Tn2 issue 3 March 2025

Ella O’Brien

Cover Model Audrey Brown

Sadbh Caulfield, Rowena Breen and Buster Whaley + Ciara Munnelly

Editors’ Note

My gorgeous boychild reader,

Welcome to 2025, the Year of the Wood Snake; and welcome to TN2, the Issue of the People. The first half of Hilary Term has been tumultuous, yes, but we still managed to collect more beautiful articles for your pleasure. Pleasure - a curious thing. The editors find themselves looking out on a rainy spring Parisian cafe, with fellow lonely wanderers traversing the Marais. What is pleasure, truly? Have we ever been so lucky to experience something so coveted? Perhaps, or perhaps not, but the coffee is running cold and we have a train to catch.

Of course, dear reader, should you experience true pleasure during the reading of this magazine, let us know. Do not hesitate to contact us, just not on the weekdays.

Buster & Ciara

TN2 FEATURED BAND STEREOCHORUS

With members hailing from as far afield as Offaly, stereochorus makes seriously loud alt-rock. Founded in 2023, their pounding drum beats, introspective lyrics, thumping basslines and jagged guitars draw inspiration from Title Fight, Modest Mouse, Pulp, and more. Their thunderous live shows oscillate between lush soundscapes and roaring breakdowns, and have been described as “formative” and “louder than raves”, with their erratic stage presence drawing feet and ears up and down the country.

Their debut single “All Came Down” releases this spring.

PHOTOS Thomas Lara Leonard

On the Culture of New Beginnings

WORDS Amelia Sikora

ART Jessica Sharkey

3, 2, 1… Happy New Year!’ you yell into the ear of the person next to you. Fireworks explode, cheers are let out from all corners of the room, and confetti litters the floor around you. Yet your mate does not respond. You wonder if he’s just completely locked out of it, but then you look down and find him fidgeting with his phone - all’s well, he’s just updating his Goodreads goal.

2025 Reading Challenge: 0 of 100 books read | 365 days left

This is the countdown to end all countdowns. The end of the world draws near with each falling digit, and the only person who can save it is…you? Read those books and humanity will finally be redeemed. Oh, as long as your goal is higher than last year’s. Otherwise, forget it; you’ve already lost.

There is certainly nothing inherently wrong with setting goals and there are benefits in doing so. Goals can hold you accountable, provide a visual aid to your progress, or simply keep you motivated. However, there is something apocalyptic about these goals and countdowns that often make me question the recent culture surrounding reading-based new year’s resolutions.

The dawn of each new year seems to lure more and more people into the habit of tracking their media consumption. Whether this is how many books they’ve read, how many songs they’ve listened to, or how many films they’ve watched: consuming a creative work in its own right essentially has no value unless it can be ticked off.

It’s easy to point your finger at online platforms, such as TikTok, and label this issue as one that is specific to our generation. The question of massive book hauls and reading trends, such as complaints about the fact that there are too many words on pages (some Tiktokers going so far as to suggest only reading dialogue in books in order to finish them faster) have, of course, sparked major discourse. The current state of things may appear to some as a threat to the art of reading.

There may be some truth to this. However, this is in no way a new or singular issue. The problem lies in people struggling through books they don’t enjoy just so they can mark it as complete. The problem lies in the reasons why people don’t feel like readers unless they read over fifty books a year. The problem lies in our growing consumerist culture and our inability to catch up with it.

The problem is that we are losing the desire to enjoy art.

This question of ‘culture’ and the decline of its consumption is posed every couple of decades. The great novelist E.M Forster diagnosed the early twentieth century by stating “we have, in this age of unrest, to ferry much old stuff across the river, and the old stuff is not merely books, pictures and music, but the power to enjoy and understand them”. There is no question in saying that we currently live in extremely turbulent times and it’s entirely possible to attribute these unattainable goals that we are setting to political and cultural unrest. They are fueled by consumerism, the capitalist obsession with productivity, and perhaps also an inherently human desire for community in the face of ever-growing individualism. Consumerism has become a religion and has seeped into the realms of art; refusing to submit to it is a rebellion and protest in its own right.

“Consumerism has become a religion and has seeped into the realms of art; refusing to submit to it is a rebellion and protest in its own right.”

One way in which we might go about doing this is by simply changing our relationship with the term ‘reader’. A reader is not defined by any kind of numerical value, such as reading ‘x’ number of books, but rather by engaging with the written word to any capacity (including audiobooks). Once this redefinition occurs, we are in a position to replace these goals with ones that emphasise engagement and enjoyment. Setting goals such as ‘read for twenty minutes a day’ are far more achievable, provide equal satisfaction and avoid emphasis being placed on speed or ‘efficiency’. It is often said that we get out of a book as much as we put into it; finishing a book in the span of a month is just as valuable as finishing it in a day.

By doing so, you are prioritising yourself and your own wellbeing while giving yourself more agency. You can decide where this time will be found and it may also prompt an engagement with ‘digital detoxing’, encouraging you to pick up a book instead of a device. Reading before bed, reading with your morning coffee or reading on your commute into college; these twenty minutes can be found anywhere and can make the world of difference. It should not be a chore or something you are forced to do, it should be something that sparks your curiosity, it should give you an opportunity to learn and to be in touch with your own psyche.

In our battle against overconsumption, a better solution is visiting your local library. Browsing the shelves and picking up a book you’ve never heard of can give you more satisfaction than a book influencer ever will. You can order any book and pick it up from your local branch, and if you can’t find something, your librarian is always there to help. If time doesn’t permit, the library also has an app called ‘BorrowBox’ on which you can borrow eBooks or audiobooks free of charge. Listening to an audiobook whilst you do your chores or are simply walking around is another way in which you can go through the books you want to read without the pressure of needing to block out time to do so.

Setting goals is a great habit, but the way in which we do so needs some attention. It is impossible to read every book ever written; this is a goal that not even the likes of Jane Austen achieved, and no one ever really will. So, why are we pushing ourselves beyond the realms of possibility? It is important to remember that we set these goals ourselves; they are supposed to be flexible and are not set in stone. Our circumstances change and we need to ensure that this is reflected in our goals to avoid unnecessary strain and pressure. We are in fact human, and not machines; an intensification of reading-input results in nothing but unnecessary stress and limited engagement with books that could otherwise contain a wealth of knowledge and pleasure.

A Taste of Love

What is it that makes those childhood dishes so nourishing? Is it the memories associated with it? The ingredients? The smell, texture and taste? More than likely it’s all three.

For me, food has been a constant pillar which I frequently lean on. When times are tough I often find myself smothering those problems or emotions under a hearty meal, healthy or otherwise. And in those moments, the dishes from my childhood are often made. I had the privilege of growing up in a household where the kitchen was at the heart. My parents are both great cooks and they have instilled their love of good cooking in me. One notable childhood dish is my mother’s lasagna, a dish I often choose instead of birthday cake… seriously, I’m not joking. Not from an Italian household, but rather a full-blooded Irish Catholic, it is a fair imitation of ‘the real thing’. A precious family heirloom, I can describe the taste, but the exact engineering of the thing is a closely guarded secret. Like all family recipes should be, it will forever remain kept in the family.

A hearty, heavy affair, it’s not an exercise in health or ‘good ingredients’, but rather just normal store-bought things. Premade lasagna sheets with layers of classic rich red beef bolognese (premade before assembly/ preferably overnight, you must use butcher mince and boost that tomato sauce with a tin of tomato puree, heavy on the garlic and pepper) topped with a thick creamy cheesy Bechamel sauce so loaded with dairy it would make any cardiologist drop dead with horror. Repeat that 3 times then top your cheesy beefy concrete job with a final layer of pasta sheet and plaster on a final layer of bechamel. Top that with a load of grated cheddar and parmesan and Bob’s your uncle. Oven until melted and browned on top. Leave to rest and set for about 20 mins then dig in. It is an orgasmic affair, used frequently at dinner parties to sober up our guests to ensure they don’t end up staying.

My childhood dish is not your childhood dish; all of us have a meal. A memory of a loved one hunched over the hob. For me it was my parents, for you, maybe someone else. What’s true for both is that we were children, yet to be sullied and frayed by time, broken by that deadline due at midnight.

You start with your ingredients, and like all childhood meals there is no set list, set order, or set amount. Just that gut feel, a taste that is either wrong or right. You grab, splash, drizzle and dab at will until satisfied that this attempt is honouring all previous iterations. Cooking a family recipe is not just about ending up with a satisfactory product, it’s an act of meditation, an act of honour, an act of love. It’s about feeling your way through those golden lacquered memories you have of watching your loved one cook for you, trying to recreate the smell that wafted in and imprinted itself in your soul or the taste that filled a young you with the energy and love to go out and play. Like Anton Ego in Ratatouille, that series of sensations that takes you back to your loved one’s kitchen.

Imagine cooking for an unwell parent – an unwell mother, perhaps. I can’t do much to help, but what I can do is cook for her. I make the recipes she taught me, from my childhood. She enjoys them. There’s a phrase that “No parent should have to bury their child”; I ask you, should a child have to cook for their parents? I’m not talking about making dinner or lunch just because they’re busy, but truly cooking. When our parents cooked for us growing up, they weren’t just feeding us; they were nurturing us, giving a part of themselves in each meal, fuelling us to grow, explore, face the world, and develop into the people we are today.

Now, standing over the pot or pan, I find myself trying to pour a little of my life into the meal; not a little, but a lot. Yet, for some reason, that act of giving life through food, it doesn’t work backwards. Blame God, blame Nature, who knows. It’s frustrating. Like a parent, I’m trying to not only feed but to nourish, to provide that full belly feel they gave us before they sent us out and off to play. In this case, I’m trying to heal. It’s about holding onto the moments shared in the kitchen, knowing that those cherished childhood recipes may one day become the way we reconnect with their presence. That to remember my parents I will be forced to cook those childhood meals. To try and see them in the steam, hear their voice in flames and feel the warmth of their hug in the fullness of a meal.

Anthony Bourdain once said, “When someone cooks for you they are saying something”. In this case, I’m saying I love you mum. So when asked why those childhood recipes are so nourishing and why they will never hold a light to a restaurant. It is really quite simple. For some they are acts of love and for less fortunate others, they are a memory of it.

WORDS

Bernard Byrne

ART Eve Smith

A Taste of Home

Home to me is Finland: the land of a thousand lakes. Twice a year I venture back to this land famous for its forests, saunas, Santa, and snow, but the thing I love most about my travels back home is undoubtedly the food.

My grandmother, or ‘Mummi’, as we call her in Finnish, is the head chef of the family, who makes sure that every visit home is celebrated with delicious food. Flight landing at midnight? Not to worry - Mummi prepares a large feast no matter the hour. She decorates the wooden table that has withstood wars, while we eat from the same plates and drink from the same cups that our ancestors used before us.

The menu looks something like this: carefully peeled potatoes from the neighbour’s field, fallen apples from a nearby tree, a plethora of meats acquired from the local market, and a homemade blueberry pie. Mummi is sure to never leave us hungry; every journey, near or far, is accompanied by an old ice-cream container posing as a lunch box, and bursting with her many delicacies. The plainness of the reused box with its worn out logo only makes the dining experience that much more enjoyable.

Admittedly, I never noticed these things as a child; I’d sit politely, eat my food and give thanks, while itching to be excused just to play Minecraft in the living room. But now I see the intricate details; the wrinkles on her forehead as she labours in the kitchen, the carvings on the chopping board from years of hard work, the magic behind the mundane kitchen cupboards. Every year I get to taste Mummi’s blueberry pie is another year to be thankful for.

WORDS Sara Lynch

My grandfather, ‘Ukki’, brings wonder and curiosity to the table. As a young child, Ukki taught me how to fish - from digging for worms and setting the hook, to skinning the catch and feeding remnants to the resident seagull. In my early days, it was an amusing, thrilling, and slightly gruesome activity. As I morphed into an angsty teen, it regrettably progressed into a chore, but I’ve since grown to appreciate the art of it all. I acknowledge the time and effort Ukki sets aside for this ritual, and I recognise his satisfaction; that primal, hunter-gatherer in him that feels immense pride in having caught his own meal - and a tasty one too.

