Night The Varsity publishes the Varsity Magazine three times a year. Each issue is based around a specific theme. The Night Magazine focuses on the time between when the sun goes down and the moment it rises in the morning — from what happens in the city after hours, to the feelings and memories that night evokes for our writers. Enjoy reading, and look out for our next magazine, an all-arts issue, coming at the beginning of 2013.
magazine u n e m le! s i th kab ic l c is
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Video games
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Contents
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WalkSmart at U of T Sexy Merlin Q&A
9 10
Observing Shabbat
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18
Bars to die in
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Letter from the Editor
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Late-night coffee
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Blue Line stories
Streeters PLAYLIST var.st/tunes
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Toronto’s street lamps
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Night jobs
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Night rides in Pakistan
Santiago night walks
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19 20
Night in film
Dream diaries
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Letter from the editor A few nights ago I took a standardized test. Stepping out of the test center after hours spent hunched in a cubicle, the city looked strange. Tall buildings were lit up and screens were flashing in front of television studios, but at 9.30 pm the streets were almost empty. All this seemed to blur past me as I walked quickly, trying to clear my head. I called friends, looking for some sort of distraction or release. But everyone was busy or about to catch up on lost sleep. So I ended up by myself at a Korean 24-hour restaurant, eating a mackerel and more kimchi than any person should consume in a single sitting. At the table next to me a group of effortlessly-cool friends were chatting boisterously, one of them tending to a grill laden with pork belly, his bleached-blond hair hidden beneath a acid-green toque. A few tables over, a few ESL students were eating soup and practicing their English with each other. Neighborhood old-timers sat down and ordered huge spreads of food, while blearyeyed young guys walked in wearing flip-flops, casually ignoring the chill of the night. I was alone, but sitting in the welcoming, noisy restaurant I somehow felt included. In the end it was a relaxed night, something all too rare during the vortex that is magazine production. But the variety that night can encompass is partially why we chose it as our magazine theme: an evening can be good, bad, or lead you somewhere completely unexpected. There are nights where you feel lost, dropped into a completely foreign, turbulent city, as Graeme Myers discovered in Santiago (pg 14). Other nights you’re able to find comfort in the little things, like the diner coffee that Ethan Chiel wandered the city searching for (pg 7). During the night you can dream (pg 20), or even go to work (pg 8). Nights have the potential to be gloomy and dangerous, but they can also be a time of wonder and captivating mystery. In the dark the past can feel strangely more accessible, like it did for Elizabeth Haq as she looked back at her father’s motorcycling days in 1970s Pakistan (pg 12). For this magazine we wanted to capture all the unique aspects of night. Here’s hoping it will inspire you to wander down alleys, walk into restaurants at 2 am, and zip along roads through the hills, all the way to some amazing nights of your own.
VisualiZinG the niGht
Simon Frank Varsity Magazine Editor, 2012-2013
THE VARSITY MAGAZINE TEAM. PHOTO BY BERNARDA GOSPIC
MAGAZINE VOL. VI
No. 1
cOntact 21 Sussex Avenue, Suite 306 Toronto, ON, M5S 1J6 Phone: 416-946-7600 thevarsity.ca
eDitOR-in-chieF Murad Hemmadi editor@thevarsity.ca maGaZine eDitOR Simon Frank magazine@thevarsity.ca
DesiGn eDitORs Suzy Nevins Dan Seljak design@thevarsity.ca
assOciate cOPY eDitOR Catherine Kabasele
PhOtO eDitOR Bernarda Gospic photo@thevarsity.ca PRODuctiOn eDitOR Alex Ross production@thevarsity.ca
cOVeR Bernarda Gospic & Dan Seljak
assOciate DesiGn eDitOR Nathan Watson
manaGinG Online eDitOR Patrick Love online@thevarsity.ca seniOR cOPY eDitOR Laura Mitchell copy@thevarsity.ca illustRatiOns eDitOR Minhee Bae illustration@thevarsity.ca
cOPY eDitORs Zoë Bedard Elizabeth Benn Catherine Kabasele Brigit Katz Sofia Luu Caitlin Plainos Alex Ross Laura Sabatini Verena Schaupp Dan Smeenk Jonathan Soo Catherine Virelli Nina Ya-Haqqi
ViDeO eDitOR Wyatt Clough video@thevarsity.ca
Fact checkeRs Catherine Kabasele Laura Mitchell
What is the essence of night, and how can you visually represent it? The design team had to tackle this question to shape the identity of this issue. It’s tricky to select a palette of colours and a set of motifs to play with that will link an urban diner in Toronto with nighttime in Santiago, and the midnight hijinks of a motorcycle gang in Pakistan. Our decision was heavily influenced by our geography. The lights of the cosmopolitan centre in which we work and study inspired the issue’s colour scheme. In the city, the dark hues of blue and purple in the night sky complement the rich orange of headlights and street lamps, while pink and green streaks of neon pierce through the darkness. Filmore’s, an iconic downtown gentleman’s club, while rough around the edges, nicely embodies this theme. We played with its famous sign, and made our mark on some recognizable real estate. Inside, our table of contents plays with the lunar phases — each of this issue’s 24 pages is paired with one of these phases. Each article’s sign-off note is a reflection of your progress through the phases of the issue. The magazines offer an opportunity to bend the rules, to offer something different both visually and in terms of content. What you see on these pages is our effort to do that — if only for the night.
DesiGneRs Ethan Chiel Jenny Kim Patrick Love Suzy Nevins Dan Seljak Shaquilla Singh Nathan Watson Michelle Yuan
PhOtO & illustRatiOn Minhee Bae Michael Bedford Rémi Carreiro Ethan Chiel Wyatt Clough Bernarda Gospic Wendy Gu Anamarija Korolj Janice Liu Dan Seljak Nathan Watson
cOntRibutORs Ethan Chiel, Celia Drury, Olivia Forsyth-Sells, Emma Fox, Simon Frank, Elizabeth Haq, Murad Hemmadi, Brigit Katz, Danielle Klein, Graeme Myers, Suzy Nevins, Joshua Oliver, Alex Ross, Dan Seljak sPecial thanks The Mothersbaugh Brothers, Sam D’Angelo, Filmore’s, Vesta Lunch, cabbage rolls, Alfred Hitchcock, glow sticks, U of T Facilities and Services, The Beach Boys, the TTC business OFFice business manaGeR John Fountas
aDVeRtisinG Tina Yazdi
aDVeRtisinG eXecutiVes Victoria Botvinnik Nick Brownlee Sofia Luu Maokai Shen
business@thevarsity.ca advertising@thevarsity.ca victoria@thevarsity.ca nick@thevarsity.ca sofia@thevarsity.ca maokai@thevarsity.ca
OCTOBER ,
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W
alking around late at night in Toronto, you’re probably grateful for the illumination provided by the city’s many street lights. As Toronto has evolved, it’s developed different lighting solutions based on changing needs and advances in technology. Street lights aren’t just functionally necessary, they are also an important part of a city’s aesthetics. Here are a few examples of what’s lighting our streets at night.
fection of electric lighting, gas lights were the primary lighting solution for most mid-nineteenth century cities. The use of coal gas to light these lamps meant they were often dirty, unreliable (they could easily flicker out if not constantly lit), and smelled awful. Widespread dissatisfaction led to the replacement of gaslights with electric lights in Toronto starting in 1880.
Victorian Gas light, king street
Tall-arm street lights found around St. Lawrence Market were first installed in the 1980s as part of a plan to provide more lighting and aesthetically-pleasing colour around heritage buildings downtown. Their distinctive yellow-orange light is a result of the use of highpressure sodium, which turns that colour once the bulb is warm. A project proposed last year
Victorian Gas Lights, which can be found in front of St. Lawrence Hall, are all that’s left of the old gas lighting system that was first installed in 1841 by the Toronto Gas, Light, and Water Company. Before the per-
tall arm street light, st. lawrence market
would replace these lights with “acorn” or “teardrop” style tall lights using metal halide, which glows white and provides more illumination for less energy.
Victorian-style Pedestrian street light, Front street and Wellington street A handful of these Victorian-style pedestrian streetlights stand near the famous “Flatiron” building at Front and Wellington. Designed with reference to the old gas lamps that once illuminated San Francisco, the lights mostly use high-pressure halide to produce a distinctive white glow. These metal halide lamps are a cross between fluorescent and halogen light styles. Just like the tall-arm streetlight, an aesthetic concern for nearby heritage buildings has informed the design and layout of these particular lights.
cobra head street light, Front street east of Yonge street Designed by architect Donald Deskey (who also masterminded the Crest toothpaste tube) and making its debut in New York in 1958, the cobra head streetlight made its first appearance in Toronto in the 1960s. The cobra is probably the most ubiquitous streetlight in Toronto, and it was favoured throughout North America for its durability and adaptability. The cobra head comes equipped with a ballast to regulate voltage and current, and a second light head can be added to the pole to provide cross-illumination in cases where having lights on either side of a street is impossible. Banal and a little ugly, these streetlights were nevertheless a simple solution for lighting Toronto’s streets and its thenexpanding highways.
A brief history of Toronto street lamps Article by ALEX ROSS
Clockwise from top left: Victorian gas light, tall-arm, Victorian-style pedestrian, and cobra head
The warning lights Light pollution’s risks and possible solutions Article by JOSHUA OLIVER
Photos by BERNARDA GOSPIC
T
he night sky in Toronto isn’t what it used to be. Those who have the privilege of getting out of the city from time to time will know the incredible majesty of the sky on a clear night. But even an hour’s drive from Toronto, you can still see a dull orange glow from the direction of the city, reaching up from the horizon. The lights of cities like Toronto can be seen from space, and you have to go a long way on land before you’ll see a truly dark night. Groups like the International Dark Sky Association (IDA) want to take back the night, and despite some objections, they make a good point.
the environment The argument you hear most often about light pollution is that it’s bad for birds. It’s pretty clear that this is the case, since birds are often attracted to light — sometimes it causes them to fly into buildings, and to circle oil-platforms
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or fishing fleets out at sea, disrupting their migration. It’s important not to trivialize the effect of light pollution in the environment. Birds, like all animals, are part of incredibly complex ecosystems and small changes can have large effects. And it’s not only birds; any nocturnal animal living in an area of light pollution also be affected.
