Volume XIX Issue 4

The Yale Herald YALE’S MOST DARING PUBLICATION SINCE 1986 | VOL. XIX ISSUE 4

Illustrated by Itai Almor

*Turn to page 12 to pedal through the Elm City from the vantage of the famed Party Bike.

2.16.18

FROM THE EDITORS Shhhh!

It’s too loud in here. Please stop yelling. Turn the TV down, I don’t care if it’s the Olympics. God, these walls are thin. The neighbor’s next door again. And what’s that noise outside? Close the window, it’s that abomination. Wine moms on wheels. The Elm City Party Bike.

Everyone who has spent time in Downtown New Haven agrees that that the Elm City Party Bike should be torn apart, limb by limb, and thrown into the river. Well, maybe not everyone. Allie Primak, DC ’19, thinks we shouldn’t knock it till we try it. In our front this week, she hops aboard the notorious noisemaker and shows us the silver lining of this urban monster.

Speaking of monsters, in Reviews this week, Juan Valencia, BF ’19, raves at Guillermo del Toro’s sea creature sex adventure, The Shape of Water.

The price of love in the film might be flooded floorboards, but over in Voices this week Alison Ho, GH ’20, has another thing leaking through her ceiling: the sweet sounds of her crush’s cello as he practices each afternoon.

Alison might love it, but I hope he keeps it down.

No one likes unwanted noise, especially not those of us here at the Herald. We get enough of it already, whether from the drunken jeers of the passing party bike or the sex screeches of an Oscar-nominated sea monster.

Seeking peace and quiet, Jack Kyono Managing Editor

THE HERALD MASTHEAD EDITORIAL STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Eve Sneider MANAGING EDITORS Margaret Grabar Sage,

Jack Kyono, Nicole Mo

EXECUTIVE EDITORS Emma Chanen, Tom Cusano,

Emily Ge, Marc Shkurovich,

Anna Sudderth, Oriana Tang, Rachel Strodel

SENIOR EDITOR Luke Chang, Hannah Offer FEATURES EDITORS Fiona Drenttel, Brittany Menjivar CULTURE EDITORS Allison Chen, Nurit Chinn OPINION EDITORS Lydia Buonomano, Tereza Podhajska REVIEWS EDITORS Gabe Rojas, Tricia Viveros VOICES EDITOR Carly Gove INSERTS EDITOR Zoe Ervolino AUDIO EDITOR Will Reid BULLBLOG EDITOR Marc Shkurovich

DESIGN STAFF GRAPHICS EDITOR Julia Hedges DESIGN EDITORS Audrey Huang, Rasmus Schlutter, Lauren Quintela, Nika Zarazvand

The Yale Herald is a not-for-profit, non-partisan, incorporated student publication registered with the Yale College Dean’s Office.

If you wish to subscribe to the Herald, please contact the Editor-in-Chief at eve.sneider@yale.edu. Receive the Herald for one semester for 40 dollars, or for the 20162017 academic year for 65 dollars.

The Yale Herald is published by Yale College students, and Yale University is not responsible for its contents.

All opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of The Yale Herald, Inc. or Yale University. Copyright 2017 The Yale Herald.

VISIT THE YALE HERALD ONLINE AT YALEHERALD.COM 2 THE YALE HERALD

IN THIS ISSUE 8

OPINIONS

VOICES

Alison Ho, GH ’20, gives an intimate portrait of two strangers who share the same building and the cello music that links them.

10,16 FEATURES

Inspired by Cornel West’s lecture in Battell Chapel, Zoe Ervolino, MC ’20, delves deep into the issue of revisionist history.

Eleazar Camez BK ‘21 reimagines La Casa as a social space largely divorced from its current political agenda.

18

Travis DeShong, BR ’19, investigates a new student group called 5a, which seeks to create a series of first-year workshops that will address power and privilege at Yale.

Brittany Menjivar, ES ’21, talks about some of the most amazing Yalies to make it to the Olympic games, including the three hockey players competing in PyeongChang this year.

CULTURE

Musicals are not often famous for their subtlety.

Maximilian Himpe, BF ’21, assesses the portrayal of mental health in the rock musical, Next to Normal.

Mark Rosenberg, PC ’20, invites us to experience “Gallery+1968-2018”, an interactive-exhibit hosted by the Yale University Art Gallery.

WEEK AHEAD

FRIDAY, FEB. 16 @ 8:00PM

THE YALE EXIT PLAYERS PRESENT: CALL ME BY YOUR WAYNE NICK CHAPEL, TRUMBULL

SHADES VALENTINE’S DAY JAM

COVER

For bad traffic and chemical happiness, come take a ride on the Elm City Party Bike with Allie Primak, DC ’19.

20

REVIEWS

Will Reid, PC ’19, introduces you to the brash, yet melodic sound of of King Krule’s The OOZ; there’s more to Franz Ferdinand than “Take Me Out” as Nic Harris, BR ’18, explains with his review of Always Ascending.

Sara Luzuriaga, BR ’21, discusses the shortcomings of Børns’s sophomore album, Blue Madonna; Juan Valencia, BF ’19, highlights The Shape of Water’s pertinence in modern American society.

COSINE Sine’s underappreciated younger brother needs a little love too.

This QR season, spend a little time cherishing the saggy line.

BATTELL CHAPEL

SUNDAY, FEB. 18 @5:00PM TILTBRUSH: CONSTRUCTING VIRTUAL OBJECTS CENTER FOR COLLABORATIVE ARTS AND MEDIA, ROOM 102

MONDAY FEB. 19 @9:00PM

OUTGOING

SATURDAY, FEB. 17 @8:30PM

12

INCOMING

6

COUSIN There’s only room for one performative bitch at Aunt Sharon’s 50th.

LGBTQ CO-OP MEETING YALE OFFICE OF LGBTQ RESOURCES 3

I N S E R T S Feb.16.2018

Illustrated by Julia Hedges

4 THE YALE HERALD

The Fat Man From the Trolley Problem Has a Bone to Pick With You

Top Five Top Fives

BEN KRONENGOLD, TC ’18 It’s an average Sunday morning out on the railway overpass.

The air is chilly. The sky is cloudless. I slip my chin into the collar of my fleece, close my eyes, and revel in the humming of an inbound trolley when SOME SADISTIC FUCK OF AN UNDERGRAD STARTS LIFTING MY LEG OVER THE RAILING. Welcome to my fucking life.

I just don’t understand.

Can’t a plus-sized man mind his own business without getting roped into some bullshit archetypical ethical dilemma? “If there are five people on a track and a trolley is heading towards them, but there’s one person on a side track, would you pull a lever and reroute the trolley?”

“Yes, professor!” “Well then, would you push an unassuming, overweight gentleman off of a nearby—” NO! No just FUCKING STOP! I was just bird-watching up there, you little shit!

Also, to the sizeist asswipes who would shove me off of an overpass: How good is your aim? Huh? You must be the Kobe freakin’ Bryant of throwing people off of bridges if you think you

could actually land me onto the tracks from so high up. We better be working with some Chris Kelly American Sniper precision if you want to avoid going to jail for throwing an innocent man slightly left of a trolley car accident.

Here’s the deal, folks.

I have two kids—also fat, so pure—and God help me if I let them grow up in a world where they could be flung off a bridge in some ridiculous attempt to save the offbrand cast of Stand By Me. Those brats were the ones screwing around on the tracks in the first place. My kids did nothing wrong except, apparently, have a genetic disposition for slow metabolism.

All I’m saying is, one day soon, it might be you who sees me on a trolley overpass on some still, frigid morning. And if you do, just keep your distance, okay? Any sudden movements and it won’t be my 350-pound ass that’s going over. But, hey, let’s not let it get to that. Let’s not let the ethicists win.

ADDEE KIM JE ’21

five ways to come out to your 1. Top dog

2.

Top five dining halls according to that one first- year that is still struggling with conversation starters

3. Top five creation myths 4.

5.

Top 5 ways to eat coleslaw without attracting unwanted advances from men—oh, that’s just me?

Top five ways to be funny and a woman 5

V O I C E S Feb.16.2018

To the boy upstairs who plays the cello ALISON HO, GH ’20

Dear R, Did you know that your room, where I think you practice, is directly above mine?

At least, I know your room is there in early afternoons, when I can hear you practicing your cello. I can’t vouch for where it is the rest of the day. For all I know, you fold it up and put it away. Maybe you lay it gently back in its case, in the same tender way you probably put away your instrument, and disappear.

When you play the cello, it sounds like sex noises to me. Did you know that? *** Every time you practice, I notice.

Not because you’re loud—you’re not. And since I only ever hear you in the afternoons (except for once or twice when you practiced late at night), when the building is emptier than usual and people are more awake than usual, I assume you’re a rather conscientious fellow, on the whole. I like to assume good things about you.

No, I become acutely aware of you because of who I am. You see, I have this condition where sometimes I think I can see abstractions, touch them, will them into being. And in the afternoons when you practice I can feel your music. Strains of music that leak through your wooden floor panels and stain the concrete ceiling above my bed and drip down onto my forehead. Cold, wet music.

Or warm, wet music.

It’s really not that loud, you know. A polite volume for a polite boy. *** I have a routine too. Every afternoon when I finish class, I run back to my room (which is directly under yours), shrug my backpack onto the floor, and crawl into bed.

Then I like to play a game. It’s called Crawl Back Out. I won’t explain the rules.

Here’s one rule: it’s a single-player game.

On good days, I win. After I allow myself a freebie hour to lapse leisurely into unconsciousness, I awaken, extract myself from my chrysalis, and reemerge in the world. Not like a butterfly, though. Those are too elegant. (Is there a word for a butterfly, but disheveled?) Sometimes I’m awakened by drops of your music hitting me on the forehead.

