CLASSICAL LAUREATE
P R I L 2 0 2 5
Pearly Gates
Graham S. Welsh
Oh the pearly gates, I’ve long awaited thee! And thy promise of a date with true divinity. Oh father, son, and spirit, fairest of all three, Greet me here at godly gates, o holy trinity!
Shake my hand St. Peter, For thine own sake, I compose this piece in meter, My place in Heaven to take.
But Peter doth not shake my hand, Nor Christ embrace me there, Instead they say “Sit down, don’t stand, And of thine proctor, beware.”
Retrieve your number two, And get comfortable in thine desk, To the old system, bid adieu! And forget about thine rest.
We at Heaven have adopted the greatest guarantee, Of accepting only those of worth; Heaven now uses the SAT, So wipe away thine mirth.
Forget about confession, And repentance too, There is no predestination, Only one way through.
So please place thine bag of sin, At the front of class, And throw thine papers in the bin, And remember, try not to finish last.
Out of curiosity, he decided to walk up to the house identical to his old one, and opened the door.
As the boy entered, he encountered a young girl sitting on the floor, painting a picture of a butterfly. When she saw the boy enter, the girl’s pupils constricted, and her mouth formed a small “o” shape as she got up from her painting, and ran into the next room. The boy’s heartbeat sped up slightly, but he continued on into the house, pausing at the room that would have been his in his old house.
The door was cracked open, and the boy let himself in. He stood in the center of the room, surveying his surroundings. It was so similar to the rooms in his old house, yet it seemed like nothing would ever feel the same as it had. In the end, he only lingered for a second before exiting back into the hallway.
Immediately outside of the room he just left, the boy looked up to see two girls, both about his age, looking at him with the same expression as the first one. He quickly flicked his eyes down to his shoes, and without saying a word, leapt down the stairs two at a time, and darted back into the street.
The boy stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and made his way to the end of the street, where he turned around to look at the house. The faces of the girls inside lingered in his mind, and he wasn’t quite sure how to feel about what had just happened. No one had ever looked at him like that, and he wasn’t sure why anyone would now. He hadn’t done anything wrong - he had
simply gone into a house that was identical to the one he had been in for the past nine years. So why was it so different now?
Shaking his head, the boy moved on to the next street, only to find the same sight. He stood on the corner, looking at the house that was, once again, identical to the one he had grown up in. But, with the oddness of the previous encounter still at the front of his mind, he walked on down the street, ignoring the house across the way.
As the sky grew dark, and the streetlights began to flicker on, the boy began winding his way back home to his tree. By this point, the looseness that he felt the previous night had been replaced by feelings of tension, anxiety, and sad confusion. Reaching his tree at the end of the street where he grew up, he crawled in, and let out a massive sigh.
The next morning started as the first had, with the boy clambering out of his perfectly-shaped tree hole, and onto the sidewalk. For the first time since he left his house, he looked at the house across the street, where almost two nights ago, he stole his Canadian tuxedo, and basketball shoes. After weighing the decision in his mind for about a half a second, the boy stuck his hands in his pockets, squared his shoulders, and strode across the street to the house.
As the boy approached, a voice called out from the doorway, attempting to get his attention. He looked up, surprised, before nodding his head in the general direction of the door. The voice then asked the boy if he wanted to join their game of basketball, as they needed an extra player. He said yes, and opened the gate into the yard.
As he was doing this, a group of boys came out into the yard, dressed in various forms of athletic wear, with the one who initiated the request carrying a ball. He told the boy what team he was on, and asked if he knew the rules.
The boy nodded again, and went to stand with his teammates. As he stood with them, he felt himself relax. His shoulders dropped, and he felt that loose, uninhibited feeling again, like things were the way they were supposed to be. Without a second thought, he ran with his teammates into the yard, a wide smile on his face the entire time.
When the evening came, the boy happily left the yard, and stood in the street, taking the feeling in, before crossing the street to his house. He lingered for a moment at the gate, and then quickly opened the gate and went up the steps onto the porch.
