be a handy person—if anything, quite the opposite—and now I could build a wood frame house.

40 Days, 40 Nights It was definitely a game of steady improvement in there. We were constantly shifting the configuration around, trying to figure out what works best.

It was a crazy scene. There were days when we’d have 15 or 20 people coming in and out.

Everyone was stoned the whole time, stoned off their asses using power tools. No one got hurt, you know [laughter]. Because the nature of this thing is difficult, because it’s a competitive world and it’s certainly a competitive city—everyone’s busy, everyone’s got a lot of stuff going on—it’s been a repeated concern: how do you help the community stay together? I think this construction project has been the most sustained period of camaraderie in Mama Coco’s history. We’ve all worked together on this thing, we’ve all seen something that I think most of us would’ve considered to be outside the realm of possibility become a manifest reality.

There was a karate school above us for a little while that we hated; they were quite literally the bane of our existence. We had an incredibly mutually antagonistic relationship and then they ended up moving out. We couldn’t get shit done with them working above us.

I’d get real tired out sometimes, thinking, this is not sustainable, it’s costing me my sanity, comfort, and happiness, my life day-to-day. But the community is what we needed to make me keep on going, because there’s more at stake than just me. If it was just me, I might’ve given up.

For some reason I seem to have found myself in this incredibly blessed position where people have rallied around the studio. It matters to them and they want to see it do well, want to see it be something, and want to see us all do something together. In the end, that’s the gas. That’s what keeps the engine running. You give me gas and I’ll run and run and run, you know, I’ll get a lot of miles on the gallon, but without that gas I don’t think I can do it.

There was one flood about a year in that just sucked. We dealt with it and got a big crew in to clean it up, which was pretty fun. The final big flood was May of this year and it was raining really hard that day. I came in, went around the whole studio, checked the perimeters for leaks, and we were good. There was no issue [laughter]. Then I was in the booth—I was with a band mixing some stuff—and I couldn’t have been in there for more than 15 minutes. When I came out, it was like a tsunami had hit. The water had pooled at the front door and just BOOM! It shot through the door. There was so much water coming in at a crazy fast rate. That was another time—I just started laughing. The band must have thought I was insane, but I was walking around giggling, poking at all the leaks and laughing again, standing there scratching my chin and laughing a little bit.

But the next day we were looking at new spaces. At that moment we knew we were going have to get out of there.

Resurrection We’ve calculated every angle in there and calculated for sound.

Some of the rooms have crazy slanted elaborate wall configurations and stuff. Outside of that, consider that November 19th will be the four-year anniversary of Mama Coco’s. I’ve been kind of the crazed workaholic; it’s not unusual for me to do 12 to 14 hour days, seven days a week at some points, just going going going. Since May I’ve been on an enforced five-month hiatus of recording, so I’ve had lots of time to think. I do feel going back in that my approach will be very different. I almost want to say unrecognizably different.

My responsibility now is to come in and get in the right headspace. To be the musical shepherd, make sure the music is right. I’m trying to work a little less so I can rest more and be more capable and on top of my shit when I do go in. That’s kind of a major thing right now. I really want to be operating at a hundred percent capacity. I don’t want to do any more sessions at 60 percent capacity because I haven’t slept in two days. That’s anther thing—whatever the benefits are in the short term of hauling ass like that, life’s too short in the grand scheme of things to make those kinds of compromises.

What we have right now is an opportunity to create a body of work that’s astounding. I think a lot of people—especially in New York City, which is such a competitive place— put a lot of energy into figuring out how to present something or how to get the right attention for it, how to promote it. We’re settling more and more on the opposite approach: to create a fucking seething rhythmic hotbed of content, of action, of things happening. And if people come, they come. And if they don’t, it’s just as fucking real as if they did.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

NOVEMBER 21 2014

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The Ore'groin Toast Burlington Throat Factory

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EpHemera

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

CYBORGS IN THE CLUB Arca and the digital boundary

by Malcolm Drenttel illustration by Lee Bernstein

On November 1, Venezuelan electronic musician Arca released his debut album Xen, named for Arca’s alter ego, a genderless—though feminine—figure whom he first developed while a closeted child in Caracas. The album is unlike any of the vocal-heavy material Arca produced before, eschewing that familiar territory in favor of letting his machines speak for themselves. The album’s single, “Thievery,” is a glitchy, stumbling tune that relies on a chorus of synths, something like a Macbook screaming for help. A music video accompanies the single, featuring a nude, animated humanoid, presumably Xen, dancing under a flickering light. Throughout the video her dancing is in sync with the song’s tonal chaos, and yet she seems distinctly separate from the song. Her feet move but she doesn’t touch the ground; her dancing is just slightly off, not quite dancing with the song, but in response to it. One can almost see the algorithm running behind her emotionless face.