Ukki’s obsession with foraging mushrooms and berries in the forest is equally captivating. He disappears at the crack of dawn in his bright red boots with a bright red bucket in hand, gathering enough fruit and fungi to last another lifetime. The eighty-something-year-old is addicted and I don’t blame him; it’s his source of joy, a cheerful dance and a peaceful meditation. He inspires me to find, even grow food of my own, so that I too can connect with nature as he does. Because it isn’t just about food; it’s about passion, freedom, and sacred generational knowledge.

My visits home never fail to remind me of the pleasure, joy, and nostalgia that comes with food. There’s no shame around drinking a glass of fullfat milk or eating a few too many slices of sugar-dusted cake. There’s no overthinking or listening to the voices telling me to choose the carrot instead. I get to savour every bite in peace, knowing the hands that have worked so hard to feed me. Every flavour has the power to transcend time and space, so that when I close my eyes, I am four and nine and twelve again; back when food was my friend, not something I feared. I replay silly childhood moments when Ukki would hide ice cream lollies behind his back, and make us guess which hand they were held in. Of course, he’d trick us with an empty hand and we would roar and jump and plead and giggle. I see myself and my cousin sneaking kilograms of sweets under the bed, stuffing our faces to the point of sickness, and I recall the school days when the canteen served a mushy vomit-green pea soup that we’d taunt each other to eat. In Finland, food becomes a multidimensional experience, awakening all my senses, my body, mind and soul. Even the simple smell of coffee from the Moccamaster could raise me from the dead.

Coming home always reminds me that food is so much more than just food. It is history, community, family, adventure; it is the sweetest symbol of love. As I grow up, I learn to appreciate food more than ever; its origins, its warmth, the stories it tells, and the intimacy it brings. I am so grateful to exist with my tummy full, and so lucky to be gifted with such wonderful gastronomic experience. How beautiful it is that these flavours from home are, and always will be, coursing through my veins and embedded in my DNA, like the countless lakes of the land whose timeless waters feed life and sustenance into my world.

David Lynch A Tribute

Iwas standing in a queue outside the men’s bathrooms inside the Trinity Arts Block when I first heard the tragic news that the visionary auteur and whimsical goofball David Lynch had passed away at the age of seventy-eight. After the immediate shock, I approached social media to validate this information. After thoroughly corroborating with the ever-dependable Instagram, I turned to my girlfriend, with tears in my eyes, shock on my face and strain in my voice, muttering the words many found themselves saying on January 15th, ‘David Lynch has passed away’. Only to be received with the confused response, ‘Who is that?’

But who was David Lynch? As a filmmaker, his fame was an enigma. Lynch was the most unknown known director. While all of his films were groundbreaking, original and breathtaking, having inspired countless filmmakers over recent decades, the majority of the general public have never seen a Lynch movie. As a filmmaker, he was as critically regarded and revered as Stephen Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, or Martin Scorsese, and yet he is not even a household name. Lynch would be considered among the great American filmmakers, once considered by George Lucas as his top choice to direct his third Star Wars movie, and yet none of his films would likely be in a casual moviegoers top five. Why was Lynch never as prolific as other filmmakers despite his profoundly wide-reaching influence?

Lynch was a visionary filmmaker, with an adjective (‘Lynchian’) named after his incredibly unique surreal style. Today, if any character in any movie walks into a retro American diner, orders a slice of pie while macabre music plays in the background, someone invariably will think, “Oh, how very ‘Lynchian.’” Lynch is often regarded as the first populist surrealist and his surreal style of the macabre, undermined by pleasant characters and tranquil settings, was so unique and original that it can be seen in countless movies today. He was the winner of a Palme D’Or, a Golden Lion, two César awards, was nominated for three Academy Awards, and won over the hearts of many critics and fans alike. He was an indisputable original voice, something that cinema is deeply missing today.

My first introduction to David Lynch was Blue Velvet, which has one of my favourite opening scenes in cinema. The seductive music, tranquil imagery of blue skies, white picket fence and red rose bushes compounded with the fact that I had no prior knowledge of what the movie was about lulled me into believing the movie was a quaint romantic mystery set in a sleepy American town. How wrong was I? The film suddenly took a heel turn and descended into surreal madness, shocking my young innocent brain into a surreal fever dream. What was sweet and innocent became illicit and pornographic, what was charming and cute became violent and dangerous, making me ask the question ‘What the hell is going on?’. Blue Velvet was my first introduction to surrealism and I swiftly moved onto the rest of Lynch’s hypnagogic filmography; from the nightmarish Eraserhead to the demented Inland Empire. Each of Lynch’s movies or his seminal TV show Twin Peaks, I found to be complete idiosyncratic bodies of work like nothing I had ever seen before. His films feel as if you are falling into a drug-induced hallucination and I love every one of them. However, Mulholland Drive is without hesitation my favourite Lynch film, which I can only describe as the feeling of drifting to sleep while lying upside down. The movie makes no sense and the more you attempt to decipher what is occurring on screen the more confused you become.

The film began life as a rejected TV pilot and went on to become a celebrated cult classic. It’s a neo-noir mystery which starts with some semblance of a plot about an amnesiac trying to recover her identity and spirals into a nightmare beyond cognition. The movie is as funny as it is bizarre and as engaging as it is uncomfortable. One minute you are laughing then the next you are scratching your head saying “Huh, I don’t get it”. The movie is also prolific for providing Naomi Watts with her breakout role, a performance which is beyond spell-binding. Everyone has multiple theories for the film, each being profoundly different, but the one thing everyone can agree on is how weird the movie truly is.

However, it was not the filmography of Lynch that made me fall in love with him; it was his eccentric personality. After watching Blue Velvet I quickly dove into the Internet to find out more about the machinations of this brilliantly twisted madman. I was met by what I conjectured was the most whimsical man in the industry of film. If you look up David Lynch online you will find a vast inventory of hilariously assorted videos, articles, and snapshots into the eclectic life of the recently deceased legend. From a twenty-minute tutorial on how to cook quinoa, an angry tirade on why watching movies through a telephone is the greatest travesty of all time, to guided videos on transcendental meditation; the man was clearly a fascinating character. Lynch started smoking when he was eight years old and often cited tobacco and coffee as his two favourite things in the world, which he could not live without. Originally a painter, he translated his surreal style of art to cinema with his debut feature Eraserhead in 1977. However, his creative mind was not exclusive to cinema and painting; he was also an incredible musician, comic book artist, memoirist, writer, screenwriter, and actor. Lynch even designed and created furniture when he was making Lost Highway. Evidently, there was no end to the man’s artistic capability.

Lynch was probably one of the funniest filmmakers in the industry, known for his capricious behaviour and his excellent comedic timing. Countless times when I was feeling under the weather or simply in need of a good laugh I would put on a compilation of David Lynch interviews and find myself in uncontrollable laughing fits. For example, when his movie Inland Empire was being released, Lynch believed Laura Dern’s stellar performance deserved to be considered for an Oscar nomination. So, instead of paying for advertising, Lynch decided to set off to Hollywood Boulevard, sit on a lawn chair chain-smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. Beside him, he had a cow and a placard with the words, ‘For your consideration, Laura Dern’ written in large bold print. The man was an undeniable master of dry wit. Anyone who has ever seen an interview with David Lynch will be all too familiar with his excellent comedic timing, where he would often, after long tedious questions, pause, smile and simply say ‘no’. Whoever saw The Fablemans in 2022 will also be aware that Lynch played a hilarious John Ford proving his incredible timing and chops for comedy. I personally believe if Lynch had desired, he could have found real success as a stand-up comic, one I would have definitely paid to see.

Without a doubt, on January 15th we lost one of the greatest creative minds of our generation. Time and time again David Lynch has provided me with entertainment through his amazing movies or his witty personality and for that, I am eternally grateful. He was an irreplaceable visionary filmmaker the likes of which we will never see again.

WORDS Fiachra Owens

How Acid Westerns Saved Christmas

After going home this Christmas I was quickly reminded of how different my taste in movies is from my dad’s. My dad loves Westerns. He tried to get me into them as soon as he thought it was appropriate, but at the time I saw his ever-deepening man crush on Clint Eastwood as a chance for a rebellion. Most of my teenage rebellions took shape as me telling my parents how bad I thought some musician or book they liked was. Embarrassingly, I wasn’t able to muster anything more substantial than that. Even more embarrassingly, as I’ve gotten older I’ve had to admit on a number of occasions that I love something now that I’d told them was terrible (most embarrassingly, this included Leonard Cohen’s music). But Westerns were never redeemed. I still think there is good reason to be wary of Westerns; their origins are in individualist depictions of American history, portraying the cowboy’s violence as heroic, Native Americans as savages, and life on the frontier as something to be nostalgic for. Saying this to my dad, however, tends to ruin the cozy vibe my parents are going for when we settle down to pick a movie together at Christmas. While that hasn’t stopped me in the past, this Christmas I found a solution to this problem in a particular subgenre of the Western: the Acid Western.

The Acid Western emerged in the 1960s in America as part of what film historians call ‘The New Hollywood Movement.’ The New Hollywood Movement was a new wave of American filmmakers who moved away from the conventions of the films that had preceded them. The movement is broad, but can be generally marked by a more experimental approach to filmmaking and narrative. The liberal counterculture movement that defined the 1960s in America is reflected in the form of these films and often also thematically. In line with this, Westerns of this period became revisionist; writing back against American Westerns obscuring the brutality of the period they depict. The Acid Western was a particular subgenre of the Westerns made at this time. In keeping with the movement that they were part of, they are typically revisionist in their depiction of the old west. Acid Westerns, as the name suggests, also take influence from the increased popularity of hallucinogens in the 1960s in America. This hallucinogenic influence produced films that were experimental and surreal. When I found out about the genre I thought that it had the potential to bring together what both my dad and I like into one movie, and consequently relieve some tension from my family’s Christmas. So I set about trying to find the best one to bring home to my dad.

“When I found out about the genre I thought that it had the potential to bring together what both my dad and I like into one movie, and consequently relieve some tension from my family’s Christmas”

The first Acid Western that I tried was Ride in the Whirlwind directed by Monte Hellman (1966). Ride in the Whirlwind was written by and stars Jack Nicholson, who actually wrote a number of psychedelic films in the 1960s (including the band The Monkees’ wildly surreal movie Head). The film follows three outlaws who are relentlessly pursued by a group of cowboys who mistake them for another group that they are feuding with. The film builds an uncanny atmosphere which is not typical of the western. The landscape is shot in a way that emphasises its emptiness, making the characters small by comparison and contributing to a sense of existential dread the film has. This dread is part of the film’s cynical outlook, which for me was a pleasant change from the American frontier rhetoric that you can find in some westerns. I liked Ride in the Whirlwind, but thought I could find something better and so I continued my search.

When I discovered Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter (1973) it felt like the surest bet for a Western that I could enjoy with my Dad. My dad really loves Clint Eastwood, and so an Acid Western made by him seemed like a perfect middle ground for us. Eastwood’s second directorial effort earns its place in the Acid Western genre because of the ambiguity of its plot. A mysterious stranger appears from the desert and violently torments the members of the town he rides into. (Trigger Warning for High Plains Drifter for sexual violence) In response to the film, John Wayne wrote a letter to Eastwood which said that “this wasn’t what the west was all about. That isn’t the American people who settled this country.” Wayne’s frustration with Eastwood’s deviation from the old school Western by portraying the cowboy’s violence as brutal inadvertently captures part of what is great about the Acid Western. In some ways, this film is much more accurate in its portrayal of the values of those who settled America than any film Wayne ever made. Unfortunately though, High Plains Drifter’s violence can not all be seen to be a statement of historical revisionism. While the brutality of some of its violence can be understood as an attempt to write back against the glorification of violence in other Westerns, its portrayal of women and the violence against them in the film works completely against this. The film is still upheld by many as a great revisionist Western, but in my opinion, its offensive portrayal of women erases any merit the film has in any other respect. For this reason, it was not a film I thought worth sharing.