On good days I recite with confidence the things I have chosen to be: I am a chemist, a writer, an engineer. (“The old brag of my heart,” Sylvia Plath once called it: “I am, I am, I am.”)

So far, this semester has been lucky. I’ve been winning a lot. *** I think I know your routine. You start slow: sometimes with scales, sometimes with

Illustrated by Julia Hedges

6 THE YALE HERALD

“Can you imagine what an allegro vivo ostinato is to an eighty-year-old?” strings of notes that sound like interjections, punctuated by rests. I assume those are your orchestra parts.

Do you remember that one time at the beginning of the year, when my roommate and I ran into you at the gym and you thought my name was Cynthia, or Cindy, or something that didn’t rhyme or even start with the same letter as mine? And you asked me if I was auditioning for the orchestra. That was the second time I can remember being angry. Just a brief white blaze, like a camera flash, and it passed. I think I laughed. Or maybe it was you.

After the orchestra music you slip into something faster or more melodic: a solo.

Sometimes it’s Bach. The rest of the time I don’t recognize it. *** I’ve seen you play onstage with the rest of the orchestra: Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff, Mahler. You move (active), and the cello section moves (active) with you. It’s touching, somehow. Afterwards I am almost always moved (passive).

Did you know that sometimes I feel like I can’t move? ***

finishes there he will be a Real, Actual Musician.

Do you ever wonder if you will be a Real, Actual anything? *** I don’t always win, you know.

For example, there were one hundred and fifteen days in fall semester, and in all that time I didn’t win a single round of Crawl Back Out. This is what it looks like when I lose: after I allow myself a freebie hour to lapse leisurely into unconsciousness, I awaken and try to extract myself from my chrysalis. But it doesn’t fall away, doesn’t peel off and become one with the detritus of the afternoon. Instead it grips me and twists, like some large hand wringing out a towel. Suddenly I can’t move.

On days when I am losing particularly badly, I close my eyes and imagine two spheres of light approaching along parallel paths, a Venn diagram whose overlap keeps increasing (two electron clouds merging, says the chemist in me) until the spheres coalesce and become, simply, a single unit of amorphous blinding light.

Can I tell you a story?

They’re car headlights, I think.

When I was in high school, my friend and I once played in an intergenerational community orchestra (ages eight to eighty, the brochure said). It was a ragtag group—nothing like the beautiful symphony orchestra you play in. They invited us because they needed someone to play the trombone (Justin) and someone else to play the clarinet (me).

I can’t remember.

There was a soloist at rehearsal one night, a virtuosic cellist who played Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme. During the final variation, the conductor asked the second violin section not to slow down during a certain ostinato passage. “Let me hear the part,” he said, “with cello.” So the second violins plucked and sawed and, sure enough, their allegro vivos were not nearly vivo enough for the cellist, who outran them all with a flourish of his bow.

Remember the community orchestra?

The conductor couldn’t understand it, but it was so clear to me. Of course I couldn’t confirm my hypothesis by asking the second violinists how old they were—that would have been too rude (but you already know this: you’re a polite boy). If I were pressed, though, if someone held a gun to my temple and made me venture a guess at their average age, I would say: eighty. Can you imagine what an allegro vivo ostinato is to an eighty-year-old?

It is a string of fast notes that leaves your shrunken, spider-veiny bow-wielding arm sore.

It is a stream of music that outruns you and stretches on forever, still running.

It is, essentially, the musical equivalent of being bowled over and left behind.

Justin and I didn’t know what to do. Eventually one of us laughed. It was him.

That was the first time I can remember being angry.

7

On losing days, you still practice the cello. ***

Sometimes when you practice slow scales or fast Bach I think of the virtuosic, Rococo-playing cellist and wonder what has happened to him, what will happen to you.

And then I think about what I have chosen to be. Those eighty-year-old second violinists, slowing down, getting bowled over by music and time—do you think any of them were chemists, writers, engineers? Do you think they were happy? *** That’s why I said your cello playing sounds like sex noises to me. The richness seems like such an expression of joy and love, and I feel so obscene, eavesdropping from my room below your room.

On losing days, as the music drips from the ceiling onto my forehead, I lie there, hating you. Did you know that? I think I am mad at you to cover up the fact that I am slowly coming unmoored. ***

***

Is this unconvincing? So be it.

Justin is at Eastman now. When he leaves he will go to Juilliard and when he

You play beautifully, you know.

7

O P I N I O N Feb.16.2018

Cornel West’s History ZOE ERVOLINO, MC ’20 YH STAFF

On February 4, Cornel West ascended the pulpit and preached to a crowd that filled both floors of Battell Chapel. His lecture marked the commencement of Black History Month and 25th anniversary of the publication of his book, Race Matters, West spoke passionately, addressing such themes as elitism in racial discourse, the necessity of love in the fight against racism, and the beauty of blackness.

He touched on both contemporary and historical issues, weaving together the past and the present. West awed the audience with his rhetorical prowess, moral suasion, and candor, situating himself within the larger black oratorical tradition.

In the days following West’s lecture, I found that his words continued to echo through my head. “In the quest for truth, stop looking for blind spots,” he had proclaimed to the audience, urging us instead to critically examine the frameworks of justice. Referencing the backlash he had faced for criticizing President Obama, West defended his position, turning the charge towards the audience and asking, “Do we have the honesty to be candid about the challenges we face?” Later in the lecture, he reified the importance of truth: “If you’re not interested in truth, goodness, justice, and beauty, then black history is NOT for you.” As West proclaimed the necessity of truth, the audience, including many Yale students, roared with applause.

Indeed, West’s lecture represented an ideological call to action. Using the impetus of Black History Month, he called upon the audience to interrogate the shortcomings of antiracist frameworks. This call to action is one that we must carry out in our own apparently antiracist spaces, including the classroom. The same Yale students who were clapping for West are among the very people at whom he aimed his indictment.

As a prospective History and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration double major, my academic interests lie in histories of oppression and resistance. As such, I have spent a lot of my academic career at Yale in courses that explore questions of race, agency, and memory. For me, the notion of memory is crucial – memory reconstructs the past into a tangible, coherent narrative to be mobilized for our purposes.

U.S. national memory tells us that Christopher Columbus discovered this land and saved the Indian savages with Christianity. Although some continue to believe in such a depiction, the rise of revisionist history has called this national myth—and others like it—into question. West would likely advise a believer in the Columbus myth to “get off the crack pipe,” a line that he repeated throughout his lecture. Modern historical discourse denounces the celebratory, limited, and racist nature of the Christopher Columbus narrative, and today, many see the problems with falsified and simplistic renditions of American history. But few are skeptical of the tendency to pare history when it is convenient for liberal rhetorical purposes.

Consider Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. Structuring his narratives as “bottom up” histories of marginalized groups, Zinn sought to present an alternative

8 THE YALE HERALD

imagination of American history. The text, published in 1980, has left a lasting mark on approaches to American historical thinking. Nevertheless, more recent scholarship has suggested that Zinn’s portrayal falls short for its simplistic, didactic approach to history. In his efforts to reframe history from the perspective of marginalized groups, Zinn frames American history singularly—his conception of American history transforms from an understanding of American history to the approach.

Yale history classrooms are riddled with such examples of well-intentioned but limited revisions. As students grapple with the oppressive realities of the past, they can often fall into presentism, applying judgments rooted in contemporary values that fail to understand the specific cultural context of a place or time. Examples of such judgments include the surface level critiques of “racism” that treat racism as an ubiquitous and static entity and fail to address the particularities of racial systems in different contexts. Such ‘critical’ approaches to history depend on present value systems in an attempt to denounce oppressive institutions, but, in doing so, operate insubstantially as mere performances of liberal values. Such comments fail at their primary undertaking: though revisionist history attempts to restore agency to oppressed groups, such a goal cannot be achieved if the framework under which oppressed peoples were operating is not understood. How can one point to instances of resistance if the very thing being resisted is undefined?

Other common presentist remarks perpetuate hierarchy within historical memory itself, notably via a ‘historical pedestal.’ A figure is placed on the pedestal when celebrated, fiercely removed from it when deemed flawed, and another figure is desperately sought to fill its pace. Such a process can take on both figurative and literal forms, as figures

“If you’re not interested in truth, goodness, justice, and beauty, then black history is NOT for you.”

- Cornel West

are bolstered and renounced through historical literature and through the physical removal of statues from their pedestals. Despite differences in the cultural import of both theoretical and physical pedestals, they are similar in that they mandate celebration. Under the framework of the ‘historical pedestal,’ history becomes a process of exaltation and repudiation, saying less about the actors of the past and more about the values of the historians themselves.

West alluded to the pedestal in his discussion of Martin Luther King, Jr., who, despite his popular acclaim today, was a contentious figure within his own time: “When he died, 55% of black people disapproved of King; 72% of white people disapproved of King.” Nevertheless, few would contest the notion that King has become a—if not the—figurehead of the Civil Rights Movement. West acknowledged the inevitable disappointment of historical figures, but his rendition is not hopeless. Instead, he uses this inevitability as a stimulus for mobilization, demanding that we “try again, fail again, fail better,” in the fight for justice.

The singularity of King’s attribution to the Civil Rights Movement is contested in courses such as Crystal Feimster’s “The Long Civil Rights Movement”, which broadens credit to those figures who, without pedestals, remain invisible in historical memory.

The point is not that failed attempts at revisionist history are bad. The point is that, in the words of West, “the standards are high.” Surface level approaches to revisionist history are not enough. Historians have developed a framework that offers the possibility to recover the agency of the oppressed in the historical process itself. It is up to us to fully engage in the personal and historical interrogation that such a framework necessitates.