Xen is distinctly, and intentionally, the product of a human hand. The video awkwardly reconciles the humanness of the songs effect—Xen’s full body contortions and extensive gyration—with the artifice of her existence, for she is also product of a computational model that cannot emotionally experience music, even if it features the shrieks of her fellow computers.

Music has an inherently physical quality experienced through the body. Electronic musicians have long been interested in how the genre’s technological source and sound is placed within the context of music as a human pursuit. In The Players Passion, Joseph Roach—a theater historian who has written on the relation between the performing arts and science—that during the Scientific Revolution, “the words mechanical and natural did indeed become synonyms.”

However, with the dawn of modernity, this Cartesian faith in reason began to fail, and with it went the idea that humans, like machines, were functionally perfectible. This failure posed the question: what is the nature of human-machine relations, and what will it become as we become more and more dependent on machines?

Electronic music was born during the 20th century in the midst of this grey area of machine/human relations. Some, like Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo, believed that machinery offered the possibility of the next great leap forward in music. In his “The Art of Noise manifesto,” Russolo writes “Noise was really not born before the 19th century, with the advent of machinery. Today noise reigns supreme over human sensibility … Nowadays musical art aims at the shrillest, strangest and most dissonant amalgams of sound. Thus we are approaching noise-sound. This revolution of music is paralleled by the increasing proliferation of machinery sharing in human labor.” Russolo takes the rise of the machine in stride and sincerely celebrates the many possibilities offered by technology in the world of music. However, in light of the assorted tragedies of industrialization—wage slavery, pollution, landscape destruction—this take on the future of technology and art is somewhat utopian. The idea of machinery “sharing” in labor with humans is contrasted by Marshall McLuhan, writing in Understanding Media, “human beings are the sex organs of the machine world.” McLuhan’s anxiety is founded in the belief that the rapid rise of machines foretells a future in which humans are rendered unnecessary. That soon we will simply be used to help machines reproduce until they can do it themselves. This view is found in the electronic music that first crept into popular consciousness through science fiction movies and radio shows. The creepy pitch-bent sound of early synthesizers gave the 1950s the sound of the future. At the time, electronic music reflected a society simultaneously obsessed with new technologies and fascinated by dystopian futures of technological excess. Emerging in an industrial capitalist world, electronic music is inextricable from the material conditions of its production. A response to our mass-manufactured technological experience, these fears are alive today in the capitalistic aura surrounding the countless dystopian films—Blade Runner, Robocop, I, Robot, Rollerball,

november 21 2014

Antiviral, etc.—that feature corporate tech-dominated futures.

In the tradition of Western culture, “the relation between organism and machine has been a border war,” says Donna Haraway in A Cyborg Manifesto. Serving as “an argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction,” Haraway’s manifesto is a case for blurring the line between man and machine in the hope of solving this utopian/dystopian technological dichotomy. The Xen whom Arca constructs on this album is a cyborg in the sense expressed in the Cyborg Manifesto: “creatures simultaneously animal and machine, who populate worlds ambiguously natural and crafted.” This album pulses with life and yet only contains sounds created by machines. In the video, Xen’s body is obviously human, but her exaggerated anatomy suggest either digital or surgical manipulation.

While we tend to think of cyborgs as humans with mechanical supplements, Xen serves as an example of the cyborg as a computer with a human supplement. The boundaries that interest Haraway—organism/machine, physical/nonphysical, identity/affinity—are the same as those explored on Xen; the album is a celebration of pleasure in confused boundaries. The line between the self and the machine is blurred, as is that of self and imagined-self. Xen and Arca—both names assumed by a real person—are the figures that populate this ambiguous world. Arca accesses Xen through his machine, and in the process Xen assumes the voice of the machine, screaming out from the dark via sine waves and mp3s.