My dad is not really that into surreal films. When I saw Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) I felt that it was more his speed. It is not usually called an Acid Western because it lacks the psychedelic influence that is considered an important part of the subgenre. However, I think it belongs here because it has been referred to as forming its own related subgenre of the ‘Pot Western.’ This description comes from the film’s prioritisation of building an atmosphere over plot, something that would become characteristic of Altman’s style. Songs from Leonard Cohen’s first album Songs of Leonard Cohen aid this atmosphere nicely, providing a dreamily introspective soundtrack that is unlike the bombastic scores which classically accompanied Westerns. This subversion of tone is typical of what Altman does to the Western genre in this film. While sticking more closely to a conventional Western plot than the other films I have mentioned, it depicts the conventions without romanticisation. There is no nostalgia for the frontier environment here; the landscape is harsh and unforgiving and the characters suffer because of it. Warren Beatty’s McCabe is depicted without the hardened machismo or the impenetrable skill that you would expect to find in the protagonist of a Western. This seemed like the perfect compromise between my dad’s love of Westerns, an interesting subversion of what I don’t like about certain Westerns, and the kind of movie I usually enjoy; so I bought the DVD and brought it home for Christmas.

In the run up to Christmas we watched McCabe and Mrs. Miller. It is my favourite of the films I’ve mentioned and my dad also said he really enjoyed it. His experience was probably improved by the fact that I was not complaining about Westerns throughout the whole thing this time. It made for smoother sailing in our selection of Christmas watching than we were used to. So I recommend looking into the weird subgenres of the films your parents like to watch, it might leave you one less thing to bicker about next Christmas!

WORDS John Garvey

ART Ciara Munnelly

TN2 Staff Early Works

Ciara Munnelly Rowena Breen

Tallulah Whaley

Curtis French

Aoibhinn Munnelly

Ele Ni Chonbhui

Max Breen

My Dad’s Hand-Me-Downs

WORDS Bo Kilroy

PHOTOS Coco Goran

In my early days I was the youngest of three girls. There was an overconsumption of matching dresses, floral pyjamas, and fairy costumes that were worn year round. We had a shared drawer full of hair accessories, and we would all get in trouble in P.E. for our earrings that we refused to remove. Though on all accounts it seemed on the surface to be a very ‘girl-dominated’ household, as I reflect now, the absence of boys led it to feel that the need for a gendered childhood wasn’t necessary because there was no comparison. I remember deeming myself the ‘son’ my dad didn’t have, in that I was slightly less ‘girly’ than my sisters; I was, for lack of a better word, scrappy. I was incredibly messy, a class clown, and never brushed my hair or even thought to care about it. But I realise now that I probably wasn’t an actual substitute, it was more that I wanted to be. It is strange now to think about how I percieved myself and how I wanted to be percieved, recognising it in my adulthood as a yearning to not be a ‘girl’ in the way that I saw my sisters. Even so, I failed as a faux son; I hated sports, Star Wars, Lego, whatever it is that boys are meant to enjoy. Yet, I have a strong memory, and am constantly reminded by family members, of when I decided to take part in ‘Saturday Soccer’ in school and the disaster it turned out to be. I can only imagine how excited my dad was, and perhaps that is why I wanted to do it. The shoes were bought and he brought me early Saturday morning, only for me to predictably hate it immediately. I feel a strange sense of guilt to this day, that I let my dad down in what I thought he wanted me to be. Of course, he never actually had any expectations of me to be boyish in this sense; I was his daughter and he certainly didn’t see me as laddish in any way. I doubt in the year 2009 that he had any presumption that I was subconsciously battling gender dysphoria, and I cannot blame him for that.

There was an obvious shift in my clear internalised dysphoria once my brother was born; I guess it reaffirmed that I was indeed a girl, and I committed strongly to femininity from that point, up until college. One day I was obsessed with my Scooby-Doo Crocs and bugs, the next it was makeup and a hyper-fixation with American Girl Dolls. The 2016 fullbeat became a part of my daily ritual, naturally paired with Victoria Secret leggings and neon half-zips, embodying the 2010’s teen. Fitting in with social standards is presumed to be a part of growing up, but considering where I am now, I think it is safe to say it was likely deeper than that. Even now I have a strong envy towards my dear brother, not only for taking my spot as the beloved youngest child, but for being able to connect with my dad in a way I never could. He got taken to the matches (which was for the best, I hated them), watched all the sci-fi movies I never had any interest in, and got to be the perfect last-minute son. I never felt an absence of love from my parents after this point, only my growing discontent with my sense of self. My dad never failed to take interest in my interests, but I nonetheless felt inadequate as his daughter.

Since I’ve somewhat drastically shifted from a stereotypical girly-girl to a stereotypical non-binary lesbian, I feel that yearning I had as a child once again. The phrase ‘healing one’s inner-child’ is fitting. What I once thought was an improper desire to not be seen as a girl that I pushed deep down, I can now freely identify with. Coming out to my very accepting parents (who saw it coming) as a lesbian was one thing, but being open about being non-binary was an entirely different matter. I had already been presenting as masculine, which was never a problem with my dad, when I told him. It was definitely an emotional conversation, from my side anyway; my father fits into the conventional Irish dad stereotype after all. I have noticed a connection with my dad through fashion in a way I didn’t think I ever could. I was blessed with very stylish parents, and though I can’t relate to my mother’s immense handbag collection, it has been euphoric to finally have that connection with my dad that I so badly wanted growing up. As he himself grows older, he passes things onto me as my mum does with my sisters. It has felt, in a subtle but significant way, a means for my dad to show his acceptance. Perhaps it’s my intense trait of sentimentality, applying meaning to things that are not inherently meaningful. Him casually giving me his shirts from his twenties that were something he’d cherished for so long grants me this idealised sense of ‘boyhood’ that I never had. Wearing his clothes brings me a nostalgic closeness to my dad as his kid, not as the assumed highly feminine daughter. Seeing an old photo of him in the purple collard shirt that now sits in my drawer makes me feel seen, and putting on the leather jacket he constantly wore when I was a child provides that sense of safety it always had, but now more an emotional safeness of being accepted for my transness.

The bitterness of remembering my childhood for what it lacked, in that I know now I was grieving the upbringing my brother received, is a heavy feeling and it likely always will be. When my dad passes something onto my brother instead of to me, it is a reminder that that father-son bond is an element of his childhood that I didn’t have. Everyone is blameless, my poor brother included, but there is a stinging part of my ‘inner-child’ that wishes I could go back and do it over. Wear my dad’s clothes, accept the non-masculine and masculine traits and not fit into the narrowness of gender ideals. That time is gone, so I’ll continue picking out the clothes from dad’s wardrobe, and remind my brother that it is half mine.

The Death of The Death of The Author Are Readers Becoming Too

Attached to Their Favourite Writers?

How is the relationship between reader and writer formed? Can a reader really know an author through their work? In 2024, many readers found out that their favourite author did not live up to the constructed image they had in their heads. Throughout the year new information was steadily revealed about many beloved authors and the morally reprehensible things that they have done. In June, the daughter of the late Canadian Nobel-laureate Alice Munroe revealed that she was sexually abused by her stepfather, and that Alice Munroe refused to leave him despite knowing this. In November, Vanity Fair published an article revealing that Blood Meridian author Cormac McCarthy groomed a seventeen-year-old girl. Perhaps most revolting of all is the information that surfaced surrounding Neil Gaiman’s years of sexual assault, culminating recently in a lawsuit.

For many readers, a special connection and closeness they felt with these artists has been irreversibly shattered. Several have posted online about feeling betrayed, as if it is a close friend that has committed the fault and not a person that they have never met. Reaction from Neil Gaiman fans has been particularly vitriolic. The fantasy author has always promoted particularly progressive ideals on social media and many of his works feature strong female characters. His wrongdoing feels particularly hypocritical. Similarly, many of Munroe’s short stories revolve around child sexual abuse. Her failure to enact justice for the abuse of her own child reveals that Munroe perhaps does not hold the values that readers thought she did. It feels as though the carpet has been pulled out from under us, and it begs the question: should an emotional bond based solely on text exist between reader and writer in the first place? Is such a bond always an illusion predicated on a false image that the author is purveying to the reader?

In his seminal 1967 essay ‘The Death of the Author’, Roland Barthes argues that our conception of the author should not alter our view of the text. Barthes believes that the most beneficial reading comes when we refuse to allow the author to cloud our judgement of the work that they have produced. A text should work on its own, right? Such a viewpoint seems to solve the confused state that readers have found themselves in. If the author is merely a surrogate for the work and does not control the ‘meaning’ of a text, then we need not worry when we learn that our favourite writer has metaphorically kicked a puppy. Your favourite author could kick an infinite number of puppies and it still would not change the meaning or experience of a text they produced. So you can scratch the names Cormac McCarthy and Alice Munroe from your favourite paperbacks, reader. The text exists outside of them.

It is an appealing theory for the common reader. It allows you to dissociate the art from the artist, as the saying goes. It removes concerns that whatever terrible morals held by the author might be reflected in the text. Since the allegations, many members of the r/neilgaiman subreddit have been rereading his comics and finding evidence of the author’s precarious moral attitude towards SA. But taking a death-of-the-author type stance renders such autobiographical readings moot, allowing the reader to live in blissful indifference. You don’t have to bin your €140 Sandman collection because, hey, a French guy says there isn’t any relevant connection between the author and the work.

It sounds good on paper, but in reality, this is not how most readers experience a text. Call it problematic, but we love to configure an image of the author, usually based on both their creative output and whatever biographical details are available. The name on the cover of a book will influence how you approach the material in a huge way. This is for good reason. If you the reader have found yourself in simpatico with a particular writer then the likelihood of you enjoying another one of their books is higher than if you picked up a book by someone you have never heard of. This is why certain authors dominate the bestseller lists.

It then follows that we construct a sort of identity around an author when their work continues to speak to us again and again. It might not be rational, but I think that this process is something very human and that it need not be blocked or repressed. It makes sense that the words that speak to us in a deep, resonant way should come from another human form. It isn’t text on its own that makes the soul swoon slowly, it is the fact that another human, another soul somewhere, has seen you, has understood something about you and the world we live in, and somehow has articulated it on paper. David Foster Wallace put his views on the relationship between reader and author like this: ‘for those of us civilians who know in our gut that writing is an act of communication between one human being and another, the whole question seems sort of arcane.’ The best feeling that good writing can generate in the reader is a connection to people in the world around you, and this connection is by definition formed by the fact that the text you are reading was written by another human.

Is such a bond always an illusion predicated on a false image that the author is purveying to the reader?

Like it or not, somebody has to actually write the thing. Therefore, whatever feelings of betrayal on behalf of a writer’s fans aren’t ridiculous. Creative writing is a form of self-expression. If a connection doesn’t form on some level between writer and reader then the whole exercise has failed. When a writer that you admire turns out to be basically a terrible person, it means that what they have expressed is not a true evocation of themselves as you believed it to be. It makes the writing itself ring hollow. You have been duped by somebody who has created a false image of themselves, and it is perfectly reasonable to be angry about that.

But once that anger and disappointment fades, you have a choice to make: unashamedly continue to read the author, or pretend like you never even knew them, and what even is a Blood Meridian? I don’t think that it is morally wrong to continue to read work from an author who has done something terrible. If you do continue to read them, I would suggest not to ignore the new information you have learned about the author. It may allow you to understand why a writer has chosen to display something in a certain way. You can critically analyse if a novel or story has been imbued with an author’s particular prejudices. In certain cases, you may discover that an author is repenting of their moral failings through their writing, as some have suggested is what Alice Munroe was doing. Perhaps what can best be gleaned from this experience is to not hold any presumptions about how a writer views the moral texture of the narratives they create –they may be closer to the villains in their own stories.

