Unrooted by UNROOTED

UNROOTED march/april 2014

the unrooted team Editor in Chief Erin Borzak Creative Director Mary Coggins Social Media Director Christine Hillmann Advertising Manager Jessa Tremblay Literary Editor Emilie Bills Features Editor Courtney Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Connor Editor Olivia Rafferty Editor Emily Hunerwadel Staff Writers Ramna Safeer Greta Rainbow Allie Horick Staff Artists Evelyn Challinor Eryn Lougheed Greta Rainbow Olivia Yuen Nikita Jackson Shelby Wall Caroline Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Andrea Lex Scott Web Developer Patrick Cason Layout Editor Natalie Ng Cover photo by Rachel Czajokwski Back cover photo by Gabi Bruce

CONTENTS

Letter From The Editor 6 Gabi Bruce - Color Palettes 8 On Poetry by Teenage Girls 16 Section of State 19 Emmalyn Sullivan Darkroom 20 Revitalizing the Roxy 28 Montauk 36 Jeff Buckley: by the Tigers in Memphis 38 Stars 43 The Illuminating Bits and Pieces 44 She Lost Herself In Your Memory 47 Eryn Lougheed - Well 48 Rachel Czajkowski - Thread Through Me 50 Whale Song 61 Crushes 62 Inward Injury 63 Nadur 66 Just Kids 70

photograph by Lily Chappell

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR 6

Things are finally looking up, and things are changing in that sentimental and unavoidable way that they do. In some places snow is melting and in other places leaves are starting to fall, and there’s always something so wonderful about the start of a new season. It gives us a chance to think about chances, to think about moving on, and to remember that every day can glow if we let it. Lately I’ve been struggling to find the things that make days feel brighter and nights feel calmer. I get attached to aesthetic moments: the painted shimmer of street lights after a rainstorm and that moment in a song that never fails to give you chills, even when it’s hot outside. I’ve always accepted that perhaps these moments are ineffable, these moments of glow, and that I will probably never know how, when, and why they will happen. Sometimes a song I’ve heard a million times will suddenly plant a weight in my chest because the lyrics suddenly make sense in that moment of my life, or I suddenly feel this incurable need to live inside of the melody. Sometimes the light hits my window just right, and I think that maybe there’s something to be said for complete and total peace. Sometimes I find myself on a street I’ve never walked down before and someone has painted a few words onto a brick on the wall, and they’re just the words I needed in that moment. If this year so far has taught me anything, it’s that glow moments come when you need them the most, but they also come because you need them. Sometimes when we’re looking for a sign, we get one. So maybe glow moments are of our own creation, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking that certain things, minutes, words, street signs, cloud patterns, the songs that play on grocery store speakers, the songs that play on the satellite radio at work, that perfectly placed flier for a book club or a house show that just happens to be scheduled for a night that I really need to escape, something keeps me believing that those things are meant for me. And that’s okay, and even if I’m a little delusional, that thought keeps me going on some of the harder days. So I’m going to embrace it, float in it, live for those glow moments, and hope that I continue to have them, no matter how much things change. I hope you all can do the same. Love, Erin

Color Palettes

Gabi Bruce 9

ON POETRY BY TEENAGE GIRLS by Ramna Safeer illustration by Erin Borzak

We buy journals that come with silk ribbons to mark our places, but we also scribble on napkins and in the margins of our math notes. We let our poetry be as raw as we can make it without chafing our insides, but we let it be silly too. We write until we are all kinds of tired, and all kinds of awake. We let the metaphors and the line breaks be all that we know to be true. We write about the things in our young worlds that are vulnerable and complex and real, subjects that need articulation in a society rapidly shifting in all conceivable and inconceivable directions. And yet, we as a body of young lovers of expression, particularly young girls, are hidden by a veil that pushes us into a subcategory in the world of “respectable” poetry that is deemed less important, less valuable, and less worthy of the world’s time. In many ways, literature as the crowning field of academia is embellished with aging works, marked by classic styles and writers whose names are signatures of poetic success. If Poetry with a capital ‘p’ was a kingdom a few decades in age, a great majority of the citizens would be youth, wide-eyed and eager to dabble in such authentic selfexpression, but the towers surrounding the land would only wave flags of dusty, male-dominated works – undoubtedly beautiful and important in their study, but not the sole insignia of such a vast art. Somewhere, the definition of valid poetry, words good enough to be given the time of