People Beyond the bird-based worries, people often forget that light pollution has serious health effects for humans. The human body has a natural cycle of sleeping, waking, and other bodily functions that is regulated, in part, by light. Living in cities where night is often not much darker than day can disrupt these patterns, creating a major health risk. Not only can too much light prevent people from sleeping, but it can also cause sleeping disorders that stop people from sleeping properly even
THE VARSITY MAGAZINE
when it is actually dark. Over-exposure to light at night has also been linked to depression, obesity, and even cancer. So it’s not just the birds and raccoons who should be worried.
solutions The solutions to light pollution are easier than most people think. Almost no one is advocating a return to candle light, or dynamiting the Honest Ed’s storefront on Bloor. Instead, simple changes in lighting design can focus light downward, where it will be useful, and prevent it from shining upward and outward, where it can be harmful. There are lots of resources available to educate people about how to make their lighting less intrusive to their human and animal neighbors. Both individuals and institutions need to pay attention to concerns about light pollution when designing buildings and installing lights. This should, of course, be coupled with
simply turning off unnecessary lights and using motion detectors or timers to ensure that lights are only on when they’re useful.
safety One of the biggest objections to efforts to decrease light pollution are worries about safety at night. These concerns are based on the faulty assumption that more, brighter light makes things safer. Actually, having things brilliantly illuminated leaves even more dense shadows outside the lit area. Very bright lights can also cause glare that leaves people unable to see. The safest lighting design is actually fairly low but consistent light, because it allows people’s eyes to adjust to the new conditions and evenly illuminates their surroundings. Couple this model with proper downward-focusing fixtures and we can have cities that are safe and a little easier on the eyes.
[ “THE MAJORITY OF WALKSMART ] EMPLOYEES ARE DOING IT FOR SENSE OF COMMUNITY. SOME BECOME SOCIAL WORKERS.”
Getting Home Safe How the WalkSmart program helps U of T students feel secure at night Article by DANIELLE KLEIN | Photo by BERNARDA GOSPIC
C
ampus safety is a major concern at U of T. The university has a number of programs in place to deter crime, including the “Work Alone” service, the “Green Dot” program, and the Community Safety Office. A particular source of anxiety is the increased risk of assault after dark, a concern that has been met by the establishment of the “WalkSmart” program. “The service started around 1992,” says Sam D’Angelo, the coordinator of WalkSmart. “Back then, there were a few occurrences at other campuses. It was thought that the only thing we were lacking here was a walk home service, which was very popular at Western and other places. So the university decided to adopt it and it’s been in effect ever since.” Walk home programs were first developed in the United States. Western was the first Canadian university to institute such a program, during a period of increased crime rates. U of T initially had few night classes, meaning a lower demand for a similar initiative. But evening classes became more common, and with increased activity on campus at night, the program was installed. Anyone can WalkSmart, including visitors to campus who are not enrolled at the university. The only criteria is that you must be moving between campus buildings or to a nearby subway station. “The objective of WalkSmart is safety in numbers,” D’Angelo explains. “We get the
employees to pick up a student from an academic building, and drop them off at another academic building or a nearby subway station. It’s not designed to be a downtown campus walk home service. “I don’t want my employees to drop people off at a bar; I don’t want them going to Bathurst and Bloor, because it’s not designed for that. We are strictly a campus service. If the university owns and operates a building, we will escort a student to and from there.” When you call WalkSmart, the dispatch sends out one male and one female escort to meet you at the time you request. WalkSmart employees have jackets and ID cards so they are easily identifiable to callers, due to incidents in the past where impersonators have compromised the safety of people who call in. “We’ve learned that if we leave an opening, deviants might take over,” D’Angelo reflects. Most program employees are students. “Our objective is to hire students. We’ve had challenges in the past where students couldn’t work, around exam time for example,” D’Angelo recalls. “WalkSmart is designed so that two people respond to an escort. If one WalkSmart books off, that team is now gone. So, at exam periods and on Friday nights, it is challenging to get students to fulfill the role. We have hired students as WalkSmarts that have graduated and come back [for] a part-time job.”
In order to accommodate the schedules of students employed by the program, after midnight U of T Campus Police building patrols take over the service. “The WalkSmart people aren’t on duty but my building patrols then do their part. They’re students, so you have to appreciate that. At one time, we had them working at two in the morning and it was challenging because a lot of them have class in the morning. “So what I’ve done is that from midnight to six am, you have campus police dispatched to pick up clients and take them from point A to point B in the absence of WalkSmart.” D’Angelo looks for more than just enrollment at U of T when evaluating prospective employees. “We test to see why you want to be a WalkSmart person. We want to make sure that you’re here for the right reasons — so why you want this job, what are your objectives. And more importantly, we check out their background, to make sure that they’re not a safety risk to the community. “We ask for police record checks on people because they are escorting people that could be vulnerable. We make sure their intentions are honourable. We do all the necessary due-diligence tests.” Students going into police work do not have a particular advantage in the hiring process. In fact, D’Angelo notes, the opposite is often true. “The majority of [WalkSmart
employees] are doing it for sense of community. Some become social workers. “Those that want to do police work tend not to be good candidates because they get the wrong perception of what it is. They’re not security. They’re simply there as a comfort zone for safety in numbers for that individual.” More than counseling, WalkSmart escorts frequently serve as a source of information about campus to students who use the service. The program tends to be used most by first-year students in their first six months on campus before they develop friendships, and they often seek basic information from the employees during the walk, such as locations of different buildings, or names of good restaurants in the area. Usage takes a dip around this time of year, as more students have friends to walk with when it gets dark out. “It stays fairly regular,” Sam notes, “If there’s an occurrence on campus that’s been in the media a lot, we find there’s a spike in usage.” D’Angelo believes that the presence of the WalkSmart program successfully deters nighttime crimes. “At nighttime around here, it’s actually very safe. You have a better chance of getting your laptop stolen at Robart’s than of getting attacked. Outside of the soft boundaries of the campus, I can’t speak to, but if you look inside the campus, crimes against persons [are] very low.” Employees of the program declined to provide testimonies for this article.
OCTOBER ,
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Basement dancefloors and non-stop drumming Meeting Toronto’s SEXY MERLIN Article by SIMON FRANK | Photo by WYATT CLOUGH
Three minutes into the title track of Sexy Merlin’s Heater, having built up a thicket of layered percussion loops, synthetic bass, and echoing disco keyboards, Sean Dunal begins to sing. Somewhere between a chant and a whisper he intones “deeper and deeper into the night,” before mysteriously adding “you’re gonna be my heater tonight.” As the sole member of Sexy Merlin, Dunal has spent the last few years constructing enigmatic dance music from the barest of means. Dunal, drummer for gloomy synth punks Mausoleum and psychedelic folk group Moon King, started Sexy Merlin as a percussion-only project, but has slowly expanded his musical palate to incorporate dense electronic textures. With the October release of Heater on Pleasance Records, Sexy Merlin’s strippeddown and playful DIY disco has the potential to go far beyond Toronto. Dunal dropped by the office to talk about recording, dance culture, and the occasional advantages of bad sound systems. The Varsity: Tell me a little about the album Heater — what makes it different from what you’ve done before? Sean Dunal: I started using a sampler over the past five or six months. This is kind of the evolution of what I’ve been working on. I did this seven-inch about a year ago and I was still experimenting … I was using acoustic percussion mainly, like pitched cowbells, and I was trying to do everything live. [But]
it sounded like one person, and that’s not what I really wanted. So I started using loops, samplers, and electronic drums primarily. I started singing, so that was also pretty new. Although “Heater” the single was different, because it was kind of me and the producer, Brandon Hocura. I had this idea for a long, 10-minute, classic disco single, that could be remixed or whatever. The form wasn’t all there, and I just messed around with some synthesizers in his studio and started doing some pretty basic drum programming, but having layers of four or five different beats that would create a nice texture. Then the song just kind of came into creation. TV: Is there a specific time of day that you think your music is suited for in terms of when you play it or when you want people to hear it? SD: I guess the nighttime generally works, but within that — I’ve played some really late shows recently and that seems to have a bigger effect, because people are just in a different mood at one in the morning. But I’ve done afternoon festivals, and as long as people are just in that kind of happy zone, it doesn’t really matter. But yeah, the style of music I’m playing has always been associated with late-night clubs, all-night dance parties. TV: How interested are you in the idea of dance music? Like clubs in New York in the late 70s or more techno-like stuff in Europe?
SD: I like it a lot. I like how with dance music there’s so many possibilities. A lot of people when they consider dance music, it’s like … a big club downtown. But it doesn’t have to be that, and it isn’t. The most interesting dance music is stuff that’s weird. It can be experimental, but it still makes you dance. There’s a couple guys from that late 70s New York scene that I really like. Arthur Russell for instance is a personal favourite, but Larry Levan has some really great remixes. And now there’s a lot of good DJs, like Azari & III. They’re doing some cool techno, house stuff, and they’re playing arenas. It’s not exclusive to the club anymore. Then just the number of venues in Toronto now, it doesn’t have to be a club with a sound system. It can be an art-gallery basement, or somebody’s backyard. It’s really versatile I think. That’s almost more exciting than going to a big club where all you can hear is the sub-woofer. TV: When do you write songs and practice? Is it just sort of the on-the-go thing? SD: Yeah, I do it when I can. Because I’m using a lot of electronic drums I can practice at home. I just have a set-up in my back room with headphones, and that’s where I make a lot of my samples. I’ll just be messing around there and because it’s my house there’s no pressure. But before a show I do like to get into a real space with drums, and I’ve done hourly rooms cause when you’re paying by the hour the pressure is on. You’re motivated to get it done.