WORDS James Grace ART Eve Smith

Is There a ‘New Sound’?

Last year Geordie Greep released his critically acclaimed album The New Sound, a departure from his previous work within the English rock band Black Midi, marking the start of his solo music career. A restless album exploring deep variations of rock and jazz, complemented by hyperbolic storytelling, resulting in a piece uniquely distinct and a means for Greep to propel his promising and intriguing solo career.

Greep’s exit from Black Midi, alongside his album title, inspires the question: is there a ‘new sound’ today? Or alternatively, does music mirror the long-accepted cyclical ways of fashion, rehashing genres and lacking originality? Has all the ‘new’ music been made already and if so, are we sequestered to looking to the past for greater exploration?

To be completely honest, my initial thoughts leaned towards the pessimistic, grappling with whether music could be defined as ‘new’ anymore in terms of sound. Was it in fact iterations of what had come before and thus, could it be classified as ‘new’? Should the lens instead be focused acutely upon the listeners, as ‘new’ in their consumption patterns of varied genres and artists? Had I listened to anything different, purely unique, without immediately thinking of the band’s influences, in some cases so blatant it felt like a rip-off? My knee-jerk reaction left me feeling disillusioned, unsatisfied, and with a greater furrowed brow than before. It failed to encapsulate my vast enjoyment of music, the wealth of diversity within genre, artistry, sound design, and most significantly for me, the art of accepting and immersing oneself in a song, EP, or album on its own unique terms. Suffice to say, I was stumped. Could I, as a college student, really claim that there was nothing ‘new’ to be found?

One thing I could consolidate in my mind was that defining ‘new’ is integral to approaching this question. The term ‘new music’ can be found littered amongst music criticism; people discover so called ‘new’ music everyday, whether from years past or a recent release. This is not the definition that concerned me. I decided to interview four others, Shane Reid, Oisín MacCann, Cuán McCauley, and Paul Jennings to get their opinions on this rather ‘unanswerable’ question. They ranged from those working in the industry to music students, all of whom are unsurprisingly what I would categorise as avid music listeners. As I began to feel further from a concrete answer, falling into vats of critical discourse on the topic, I turned and posed the question: “do you believe there is a new sound?”.

First up, Shane Reid, a third year music student honing a perspective largely informed by his studies: “As a music student, it is important to look at the context, historical context and otherwise, in the discussion of a new sound”. In relation to genre, Reid spoke of how music and its genres span the millennia of recorded history, with subgenres utilising the tools, ideas and foundations within a given genre. For example: classical music, and classical-era subgenres. This very fact brings in the conflict between the static and the evolving nature of music. Reid referred to Tin Pan Alley, which was a linchpin in the pop music tradition, when answering whether pop music had a new sound. Reid stated, “I don’t think there is new music in the pop form, but there never has been…it will never be by definition of its function.” A function, he expanded on, as one rooted not in artistic impression, but in business and commercialism. However, as the conversation continued, Reid was resolute in his belief that the exhaustion of all combinations and new sounds has not been reached (if it ever will be), highlighting the progression of art music, spanning from the likes of Beethoven to Aphex Twin, as an interesting space for music and a beacon of new sound. Reid’s main insight lay in the space of music technology, giving him reason to hold a positive perspective. Specifically, Reid referred to micro tonalities (any musical interval or difference of pitch distinctly smaller than a semitone) as the source of an infinite number of greater possibilities than the traditional Western scale. Reid mentioned some contemporary musicians who have experimented with this modern technology such as Dimitar Milev (see ClubhOuseFunk) and even Geordie Greep’s old outfit, Black Midi (see any of their live performances with Sitar). Yet, as Reid noted, “these forays into the field are impressive but remain obscure and only touch the surface of the possibilities allowed by microtones”.

Innovation, Reid claimed, is still to be explored within texture and sound design, not only in controlling the note the instrument plays but the harmonics and otherwise to a fine degree. It would be remiss not to acknowledge that it is the Western perspective which often informs our feelings of exhausted tactics within music, there is a wealth of culture, sounds and artistry across the world, perhaps which we often overlook, such as Joe Hisaishi, Toshiko Akiyoshi, He Zanhao and The Cairo Jazz Band.

WORDS Alice Carroll ART Jessica Sharkey

Oisín MacCann, a musician performing under the name Light Gallery (a personal project which “lies somewhere in between indie, folk and pop”) stated, “I don’t try to constrict myself to specific genres”. Light Gallery for MacCann is a way to channel and convey his emotions by picking up the instruments at his disposal, MacCann aims to represent his “lyrics in the best possible light”. When approached with the question of a new sound, he replied adamantly from the outset in its favour detailing how musicians, writers and producers are constantly evolving with the times. At a local level MacCann highlighted Curtisy as a breath of fresh air to the Irish rap scene “lovely grassroots modern Irish creatives.” Across the pond, Divorce is a stand out UK band for MacCann describing their sound as “a really unique mix of British indie rock with trad/folk/country influences”. But at the top of his list of up and coming innovators is the music duo Jockstrap, citing their production, lyrics and music videos as phenomenal with ‘I Want Another Affair (Taylor Skye Remix)’ as one of MacCann’s favourite music videos. To those who disagree with the idea of a new sound, MacCann referenced that the nostalgia of many for music’s past leads to an often pessimistic and static feeling towards music. As MacCann aptly put it, “surely all music is innovation, songs although holding similarities come from a new individual and their perspective and mindset…music should not be viewed as a cultural zeitgeist somehow ruined by the conformity of capitalism”. MacCann’s interpretation of a ‘new sound’ centred around the argument that the conscious decision to innovate within music whether in production, writing, instrumentation results in fostering a new sound.

Cuán McCauley, a student and music enthusiast stated in reply, “we’re losing the ability to judge the music making of the modern day by the quite antiquated notions, standards and terminology, of the ‘old’ music industry. I struggle to understand why people (like Rick Beato) believe that music has become more cyclical and trend based when the current makeup of popular music couldn’t be more sonically diverse”. If trends are a term we use for music, McCauley thinks it isn’t necessarily a negative thing, “When modern artists re-contextualise old trends, motifs and hallmarks of genres no longer at the forefront of popular music consumption, they do so with a nostalgia for the people and community that that music represents or represented”. As with all those I interviewed, innovation within production was at the forefront of their beliefs on the continuing evolution of music.

Advancements within music do not act as a deterrent for musicians but instead as motivation. It encourages musicians to consistently strive for the ‘new’ by pushing boundaries, and this very act can be defined as cyclical according to McCauley in setting the stage for a new generation. Due to the rise of technology and its accessibility, McCauley argued that we are experiencing innovation at a vastly new and consistent rate. Musicians are induced to operate “as ‘sonic auteurs’, much more so than any other decade of popular music production”.

Lastly, I spoke to Paul Jennings, a professional DJ and co-owner of the label ‘Reasons to Dance’. In conversation in relation to dance music, Jennings also acknowledged the role of nostalgia within music and how this materialises itself within the creative process with sampling and the rise of tropes in the recreation of house and drum and bass tracks of the nineties. “This is not necessarily a bad thing”, Jennings stated, and its existence does not render a ‘new sound’ an impossibility. By looking at dance music today, Jennings’ search for a new sound is steered by the happenings within experimental scenes, particularly the work of Bristol record label TimeDance rooted in UK rave culture. In reference to his coowned label ‘Reasons to Dance’ based in Dublin, Jennings explained how when approaching new artists, whether in the early stages or the signing, they don’t want it to sound like a genre. Genre fluidity is integral to their mission moving away from sounding like a house or drum and bass track, and towards the ‘new’ in dance culture.

So is there a new sound? It is not the first time this question has been asked and undoubtedly not the last, and still a concrete answer remains elusive. But to consolidate my own beliefs, and to lessen that furrowed brow I had earlier, I resolved to operate on hope. Recently, I found myself talking to a drummer at a live music bar in Utrecht. There I was in a country with a different culture, language, and traditions than mine yet we both connected through a shared affinity for music. In this space that Dutch music students worshipped, with open jams and a vitality for life, I couldn’t deny the chance or the ‘existence’ of a new sound. Why should I dismiss the ideas, when it could lie within the music the band that played that night, or with the musicians dancing in the crowd. And so I will end this article on this note, whether you agree or not, my final answer is yes, there is the possibility of a ‘new sound’.

Is the future of Folk Trinity folk? A Top Floor

WORDS Eva Stylianides, Zoe Breen

POSTER Stella Slade

The folk music tradition finds itself at a crossroads. The old ways of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie preserve the past as much as they cling to it. Songs such as House of the Rising Sun have no specific writer, and thus can be covered by any artist; redecorating the same room, over and over. But is this a legacy that can be continued? How can there be a future for folk music if its entire ethos is retrospective? How can the modern artist continue this legacy, imbuing themselves in their music, without straying from the genre all together?

Seth Rackard, a Limerick-born, Trinity-honed musician sheds some light on these questions. Top Floor Music collaborated with Rackard to put on a cosy and intimate soiree to showcase this modern spark of folk tradition. Nestled beneath the eaves of the GMB Attic, students settled into an evening of hypnotising finger-plucking and comedic storytelling that flooded from the fingers and lips of the talented Rackard. His role was that of a mystic; a medium of the ages conjuring deep emotions from times long forgotten, and playing them so urgently and passionately that they felt timeless. The room was filled with wisps of heartbreak and love that melted into the ears of the audience, and stayed with many for some time to come. Can Rackard strike the chord between cover and creativity, or is his musical adventure constrained to toe the line of the boundaries of folk?

To understand this conundrum, Top Floor sought to understand Rackard. To know the musician is to know the song.

What are your influences and what fuels your passion to play?

My top two would be John Fahey and Blind Arthur Blake. Also Maureen Bradley, a Donegal-based blues artist. It was through her release that I started listening to a lot of the artists that she would’ve covered. I guess Blind Boy Fuller, and Nora Brown, I would say.

How important is the storytelling aspect of folk music to you?

You can feel, especially from a lot of those old songs, a state of flow and playfulness that is so integral to the song process that would come through a lot of those [songs]. That’s an incredibly difficult thing to achieve. I think that it’s very easy to dismiss a lot of that stuff as novelty, but I think that it does shine an authentic light on the person making the art and is impressive in its own right. It’s not something that a lot of people can achieve— actually being able to get in touch with yourself and translate your own experiences in a self-aware manner is a lot more difficult than its given credit. Being genuinely engaged and passionate about the stuff that you’re doing is fundamental, it’s the bare minimum. I’m into that music because it connects with me and not because I’m pursuing a certain career path.

Music Interview with Seth Rackard

Do you ever feel like it’s a struggle to get the audience to connect with the stories you’re telling through music, considering that we’re so far removed from the past that these songs rise out of?

This sounds dismissive, and I don’t mean it to, but I just don’t care. So long as I have a good time at a gig, it’s a good gig. Which is maybe slightly inefficient because you’re doing it for the audience, but I feel like if you aren’t enjoying playing, no one else is going to enjoy it. Focus on your own experience will effectively translate, whether it’s the actual message of the music you’re doing or just your own passion.

What role do you think traditional folk music plays in modern times? American folk music was a political tool in the early to mid twentieth century to bolster protest movements and address hardships like the Dust Bowl.

What role do you think it serves now politically or culturally? Do you think there’s a place for it now in contemporary culture?

Folk is a tradition which is deeply uncommercialised at its core— a unique characteristic. Its integral value lies in its ability to be authentic, which is kind of unique at the moment. It has been used for political means, and I think when that’s done effectively it’s great; there have been a few artists in recent years that have done it very badly.