Gone was the comfortable feeling he had felt all day , leaving in its place uncertainty, like he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be here anymore. He tightened his resolve, and entered his house.
No one was in the front hall that night, and the downstairs was quiet with the exception of the kitchen, where he could hear water running, and dishes clattering. The boy tiptoed up the stairs, trying to avoid the stair that always creaked at the worst possible moment. The door to his old room was wide open, with light streaming out of it as girls came and went, getting ready for bed.
After a minute, he heard murmurs outside of his door, and as he walked over, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, he realized that the whispers were about him. About how he shouldn’t be there, what he would be doing in his room, what to do with him when he came out of his room.
The boy was stuck. He was shaking again, his heart racing, and he didn’t want to leave. He hoped that if he stayed there long enough, the girls outside his door would go away. After a few minutes, he heard an adult’s voice, as the girls explained the situation to her. The boy decided he couldn’t stand it any longer, that he knew he had to leave, so he opened the door, and shoving his way through the group, and ignoring the pacifying words of the adult, he ran down the stairs, out into the street, fighting back tears every step of the way.
The boy sprinted through the neighborhoods, the houses blurring together, as they did even when he wasn’t in constant motion. He ran, and ran, and ran, trying to find somewhere that lacked the degree of separation that everything seemed to have.
After what seemed like hours, the boy stopped, his chest heaving. When he looked up, he realized that something was different.
He found a street. A new street. It had the same two houses as all the other streets, yes, but they weren’t the only two houses. There were three. And there were people in the streetssomething that he had never seen before.
The boy walked cautiously further down the street, taking it all in.
He approached the third house, getting there just as a young man was leaving. The young man gave the boy a small half-smile, and the boy looked down, shyly. But after a half-second, he looked back up, and smiled back at the young man in the exact same way, almost as if they were the same person, just years apart.
“Shaping
Change: Ideological Survival in Dystopian Narratives”
Parul Biju
The question of how to react to momentous situations is one that has permeated literature and real life. From the warnings of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to the lessons in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the philosophy underlying successful action is one that has been discussed through many different lenses. Through the books Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin this question will be viewed through the lens of ideology.
In Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler tells the story of Lauren Olamina, a teenager who is determined to survive in the dystopian conditions her world has found itself in. Climate change and economic crises have turned America upside down. “Extremes of economic wealth and consequent inequality of political power” means the government became “unable to regulate even the most egregious depredations on human rights or natural ecosystems, or engage in any projects other than the purely symbolic politics of space exploration and even that is being privatized. Local and multinational corporate and private power has inserted itself into the resulting spaces. The poor are getting poorer and more desperate; the rich are getting richer, able to afford (otherwise basic) consumer goods beyond most people's imaginations and living secure in their gated communities protected by private police forces who shoot first and question later” (Stillman).
Lauren is not rich, but her family is living in a walled community; this means to the poor outside living on the streets, she is rich. The community, led by Lauren’s father, is constantly threatened
anymore” (55). In order to survive, one needs to do more than just adapt to the changes, one needs to instrument changes. Lauren is determined to go out and create Earthseed.
“We do not worship God
We perceive and attend God
We learn from God. With forethought and work, We shape God. In the end, we yield to God. We adapt and endure, For we are Earthseed And God is Change.” (17)
Lauren is the only one preparing for this inevitable destruction. She builds an emergency pack with money, seeds to grow, maps, and anything else she deems necessary for survival. She trains herself so that her first instinct during an emergency would be to get the pack, put her shoes on, and run. Her escape route is not set in stone but she will move in the direction of Canada, where things seem a bit better. From old books, she learns about useful plants along this road. At any moment, she is learning and preparing to leave. Then it comes. The big hit.
“Embrace diversity. Unite
Or be divided robbed, ruled, killed
By those who see you as prey.