TV: Do you think you’re in an interesting position because what you do is sort of inbetween live and more programmed music? SD: I think I straddle that world of live performer and DJ because a lot of what I’m doing now is sample-based. So I can do sets that are completely electronic. Like if I was in the position where like, “Oh this place has a really great sound system,” it might be better if I just used electronics. Or I can do like some dirty punk show in a garage with mainly acoustic drums. TV: Have you done a completely digital set? SD: I have, for NXNE this year I had a bunch of shows on the same day. So I managed to fit my electronic stuff into my backpack, and I could bike to the shows. I just had the sampler, and then four pads and a mic. It worked nicely. But with the electronic stuff … I find you really have to commit to the performance, and you’ve gotta bring a lot of the energy. It’s easier to get into with an acoustic drum kit, which is why I still use them I think. TV: Is that because people can connect with them better? SD: Yeah, or I can connect as the performer. When I’m hitting something and getting that instant sound back, it’s like “Ok, this is happening.” Versus the pads, it’s synthetic. You gotta provide all that live energy. The machine’s not going to do it for you.
“A LOT OF PEOPLE WHEN THEY CONSIDER DANCE MUSIC, IT’S LIKE … A BIG CLUB DOWNTOWN. BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THAT, AND IT ISN’T. THE MOST INTERESTING DANCE MUSIC IS STUFF THAT’S WEIRD.”
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THE VARSITY MAGAZINE
Harsh, lovely, perfect One man’s quest for a damn fine cup of diner coffee
Article by ETHAN CHIEL | Photos by WYATT CLOUGH
T
he 24-hour diner in my downstate New York hometown closes at one in the morning, two if it’s Friday or Saturday. Even then, the waiters glare at you if you come in after 11. Generally, I get there about 10 past 11. The waiters are really good at glaring; it took me a long time not to feel like a jerk walking in. When it’s closed, the little yellow oval outside that says “Never Closed” is there to twist the knife. There’s a lot worth eating at a diner late at night, the sort of stuff you really want to eat after two in the morning. There’s the humble burger, the slumber-tempting not-so-short stack of pancakes, or even the club sandwich (arguably one of the great inventions of the nineteenth century). But eating is secondary. Walking into a diner at 11 at night or two in the morning, the name of the game is coffee — specifically crap coffee.
EVERY CUP IS RECOGNIZABLE AS CRAP COFFEE, BUT EVERYWHERE YOU GET IT THERE’S SOMETHING SPECIAL ABOUT IT Let’s be clear on what crap coffee is. It isn’t bad coffee. Bad coffee is the cup you get where the beans are burnt but you grin and bear it because it’s just too early. Bad coffee is the darkish water you drink at the office because, hey, it’s free and it gets the job done. Crap coffee is different. Crap coffee is great. Every cup is recognizable as crap coffee, but everywhere you get it there’s something special about it. It’s rejuvenating, but it feels as though you’re doing some minor violence to your body by drinking it. Most importantly, drinking it isn’t about seeking out something that’s less than good, or about slumming it; it’s about appreciating it for itself. When I moved to Toronto, I wasn’t quite sure where to get my crap coffee fix. Then, one night, I found myself at Mars Food. I wandered in because of a family story. My dad told me about the place because of a time, some 30 years ago, when a friend of his who lived above the diner asked the then-owner why they named it Mars Food. The owner thought for a moment, and then offered frankly, “We named it … after the planet.” That was enough to get me in the door. Much of the time, Mars is as cruel as my hometown diner. During the week, they close at eight, leaving the caffeine-seeking pilgrim to face a darkened storefront.
On the weekend though, it’s a haven. The coffee is cheap and often tastes just slightly chlorinated; it’s perfect. Not too long ago I ducked in late at night as it started to rain. There were a couple of people at the counter being served by a bored-looking young man. I sat for a bit and absorbed a couple of coffees. Afterwards the rain didn’t seem so bad; walking home in it felt right. There’s one more distinction that needs to be made, between drinking crap coffee during the day and drinking crap coffee at night. Along Route 17, the highway that runs through the Catskill Mountains between New York City and Binghamton, there’s a town called Roscoe. Just off the highway is the Roscoe Diner. The walls are covered with college pennants and the portions are large. I’ve never been in the Roscoe Diner later than seven or eight at night. It’s a good place to grab a bite and a coffee on the drive from New York to Toronto. The coffee is crap coffee, but drinking it during the day isn’t the same. It’s still good, and it keeps you going for a while as you wind through the mountains to get on the thruway, but it’s a transitory experience. Its purpose is to keep you going, and it does that well. At night, sitting in a diner just to sit in a diner, crap coffee takes on a different tone. During the day, its job is to get you somewhere or to make some task bearable. At night, without a purpose, it’s kind of perverse. You’re drinking it in spite of the fact that you’re giving the finger to your circadian rhythms. Late at night, with no purpose, the coffee just sticks in your stomach and makes you wonder whether it was a good idea to drink it in the first place (it was) and if it was a good idea to stay up as late as you have (it probably wasn’t). There are exceptions to this rule. You can drink crap coffee at night on the go, but that seems to fall into a category of its own. It’s about drinking it when there’s nothing to do and you have to come face to face with the coffee. It has to slosh around in your belly and make you think and talk in the way that you only can when you’re caffeinated and it’s late. Not terribly late a few weeks ago a friend and I visited Vesta Lunch, the Bathurst and Dupont landmark that consists of a single dining counter and a long window. It’s been likened to something out of an Edward Hopper painting so many times it should to be illegal to do so (although I would be guilty of no fewer than five counts of this new crime). We sat at the counter and spoke for a while with the kindly older lady and sarcastic middle aged man who were on shift. We went through one cup of coffee, then another. It was neither spectacular nor terrible — just exactly right. After the first cup, a pair of men came in. One was very loudly airing some terrible opinions about women. On our way out, we approached him and I told him his facts were wrong and his ideas were deplorable. I would’ve spoken to him anyway, as I hope anyone would, but I’d like to think that those two cups made it even more imperative. In the world of crap coffee, there’s no room for crap thinking.
OCTOBER ,
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On the night shift Meeting students who work late Article by OLIVIA FORSYTH-SELLS | Photos by BERNARDA GOSPIC & DAN SELJAK
A
fter campus shuts down, and students begrudgingly bundle up and begin the walk home from their evening classes, there are people who are just getting ready to start their work day. The Varsity interviewed two students whose jobs reveal both the excitement and the drudgery that comes with working at night: Matthew Wall, a bar back at an infamous Toronto nightclub, and Johnathan Warda, who works as a front-desk attendant at Woodsworth College Residence. They revealed why they do what they do, when no one else wants to do it.
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I spoke with Matthew Wall to see why he spends his weekend evenings carrying a bus bin on his head. An Anthropology and Sociology student, in his graduating year, Wall is taking full advantage of his nocturnal sleep schedule and working a very different 9–5.
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MW: To some extent, I think it does, as I am able to work to pay rent, bills, and for food working three nights a week. I am, however, not an especially diligent student as it is.
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TV: What’s your sleep schedule?
MW: Erratic at best, but this is an issue that I’ve always struggled with. Starting my workday at 9 pm as opposed to 9 am is a lot easier for me, but perhaps this is just an issue of discipline.
TV: If you could make the same money working 9–5, would you? Why or why not? MW: If this means working a workweek 9–5 for the same money I make in three night shifts, absolutely not. Free weeks allows me to work on projects in a continuous manner, the spare time is worth the cost to my sense of self-respect.
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TV: Does it give you an edge in school? Why or why not?
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MW: I usually work only Friday, Saturday and Sunday, leaving me the rest of the week for school and other pursuits, which I appreciate. However, my social life suffers as I head to work when most people are attempting to distance themselves from it.
TV: It is hard to maintain relationships considering your work schedule?
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TV: It seems as though people who work late night-hours mostly complain that drunk people cause the majority of problems. Is there anything else about your job that makes it different from people who work in the daytime?
industry would probably be unsettling to most people — I have dealt with a variety of bodily emissions, violent customers and some of the strangest co-workers imaginable. Standing on the other side of the fence gives you some cold, clinical detachment in the analysis of human behavior in the club space. I think I also get a rare glance at the layers of veneer that hospitality spaces maintain — plush curtains and lavishly decorated booths serve to cover up leaking pipes, broken dishwashers and malfunctioning ice machines.
MW: It hasn’t ever presented itself as I arrive at Woodsworth College an issue, there are 416-923-3386 times at which I Residence at noon on a sunny Tueshave regretted not being able to join day afternoon to sit down with the drgriffith@rogers.com friends on nights out but it has never well-dressed Johnathan Warna, 25 Charles ST.Wand ask him about his time mindbeen a major impediment. Toronto ON M4Y 2R4 ing the front desk of Woodsworth TV: Do you think you get a different at a very different time of the day. BLOOR ST. W. Warda supports his studies in Hisexperience of the city than sometory and Employment Relations by one who works 9–5? CHARLES ST. W. spending many of his nights and Our Office MW: My experience of Toronto very early mornings tending to through the lens of the hospitality wild first-year students. YONGE ST.
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Matthew Wall: I work as a barback at a nightclub in the Queen and Bathurst neighbourhood — I am essentially a bartender’s assistant, setting up and stripping down the bar as well as assisting them in their duties throughout the night. My shift typically starts at 9 pm and ends at 3.30 in the morning.
BAY ST.
TV: What is the nature of your job, when does it start and when does it end?