Do you think that folk music ever runs the risk of becoming commercialised, or is there something innate to it that resists this? Actually, yes. Much of post-punk and indie music, in its current state, relies on a massive facade— it’s something that bands, especially, need to maintain. With folk, it isn’t like that. If I want to go onstage and mess up a song, or just stop, I can. I can talk for as long as I want. There’s a freedom that’s inherently there, with folk music. I think that lends itself to resisting commercialisation, because without the facade it’s a lot easier to tell when insincere folk music is being produced for monetary profit. It’s very easy to tell when it’s out of touch with the person making it, and I think there’s much more pushback towards that in the overall folk tradition than there is in other genres where it’s widely acknowledged that maintaining that facade is integral to the culture of the genre.

Folk music’s future legacy must be preserved by harkening back to its authenticity. For Rackard, the uncommercialised nature of the folk scene is the answer to the question of its future generations. As long as the performance and the artist engage genuinely with the music, the label of folk can oscillate. Because the intent is true. This is how folk has persisted for so long, and how it can continue to do so. And Seth Rackard is as honest as they come, so the future looks bright.

Encore! An Interview with Seth Rackard, Three Years Earlier.

In 2022, Rackard made his Top Floor Music debut, performing several songs to an Atrium room packed wall-to-wall with eager listeners. After an incredibly well-received set, Rackard sat down with TN2’s very own Buster Whaley for an interview. Both Rackard’s performance, and the subsequent interview, were sadly lost -- until now. The following is a transcript of their conversation.

Whaley: Hi Seth. That was some great music.

Rackard: Yep. I’m going to remember this day for the rest of my life.

Whaley: Alright, uh, let’s get started… You’re in a band called Cascando but you’re also a very talented solo artist. Which do you think suits you more?

Rackard: Well, there’s that old saying about two wolves inside you, Whaley, something about two wolves... which one do you feed?

[Silence as Rackard trails off, gazing wistfully at the audience]

Whaley: But is there a different songwriting process? In the band, versus on your own?

Rackard: Yeah, in a band there’s five other people sitting next to me, and on my own I’m alone. Pretty obvious, really. Next question?

Whaley: Do you find that you tend to play different styles of music on your own?

Rackard: Well, Cascando is largely electrified folk, and my roots mainly lie in folk and trad. But I suppose there is a different process… Cascando is more rooted in blues and country, and a lot of my solo stuff is based on the British folk scene of the sixties, Jackson Frank and Burt Jansch and all that kind of stuff [editor’s note – Frank and Jansch are American and Scottish artists, respectively].

Whaley: It’s common knowledge on campus that you’re very well-read. Are there any writers in particular that influence your songwriting?

Rackard: It’s ironic, actually, I can only write lyrics when I’m not reading.

Whaley [to appreciative laughter]: it’s hard to do both at the same time, eh?

Rackard [impatient]: No, actually, that’s not what I meant. I often find that if I’m reading, I feel under pressure to write good lyrics, and then I don’t write good lyrics. But when I’m not reading, I don’t care about writing good lyrics, and then I DO write good lyrics. I’ve found that too many competing influences serve only as obstructions before my creative process. In terms of writing music, it can be helpful to absorb and regurgitate my influences, but in terms of writing lyrics, I can’t do that. I can only write lyrics when I really want to write lyrics, when I have something I’m emotionally invested in that I actually do want to express. I actually haven’t been able to write lyrics for about three months now. I haven’t been inspired.

Whaley: I hope you get inspired soon.

Rackard: Maybe after the divorce. That’d be a nice silver lining.

Whaley: What would you tell any aspiring songwriters, then? Not to read?

Rackard: No, no, that’s just me… I wrote my first song about a year and a half ago, and I’ve been playing guitar for ten years. I could never write a song until September 2021.

Whaley: What was the first guitar you ever played?

Rackard: It was actually [unintelligible]... Good God! But I finally upgraded to a Gibson Les Paul, at the ripe old age of thirteen. When it comes to playing acoustic guitar, I never did anything involving fingerpicking until about this time two years ago. And when I got into folk, I kinda just took off.

Whaley: Would you say that being a BESS student has influenced your lyricism?

Rackard: Again, the two wolves… BESS Seth and Music Seth, ruthless capitalist hunger versus overwhelming talent… Yes, someday you’ll be working for ME, Whaley…

Whaley: Tell me, Seth, do you believe in love?

Rackard: Well, who would say no in this situation? [laughter] A BESS student, that’s who. [laughter stops]

Whaley: Would you say that moving from Limerick to Dublin influenced your artistic output?

Rackard: It’s certainly a more creative environment here in Trinity as opposed to... some other... places.

Whaley: Are your bandmates from Limerick as well?

Rackard: One of them is, the rest are mostly from Cork. We only really play together at gigs, actually, so it’s kind of a really bad setup…

Whaley: No rehearsals?

Rackard: No, not really.

Whaley: How does your daily schedule or routine influence your creative process?

Rackard: You sure ask a lot of questions, huh? Well, I brush my teeth morning and night, I shower, and I get regular haircuts. I’m actually getting a haircut tomorrow as well, so stay tuned.

[Thunderous applause shake the room]

Whaley: And how does that, uh, does that influence your creative process at all? Songwriting, anything like that?

Rackard: No, not at all… No.

Whaley: Not at all.

Rackard: Yeah, no.

Whaley: Alright.

Rackard: How much time do we have left?

Whaley: Not much. Anything else you want to tell us? Any upcoming music?

Rackard: Yeah, Cascando, we’ll be releasing our upcoming single, Canyon Music, in the next two weeks.

Whaley: Great. Thanks, Seth.

Rackard: Sure. What a pleasure.

WORDS Buster Whaley POSTERS Luke Foley (left), Liam Liddane (Right)

SCooking as a Form of Life Inspiration

WORDS Sive O’Reilly Doyle ART Eve

Smith

elf-care, in the current zeitgeist, is largely portrayed as an aesthetic accessory; think sunrise yoga classes overlooking Dun Laoghaire harbour, a perfectly tailored gym routine, the sauna and sea swim combo (who cares if I black out every Friday if I go to run club on Sunday morning!), even an elaborate skin care routine.

That is not to say that the above are practised purely for aesthetic reasons, they can all be individually helpful, but I prefer to believe that to meditate, to become mindful, to develop oneself, you don’t need fancy subscriptions, equipment, or classes. Meditation and mindfulness can be found in smaller, unglamourous, seemingly mundane pockets of life. For me, one such pocket is the simple act of cooking.

I acknowledge that many do not enjoy the process of cooking, finding it simply an aggravating chore that must be muddled through at the end of every day; however, I find it is something completely different. Yes, if a day has been particularly draining, the process of cooking can seem somewhat daunting, but the prospect of a delicious meal at the end makes it all seem worthwhile. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

There seems to be, these days, more than ever before, advice pelted at us from every angle about how we can transcend our desperately average, mid-performing, ‘has potential just can’t quite reach it’ selves, to become something more. No matter what social media app you’re scrolling on, there are inevitably influencers with shiny, slicked back hair, donned in perfectly matching workout gear, from Ireland, the UK or the US but all managing to somehow have the same voice, giving guidance on simply, how to become better.

How to work out more; how to take breaks; how to be mindful; how to overthink less; how to cut out people that don’t serve you (while maintaining your relationships, of course); how to work on forgiveness; how to forgive less. There is this pervasive idea that there’s some perfect world out there that’s just out of reach; if you can just change the right things, achieve the providential combination, the puzzle pieces will slot together, and you will become a reborn version of yourself.

I don’t take issue with the aforementioned rituals; I’ve been known to enjoy a sauna and dip in the freezing water occasionally. They are just examples of how the ideas of self-care, self-improvement, and selfdevelopment have been commodified and fetishized, by Tiktok and Instagram Reels, and by people trying to sell the idea of a perfectly selfactualised reality. My main issue is the idea that to ‘fix’ ourselves, to ‘level up’, to reach this inner peace and satisfaction, we must pay for someone to either tell us how to do it, or partake in activities that have become trendy, as a substitute for self-care.

Capitalism tells us to treat the symptoms, not the cause. Self-care, as portrayed on social media, may reduce stress, or make us feel like we have treated ourselves to an hour dedicated to self-improvement (that we’ve paid for, of course). To radically challenge this mindset, we must not only find joy in the things we pay for, or that we gain social or financial capital from, but in the smaller parts of life. The parts of life that do not just involve contributing to our productive output, but the things that are truly good for the soul. When I cook, I’m focused on each individual task, slowly adding ingredients together, step by step, layer upon layer, until I’ve created something beautiful. I’ve always loved eating good food, and once I was old enough, I started to create this food for myself.

The methodical, repetitive nature of the cooking process, its creative expression, and above all the sensory satisfaction of a meal well-made, is what makes the art of preparing food the ultimate form of self-care, of replenishment, and, dare I say, the essence of life. What are we but an amalgamation of senses, forever perceiving, interpreting, shaping, creating? And cooking – well, what feeds the senses better?

Food preparation – washing, peeling, dicing, chopping, slicing, grating, mincing; these actions are systematic, predictable, measured. You can compare it to the grounding function of the controlled breathing stage of traditional meditation, a task to fulfil that does not take mental energy and consideration but rather requires a harnessing of your physical senses, to get in touch with that part of yourself that library days don’t particularly fulfil.

The art of cooking as a form of creativity or playfulness is something to be wholeheartedly embraced. For those of us who don’t feel particularly artistically inclined or get the opportunity to be creative in our everyday routines, cooking can be beautiful opportunity to be imaginative, to allow instinct to reign free – the chance to arrange flavour, texture, and even colours, creating something uniquely mine.

Imagine the visual symphony of neon orange chilli oil, dotted with sesame seeds, bright colour splashed across an otherwise bland-looking dish, or slices of scallions, adding a burst of green and cutting through the dish with a subtle peppery flavour. Think feta crumbled over shakshuka, its creaminess and tangy flavour bringing a layer of complexity that wasn’t previously there, or the sensation of tart pomegranate seeds bursting on the tongue. The deep, clear, umami goodness of miso soup, the faintly salty taste of nori, the crunch of cucumber and fresh tomato dressed in silky olive oil. For me, that is quite literally sensory heaven. And the fact that I get to create this for myself? It feels almost magical.

The satisfaction of having created something that can spark such joy is one of the best feelings in the world. Delicious, fresh, fulfilling food is something genuinely special to me; I have labored with love, and I get to reap the rewards and share it with the people I care about.

Some may counter that, because a meal is something fleeting, impermanent, it’s not something you get to keep forever, the experience, the care, the love, simply isn’t worth it. Not worth the time, not worth the thought, not worth the effort. And many approach life in general this way; as an endless succession of trade-offs, what’s the maximum I can get with the least amount of effort?

And hey, that’s not to be critical – that’s a fight or flight response of someone who’s become so used to living according to capitalist conditions, they’re simply burnt out and exhausted. It becomes a defensive mechanism, how to preserve energy that is drained more and more every day. We’ve become accustomed to living life in the fast lane, what’s the point of doing something if it doesn’t provide financial or social capital?

Cooking has taught me that there is true value in proceeding with care, going slowly, in investing just a little time in the things that serve you and bring you joy. This applies to everything in life: relationships, hobbies, personal projects, small passions. It is worth it to invest time into things that are truly good for you and make you happy. To me, that is the true nature of self-care, and that’s what cooking does for me. I urge you to find the things that make this statement ring true for you.

drawings by Eve Smith

On Music Production

Many images can spring to mind when we think of a musician: a pop star twirling around on stage in a sequined costume, a seasoned jazz singer crooning into a microphone, a street performer strumming a weathered guitar. Yet, behind each song heard on the radio, in a nightclub or at a concert hall, there is a team of unseen musicians meticulously crafting every detail of the lyrics and composition. One of the most unsung figures of this process is the music producer, who is responsible for overseeing the technical and creative aspects of a record. They act as the architect of the song and shape the sound in its entirety, ensuring that every vocal and instrumental element comes together seamlessly to create a polished-sounding track. Production is a central facet of recorded music, and has been since the dawn of electrical recording in the 1920s. Since then, countless trends in style and advances in technology have emerged, but the music producer has remained a constant driving force in the evolution of recorded music.

