In every journey, we find moments that push us beyond the ordinary — moments when we transcend the usual, defying limitations and venturing into new realms of our own making. This issue of Ink Magazine is a testament to our resilience and growth, to embracing change and emerging stronger. It is a journey of transcendence in every sense — a word that whispers of transformation. Much like the shifting contours of our own lives, Ink has faced new beginnings. With a new location, new leadership and fresh faces, this year demanded reinvention. We’ve come to understand that transcendence is not just a destination, but a state of being. It’s that rush when you overcome self-doubt, the moment you take a deep breath and realize the impossible has become real. There is an incredible high that fills your soul when you’ve scaled your own limits. There were moments when the weight of it all seemed too heavy, when success felt just out of reach. And yet, here we stand holding an issue that radiates the strength that comes from overcoming.
Transcendently,
Kayana Jacobs Editor-in-Chief
WALKER COSBY SAMAH
ELHASSAN
KOBI MCCRAY
NATALIE UHL
MASON ROWLEY
JULIANNA BROWN
MADDIE BUI TC PRIEST
LAREINA ALLRED
SUONG HAN
BUFFY PETRIN
LYDIA BEHLER CLAUDIA ANDRADE-AYALA
AVA SOONG
AKILI WILLIAMS
NAOMI LILAC GORDON
AURELIO BABBIT JAYLYN JOHNSON
HASSAM VIRK
EMILY MANCE PEAKE WEBB
ISABELLE SAMAY
CALEB GOSS
SELAH PENNINGTON
RYAN BENSON ANDREW KERLEY
CRISTINA SAYEGH
ASHA HUBBARD
KAYANA JACOBS
REBECCA HEARNS
MARTY
ALEXEENKO
ERIN DAKOTA
EscapingNormality
Music as Ascension
Written by Zoya Javaid Graphics by Marty Alexeenko
Growing up, Pakistani culture enveloped my home. Over the years I’ve started to miss coming back from school, swinging our heavy door open and immediately having my senses overwhelmed by familiar sounds and scents; the warm aroma of spices wafting through the air, the bright swirling colors of our painting — picked up on the side of the road during a trip to Karachi — all constantly backed by my mother’s hums. She always sang in Urdu — songs from her childhood we never knew. I would always make her laugh by pretending to know the words and sing along. As kids, we would beg to listen to anything else, but I know she secretly wished we would share in her love for the music.
Pakistani culture has always been inseparable from music. I remember crowds of my loved ones banging on the “Dohl” — a double-sided barrel drum only brought out on special occasions — with spoons. Singing with joy on someone’s wedding night, their jubilant voices still ring in my ears. The songs were always the same, classics everyone knew from a single
note. I felt more connected to my community in those moments — like the music was taking us higher than we’d ever been.
Nowadays I’ve begun to understand the magic my mother was trying to show us. One day she was beaming with excitement to show me one of her favorite songs, “Tu Jhoom” by Naseebo Lal and Abida Parveen.
“It means ‘you dance and let go’ … a carefree dance of submission to the universe, a higher power. Worldly desires don’t matter. It’s about being one with the universe or your creator,” she said, light filling her eyes.
People have been chasing this feeling for centuries, there’s a reason it feels so special to us. The Turkish sema, for example, is a practice that I have always been mesmerized by. The whirling dance was developed through Sufism, a sect of Islam practiced all around the world that focuses on believing in your creator’s love for you above all else, not fearing them. To Sufis, transcendence is love beyond human love; when you move past that and feel love for the universe or your higher power, then you’ve reached that special plane of being. They’ve learned that music is the most powerful tool in getting to that place — freeing their souls from worldly problems.
On a recent trip to Konya my Mother was able to see the dance firsthand. Shuffling into a small amphitheater, signs read “no photos, no videos, no phones and no talking PLEASE.” They abided, sitting with their legs crossed in a tight circle. An eerie, anxious energy radiated among the audience as they waited in attempted silence, nervous whispers and twiddling thumbs impossible to avoid. But when the dervishes — devoted members of the Sufi order — emerged from the darkness and music began to fill the room, the tension melted away. They moved in perfect unison with each other. My mother said it was as though she had entered a trance — like there was a magnet pulling her soul to the center of the circle. When they left the stage, silence came easy to the once fidgety audience.
“You walk away feeling like you were lucky to experience something so spiritual,” my mother told me. “It leaves you craving that connection, wanting to search for it yourself.”