“MY EXPERIENCE OF TORONTO THROUGH THE LENS OF THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY WOULD PROBABLY BE UNSETTLING TO MOST PEOPLE — I HAVE DEALT WITH A VARIETY OF BODILY EMISSIONS, VIOLENT CUSTOMERS AND SOME OF THE STRANGEST CO‒WORKERS IMAGINABLE.” The Varsity: So what are your shifts like? Johnathan Warda: We usually work three or four shifts a week. Security shifts from 7–11 pm, 11 pm–3 am, 12–4 am, 4–8 am. Those are what we call the hell shifts. TV: What is the one story you tell all your friends at parties about your job? JW: The first year froshees, who come in drunk out of their mind, take half an hour to try and convince you that they aren’t drunk. That definitely keeps the night entertaining. They always tell us not to tell their moms or their profs that they were drunk… It’s cute when they think, like high school, that the administration cares what you do in your free time.
why the government was watching her. She kept going on then called me a Communist. There was another man who walked into the building and kept staring at me and telling my female colleague how nice she was. He kept trying to make me push him, he said that he would really enjoy it if I pushed him out. It’s creepy when you’re in the situation, but afterwards we always laugh. TV: At that point did you actually feel threatened?
TV: Have you had any nightmares dealing with people?
JW: I didn’t personally, I was more so feeling protective of her [Warda’s female colleague]. We were calling campus police non-emergency, and it took over 15 minutes to get through. I just kept saying “the cops are coming” and he looked at me knowing they didn’t get the line yet. Then we called the actual emergency line and it took them a few minutes to pick up as well.
JW: There’s a lot of traffic from the street at this residence location. During the Olympics once this lady walked in, and she asked me
TV: What is your sleep schedule like? Is it hard to switch back and forth? Does it affect your personal or social life?
JW: It definitely does because we don’t have a set schedule, it’s not even rotating, it’s different all the time based on peoples’ changing availabilities. Then midterms and exams change things a lot too. Some weeks are worse than others, and it makes it difficult planning things. For example, if I want to go out on Saturday, but I have to work 4–8 am on Sunday. It’s not really realistic to go out and stay up for it.
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TV: Do you like working at night? JW: It’s a simple job, you get to see a lot of people coming in and out, and its not demanding so you can do school work. But sometimes I feel like it would be nice to have a work study job with a more flexible schedule. TV: Do you feel like you get to see different version of campus? JW: For the first two years I lived on campus and my job was in my basement. But now that I’ve moved, if I am leaving work at night its interesting to see students in a totally different mental space. You see people with their big backpacks who are commuting. It’s more than just kids getting drunk between residences.
~
Whether the benefit is financial, time-management, convenience, or simply the nature of the job, people who make a living while you are dreaming seem to have one thing in common: they don’t mind staying awake, listening to the quiet of the city, and seeing the best walks of shame available on our beloved streets. They get to see a world we either don’t see at all, or forget the next morning when the headache fully sets in. So, next time you run into a cabby, barback, night patrol, or 24-hour attendant, wave to them and smile, because they see you and the city at times generally reserved for faint memories.
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JOHNATHAN WARDA
OCTOBER ,
9
Lighting the
candles How observing the Jewish Sabbath can define your Friday nights Article by Brigit Katz | Photo by Bernarda Gospic
T
he Friday afternoons of my childhood would unfold in almost exactly the same way every week. After we came home from school, my brother and I would sit in front of the TV, mouths gaping slightly, completely engrossed in whatever program we happened to be watching. Every now and then we would be jolted from our cartoon-induced stupor by a loud clanging in the kitchen, where my mother had jerked an elusive pot free from the back of the cupboard as she went about making dinner. My father would come home much earlier than he normally would, more often than not looking slightly harried, and head straight to the phone to put in one last call to his secretary before the weekend. As the sunlight began to dissipate and darkness fell, my mother would call out, “OK everyone, I’m lighting the candles!” Then, suddenly, the TV would be turned off, the stove shut, the phone hung up. I would wander into our living room and watch as my mother struck a match and lit two candles that had been placed in a pair of slender, silver candlesticks. She would slowly wave her hands over the fire three times, cover her eyes, and say the blessing that I had heard so many times before: “Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to light the Sabbath candles.” For as long as I can remember, these candles, their dancing flames piercing the newly descended darkness, have served as a reminder that Friday nights are special, different from every other night of the week. According to the Jewish calendar, each new day begins at sundown, and Friday nights mark the beginning of the Sabbath, or Shabbat, as it is called in Hebrew. Since the time of the ancient Israelites, Shabbat has been considered the holiest day of the week. In modern times, many practicing Jews — including my family and I — honour Shabbat by adhering to a number of prohibitions and precepts. Between Friday evening and Saturday evening, we don’t use technology, conduct business, write, or drive. We eat special meals, say prayers, light candles, and recite blessings. When I was younger, I never gave much thought to the temporary suspension of regular activity that I experienced each week between sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday; I didn’t have to. I had been observing Shabbat for my entire life, as had most of my friends. I went to a private Jewish school, which ended earlier than usual on Friday afternoons to ensure that its students could get home before dusk. Observing Shabbat was routine and uncomplicated, and I was able to go about it as though it was simply a matter of course. When I arrived at U of T, I was submerged, essentially for the first time, in an environment where my lifestyle was something of an anomaly. I quickly realized to a greater extent than I ever had before that for one day each week my life is dictated by the trajectory of the sun and the steady approach of nightfall. Since entering university, my Friday afternoons have often felt like a race against the clock, a frenzied effort to cram as much as possible into a truncated day. I must always be sure to make sufficient progress on essays, assignments, proposals, and projects before the sun begins to set, which in winter can happen as early as 4.30 pm. I rush to leave campus, even if I haven’t finished searching article databases or collecting books from the library stacks, just to make sure that I arrive home before dusk. I am always surprised at the extent to which my observance of Shabbat, my relatively brief disappearance from the flux of secular life, can set me apart from my peers. To most of my university friends, Friday nights are an opportunity to usher in the weekend, to let off steam after an intense week of classes, papers, and tests. They spend their Friday nights at parties and in bars, and there is rarely a time that I do not wish I could join them. But I have always declined the invitations to movie marathons and pub-crawls, girls’ nights and birthday parties. Instead, I spend my Friday nights at home, eating dinner with my family, reading books, and more often than not, going to bed early. I would be lying if I said that I have never considered giving up on my observance of Shabbat and freeing myself from all the challenges and hassles that come with it. I am not a particularly devout person, nor even really a “spiritual” one, but Shabbat is important to me. It is important to me for reasons that I do not completely understand and cannot entirely articulate, other than that it has somehow become an integral part of my identity as a Jewish person. I am content to put things on hold each week between the bookends of two sunsets, to stay at home on Friday nights, watching as the smoke from the Shabbat candles disappears into the darkness.
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THE VARSITY MAGAZINE
Taking the Blue Night Article by Murad Hemmadi | Photos by Rémi Carreiro
I detach myself regretfully from the birthday celebration at The Crawford. I’ve got an early start tomorrow, and I’ve got a long trip home yet.
You’d think with all the soon-to-be drunken revellers headed for the club strip on College Street on a Friday night that the streetcar would be pretty frequent. You’d be wrong. The 506 Carlton is one of a handful of streetcar lines that runs all-night, but that doesn’t mean it shows up often.
I’ve now let two Blue Night buses go past without attempting to board. The TTC is at its busiest at two very different times: weekday mornings post8 am and Friday nights post-2 am. At these times, the chance of acquiring enough space to stretch out your arms and read is minimal; the odds of getting a seat are close to none. My care in acquiring a transfer turns out to be unnecessary — there are far too many people getting on for the driver to check each fare.
At Bloor Street, a flood of people depart, and I manage to make my way to the area near the back door — my favorite spot on a bus. Sure, it means I have to move every time more than one person tries to get out that way, but it means I stay awake and that I don’t have to squeeze up every time someone gets on.
I hike back to street level. It looks like it’s going to be another night on the “vomit comet,” the entirely appropriate moniker for the Yonge Street Blue Night bus. Luckily, I’ve remembered to grab a transfer.
I should have stayed at the front. Someone in the back is smoking a joint, and the total lack of ventilation in the bus means the smell is making my head hurt. It doesn’t help that one of his friends is shouting “Oh my god!” every so often.
I’m trying to make it up to Sheppard Avenue, so I can head east to my North York neighborhood. That’s only one major intersection north of where I’m standing, shivering outside the gas station that faces York Mills subway station. I seriously consider walking the two-odd kilometers between the two streets, just to keep myself warm and alleviate the boredom of standing by the side of the road waiting for a bus.
I finally make it on to the TTC network. There’s the usual Friday-night crew of slightly-sloshed youngsters and grizzled nightlife vets.
I embark at College Station, intending to catch the last northbound train. I make it through the station doors, a good sign, since it suggests that the station — and therefore the trains — are still in service. I get down to the platform and spend a moment considering whether or not I’m on the right one. A quick check (the train is always on your left on TTC platforms) tells me this is indeed the northbound track. So where’s the train? The sight of a light coming down the tunnel makes me think I’ve just made it, but it turns out to be a maintenance engine. Turns out, the last northbound train left at 1.50.
The bus driver has gotten wind of the smoker (literally — the smell of the weed hangs in the air, mixing with the delightful notes of throw-up that are a Blue Night mainstay), and he’s not having it. He pulls the bus over to the sidewalk and radios the dispatcher. Soon enough, two Transport Enforcement units arrive and herd us all off the bus somewhere just north of St. Clair.
Turns out the second bus I boarded was a 320A, which only goes as far as York Mills Road. I’m forced to disembark short of my destination for the second time.
The next bus promptly arrives, and I make it on relatively unscathed. I’m relieved; I’ve had more than enough transit excitement for one night.
There’s a group of people singing lustily in Spanish on this bus. There are six of them, three couples clearly returning from a night on the town. At least one member of the party is asleep, oblivious to his companions’ music making. One of the women — clearly the “la bonita” of the song — is twirling in the space behind the back door of the bus. Eventually the happy group tumbles out, the sleeping member carried out by his fellows. A bus finally arrives. Turns out its another 320A though, so I’m joined by another set of weary and barely-conscious revelers.