Photo courtesy of Public Domain

La Casa No Es Mi Casa

9

ELEAZAR CAMEZ, BK ’21

Yale prides itself on its diverse student body and on the many spaces students of different backgrounds can visit to feel more welcome on campus. La Casa is ostensibly one of these places. As one of Yale’s cultural houses, its advertised intention is to provide a venue for Hispanic students, such as myself, to meet each other and take part in activities that celebrate our shared heritage. I greatly appreciate a campus group recognizing and responding to the need for a space dedicated to celebrating Hispanic culture. However, I feel that La Casa does not take full advantage of the opportunity it has to provide such a space. I also do not entirely identify with the particular version of Hispanic culture that it promotes.

Before coming to Yale, I believed that I would feel somewhat at home at La Casa. My parents immigrated to the United States from Mexico and I grew up speaking Spanish, eating and cooking Mexican food, and visiting relatives in my parents’ hometown. I figured that dropping by La Casa would be a great way to start off my first semester at Yale.

I attended their open house expecting a warm, energetic environment where I could meet fellow Latinx students.

This was an exciting prospect given that I had not met many in my first few days on campus. Upon arriving, however, I began to realize that the aims of the organization were different from what I had anticipated. I got to the event about 20 minutes late, expecting to encounter a room full of lively conversations as people met each other for the first time. Instead, I turned into the living room and became unwitting witness to a lecture on how the Yale community is too white and how Hispanic students needed a safe space on campus. The speaker went on to talk about about how the interests of Hispanic students and the Hispanic population in general had been neglected by Yale and the nation at large, and how we were obligated to fight against such injustice and discrimination.

Although I agreed with many of the sentiments expressed, I did not go to La Casa to hear a rallying cry to lash out against unjust systems of power and oppression; I went there to meet people from a similar background and hopefully to make new friends, using our common culture as a starting point to get to know each other. It is true that La Casa is positioned to be an effective platform for promoting activism

because it attracts students who are passionate about their heritage and about working to help members of the local community who are similarly marginalized. However, presenting itself and behaving first and foremost as a hub for activists is not the ideal way to draw in those who are looking for a primarily cultural space. The open house event came across as an overly aggressive advance at a time when I was seeking a space that was calm and familiar to serve as an anchor during my first couple of weeks on campus.

When the main speech was over, I stayed and introduced myself to some people, but I did not feel inclined to linger for too long. Although most of the people I met were friendly, my first impression of La Casa remained disappointing. I believe it is essential to maintain spaces on campus where students can gather to connect with each other based on their shared heritage, which can be a starting point for forming new friendships. A cultural house should certainly promote activism, but not so stridently when incoming first years are feeling overwhelmed and want a place to get away from the constant pressures of college life. Instead, La Casa primarily focuses on rallying students to take action against discrimination and other issues affecting the Hispanic community at Yale and elsewhere. As important as it is to address those problems, La Casa would make better use of its resources by devoting itself to creating an environment that encourages Hispanic students to bond over their shared culture, rather than initiating a call to action that many students may not be seeking. The sense of urgency that La Casa creates by pushing students to take part in its many activist endeavors may repel students who look to it first and foremost as a space to connect with other Hispanic students.

Since my own priorities were misaligned with La Casa’s, I decided that very night that I would not become a frequent visitor there.

In addition to my disagreement with La Casa’s priorities, I find that it does not entirely represent or celebrate my background. My impression is that La Casa’s objective is to welcome Hispanic-Americans, rather than to promote purely Hispanic culture. Members of the Yale community who are not directly connected to their Hispanic heritage via their parents or birthright often feel that they have assimilated to American culture, but are seeking a way to get

in touch with their roots. La Casa aims to help students with this background establish their identities in the community and embrace their culture. However, for me, this means that La Casa primarily upholds a set of values and customs that differ from my own. I identify more as Hispanic, rather than Hispanic-American. As a first generation American, I relate to many facets of Hispanic-American life. However, my perspective is different from third- or even secondgeneration students—my parents spent most of their lives in Mexico and still identify strongly with Mexican culture.

As the first American among the members of my extended family, my mission is to fully establish myself and my family in this country, and to take advantage of the opportunities afforded me as a result of my parents’ hard work. I serve as a bridge between my family’s past, which is in Mexico, and our future, which will most likely be in the United States.

And I am not the only one who expresses disappointment with La Casa on similar grounds. Several of my friends who are international students from Latin America felt similarly, like Nissim Roffe, GH’ 21, from Puerto Rico, who told me that he felt like La Casa was “designed specifically for Americans of Hispanic heritage.” This often leaves students like myself or my aforementioned friends somewhat alienated because La Casa’s environment feels like it is intended for those who are firmly situated within American culture, but who are also a part of the unique Hispanic culture that exists here in the United States, which is not what we are accustomed to.

I entered Yale excited to become a member of La Casa’s community. However, after forming a disappointing first impression on the first night and sensing that the group’s main objective was more to develop than to celebrate cultural identities, I decided to distance myself from the house for the time being. I do plan on making another visit to La Casa this semester and reaching out to more of the people involved with the organization. However, I am doubtful that I will come to appreciate it as fully as I once imagined I would.

La Casa

I serve as a bridge between my family’s past, which is in Mexico, and our future, which will most likely be in the United States.

9

F E A T U R E S Feb.16.2018

Handsome Dan and the Olympians A Brief History of Yale’s Presence at the Olympic Games BRITTANY MENJIVAR, ES ’21

If you’ve been keeping up with the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, you know that there are plenty of amazing athletes on Team USA. But did you know that three of them are Yalies?

That’s right—and they’re not the only ones who have gone from top-notch Bulldogs to internationally recognized Olympians. Over the years, hundreds of Yale students have competed in the Olympic Games, many of them scoring medals and even setting world records (mostly at the Summer Olympics, though—Yale’s swimmers and rowers seem to be especially accomplished). Here’s a sampling of some of the most notable athletes who have put the blue in the red, white, and blue.

Bulldog, bulldog, bow wow wow!

Gilbert Colgate, Class of 1922

Gilbert Colgate was another Yale bobsledder, making him one of just a handful of Yalies who have participated in the Winter Games.

He took home a bronze medal in the two-man event at the 1936 Olympic Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. He was politically active as the first treasurer of the Planned Parenthood Federation. And if his name sounds familiar, that’s because it might be the name on your toothpaste tube: his great-grandfather, William Colgate, founded the Colgate-Palmolive company.

Don Schollander, Class of 1968

Don Schollander, a swimmer, has more Olympic medals than any other Yalie. In the 1964 Olympics inTokyo and the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, he won five gold medals and one silver. His 1964 performance was especially impressive: four out of his six medals came from that year, making him the first American to win that many Olympic medals in one year since Jesse Owens in 1936. This victory scored him a LIFE Magazine cover. Fun fact: at Yale, he was also in Skull and Bones.

TWELVE YEARS Edward Eagan, Class of 1921

Edward Eagan has gone down in history as one of the most impressive Olympic athletes. Not too many Olympians have competed in the summer and winter games, but Eagan’s been to both. And on top of that, he won a gold medal both times, something that has only ever been done by one other Olympian. In the 1920 Summer Olympics at Antwerp, he competed as a boxer in the light-heavyweight division.

Twelve years later, he arrived at the 1932 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid with a new sport—bobsledding, which he got into just three weeks before the competition. In his free time, he participated in the Adventurers’ Club of New York, a semi-secret organization that featured many prominent authors, explorers, and other distinguished persons.

William Steinkraus, Class of 1948

William Steinkraus was an equestrian legend who participated in not one, not two, but six Olympic Games. Thanks to his talent, he traveled all around the world, visiting everywhere from Mexico City to Rome. Across all of his competitions, he won one gold medal, two silver medals, and one bronze medal. Even after he retired, he continued his involvement with the horse showing industry, serving as a leader on the United States Equestrian Team. His interests were diverse: aside from riding, he played the violin and was particularly fond of antique furniture.

In 1987, he was inducted into the Show Jumping Hall of Fame.

Anne Warner, Class of 1977

In the 1970s, Anne Warner was one of Yale’s most accomplished rowers. At the 1976 Summer Olympics in Quebec, she won two gold medals in the sport. She also qualified for the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, but she and fellow Yale rowers John R. Biglow (Class of 1980), Virginia Gilder (Class of 1979), and Steve Keisling (Class of 1980), couldn’t compete: that year, the United States boycotted the Olympics to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. In 2007, she received one of 461 Congressional Gold Medals made for athletes affected by the boycott. At Yale, she was a Russian Studies major and conductor of the Yale Slavic Chorus (which is just a little ironic).

LATER, HE ARRIVED AT THE 1932 WINTER OLYMPICS AT LAKE PLACID WITH A NEW SPORT— BOBSLEDDING, WHICH HE GOT INTO JUST THREE WEEKS BEFORE THE COMPETITION.

10 THE YALE HERALD

Celita Schutz, Class of 1990

Celita Schutz is the only judoka (judo practitioner) from Yale who has ever competed in the Olympics. She picked up the sport at just six years old after seeing her brother take a lesson. Within a few years, she was competing worldwide and training in Japan, Spain, Germany, and Brazil. She went to the Summer Olympics three times: in Atlanta in 1996; in Sydney in 2000; and in Athens in 2004.

Although she did not win any medals, she’s certainly a distinguished athlete: in 1996, she was captain of the Olympic Women’s Judo Team, and she was considered the number one judo player in the United States for several years.