In an interview with The Fader, Arca reflects, “I loved the idea I could let myself operate in openness to both science and superstition, and I think placing myself squarely in the middle of those things is where I feel happiest. Allowing for some form of magic. We don’t completely understand everything in nature.” Arca’s music explores the tension between the conception of technology as something mystical qua human, and that of technology as rooted in binaries, inseparable from its analytic, computational, lack of dynamism. Song titles like “Family Violence,” “Lonely Thugg,” and “Wound” motion toward a ferocity that is not found in the songs’ lyrics, because there aren't any. While the album is named after Arca’s alter ego, Xen does not feature a single vocal performance or sample. Rather, Arca’s use of the pitch wheel serves to create a voice for Xen. In returning us to a trademark of the digital sound, the pitch bend is still creepy and unsettling, but now,

the sci-fi sound has been re-contextualized among symphonic string synths that regularly fall apart, rhythmic chaos, and much sadness. The aesthetic of 1950s cold, calculating, spooky machine has been replaced by machines that make mistakes and feel regret for doing so.

In a review for The National, Andy Battaglia recalls an early version of the album sent to journalists, which featured a version of the song “Sisters.” A glitch somewhere along the line had severely damaged the file, and the product was “disorienting and outlandishly abstract.” The mistake went unnoticed for months as the listeners assumed that an artist’s intent was behind the chaos. Similarly, in the video for “Thievery,” the lights flash on Xen’s body at the 2:26 mark to reveal a collection of bulbous growths on her upper thighs and groin. Looking much like the special effects in Cronenberg’s The Brood, the moment lasts less than a second and poses the question: is visual artist Jesse Kanda’s intention behind the deformity, or is it the product of an animation program gone terribly wrong? These two instances of questionable artistic intent return us to Haraway’s interest in boundaries.

Our focus on seeing artists as genius creators prevents us from raising questions of how we privilege intention in aesthetics over material consequences. Is digital music created on machines, with machines, or by machines? Is Arca a musician in the traditional sense, or a curator playing on the disintegrating boundary between human and technology? At what point does a corrupted file cease to belong to the artist who originally created it, and become the intellectual property of the machine that generated it? This album engages with blurred boundaries not in pursuit of answers, but for the sake of asking more questions. As the questions pile up, the line only blurs further. As Haraway writes, “This is a struggle over life and death, but the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion.” On Xen, technology is vivified. These questions point toward this optical illusion, and the result is that the cyborg Xen becomes a product of social reality. The album is intent on the creation of life—not a biblical, ideal life—but scary, hectic, real life. Much like our own lives, cyborg life is full of emotional imbalances, algorithmic errors, corporeal flaws, and beauty.

MALCOLM DRENTTEL B’18 is the sex organ of the machine world.

TECHNOLOGY

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THREE VELVET BOYHOOD

by Andrew J. Smyth

To have been delighted by a jumpsuit. An unusual circumstance in which to find oneself, granted, and perhaps even an uncomfortable one, but not, as you can see, or rather as we can agree to be shown, an altogether unreasonable position. It’s not that the jumpsuit has any inherent advantages in respect to other garments. Indeed, having entered and then zipped oneself inside, the jumpsuit wearer will probably find herself in possession of a dangerous handicap whenever the impulse to urinate, or especially to masturbate, should materialize. A botched removal, one imagines, might even result in some irreversible tangle, a gridlock, which, in its most absurd and tragic iteration, could go so far as to cause an actual amputation, the circulation of oxygenated blood having been denied to the ensnared forearm. And anyway, unless she has sustained a truly devotional commitment to her yoga instructor, the slouchier bits of her body will achieve beneath this vestment a severely impolite dangle. Yes, the jumpsuit is a parlor trick. A deliberate sartorial gag intended, basically, to provoke a few raised eyebrows. I am the astronaut and the alpine skier, she who wears the jumpsuit shouts. I am the laborer, the prisoner. But, obviously, I am also not these things; I am not these people, because I have adopted this attire as a conceit, out of boredom, for fun. And when the party has expired, she suggests, I am capable of sliding out, after which I will retreat to the confines of my apartment and reclaim my fur vest, or whatever. The irony thickens, of course, if we consider etymology. That is, if we remember the jumpsuit’s original intention: to describe military pilots hurling themselves out of fighter jets. It follows, then, that to wear a jumpsuit, the suit for jumping, is also a kind of gesture upward. A finger pointed at those downward plunges, a grasp at that insane velocity, and finally a wink at the descending paratrooper, whose behind, it must be said, looks so incredibly firm beneath all that insulation. But then, there are jumpsuits, and there are jumpsuits. The specimen here belongs to this latter category. A jumpsuit with fanfare, if you will. A jumpsuit whose magnetism eclipses its genre, and whose features I will singe upon your memory, so help me God.