Another two bus-loads are deposited by the side of the road before a regular 320 that will take me past York Mills finally arrives.
I tumble into bed, utterly exhausted. My usual hour-long commute has turned into an epic threehour quest for home. Just another night on the Blue Night bus.
I end my TTC adventure by stepping off the bus at the nearest stop to home. I’ve been on the transit network nearly two hours at this point.
I finally make it to Sheppard. The last Sheppard train eastbound leaves at a quarter-past two, so its long gone. I huddle behind a planter at the stop and wait for the 385 Blue Night bus. It arrives within a couple of minutes, mercifully half-empty.
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Good fath
12
THE VARSITY MAGAZINE
hers,
bad characters
How does one go from biker in Pakistan to financial analyst in Canada? The story starts one night in the hills… Article by ELIZABETH HAQ | Illustration by ANAMARIJA KOROLJ
T
hrough a boombox on a frigid night in the mountains of northern Pakistan, in a subdivision of Rawalpindi District called Murree, John, Paul, George, and Ringo tell a boy he’s gonna carry that weight for a long time. A group of young men dressed in faded leather jackets and multiple pairs of socks mount 1978 Kawasakis. They are all about 19 years old. The engines roar, they zoom along in the snow, and never giving voice to the urgency they feel. A thick night wraps around the snow-capped peaks as the group tackles dirt roads that veer left and right without warning. If they make a wrong turn, there’s nowhere to go but off the side of the mountain, a floating pathway without a guardrail. They’re riding without brakes.
Photographic documentation was not high on the list of priorities at the time. So my father exists in a hiccup of reality, the product of the tales spun by those around him.
~
Ten years after that night journey, my mother will visit Pakistan. They will meet, my father will marry her, and he’ll board a plane that will fly him to her home in Toronto. My mother says during those early days in Canada, my father was fond of dining out and of expensive department-store sweaters. My grandma tells me that my father would accompany her to the butcher on Bathurst and the two of them would make dinner for the whole family — these times with her beloved son-in-law seem etched in the old woman’s memory. My grandfather tells me that he was fascinated when my father got his Canadian driver’s license
EVERYONE HAS A STORY ABOUT MY DAD. AS A KID I GENUINELY THOUGHT HE WAS A SPY, FOR ALL THE DAZZLING ESTIMATIONS AND ASSUMPTIONS THAT CLUNG TO HIM LIKE THE SMOKE FROM HIS CIGARETTES. Somewhere amidst the wreckage of all this natural wonder, there’s a campsite that is a refuge from responsibility and the passage of time. On this night trip, as six men on four motorcycles journey towards it, they pass a shepherd minding a herd of goats and decide to steal one to eat for dinner. As the goat bleats loudly, one of the boys wraps the animal’s legs around his shoulders. Then they’re off into the night again. One of these men is my father. He is the eldest son in a culture that both unabashedly adores and heavily burdens eldest sons. He excels at math and science — a man of numbers and logic. He is the most educated of his siblings. During his childhood, his family lived in a small village with mango trees, cows, and tongas. His father is often away in foreign countries and sends back money to support the family. While he’s away, it’s my father’s responsibility to look after things. From a young age he is known as a man of few words. Whether negotiating the twists of a mountain road or riding to the extreme northern limit of Pakistan just beside the border with China, my father and his friends operate as a pack. They attend the same colleges and parties. They are as comfortable with one another’s families as they are with their own, and while they’ve garnered various reputations, inciting both admiration and admonishment depending on who you ask, their recklessness is complemented by an ardent devotion to those families. On the city streets of Pindi, as it’s called, young men in leather and denim (“Jimmy Dean jeans,” as my mother describes them) are often seen giving rides to their mothers and sisters; beautiful women with almond eyes and dark waterfalls of hair side-saddling Yamahas in salwar-kameez. Pictures of my father from these times supposedly exist, but I’ve never seen them. If they do, there are very few.
and immediately conquered the Don Valley Parkway without a second thought, even though he had never ever seen a roadway that wide or fast-moving before. And though I don’t have any proof, my mother says that when I was born, my father frantically called everyone he could remember a number for and shouted, “I have a daughter!! Do you hear me?! A daughter!!” I don’t believe I’ve ever witnessed him in such a state of excitement. Everyone has a story about my dad. As a kid I genuinely thought he was a spy, for all the dazzling estimations and assumptions that clung to him like the smoke from his cigarettes. But as the years progress, like all men of his age with families and bills and memories, he has been contained within a cocoon. He relishes stability and takes pride in endurance. It is now enough for him to have a home to return to every night, the same destination to set out from every morning. Unlike many new immigrants, my father was able to secure a job in his field almost immediately after arriving in the country. Finance and numbers have always come naturally to him, and he ebbed and flowed his way upwards with ease. He always maintained an untouchable sense of selfassurance; I had never seen him break a sweat, much less treat something as involved as a successful career as anything more than a side note. Like every family, mine has survived countless threats to its existence. In 2009 when the economy tanked, my father faced professional uncertainty together with unprecedented personal anguish. His sense of higher purpose seemed compromised by his dismissal. I watched him combat the rigors of applications and interviews and theorized, on my own, that the entire process must have been incredibly demeaning for
him; he had to prove he was worthy of contributing to the country he had loved for the better part of his life. But he never spoke of it in any detail at all. My father does not maliciously withhold his thoughts and feelings: he believes that what has occurred in the past escapes definition by the very fact of being over. And though I understand this, I can’t accept it. Because it’s terrifying to love someone that you don’t really know. But the silences of fathers and daughters who exist on separate planes are well-documented. In this grey space we negotiate daily, the absence of knowledge becomes knowledge itself. So in the wake of yet another outsider’s tale of a man to whom I owe my life’s blood, I’m always left wondering what scenes are lodged inside my father’s brain; the exact nature of the multitudes he contains. Which mountain meant the most, dad? What were you drinking? Were you scared? Did you think you’d have kids? Were you hoping to fall in love? Fathers are weird. They are paradoxical, near-mythical creatures wading through the currents of mundane reality. With one toe dipped in the fantastic, they occupy a space just outside of what’s familiar. They seem to be part of some larger narrative; the ordinary person’s claim to a kind of literary magnificence. But in order to be a good father, you have to be a bad character. A father has to emerge out of the cyclone of his own fears and desires and flaws, he has to forgo the romance of being his own person. Families often depend on it and anything less is inadequate. Anything less is painful. As it goes, my father is neither a bad nor a boring character. Entrenched in mystery, infused with legend, he’s a brick wall that repels both deconstruction and demolition. It seems that everything I know about him is a story about best friends on motorcycles in the mountains, whispers of what half of me might be. But sometimes he will laugh so hard that tears well up in his eyes and a flash of that vital recklessness will burn just behind them. At times he’ll yell and it seems that the cocoon is temporarily shattered. On the best occasions, he’ll crane his neck while driving in order to admire a motorcycle passing by and tell me he used to ride those. In these half-moments, a lifetime’s worth of murky confusion is punctuated by a gasp of perception. Incredibly, succinctly; imagination supersedes reality. I see him for not only what he was, but what he must be now. These are moments when time is blocked and it’s just motorcycles, mountains, cosmic murmurs. The stories are enough.
~
The landscape sprawls and juts skyward, an assault on the senses in a country famed for its suffocating cityscapes and punishing summers. Just up ahead there’s a camp where young people from all over Rawalpindi District gather, for food and drink and sometimes love. Here, on a cruelly cold night in 1978, you may find a man with a dark, thick mustache. He smiles without reservation and wears the same brown leather bomber that now hangs in my closet. As if perceived through a frosted window, he will look fragile. Without warning, he’s likely to ride downhill through narrow passageways. The man is my father, and the mountains of Murree belong to him.
OCTOBER ,
13
A
“ 14
THE VARSITY MAGAZINE
tear gas fog police officers armed to the teeth a woman digs through the trash cars go by every which way and the awful asthma trees the city is doomed to disappear it’s the world, they tell me don’t worry it’s the year 1979” —Nicanor Parra, “1979”
By night in Santiago Article by GRAEME MYERS | Illustrations by WENDY GU
I. Santiago & Arrivals
No one should be surprised if the writer feels an unbearable isolation, similar to illness, as he takes his first steps into that new space. If we imagine the arrival: stepping off the plane, smog-obscured mountains encircling him, 70 or so taxi drivers each struggling, swearing and singing in Spanish to get a foreigner into their car. It’s wonderful, entering to such a reception. Everything seems to begin just as it should. But a problem presents itself: as a dream and this new reality clash, the audience realizes that nothing is as it was expected to be. And with the glimpse of the first water-cannon-equipped police truck, Santiago begins.
I responded to her in my mind, saying that half the Chilean work force earns the minimum wage, equivalent to 386 American dollars a month. Numerous surveys rank Chile as one of the most economically unequal societies in the world.
~
But it’s true, some people do make a lot of money. Las Condes, La Reina, Los Dominicos. These neighbourhoods radiate wealth, with European-style villa homes, and Parisian street lamps lining the wide, empty streets. These places make up one Santiago. They have clean air, nice cars, sprawling malls and private security. They are the “triumph” of the “Miracle of Chile,” as Milton Friedman called
THE TEAR GAS BURNS, THOUGH MOST STUDENTS HAVE OLD, FADED GAS MASKS. EVENTUALLY POLICE COME IN ON FOOT, WITH RIOT SHIELDS. MY FRIEND AND I HIDE IN A HOT DOG SHOP AND LEAVE THROUGH THE BACK DOOR, WHICH LEADS TO AN ALLEY. II. Santiago & Fear
To write about fear is a very strange thing, akin to purposefully revisiting a place that you would prefer to forget, to wandering through the alleys of time. It is to translate memory, and link the events of that specific past with those of the present. But I shouldn’t digress too far from the story. It starts with a copy of Antipoemas, by the renowned Chilean poet Nicanor Parra, tucked into my jacket pocket as I step out the gate of my rundown, two-storey building, a 15-minute walk from the Plaza de Armas and the center of Santiago de Chile.