One of the most well-regarded music producers of all time is Quincy Jones, who began his career as a jazz composer and arranger in the 1950s. Jones has credits on many of the most iconic songs of this era, collaborating with Frank Sinatra on ‘Fly Me To The Moon’, and working with legendary artists such as Ella Fitzgerald and Aretha Franklin. He subsequently pivoted into the pop music genre, producing Leslie Gore’s ‘It’s My Party’ in 1963. Jones’ style was defined by his lush instrumentation, as well as his and blending of acoustic and electronic production elements, which made him attractive to artists across all genres. A pivotal moment in his career was his contribution to the musical score of The Wiz, starring Michael Jackson. The pair fostered a close working relationship, which led to Jones producing Jackson’s album Off the Wall in 1979. The monumental success of this record catapulted each of their careers to stratospheric heights, and made Jones the most powerful record producer in the world at the time. This was affirmed by the reception to their second collaboration, Thriller, in 1982. The album was subject to rave reviews due to Jones’ characteristic its innovative production and blending of genres from synth-pop to and R&B elements. Thriller soared to the top of the charts and remains the best-selling album of all time, with over 70 million copies sold worldwide. Jones went on to score a number of feature films, and was nominated for an Oscar for his work on The Color Purple in 1985. Quincy Jones passed away in November 2024 at the age of ninety-one, following an illustrious career spanning seven decades. The full scope of his cultural impact is evident in the poignant tribute to his life and legacy at the 2025 Grammy Awards, which began with a speech from Will Smith who attested that “Quincy made so many music greats, across multiple genres, sound even greater, bringing the best out in legends”. Janelle Monae, Stevie Wonder, Lainey Wilson, Cynthia Erivo and Herbie Hancock each delivered their own renditions of Jones’ classics, including ‘We Are The World’ and ‘Let the Good Times Roll’, underscoring his lasting influence across both generations and genres. Jones was a visionary producer who reshaped the landscape of modern music and , who defined his own unique sound while simultaneously elevating the careers of musical legends.

Over the past decade, music producers have adopted taken on an increasingly public-facing role, with some becoming celebrities in their own right. One of the most notable examples is New Jersey-born pop producer Jack Antonoff, who won the Grammy Award for Producer of the Year three consecutive times in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Known for his heavy use of synths and layered vocals, Antonoff crafts a dreamy, indie-leaning sound that is consistent across his catalogue. His intricate production first gained acclaim following the release of Taylor Swift’s 1989 in 2014, with his tracks ‘Out of the Woods’, ‘I Wish You Would’, and ‘You Are In Love’ standing out against songs produced by industry veterans such as Imogen Heap, Ryan Tedder, and Max Martin. However, it was his work on Lorde’s 2017 sophomore album, Melodrama, that established Antonoff as one of the most influential producers of this century. From its triumphant, explosive first single ‘Green Light’ to softer tracks like ‘Writer in the Dark’, Antonoff’s glittering production is just as integral to the success of the album as Lorde’s brooding vocals. The album’s critical and commercial success made Antonoff one of the most sought-after producers of his generation, leading him to become Lana Del Rey’s right-hand man while also collaborating with artists like Clairo, Sabrina Carpenter, and Kendrick Lamar. A Jack Antonoff production credit all but guarantees a Grammy nomination or a spot on end-of-year lists, cementing his status as both a critical darling and a commercial powerhouse, and highlighting the integral role played by the producer in the success of a record.

With the constant emergence of new musical technologies, the role of a music producer is ever-evolving. The growing accessibility of music production software has made music creation more affordable, enabling a new wave of independent artists to thrive. This has given rise to the bedroom pop movement, where musicians self-produce professional quality tracks from home studios. This shift is exemplified by the success of Canadian electronic musician Grimes, who produced and recorded her entire album Visions using Apple’s Garageband software in 2012. Visions, which featured Grimes’ breakout single ‘Oblivion’, was lauded for its cutting-edge production and for showcasing how innovative music can arise from minimal resources. Charli XCX received similar acclaim for her record how i’m feeling now, which she conceived and released during a period of six weeks during the initial COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020. She recorded the entire album from her home studio, digitally consulting her co-producers AG Cook and BJ Burton. In a promotional Zoom call, Charli stated that “The nature of this album is going to be very indicative of the times, just because I’m only going to be able to use the tools I have at my fingertips”. These tools ended up being more than enough for her to create an experimental record with lasting impact. Both Visions and how i’m feeling now serve as proof of the immense changes occurring in the realm of music production, but still reinforce the crucial role of strong production in the success of an album.

The Emotional Durability of Clothes

Irecently wandered through a charity shop, scanning aimlessly through the racks until I reached a section dedicated to an older clientele. I sifted through it out of curiosity, hundreds of past lives at my fingertips. A beautiful cable knit jumper, with the name ‘Jack’ scrawled across its tag in thick marker. The collar was worn in, the cuffs clumsily stitched back together, traces of someone’s character and life absorbed into the wool. All of which you could take home for just a fiver. Clothes are personal artefacts, carrying the imprint of those who wore them before; their true value lying not in material durability, but in their ability to hold memories and identities, turning garments into intimate archives of personal history. Clothes outlive us, remembering everything, and carrying every trace of the lives they once belonged to.

The wardrobe of my childhood bedroom has the same essence as this charity shop rail, a graveyard of my past selves. Inside lie Hollister t-shirts from 2014, still intact from a time before everything was polyester, and when logo t-shirts were the height of style. An ugly hoodie that an exsituationship graciously lent me for the walk home, whose face I struggle to piece together, but whose character I am unfortunately reminded of every time I open the wardrobe door. A pair of Topshop Joni jeans that I did everything but sleep in for almost a year (though they wouldn’t even go over my calves now), remain folded on the shelf. Although I should definitely part with these items, throwing them away feels like an act of violence. They are not just cotton and cheap denim; they have transcended mere fabric and have become artefacts of who I was and who I am. Though defining my younger self by Hollister t-shirts and exes hand-me-downs feels trivial, these pieces carry an undeniable weight. In a digital era where memories are often intangible, they serve as rare, physical proof of my past selves; something that now feels invaluable. To discard them would be to erase every version of me that once existed.

Vinted, Depop, and charity shops have undeniably changed the way we view clothes. Buying vintage isn’t just shopping; it feels like an inheritance. The emotional durability of clothes goes beyond sentimentality: it is tangible, lived-in, and deeply personal. If you’ve had a steady stream of Vinted packages arriving at your door recently, you’ll know what I mean. There’s something uncanny about wearing someone else’s clothes, or knowing you are in someone else’s shoes. It’s an unsettling yet highly intimate feeling of wearing another’s life, a connection to a person you will never know. Buying vintage is much more than a rejection of fast fashion, or an aesthetic choice - it’s a way of borrowing an identity.

Recently, in the Dunnes check-out line, a girl approached me to tell me she loved my jacket that I’d bought from Vinted the day before. Out of the Irish inability to take a compliment, I blurted out, “Thank you, but it’s not mine”. We stood facing each other while she anticipated a story about my stylish Mum or maybe how I robbed it from a flatmate; yet I had no story. In that moment, I realised I still felt I was borrowing it from someone I had no connection or knowledge of, other than their Vinted profile picture of their cat. I left feeling like I’d been caught in a lie, as if I’d stolen not just a jacket, but someone else’s style, their past, maybe a piece of who they were. That’s the strange thing about second-hand clothes, they carry echoes of someone else, until, with time, they start to become yours.

But in a world that glorifies nostalgia while simultaneously discarding the past, how do we embrace our clothes’ history without succumbing to fashion’s obsession with the new? We are constantly sold the capitalistic fear of aging, particularly in fashion, where nostalgia is romanticised, through Y2K revivals, and ‘timeless’ staples flooding our feeds, yet the industry continues to operate on a cycle of relentless reinvention, discarding trends as quickly as they appear. Nostalgia is only valuable when it can be turned into a marketing tool, rather than any genuine connection to the past. The world is obsessed with newness and disposability, conditioning us to forget that clothes are supposed to live, evolve, and be reborn; not just in charity shops or Depop, but in our own wardrobes. The real act of defiance isn’t just buying second-hand, but it’s resisting the urge to replace, to discard, to chase the “new in” page on ASOS. It’s about letting our clothes grow old with us, allowing them to absorb our experiences. The most radical act of sustainability isn’t so much rewearing the past but refusing to discard the present.

In the end, I left Jack’s cable knit jumper on the rail in the charity shop. Although it would have been a beautiful addition to my wardrobe, and was frankly an absolute steal, it felt strangely too personal to take it home. Perhaps the next customer after me was more suited for the inheritance. As we move towards more sustainable fashion practices, we must acknowledge that the emotional durability of clothes isn’t just about reusing what has been discarded, but also understanding and honouring the depth of connection they hold, and the lives they have touched. Ultimately, wearing second-hand clothes isn’t merely a practical choice, but an opportunity to carry someone else’s story alongside our own, and in doing so, better understand the true value of the clothes we wear.

WORDS Ella Mansfield

Painting by Eve Smith

Caught in the Nest Navigating Adulthood on the Deathbed of Your Youth

WORDS Luke Reid

Art Jess Sharkey

You know the tale. Kids relishing in dreams of adulthood and adults yearning for the days of before. Longing for states we can’t return to and reaching for any resonance of those accompanying feelings. It’s nothing new, really. These are feelings we all must face in life. Especially as college students. We hold onto youth with its essence seeping between the cracks of our tight knuckles, strangling it until it’s beaten and we’re left wrinkled in The George.

As I approach graduation, I look towards my future career prospects, my future home, my future life without college to fall back on. Escaping the horrors of part-time retail work and the joys of frolicking around campus and complaining about how much work I have to do. Letting go of your youth and embracing adulthood can be scary and frightening, but oh so exciting. Yet, there are so many of us who are developmentally stunted. The Irish housing crisis has left us with nowhere to turn. Many of us are still stuck living at home, letting independence pass us by until you’re like me and it all has to hit you at once with no manual on how to navigate your impending graduation to ‘adulthood’.

Many students from across the country and abroad who settle in a new city to begin their new life are perhaps better suited than us homejunkies, cooped up in our ancient childhood bedrooms that have held the remnants of childhood imagination and toy worlds, the highs and lows of secondary school anxiety attacks, and now the depths of my dissertation. Every memory of my life thus far leads back to my childhood bedroom where I slept smothered in stuffed teddies and my mammy tucked me into bed. Every holiday and night out ends with me returning to that room, regressing to that state, finding solace in those comforts yet never finding room to truly grow and embrace my mighty age. Letting go of my youth seems like such an impossible task when I’m drowning in it every time the sun goes down, the ghost of my child self sitting across from me, watching me drift off as I stare at yellowed stars on my ceiling, imbuing me with his essence.

How many 22-year-olds say they feel 17? How many 40-year-olds say they feel 20? Do any of us ever truly embrace whatever ‘adulthood’ is supposed to mean? Does it happen upon you on a random birthday with that fantastical shifting of your frontal lobe that burns away your youth and awards you that gorgeous perspective of Adulthood™? And who’s to say that’s such a bad thing? Can’t I embrace my adulthood independence and free will to make my own decisions and mistakes while holding onto a youthful optimism?

Yet, despite all of these midday ponderings, I fantasise about this new life as a child would. All those children out there wishing they could run away with their stick-and-bandana bag with a pair of socks and a cookie. Yearning for days of more, days of independence and freedom from the rule of those pesky adults with their pointing fingers and orders. I wish to cling onto my imaginative youth as my wings get caught in my oversized clothes, begging for a release to free me from the nest. And once I do I’ll look back with my rose-tints and a black veil and cringe as I mourn what I’d lost, what I couldn’t appreciate at the time as I pull a grey hair from my lower back. And to that, I hit the tennis ball back over to that hypothetical me to acknowledge that life isn’t about bearing things in your calloused grip until you reap all the positivity from that memory but about appreciating what has come to bring you to where you are. That youthful optimism is still kicking its feet and giggling!