Mark Arcobello, Class of 2010, Broc Little, Class of 2011, and Brian O’Neill, Class of 2012

Sarah Hughes, Class of 2007

17

Before she was even a Yale student, Sarah Hughes was an accomplished figure skater. After years of competing on the national and global level, she went to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake at the age of 17 and became the Olympic Champion in ladies’ singles. Shortly after her victory, she enrolled in Yale and became an American Studies major. On the ice, she was known for her triple-triple jump combinations and camel spin; off the ice, she was passionate about breast cancer awareness and research and supported an organization that provided free skating lessons for girls in Harlem. She began this activism as a Yale student, and has continued it since.

For Mark Arcobello, Brock Little, and Brian O’Neill, the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang are a reunion of sorts. All three members of the U.S. Men’s Ice Hockey Team played together at Yale under Coach Keith Allain, Class of 1980—who, incidentally, is also in PyeongChang as an assistant for the team. Currently, Arcobello, Little, and O’Neill all play for professional teams in Europe: Arcobello for Schlittschuh Club Bern in Switzerland, Little for Hockey Club Davos in Switzerland, and O’Neill for Helsingin Jokerit in Finland. Sadly, they lost their first match on Valentine’s Day, but they still have a chance to redeem themselves in the two additional matches this weekend. The Herald wishes them good luck!

11

12

Illustrated by Julia Hedges

SWEATING & SLURRING ALLIE PRIMAK, DC ’19

“You’re going to have to drink,” he said, turning to me with an earnest look. It was noon on a Saturday, and we were perfect strangers. Before I could say anything, he was serving me hard root beer in a plastic cup. “It’s so great,” he urged. “You can barely tell it’s hard.”

I took a sip.

Hastings and I met under peculiar circumstances. I found myself seated beside him, chugging the hard root beer he’d brought from home, on the strangest of all contraptions: a circular tandem bike with a built-in bar and blaring sound system. It circles New Haven regularly, stopping at drinking joints along the way and carting a group of screaming strangers.

In other words, we met on the Elm City Party Bike.

I’d never had any intention of going on this bike. One could call the Elm City Party Bike the most obnoxious thing to ever roam the city’s streets. I’ve heard professors make derisive comments about it in casual conversation, as if deeming it the laughing stock of New Haven. I’ve heard several friends who live along the bike’s regular route call it their personal archnemesis.

I picture them tossing in their beds, plugging their ears to block out the drunken rancor of that wretched thing. “It absolutely sucks,” one resident told me.

So, when I found myself seated on this booze-trap, it was sort of a last resort. That is to say, I went on it completely alone, a newly-minted 21-year-old amongst an amalgam of middle-aged strangers. Furthermore, I wasn’t really planning on getting trashed with them.

“But Allie!” Hastings shouted. “You have to come along into the bars, it’s part of the whole experience! It’ll be great for your writing.” He knew I was reporting on our ride that day, acting as more of an observer than a participant.

Nonetheless, he kept offering to buy me shots. Hastings isn’t the kind of guy who needs alcohol for any sort of loosening up. He’s just congenial and wants you to get in on the fun. A 32-year-old nurse practitioner from Bristol, Conn., he took me in with open arms—as if I were his patient and he was going to cure my malaise with alcohol.

A little wary of his friendliness, I politely declined the offer. *

*

*

The Elm City Party Bike was founded with the goal of making the city a better place. Its owner, founder, and spokesman, Colin Caplan, boasts enthusiastically about the bike’s impact on the city. He brings pamphlets and promotional cards to our meeting at B-Natural, a café right in the center of downtown. He shows me how the bike has stimulated economic growth in downtown New Haven by helping local bars and restaurants—many of them neighboring the café we sit in—reap the benefits of the bike’s regular tours.

He confidently maps out the statistics for me: the bike runs about 15 tours a week on average, bringing in 225 people a week; 900 people a month. The party-bikers, coming into New Haven, will have to spend money on metered parking and garages, they’ll have to pay for the drinks they buy at bar stops, and they might even stay after their tour to grab a meal in town. “The bike has brought over $100,000 to $150,000 of economic stimulus to downtown New Haven since April,” Colin explained. “And people are driving in over two hours just to get on the bike.

They’re coming in from the far reaches of Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. There’s

13

nothing like it nearby… we want people to have fun, we want to make New Haven look like a worthy city, you know, like a real destination spot,” Colin told me.

On the tour, Hastings mentioned that he comes to New Haven often for its gay social scene. “New Haven’s really where it’s at,” he explained. His friends are a group of young professionals all in their early 30s, some of them gay and some of them not. They all work in the healthcare field across Southern Connecticut, and often come to New Haven for fun. None besides Hastings, however, had ever ridden a party bike before. His friends only made up one faction of the conglomerated demographic of partygoers on our public tour. There were two other groups along with us: a clan of five women from West Haven, all in their early 30s, and a trio of suburban moms from Portland, Connecticut. The West Haven women were on the bike celebrating their friend Lisa’s upcoming birthday. Some of them had piercings and they were all smart to bring blankets in the November cold.

The three other women were all in their 40s and blond, and each sported her own version of posh sunglasses and a beanie. They brought their own garnished Bloody Marys aboard the bike. To be clear, the whole activity was a BYOB affair. Colin explained that Connecticut, as one of seven states with an open passenger container law, pays a provision to the federal government to allow each passenger in a motor vehicle (excluding the driver) possession of one open container. Under these circumstances, the Elm City Party Bike can work.

Even when it comes to public intoxication and traffic laws, the bike was given the green light on all fronts.

Colin’s business partner, Christian, is a police officer for the New Haven Police Department. “The Head of Traffic and Parking loves bicycles,” he said. “He was a big proponent of the [party] bike. In the end, the city, including the mayor, all supported this, saying ‘You know, we trust you guys… we know you’re gonna do a good job, you’re not gonna mess up.’ ”

It turns out that maneuvering the party bike is harder than it looks. It’s disorienting to pedal forwards while moving sideways, and handling the sheer heaviness of the vehicle is enough to make you sway and stumble without the help of alcohol. The biking itself requires real exertion, too—if one person stops moving, everyone else instantly feels the added weight transfer to their own pedals. Even through the difficulty, I could see everyone laughing at the awkwardness of it all, adjusting to the newness. “Puuuuuuusssh!” some of the partygoers yelled giddily, excited to all be part of something communal.

Hastings and I made more conversation. He told me about his life and his boyfriends and asked me how I was doing in school, talking as if we were old friends. I found myself loosening up with him, unable to tell if it was due to his friendliness or the spiked root beer settling in my stomach. At our second bar stop, I let him buy me a shot of whisky chased with a shot of pickle juice. We smiled at the sourness. *

*

*

As we pedaled and swayed further into the city, the three distinct groups of passengers began to merge.

The suburban moms from Portland, who brought Tupperware containers full of home-baked cookies onto the ride, yelled from across the bike: “Allie, would you want some? Anyone else?” And soon enough, the Portland moms began bonding with the group of women from West Haven, who shared that they happened to be moms themselves. One of them, Holly, told the others about her 12-year-old daughter and 18-month-old son. They began exchanging stories, showing one another pictures, and stopping to lift their drinks in celebration of every stop light we hit.

And Colin hasn’t messed up. Despite negative comments from the Yale community, this business has really made an impact. “People are very, very vocal about how happy this bike made them,” he says, referencing Facebook reviews praising the bike in superlative terms. “We’ve had stories of people literally saying they had been down-and-out, depressed for a year, taking care of their sick mom… and then they came on the bike, and they cracked their shell and they, like, found their life again, just meeting strangers.

That’s like… you can’t pay enough for that kind of therapy.”

At our second-to-last bar stop, the Portland moms and the West Haven moms gathered together at a central table in Barcade, right on Orange Street. The dull lighting of pinball machines and Pac-Man games lit their faces. “It’s the Bad Moms Club!” they happily blurted to one another, as if shouting a secret. They held up their drinks and committed to a cheers, arms lingering in the air. Carol, one of the Portland moms, launched into a toast: “We have new friends and old friends! This is what you need. I love pumpkin picking, and going to kids shows, but I also love this.” She pointed to the cup in her hand. “Sometimes you just need to do this for yourself, you need to take care of yourself up here,” she used her other hand, without the plastic cup of beer in it, to point to her temple.

One of the bartenders on my tour, Erin, recounted similar stories. We sat outside on the bike as Hastings and the other partygoers mingled inside Barracuda, a bar on Chapel Street. “I think it makes people really happy,” Erin said.

“I think this is something so basic that it might withstand the test of time. We had someone on the bike the other day, and it was her fourth time on it, she just loves it.”

As Erin was finishing her thought, a man biking by shouted: “YEAH! YOU GOTTA GET THAT PARTY STARTED! WHOO!”

As she spoke I felt a sort of warmth emanate from the group, not from the alcohol but from the expedited closeness. Perhaps this was, in effect, what the bike’s owner had intended all along. “Yeah, it’s very therapeutic for people,” Colin had said. “And that’s an experience that we didn’t anticipate, we didn’t know it would have that effect. I think the drinking is a plus for most people, most of our guests want that. It’s a relaxing thing... [but] even for people who don’t want to drink, it’s another way for them to feel camaraderie.”

Erin laughed and waved back to him. I could barely imagine riding the bike four times, let alone once. I was already starting to feel vulnerable venturing out into a city of gawkers, honkers, and disbelievers.

Despite its spectacle, its rowdiness, and its triteness, the bike was a vessel for fostering friendships. Moreover, I began to see that the Party Bike was no bar. It wasn’t a dark, musty room where no one talked to each other, where partygoers hid in corners, pressed against mobs

14 THE YALE HERALD

of sweating bodies. It wasn’t the same over-sexualized atmosphere of unwanted drinks from strangers and unsolicited whispers in ears. Instead, the Party Bike was the bar’s opposite. Its outdoorsiness and its communitytable feel were actually conducive to finding another person to really look at, latch onto, and befriend.