Though witnessing the sema is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, experiencing music in that way is not. We can see it all around us if we look, especially in the media we consume. “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” for example, gave us the term “tunnel song,” brought about by the pinnacle scene in the movie where its young protagonist stands out of the sunroof of a car, speakers blasting and his friends shouting along with him, “I feel infinite.” Every music lover I know has a tunnel song of their own. This kind of transcendence connects us to ourselves in an irreplicable way. The things we love in private are often the things we love most. Blasting songs we typically confine to our rooms into the night sky sets our souls free, in a way.
Going home from school after the end of my freshman year of college was a heavy sigh for me at first, but looking back, I really appreciated the time I shared with my sister that summer — the car rides we took together. We’d settle into a conversationless void while the heavy bass of her 2017 Honda Civic boosted the car along the backroads. She loves music in the same relentless way I do. Every few weeks there’d be a new song that would play on loop any time we drove anywhere. We’d roll down the windows and turn the volume up until we couldn’t hear ourselves singing along anymore. “Telekinesis” by Travis Scott, “Self Control” by Frank Ocean, “Ribs” by Lorde. Those songs were like portals ...
The ways we break free look different to everyone, but so does every human on earth. Every single person who’s ever existed has been different and, somehow, we find ourselves united in transcendence. No matter who you are, what you believe in or how you feel, music is capable of taking us there — to a place where we’re all the same, a plane of euphoria where nothing else matters. As long as humanity remains genuine in our pursuit of life and art, we will always have music that grants us ascension — and that comforts and inspires me immensely.
Models: Bella Melo, Hannah Meade and Yogurt (the snake)
La Petite Mort
Written by Lareina Allred
Long ago, in the age of monkeys and cavemen, humans copulated with abandon. Ancient shamans had mystical orgies, Greek gods were lauded for their foot-long schlongs and the French (those fickle and incomprehensible creatures) wrote endlessly about the joys of “la petite mort” — the little death of orgasm.
Okay, not really. But in our present-day nightmare land of parochial weirdness, it’s hard to imagine not being absolutely frigid about the idea of taking your clothes off. Republican senators are still arguing about the lawfulness of nipple piercings in public, so I think it’s safe to say that American society isn’t really ready for an exposè about the metaphysics of arousal and the spiritual benefits of an orgasm. Too bad for them though, because that’s exactly what we’re going to do today.
Take a moment to look at what’s inside your pants. Appreciate it. Say hello to it. Establish a tentative peace. Maybe even give it a name! (Mine is called Veronica.) By the end of our time together, you will have grown from uneasy companions to the best of friends. Whatever lives in your underwear, it deserves more attention than you’re giving it now and more love than you’ve been taught to bestow.
Busy and smart as you are, you probably have lots of things to do. Emails to write. People to call. Laundry to wash … and then put off folding until it sits in a pile on your bedroom floor. Taxes to do! All of these things are important, sure, but how boring would life be if it was only laundry
and taxes? Awful, humdrum and lackluster, punctuated only by the occasional “girls trip” to Cancun or a mediocre $30 brunch. If you truly want to be one with your animal self, if you want to live a life worth remembering and feel like you’re at peace with your ancestors or whatever, you need to be naked sometimes and get yourself off! Now!
Orgasms have been oft-discussed but little understood. How we process arousal is often mental as much as it is physical. Someone could be jackhammering your clitoris at a million miles per hour, but if they haven’t brushed their teeth that day, nothing’ll brew downstairs except for a nasty UTI. According to a neurologist in the Scientific American article “The Orgasmic Mind,” brain imaging studies show that for most people, achieving climax “involves more than heightened arousal. It requires a release of inhibitions and control in which the brain’s center of vigilance shuts down.” So what exactly happens when you orgasm, and why do I think it’s so important? After all, most people jack off and they don’t feel the need to write essays about it.
Well, for one, it feels good. As much as we like to pretend otherwise, human beings are fickle and lewd. We’re a lot more likely to want to reproduce and ensure the survival of our species if that reproduction is enjoyable. However, writing off arousal as just a byproduct of evolution ignores that intimacy has utilities beyond just populating the Earth with your unending seed. Pleasure can help you lower your inhibitions. When you climax, your brain floods with a slew of beneficial chemicals. According to Dutch psychotherapist Woet L. Gianotten in his article “The Health Benefits of Sexual Expression,” different “aspects of sexual action directly influence the homeostasis of the neurotransmitters and the neuroendocrine system.” The study of arousal is a relatively young one, but Gianotten posits that the scientific community has slowly “begun to acknowledge and accept that sexual expression has various benefits for relationships, bodies and minds.” If dolphins can be gay, I think you should be allowed to masturbate without pastors telling you you’re wasting sperm — and if anyone tries to rag on you for buying a vibrator, just tell them that it’s the doctor’s orders.
