MARCH 2014
SYMPOSIUM
VOL. 1 ISSUE 3
Arts & Literary magazine
Editor-in-Chief: STEPHANIE GRELLA Managing Creative Editor: PEDRO PESSOA Managing Academic Editor: STEPHANIE TAYLOR Copy Editor: STEPHANIE SHEFLER Layout Editor: SABRINA YAU Cover Art: The Mountain’s Belly Button ANNA PALIY Back Cover Art: Rape of the Sabine Women NICK REDDON
Wild Strawberries ANNA PALIY
Copyrights remain with the artists and authors. The sole responsibility for the content in this publication lies with the authors and artists. The content does not reflect the opinions of the Arts and Humanities Students’ Council (AHSC) or the University Students’ Council (USC). The AHSC and USC assume no liability for any errors, inaccuracies, or omissions contained in this publication.
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a year in review: ahsc executives
This year, I think the council has done a great job at increasing our connections with the London Arts Community. Whether it was the art showcased at Harmony, AHSC Reviews, or our upcoming play at The Arts Project, council has really made an effort to reach out to the local arts community. I’m also please with the steps we’ve taken to work with our alumni, which made our Career Week Alumni Panel possible. Alumni are a fantastic resource for students, so building on our relationships with them is very helpful for students. Finally, I’m so happy with the way council has worked together this year to put on events such as An Evening with Jian Ghomeshi, our Symposium Launch Party, our first formal in three years, review sessions, essay clinics, a coffee house, along with many other events and initiatives that have helped support arts students. I’m so proud of the work that the AHSC has done this year, and I can’t wait to see what it will do next year! -- SARAH EMMS, President This year has been absolutely incredible for the communications portfolio; we’ve begun the long and arduous process of bursting through the Western Bubble to establish a connection between students and the London artistic community, and I’m very proud of the accomplishments we’ve already achieved in creating a support system for students and community members alike. The re-creation of Symposium is certainly a highlight of this process, and I’ve enjoyed seeing such a vibrant and vital publication come back to life. I sincerely hope that next year’s council continues to expand on the work we’ve begun, so that both the London and Western artistic communities can benefit and flourish in the near future. -- DENA GOUWELOOS, VP Communications The academics portfolio has had a great year! We’ve continued to support first-year students with essay clinics and class review sessions, but expanded our reach to help upper year students with new events such as professor talks. As a result of last year’s Change Camp we created graduate workshop seminars and the Arts Bulletin, a one-stop resource for students in the faculty. A huge shout-out goes to everyone who has helped make the year fabulous! -- ELIZABETH NASH, VP Academics I am so grateful for the experience of having served as this year’s VP Events! From the fall coffeehouse, to the symposium publication launch, to the Jian Ghomeshi keynote, the Reverie festival and formal, the annual play, to council bonding dinners and group outings to local theatre productions, and philanthropic initiatives, this year has been quite the ride! I’d like to thank everyone in my portfolio for their endless commitment to each of their positions, my fellow exec for all of their guidance, and council as a whole for showing their support for the arts faculty by attending each event. I am confident that the AHSC is left in good hands and I’m excited to see the initiatives council will have in store for the upcoming school year! -- CRISTINA RIZZARDO, VP Events
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Pantoum to Cheating BRYN MCDONNELL She wakes up before I do, Crawls through arms and into my phone Leaving fingerprints for clues Before waking me and heading home.
Murky Tuscan Waters RIMA SATER
She crawls around me, unlocks my phone, sits alone On my swivel chair, with head hunched and back to me Before turning, then kissing me and leaving home For work. Her smile’s forced, her posture unhappy. She sits down: shoulders and eyes roll away from me. I tell her doesn’t have to worry about this ‘fucking girl’ From work. Her hand is cold, her stare empty, and it makes me unhappy Watching her tear apart her necklace pearl by pearl. From my wit’s end, I shout: “You have nothing to worry about!” But she uses hot pink nail chip paint as clues, Slides off her gold band, grabs a bottle and leaves in doubt. Doubtless, she’ll sleep before I do.
Chicken Fried Twerky JACLYN GUNTO
To Reflect and Reflection ADAM MOHAMED One day ’round these crumbling walls I will find and breathe into you Flakes of memory that I have pined, And exalted thought hung from cathartic skies I will tear the incision sewn by Conformity Watching as it spills of bondag’d reason And archaic tears evaporating after birth. Thickened vales conceal the pond That settles so still I can see myself: Stitched laurels strewn around my neck I pelt a rock Shattering the reflection into shaken shards.