day, has altered from the ability to tell an honest truth to the ability to climb the proverbial ladder. Where did it arise that the young girl with winged eyeliner and a story to tell is “just another” teenage girl writing poetry, and a grown man looking into finding himself and picking up a pen is nothing short of a budding Neruda? There is an elitist bitterness towards our words that belittles the way we resort to poetry to tell the stories that make us so deeply human, and thus, a way to live through art and make ourselves bare in the inextricable fragility that comes with this point in our lives that is crucial in every aspect. These years of our lives are dirty and clean and ugly and beautiful. Our poetry is testament to that. As the glimmering teens of a generation of cultural revolutions more drastic than any other before it, we are determined and infallible as much as we may be fragile and broken. The extent to which we encompass all these things is so loud in its extremity, perhaps due to the exponential noise that surrounds us, that our inclination to use forms of art such as poetry to filter these plethora of emotions through is only increasing. When a young woman, constantly faced with the undeniable pressures of current social structures, is able to feel the safety of the art form within words she has created herself, it is an expressive choice that should be cherished and striven towards. Yet the tight silk

collars and monocles of academia have once again fashioned a trope out of the teenage female writer. This belittlement is one that invalidates the worth of her expression, and thus, her story, in a society already seeking to demean her existence, more so if she is a young woman of color. A few years ago, I sealed a poem of mine into a manila envelope and slipped it over the counter of my local library. It took a great summoning of bravery to submit my first attempt at publication to a small literary magazine run by the library branch of the city I live in. The woman over the counter smiled at me, not showing teeth. Taking the envelope and scanning my submission form, she said loud enough for the old man behind me to hear, “This is a poem, yes? Oh.. Is it a love poem? Because we get so many of those.” She shook her head knowingly, not waiting for my response, and pushed it onto a pile of other envelopes near her office chair. And I? I practiced my normal response to anything humiliating or belittling. I stood there, not knowing what to do, blushed myself into oblivion, and shuffled off. But what I wanted to say was, “Yes it is. Yes. It is a love poem. Is there a problem?” Is there something wrong with young women writing about love? Is there something wrong with writing about love that is lovely and sweet and makes us feel warm? Or about love that is dirty and dangerous and sometimes can cause pain? Is there something wrong with us being able to be real? As long as our poetry does not romanticize hurt and emotional issues, which it definitely should not, is there something wrong with our ability to articulate our

stories into line breaks that we work hard to perfect? Does it, perhaps, make you uncomfortable that we are taking an art form for our own, removing the golden brandishing of academia and sizing it to fit our complexities? Because perhaps we should all be aspiring, within our inner dreams of being black-turtleneck poets, to be able to use such a wonderful expression to tell stories that make the world laugh and cry and be comfortable and be uncomfortable en masse, the way in which young women specifically are doing across the world. Perhaps a step back needs to be taken, or a few, and these wonderful budding poets, whether they write about love or otherwise, need to be held close for their sheer bravery. For is that not the nature of art? Is not the making of art innately brave? And that is not something to be ridiculed or depreciated. It’s something to love. So: young women who write poetry, whether it’s messy or neat or structured or circular, whether it’s vengeful and angry or soft and doting, whether it’s everything or nothing or everything in between, we love you. And please, for the love of Poetry with a capital ‘p’, keep writing.

section of state by sebastian kline image by greta rainbow inward and outward into some form of function, to an ebb and flow with no present, but with a disgusting sense of past preservation. over top a functioning gear is the outward mobility of progress. the very core of structure that we struggle to grasp, struggle to find, struggle to interpret. we strive for the â&#x20AC;&#x153;I striveâ&#x20AC;? in scientific. placing bets on plans in box seats, overdubbing friends with a volume that clears sectionals. our hands move faster than the internal revenue packet, the indicated lines on which we conduct our signatures, forced to make the choice of philosophy that our fathers predated. a world of invoice, a discussion of much needed cataclysms. overcooked destruction in the purest form of opulence. and here we sit dining.

