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Staff Amy Robinson, President Lauren DiNicola, President
Editorial Board Lauren DiNicola, Editor-in-Chief Jackie Leong, Editor-in-Chief Bridget Irvine Katya Johns Rebecca Maddalo Max Schulman Jenny Ng Art Board Jihyun Ro, Director Zoe Galindo Sarah Ngo Stella Fiorenzoli Alexander Pytka Jenny Ng Design Board Samantha Wesner, Director Qing Qing Miao, Director Jackie Leong Xinrui Zhang Elisabeth Meyer
Staff Writers Melanie Wang, Director Anita Lo, Director Christopher Alessandrini Rebecca Chen Julia Haney Annie Harvieux Brian Kim Simone Kovacs Bonnie Lei Jackie Leong Jenny Ng Alexander Pytka Amy Robinson Annie Wei Katherine Xue Catherine Zuo Historian and Alumni Relations Director Christopher Alessandrini Events Coordinator Simone Kovacs
Donors Jean Shaw Wenyi Cai Joshua Haas Russell Krupen Buck Farmer Rachel Bergmann Faculty Advisor Daniel Donoghue With Special Thanks To: John Finnegan, The Crimson The Office for the Arts at Harvard The Undergraduate Council and to our graduating seniors: Emily Marie Boggs Louis Evans Sarah Ngo Max Schulman Katherine Xue
Tuesday Magazine is a general interest publication that engages in and furthers Harvard’s intellectual and artistic dialogue by publishing art and writing, with an emphasis on student and non-professional work. Staff applications are accepted at the beginning of each semester, and submissions are accepted on our website throughout the year. Visit www.isittuesday.tumblr.com for more information. Copyright Š 2013 by Tuesday Magazine. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.Tuesday Magazine is a publication of a Harvard College student-run organization. Harvard name and/or VERITAS shield are trademarks of the President and Fellows of Harvard College and are used by permission of Harvard University.
Table of Contents | Volume 10, Issue 2 4
Unresolved 2, 3, 4, 5
20 Vespertine
5
what is the opposite
. Poetry
21 Plexiglass Model
6
untitled
. Poetry
22 The Anti-Indie
7
Boats at Sea
. Photography
25 Red
. Drawing
8
Untitled
. Photography
26 Womb
. Sculpture
9
guilt is two elephants
Amy Robinson
. Mixed Media
Devi Lockwood
Alexander Pytka Stella Fiorenzoli Alexander Pytka Devi Lockwood
10 Surgery
. Fiction
Jackie Leong
Blue
Helen Shi
.
. Poetry
Drawing
11 Still Drunk
. Poetry
David Dixon
12 Untitled
Saad Amer
. Photography
13 The Sister Brian Kim
. Fiction
Catherine Zuo
. Poetry
Stella Fiorenzoli Jenny Ng
Helen Shi Jihyun Ro
. Sculpture
. Essay
27 Edge
Lauren Claus
28 First
Matt Krane
. Poetry
. Fiction
31 A Bubble Bursts When It Rises to the Surface Nature’s Essence Saad Amer
. Photo Manipulation
32 Odilon’s Razor
Misha Garrison-Desany
33 Light Remembrance Zoe Galindo
. Collage
16 Nebula
. Photography
34 Unresolved 6, 7, 8
17 moon dust
. Poetry
35 Letter to the reader
Garrett Allen David Dixon
. Poetry
Amy Robinson
. Mixed Media
Amy Robinson & Lauren DiNicola
18 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Pre-Med Jeremy Ying
. Nonfiction
Cover image: Unresolved 1; Amy Robinson Table of Contents | Tuesday Magazine | 3
Unresolved 2, 3, 4, 5 Amy Robin so n Mixed Media
4 | Unresolved | Amy Robinson | Tuesday Magazine
POETRY | DEVI LOCKWOOD
what is the opposite of skin always wind on top first through orange nights orange country nights warm light of porch chair reciting poetry, or like yoke a wooden crosspiece traversing terrain of necks and biceps extension of wrist of more lines than mornings there are five ways not to be a day five thin hands outside cupping the chair’s arms as if to say let’s make a rocking chair or thoracic nerves or even muscles of the chest what are breasts what are walnut shells things discarded on the porch planks of chest five breaths five ways not to be a country thin NOUN of grounding the bones letting electricity be bone be restless hollow and f r e e
what is the opposite | Devi Lockwood | Tuesday Magazine | 5
6 | untitled | Alexander Pytka | Tuesday Magazine
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POETRY | ALEXANDER PYTKA inspired by William Blake’s “The Ancient of Days” (1794)
After the Superman was first beckoned, vice and virtue became extinct and the world’s former understanding of faith was progressively eclipsed by vehemence and confusion. But the prophet of the present age, serving only truth and clarity, has said:
B o a t s at S ea S t e l l a F io re n zo li Photograph
Boats at Sea | Stella Fiorenzoli | Tuesday Magazine | 7
Unt it led Alexander Pyt ka Photograph series
8 | Untitled | Alexander Pytka | Tuesday Magazine
POETRY | DEVI LOCKWOOD
{
guilt is two elephants: one on my shoulders and one on my heart
}
guilt is two elephants | Devi Lockwood | Tuesday Magazine | 9
Surgery FICTION | JACKIE LEONG They cut the uneasiness out of me at age ten plus four minus two add one or five or seven, if you like. It’s your choice. They placed me on a grey table, once white, still gleaming, and raised the blunt spoon above their unmasked faces. Up close, their lips looked like dry petals, cracked and stained, a bit, with the faint red blush like an old bloodblot.
it is not lit. My fingers, stretched out till rigid, wide, taste the eddies in the air. There is no hint of fear no hesitation no instinct to turn back. The faint glow of the city’s last sleepless dregs flicker hollowly, neon colors lonely in the night. My flailing toes spin blindly through the cool evening, and I touch down, lightly, purposeful, heading for silent lands.
The spoon came down. Handle end first, the puncture was clean and efficient. I cannot say about pain. I don’t remember. I do know that my limbs were not tied down, that my feet were free, my shoes unremoved, my laces tied. I could have run, if I wanted to. But with numb toes and with the same wide eyes that I’d use later, facing down the rushing stars as they descended, the flash of lightning and the dry skies, I stared up at the spoon and the gleam that came off of its rust spots, and wondered about decay.