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The End NATALIE FRANKE Don’t we all fantasize about our death at one time or another? Don’t we all imagine the faces at our funerals and wonder if the postman will come to pay his respects or your high school lab partner will cry? Don’t we all sink into the perverse pleasure that one day everyone we know will be regretting the things they never said to us? Distant relatives will wish they had known us better and ex-lovers will wish they had had one more night with us. Sick joy spreads from our gut to our fingertips when we close our eyes and picture the consequences if we never opened them again. How profound of an effect could our deaths have on our acquaintances? Could we change lives? These were among the thoughts that filled my mind the night I killed myself. When one takes her own life, the people she knew begin to overanalyze every interaction they had shared. They worry that returning her phone call late or failing to send a holiday card tipped her over the edge. They worry that the time she said she was too tired to join them for drinks was a warning sign. That is when their perceptions of the deceased begin to distort, and they will continue to distort until they come to the conclusion they are most comfortable with. Grief is an absurdly selfish thing. Regret wells up in every of the deceased’s acquaintances, not because they wish he or she had died knowing their true thoughts, but because the living could then sleep better knowing they had said their piece. And so to come to terms with the fact that suicide has entered their lives, they begin to conjure false images of the dead. Their choosing to remember me as a misanthrope isolating myself with marijuana cigarettes and Dostoevsky makes it easier to believe there was nothing they could do to stop me, as if slitting my wrists in a library’s self-help section was my inevitable fate. This reassuring illusion lasts until the memories seep from the subconscious. Suddenly, I am in their every thought. They dream about the shape of my lips and the sound of my laugh and the fullness of my eyelashes. I become impossibly immaculate, an ethereal figment of their imaginations and this is the stage about which we all fantasize. In death, we achieve what life could never provide: inexorable adoration. Chilon of Sparta, one of the Seven Sages of Greece wrote ‘De mortuis nil nisi bene dicendum’—‘of the dead, nothing but good is spoken’. This unspoken rule of mortal respect is the romantic idea that guided my razor from the inside of my elbow to the crease of my wrist, tracing the blue and leaving the red. I didn’t feel much pain, just a tinge of satisfaction with the irony of the situation. I knew that I would be the only person in the library besides Miss Harriet Welsh, the eternally sedated Dewey-Decimal slave, and nobody was likely to find me until the janitor came in on Wednesday. It was a Sunday. It was a television static grey Sunday where one goes through the suburban motions without remembering the sermon or tasting the tea. A polite smile is enough to distract from impassive eyes and superficial conversation floats in the recycled air with the weight of a raincloud. My mother mingled with the more affluent churchgoers, discussing lemon squares or the popular rumor that Mrs. Fieltsch’s son has decided on being a homosexual. My father carried his reverend duties with poise and a bleached smile, finding more pleasure in being the church’s Father than my own. How hard is would be for him to accept that his own daughter has committed a sin almost as unforgivable as the one Mrs. Fieltsch’s son has chosen to commit. I sat near the coffee pots chewing the idea of suicide, savoring its hollow sweetness. Of course everybody in that room would come to my wake, at least. My mother’s friends would weep in an obligatory fashion into embroidered handkerchiefs. Mrs. Fernandez, my old babysitter would pray for my family but be constantly interrupted by massive sneezing fits, terribly allergic to all flowers. The Richardson boy would shoot accusatory glances at my parents, assuming it was their fault. He had been in love with me since high school graduation, when we got high under the bleachers. He said he couldn’t believe high school was over. I quoted Lao Tzu: “Amidst the worldly comings and goings, observe how endings become beginnings”. He then asked if he could touch my breasts. These were the sorts of people I left behind. In a state of hazy content, I reveled in Lao Tzu’s quote with my last breaths. Not one of my neighbors had been exposed to the worldly comings and goings. Monotony cursed their lives but worse than that, they accepted it with enthusiasm. Routine tucked them in at night and kissed their foreheads, assuring them that tomorrow would be the same. But tomorrow would not be the same. I had shattered their comfort with my razor. My blood would fill their empty lives with the harsh reality that things don’t always go as planned. I was sacrificing my life for theirs. My ending marked the beginning of their morbid epiphanies. As my eyes began to close, theirs began to open. I felt pure bliss as I drifted farther away from the living, and I sank deeply into the realization that I was the girl that had changed lives, after her death.