DARKROOM emmalyn sullivan

the thing about delving into surrealist work is that you get to challenge what’s real and what’s imaginary; you get to force people to dream with their eyes open. and in life there are all these small concrete truths that no-one ever questions - to be able to distort that and disassemble another person’s reality and watch them look for reasoning when there simply is none, it makes gears in my mind turn. it’s taking day-to-day tasks and vulnerabilities and flipping them so that you have to re-think how to look at something mundane; re-teach someone how to think.

iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m trying to take the things that scare you and manipulate them in a way that makes you step back and rearrange everything that brought you there. 26

REVITALIZING THE

ROXY by Emily Hunerwadel photographs by Erin Borzak

The poet Jack Gilbert once said, “We value the soiled old theaters because of what sometimes happens there.” Built in 1939, the Roxy Theater of East Nashville is one such relic that has sadly fallen into disrepair. Pretend you’re there now. You’ve trekked through a vacant, only partially-paved parking lot to root out and walk through the doorway of the boarded-up theater. Though you find old wooden signs and random collected items all about the lobby, you can still see the green and cream of the original terrazzo flooring. Through the doorway to your left, you find a small room with a wide window facing out into the theater. This was once a control room when the theater was turned into a recording studio in the ‘80s by the record producer Aubrey Mayhew. Some recording equipment is still stored around the room—a small tape machine, compressor in the corner. Out of the window, you can see the rows of seats, the rubbed-off wall of exposed brick, the stage with a single chair highlighted by big-bulbed, vintage lights above. An old hammond sits unused against the far left wall. The room is ruined. It’s soiled. It’s beautiful. In its heyday, the Roxy Theater was the focal point of the surrounding community. “The very first time I can remember the Roxy, I was 8 years old. It was the mid ‘40s,” said Ken Binkley, lifelong East Nashville resident. “You were in heaven when you were at the show.” Binkley and his group of friends were regular theater goers, grabbing ice cream from the Red Cross Pharmacy next door and then catching such movies as “The Three Stooges,” “To Please a Lady,” or “Bonnie and Clyde” for 12 cents a ticket. “It was where you had to go for date night. It was party and lights, where we had fun,” said Binkley. “Everyone went to the Roxy.” Lights are right. Pictures of the theater from the ‘40s and ‘50s show an old-styled marquee, the only shining object on the block, drawing the community in, but now, one can only see a small, homemade “Roxy” sign, decorated with store-bought Christmas lights by Dane Forlines, the founder of the “Save the Roxy” campaign and president of the Mc-

Ferrin Park Neighborhood Association (which the theater is located within). “People have to appreciate the architecture of the Roxy, these masonry skills,” said Forlines. “They don’t make buildings like this anymore.” As Forlines spoke, we stepped over the caution tape partitioning the staircase from the lobby. After a short trip up old squeaky steps, we find ourselves in what was originally the balcony. Mayhew turned this upper floor into an apartment when his recording studio was still functioning and lived there until his death in 2009. “It’s too expensive to build buildings like this anymore,” Forlines continued. “We build cheap stuff, and cheap stuff falls apart. 50 years later, it’s gone. We’re creating a nation that’s perpetually 50 years old. We don’t have anything to connect us to the past or to send us on to the future.”

Opinions like this caused Forlines to start the “Save the Roxy” campaign, which had its first fullscale event on Nov. 9 of last year. Forlines said that around 1,500 people attended the festival, which lasted all day long and featured an indoor stage showcasing a dozen Nashville bands as well as 20 outdoor pop-up retailers. It was all about awareness. “The November event wasn’t a fundraiser. We just wanted to pitch for its restoration. We are discussing planning future events to keep the momentum going and to find people that are interested in investing,” said Forlines. As of this very second, there are no planned renovations, and that all comes down to financing. The Roxy Theater needs a million dollars of restoration, according to Forlines. If fully renovated, Forlines and the McFerrin neighborhood see the theater as a community center, just like it originally was.

“The number one thing that always comes up is that people want it to be open to the public,” said Forlines. “The community wants it to be more than a theater. They could see a live show, host a wedding, display an art exhibit. It should be a big part of the community.” Binkley agreed, “That whole section of town could be brought back to life. If the Roxy were to be completely gone, it would break my heart. The theater could revitalize the whole community.” As Forlines walked to the staircase to walk back down to the lobby, he looked back at the ‘50s styled apartment that the balcony had become.