Orgasms also help you to be a better person. I know that’s a bold claim, but it’s easily defended.
If you understand yourself, your body and its ticks, your mind and its raptures, you understand the world. Each of us holds a universe within ourselves, a whole ecosystem of feeling that is crying out to be heard. If you cannot know yourself — touch yourself and be touched in return, in a blissful way — how could you ever presume to understand someone else? You cannot grasp the significance of the stars if you’re too terrified to feel the thrum of your own flesh. The religious cult of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, fertility and ritualized madness, revered the concept of ecstasy so highly that the Bacchanalia festival became outlawed by Roman
officials for its (undeserved) reputation of being a massive, free-for-all orgy. There’s a historical precedent to not only engaging in, but respecting and worshiping the heights of physical pleasure. There’s no better way to reach heaven than to feel it between your legs.
So what happened? How has our modern American culture twisted one of the body’s most primal joys into an endless wellspring of negative vibes? Something lusted after but endlessly warned against, sexual pleasure is now the biggest, most naked elephant in the room.
Our ancestors laid the groundwork for the U.S. to become a puritanical battleground. The dominant dogma of Christianity has morphed from a gospel of charity and goodwill into an excuse for conservative pundits to accuse drag queens of being pedophiles. (The irony of that accusation is sadly lost on most Catholic priests.) Christ’s martyrdom for the good of all mankind has risen above self-sacrifice into an excuse for asceticism, the idea that eating unsweetened graham crackers and only having sex for the sake of procreation is your one ticket to heaven.
Even if you’re no longer religious or never have
been, these cultural stigmas against arousal are so pervasive that they infect your mind, wanted or not. I spent most of my youth believing I would be denied holiness because I sometimes wanted to kiss girls. “Lock her up!” St. Peter would say, barring the pearly gates as my ghost cried and cried. “This wanton whore touches herself! She thinks about people naked! She’ll never inherit her own holy kingdom!” The fallout from these “Sister Wives” night terrors still haunt me whenever I replace the batteries in my vibrator. Over time, though, I’ve learned to shed my shame.
We live in a society of self-flagellation, but denial does not make you holy and pleasure does not make you evil. It makes you human! Guilt does not have to be the prevailing emotion of your life and no god — no god that’s worth worshiping, anyway — would punish you for living well.
Unfortunately, as modernity isolates us from each other, we’ve lost touch with something essential inside ourselves. No longer attuned to the rhythms of the Earth or the significance of the cosmos, we wither under the glare of LED screens and milquetoast sitcoms. But just because that’s how life is now doesn’t mean that’s how it always has to be. Computers were only invented in the last 100 years and now people are trying to legally marry their AI chatbots, so I think the universe can excuse you for trying to find some pleasure in your day-to-day existence.
We have forgotten the most important thing about ourselves: that as lofty and smart as we think to be, we are still animals. I am an animal, you are an animal, a creature with a body that laughs and cries and c*ms. How arrogant is it to assume that we know better than the geese above, the fish below? They all breed and eat and die just like us, except none of them are living under capitalism. You must learn to exist with your body’s beautiful raptures despite everything that plagues it. You deserve to be gross. You deserve to feel good.
Return now to your genitals. Ask yourself, as you stand in front of a mirror to face your own naked flesh: When have you ever let yourself exist outside of the million hair-trigger distractions that plague your life? When was the last time you screamed out in joy? How often do you feel bliss, true and sharp?
You cannot live forever in a state of wanting. You can transcend modern grayness; become an earthly greatness. You have sublimity at your fingertips. All you have to do is reach down and touch it.
HEAVY BREATHING
Creative Director,Photographer, Lighting : Akili Williams
Stylists:
Makeup: Zari Parker
Models:
Jasmine, Akili Williams
Ansh Gandhi, Jaylyn Johnson, Syton Nontong and Zari Parker
for when a player gets too into their own head. They begin considering their grip on the bat, or the looseness of their glove or any other tiny imperceptible difference, and it throws off their entire muscle memory. They strike out, which makes them burrow deeper into their own head, strike out more, and so on and so forth until they’re finding themselves out of a job.
In the summer of my sixteenth year on this planet, I was having a generational, existential case of the yips. I’d only been experiencing life as a fully sentient being for three years — having flipped some sort of switch in my brain at age 13 that made me realize I could have a personality and traits — and I’d done nothing with it. I was this malleable thing — afraid looking dumb — and it was incredibly, incredibly obvious. I couldn’t breathe without wondering if I was making too much noise. “Am I sweating too much?” “Oh God, my back isn’t straight.” “Fix your posture.” “Tie your shoes.” “Eat your Wheaties.”