Playa El Tunco at Sunset RIMA SATER
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Writing JOEY SIMPSON I’m not writing for money; Not that I stopped trying or tried to hide My street begging. Pockets bursting with poems On the backs of hardware store receipts, remembering Serene portraits of bodies under light. I couldn’t have that job, From reliving the torn voices from nights before, The smell of Styx full of Walker Sticking to my clothes, while I Performed rehearsed apologia Reconciled slavery and lucid hoaxes of agency; Breaking balls, and Wasting time, giving myself meaning in Difference, when I swore That this will be the last, and still -Why has nothing happened. I can’t write to be popular, Because I write For my doctors and the Amphetamine’s red glare, like a candle-lit face. I write as a dirt-bag, Because my craft builds nothing, Houses no one, shows no opulence. Blood money rains, And only when I’m soaked, I see Revile all around, sitting with my warm pints, Little knights, and a King. I’m not writing for happiness, I keep going because I’m too far And wrong bends took me away, and Showed me love and Passion in Vials, In my man’s coat pocket, And he’s been waiting all day to See my yellow grin. I’m a peddler of disclosure, because I followed heroes To their graves and watched as friends Bathed themselves in corrosion, So my drops of revelation Are footsteps following theirs.
I write Because I hate blank space.
Midline RIMA SATER
Tuesday
March 29th 2nd Annual Spring Fling Dance The Duchess of Kent 8:00 pm - 1:00 am
March 29th The Neil Young’uns London Music Club 7:00 - 9:00pm
March 29th Brahm’s Requiem Wesley-Knox United Church
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Palace Theatre 7:30 - 9:30pm
April 5th R5 Budweiser Gardens 7:00pm
March 29th An Evening of A Cappella Music Forest City Community Church 7:00 - 10:00pm
9 Black Sabbath Budweiser Gardens 8:00pm
Poetry Reading London Library 7:30 - 9:00pm
Budweiser Gardens 7:30pm
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April 15th Film Series Stoney Creek Library 7:00 - 8:30pm
April 23rd The Midtown Men Budweiser Gardens
April 22nd – 25th FLUX London Dance Festival Various Downtown Locations
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April 29th Broadway Revue Palace Theatre 8:00 - 10:00pm
April 25th – 27th London Lesbian Film Festival Rainbow Cinemas 7:00pm - 5:00pm
- Bas Van Fraassan 5:00 - 6:30 pm Museum London Theatre 6:00 - 9:00 pm Don Wright Faculty of Music (Until April 6th) Western University Symphony Orchestra 8:00 pm
Engineers’ Without Borders Charity Art Auction 6:00 pm at Windermere Manor
28 Gypsy Musical Palace Theatre 7:30 - 10:30pm
Don Quichotte Theatre l’On Donne 7:30 - 9 pm
21 Dance of Inclusion London Music Hall 7:30pm - 11:00pm
Friday
3 Rotman Institute of Philosophy 4 Water Rights Film Festival
Animals: Our Moral Contradiction 7:00 - 9:00 pm
27 Love, Loss, and What I Wore Palace Theatre 8:00 - 10:00pm (Until April 5th)
April 13th Orchestra London Centennial Hall 2:30 - 4:30pm
2 Beauty and the Beast
Catherin MacLellan London Music Club 8:00 - 10:00am
vidualization of War: Protection, St. Paul’s Cathedral Liability, Accountability” 5:00 pm 8:00 – 10:00pm
March 22nd Irish Dance Ceili German Canadian Cub 8:00 pm - 12:00 am
7 Brit Floyd Budweiser Gardens 8:00pm
Political Inquiry Colloquium Seminar Series 12:00 - 1:30 pm
Day 3:00 - 5:00 pm
Thursday
19 Lecture by Photographer Jorge 20 Don Quichotte Uzon Theatre l’On Donne 7:30 - 9 pm Conron Hall, University College 5:00pm - 7:00pm Don Quichotte Theatre l’On Donne 7:30 - 9 pm
Wednesday
25 Trudeau Lecture: “The Indi- 26 Orchestra London Classics
31Arts & Humanities Research 1 Coronation Street
Final Exams Presentation 11:30 am -12:30 pm
24 Manage Your Time for
Edith Spanner March 18th The ARTS Project 8:00 - 10:00pm
18 Spelling Bee and Pharmacology Seminar Series Grand Theatre (until April 12th) 2:00pm, 7:30pm, or 8:00pm 4:00 - 5:00 pm
17 Department of Physiology
Monday
March/April
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Published by the Arts and Humanities Students’ Council Western University London, Ontario, Canada
2014