Somewhere there is someone who inherited what I rejected, sitting with their cheek against the lukewarm glass, looking at their outstretched palms and wondering about electricity, about progress, about explosions. Their fingers will brush the double-knot of the pouch stitching over their heart, and they will ponder the benefits of permanence. Their lids will be half-closed; they’ll be wide alert. Far off, Blue tracing the seams of the landscape, I will Helen Shi not wave good-bye. Colored pencil on black paper
Flick of finger, hand sans glove: the scoop appeared, scraping the edges of incision, searching for those wisps of terrible thought, indecision, the acid remains of butterflies swirling in gastric juices, wings intact. Look at all this garbage, they said; without it you will be better. My mouth, unfettered, free to speak, lay still. I did not say, Whose standards, or Which direction. My voice would not come up. They did not let me see the jar. It had been filled, as they promised my own fissure would fill. Other thoughts will occupy you, they assured. You will never be empty again. They could not estimate time. I was laced up reversibly, so that when I pulled the threads I could see the bareness of it all, the artificiality. It was dark. The wound filled with neutral tissue, instead, as they’d assured. I stand on rooftops, now, I jump from power lines, I sprint, head low and arms out, along the skyline of the world where 10 | Surgery | Jackie Leong | Blue | Helen Shi | Tuesday Magazine
Still Drunk POETRY | DAVID DIXON
my brother sebastian was killed in a plane crash overseas, in asia we got the call on a tuesday i was still drunk on friday when our mother received a postcard from him sebastian died 72 hours ago but the mail takes 10-14 days from the bottom of the world mom sobbed when she read his letter ‘of course’ I thought to my self sebastian was always late for everything
Still Drunk | David Dixon | Tuesday Magazine | 11
Unt it led Saad Amer Photograph
12 | Untitled | Saad Amer | Tuesday Magazine
The Sister FICTION | BRIAN KIM
She was lifted from the water like Jesus Christ, with one rope tied around each forearm and her toes pointed slightly earthward. Lifeless, she hovered for a moment, her limbs extended and one pointer finger lazily indicating the direction of each ocean, as if to thank the sea that bore her and the sea whose veiny daughters took her away. Her skin had lost all of its color to match her dress, dripping first jets, then crystalline globules of water, the beads small enough that they seemed pure in the sunlight. Her lips were scarcely red. “A darn biblical sight,” someone muttered in an undertone, and in silence, three heads nodded wearily. The machines tightened the ropes and the body they carried tightened as well. No man had wanted to retrieve her from the river. No man wants to swim with dead bodies. “Why did she do it?” A different voice, this time, and this time, the heads shook slowly. “She was unhappy.” “But why?” The river was swallowing every word. “She’s your sister. Don’t you know?” “To Hell if I know.” “She’s your sister.” “To Hell.” The body had reached the peak of its ascent, and it looked very tired. They didn’t know what to do with it, now that it had been lifted for the crowd to see. One man called unintelligibly across the river to his partner. “Take the fucking girl down, already.” A small group of men had gathered on the far side of the river in conversation. One man suggested that one rope be cut and that the body be allowed to swing from its perch onto the bank, but another pointed out that the falling body may hit an observer. Then a suggestion was made that the body be cut from both ropes simultaneously and dropped onto a raft in the middle of the river. But no man wanted to steer the raft himself, lest the body fall slightly off-center and he be responsible for catching the girl in his arms. A romantic gesture, one of the workers declared, has no place in working with the dead. “What the hell are they going to do?” On the oppo-
site side of the river, the tourists were talking again. “Can’t just leave her there, can they?” “Hang her up to dry, first, perhaps.” There was laughter, the loudest coming like a bark from the man who was her brother. He picked up a rock and threw it loosely at the body, his heart dropping as he watched it come frighteningly close to her dangling feet. He rubbed his fingers together. One man across the river scowled at him and wagged his finger. “So you don’t know?” The first man asked again. “Bloody Hell. I don’t read her fucking diary.” “Well, what are you going to tell the Police, then?” “Who?” “The goddamn Police, that’s who. What are you going to tell them?” “That she’s dead. Any damn fool can see that.” A hand was limply thrown in the direction of the suspended body. “Maybe she didn’t even off herself. Maybe her friends did it. Or maybe she had a chemical imbalance and fell over the edge or God knows what. That isn’t anybody’s problem but hers and the river’s.” “It’s the Police’s problem.” “Like Hell it is. What the Hell is going on over there?” Across the river, one man was climbing up the crane arm like a monkey. A small throng of workers formed a ring around the base of the steel arm, pumping fists and shouting. “Kids. Like fucking kids.” The brother cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted in the direction of the other bank. “You won’t get her down that way! Sons of bitches.” His sister danced in response, as the wind picked up and pressed the dress against her body. Her hair, dry now, spread like paper wings. The worker on the crane almost lost his balance. “When are you heading home?” Cigarettes were lit, and a lighter passed around. “How are your parents doing, by the way?” “Not well. But I can’t go home until these bastards find out what to do about her. They might drop her down
The Sister | Brian Kim | Tuesday Magazine | 13
a well, or something.” Polite laughter once again collected on the near side of the bank before being swallowed by the river. “I’m sure they’ll be fine. They’ve got a lot of fellows helping out over there. Why don’t you go home and make sure that your folks is okay?” The man on the crane had reached the top rung of the arm and called to his friends below. “I’d really rather stay.” “Fine. She’s your sister.” “Fine.” One man turned to the brother and snapped his fingers, sending sparks of ashes spinning wildly downstream. “Say,” he paused matter-of-factly to watch the paper burn on the end of his cigarette. “Did you know that drowning is one of the worst ways to go?” “How?” The brother fixed his eyes across the river on the man who was now balancing dangerously on the rope that connected the crane to his sister’s left arm. “The pain.” The wind picked up. “Pain? There’s no pain in water.” “There sure is. It’s like getting water up your nose, but constantly. And then the water gets into your lungs and fills them up.” The man held his hand at his stomach with the palm facing earth and slowly lifted it up to his neck. “And then when you’re full, you have to wait until you’re all out of breath to finally go. You got a lot of time to think about what you’ve just done.” “I wonder if she thought about me.” “Almost certainly,” the man was bragging, now. “She probably thought of your parents, too. She probably felt really sorry she ever jumped in.” The brother was silent as he watched the man on the ropes gingerly place his feet one in front of the other. He remained transfixed as the boastful man performed a colorful rendition of a young girl drowning quite regretfully in river water. The others around them were laughing and slapping each other friendlily on the back. “Oh, woe! That I ever thought death might bring
14 | The Sister | Brian Kim | Tuesday Magazine