“Many people met their spouses here. They had their first kiss up here in the balcony. They watched their first movie here, wasted Saturday afternoons getting ice cream at the pharmacy and then watching a film. “If we lose these buildings, we lose those stories. We lose that culture. We lose that heritage, and those individuals themselves lose a piece of their lives. I want this area to be restored so that it can become the story of the next generation.” Sometimes what happens in these theaters is just entertainment—party and lights, and sometimes, it’s so much more.

Sometimes what happens in these theaters is just entertainmentâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; party and lights, and sometimes, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s so much more.

M O N TA U K DANIEL ROOSEVELT Jenny got a real bad haircut Baseball cap cupped to it Told her I was gifted At cutting things out of magazines How different could hair be? Pretty different Wasn’t Pretty Pretty Bad Real Sorry Let’s just shave it all off And you’ll look like Natalie in V It was November Jenny hated the Mets...or the Yankees That’s the same week we met Thomas That one kid with the sewing kit In his fanny pack His left hip Quick-witted Red-knuckled Well-read Wore flannels that never fit Still November And I remember Tom said, “I can turn my head into anything I want it to be Like a desolate prairie Which sure comes in handy When talking to the cats in the alley off Bowery Well that’s the spot Where the unthinkable thoughts Set up their cots And never seem to cross my mind”

Olive was never good at keeping track of time Especially in November

But we couldn’t blame her You know, ‘cause the falling backward and all But, I mean, who can really even keep track of it all, right? I swear it was November ‘Cause up until then we never liked people But we did just fine After Tom scribbled a couple of lines In the classified section of the New York Times He said, “Recite it a few times Then you’ll never have to try a single day in your life To like anybody” And what he wrote down escapes my mind But it worked up until I fell asleep that night I fell asleep that night On the black and white tiles of the kitchen floor Just to see the world from where I had never seen it before I swear, right then and there, it didn’t look so bad Head in a paper bag, it was 3 a.m. and pitch black But when the morning did come back I swear Right then Right there The world didn’t look so bad For November.

image by Erin Borzak

Jeff Buckley: By The Tigers In Memphis words and image by Olivia Rafferty I’m sitting on a cold slab of stone, hearing the purring of Sumatran tigers. It’s one minute to midnight in Memphis, and I have a date with Jeff Buckley. The Memphis Zoo has given me special permission to come in on this summer night to perform a small ritual by the late singer-songwriter’s memorial plaque, which will hopefully result in a transcendental interview. I arrange a small cluster of candles around the step, which illuminate the words on the wall: “In memory of Jeff Buckley: 1966 - 1997.” In my hands I have a watch - a precious artefact which I managed to procure after months of chasing leads all over America. It’s a limited edition Nixon, made several years ago; the leather strap being made out of a jacket that once belonged to Jeff. As the hands on the watch-face meet at 12, I set it down by the candles. There is a rustle in the trees, with a light breeze and the faintest whisper of sound, Jeff materialises by the stone, the candles be-

tween us, the light almost moving right through him. Jeff wavers slightly, softly blurred around the edges, his low voice mingling with the cricketsong. When he gives his answers to the larger questions, he takes his time - sometimes punctuating the conversation with almost agonising pauses, as if he’s drawing up the answer from a deep well. JB: Memphis zoo? That’s, that’s funny. They put me next to the tigers? OR: There’s a plaque for you here. People said you liked to come and see the snow leopards. JB: Yes, I loved the big cats… but the butterflies were my favourite. I never came by without visiting them. If I’d been around longer, I would have

liked to volunteer here. I was going to volunteer. OR: So, Jeff. There’s a question that I think was on everyone’s lips when you passed JB: [laughs] You’re getting straight into it, huh? Well… I did notice there was a lot of… um, there was a great amount of speculation concerning the way I died, whether it was intentional or not. OR: And was it? JB: [shrugs] Not really. But I’m not mad about it, I don’t think so. OR: Not mad about the suggestion that you killed yourself? JB: No, mad about my death, I mean. I’m not. Well, I guess I’m not. But even then… I don’t want people to think that I’m being dismissive. I’m not being dismissive. Dying… Actually, in terms of how I died, it was very poetic. [laughs] Honestly, it’s like something I would have written myself. The waters of Memphis… And of course during life I thought about death a lot, in a lot of different contexts. Poets, musicians… our duty is to reflect the human condition, death being a natural part of it. And I think that when people read into that in my work, or throwaway remarks from magazine interviews, then they’ll write the whole thing off as, as intentional, I guess. I won’t say that I wanted to die when I did. But I’m ok with that end being my end. OR: Do you feel like you had more to do? JB: Of course - who wants to die at 30? You know, it’s not quite the 27 Club but it’s close enough. I had a lot of plans about what I wanted to do after Grace. It was only the first album, and there was a lot of critical acclaim - which I didn’t enjoy… OR: You didn’t like the success? JB: No, no. I mean, I liked being able to create something and share it, to be able to express myself; what I didn’t like was the way some people, and people who had, you know, a lot of