~
As I walked on that first night, past dogs barking in the alleys, I retreated into my thoughts, realizing what it means to be lost, with no plans, no commitments and no one. So I went towards the city center and looked around me, at the buildings I knew from books and poems that were being transformed from ideas into places. Spaces are always a combination of the two — how much of either depends on the person walking through them. As my roommate said that first day, “People here make so much money, so why don’t they do anything about the street dogs?” She worked in an upperclass part of Santiago, teaching English to business people.
it, the period of praised free market reorientation in the 1970s and 1980s, which led to large economic growth — for the upper classes at least. Chile’s economy actually grew just one per cent total between 1973 and 1989. But I knew all that before I arrived. So as I walked, on that first night, past posters that declared “Nationalize the Lithium!” and “Profit out of Education!” the streets served as both reminders of and introductions to the vast polarization of Chile, to the conflicted feelings that each building, each statue and each flag conjure up amongst the different Santiagos, forced together in that space between the mountains.
III. Santiago & the Past
The year is 1970. Salvador Allende, a Marxist and head of the Chilean leftist coalition Popular Unity, comes to power in an election in which he wins 36.63 per cent of the vote. He is then, due to the lack of an absolute majority, confirmed president by a vote in the Chilean Congress. The CIA spends $425,000 on an anti-Allende campaign during the election, while the KGB spends $400,000 on behalf of Popular Unity. Allende becomes the first democratically-elected Marxist president in Latin America.
I walk through Plaza Italia, where the Mapocho River used to fork before it was diverted. I see all of the apartments, dark now because it’s very late, towering over the symphony hall and the 24-hour cigarette stands. Julio, from Chilean-writer Alejandro Zambra’s Bonsai, lives in one of these apartments, I think to myself. A police truck sits in the square. As Zambra said, “I grew up in a dictatorship, I said my first words in a dictatorship, I read my first books in a dictatorship.” The memories of an entire generation linger, curled up beside the dogs licking crumbs off the sidewalk.
~
The year is 1973. In the March parliamentary elections, Allende’s coalition increases its share of the vote to 44.11 per cent, but is faced by a majority right-wing opposition with CIA support. On September 11, a military coup takes place, led by General Augusto Pinochet. The military declares control of the country, but Allende refuses to resign, and broadcasts a final message on national radio. When the military breaks into the presidential palace, Allende is found dead, having committed suicide. Over the next 17 years, more than 40,000 people will be kidnapped and tortured, killed or “disappeared” by the dictatorship.
~
“The first country in the world to make that momentous break with the past — away from socialism and extreme state capitalism toward more market-oriented structures and policies — was not Deng Xiaoping’s China or Margaret Thatcher’s Britain in the late 1970s, Ronald Reagan’s United States in 1981, or any other country in Latin America or elsewhere. It was Pinochet’s Chile in 1975,” Stanford’s Hoover Institute gushed in a 2007 report, praising Pinochet and his advisers. The argument is based in the idea that the market is pure, that economic freedom is the most important kind of freedom — more important than democracy.
~
The year is 1982. Chile has just fallen into the worst banking crisis in its history. The Pinochet government intervenes in the banking system, after implementing radical free market policies for the previous nine years, and ends up controlling more of the economy than the democratic government that had preceded it. From 1975 to 1982 the Chilean foreign debt rose from the equivalent of $5.3 billion to $17 billion, caused by the excess borrowing of private companies unable to pay their loans. The military government backed their debts, despite mass poverty.
~
The year is 2012 and it is night as I walk towards the Plaza de Armas and the presidential palace, with this history hanging on the walls around me. Statues still stand in honour of members of the regime, while its far-right economic ideology (despite both
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breeding and being bred out of inequality) has been idealized and adopted by much of the world. So with every student rally that struggles to change the massively privatized education system, and every Pinochet memorial that draws neo-Nazis out of the cracks, this history is made new again, and new violence clogs the streets.
IV. Santiago & Dionysus
Another night I was walking alone at around 2 am in Barrio Yungay, one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Santiago, and I was afraid. After buying a beer from a guy in an alley (beer is cheaper than bread, after all), I saw some graffiti that read as follows: “Interviewer: What bores you? B: Empty discourse from the left. I expect it from the right.” I went back the next day to try and find it. Worn grey brick stared back at me like a mirror that reflected frozen sand. Those late night phrases had either left before I could find them again or hadn’t arrived yet.
~
The year is 1990. The percentage of the population living below the poverty line is about 40 per cent, down from 50 per cent in 1983 and 45 per cent in 1987. After a referendum on his leadership in 1988, Pinochet steps down and a new democratic government is sworn in. Pinochet hands over power, after passing a law guaranteeing amnesty for most of the military, having reached an agreement to remain Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces (as well as “Senator for Life”), and attempted to preserve his economic model by making it more difficult to change the constitution. Patricio Aylwin, a Christian Democrat who opposed Allende, becomes the new president of the Republic. After the return to democracy, there will be three Truth and Reconciliation Commission reports released in an attempt to come to terms with the abuses of the military dictatorship.
V. Santiago & the Present
It’s now August, 2012. Universities have just returned from winter break. The student protests resume today, with the biggest demonstrations planned in months. I walk along La Alameda, the biggest street in Santiago, with a friend and enter the protest area. The towering buildings and
landscaped boulevards reflect the new wealth of Santiago: a wealth that presents itself in the architecture, in the billboards and in the private universities, but which remains out of reach for the majority. In this society, to get a university degree, poor students find themselves with debts equal to the cost of an apartment, while the elite need not share their higher-than-first-world standard of living. This disparity will continue, under the political class of either the mainstream left or right. But the militarized police break up my thoughts, as armoured trucks (purchased from Apartheid-era South Africa), firing water cannons and shooting tear gas, drive towards us. We run back and forth to try not to get hit. The tear gas burns, though most students have old, faded gas masks. Eventually police come in on foot, with riot shields. My friend and I hide in a hot dog shop and leave through the back door, which leads to an alley.
~
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Under the Pinochet regime, large foreign companies were those who profited most from the new economic “freedom.” By exploiting labour through banning unions, privatizing all levels of education, and cutting corporate taxes, Pinochet allowed the means of the upper classes in Chile to grow while, at the expense of the majority, foreign businesses took the country’s natural resource-based wealth back to their shareholders. The democratic governments that have followed have done little to change this, and even ostensibly center-left governments have generally adopted the capitalist programs of the Pinochet years. Pinochet’s 1980 constitution is still in place, though small parts of it were finally amended in 2005.
~
One of the groups that has profited the most from these business-favouring conditions has been the Canadian mining giant, Barrick Gold. Driving through the Atacama Desert, a different night, I see spray painted slogans on rocks beside the highway, proclaiming “Barrick Out” next to small shrines to Jesus. Nostalgia for the Light, a documentary by Patricio Guzman, explores these same deserts, showing the astronomy community, with its telescopes exploring the stars and the past, contrasted with groups of mothers, still searching for their sons’ bodies amongst the rocks where Pinochet hid many of his victims. The copper mines are here as well, constant reminders that while change may have come, it has not been nearly enough. The Pascua Lama project (a Barrick mine that produces gold, silver, and copper) is just one example of the controversies found in Chile, that follow Barrick Gold wherever it goes. The mine is in the Andes, occupying traditional indigenous land. The government did not consult the inhabitants at the project’s beginning and has been known to use
the “special forces” to clear protesters from mining sites or pipeline routes. Pascua Lama has been particularly divisive, as activists and scientists claim it is extremely harmful to the environment, In 2010, the Atacama Environmental Authorities began the process of punishing Barrick Gold for illegally damaging the glaciers and rivers and for breaching the health standards of the local Environmental Qualification Resolution. As Sergio Campusano Vilches, president of an indigenous ecological group explains, “Our Community was intentionally ignored by the State of Chile during the approval process for the Pascua Lama project because we oppose mega-mining development within our lands. This has to be recognized and amended. We sincerely hope we can find the justice that was denied to us in our own country.” He highlights the largest problem with the compromise to reach democracy: it came at too high a price, allowing large corporations to maintain influence and power. The Truth and Reconciliation Committees have not sufficiently dealt with the most destructive legacy of the dictatorship; its economics, which continue today.
VI. Santiago & Apollo
In a 2010 interview with The Globe & Mail, Peter Munk, founder and chairman of Barrick Gold, stated, “It is your obligation to give back as much as you have taken from a country… I’ve made some money and I wish to give it back.” As the Globe says, there are “two prongs of Mr. Munk’s philanthropic vision: stay focused and support Canada’s role on the world stage.” The interview was conducted in the wake of his $35 million donation to the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. The university has been criticized at length for the lack of transparency in its agreement with Munk, and Munk himself has been accused of exercising outsize influence. Barrick Gold has been under investigation in numerous countries for human rights abuses, environmental destruction and involvement in corruption. But the University of Toronto knows all this. In fact, they profit from it, owning $1,206,000 worth of Barrick Gold stock as of March 31, 2012. It’s just one part of their investment plan, which includes companies such as Imperial Oil, El Dorado Gold, and Enbridge. U of T claims that it cares about inclusivity. It presents itself as an environmentally, socially conscious institution, which offers education not just for the few that can afford it. But it does these things while actively supporting and being supported by companies, like Barrick, that take advantage of people around the world. While Chile continues to have some of the highest post-secondary fees in relation to the average income, the University of Toronto accepts Barrick’s and Peter Munk’s money — earned in an economic system which excludes the majority of the Chilean population — contradicting many of the university’s professed values.