me peace—woe!” The man stood up straight and began to dance a jig and sing. “My father is a farmer of cows, my brother is a townie, my mother thinks I’ll come home tonight— but no! I’ll be drowning.” “To Hell with you. I’m not a townie.” “To Hell you are!” There was laughter all around and good spirits. Nobody else paid any attention to the man on the ropes. The wind started to pick up and the man had reached the center of the river, balancing precariously and dancing with the body. “Why, look!” The brother pointed in the direction of his sister. “What’s it?” “Why—look!” The man on the ropes had knelt down in order to cut the rope attached to her left arm, but before he did so, he bent back the head of the girl and pretended to kiss her. Men on both sides of the river doubled over in laughter. The man on the ropes laughed, too, and shouted something theatrically to his audience that was lost in the noise of the river. He gestured dramatically at the sunset with his knife and recited another line before feigning another deep kiss. The dancing man began to jig again. “The table’s set with forks and knives, but my seat is still vacant, my brother thinks I’m still alive— brother, I won’t make it!” The men on the other side of the river spotted the commotion caused by the dancing man and jeered playfully across the water. One of the men began to dance a jig of his own. Other men threw small stones at the man on the ropes, who fought them off triumphantly with his knife, cursing and swearing to protect his newfound lover. The stones ricocheted off of his blade and some struck the girl on the arms and the body. “It’s getting late,” the brother muttered. “Hey! You bastard on the ropes! Cut her down already!” The man
stopped mid-laugh and scowled at the brother. Then he took his knife and began to sever the rope, still sullen. Men on both sides watched as the rope became thinner and thinner, and the wind pressed the girl’s dress against her body. Finally, with a shout, the man brought his knife down for the final time, uncoupling the two lovers forever. He held onto his rope and she held onto hers, as the two bodies swung like pendulums towards opposite banks. “Watch out!” One man pushed the brother out of the way of the falling body, whose toes skimmed lightly across the river before it crumpled violently into a ball of skin, hair, and white lace on the dirt. The rope continued to swing and then swing back, slowly dragging the girl with it until it finally came to rest, her head and chest completely submerged in the river, her legs abandoned on the shore, and her right arm lifted heroically by the rope still attached, like a final hurrah, into the air. The men on the other side applauded and gave slaps on the back to the man who had been on the ropes. He took a deep bow and shook many hands, laughing. The brother still stared silently at the mess that had been a girl who had been his sister, the water lapping against her raised arm. Her hair formed a drifting halo around her head like sea grass. “They’ve got her down,” a man put his hand on the brother’s shoulder. “Now, are you famished, or what?” “I am,” the brother admitted and he put his hands in his pockets. “I should bring her home.” “No, no, no, no,” the man wagged his finger. “Do you really want your folks to see this mess?” He gestured at the girl, who had slipped slightly further into the river. “Here’s what you do—I’ll take her back to town. Come by tomorrow morning and pick her up. Don’t let your old man see his only daughter like this. Have some decency.” The brother nodded, his throat nodding with him as he swallowed. “You’re right.” “Like Hell I am. Come, let’s go.”
“It’s dark now. I’d rather go home along the river.” “Suit yourself!” The man turned to the others. “Come! It’s past supper time.” The men lifted their things and all turned to leave. Two of them pulled the sister out of the water and lifted her body into a wheelbarrow. They turned to each other and winked. The men on the far bank had already dispersed to their homes for the night. The brother stood for a moment, watching the men disappear, pushing the girl ahead of them. The wind picked up for a final time, and he shivered. He could barely make out a head of hair spilling over the side of the wheelbarrow, and for a brief instant, he fought the urge to tell her to put her head in the window. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, everything looked smaller. The mighty river hushed to a muffled roar as the world gave way to the infallible black of the night. He turned and ran home with the river on his right.
The Sister | Brian Kim | Tuesday Magazine | 15
Nebu la Garret t Allen 16 | Nebula | Garrett Allen | Tuesday Magazine
Photograph
moon dust POETRY | DAVID DIXON
everyone paid attention when neal stepped on that boulder of dust that barren wasteland I walked through a similar desert for seven months the sand was moon dust, brown baby power that wisped away in a personal cloud each time my sole touched down but nobody noticed my steps for mankind I went to war and america went to the mall
Captain David Dixon is a Marine Cor ps pilot and an Iraq War veteran. He received his master’s in 2011 from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
moon dust | David Dixon | Tuesday Magazine | 17
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Pre-Med FICTION | JEREMY YING From Cambridge to Cambridge I hopped, but the two cities are like opposite faces of the same coin. I sat down at a picnic table, the outdoor seating for Sir Isaac Newton Pub. It stood on a hill overlooking the city center, and the spires of King’s Chapel were visible in the fading light, shrouded by evening’s tawny haze. To the west, alpenglow stained the trees grapefruitpink, to borrow a Joycean construct. At the table in front of me was a family, or so I assumed. The middle-aged parents faced me, a beer-bellied father with a stein and a half at his right hand and his thin, curlyhaired wife at his left. A son and a daughter, daughter-in-law perhaps, had their backs to me. As families are wont to do, they were regaling each other with some hilarious event in their history. I eavesdropped leisurely, but my eyes were fixed on the town at the foot of the hill. A couple of hours ago, I was busking in the marketplace. I was there as the square slowly emptied of wares and tourists, and the weary sunbeam, cascading slantwise on the large clock suspended over the colorfully striped awnings, became flatter and flatter.
Finally, the gold-front fell horizontally like a shelf just as the hands of the clock reached maximum divergence and began to chime for six o’clock. I saw the passage of time simplified into perpendicular lines, circumscribed by two circles, the lesser pewter and finite, the greater half-asleep as it lies down to rest. Evenings in the other Cambridge were just the opposite. The city got busier as people poured in to attend to the base human need of loneliness. Nocturnal sounds were amplified as if the ceiling to the sky were lowered; the windy rustle of faraway traffic rolled into a low-pitched gale. Evening fell in the other Cambridge, and the lines and circles were scrambled into thousands of legs, millions of pinpricks of light moving this way and that. It was a tiring existence then: classes until late, rehearsals until later with memoryvacuums in between. I remember somewhere in the middle of it all I was walking out of Northwest Laboratories down Oxford Street, and I wondered quite lucidly how much longer it would take before I stepped into traffic. I was not hysterically depressed like a
18 | A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Pre-Med | Jeremy Ying | Tuesday Magazine
hormone-ridden teenager. Hell, I turned 20 that fall. If I were to go then, it would have been an entirely calm and rational throwing in of the towel. I thought I knew all there was to know about the next three years: more of the same internal frustration, external hilarity, and wandering. I also thought I knew all there was to know about Debussy, but there was a surprise in the form of un beau soir when the crisp autumn evenings started to encroach on the drawn out summer afternoons. I would listen to a piece she sent me in return, Beau Soir, arranged by Heifetz, performed by Anne Sophie-Mutter, and stare at the other Cambridge’s reddening western horizon from the window. What I remember: a darkening room: piano, the tinkling notes rise and spin like the spiraling brushes of first flaming and then ashen altocumulus: violin, sobbing sighs fluttering the leaves: hemiola, a writhing tangle of limbs and sheets and hair. Spellbound: piano drops out: violin encapsulates all of eternity in two notes, F sharp to A. Suddenly nothing moves. Nothing has ever moved nor will anything move.