When I consider letting go of my youth and embracing this new adulthood that awaits me, there’s something negative implied. It’s easy to associate youth with a sense of innocence and imagination, freedom and flexibility, carelessness and cheerfulness. And in that, it’s even easier to ignore what adulthood awards you — the freedom to choose who you want to be. But one’s youth isn’t an exponential chart of happiness and positivity; no life stage truly is. While stuck in my childhood bedroom, it’s impossible to really yearn to be anyone but who I’ve always been at home. Sure, we all mature and grow as people outside in the world, but all that goes out the door when I’m lying in my bed caught in the past. Freeing myself of these burdens and embracing the future, accepting what my youth can give me and appreciating my first steps on the moon in the process.

Sophie Eastwood in California

Nerds, Geeks, and Dweebs Becoming, in Theatre Camp

It’s hot in New York City and I am eight years old. My teacher describes me as “aloof” to my mother and prescribes to her a book called Odd Girl Out. I start arguments with the kids queueing for the swingset about whether or not God exists. I have one friend, a nonverbal boy who wears a Santa hat every day but willingly listens to me explain in great detail the entries in the Guiness Book of World Records. By all accounts, I am off-kilter. Itching to escape the confines of middle childhood; boredom as my final execution.

New York summers consisted of waiting in line to swim in the public pool (where one could find a wide assortment of Band-Aids and clumps of hair floating on the surface), going to the free MoMA events for children under twelve, and situating myself under the seal sculpture in the playground on West 22nd Street (aptly nicknamed by my family and I as “The Dirty Park”) which erratically squirted warm water out of its mouth.

My grandfather lived in a very old turquoise house in a small town in Connecticut - one of the few that wasn’t blown up in the Battle of Ridgefield in 1777. He had a koi pond and small cluster of peonies in his back garden. I always felt the house was haunted. It probably was. Nonetheless, it was a consistent offering of airy escape, although most often only for a brief afternoon at a time. Somewhere in the stickiness of summertime, my parents, possibly believing that my diagnosis of ‘aloof’ had something to do with the water I was ingesting from the playground seal on West 22nd Street, concocted a plan. I was to stay in my grandfather’s home for six weeks and attend theatre camp.

At first I was disgusted. Theatre camp was for nerds, geeks, and dweebs. Which, truthfully, I still believe to be true. I also believe, however, that I deeply and wholly belonged to this genre of child. I had long been picked on for being weird – despite this, and possibly to my own social decline in the hierarchy of eight-year-olds, I never considered becoming the type of person the children in my class would see as an equal. Perhaps it was my own small act of defiance in a world which I felt was grossly unjust –scheduled bedtimes, meals I didn’t want to eat, extracurricular activities I dreaded. My entire universe had been designed by other people. So, as the thought of theatre camp became less of a far-off, unserious plan which would never come into fruition, and more of something which was going to happen and which I had no control over, I began to sink into the actuality of it all. It was happening, and no amount of foot-stomping, whining debate would alter my fate.

We took the train up to Connecticut on a Saturday in late June. It was raining and I was sulking. Silent treatment extraordinaire. My colossal defiance had blinded me to the possibility that theatre camp would be something I enjoyed – something my Grandfather echoed once we reached the turquoise house. But I knew what I believed to be true. I didn’t belong in theatre camp. As a matter of fact, I didn’t belong anywhere. Only the protective, albeit limiting, confines of my own imagination could offer me solace.

WORDS Tallulah Whaley

ART Jessica Sharkey

The production was The Sound of Music. The theatre was small and had an air of regality. Auditions were held, and I was assigned the role of Marta, the second-to-youngest Von Trapp child. My first line in the show was “My name is Marta, I turn eight years old on Tuesday, and for my birthday I would like a pink parasol.”

As the days progressed, I began to notice a shift in my level of defiance. It began with appreciating the beauty of the space I was in.The sound of the theatre during rehearsal. Ornate details, hollowed wooden edges. Heavy curtains, almost ghostlike hanging from the rafters. Echoes muffled by deep purple velvet seat cushions. The word ‘rehearsal’. Grandpa asking how was camp? And me responding, rehearsal. Just to hear it. Feel it on my tongue. Pretentious joy. The script. Writing my name on it in magenta gel pen, looping the A’s and L’s together until it looked more like a rollercoaster than anything legible. Putting it all in a purple binder adorned by puffy stickers. The day we were fitted for costumes – blue dress with a white collar and frilly socks. We’ll put your hair in plaits.

It all felt wildly important. I began to feel like I was keeping a massive secret: that despite knowing this production would exist in history solely as a memory in the minds of the children who acted in it, I also knew that I was on the verge of becoming an entirely different person. It was beginning to dawn on me that my presence - something I had been starting to believe would only ever slip through the cracks, never solidifying into anything permanent - had the potential to make something whole. The other Von Trapp children relied on me to say my lines. I was a part of something larger. A story which had been told thousands of times before.

Perhaps putting on a costume, memorising words to say, practicing beforehand where to move on the stage, was precisely what I needed as a child who, up until this point, had felt so strongly that her actions, behaviours, thoughts, and feelings were different and therefore wrong. The simple act of pretending - of becoming somebody else - had hitherto been an impossibility. I had been so preoccupied with figuring out how I fit into the increasingly hypocritical universe in which I happen to reside.

Opening night, sticking my head through the cracks of the curtains, my parents sitting front-row. The whole show passing by in what felt like fifteen minutes. Trying to remember to stop smiling during the sadder scenes. My Grandpa presenting a bouquet of his pink, home-grown peonies after it was all over.

We drove back to New York on a warm night in early August. Dark blue air, empty country roads. Sticking my head out the window, my brother asleep in the seat next to me. CoffeeHouse radio station playing The Decemberists’ I Was Meant for the Stage. I had a feeling that I had done something, for the first time in my life, that truly meant something. To have people watch you, clap. Learning the words I had to say. Putting on the blue dress. Warm under the lights. Looked at my mother in the rearview mirror. Knowing look. Her daughter was never ‘aloof’.

Women Don’t Owe You a ROLE MODEL

In summer of 2020, while most of us were busy box-dying our front strands or completing Chloe Ting ab workouts, Lana Del Rey, almost a decade into superstardom, released her most controversial opus yet.

‘A Question for the Culture’ appeared on our screens on May 21st via Instagram. A 2-page declaration, laid out in typewriter font, it was a far cry from the usual heavily-filtered vaping videos or posts promoting new music.

The post illustrated her frustration with the way the media had received and critiqued her music in the preceding decade. Particularly at the beginning of her career, Del Rey wrote frequently from the point of view of a submissive, damaged and at times lustful woman. Among many releases, her 2014 album, Ultraviolence, a fan favourite, perhaps embodies these themes most plainly. Critics condemned its alleged romanticization of domestic abuse and female submission, with lyrics such as “He hit me and it felt like a kiss” on its title track ‘Ultraviolence’ and “Being a mistress on the side, it might not appeal to fools like you” from ‘Sad Girl’. Critics accused Del Rey of promoting traditional, anti-feminist views. Journalist Isabella Castillo wrote an article entitled ‘Lana Del Rey’s Music Filled with Outdated, Antifeminist Ideas’ in 2015 for the State Press. ‘All the struggle for gender equality needs is a powerful, chart-topping advocate for the battery of women’ she stated ironically.

In Del Rey’s Instagram post, she outlines how she drew from her own past experiences, experiences shared by many women, when making this music. The public controversy came from the singer’s chosen comparisons, claiming that other female singers, such as ‘Doja Cat, Ariana, Camila, Cardi B, Kehlani and Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé’ have enjoyed number one hits about ‘being sexy, wearing no clothes, fucking, cheating etc-’ and although it is not explicitly said, she appears to feel as though she is the only one who has had to face any backlash at all.

Del Rey’s decision to compare herself to a group of women of colour (save for Ariana) was ill-thought out during one of the most dissident political climates in America, right before a major re-election that would polarize the country in unforeseen ways and at the beginning of a summer characterised by thousands of Black Lives Matter protests worldwide. More than that, she was simply wrong to imply that no other female musician has faced controversy to the degree that she has. Female public figures are and always have been scrutinized by the press for singing about fucking, cheating and being sexy. Just three months after ‘A Question for the Culture’ entered the zeitgeist, ‘W.A.P’ featuring Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion would make history as one of the most heavily condemned female collaborations of all time – famously criticized by right wing journalists Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro, republican politicians, and even fellow rapper CeeLo Green, who labelled it ‘Salacious gesturing to kinda get into position.’

Overall, the Instagram post was in poor taste. However, between Del Rey’s own words and the consequential public backlash, we met an agreement on one issue – female musicians are policed by the press to a very harsh degree. Have we ever thought to look to their male counterparts?

For every female rapper or pop princess who is villainized by the public for salacity, there is a male rapper deemed alpha or a mystifying male indie singer considered alluring.

The double standard is perhaps most transparent within the rap community, where common themes for both male and female artists include sex, drugs, nudity and similar obscenities. Megan Thee Stallion played an active role in Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign, garnering particular attention after her performance at Harris’ breakout campaign rally in Atlanta last July, where she sang hits including Savage and Body. The online reaction from conservatives were akin to a witch hunt. The phrase ‘Hoes for Harris’ began circulating widely on X in the hours after, utilized by many conservative influencers and journalists including Drew Hernandez and DesireeAmerica4.

Eminem, perhaps one of the most lyrically controversial rappers in the mainstream, whose lyrics are often morbid as they are scandalous, consequently endorsed Harris in an October Detroit rally. The rapper’s backing garnered no such reaction and in fact flew quite under the radar. It appears that rapping about toxic relationships, murder fantasies and cannibalism does not call into question one’s ability to promote a political candidate should it be a man with ‘certified GOAT status’. Kanye West’s prior endorsement of Donald Trump in 2020 was undoubtably surprising and controversial among certain groups, however, the suitability of him as a supporter was never questioned in relation to his own risqué and lewd lyrics.

The double standard is perhaps more well-hidden within pop and indie music, although it is there for those with eyes to see it. Pop sovereign Taylor Swift has always been a criticized figure and many times it has been for good reason. One criticism that began early in her career and never seemed to die was her habit of writing about her own failed relationships. Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres frequently made jibes at her during TV interviews, asking what song is about what ex-boyfriend. In 2014, Swift called out the unending criticism while on an Australian radio station 2DayFM, highlighting the fact that Ed Sheeran and Bruno Mars are both guilty of the same crime, yet do not face the same backlash.

Ariana Grande is another singer who has drawn attention to the blatant double standards for men and women in the industry. In a 2015 twitter post, she highlighted the fact that men who discuss sex or sexual themes in their music are ‘regaled’, where women are ‘shamed.’

Lana Del Rey is not the only indie singer who has frequented themes of abusive or toxic relationships. Many hall of fame heartthrobs, from Kurt Cobain to Elliot Smith have addressed similar subjects in their music. The title track of Smith’s 1994 debut album Roman Candle addresses his troubled relationship with his stepfather, who allegedly abused him during his childhood. Throughout the track, Smith fantasises about hurting his abuser ‘I want to hurt him, I want to give him pain.’ Nirvana’s 1993 hit ‘Heart Shaped Box’ has often been interpreted by fans to be about Cobain’s infamously toxic relationship with singer Courtney Love and the difficulties with being constantly sucked back in regardless of how bad it gets.

Elliot Smith and Kurt Cobain have not been accused of romanticising these taboos of life and love in the way that Del Rey has. It appears that, for women, there is a constant expectation to embody a certain perfection. Women in the public eye are expected to be role models –even if that is not what they signed up for. We exist in an age where, for some odd reason, anything that a woman does has to be justified as for the advancement of all women.

Megan Thee Stallion’s decision to show skin in a music videos or to rap about sex is not inherently empowering. However, it never needed to be empowering. Similarly, Del Rey singing about being in abusive or toxic relationships is certainly not an advocation countering the battery of women. It is art and art does not need to subscribe to the virtuous standards of the time it exists within. Why is it that we so easily don the labels of mysterious or misunderstood to artists such as Smith or Cobain, or that male rappers who write about pussy and bitches are seen as alpha rather than salacious?