~
So while Peter Munk buys himself a legacy, the problems of all the different Santiagos still exist. To the south the houses appear entirely different; these are the traditional neighbourhoods of the poor, places where Pinochet did absolutely nothing to encourage development. The walls and roofs are cracking, while a 20-minute subway ride away sit mansions, protected by the police and security forces, who
CONTINUED PG 18
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Beware of the murder bar Don’t let lurking terror ruin a night out Article by DAN SELJAK | Illustration by MINHEE BAE
Y
ou find yourself lost in the wilds of Toronto with a couple of friends. Far from campus, you and your buddies decide that you wouldn’t mind a little light refreshment. Spotting what appears to be a dive bar, you head inside to order a pint or two. But the moment you cross the threshold, you notice that something is amiss. You can’t put your finger on it, but there’s a general malaise, a lingering sense of anger in the air. Perhaps it’s the bylaw-infringing smell of tobacco smoke, or that the bartender is drunker than any of the patrons, or perhaps it’s that a number of customers are asleep or crying. Whatever it is, your adrenaline starts pumping and your sphincter tightens into a knot. You have just stepped into a murder bar. This is quite different than your average dive bar. Dive bars are an important and healthy part of any neighbourhood dynamic — they are a vanguard against the all-consuming forces of gentrification — a sign that a neighbourhood still has some balance in regards to mixed income. After all, not every bar can serve seven-dollar pints of local craft brew and artisanal cocktails. A murder bar is a far more insidious beast. Often located near mental health facilities, probation offices, or homeless shelters, murder bars are almost predatory in nature. Proprietors eschew any kind of moral standard in favour of profiting off the mentally ill, the desperate, or whoever else wanders into their web of misery and alcohol. Entering one, you get the distinct sense you may not leave in one piece. Some murder bars are deceitful in nature. I’ve seen one that disguises itself as a karaoke bar, hiding its true nature behind images of pop music and joyous sing-a-longs. It is always empty, but if a person tries to enter, they are shooed out angrily with the words “Private party, private party!” as strange noises and cigarette smoke emanate from the back room, a mysterious place guarded by a ratty looking curtain. I have been tempted to return, to challenge those gatekeepers and to explore the secrets of the mysterious back rooms, but I worry that I would be lost forever to its dark secrets. Others are parasitic. In Parkdale I encountered a bar that was once a gourmet Eastern European restaurant. When ownership changed hands in the late 2000s, a murder bar grew from its inside and burst out like a booze-infused variation of the movie Alien. When I went — seeking cabbage rolls, as is the custom
of my people — the only sign of its former glory were photos of Belgrade on the wall. The windows were painted black, though poor workmanship and age allowed an eerie orange mosaic glow to filter though the cracks and shoddy brushstrokes. I left quickly. I did not order any cabbage rolls. These bars exist, dear reader, and if you find yourself in one, I would advise you to act as if everything is perfectly natural, and
mimic the actions and behaviours of the other patrons. Do not make any sudden or unexpected movements. When startled, a murder bar’s own customers act as antibodies and will attempt to expel any outsiders. Be ever vigilant, browse yelp regularly, and learn to recognize warning signs, such as covered windows, the flagrant disobedience of indoor smoking bylaws, and an ever-present malicious aura.
CONTINUED FROM “SANTIAGO” PG 16
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seem to have a greater presence in these neighbourhoods. Peter Munk has taken much from Chile, but he is not concerned with giving back — at least not to Chileans anyway. Of all of Canada’s qualities, economic freedom is clearly at the top of his list to “spread,” as illustrated by a statement he made in 1996, where he praised Pinochet for “transforming Chile from a wealth-destroying socialist state to a capital-friendly model that is being copied around the world.” Munk is quoted as saying about Pinochet’s human-rights abuses on anti-Munk website munkoutofuoft: “They can put people in jail, I have no comment on that, I think that may be true…I think [the end justifies the means] because it brought wealth to an enormous number of people. If you ask somebody who is in jail, he’ll say no. But that’s the wonderful thing about our world; we can have the freedom to disagree.” Today, those who disagree are greeted with tear gas and water cannons. Under Pinochet, they were welcomed with worse.
VII. Santiago & A Dream of Franz Kafka “it all came down to nothing & of nothing, there is very little left” —Nicanor Parra, “A Resounding Zero”
~
On my last night I wonder, where does all of this leave us? While the student movement may be
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flawed, it is at least understandably so. As the only group that presents any hope for a different future, it is filled with competing thoughts, ideologies and factions. It is born out of a lack of other options. When politicians and universities alike can be paid and influenced by the likes of Barrick Gold, when elected leaders change little or nothing, the only democracy that exists is found in the street, the sole place where people can declare that it is not okay for us to continue on this path, for one society to slide forward while exploiting another, for one’s education to be financed while another’s is not. And so I walk and think of Franz Kafka because he saw modernity for what it was, long ago. I meet him in an alley and he nods his head to me, before walking off in the rain. I go the other direction.
Capturing darkness Cinema’s evolving treatment of night Article by EMMA FOX | Illustrations by JANICE LIU
I
n early cinema, night was a creation. Cameras couldn’t shoot outside without daylight, so the typical solution would be to use “Day For Night” techniques: darkening a shot by under-exposing it or using a blue filter on the lens. The sole requirement was to be believable to the viewer. Moviemaking, after all, is just a big ruse. When shooting at night became possible, night became an area of potential for films; not only as a context, but as a subject unto itself, one to be variously explored, felt out and framed. It is worth asking, case by case, why a film foregrounds night in the specific way that it does. Why is night needed? Some films have such a need for darkness that if you removed the night from them, all you would have is a slow evening followed by a rough morning, and you wouldn’t know why.
The Big Sleep, 1946 Depictions of the threatening night eventually took on human features. Sex, booze, blackmail, murder, Los Angeles — these are some things you can find inside the brown paper baggy of film noir, passed around in Hollywood in the 1940s by directors like Howard Hawks. In his film The Big Sleep, night is the time for vice, and the waking hours for stock characters such as the mobster and the sexually deviant blond. Metaphorically, this world is the corrupt and unseen reality behind idealized Los Angeles. A literal lack of vision, rendered through the sparse lighting characteristic of noir, is also functional to the detective narrative. Throwing things into obscurity means that they are hidden. Uncertainty creates intrigue, identifiable people become dark shapes, the origin of a gunshot is harder to pinpoint, and detective Marlowe is able to gather information without being noticed. In the film, an almost allergic reaction to any light is demonstrated when Humphrey Bogart (famously under-lit) has Lauren Bacall turn off a lamp by saying, “Move that light, will you? Or move me.”
Nosferatu, 1922 Even before technological means of capturing it existed, F.W. Murnau took an interest in night and its relationship to fear. Murnau’s Nosferatu, associated with German expressionism, is a silent horror film about a vampire who sets about terrorizing a small town. In today’s culture, vampires can cruise the mall without dying of sun exposure, but we are also familiar with the traditional, gothic vampire, and how necessary night is to him. Nosferatu, the vampire in the film, permeates the night; at his worst, he is a dramatic, lurching shadow, an actual manifestation of darkness. The film makes a dichotomy out of night and day, with Nosferatu’s absolute power on one side and his obliteration on the other. In many prints, tinting and toning the film with a consistent colour signifies night scenes, which is a crucial use of Day for Night; the vampire is immediately invoked and the viewer knows all bets are off. The tints, usually blue or green, have the incidental effect of making night feel appropriately supernatural.
Hiroshima Mon Amour, 1959 Night belongs to romance — to Bogart and Bacall, but also to the nameless French woman and her Japanese lover, who spend 24 hours together in postwar Hiroshima. In Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour, night allows memory to push through a desire to forget personal tragedy in the context of global tragedy; it is revealed through brief flashbacks that the woman had an affair with a German soldier during the war, for which she was brutally shamed in her town. What occurs is the opposite of obscurity: exposition. The later it gets, the more detailed her story becomes. She wears white against the darkness and is always illuminated during her narration, while her male companion, prompting her story, is covered by shadow; his anonymity makes him a surrogate for her former lover, and the whole night, a reincarnation. Traveling backward through memory confuses the sense of time’s passage in the present. The unclear temporality reinforces the universally structureless nature of night.
Night on Earth, 1991 Jim Jarmusch is a director who appreciates night for its lack of definition because it encourages the imagination. Night on Earth handles after hours with relative simplicity because this is its self-professed theme. It gives continuity to the different segments of the film, which track the experiences of cab drivers in five cities: L.A., New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki. These happen in sequence; we feel as if we are progressively moving through the stages of a complete night, but really we are experiencing one simultaneous frame of time, five times over. Because of this repetition, and because the drivers are working their jobs, night quickly becomes normal. “What a fucked up day,” says the Paris driver without a trace of irony after dumping a couple of guys out of his cab. Invariably, there is a pronounced contrast between passenger and driver, which produces situations both comedic and melancholic. Each city’s existing light has a unique quality, so Jarmusch claims to have shot with nylons stretched over the lens, a different type of nylon for each city. The diffusion evokes Jarmusch’s theory of the night: it’s a time that benefits from the absence of hard light and lets creative conversation arise between strangers in a cab.
Werckmeister Harmonies, 2000 Bela Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies is an aesthetic study of the end of earth, experienced by a town somewhere on the Hungarian Plain. At the beginning, Valuska, the young mailman, demonstrates an eclipse of the sun in a pub, using the bodies of the drunken men to represent cosmic bodies. In doing so, he invokes “boundlessness” and “infinite emptiness,” the feeling of immortality. The beauty of this sequence is a bitter counterpart in the film’s main theme, which is the conclusion of all life. Night’s presence in the film does not create uncertainty because the town seems aware of its imminent destruction. It begins with a mob of lowlifes who have come from far away to see an embalmed whale in the town square. Later, they march from the square to destroy the homes of the townspeople. People are shown moving purposefully through the night toward a known destination. Tarr does not attempt to manipulate the available light; Valuska’s silhouette walks along the road, and the only light provided by streetlamps. When the camera recedes from him, past the lamps, the frame is dominated by an expanse of blackness.