But the piece moved on, slowly, as if in deference to the timelessness just before the ending. The world moved on as well, but not nearly at such a leisurely pace. As I cycled back down the hill, homeward, the taste of November overtook the roast duck leg and mashed leek. Perhaps the reason I prefer this Cambridge is its timelessness. I have no history here, nor do I have a future as a temporary resident. In the morning I am born; at night I die. And before I pass into dreamless sleep, the tranquil night (in Latin, “trans-” meaning overtly with the root “quies” meaning quiet) seeps in through the cracks and smothers me. Weeks earlier as I was walking back on Jesus Lane, having spent an obscene amount of time preparing potato salad for a gathering, I had my first close encounter with tranquility in its natural habitat. The empty street welcomed my presence like a long-forgotten friend. As I continued onto All Saint’s Passage, I hardly noticed the faces at the bus stop, unlit and waxy underneath pale fluorescent light. Around me there was no trace of the day or any day. Blackened storefronts, the roads, the ground beneath
my feet all existed without apprehension or reminiscence. What came back to me was Laozi’s strange message that first there was zero and then there was one. From nothing everything is derived. Thusly, the stillness evoked in me simultaneously a million feelings. It is as if someone took the gleaming, multicolored vials with labels like fear, awe, confusion, calmness, reverence, and smashed them onto the floor of my mind. Each tinkling, ruined vessel let out a thought: How can this inhuman quiet be? Is someone sneaking up on me? Is this a real place or am I hallucinating? Where are all the people of this city? Where have all the noises gone? I walked through the deserted Great Court with my measured footsteps on stone and their echoes clattering an incomprehensible litany. On the avenue leading west to Burrell’s Field, underneath a canopy of century-old trees, shifting veins of darkness overhead swayed mystically to the mantra of silence. If I stopped walking altogether (here, I stopped walking), the mantra would continue. If I stopped existing altogether (here, I stopped breathing), the silence would continue.
It was a beautiful thing to be so insignificant because then I was accepted by everything within the darkness, my new home. A home without movement or purpose so that there is no letdown, without previously buried landmines like words or songs or smells or places or days or nights or creaking wood floors or dirt-stained, sticky linoleum. This Cambridge is my home without history or future. And so, one returns to zero. From everything nothing derives. Stillness crowded out the plenitude of emotion, settled itself comfortably inside of me as the rain started coming down (here, I slowly pulled out and unfurled my umbrella, taking care to step around the large puddle at the gate) at around midnight, July 4th, Independence Day.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Pre-Med | Jeremy Ying | Tuesday Magazine | 19
Vespertine
(a lyric for the nocturnal) POETRY | CATHERINE ZUO Sleepthirsty, we grazed by night on the sky ashes whose light gave us an appetite for abstraction. So in the whims of passing clouds she spoke of oceans, spoke of waves of hot dark water that crested over us erasing our moonswept reflections until we drifted into sleep escorted by the night and love, the melter of limbs. Later in the sultry light beckoning from the sill she saw sunsets, saw unspent days in deserts lolling in sand that stuttered across our rich skin as she cradled a sirocco’s blessing. This the stars gave: a certain steepness to her eyes, burning them black from staring at the sky, until when the flames popped along the logs she recalled autumns, recalled a dream of whirling leaves and woodsmoke whose wisps were consummate as caresses of light and heat. But not long after, the sparklenoise of comets had infected her, had thronged her in air and fire and rent her into the plasma of their fellow spheres. For she wanted to walk through walls and I, I sunk through floors bearing her escaped gravity as away scampered her starburnt soul.
20 | Vespertine | Catherine Zuo | Tuesday Magazine
P l e x i g l a s s M o del S te l l a F i o re n z oli Sculpture
Plexiglass Model | Stella Fiorenzoli | Tuesday Magazine | 21
The Anti-Indie: Hipster, Popstar, or Both? Lana Del Rey’s polarizing rise to stardom ESSAY | JENNY NG On January 14, 2012, the image of the Saturday Night Live musical guest appeared on-screen as usual. It certainly wasn’t a big-name radio artist. It was a brunette with a long pretty doll face, a dainty nose, and big pouting lips. Most watchers, myself included, had never seen this girl before. Host Daniel Radcliffe announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, Lana Del Rey.” To put it simply, the performance was strange. In a white flower-lace dress, the statuesque singer awkwardly swayed back and forth on stage, occasionally adjusting her hair, while moaning in a low, unnatural voice. That in combination with the slow, underwhelming nature of the song made for a boring four minutes. She performed as though she were singing to herself or a mirror, and to viewers nationwide, it was disengaging, just bad. I remember watching it on my living room television, asking, “Who is this again?” and then changing to another channel until it was over. The Internet responded harshly. In an email, NBC news anchor Brian Williams wrote, “Lana Del Rey had one of the worst outings in SNL history last night—booked on the strength of her TWO SONG web EP, the least experienced musical guest in the show’s history, for starters.” A headline on Jezebel.com read, “Lana Del Rey Single-Handedly Ruins SNL, Music for Everybody,” and the Twitterverse exploded in criticism. (Juliette Lewis: “Wow, watching this ‘singer’ on SNL is like watching a 12-year-old in their bedroom when they’re pretending to sing and perform.”) In an episode three weeks later, SNL captured both the eccentricity of the performance and the public reaction to it in a Weekend Update skit: the singer, played by Kristin Wiig, says, “Based on
22 | The Anti-Indie | Jenny Ng | Tuesday Magazine
the public’s response, I must have clubbed a baby seal while singing the Taliban national anthem.” Seth Meyers, the news anchor interviewing her in the skit, asks her, “Why do you think you made people so angry?” “I think people thought I was stiff, distant, and weird. But there’s a perfectly good explanation for that.” “What’s that?” “I am stiff, distant and weird. It’s my thing, I stand still and sing sad songs.” The mainstream public paid attention to her for the first time because of the surprisingly sharp backlash, so the question on everyone’s mind, then, was how such a subpar performer landed a gig on SNL. Those who looked to the web for answers soon found out that Del Rey had plenty of buzz online: the music video for “Video Games” had 20 million views on YouTube at the time. Two weeks after the SNL performance, she released her debut album, Born to Die, and it topped the charts in eleven countries (although notably not in the US). Not everyone believes she deserves the growing hype she’s been receiving, and it has resulted in a divisive conversation on whether she is an ‘authentic’ indie artist— specifically, how she produced her music and became the self-proclaimed “selfstyled gangsta Nancy Sinatra” persona she is famous for. Who is Lana Del Rey, and how or why did she come into the spotlight? --Before she became Lana Del Rey, she was Lizzy Grant. “I grew up in a small town,” she told MTV, specifically Lake Placid in upstate New York, “and I just thought it was going to be a long life.” Her father, Rob Grant, is a successful domain investor millionaire, and that is
one detail bloggers never fail to mention. It inevitably leads to the speculation that she was always a trust fund baby whose father used connections to get her into the music business. But based on the sequence of events that led to her record deal, that may be oversimplifying things. She denied these allegations in an interview with Pitchfork At 14, Grant was sent to boarding school in Connecticut to deal with her drinking problem. In her feature as GQ magazine’s 2012 Woman of the Year, she said, “I was a big drinker at the time. I would drink every day. I would drink alone. I thought the whole concept was so fucking cool.” She got sober (and has been for nine years) while attending Fordham University, where she studied metaphysical philosophy because “it bridged the gap between God and science…that was when my musical experience began.” Grant began performing in clubs in New York under various stage names, including Sparkle Jump Rope Queen, Lizzie Grant and the Phenomena, and May Jailer. Videos of Grant show a sweet young blonde who dressed in t-shirt and jeans. After doing well in a songwriting competition, Grant signed a deal for $10,000 with 5 Points Records before her senior year of college. Upon graduation, the singer-songwriter moved to a trailer park in New Jersey and started working on the first Lizzy Grant record with producer David Kahne (who has worked with many big names, including Paul McCartney, Sublime, Tony Bennett, and Regina Spektor). Kahne described his impression of Grant to Spin magazine, “What she is doing is against the grain of chart pop, which is about getting to the club on Friday night. The country is fraying at the edges; she wanted to look at that edge, at