The Party Bike, like the Harkness Table, fortuitously situates its riders so that they are mandated, forced, even, to make pleasant eye contact with one another. Eye contact actually increases levels of oxytocin, a chemical promoting intimacy, empathy, and trust. Working together to propel the bike forward also allows for this reaction to occur, and for partygoers to feel happier and friendlier toward one another. Many of the activities the bike requires promote positive chemicals in the brain. As bikers are seated outside in fresh air and sunlight, they’re raising levels of serotonin (a chemical that regulates mood to make you feel more important). As they pedal and drink at the same time, the exercise and alcohol promote endorphins, the body’s natural painkiller.

And learning something new—like how to ride a bike sideways and juggle some beers while you’re at it—sets dopamine surging through the brain as well. I asked Dr. Robin Dunbar, an emeritus professor of evolutionary psychology at Oxford, what happens when all of these chemicals are surging at once. “I suspect that the effect would be additive (everything would add something),” he answered. As Elm City Party Bikers tour through New Haven, gulping spiked root beers and Bloody Marys and whatever else they brought on board with them, they’re practically downing a cocktail of happy chemicals too.

And, as they gaze at one another with newfound happiness, the whole world is looking at them in awe.

The “Get The Party Started” guy who shouted out to me and Erin was only an exemplum. Onlookers and outsiders, I quickly learned, really do love the party bike. Along our way, several other drivers smiled, waved, and honked. Pedestrians pointed and took pictures, looking amazed rather than annoyed. A man and his son hoisted atop his shoulders both waved at us with giant grins. And I had to admit, the experience was pleasantly public, far from the seclusion and isolation one feels in the back corner of a bar—or anywhere.

I am all too familiar with this feeling, as are many other people my age. Just a few months ago in September, The New York Times published “The Real Campus Scourge,” an article detailing the rise of loneliness among college students; not only my mother, but several of my friends on campus texted me the link in the following days.

The affliction could extend far beyond my generation, too; Duke University researchers found that one in four Americans feel they have no meaningful social support in their day-to-day lives. So I wondered, should more people be taking a ride on a Party Bike? *

*

*

The riders on my tour took to me in a way I couldn’t have expected. They revealed so much to me during the short two-hour ride—their professional dreams, their ex-husbands, their hopes for their children. I watched as the members of the Bad Moms Club took selfies and exchanged numbers. “Get in the picture, Allie!” they said as they pulled me into the frame. Even Hastings asked for my phone, punching in his number and telling me to reach out if I ever needed advice about anything after college.

“They came on the bike, and they cracked their shell and they, like, found their life again, just meeting strangers.

That’s like… you can’t pay enough for that kind of therapy.”

At the very end of the tour, I was sitting at the back of the bike wedged between Carol, one of the Portland moms, and Holly, one of the West Haven moms. By this time, everyone had rearranged seats, completely engrossed in conversations with former perfect strangers. Carol is white, middle-class, and lives in the suburbs, while Holly is Black, low-income, and lives in West Haven. Both treated each other with the fondness of old friends, and treated me with caring concern, as if I were their daughter. Holly turned to me seriously, leaning in close to speak over the music blaring at the front of the bike. “So you’re a student around here?” she asked. “What are you doing with your education?”

“I’m not entirely sure yet,” I replied. “I like English— I’ve been thinking about teaching after college.”

“Well Miss Allie,” Holly started to say, as she grabbed my hand and squeezed it. Neither of us wore gloves, despite the November cold, and our palms began to warm up. “I know you’ll be a great teacher. Be great.

Promise me you’ll be great.” She looked at me with the type of gaze you save for intimate friends, and her voice began to break, as if she were about to cry.

“You know, my children have fallen behind in their school system. And they need teachers like you, they need to be challenged. And I’m not saying this just because I’ve been drinking or anything. It’s because I mean it.” She squeezed my hand tighter. “If you get anything out of this today, just remember, please be great. I need you to be great for my children.”

I realized that Holly actually was crying. She looked in my eyes earnestly, her words suddenly sobering me. I felt a pang of some deep attachment, an urgent obligation to her—someone who, until so recently, had been a stranger seated beside me on a metal contraption unfamiliar to the both of us. And in a way, it was comforting, that we were holding hands now as she told me her hopes and dreams for the rest of my life.

As I walked home from the Party Bike, her monologue swirled around in my head. The hard root beer, the shot of whisky, and a home-baked cookie sat in my stomach. My legs felt sore. My face felt warm. I took a nap right when I got home, and when I woke up a few hours later, there was a text message on my phone from Hastings. I opened it and he’d sent me a video: he and I are drinking pickle juice out of shot glasses at Three Sheets on Howe Street, the second bar we’d stopped at. “This is my new friend!”

Hastings exclaims to the camera before throwing his head back and downing a shot. In the video we both grin at each other, neither of us even too drunk yet.

Colin Caplan 15

F E A T U R E S Feb.16.2018

Workshopping Respect TRAVIS DESHONG, BR ’19 YH STAFF

When more than 1,000 students, faculty, and administrators met for the March for Resilience in the fall of 2015, they sent a powerful message that major steps needed to be taken. An alleged racist incident at a fraternity and a repudiation of university-mandated political correctness revealed social fault lines and garnered national attention. Students protested against Yale’s institutional privileging of the white, wealthy, and male. The moment mobilized activism and drew the ire of detractors. Such impassioned responses from different sides indicated the need for not just reconciliation, but progress.

One small group of undergraduates called 5a is continuing the spirit of that fall. Active since Nov. 2017, the group is committed to creating a space for purposeful discussions about race, gender, sexuality, and wealth privilege. “We want conversations of power and privilege to be a larger, spoken element of Yale’s campus,” said Mariko Rooks, TC ’21, a member of 5a. “We’re furthering dialogue to hopefully create a better climate.”

Its name echoes back to impassioned calls for change. On Nov. 3, 2015, Next Yale drafted a letter to the senior members of the Yale administration. The group expressed its dismay with the university’s unwillingness to address campus inequalities and presented a list of demands. Section 5 of the letter called for “the immediate removal of Nicholas and Erika Christakis from positions of Master and Associate Master of Silliman College.” A secondary demand, subtitled 5a, called for “the development of racial competence and respect training and accountability systems for all Yale affiliates.”

The name does not signify direct affiliation with Next Yale—and the group has yet to fully agree on this title. For the moment, however, it continues to go by the name 5a, out of a respect for the legacy preceding them. “We wanted to choose a name that alluded to the tradition of activists before us,” 5a’s Kellyn Kusyk, SM ’20, explained.

The core eight members attend regular weekly meetings. A larger group of students are kept up-to-date through their panlist. The group’s horizontal structure emphasizes the sharing of tasks and responsibilities. Kusyk described the group as predominantly nonwhite and diverse across gender and sexual identities. 5a’s members have highlighted how important it is that the people in their cadre work well with one another. Each member has their individual reasons for involvement, be they academic interests, previous work or community experience, or political leanings.

“We aren’t necessarily the most qualified people to be doing this, but we recognize the fact that this needs to be done,” Rooks commented.

“The value of humility combined with earnestness has worked well.”

Now, 5a seeks to develop and implement a Power, Privilege and Systems of Repression workshop, which assembles groups of new students to discuss systemic inequality. With the aid of trained facilitators, students confront these topics in a safe but directed setting, in the hopes of increasing the baseline appreciation for the nuances of gender, class, and race.

5a aims to have a pilot workshop for the incoming first-years ready by Camp Yale orientation of the 2018-2019 academic year. The group also hopes to continue offering voluntary workshops that would occur

16 THE YALE HERALD

over the full year. Another long-term goal is to institute a four credit program in Ethnic Studies. It’s currently conceived as a summer session program and the hope is to incorporate it into the school year if it goes well. Mindful of the complexities of their subject matter, 5a is currently amidst the time-intensive development and testing phase for the pilot.

Rooks described the workshop’s three driving ambitions. The first is the simple acknowledgement that different groups possess power and privilege. Second, 5a wants to expose the history of the oppressive systems that cut across demographics. The last goal is to communicate why this work is important within an institution like Yale. Kusyk pointed out the University’s entrenched white supremacy built on generations of elitist homogeneity. “Those conversations are undesirable and even scary because they imply change,” they said.

The group has looked to similar programs at other universities— particularly in the Ivy League—for guidance on content and form.

They also take inspiration from organizations that have conducted this sort of training at the high school or collegiate level. Rooks cited Kizuna, a Los Angeles-based organization dedicated to empowering new generations of Japanese-Americans via education, as a resource.

The group, informed by these programs, considered the workshops’ level of difficulty—knowing that this would affect their accessibility.

Ultimately, 5a has decided to create introductory-level workshops to allow those who are less familiar with these issues to still partake and be engaged.

Faculty and staff members serving on 5a’s advisory board have contributed to content development as well. The group specifically sought out Yale professors and administrators with backgrounds in History, Gender Studies, and racial scholarship. Dean Rise Nelson, the Director of the Afro-American Cultural Center, played an role in getting initial support for 5a. Crystal Feimster, an associate professor of African American Studies, History, and American Studies, has agreed to serve on the advisory board and help shape their workshop’s curriculum.

Laura Barraclough, an associate professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, became aware of 5a’s activities after member Branson Rideaux, BF ’20, asked her to make an announcement to her class about the group’s first brainstorming meeting. She agreed to serve on their advisory board shortly after.