power in the industry, I didn’t like the way they talked about Grace. The attention from the critics… well, I was skeptical of it. And I think I had a right to be. Grace got so much acclaim from these rock critics who I couldn’t trust. Sometimes, artists I admired would come out with what I thought was a masterpiece, and then it’d get shot down by these magazines. I was wary. OR: But it’s still heralded as one of the greatest albums of its time. JB: Yes, but, then what, you know? [laughs] I didn’t get to do anything else. Grace is always going to sit there as a relic, an example of my work, the only real, polished, complete piece of work that I produced. Nobody heard what I had coming next, not really. The next album could have been released and maybe everyone would tear it down and say it was terrible, you know. Or maybe it would outshine what I did with Grace. I think… [pause] I think that what I produced while I was alive, it wasn’t enough. If people really wanted a whole sense of me as an artist, then they can’t judge just by Grace. OR: But that’s all we have. JB: I know, so in that sense, that’s all that my work really is. That’s all I really am to music, to history… [impersonates a critic, drawing his hand across an imaginary headline] “Jeff Buckley: Grace”… “Jeff Buckley: Hallelujah.” OR: Some would say your version eclipsed Leonard Cohen’s. JB: I guess it did, in a way. He’s gonna give me a hard time for it when he gets up there [laughs]. OR: So what’s the afterlife like, then? JB: It’s beautiful. It’s… yes, difficult to describe. I’m enjoying my time up here, very much. But don’t get me wrong, there was and will always be something beautiful about my experience of humanity and that human pain, the intimacy of living and being alive. The truth and tangibility of it all… It was all love, sex, trash, scars, the fear of the end, growing old, becoming unbeautiful,

your hair and teeth falling out -

answers to those big questions.

OR: But ageing is something you didn’t get to experience.

OR: Do you ever get a clear answer to those big questions?

JB: Yeah… but I feel like I already know, you know? People, musicians, artists all write about the human condition so much, it’s as if we can experience the whole stretch of our time on Earth simultaneously, in each isolated moment, instead of several linear ones. I experienced the slow drag of mortality through others’ work.

JB: …yes, in a way. But up there, you don’t have to receive answers, receive information in the way one would usually receive a piece of information back on Earth - down here of course we do it aurally, or visually, with writing and speech… but up there it doesn’t need to be communicated -it’s somehow already nested in the back of your subconscious; you can access it to a degree, but you can’t quite explain it. Not that you’d need to explain it to anyone else, we all have the same answer in our heads up there.

OR: Do you think you offered anything of that ilk in your own work back here? JB: Yes. I always tried to create something that reflected life. It’s always precious to make something that people can relate to, that people can carry with them. OR: And who do you carry with you? JB: [sighs]… oh, lots of people, uh, Billie Holiday, Joni Mitchell, Lou Reed - he came up here recently, actually, wanted to collaborate with me down here when he saw me at The Knitting Factory, so now we are, so that’s an honour - um, and then there’s people like Dylan, Allen Ginsberg OR: So we’ve got something in common: I’m a big fan of Allen Ginsberg, too. Is he up there with you? JB: We spend time up there together talking through projects, I write stuff and he looks it over for me, I’ve been writing a lot more poetry up there. But Ginsberg… yeah, sometimes you can find him shouting and singing over the cloudtops, [laughs] he’s the same as he was down here, I think. Except a lot happier. OR: Are you happier? JB: I’d be disappointed in heaven if I wasn’t. So, the answer is yes. There’s a sense of completion and comfort you get up there, there’s no searching and digging and sniffing around the trash like you do back on Earth, trying to delve, find the