destruction and loss, and talk about it.” In fall 2008, she released Kill Kill, a threetrack EP that Grant called “Hawaiian glam metal.” Its cover is a pop-art style portrait of her with blonde hair and thinner lips, surrounded by colorful flowery graphics. Commenting on videos shot for Kill Kill, a Huffington Post journalist said she must be “infatuated with Americana.” After the release of the EP was when Grant decided to change her name. She felt that she was creating an art project and “wanted a name I could shape the music towards.” As for the name itself: “I was going to Miami quite a lot at the time, speaking a lot of Spanish with my friends from Cuba— Lana Del Rey reminded us of the glamour of the seaside. It sounded gorgeous coming off the tip of the tongue.” Contrary to the rumor that her name was fashioned by industry marketers, founder of 5 Points David Nichtern said the decision was all her own, explaining that “if she is ‘made up’—well, she is the one who made herself up.” The debut album was titled Lizzy Grant a.k.a. Lana Del Rey and was released in January 2010. But the album did not get much time to gain popularity: it was withdrawn after only a few months on iTunes. For reasons unknown, Del Rey decided to shelve the record and bought the rights back from the label. It seems that Del Rey wanted to keep this musical past hidden. Much of the evidence that Lizzy Grant existed as a recording artist was taken down from the Internet. When footage of her as a casual Lizzy Grant surfaced on BBC’s 6music, she blurted “fucking hell!” on public radio. --As with so many recent artists, YouTube is where Lana Del Rey really made it. In June 2011, she posted a music video for a song called “Video Games,” the description of which contained the “self-styled gangsta
Nancy Sinatra” epithet, and it was a viral hit, essentially launching her career. She pieced the video together herself: an assortment of old paparazzi footage, vintage home videos, skateboarding shots, and stop-motion clips of blooming roses, in addition to webcamperspective singing to the camera. The effect is haunting, appealing to a 60s aesthetic and American nostalgia. One thing you can’t help but notice is that she got a new look. The short blonde transformed into a long amber brunette, everyone can agree that her lips grew (she has repeatedly denied plastic surgery, but what rising celebrity would admit to it?), and her mannerisms and lyrics are a hybrid of sultry and innocent. Lizzy Grant was gone, or at least went through a considerable makeover—and this is where the seeds of controversy were planted. Although bloggers were unaware of it when the track was first posted, the change of appearance and the implicit motivation of fame behind it eventually became a major subject of criticism. Most mysterious is why she did it, especially after sources made it clear that it was not some industry-directed campaign that mandated the transformation. Did Del Rey just want to reconstruct a certain image of herself as an artist, perhaps calculated according to cultural trends, and try to make it stick? It is certainly possible that this self-led makeover was simply an effort to make herself more appealing to everyone: record companies and general audiences. Kahne told Billboard, “I think she wanted to be Lana Del Rey and didn’t want to be Lizzy Grant. She wiped [out] this other person. I think she actually thinks that she’s that other person, and she probably is. So that was the decision that she made, that she didn’t want traces of that whole person around, as far as I can tell.” Maybe it was a personal change in identity, but whatever her reasoning, the new Lana attracted more
listeners and viewers. It became an issue because this appeal was initially limited to an indie audience that enjoys discovering online gems and has different standards of what comprises a deserving musician. Pitchfork, which prides itself in promoting independent music and from new artists, bestowed the title of “Best New Track” on “Video Games” in August 2011, giving it a stamp of indie approval. Hipsters jumped on the Lana bandwagon, seeing a singer with promising music and an enigmatic persona, only to feel betrayed when it turned out that her image was not always what it is, that she could be (indie gods forbid) inauthentic. Pitchfork writer Nitsuh Abebe pointed out that not only does her possibly calculated image make indie fans uncomfortable, but the image itself, “Hollywood vintage, 50s Americana, the concept of fame, the toughgirl crooner, beers delivered at home and pool played at bars, the whole faded cheer of a mid-century nation” may be so “evocative and well-worn that…once you know this is where the artist is aiming, watching her get there can be like watching someone accurately answer questions on a multiplechoice test.” In other words, maybe the particular image that she chose (or didn’t) was doomed to come off as fabricated from the start. Authenticity is the buzzword that comes up in every debate over Del Rey’s artistry. So, why does anyone care whether she is authentic? Because it was the indie audience that found her first. In contrast with mainstream pop audiences who will give an artist consideration regardless of what production may be happening in the background, indie listeners highly value the authenticity of a musician’s journey, work, and even face. Stylistic reconstruction of persona and physical appearance is strange and undesirable to them. According to the virtues of this realm, the music is allowed
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to be atypical and eccentric but is certainly supposed to speak for itself, while the performer’s persona is relatively nonexistent, because the artist is always just “the creator of a fiction.” Pop, on the other hand, renders imaginative presentations with the same formula for its songs. In “Video Games,” she seems to have both an indie sound and an interesting but genuine persona. In the end, however, as Abebe wrote, “Del Rey has the ear and ambition for a pop audience, and an aesthetic that makes an effective splash around the ‘indie’ press.” (Popular blog Hipster Runoff asked, “Will Lana Del Rey continue to fool the Indiesphere?”) Taking her later songs into account, she may have used indie culture, intentionally or not, as an online springboard to the mainstream spotlight—and hipsters, of course, hate that. An unfinished version of “Video Games” was enough to get her a record deal with Stranger Records, and the subsequent Internet attention led to a global contract with Polydor and Interscope around the time the single was officially released in October 2011. The possibility remains that she was already developing a relationship with Interscope when “Video Games” was first posted. Some sources say she was signed as early as six months before Pitchfork had noticed her, which would suggest that Interscope had a hand in her rise from the beginning and would further the opposition’s view of her as a fake. And yet, her indie scapegoat status didn’t stop her climb towards recognition: the song earned a Q Award for “Next Big Thing” and an Ivor Novello for “Best Contemporary Song.” Born to Die was officially released on January 31, 2012 and sold 3.4 million copies last year, making it the fifth bestselling album of 2012. It was a big year for Del Rey, because, after recovering but also gaining interest from SNL, she achieved mainstream success. She modeled for H&M’s autumn and winter campaigns and will be endorsing Jaguar’s F-type. The