Although she hasn’t advised them yet, she has a clear sense of what the group members are seeking from their allies.

“They’ve asked us to attend two meetings per semester, one at the beginning and one at the end,” she said. “They’ve asked us to meet individually with 5a members on request in order to hash out sensitive and strategic issues. They’ve asked us to attend one or more workshops to observe and provide feedback on how they’re conducted.”

Barraclough has engaged in this sort of work for some time. As an undergraduate majoring in Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego, she was a Diversity Peer Educator. These educators were trained to conduct a similar style of workshops. They hosted hour-long evening sessions

“WE AREN’T NECESSARILY THE MOST QUALIFIED PEOPLE TO BE DOING THIS, BUT WE RECOGNIZE THE FACT THAT THIS NEEDS TO BE DONE.” Mariko Rooks, TC ’21

17 and residence hall meetings. Sometimes they played key facilitating roles in student leadership conferences. Her undergraduate work was unpaid, but after graduating she was hired as a salaried staff member to help formalize the program.

She explained that workshops like these took inspiration from a decades-old methodological approach called Intergroup dialogue (IGD). IGD is face-to-face organized discussion between members of two or more social identity groups that aims to promote understanding, push progressive action, and uphold dignity. It has become a cornerstone for the evolution of Social Work, American Studies, and Ethnic Studies as academic disciplines. It stresses critical thinking skills, varying perspectives on issues, social awareness, and pathways towards collective action. The University of Michigan founded its seminal Program of Intergroup Relations in 1988, the first to formalize the IGD approach. The program has since been a model for numerous university programs.

What’s more, facilitators receive an education of their own.

Barraclough recounted her time at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, where she taught a Race and Racism class with three teaching assistants who served in a facilitative role. They learned strategies for absorbing students’ anger, frustration, or guilt. These positive communication techniques, like reframing questions or softening language choices, neutralized politically charged situations.

There were no rewards or punishments, allowing students to be more honest and take risks.

5a strives to bring this learning experience to the Yale community.

As it’s still in the development stages, they have yet to encounter any pushback—but the group realizes that as momentum builds, the likelihood of resistance could mount. “Outwardly, at least, diversity is in,” Rooks commented. “I think we’ll get more pushback once the final workshop goes before the Intercultural Affairs Council. That’s why being prepared, dotting all the Is and crossing all the Ts, is really critical.”

Speaking about 5a, Boyd said the group’s energy and commitment impressed her. “Developing effective training is not easy, so I’ve been glad to see them reaching out to those who can support their work.”

Moreover, there is the question of scope. Barraclough argued that this sort of program will truly impact only a fraction of the student body.

Even with a compulsory session (or sessions), the demands of both orientation and the general academic calendar will undoubtedly limit the workshop’s effects. Some in 5a have proposed training members of groups not traditionally involved with this vein of social work, like sports teams and a capella groups. “You need to transform only a small group of people to build new leadership capacity,” Barraclough added.

“Those people rub off on their friends. We can be realistic and still insist that this is important and valuable.”

Barraclough stressed how inexpensive it would be to implement these workshops, saying that approximately $50,000 per year would be enough to cover facilitator salaries, printing and photocopying, food and beverages, and other miscellaneous supplies. “The administration would be smart to support this,” she said. “The students are willing to do the work themselves. That should thrill them.”

The social disparities within the Yale community have become more conspicuous since the unrest in the fall of 2015. That semester’s demonstrations were organized to promote empowerment and solidarity among different groups. Productive communication between different groups is critical to wider unity moving forward, and that’s what 5a aspires to deliver.

More crucial to the group now are the logistical requirements of implementing a new educational program in a crowded academic schedule. The Communication and Consent Educations (CCE) program underwent a similar process to establish itself and integrate its teachings into community life. Melanie Boyd, who directs the Office of Gender and Campus Culture, explained how the Women’s Center, the Yale College Council, and the cultural centers combined efforts to support campus interventions. As momentum increased, different campus task forces and committee reports supported pilot programs addressing sexual climate and misconduct. Yale created the CCE program and the Office during the summer of 2011. The CCEs invest a great deal of time shaping their workshops, setting well-researched goals, training facilitators, and assessing workshop impact.

17

C U L T U R E Feb.16.2018

Picturing the Obamas

ANNA MCNEIL, BR ’20

On Monday, February 12, the official presidential portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama were revealed as the newest additions to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. The portraits, completed by artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, respectively, have been hailed not only as significant artistic contributions but also as forceful political statements. The identities of the sitters and artists have been central to the discussion of these works, firmly placing this event in the discussion of contemporary art, politics, and how these realms are intimately linked. The racial politics which these portraits imply make them vastly unlike the other presidential portraits in the National Gallery.

This can be attributed to the racial politics which many believe the portraits imply. The portraits, as the Obama presidency, represent immeasurable gains in the direction of racial visibility and recognition for the work of Black artistic traditions.

Announced in October 2017, the choice to commission Wiley and Sherald was highly publicized. Wiley is an established artist whose work places quotidian Black men—and occasionally women—in direct conversation with portrayals of prominent white historical figures. This puts him in an ideal position to execute the portrait of our nation’s first Black president, altough its a departure from his main works in the sense that Barack Obama is already a well-known figure; it’s a less subversive gesture than many of Wiley’s other works. Aesthetically, the portrait is impressive. Wiley’s photorealist and high-sheen technique

emphasize the president’s visibility. The work characterizes Barack Obama as historically important, but also a man who is seen. His skin shines; this portrait engages in the aesthetics of surfacism, which are closely related to contemporary hiphop culture and modes of Black representation. The portrait is visually stunning; it endows the sitter with gravitas and wisdom, while still embracing the graphically exuberant tradition of black aesthetics.

Sherald’s portrait is drastically different from Wiley’s— appropriate, given the nature of Barack and Michelle Obama’s partnership. Celebrated for establishing themselves as individuals, the two became beloved public figures precisely for simultaneously cultivating distinct identities and mutually supportive relationship. Michelle Obama, who suffered intense—and undoubtedly racialized—public scrutiny, flourished as a public figure and role model. The contrast between her portrait and her husband’s speaks to her independent and persevering character. But at first glance, this portrait has far less of a visual impact. The color palette, a modified grisaille (a method of painting in gray monochrome), seems to elide the former first lady’s Blackness, whereas Wiley’s calls explicit attention to the President’s. The portrait, especially in context of Sherald’s larger body of work, comments on race and gender in more subtle ways, but the decision to render Michelle Obama’s skin in gray was a missed opportunity. It quite literally pales in comparison to her husband’s portrait, a fact which is complicated by the notion of portraiture. In fact, Sherald’s work falls somewhat flat when considered as a portrait.

More of the canvas is devoted to Obama’s graphic dress than her likeness. Her acclaimed arms, represented in a

vaguely mannerist tradition, are more captivating than her expression, which does not look particularly personalized.

Sherald’s paintings typically depict anonymous Black urban subjects, rather than specific people: tendencies toward anonymity seem to color this portrait of the former First Lady. Many of Sherald’s other works engage more confrontationally with the viewer than this one. Michelle Obama is a figure whose relationship with an oftentimes racist and sexist public is well-documented: Sherald paints her a softer expression than might have been expected.

The former first lady does not quite look as deliberate or spirited as she does in other works. The portrait is stunning and elegant, and imbues Michelle Obama with grace and intelligence, as was appropriate, but the vibrancy of Wiley’s work—which inevitably informs how Sherald’s piece will be received—obscures Sherald’s more subtle gestures.

These pieces, rather than forging new bonds between art and politics, reveal the extent to which art, especially when commemorating important figures, always lends from and contributes to political opinion. These are not the first presidential portraits to further political agendas. Indeed, the numerous white artists commissioned to produce presidential portraits in the past were also citizens whose identities were not apolitical. In American politics as well as art history, whiteness has been naturalized such that any departure becomes ‘other.’ Sherald and Wiley’s works acknowledge this fact without being immobilized by it. In both pieces, there is a sense of dignity and intentionality which relates to the political realities of Obama’s administration, and the undeniable impact this had on American race relations, in many cultural spheres.

Next to Normalizing Mental Health “Whenever I tell someone that I am in a long-distance relationship, I am met with looks that range from apologetic to pitying.”

MAX HIMPE, BF ’21 “Rock musicals” are not, as musical theatre agnostics might think, homages to Guns N’ Roses. The songs are rarely performed in gravelly voices over epic riffs. Next to Normal, the rock musical which played at the Off-Broadway Theatre two weeks ago, had guitar and drum-heavy music but there were no headbands in sight. More Billy Joel than Axl Rose.

That said, the drug use in this production could rival any rock star’s. We first meet the main user, Diana Goodman, in boisterous form: she’s making sandwiches for her children and having sex with her businessman husband. This is prime suburban fare; the audience just waits for the cracks to appear. Indeed, by the end of the opening scene, the sandwiches scatter the floor and Diana croaks, “the house is spinning.”

Diana has bipolar disorder. She has suffered from psychotic episodes for sixteen years, to the dismay of her beloved family. Hints of depression (although never fully addressed) mire Diana’s husband. Her daughter, Natalie, at first a sullen nerd, starts to rave away her familial pain with

18 THE YALE HERALD

prescription drugs while Natalie’s ever-soothing boyfriend tries to stabilize her downfall. Their duets are sweeter than honey but just as rich, performed tenderly by Erin Hebert, PC ’18, and Jake Moses, TD ’21.

The play explores mental illness at its most extreme. The director, Abbey Burgess, TC ’19, stressed the importance of collective research to emulate symptoms fairly. As is common with plays about severe mental disorders, Diana’s delusions frequently pull the carpet from under our feet.