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Dream diaries Three students boldly reveal the depths of their subconscious Article by DANIELLE KLEIN, SUZY NEVINS, ALEX ROSS | Illustration by MINHEE BAE
Alex’s Dream I find myself in a circular and dimly lit room with two doors on either side of me and one in front. The door in front of me is red, the door to my right is blue, and the door to my left is white. I’m sitting in a hard plastic chair, looking anxiously at each door, trying to decide which one to go through. I notice that each door has an eerie green light emanating from it. I stand up and my dream-self decides it would be reasonable to go through the red door. I’m not sure if it’s because this door looks less ominous, or if it’s because I like the colour red. I open the door and step through what looks like a portal. The portal transports me into the interior of some sort of underground military base and shopping mall. It’s disconcerting to see clothing stores and coffee shops juxtaposed with stalactites and mounted gun turrets. Surrounding me are people just as bewildered as I am, and lots of them have strange wounds and burn marks. Soldiers with odd looking weapons are guarding us. All of a sudden, a large section of the cave’s ceiling collapses and aliens with ray guns start pouring in. As the soldiers and the aliens start fighting, I run for my life. I can only guess a flying saucer is shooting at the base, causing it to shake with chunks of rock flying down. Unfortunately, as I’m running up an escalator, a large chunk of rock falls on me. However instead of dying, I just end up right back where I started. That the soldiers and the aliens are scoring points on each other rather than dying indicates that my brain has decided to put me in some sort of weird video game dream. After several attempts, I eventually make it out of the base and escape the aliens. When I wake up in the morning, I realize that my dream was probably inspired by trying out the demo of an alien invasion game called XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I probably need to cut down on my playing time.
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Danielle’s Dream
Suzy’s Dream As always happens when I dream, my house isn’t really my house. I’m in my room when I hear the voice of a girl I once knew as she wanders past my door sulking. I open the door and begrudgingly ask her what’s wrong. She holds up a cheque that says, “$0 for food and water,” signed by her father. I offer her some tea, but become suspicious that she’d been sleeping in a cupboard downstairs (I’d recently heard a news story about the man in Japan who found a woman living in his closet. My subconscious likely held onto this). The girl dissolves and I walk downstairs into the kitchen where my dad is standing by the light of the stove, kneading a cantaloupe-size ball of cheese that starts turning into pizza dough. Memories of being three years-old came flooding back: we used to make pizza together every Wednesday. He would make an adult sized pizza to share with my mom and sister, and I would make a mini one, just for me. He‘s kneading and mixing it so fast that it starts spinning and turning into all kinds of things: first a penguin, then a lighthouse, and finally, a Buddha-like man. The spinning stops as he raises the dough off the counter and covers his head with it. I laugh uncontrollably at the bizarreness of his gesture, and pull out my camera to take a picture but the buttons won’t work. Noticing my frustration, he says, “It’s disgusting anyway.” As my sister appears out of nowhere and wholeheartedly agrees, the kitchen morphs into the one from my childhood, and I wake up thinking about the days my dad and I spent cooking together while everyone else was at work or kindergarten.
I’m in a religious service and notice that some of the people around me are being loud and disrespectful. I become very agitated, and want to ask them to leave. However, I don’t want to come across as uptight. I keep thinking to myself, “Why am I here?” Around the room are many vintage-looking white bath tubs. Some people begin to lie down in the tubs, including the people who were being disruptive earlier. I understood that this was part of the service. Others, myself included, stand behind the tubs and turn on the taps. The tubs fill with butternut squash soup, completely submerging the people inside. Still, I’m asking myself, “What is the point?” Then, we drain the tubs, inside of which are only human skeletons. Once the tubs are drained, the service is over, and the crowd mingles and chats surrounded by the tubs and skeletons within them, not seeming to be aware or guilty of what happened. Although the presence of the dead is felt, it’s not explicitly being acknowledged as disturbing or grotesque. I continue to ask myself, “Why? Why am I here?” while also partaking in the casual post-service chatter. Finally, I have a moment of revelation where I become suddenly and horrifyingly aware of what took place, and think to myself, “Why do we do this? These people are dead. We killed them.” However, all at once my certainty as to whether we killed them wavers and I think that maybe they had been dead all along. I keep asking, “Why? Why?” and then the answer occurs to me, “because this is just what we do.” Still upset, I want to yell out loud, but find myself muted as the crowd shuffles out sadly en masse, like mourners following a funeral procession.
The Science of Dreams Article by CELIA DRURY
H
ave you ever awoken in the middle of the night from a dream and had no idea what it meant? Why did dreaming of an orange elephant wearing tennis shoes and walking on water make you feel so anxious that it roused you from your sleep? Deciphering dreams is complex to say the least, and navigating through the subconscious can be like trying to find your way through a labyrinth blindfolded. As if our waking lives weren’t confusing enough, dreaming only adds to the complexity that is the human psyche. But it’s not always a bad dream. Dreaming can be a fantastic and liberating experience, and sometimes help with a problem that you are facing in the waking world. Trying to shed some light on the otherwise-convoluted subject
of dreams may be an ongoing process, but it’s an interesting one at the very least. On a normal night of sleep we enter and constantly cycle through four stages of altered consciousness: two stages of light sleep, and one each of deep and slow wave sleep. Dreaming occurs at all stages, but the most fantastical, bizarre and emotional dreaming occurs during rapid eye movement (REM), which is between the second and third stage of sleep. REM dreams are the most memorable because, in addition to the auditory and visual hallucinations, they can include other senses such as taste, odour, and in some rare cases, pain. REM is unique because the brain experiences full conscious wakefulness while the body remains paralyzed. This is due to the neuronal input to the pons, a
Illustration by NATHAN WATSON
part of the brain stem, which blocks any type of muscular movement. At this point the dreamer is exposed to the unchartered waters of the subconscious. Whatever repressed emotion the dreamer may be experiencing will ultimately be uncovered by the subconscious and presented in an uncharacteristic way, leaving the confused dreamer to ponder the implications of things as strange as orange elephants in tennis shoes. The most important thing about dream analysis is to consider how you feel in the dream. Dream symbols can be characterized by your emotional response to them. You will be able to gain insight into what your repressed emotions may be saying, and possibly realize why you may be repressing those emotions in the first place.
If you’re tired of being bossed around by your subconscious, you might want to consider practicing lucid dreaming. Here, the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming and can control what happens throughout the dream. Lucid dreaming is hard to achieve, but can be learned through intense focus and practice. REM is the best stage to take advantage of your lucid dreaming practices. So go and jump on that tennis shoewearing orange elephant’s back and walk on water. Have fun with your dream — they’re there to help you through your daily life, and are unique as you are. Source: Psychological Science — Second Canadian Edition: Michael S. Gazzaniga, Todd F. Heatherton, Steven J. Hein, Daniel C. McIntyre
Playing the dream Video games with great (or not so great) dream sequences Article by ALEX ROSS | Illustrations by ETHAN CHIEL & DAN SELJAK Dreams are crazy and unpredictable. Your dream-self is often trapped in a sequence of events beyond your control or understanding. You’re an Alice moving about in Wonderland. How does something so intensely personal translate into an entertainment medium like a video game? I’ve always had a perverse love of dream sequences in video games. But as we’ll see, dreams don’t always translate well into video game space, often leading to the same frustrations as dreams themselves.
Max Payne (2001)
Psychonauts (2005)
From trade shows to weddings
The third-person action shooter Max Payne features two different dream sequences. Fans of the game are divided over whether these are brilliant or awful. This is due to the puzzle element in which Max has to navigate a series of mazes based on his house. The first dream features a baffling blood trail that Max has to follow; one wrong step and it’s instant death as Max falls into the void. However, the second dream sequence does a great job of breaking the fourth wall when Max is told he’s a character in a game. The music in both dream sequences is sufficiently ominous and creepy.
In Psychonauts, the main character Raz enters the heads of various characters in order to complete challenges and defeat a wide variety of enemies. Each challenge presented to the player is unique and totally dependent on whose head Raz enters. It’s a great game with a dark, twisted sense of humour. Unfortunately, while Psychonauts was critically acclaimed and developed a devoted fan base, its sales figures were underwhelming. Not everyone was into the idea of exploring other people’s psyches — it can be scary in there.
program offers the unique
Afraid of Monsters: Director’s Cut (2007)
Dragon Age: Origins (2009)
This is a brilliant survival horror modification of the 1998 first-person shooter, Half-Life. Designed by Andreas Ronnberg, the game takes you through a surreal night in the life of a drug addict. A certain tension from the game comes from being unsure as to whether the monsters you’re seeing are actually there or just drug-induced hallucinations. Perversely, the only way to heal yourself is to take more drugs. The crude graphics add rather than detract from the experience, giving the game an extra layer of unreality.
In the fantasy world of Thedas, people who dream don’t just go somewhere in their subconscious, but to a mysterious realm known as the Fade. Unfortunately, the Fade is also home to demons that want to possess people in order to manifest themselves in the real world. There’s a whole sequence in Dragon Age in which the player and their entire adventuring party are put to sleep by a sloth demon and must then escape the Fade. A mod for the PC version of the game that shortens this level is very popular, as many players find this part of the game frustrating.
to cultural festivals, this skills you need to launch your career as an event coordinator, account representative, corporate meeting planner or many other exciting career opportunities.
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“Bike around the city, find new places.”
“Sleep.” Third Year | Biological Anthropology
Sam
Third Year | Evolutionary Biology
Elaine
thing to do at night
First Year | Political Science
“Crystal meth.”
Aarti
Second Year | Psychology
Lilly
Compiled by MICHAEL BEDFORD
Second Year | Psychology and Environmental Studies
Tolu
Second Year | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Boris
in the city?
Fourth Year | History and Political Science
Divya
Fourth Year | Human Biology and Physiology
Danyal
STREETERS
What’s your favourite
“Explore and meet new people.” “Grab a beer with friends.”
“I like to go see ENSU events or see shows if I can. Preferably if they’re free.” “Parkour.”
“Discover new places.”
OCTOBER ,
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