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production-polished music video for the album’s title track—in which she appears nude embracing a shirtless tattooed man with his eyes closed in front of a waving American flag, seated on a throne between two tigers in a grandiose church sanctuary wearing a crown of flowers, and finally dead and bloody in the man’s arms with fire burning in the background—now has 101 million views on YouTube. --Musically, Born to Die is just okay, distinct from radio Katy Perry, but, as Abebe precisely described, “not as interested in sounding surprising as it is in looking and feeling that way.” It’s true: the most popular song, “Born to Die,” is cool and a little catchy with a dramatic film sound, but there’s nothing remarkable about its musical quality. Through the course of the album, her voice can be unnaturally low and then suddenly baby voice high. The lyrics are usually provocative in some unconventional, awkward way (in “National Anthem”: “I sing the National Anthem / While I’m standing / Over your body / Hold you like a python. / And you can’t keep your hands off / Me, or your pants on”) but lack any true emotional complexity. More often than not, the songs feel stretched and repetitively dark. Once Born to Die came out, Pitchfork abandoned the Lana train, closing its 5.5/10 review with “For all its coos about love and devotion, it’s the album equivalent of a faked orgasm—a collection of torch songs with no fire.” Her musical style can be characterized as chamber pop with an alternative edge (MTV called it “Hollywood sadcore”) and that is, admittedly, new, especially when you add good looks and a nostalgic aesthetic proven by Mad Men and sepiafiltered photography. It is a formula young American trendsetters had not seen before. Whether Del Rey calculated her brand to give the people what they wanted, or just stumbled upon this idea and found that it stuck, she gained the online attention she needed to get to the next level of mainstream
attraction. Editorial director of Billboard Bill Werde said, “There’s a lot of curiosity around her because of this perception, where people don’t really understand the story, they don’t know why there’s a Lizzy Grant and why there’s now a Lana Del Rey. And that adds a little bit of intrigue around this, which helps get people’s attention maybe that split second that’s required to get them to click on a video and to listen to a song.” And because of her unique backlash-filled path to fame, she has also triggered conversations on the nature of online discovery of musicians, the difference between hype and talent and yet the necessity of both—where Del Rey lies on that spectrum is yet to be determined—and audiences’ idealistic desire for an artist that can cut across genre lines. Not to mention, many have considered her depiction of women to be anti-feminist and regressive, appealing to male fans by eroticizing the idea of a sad girl’s powerlessness against men. At the moment, it seems that people don’t know exactly how to feel about her: in a tweet, Australian singer and media personality Em Rusciano summed up the question on the Lana newcomer’s mind, “Can SOMEONE tell me if it’s okay to like Lana Del Rey or not? I’m getting mixed messages from the cool people.” That could mean that Lana Del Rey as a package is confused, “half-formed and already fully famous,” as fellow artist and critic Amy Klein wrote. But even if her musical talent is iffy, she’s sexy, her persona is alluring, and she has cults dedicated to loving and to hating her—she may have already won the game. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Del Rey responded to the SNL backlash, “There’s backlash about everything I do. It’s nothing new. When I walk outside, people have something to say about it. It wouldn’t have mattered if I was absolutely excellent. People don’t have anything nice to say about this project. I’m sure that’s why you’re writing about it.”
Red Helen Shi
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Wo m b Jihyu n R o
String and glitter
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Edge POETRY | LAUREN CLAUS
It was beautiful, that sorrow that slipped into your breath, like distance was a taste and you felt it. I remember you ripped my tenderness, and we were bare that waste of a moment when I loved you. Now sink, and feel it, and I’ll welcome you back. Sand slips into water, and stares down the brink and I knew you there, wet edge of the land where rocks burned our skin like fire. The water seems soft, and I too am tender, and waves will slip into your breath like sadness, seams rolling away till wave and skin are one. Still, to see you again is too close to desire; though we loved in the sea, you kissed me like fire.
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First FICTION | MATT KRANE I. On the 27th of June, near midnight, I pulled open the glass front door of an old house. A girl wearing a purple dress perched on the steps before me, resting her arm on the banister. When I opened the door, she looked down and raised her hand in silent greeting. Then she turned and vanished up the stairs. I followed her up. Stumbling onto the landing above, I paused and tried to take in the scene. A low lamp gave warm light to the couches and chairs. Six boys and girls splayed out in a rough circle talking, all sixteen or seventeen years old. One boy sat on a table. The girl wearing purple turned from her cushioned chair and looked toward me curiously. I blushed and sat on the ground beside her. “There is no fundamental form of meaningful sexuality,” a girl with a dark French accent declared. A boy with awkward arms and thin glasses retorted, “You’re living in the 1960s. Cultural conventions still impart meaning to sexuality, like, independently of some transcendental ideal.” I coughed and blinked. The girl in purple and I turned toward each other with wide eyes.She shook her head. Slowly I turned back to listen to the conversation. The words began to blur together comfortingly. I drifted in and out, watching the veins and arteries of the ceilingwood mesh together above my head. The boy with glasses, the girl with a French accent, the six of them looked at one another earnestly, still talking and at the same time somehow pleading. They left abstraction and began about themselves, speaking quietly. They had been guarded before, but they fell quickly into personal histories. Only the girl wearing purple held something separate. The others spilled words out into the circle recklessly, but she paused and spoke hesitantly. She sat like a newly hatched bird, ever a step from retreating back into a yolky shell. Her voice had a smoky tint. During a pause in the conversation, the boy with glasses suddenly turned and asked about her childhood. She, taken aback, gave a story instead of a history. She said that a god, long ago, punished human beings by splitting them in two. That each person longed for the embrace of the lost half. Then she laughed and told us it was a myth. The others laughed softly with her, but I stayed quiet
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and just smiled. The conversation spent itself in a rush. The girl in purple stood to leave, glancing downward. I opened my mouth, but my tongue fumbled the words. “I don’t – Sorry, I don’t know your name.” A beat. “Avani.” II. Rain came down on the brick porch and slicked the twisting streets of Ithaca. We raced out, boys and girls crashing crushing pressing out over the porch, down the steps, onto a sloping hill of grass. Joining hands we pulled ourselves in circles and there was rose and there was ash and we all fell down. Muddied, I stood and walked down the hill from the rest. I looked at the black streets. Cold mist and labyrinths of wet pavement – rain, for me, brings to mind another city, nestled in the coast of Oregon. Back home, the rain sinks into everything – trees, books, skin, and mouths. Here, the summer before I applied to college, living for six weeks at a program in Ithaca with thirty people I had never met, Oregon still hid in the streets. Avani ran out into the rain. Her thin shirt instantly conformed to the contours of her body. She sprinted down the lawn. Barefoot, with water dripping down her bangs over her face, she ran down the way, legs bent all-angled, her body vanishing into the distance. I looked out after her. Glancing toward the house I drew back: a row of boys and girls raced down the slope of the lawn. They held their arms straight out for airplane wings while the thunder boomed above. One boy stumbled and fell, tripping another. In slow motion they sprawled through the air, tumbling into the mud and laughing. I walked down. The streets were slick against my feet while I searched under the trees. Sitting on a ledge beneath a giant oak with wet leaves venting down water I found her. Her rain-torn t-shirt barely covered her but she didn’t care. She didn’t smile when I came toward her; she just looked at me. I didn’t know what to say, so I sat next to her, not speaking. The darkened brick of the ledge cut into the backs of my legs. Avani looked at me with eyes that had the streets in them. For a moment she softened; we leaned toward each other slightly, and she smiled. Then she sprang up and