OR: How do you know? JB: The universality of this experience… people connect in different ways up there. Even though you may still talk and gesture, there’s a kind of telepathic union between everyone. Sounds strange, but that’s how it is. OR: So you’re writing poetry with Allen Ginsberg and collaborating with Lou Reed. Do you dedicate a lot of time to art up there? JB: Yes, I play my songs… my Telecaster, well, a Telecaster is there with me. Sometimes I revisit my work on Grace, but not often. I’ve been writing a lot of new material. Funny what a view into the infinite can do for your songwriting… reflecting death, well, it’s something entirely different from what I would write about on Earth. Art continues up there as it does down here, all the same. OR: What does God think about your work? Have you met him? JB: No… actually, I don’t know if he’s even there. I don’t know if he’s a figure, or… To be honest, I’m surprised that there was an afterlife. It seems like a childish dream, something that we all made up in our minds so that we could rest our heads on the pillow a little easier. If God was around, he wouldn’t necessarily make himself known, I don’t think. He’s got far too much to answer for…

You don’t have to believe in him to be up there, though. Everyone seems to end up there, I don’t think there’s a hell. OR: Are there criminals up there? JB: There are rumours. Someone says they saw Ted Bundy once. Murderers… I don’t know if I believe it. But if it’s true, if there’s no hell, then I guess this isn’t heaven. OR: What do you think it is? JB: Another plain of existence, a much calmer one. I don’t know if it lasts forever, but - I feel like it all came together up there, for me, it all came into focus. If perspective was a place… that’s how I’d describe it. OR: Perspective. I like it. Well, thank you for your insights. It’s been amazing speaking to you. I do have to confess before you go - I went through a phase when I was younger, when I was very scared for a long time about my own mortality… I used to think about you and your music, and how you’ve experienced death, which brought a kind of comfort? I don’t know how to explain it.

JB: No, I get it. Death is often conveyed as such a lonely experience. OR: Exactly. And not only that, but it’s terrifying as well. And to think of people like you who have been there, it makes me feel a little better. JB: People like me? OR: Musicians, idols… people we love, “blowing their kisses hello, to life eternal” [pause] Anyway, thank you. It’s been a very interesting conversation. JB: Glad I could help. It’s been an interesting setting. And circumstance, I guess. OR: Can you do one more thing for me, Jeff? JB: What would you like? OR: Just say hello to Allen Ginsberg, please? Or, remember to introduce me, several decades down the line? JB: I’ll remember it, it’ll be my pleasure. I’ll see you when you come up - “Olivia! By the tigers in Memphis, right?” Yeah, it’ll be my pleasure.

BY ANNA JONES IMAGE BY OLIVIA YUEN

We are stars, Our lives mirrors of fire and night. Twinkling, twirling, shining, Falling, flashing, imploding. We are Unnoticed when present but missed When gone. Inspiring only when remarkable. I am Too far and too late, Gone before impact. Collectively dying in The brightest of explosions And mourned by the watching. Illuminating darkness; descending into night And returning to the universe.

The Illuminating Bits and Pieces by Greta Rainbow illustration by Eryn Lougheed

Sometimes it gets really dark in here. The kind of dark that, could the obstacle of finding a source of light be overcome, would put out any lumination all on its own. It’s not suffocating; it is simply still and stagnant. The dark is easy to get used to, but impossible to see through. Few can conquer it all by themselves because the dark plays a sly game of playground tag: you’re only free when something from the outside tugs on your arm and you race madly from the dark, determined not to lose again. That thing is the glow. A reminder of everything to be passionate about and to love and to discover. The dark is often unavoidable. I feel myself closing my eyes (though my pupils are still open) and allowing the worry, perturbation, and disparity to dominate. Lying in bed sometimes, or sitting on the bus, maybe walking to school, I realize again and again my lack of ability to click my heels three times and feel okay. Of course, the dark isn’t so bad. It doesn’t hurt me or scare me. I just feel lonely and doubtful about all the light in my life that I know I have. Was it ever there? So I yell out in the tag game of the dark: “Me! Help me!” This is a cry for the glow. Every person’s glow is different. It’s what brings them out, away,