Our implicit trust in her perspective is subverted by her slipping grasp on reality, to agonizing and thrilling effect.

No spoilers, but I’ve never seen a birthday cake held with such heartbreaking pathos.

And our guide in this rollercoaster? The masterful Erin Krebs, JE ’18, as Diana, compelling us with her sheer skill of storytelling (and creating a credible character) in song.

Gilberto Saenz, ES ’19, also deserves credit for being our and Diana’s sobering mainstay as the husband, complexly and convincingly bearing the burden of it all.

Those seeking a nuanced portrait of mental health issues

may have been disappointed. Depictions of extreme treatments, including electric shock therapy–coupled with the breakneck dramatic pace–were especially hard to swallow. Moments of calm were lost amid the noise of Diana’s journey.

But though the play was at times heavy-handed, the performances were thoughtfully handled. Tobiah Richkind, TD ’21, playing a ghost from Diana’s past, trudged the set villainously, as a refreshing embodiment of grief.

The closest to a rock star was Alex Swanson’s, TD ’21, psychopharmacologist (a mouthful to say, let alone sing), providing a necessary dose of funny.

In conversation, Burgess highlighted the subtle gesture of hope at the play’s close, which, in her opinion, functions as an antidote to the play’s extremities. Her efforts to humanize mental health were undeniably successful, confirmed by audience members’ final sobs. But the play left me wondering: when will drama be written that doesn’t sensationalize mental health? And when will Yalies get to see it? Nonetheless, in playing to extremes, the production never failed to move us.

Live Studio Audience MARK ROSENBERG, PC ’20 “Forget all the standard art forms. Don’t paint pictures, don’t make poetry, don’t build architecture, don’t arrange dances, don’t write plays, don’t compose music, don’t make movies.”

So begins “How to Make a Happening,” a lecture by Allan Kaprow distributed on vinyl in 1966. On the record, Kaprow, a pioneer of American installation art and leader of the Fluxus experimental movement, describes the philosophy behind his “Happenings”: a series of participatory pieces put on by Kaprow in the ’60s through the ’70s that blurred the line between performance and life, artist and audience.

Kaprow’s fingerprints were all over “Gallery+1968-2018,” a public program hosted at the Yale University Art Gallery on February 1st. The event, curated by Brian Orozco, ES ’18, a Nancy Horton Bartels Intern in the gallery’s Programs Department; Molleen Theodore, Curator of Programs; and Emily Arensman, Programs Fellow, was the first in a series of events at the YUAG commemorating the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement in its semicentennial. Bookended by a spoken word performance by Kamau Walker, SM ’20, and a screening of the documentary The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, Orozco devised a studio workshop, inspired by a series of graffiti workshops Kaprow conducted with Pasadena middle schoolers in the ’60s, that encouraged participants to engage with the themes of the Civil Rights Movement on their own turns.

After Orozco gave some brief remarks, Walker, a member

of WORD: Performance Poetry at Yale, delivered three poems: two original compositions (one was written in his biology class earlier that day, though you wouldn’t have known it), and “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” by Gil Scott-Heron. “The revolution WILL put you in the driver’s seat,” Walker told the crowd of two dozen. Four lines later, the poem ended, and the audience took the wheel.

The curators had prepared two workshop stations. At one, participants used markers and stencils to decorate brown paper banners. Here, Orozco echoed a installation by Chicago-based filmmaker Cauleen Smith at the Whitney Biennial, a series of hand-stitched, sequin-studded banners protesting police brutality: activism and art, intertwined. Elizabeth Kingsley, ES ’19, inspired by the #MeToo movement, was sketching the answer to a rhetorical question: “Women Are To Say.” At the second station, a small crowd of participants designed buttons decorated with photo clippings: Black football players kneeling, arms linked; Clean Dream Act advocates, heads bowed, watching a Jeff Sessions speech on an iPad. Orozco chose to provide no prompt beyond the blank banners and buttons. “In the end,” he said, “we didn’t want to be too prescriptive of what [the participants] should make.”

The YUAG’s Gallery+ events are intended to facilitate community participation, so banner-making was an apt medium. “It doesn’t require great skill to make a banner,” Theodore said. “It’s not like you have to draw perspective or draw figure. You just have to have an idea.”

The Gallery+ participants were engaging with decades-

old political dialogues. Yet, doodling, tracing, cutting, pasting, chatting, laughing, they seemed like Kaprow’s middle schoolers in Pasadena.

Banners decorated and buttons made, the program shifted into the YUAG auditorium for the screening of The Black Power Mixtape. The documentary, directed

by Göran Olsson, features interviews with activists like Angela Davis and Huey Newton. All the footage was shot by Swedish journalists; the American media wasn’t covering it. The revolution wasn’t televised. But, that evening at the YUAG, during Orozco’s studio workshop, it was live. It was happening.

“Forget all the standard art forms. Don’t paint pictures, don’t make poetry, don’t build architecture, don’t arrange dances, don’t write plays, don’t compose music, don’t make movies.”

-Allan Kaprow, “How to Make a Happening”

Illustrated by Jason Hu

19

R E V I E W S Feb.16.2018

FRANZ FERDINAND, ALWAYS ASCENDING NIC HARRIS, BR ’18 YH STAFF

Franz Ferdinand’s new album Always Ascending is a beautiful ball of energy, and I can’t get enough of it. From start to finish, the album teems with the same otherworldly vitality that the British band exhibited on “Take Me Out,” their hit song from over a decade ago. And yet, as one might deduce from the album’s title, Franz Ferdinand isn’t content to simply stick with what has brought them success. Instead, Always Ascending fuses the band’s characteristically bouncy style of rock with a healthy dose of ’80s-inspired disco, creating a fun and eclectic genre hybrid. While it’s tempting to try to dissect the album from a highly conceptual perspective—and there is plenty to dissect—the best way to enjoy it is to simply let it sweep you away in its torrent of spirit.

It’s hard to say which songs will become hits on Always Ascending, simply because the album is so varied. Nonetheless, among my

favorites are the titular opening track and “Huck and Jim.” Listening to “Always Ascending” is like being transported to the most poppin’ nightclub in an alternate universe where David Bowie never died. In addition to the close similarity between lead singer Alex Kapranos’ voice and that of Bowie, Kapranos shares the icon’s fascination with space travel, cooing “Cirrus caress you / Cumulus kiss you / Raindrops of crystal / Whisper ‘we’ll miss you.’” “Huck and Jim,” on the other hand, is a raggedy-but-lovable rock song, in which Kapranos joyfully warbles about going to America and “Sipping 40s with Huck and Jim.” If “Always Ascending” is a rocket that launches you to space, “Huck and Jim” is the faithful, beat-up van that carries you and your buddies cross-country on an unforgettable road trip. Whichever your preferred journey be, Always Ascending accommodates both.

True to its title, the album is a product of constant motion that employs stylistic shifts between songs, from rock to disco to rock again. This promotes a perpetual evolution within songs, which keeps things fresh while allowing listeners to get their dance groove on. The album’s only real outliers are “The Academy Award” and “Slow Don’t Kill Me Slow,” both of which are (not surprisingly) slower, quirkier tunes that provide a respite from the album’s otherwise untiring excitement. Always Ascending is a treat for the ears, and—despite what mainstream radio might say—demonstrates that Franz Ferdinand is more than just a one-hit-wonder.

THE SHAPE OF WATER JUAN VALENCIA, BF ’19 In the event that over a dozen award nominations have yet to convince you to watch The Shape of Water, I’ll gladly belabor the point further with this: it’s one of the most remarkable films to come out in the past year. Fans of Guillermo del Toro will recognize the director’s arresting aesthetic signature in every scene, from his characteristic use of color and shadow to the urgently relevant themes that he and co-writer Vanessa Taylor have incorporated into the work. Set in Baltimore during the Cold War, The Shape of Water follows a mute and socially isolated woman played by Sally Hawkins, who works as a cleaning lady in a government facility along with her close friend and interpreter played by Octavia Spencer. One day, when tasked with cleaning a room drenched in blood, Hawkins’ character comes into contact with a strange, amphibious, sentient humanoid creature that the facility’s operatives are trying to keep top-secret, while also running horrific experiments on it. Hawkins grows fond of the creature, which brings her into conflict with a military colonel played

by Michael Shannon, the man who abducted the creature in the first place and the film’s primary antagonist.

20 THE YALE HERALD

Perhaps unexpected for a movie broadly about a woman falling in love with a fish-man, The Shape of Water makes shockingly poignant commentary on American society, brought into focus through del Toro’s unique sensibility for portraying the socially marginalized and their acts of resistance. The film, set against the turbulent backdrop of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Cold War, is only slightly more political than del Toro’s previous notable films, Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone, both of which are set in post-WWII Spain and incorporate powerful anti-fascist themes.

Despite the depiction of Baltimore in The Shape of Water as a bustling, modern American city—where conspicuous consumerism has rendered everything from movie theaters to car dealerships with gilded glamour—del Toro doesn’t let his audience forget the ubiquity of prejudice in American society. Sharp and jarring scenes variously depict ableism, sexism, homophobia, racism and misogynoir: such as one scene where a friendly conversation between two white men at a diner is interrupted when the proprietor tells an African-American couple they cannot sit inside the restaurant. Shannon’s colonel is a terrifying and effectively-written intersection of several oppressive

identities bound into a single character; he embodies whiteness, toxic hetero-masculinity, and militarized capitalist violence all at once. And Hawkins’ technically disabled but admirably strong-willed character is nevertheless capable of combating this violent force if it means she can liberate the one she loves, regardless of how unorthodox or impossible her relationship with a so-called ‘monster’ might seem.