Del Rey’s now infamous 2020 Instagram post highlighting inconsistencies within criticisms in the music industry perhaps did not hit the nail on the head with the hammer, however these inconsistencies certainly persist within other realms. There is a strange expectation that any art that a woman releases has to uphold messages of liberation and wokeness and that if her art does not endorse such values, she is unworthy of contributing to any kind of public discourse. Let us not forget that art, in any form, does not necessitate explanation or justification. Whether rapping about WAP or singing about the appeal of mistresshood, art simply is.

WORDS Kate Ryan

TN2 Fiction & Poetry

SWIMMING LESSON MY HOME

the water in the pool takes turns at being blue then green then blue again as i stand at the edge looking into the deep. i hear him then screaming to me from the water; hands first don’t hit your head. droplets from my soaked bathing suit are making a pool of their own on the hot asphalt and before i can scare myself i leap without looking. i think i did it right because he is smiling and he doesn’t smile that often. he gives me the full rundown but i never listen that closely and anyhow he doesn’t do much talking anymore he hasn’t for a while. sometimes he would still nod or say a few words but then he wouldn’t even look if you squeezed his hand or if you told him you graduated. he would look into empty space and yell out sometimes but never anything i would recognize.

now he doesn’t even do that now he rests at last as i am sure he was tired of us not hearing when he tried to help me and my brother to get the hardest part of the crossword. that is how i remember him best ; in his chair pen in hand glasses firmly in place his tongue out while he was focusing and writing down the last letter.

i am left with one clue empty

WORDS Ana Kosat

as tan lines fade into my skin the rooms grows cold at night despite the heat trying to keep its grip on the last days of august. i lay awake in my childhood bedroom with the window open just a crack to let the beginnings of fall inside, still unable to let out the life it holds, between the walls i was never allowed to paint turquoise. concealed by white bounds covered in photographs and a window overlooking a 24-hour gas station, where prices are written out in a language different to my mother’s, my wounds have stopped bleeding and although still bandaged, i struggle to remember that it is that distance, that made the land hospitable, that poked a hole for the stiffled air to escape. my lungs have filled up with oxygen, alveol by alveol, expanding into fields where corn grows and is reaped in late summer.

a metal key on a gold string, drags me down to the cold cobblestone, that covers paths leading far. it won’t open my door again the lock has been remolded by love for a place that doesn’t feed my grief. sometimes home isn’t home anymore, maybe it never was.

HEIRLOOM

Pocket watch, o pocket watch

Little universe

Self-contained

Beyond repair

Time’s true cause and reason

Tiny demon

Once imprisoned

Wheels with teeth stopped spinning

You have escaped

Will you return?

WORDS Jes Paluchowska ART Jess Sharkey

Looking Back at the Basics. The Play I Can’t Forget

When starting to talk to new acquaintances about theatre, I like to ask them what it is that they imagine when they hear the word. They look at me confused when I say that. Fair enough; I sound insufferable. I then explain: “Tell me about the play. The one you start to think of by default”. This usually helps.

We all have that one production that we saw at some point, after which we could never again look at the stage the same way. It would be something you caught young and, funnily enough, it tends to be a classic. The people I’ve met since moving to Ireland have a tendency to answer with Shakespeare, a good few times bringing up how seeing Much Ado About Nothing made them realise old theatre can actually still be funny. Another big one is Ibsen, something about the universalism and the base appearance of ‘wow look at that, isn’t it messed up how much it’s making me feel to see those Scandinavians suffer’. Mine, as much as it pains me to say it, is even more pretentious.

I couldn’t have been older than twelve when I first saw The Magic Flute on stage. It was my first opera, which I fully expected to hate, and the only thing that held me in my seat as the curtain went up was the memory of the 1977 cartoon version that my grandparents kept on tape for me to watch on the weekends. Even then, long before my goth phase fully kicked into actualisation, the Night Queen was doing it for me.

So here I am, very small and expecting to be very bored, when the lights go down in the Warsaw Great Theatre National Opera. The curtain was red but now I can see only in black and white as the actors waltz on stage, dressed in a style I will later learn to recognise as the chic of American 1920s. Already I can tell that this is not going to be anything like the cartoon, with its bright colours and humour, somewhat campy and with gaudy decorations to frame the immobile singers. Okay, I tell myself when I see Tamino run onstage, I see how it is. This is just going to be a theatre play, but with music. I can work with that. And then the snake comes on, and very suddenly, I realise I was gravely mistaken.

WORDS Jes Paluchowska

Barrie Kosky’s staging of the Mozart classic goes full out, both in style and in its usage of technology. The wall behind the actors is left fully in view of the audience with little to no props present to obstruct it. Instead, a projector blasts at it at all times, changing the scenery according to the needs of the scene. There are balconies and windows installed into that wall, with staircases and lifts hidden on the other side away from the audience’s eye. In a more active kind of theatre, with the actors moving around and obstructing the light, it would have probably been something of a nuisance. Here, it was an elevation.

Even if, like me, you never quite became an opera snob, there is still a more than fair chance that you are familiar with the Queen of the Night aria. It’s a soprano masterpiece, all high tones and iconic calls for vengeance sung in dramatic German by an evil sorceress. If you already knew that, good for you. The only reason I was familiar with its contents at the time was that the cartoon translated the lyrics into simple Polish, going for a nice and simple “Ja zemszczę się!” (I will have revenge!), rather than leave me at the mercy of the original (and significantly more complicated) German „Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen” (The vengeance of hell boils in my heart).

The aria is a crown jewel of any Flute staging and, when it came to it, the Kosky production certainly did not disappoint. The Queen, played at the time by the great Joanna Moskowicz, stood atop a balcony front centre of the wall, overlooking the fleeing lovers in a scene mirroring the opening chase. She was larger than life. The singer, small in comparison to the figure she was portraying, was only the very top of the silhouette, sat, like the top half of a centaur, atop a giant, pitch-black body of a spider. Her legs moved mechanically, like something straight out of Metropolis, scuttling along with the fever-pitch rhythm of the aria. It transfixed me, and I remember feeling like a small fly or insect that was about to be consumed.

Years later, I can’t help but look back at this production. I have since seen and been moved by many more plays, operas, and others, but I don’t think any had this particular effect on me, simply rooting me into place with wonder. The very idea that you could move the play up from the flat second dimension had never occurred to me. It let me see just how much more than the floorboards there is to theatrical space, and just how far an old story can come when augmented by new visuals and technology. If any of you ever find yourself on the continent, I cannot recommend trying to catch it. As of now, the Kosky production is staged in Berlin and Warsaw, scoring raving reviews with a new cast.

Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt

Eve Smith

What I Tell Myself... Confessions of a Girl Educated with Girls

There wasn’t much that I felt I missed out on as a child. Well dressed and always presentable, good manners, stable home life, has a great circle of friends, a pleasure to teach. This is how my teachers described me in the notes section of my school reports. Their comments followed the same structure year on year and read like copy-paste versions of their predecessors’. There were the odd years when a teacher would pick up on a growing inattention in class, my habit of staring out the window when I didn’t understand my arithmetic, or my lack of recall. ‘What did you think about the story we just read, Ms. Moynihan? Did you think the Frog King deserved to be ousted by his court?’ I hadn’t realised the frog was a king, nor had I paid attention to the ending of the story. ‘Yes, I think he deserved it.’ That should do. ‘And why do you think he deserved it?’ Damn. ‘He was a bad king.’

I went to a same-sex Catholic School in the suburbs of North Dublin in Ireland. All of my teachers were women, my principal, a woman, all of my classmates looked, sounded and dressed like me. In fact, the only men I interacted with during my eight years of primary education were the local priest in the church next door, and the caretaker whom I collected cartons of milk from before lunch. I think this may be the reason I was so shocked when I discovered what misogyny was. My classmates, too, were horrified. People speak about matriarchy as if it is some far off utopia. I think I lived it.

Smith

WORDS Alice Moynihan ART Eve

I usually reminisce about my school days with the kind of fondness one holds for their dead pets or their lost teddy bears. There is a photograph, or rather a page in the annual school calendar (you know the one that parents pay €20 for and are disappointed that their child only features once in the entire booklet). It sits in the bottom of the ottoman in my living room at home. When I am feeling nostalgic for simpler days, I sit down at the ottoman and rifle through my Communion photos (and sigh with regret at the extravagant white kitten heels I had insisted on wearing ). Pictures of me in the hospital, pink and scrunched up looking like an amorphous blob. In one picture I am on the periphery of a large group photo, a small smile which could have been bigger had the picture been taken a millisecond later, plays on my lips. My hair is natural, not straightened. My friends smile too. The memories of my classroom at Christmas time, all the sugar we were fed, days spent lazing on the grass at lunch, watching episodes of Aifric and Veggie Tales on the box television on rainy days, are as comforting as remembering the eyes of a deceased and well loved terrier.

Some people disagree with the notion of educating girls and boys separately, yet another way the patriarchy is upheld in our system of education. Oh boo! Is what I’d love to say. But I can’t, because I agree. And then I find myself feeling guilty, torn between nodding my head and agreeing that the education I was given was unfair, and advocating for my younger self, standing up to common sense and explaining that I loved my education. Sit down, that’s the wrong opinion.

Supposedly, in Ireland anyway, girls perform better academically when educated separately. This is one of the main proponents for same-sex education. Boys tend to perform worse academically when educated separately as opposed to educated in a mixed environment. This is one of the main arguments against same-sex education. Of course there is more nuance to the argument. In second level education the lines become much blurrier. As is the natural progression for a child who was educated in this way at primary level, I went to an all-girls secondary school. I was educated with a majority of girls and a few trans-boys who I had grown up with. At sixteen it would have seemed very odd to have them transfer to the nearby boys school. But this is not my story to tell.

Sometimes my mother will turn to me and ask ‘Did I do the right thing? Did you not enjoy being in a girls school?’ She stops on the verge of proclaiming herself a ‘Bad Mother’, whatever she interprets that to be. Usually this reaction is a response to my complaining about the lack of socialisation I had with men and boys my own age growing up. Comparatively, my friends who went to mixed schools have more friends from both gender pools. All of my male friends are either gay or thrice my age and I have never been able to be friends with ex-boyfriends. My mind designates their characters to the little space in my head labeled ‘Enigma’. I don’t know if that makes sense, and I certainly could never explain it to my girlfriends who were educated in mixed environments.

‘I don’t think of it like that. My life happened the way my life happened and I adapted to it. I got a great education.’ I don’t know whether I am trying to convince my mother or myself. My friends, who went to the mixed school one neighbourhood over from my own school, are like my teachers’ comments about me in my school report. Copy and paste versions of one another. Their personalities are unique of course, and I do not mean to suggest a lack of substance, rather the opposite. They are confident in this world, they are sure of themselves and their thoughts. They don’t get offended easily, they have hard shells. I love my friends for all of these reasons, but I am an ‘Enigma’ to them. They can’t understand my opinions, they laugh and say, ‘Alice you’re so funny.’ They don’t get offended or indignant about anything and they can’t understand why I do.

It’s 2012, and in a moderately sized girls national primary school in North Dublin (which is now co-educational) some classrooms are integrated. Two grade levels could be educated in the same room by the same teacher. Each grade learns a slightly more or less advanced version of the curriculum according to their age group, but for the most part, the girls collaborate and learn together. The younger girls benefit from the example and maturity of the older ones. The older girls enjoy being mentors to their younger classmates. They hunt for Easter eggs on the last Friday before the mid-term break. They line up to sit on Santa Claus’s lap on the last day of school before the Christmas holidays. They pool €2 coins at the end of the year to buy their teacher a nice present, they all sign the card. Sometimes the older girls even invite their younger classmates to their birthday parties. None of them have a problem with the way they are taught. None of them think that it might be better to have boys in the room. None of them feel they miss out on much as children. This is what I tell myself.

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