home to the place where they are calm and content. It can be multiple things too, and maybe some people have an almost constant gleam around them so that it rarely gets dark. This is usually unannounced, your glow quietly entering your life at some point, and slowly building its importance to you and subsequently its ability to beat the dark. My glow is, coincidentally, a song from an album called The Glow Pt. 2. “I Want Wind to Blow” by The Microphones, fronted by Phil Elverum and now known as Mount Eerie, always makes everything okay. I have to smile when it plays, inwardly and outwardly- I don’t even mind that people on the bus probably think I’m a bit crazy. It reminds me of serendipity and the ocean and the film Submarine. Paralyzing in the best kind of way; all I can do is lie down and listen. I think a little bit too, but not about the future or other stressful things. “I Want Wind to Blow” only allows observation of the sky’s perfect amount of stars, a recounting of a meaningful conversation, or the feel of my largest sweater to cross my mind. The thing that makes one glow isn’t limited to anything. Being quite introverted means that I usually find solace in independence- journaling to loud music does it pretty much every time. Sometimes I need to curl up and re-watch my favorite Wes

Anderson films, escaping into an aesthetically pleasing dream world. I have a friend who always lets me know when she’s down, feeling her way through the dark and utilizing other people as her glow. It’s also really okay- and common- to be a little sad to feel better. A 2012 Ohio State University study surveyed students before, during, and after a viewing of Atonement (WWII romantic tragedy with Keira Knightley), finding that participants reflected on real people and their own close relationships afterwards, leading to an increase in life happiness. “I Want Wind to Blow” doesn’t have the cheeriest lyrics (“Under fluorescent lights, There’s sacrifice, There’s hard feelings, There’s pointless waste”), but it still makes me feel optimistic and that’s all that matters. No one is allowed to critique one’s glow; when reality seems catastrophic, what you hold onto must be strong and thus important. Find the glow. The many illuminating pieces that pull you out from the dark. Remember what makes you happy, even if the thing itself is a little melancholy, and use it whenever you need it. Watch multiple episodes until you laugh deeply; read the poem over and over until it’s memorized; step outside and breathe. Life is huge and scary sometimes, and people cannot glow all on their own. We’re lucky- we have things to help.

She Lost Herself in Your Memory by Colleen Brown She smokes Marlboro lights in an attempt to eliminate the pain. I just wish that she knew that putting poison inside of her body may help at first, but the aftermath of the action will only leave her feeling as damaged as she did before, or it may make her feel worse. She kisses random men in attempt to get the taste of your mouth out of hers. If only she knew that locking lips with strangers doesn’t always wash out the memories. But she’s trying, and it’s an ongoing battle Between her head and her heart. One part of her, the logical side, tells her that if she was happy before, she could be that way again. But this time, without you. Her heart always seems to overpower the reality of the situation, and it tells her head that there is no future; no brighter tomorrow without you. She is caught inside of the feeling of her skin against yours, and the sight of two stars colliding and creating constellations in which only you both can see. She should have known that even though your body resembles a universe filled with light and warmth, that the only way she will ever be able to rid of your memory for good will be to create new ones with those who will not take her love for granted, or who won’t have to think twice about leaving for something better.

Eryn Lougheed 48

THREAD THR

RACHEL CZ

ROUGH ME

ZAJKOWSKI

I use thread and paint to express emotions and my inner frustration. Taking self portraits is an outlet for calming my stress and putting my low self esteem to rest.

Whale Song by Adefisayo D. Adeyeye illustration by Nikita Jackson 1. Honestly I dug you out. Felt your moth bones hatch into my palms, and chapped at you up till you became the tiny crimson Romans against my teeth. I laid traps for you. I spider webbed your bedroom with blood vessels and wire huts. I was careful. There are some whale calves that find the clock guts erotic. Calves who nibble the edges and peel open like roses on the altars of broken flower pots. I am undead, but still swimming the pathless bramble. I am going door to door in stolen jeans to ask about the ghosts, and who has seen them. My most valuable cloth covered bear, the warm fur matted in the palms of my hands. I know somewhere inside you there is a map touched grave without a body. Somewhere inside there is a love who is ribbed out. 2. I am half whale half corpse. I am trying to love you like cannibals love planning picnics inside wet mausoleums, like paper men love listening to the whisper-step of tree branches. I am putting naked whale calves in mailboxes and bathtubs while a saw toothed man eats garbage from the cans on my street. He spits up snickers wrappers and paper cups and says nothing. I want to live in you like the dead live in the earth. I want to look for you like tiny humans look for tinnier humans to bury under their leather tongues. Honestly I am losing to the stars. I have been frozen inside black oceans, my thick wet blubber is full of winter and maplewood. I am looking for human sized holes to stick fingers through. I am trying to breathe like the mountains. So, forever.