The movie is worth seeing for the end shot alone, concluding a final sequence that fans of Pan’s Labyrinth might find familiar but no less cathartic. So much about this film is pure magic: the gorgeous set and costume designs, the eclectic diversity of the soundtrack, and the incredibly compelling performances by Hawkins, Spencer, and pretty much everyone else on cast. This all comes together to make a film that’s already been recognized with numerous awards and is sure to win more in the coming weeks. With The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro offers us, in his usual modern fairytale style, a parable about love and resistance, both timely in its pertinence to our troubled contemporary age, and breathtakingly timeless in its message about the human condition.

BØRNS, BLUE MADONNA SARA LUZURIAGA, BR ’21

How do you meet expectations after initial success? The young singersongwriter Garrett Borns, who goes by the stage name Børns, seemed highly concerned with the fate of his musical career when he created the album Blue Madonna, released January 12. The album features some musically exciting moments and is overall an enjoyable listen, but in his efforts to surpass his breakout album, Dopamine (2015), Børns writes and performs too artificially to achieve the sparkling All-American nostalgia of his previous work.

I saw Børns live at Buku Music Festival in New Orleans over spring break two years ago. My friends and I squeezed our way to the front row and stood enthralled as Børns serenaded the crowd with his androgynous falsetto, his shoulder-length hair center-parted and swinging as he danced along to his addictive indie beats. The rest of our trip we listened to the album on repeat.

It was everything an artist could hope for in a first album cohesive in nature, but each song remaining distinctive, with bold and textured lyrics.

Børns cultivated a clear aesthetic in his first album, one of a reinvented indiepop genre that utilizes synthy electronic beats to augment the sense of urgency in clinging to some unknown past, a common feeling among millennials. But Blue Madonna feels aesthetically overly-saturated. The nostalgia is heavy and sprawling, rather than succinct and fiery.

Maybe it’s not fair to compare Børns’s sophomore album to his first. Several years have passed, and his musical inclinations likely shifted over the course of his rising success and his time on tour. And, indeed, Blue Madonna is overall a good listen, nostalgic and evocative of his charmingly juvenile quest for transcendence. But in here, his excessive effort to be cool squashed much

of what he cultivated earlier on Dopamine. Børns’s attempts to incorporate millennial lingo made me cringe. On “Second Day of Summer” the chorus repeats, “Throwing me that shade like I’m not cool enough,” an expression which already feels passé. His eager endeavor toward relevance prevents this album from reaching the boldness and freshness of his first. At best, some songs are forgettable, and at worst, they feel contrived.

Børns’s is known primarily for his falsetto voice, an intoxicating tool that often renders listeners unsure whether the voice is male or female. Indeed, this very gender ambiguity is crucial to Børns’s trademark blend of traditional pop with New Age spirituality. His voice remains distinct and exciting in the album what’s missing, though, is any musical reinforcement for this high register. The electronic beats don’t build, but rather loll steadily on, making the vocals seem uneasily suspended in air with no support.

Lana Del Rey is featured on two songs, “God Save Our Young Blood” and “Blue Madonna.” She shares an artistic aesthetic with Børns synthy beats and lyrics invoking spirituality and individualism. The collaboration probably seemed like a no-brainer, but her voice melds with his so well it ironically doesn’t add to the songs, instead further weighing down their languid pace. Del Rey is at her best on her own terms or in collaboration with radically different musicians such as A$AP Rocky and The Weeknd.

On Blue Madonna, she’s a superfluous decoration.

The song “Supernatural” features a theremin interlude performed by renowned thereminist Armen Ra. To play the instrument, musicians create sound waves instead of making physical contact with it. The effect is an eerily voice-like sound, which is why the instrument is so frequently utilized

in horror and sci-fi films. “Supernatural” is an interesting moment on the album, one which purports to explore the nature of reality and its connection to cosmology with the lyrics “Is it us, or is it supernatural?” The lyrics are too weak to fully delve into themes of spirituality, instead merely grazing them as would an angsty teenager in a journal entry. But the theremin interlude is a saving grace, evoking Børns’s voice and taking it a step further into the realm of the uncanny. It is really an inspired moment, and a great example of a way Børns could utilize unexpected musical collaborations to actually add substance to future albums.

The album still has some great, catchy pieces. The song “I Don’t Want U Back” employs many of the shifting rhythms and crescendoing melodies that we saw on Dopamine, standing out from the sluggish pulse of the rest of the album. “We Don’t Care” also picks up the pace, utilizing drums to create an infectious dance beat that would seem perfectly at place in a party montage scene in a pseudo-indie film about bored high schoolers. “Faded Heart,” the album’s first single released in 2017, is another highlight. Unlike many other songs on the album, it has a distinct melody, an exciting rhythm, and a catchy chorus another great dance song, one which would fit right in on Dopamine.

Børns revealed his capacity for lyrical and musical complexity on his breakout album. I hope that as he considers his next album, he remembers what inspired him to write music in the first place, instead of attempting to fulfill a certain image and subsequently sounding clichéd. You can do better, Børns. My high school self depends on it.

KING KRULE, THE OOZ WILL REID, PC ’19 YH STAFF

The first thing you notice about King Krule is that he doesn’t look how he sounds. During a November 2017 appearance on late night TV to kick off his North American tour, Archy Marshall, the King himself, wandered the stage like a drunk. Rod-thin with tousled orange hair and crooked teeth, Marshall looks more grade school gremlin than melancholic frontman. But when he approaches the microphone, the mismatch is startling: that voice—dark, deep, and gravely like it’s been drowned in cheap beer and made coarse by unfiltered cigarettes— couldn’t possibly belong to this pipsqueak, could it?

But once the music begins, the combination is seamless; it’s a wonder we doubted it at all. So too is the case with The OOZ, King Krule’s third full-length release. Marshall first came to fame in 2011 with the release of an eponymous EP, on which he demonstrated his broad musical vocabulary—from jazz harmonies to hip-hop beats to punk vocals. On this latest album, that jagged mix achieves a coherence not always felt on previous records. Marshall produces more than a sound on The OOZ. He builds a world.

It is a world of late nights and anguished thoughts. “Biscuit Town,” the album’s opening track, mixes hip-hop inflected drums with interlocking guitar riffs. On “Dum Surfer,” cavernous drones, undulating in and out of earshot like the roars of mammoth beasts, match a surfer beat

and dub bass while a clean electric guitar punctuates the track with bright harmonies. Marshall’s voice is not a singer’s voice, and on this song, as on most, he doesn’t bother protecting it from strain. It gets warped and distorted, as much by audio FX as by what you might call, oxymoronically, his “vocal technique.” He warbles his lyrics like an anhedonic lounge singer.

The OOZ, it turns out, is the perfect title for this collection of sludgy songs. The theme of the sea and sinking in its vast depthness pervades Marshall’s rhetoric of loneliness and detachment. “You’re shallow waters, I’m the deep seabed,” he croons on the album’s opener. “Slush Puppy,” a haunting soliloquy on mental illness, begins with a whisper and ends with a yell: “I’m down under the sea,” Marshall sings in duet with singer-songwriter Okay Kaya. “Nothing’s working with / me,” he shouts. Songs like “Half Man, Half Shark” and “Midnight 01 (Deep Sea Diver)” further the theme. “Why’d you leave me? Because of my depression?” Marshall asks coolly, on the latter. It’s unclear whether the singer wants to rise to the surface or dive further into the muck. Either way, we ourselves are submerged.

“Midnight 01 (Deep Sea Diver),” these careful harmonies give melodic (and perhaps emotional) support to the distressed vocal. And for all its grit and gravel, Marshall’s voice often achieves a haunting, quavering beauty. On “Logos,” a kick drum pulsates like a heartbeat while Marshall half-sings, half-raps over layers of electric guitar, pillowy synths, and errant sax licks. Partway through, a drum kit enters in a bossa nova rhythm—a reminder that being alive means more than just a pulse.

All this explains one final anomaly: the album’s cover. It depicts a blue sky crossed by a single, pink contrail. Recently, Marshall made a request on social media for fans to send him photos like the cover. He’s uploaded the better ones to an Instagram account, which has quickly become a patchwork of sky blues and cloud whites. In addition to their music, social media has given artists a tool to project their persona into the world. So it’s odd—in the same way the album cover is odd—that Marshall has chosen to curate a social-media monument to something as whimsical as sky-gazing. But the Instagram page seems to suggest something that The OOZ reiterates in its tenderest moments: in the face of anguish, sometimes merely looking up is enough.

And yet, through the bleakness, there’s always the suggestion of light.

In general, Marshall’s guitar arrangements are spare but gorgeous— punctuating the thick haze of the low-end bass and drums. On

21

Write for The Herald!

EMAIL EVE.SNEIDER @YALE.EDU

We love you, Nika 22 THE YALE HERALD

THE BLACK LIST

23

THINGS WE HATE

WET SOCKS

BLOATING

I really had to go.

This nude bodysuit is getting a little tight

STRAWBERRY NUT M&MS

THE SOFT SMILE

What’s next, raspberry ass?

I prefer a hard frown.

FLAT SELTZER Equivalent to a really disappointing massage DRY EYES Sandpaper is bad to wipe away tears

“HEHE” “Haha”’s creepy mustachioed uncle.

GETTING THE WRONG THING FROM THE VENDING MACHINE lol, i totally didn’t select strawberry nut m&ms…

23

POYNT E R F E L L O W S H I P

I N

J O U R N A L I S M

Don’t Miss a Single Event!

Sign up now for the Poynter newsletter: communications.yale.edu/poynter