In short, the yips.
Written by Mason Rowley Graphics
It was in this stupor of indecision and posturing that I found myself in possession of my first set of concert tickets: IDLES — hot off their pandemic-era release “Ultra Mono” — coming to the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. Despite weak releases (including “Ultra Mono” itself) and an increasingly corny presence in interviews dampening pretty much all enthusiasm I had for them, I could confidently say that IDLES were like gods to me in 2021. It was a fatal concoction: my first simultaneous experience with true-blue leftism, heavy music and that ever-potent — but positive — male rage. Soaked in the vigor and colors of punk mosh dreams, I made
I rode into the city in a black
cousin’s boyfriend’s, who I’d conned — alongside the aforementioned cousin — into coming along. The quo of this quid-pro was my attendance of that year’s Dreamville Fest, but when the time finally came around she decided her soft-brained little cousin was a lot less enticing of a companion than, say, any of
by Ryan Benson
I spent the entire ride listening to Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde” — a fundamentally boring album. No matter how many times 16-yearold Mason had scoured Rate Your Music reviews, absorbing notes on The Band’s “apple-pie Americana” or Dylan’s “shrill, informative voice,” I still fell asleep thrice across its runtime. But I’d been told it was God, so as we parked the car illegally on the street, rushed our bags into the hotel and ate takeout as the sun fell, I planted my terrible headphones on my head and listened, waiting for that divine spirit.
As the sun set over our dingy slice of the district, we set off. We rode to the 9:30 Club after much difficulty on electric scooters. Inside, a pair of Xs on my hands were the only thing separating me from the majority middle-aged, majority bearded, majority white crowd. The dense mass spent their time idly sipping Pabst and muttering back and forth to one another.
“Have you seen
My cousin, after making sure she had my phone number, quietly and swiftly retreated outside before the house lights dimmed. Some band named Gustaf played. They were, no offense to them, very plastic — very art school in a “I own a copy of ‘Stop Making Sense’ because it’s an A24 movie” type of way. If they were a person, they’d be played by Rachel Sennott in three years. Then, IDLES.
“What are you drinking there?” them before?”
They played like they wanted to stop your heart. They existed as energy. The guitarists flailed like they were being flogged. Lead singer Joe Talbot screamed till his face was red and sweat-drenched, and his voice seared with a primal tone — like a fist was being buried down his throat as he sang. The kick drum rang out like automatic gunfire. They blazed through song after song after song, and as the night continued it felt like a baptism. I’d gone from a tentative toe-tap on the outskirts of the mosh pit, merch shirt draping from my body like an unfamiliar third skin, to bruised ribs; to a complete refutation of civility as I — with full love in my heart — rammed headfirst into passerby. They announced last call: no encores, no after-shows. A crowd surfer clad in the transgender pride flag made it to the front and made an impassioned plea to the crowd for “Trans rights now, trans rights forever!” I screamed along with a pang in my heart I’ve yet to resolve. The crowd split at Joe’s command and — as the band launched into show-closer “Rottweiler” — he dropped his hand; and all of us in the pit — those who were young, dumb and hungry for a good time —
The walls and the floor are breathing, rising and falling with every ragged breath as you spin yourself hysterical, like those nuns in France, and you slip and a strange arm with the force of a jar of smelling salts grabs you and pulls you to your feet with a jerk, and you continue running, despite the in your shins or the cramps in your soles you pick up into a sprint, your movements are jagged, the guitars grow in volume, you pound your chest like some sort of primordial instinct, some deeper inner working that tells where you should be, barely breathe, your straining alongside you with the heat and the exhaustion but the strobe light is moving so fast it’s like it’s synced with the refresh rate of your own eyes, and the snare rings like liberation bells, and the room is a blur but it seems it’s always been a blur, a chundering mass like the ocean itself, a collective soul, a hivemind, you can’t remember a moment before this but you can hear the thump of the bass analogous to your own heartbeat, and the
I left sweat-glazed. I walked back to the hotel with my cousin in tow, shell-shocked, breathing air that — after the hazy, heavy breathing supply in
a tone that becomes your single, only, permanant thought, and in that moment, between those ice-pick guitars that feedback into one another like twin fate wpunctuated by an absolutely tectonic drum fill, that brief instance between this and whatever beyond there is, you’ve found God. You’ve found God in others, flashing in your peripheral vision with a tap on the shoulder to keep you moving or a grin as you move in time. He, or She, or It, has consumed you whole, slipping between bodies and molecules. It is nirvana in rhythm.