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To have adopted the most delicious posture. No doubt a pleasant status to achieve, to have achieved. You lean into the contraposto, arrange an angle for your elbow, you look up into space and grin. A poise without perimeter. It’s lavish and splendid. All that blue satin calibrated to maximum vigor, rigor, and then partnered with a force of nature, this boy who is a hurricane. A glance that would halt a rhinoceros, or skewer a goldfinch in mid-flight. A charged, erotic, fuck-you stance. Like certain Dada instigators, or dynamite inside a temple. As if I’d bathed in kerosene and felt it to be sumptuous. That zone of sensation without a flicker of doubt, no hesitation, only pleasure and surprise: “Whose hissing Corals part — and shut — / And Cities — ooze away —”.What kind of lapis lazuli, or indigo, or sapphire has conjured this electric shock? What is it to be zapped, and with what shape might we accommodate that voltage? I, for one, am having trouble cooking up a language, outfitting a match, locating a discourse to accord with the experience. Obstacles abide the entryway. The very passage into language, into satin, as it were, is freighted with a clumsiness of which I do not know how to dispose. It is wearing shoes with velvet bows: suddenly I am prone to tripping, liable to fumble, given to skidding, subject to wobbling. It’s as if, in my writing, in my walking, in my adjusting my lace collar, I have become hypothermic, and so have been made to misplace my facility for speech. How else to explain the seizure set off by that hat, and also by its associated feather? Or those lips, which are a volcano, that embroidery which may as well have ignited. So many joyous surfaces, so many sites of pleasure that resist transcription. It is not that images at large elude designation, or cannot be spoken. Enough time and ink, and every stitch of those trousers will have been catalogued. A veritable index of fabrics will have been generated, every textile assigned a footnote, all the patterns sketched and cited. The snag in the procedure is this: no archive, no system, no method can ever reproduce the flash, the bite, the snap. The moment goes on, and I am bewitched.

To have worn a codpiece with a scowl. A promiscuous intelligence. Elegant and cruel at once; the most lascivious intention. For what is it to wear a codpiece, never mind that slender grimace? The usual excuses bore me. Custom, ritual, tradition; all of that we know already. Better to introduce promotional terms, to think of the codpiece as a kind of advertisement. A notice-me economy. Strap it on, and here I am, he says. Capable of reproducing, wellendowed, able to make more of me. And don’t be weirded out by ample nose, or my lazy eye, either. Even in my silk turtleneck, I am qualified to inject whomever it is that I should select me as mate with viscous, necessary, life-giving fluids. That is what I wish to be known of me, and to be represented upon the canvas, in paint, with aplomb. Yes, that is what he has said, or he has had said about him. Because cod, apart from signifying a rather bland North Atlantic white fish, is also the Middle English word for scrotum. Little imagination required to establish that particular linkage. And indeed, is there not something fishy about portraiture? Does the portrait not deliver a certain stench, does it not communicate a funerary odor? Why is it that I like so many likenesses? The question is, he says to me from 1550, am I dignified or constipated? Either way, am I not present, am I not scowling? Yes, in this moment, my scowling does not seem to be debatable. It is a permanent, factual, immanent scowl. For the duration of the image I am a scowling subject.

Even if afterward I am threading my eyebrows, smoking my cigarette, painting my nails, and beating my chest. Even if I am now winning at chess, giving fellatio, dancing a tango and firing a musket. This is the image unraveling in a single shout. This is me like the storm cloud or the sea sponge absorbing it and squeezing it out again. This is me like Bresson’s Pickpocket wiggling it between my slender fingers. This is my gravity at work upon the meteor shower, because I am tugging at it, I am reeling it in, I am gnawing it to dust. This is my meal, because I am unbuttoning my vest, I am applying my lipstick, I am snapping the waistband of my jockstrap, and I am laughing, laughing, laughing to the blonde waiter, “Yes, darling, I think I am ready for the liver.”

November 21 2014

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IRON AND FIELDS

by Camera Ford

illustration by Brielle Curvey

The earth can seem impenetrable, unexplainable, whether you are flipping through the pages of an earth science textbook or staring up at the face of the cliff you are about to climb. That cliff was once completely covered by the sea.The footholds you seek have been carved from the remnants of molten rock risen from deep inside the earth. I learned about these things in my first geology class and never looked back. I often find myself mulling over what I know about the inner workings of this place, trying to put it all together. What did the continents look like before they were the continents? Why do we need a core? How the heck do compasses even work? With a bit of thinking, I figured I could build a small window into the workings of this planet: our bleak, beautiful, mysterious home.