became far away in the blurring rain. III. We gathered at the edge of a cliff, Avani and the others. Avani eyed a boy with spiky hair. He eyed the cliff: thirty feet of space. We stood staring down at the water leaving scars of white along the blue surface. Avani wanted to jump with the boy, but he didn’t want to jump. She wandered toward the edge to stare into the dizzying space, returning with mischievous eyes. Avani had a sweet tooth for vertigo. Laughing, she turned to me and gave me a shove toward the precipice. I started over, shook my head, turned back, looked at her taunting eyes, and turned around again to place my feet on the ledge sticking out over the water. My fingers started to play on my hip. I jumped. Halfway down my body decided that the water must be coming soon and braced, only to be confused and shocked by the space. Somewhere out in the endless open air thinking spilled out of me like blood, and when I hit the water I dropped straight down, fearless as an arrow. As I swam off to the side I felt fish slip past my hands and torso. My legs and arms were shuddering. I breathed out and turned up my neck to watch the scene unfold on the ledge above. Avani and the boy with spiky hair stepped up to the edge and began to count together. The counting made it easier. Avani rocked back and forth on her heels, letting the sharp angles of the rock press into her feet. Her eyes lit up. And then they fell together, hands grasping outward. She looked perfect in the way of glass-smooth-moments as she fell. Poised straight in the air, she was beautiful in the way of breath catching. IV. The night begins in tea leaves, but we begin with words. That night we brewed: tea, sweetbitter, Eros and honey. In the old house we drank from the dregs and collectively winced. Then, draping blankets over ourselves, the six of us fell to reading poetry. Avani recited Neruda: “we wanted to build a strong nest with our own hands, without hurt or harm or speech, but love was not like that: love was a lunatic city with crowds of people blanching on their porches.” She wore a lilac dress and a white sweater and her words held hints of purple. The room got quiet.
We all looked at each other, still too young for the suspension of disbelief that poetry needs. I glanced up at Avani. We all laughed. The sound was slightly bitter. The beaked nose boy stood, slinging off his blanket, and headed to the kitchen. The others stood in turn, and Avani and I followed slower. I couldn’t meet Avani’s eyes. The lanky boy moved toward the fruit. Avani circled off around the corner near the pantry, and I, about to make for the juice, pulled up short. Then I walked over to the pantry, sitting with my back against the cabinet. I traced the gray mortar between tiles on the floor with the tips of my fingers. Avani walked in circles. A lyrical, miracle smile. Even though the girl with glossy hair was blending sweet fruit in the next room and the Ithaca night was thick with cicadas, it felt quiet. I tried to figure out how to start. Her eyelids flickered and her arm began to tense, her hand curling up into itself. I could taste the bitter tea on my lips. The air was too much. We decided to move outside. I stood and walked through the halls with Avani, opening the heavy glass door to the porch. The cicadas got louder and summer heat came upon us. Shadows pressed in on the light from the house, leaving blurs. Can I ask you a question? I finally got it out, sitting down on a porch-swing made of long bars of wood. Maybe, Avani responded, sitting next to me. She started rocking the swing slowly and absentmindedly. What were you like, before? She waited. The porch-swing rocked. I waited. Young, Avani said, and the leaves rustled. I was carefree, I think. As much as I remember, she told me, her eyes fixed on the outlines of trees in the distance. And now? Darker. Sprinting down rain-slicked streets. Do you wish that you - that things were different? I stumbled, following the motion of her legs en pointe. I’m not sure if wished is the right word. But longed: yes. For a moment I didn’t move. Avani interrupted the silence: I’m scared, talking. When you look, stare like that I can’t. The rhythm of the porchswing faltered. Sorry, I said. Why? The narrowing, focusing, it gives it too much weight. Her
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slender legs resumed the circles that rocked us back and forth. I’m afraid to say something with even a hint of untruth. You’ll just have to trust me. Her shoulders straightened. Avani counted with taps of her fingers. Then she leapt into a story. I was twelve. My father died the day after my sister’s birthday. I nodded. She had mentioned her father’s death before in fragments but always changed the subject. Her legs rocked the porch-swing steadily. We were in Hawaii. The night before, the night of my sister’s birthday, I woke up with tears in my eyes. I didn’t know why. The next day we swam in the sea, snorkeling. Then he went deep, and when he came up – I knew it was bad. He started paddling to shore – I remember they were violent strokes. My father was a big man. When he reached the shore he stretched out like a great beached whale. My mother ran. Someone called for an ambulance. We were on an island, the hospital was too far. It was forty-five minutes until they came. My mother went in the ambulance with him, but my sister and I couldn’t fit. Someone drove us to the hospital, I can’t remember who. When we got there I asked for my mother. I went into the room and then I knew, but my sister had disappeared. When she finally walked in, she asked, “Is he dead?” I just nodded. I couldn’t say anything. I only cried when I slept, after. The back of my neck tingled. I started to apologize but held back, not wanting to break the rhythm of her speech. Every night I woke up to find tears on my pillow. They felt hot. But during the day I never cried, just froze. I froze everything. I wore two watches, his and mine, one on each arm. She neared an end, suddenly exhausted. In the pause I tried to remember the summer. Now? I asked. I don’t know how to say it: I want to move – unfreeze – tell – laugh – howl. For a moment I stayed focused on her. She smiled. There was a lull. Do you think we’ll keep talking, once we leave? I asked. Avani looked out. Her legs intimated grace. The porch-swing rocked, our bodies back-lit by the warm light of the house. As a silhouette she stared out into the blackness, and I followed her gaze, only just able to make out the forms of trees. Avani’s toes curled gently as she inhaled, then exhaled. It’s not that we will: it’s that we couldn’t not, she decided finally. I wasn’t sure but I felt relieved. She stood up from the porch-swing, and it shook from her absence. Laughing, she vanished back into the house. I just sat on the swing,
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accustoming myself to the quiet. A beat. I looked out to the place where her eyes had focused. Then I turned to follow Avani inside, though the heavy glass door had already closed. V. The summer ended on an overcast Saturday morning at nine, with embraces that lasted for minutes. We couldn’t figure out how to say goodbye, so we didn’t. We held each other, bracing against something: two tall trees in a storm. Salt left our vision blurred. Near the end, Avani gave me a blanket to keep, the one she had used that summer. I sat in the kitchen of the old house before I left, feeling the smooth fabric and letting the deep purple sink into the undersides of my eyes. A wave of something began in my chest and moved down my lungs and ribs into the column of my spine. I pressed the blanket to my nose and inhaled. I smelled her, the scent of summertime and of pine-wood porch-swing and of bitter tea leaves. I inhaled the scent of first loss, and it sent shivers through my spine. Then I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders and pressed the fabric to my eyes. The water left the fabric only slightly darker. She and I left as friends, with me holding her hands too tightly, trying to memorize touch. She understood, grasping my palms in return. For six weeks of summer I inhaled Avani and purple, and then I left. It was the 7th of August. On the creaky puddle-jumper flying westward, I turned every few seconds. A hint of Avani’s voice rang out from two rows back or a seat forward. The din of passengers’ voices melted into purple; a second later the illusion faded and I sank back into my seat. I kept my hands in the blanket she had given me, too exhausted to cry. On the plane out of Ithaca, sleepless, I remembered firsts. In Ithaca, I was young and easy under the trees. I didn’t understand that it might have been another city, another color, and another season. Instead, I clung fiercely to the specifics: my city, Ithaca, summertime. The wind blurring through streets and gorges. A glass door. A barefoot girl. Quiet. It’s hard to accept that the story of those six weeks is also the story of other lovers and other friends. A year later, another group of thirty kids arrived in Ithaca. There were storms and palms, blankets and questions. Maybe there was a girl dressed in purple. There could have been another – I have been trying to remember that.