comic by Lauren Rantala

Inward Injury by Laurie Crissey

Our parting was nothing to go home about. Nothing to take a boat across this ocean over, Over and under the loopholes, detangling One limb from another. It lingers on the bristles of my toothpaste, Makes gums bleed, makes me rot inwardly, Cowardly in injury, no fight left, wounded animals, Curling in our victory. Parted down the middle in girlish vanity, A line has been drawn across counties, Who were we then? My spindly fingers, Scrabbling to take a route. Ninety different species dig and spread From the corpse in the lane with foxy hair, Blossoming out like fungi in the ribs Of their new home.

nadur by jessa tremblay

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by Olivia Rafferty illustration by Evelyn Challinor I finished reading Patti Smith’s autobiographical novel, Just Kids, the other day. After lingering over the last pages, where Smith has collected several photographs and poems for Robert Mapplethorpe, I blotted the corners of my eyes with an index finger and rested the closed book to my forehead, as if I could glean any extra cosmic message from the physical contact. The way she had spun her words, the images she constructed, and most of all the narrative of her relationship with Mapplethorpe left such an impression. Many likeminded artists and creative souls will find themselves itching as they travel through the pages, because the way she writes and the artistic endeavors she describes serve as a plethora of inspiration. Before I had read the book, I saw Patti Smith as a figure of female rock ‘n’ roll that merged with the likes of Janis Joplin and Stevie Nicks. I had no inkling of her actual discography, or that it was she who had sung “Because The Night” (which, when I discovered

that she had co-written this with Springsteen, turned me emerald with envy). Her book delves into so much more than her music, though. In fact, music hangs around the periphery of the novel. What lies at the heart is the world of poetry, photography and art that she and Mapplethorpe created. The majority of the pages are set in the jewel of the New York arts scene, The Hotel Chelsea. For those of us with a MidnightIn-Paris-esque longing for the “golden age” of rock ‘n’ roll, this is the book to read. But it stretches to a wider reach than that - this book is for every artist, every poet, musician, draughtsman, and photographer that longs for the bohemian lifestyle, the mattress on the floor, the wandering of hotel corridors and Parisian streets. It also takes you by the back of your head and pushes your nose right up to the less romantic aspects of her life: the hunger, the homelessness, head lice, gonorrhea, and of course, Mapplethorpe’s contraction of AIDS.

The best pieces of art are the ones that inspire you to make something of your own, ones that encourage response. As I put the book down, I thought, I must write something for her. Smith delivers us a story with such honesty and intimacy that it only feels right to offer something up in return. I wanted to create an exchange, because, as I read, I lived these years with her; I became the ghostly third presence in her relationship with Mapplethorpe, their guardian willing the pair to thrive, create, and eventually, survive. So it was with this sense of involvement that I sat down to write. But I couldn’t hold a candle to her prose - a prose that doesn’t lie on the page, but beats its small wings above the paper grain. My brain blossomed with a collection of mismatched objects and images - I thought of Smith’s description of Jim Morrison’s grave in Paris, with the empty bottles, flowers, candles, paper trash and scrawls all over the gravestone. That’s what Patti Smith had left in my head. Throughout the novel I saw how Smith and Mapplethorpe harboured a lust for collecting artifacts and talismans: the Polaroids, the clusters of scintillating knick-knacks, record sleeves and swathes of textured fabric, and the Persian necklace that glittered at the very heart of it all. Through all this beautiful litter, the main theme was still unmistakable: life for love, life for art. This was her dedication to the lives that became inextricably intertwined through love and art… and in the end, her story became a work of art in itself. I knew that, just as she and Mapplethorpe had collected treasure, her book had become one of my own secularly-sacred objects. So, I sat at the desk and with each word I extracted from my blooming skull, I felt like I had pulled out a tooth. The words were disjointed and try-hard, sugary and ugly. This isn’t what I wanted, I thought, and considered throwing away the whole thing. But then I thought of Smith’s descriptions of her rooms, her studios, where she would sit and write and draw into the small hours. I saw the piles of discarded sheets of paper with scrawls and typewriter ink on the floor. That was the beauty of it, that was the rock ‘n’ roll, the art. So I offer up my meagre review of Just Kids, hoping that she would understand.

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