Solid Earth The earth is like an Everlasting Gobstopper. There are layers: from the hard, outer shell on which we live and die and make our homes (the crust); to the molten mass of rock that flows hundreds of feet beneath us (the mantle); to the liquid metal surrounding the solid iron ball that is its core. That innermost layer, the remnants of space collisions three and a half billion years old, sits solidly at our center. It faintly emits heat, giving us the weight that keeps us within our life-sustaining orbit of the sun. Any closer or farther away and our delicate ratios of oxygen and carbon, water and atmosphere, would have evolved such that nothing—not goldfish, not algae, not the nice family from down the block—could survive here. That thick iron core—saved from melting into a sea of metal only by the immense pressure crushing it into a solid mass from above—anchors us. Imagine: our planet, suddenly unmoored from the laws of gravity, rotating faster and faster through space and time. A deep, lasting cold creeping outwards, halting magma in its tracks and ending, before we’d know it, the heat that sustains us from within.

Home When we are lost in the wilderness, our compasses point north. The needle is steered by the magnetic field that circles the earth; this field encloses our planet in a web of electrical current that extends thousands of feet into space and deflects radiation and bursts of energy from the sun. This, too,

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comes from the core: as the liquid nickel and iron arc up, around, and down again in an infinite loop, they create the magnetic field that quietly pulses alongside us. Invisible, the field points us north; birds and wildlife sense it internally and use it to guide them to warmer climates and then back again. But it also moves, as restless as the beings that rely on it. And gradually, in spite of the many lives depending on its influence, the field’s direction veers further and further away from true North (the North Pole) until it finally finds itself at rest near the South Pole instead. Every few hundred thousand years, the reversal begins again.

You can see the traces of each reversal buried deep below our feet and everything we touch. Deep, past shark dens and coral reefs, at the bottom of the ocean, each field direction is burned permanently into the magma that becomes the sea floor, settling in as it cools and hardens. You can see the change, if you look under a microscope. North becomes South, South becomes North, and the earth goes on.

Resonance When earthquakes come, they ripple through vacations and lunch dates and daily routines. They cut through mudcovered hills and cracked riverbeds as they propel waves of energy into the ground beneath our unsuspecting feet.

The ensuing damage is the distance from the quake and the energy contained in its waves, manifested with unflinching indifference. It is the contents of the earth’s crust, re-ordered and re-shaped. When waves pass through the soft, forgiving bedrock of California, still warm from its ocean birth only a few hundred thousand years ago, they lose part of their energy to the surrounding material. Part of the wave disappears, its strength yielding to grains of rock as it filters through. The earth still pushes and pulls and upends the world above, but even the worst damage has been dampened by the journey through the crust below. But underneath the teeming cities of the East Coast, the hard granite underbelly is cold in its old age. There is no forgiveness when seismic waves find themselves there. No energy is soaked up by the rocks; instead it travels fast and hard and leaves a trail of shaken and shattered remains, ours and the earth’s, in its wake.

Sometimes harmony is the worst thing that can happen, like when the frequency of a wave matches precisely with the

natural swaying tendencies of the building above. They move together, feeding one another; the resonance devastating your favorite corner store (the one where you used to get snickers bars after school), even as it leaves the next completely untouched.

Surface Traces Three-hundred million years ago, the land that would become Rhode Island was locked in the middle of a supercontinent—a huge island that held most of the earth’s land mass, fused together by the collisions of huge continental plates. These collisions created, among other features, the Appalachian Mountains. Its well-traversed peaks have been frozen, thawed, weathered, and eroded down to a fraction of their original size. Many millions of years later that supercontinent—global unity, incarnate—began to separate again, the east coast of Africa pulling away from the coast of New England in a gradual southern migration. The particles of dirt and rock and dust from the Appalachians gradually settled themselves along Connecticut’s coast, forming the layers of sediment that today reach far out into the Atlantic Ocean, beneath the ships that criss-cross its rolling waves.

Even 80,000 years ago this place was still not yet recognizable. Sheets of ice were on their slow march downwards from the North Pole; the glaciers covered New England until about 20,000 years ago before flowing back north, dragging rocks and boulders across bedrock and carving paths through soft sediments to create what has become Narragansett Bay. The world we see and smell and touch is nothing but a snapshot in a four-and-a-half billion year life. The shoreline of the beach you are standing on, covered by trillions of shell and rock fragments broken apart by water and time, is retreating imperceptibly beneath your feet. Millions of years ago this spot was miles away from the ocean. A few million years from now, it will be miles offshore, sand swirling in the waves that travel inland towards the new shoreline.

CAMERA FORD B'16 is steered by the magnetic field.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

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