A Bubble Burst s W hen It Rises t o t he Surf ace ( top) Nat ure’s Essence ( left) Saad Amer Two manipulated photographs
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Odilon’s Razor POETRY | MISHA GARRISON-DESANY
Oh Baby, I stay up all night listening to your angiograms. It starts out slow. The machines beep against the backdrop of Telemundo. I am falling, falling, falling into Odilon’s spider web, Kerosene neon drips from its lips, Like Romeo, kissing for one more hit, Your heartbeat mirrored in the strings’ vibrations, set to the t-turntables in your respirator. Breath. Another shot, E E G shock, your MRIs light up like a bud in the December night. This is the spot, the doctor says, where the meteor rock Dropped from the constellations, Bore the holes in the universe, Gave the moon her black eye, Dotted the sky with the acne scars we used for connect the dots. A heart with our initials carved into the world tree, Baby it’s you and me, Veins like gnarled roots, I am falling falling falling into the safety net of your arteries, Carve out the heart in me so you can breathe again. Doctor, I don’t want to watch scalpel to ivory. Your chalked bones under your meat dress, Hook up the stethoscope to the telephone line. I am calling you from Occam’s razor phone, Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Can you hear me?
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Open your eyes, adrenalized by the morphine drip, Don’t slip any further, Caspar’s already at the edge, I will cut my head off So you can see butterflies With your eyes again. Chop me into pieces, find the broken spots, And press your fingers into my knots, Blood and brain on the backwall of Wiertz’s dollhouse. I am falling falling falling into a beer hall, A shot gun stash hidden in the cash of your thighs. Baby, even spiders cry sometimes. I am falling falling falling to the subarachnoid space Behind the stars in your eyes. A prophetic Dorothy chant, Hymns from the tv static and EKG heartthrobs, I stay up all night listening to your angiograms. I stay up all night listening to your angiograms. I stay up all night listening to your angiograms. The morning is coming in through the window, Painting cathedrals on the walls, impressions of ballerina swirls On the turntable twirls, Algebraic hands, reaching out to touch the colors. Thick. Heavy. Slow. Odilon. It is taco Tuesday in the cafeteria, and my coffee is cold now. The symphony stops short, the last high note punctuated with I’m sorry.
L i g ht R eme mb ran ce Z o e Ga lin d o Collage
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Unresolved 6, 7, 8 Amy Robinson Mixed Media
34 | Unresolved | Amy Robinson | Tuesday Magazine
To the reader : Do you remember your tenth birthday? The excitement you felt as you realized you had finally reached double digits! The thrill of officially declaring you had made it through a decade! The triumph of blowing out ten candles with a single breath! (You were ten now, you only needed one). Ten years is a major milestone. This semester, Tuesday celebrates its 10-Year Anniversary. The staff has, therefore, used this issue to reflect on how far the magazine has come. As the legend goes, Tuesday Magazine began as a kernel of an idea during an Expos course, Harvard’s mandatory class that teaches basic essay writing skills. While students generally approach it with dread, one particular group of students used the class as an opportunity to found Harvard’s only general interest publication. Tuesday Magazine has evolved significantly since. Notably, the title dramatically changed from Voice Where Prohibited to the beautifully simplistic and enigmatic Tuesday Magazine. But more significantly, Tuesday became an integral part of student life by providing a creative outlet previously unavailable - a space where the untidy, the structured, the untitled, and everything in between converged. From animation to shopping lists, freshmen to Marine Corps pilots, Tuesday Magazine has the honor of showcasing pieces of all mediums and from all walks of life. Like any journey, Tuesday’s has not been an easy one. Amongst the many prestigious, grandfatherly organizations on Harvard’s campus, it could be said that Tuesday Magazine is just learning to ride a bike. Our founders are not yet ten years out of college. As printing costs rise and grant and advertising options decline, Tuesday does not have the luxury of relying on well-established bank accounts and well-off alumni. Although we would love to say with certainty that Tuesday will be thriving and grounded ten years from now, the uncertainty that surrounds Tuesday’s future helps make each issue so thrilling. Every semester, we relive the founder’s awe as we watch Tuesday materialize into a breathtaking magazine, despite the odds. Thus, even though Tuesday’s infancy may be a disadvantage financially, lacking deep historical roots is also what makes this a truly unique organization. Each student who joins has the opportunity to shape the magazine’s future. Every semester, we rewrite Tuesday’s traditions and legacies, a power and flexibility that not many other clubs can provide. Accordingly, this issue has emerged as the collective product of a myriad of insightful and diverse visions contributed by the staff members, truly indicative of the passion that Tuesday sparks. This passion, which has now spanned a decade, does not fade after graduation. We would like to dedicate this issue to our alumni. The entire staff - past, current and future - thanks you for conceiving Tuesday Magazine ten years ago and for continuing to support it as it grows up. In honor of this momentous issue, we collected thoughts and stories from our dedicated alums that will be featured on our website (isittuesday.tumblr.com). All past editions will also be featured in honor of Tuesday’s birthday. Even though our alumni are still paying off their own debts, they banded together this semester to pay the difference between the money we raised and printing costs, a true testament to how Tuesday has stayed in their hearts. We hope that you enjoy this issue as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Although the significance of reaching ten years is truly noteworthy, if you remember your tenth birthday, we are sure you also remember the incredible growth that followed. And we can not wait to see what Tuesday’s future holds. Tuesday Love, Amy Robinson & Lauren DiNicola
Letter to the reader | Tuesday Magazine | 35
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