Embrace diversity
Or be destroyed.” (176)
Lauren is the only survivor in her family. Her training pays off as she is able to get her emergency pack and run. She helps two survivors, realizing the strength in numbers. Her journey has started. Along the highways where 100s of people walk imagining salvation, Lauren creates a community. She helps vulnerable groups, bringing together strangers of every background. They stick to her leadership, unknowing they are following her verses despite their lack of belief God is Change.
“But [change is] not a god. It’s not a person or an intelligence or even a thing. It’s just … I don’t know. An Idea” (217). Lauren’s reply is revealing: “Because after a while, [Earthseed] won’t be Important! … People forget ideas. They’re more likely to remember God - especially when they’re scared or desperate” (221).
The idea of Earthseed itself is instrumenting change, and Lauren is massively successful. Tying together teachings allows the group to have a guide, something to resolve their wills, something that will keep them focused.
Lauren forms Earthseed because she realizes a need for survival beyond herself, the need for the survival of people. In order for that, she follows her teachings to shape change and create what would eventually save her world.
Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness explores the other side of this question: subverting ideals in order to instrument positive change.
The Left Hand of Darkness depicts the mission of Genly Ai, an Envoy from the Ekumen of Known Worlds to the planet Gethen or Winter, to convince them of joining the Ekumen as its eightyfourth member. Ai lands in Karhide, one of the two major nations in Gethen. The King in Karhide is anxious and paranoid; he is not very receptive to Ai’s offers. But Ai has a benefactor: Therem Harth rem ir Estraven, a “lord of the domain and lord of the kingdom, a mover of great events” (5-6). The King’s right hand man, Estraven is the only one convinced that Ai is genuine about his tales of other worlds and technology. Though events lead to Ai trusting everyone but Estraven, the latter saves Ai continuously and gives his life up for what he believed would propel his nation.
Of the two religions of Karhide, Estraven was trained in the practices of Handdara. A religion without “institution, without priests, without hierarchy, without vows, without creed,” it is unclear as to whether “it has a God or not. It is elusive. It is always somewhere else. Its only fixed manifestation is in the Fastnesses, retreats to which people may retire and spend the night or a lifetime” (57). The Handdarata prioritizes noninterference and have mastered the skill of foretelling.
The situation in Karhide worsens, and Ai decides to give up and try to convince the opposing nation, Orgoreyn. Before leaving, he goes east to the Fastness to get a foretelling. There he meets Faxe, the ideal Handdarata. Ai asks the foretellers (led by Faxe) whether Gethen would be a part of the Ekumen in five years. The answer comes out in his favor: a resounding yes.
Both Lauren and Estraven believed in surviving beyond themselves. They both saw the possibility of utopia and endeavored to bring it to fruition. But Lauren had to create whereas Estraven simply had to work around some of his teachings. This makes sense, Handdara already had one piece to the puzzle Lauren’s community didn’t have: the belief in uncertainty and the adaptation to it. Estraven added on the second piece: shaping change. Lauren’s walled community, focused on immediate survival, neither adapted to the increasing attacks nor tried to shape their future.
Album Review
Portrait-Samara Joy
Benjamin Giller
I was skeptical when I first heard people compare Samara Joy to Ella Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was a staple of American music for decades. She was both the face of jazz and the face of pop. Her 1947 bebop rendition of "How High the Moon" is one of the most important scat recordings of all time. Samara Joy, age 25, comes from a family of gospel singers. She only started singing jazz at the age of 18. She attended Purchase College in New York State, and she released her first album, Samara Joy, in 2021, the year she graduated. By 2023, Joy had received Grammys for Best New Artist and Best Jazz Vocal Album with Linger Awhile.
Despite her accomplishments, it still felt premature to equate Samara Joy to someone many consider to be the greatest jazz vocalist of all time. Yet, when I saw her performance at the Newport Jazz Festival last summer, I began to wonder. On a cloudless, sweltering summer afternoon, in the middle of a field with no shade whatsoever, Joy's voice gave me chills. I was captivated by her performance, and by her ability to make an audience of thousands feel the emotions of her lyrics. Some of the songs, including the danceable "No More Blues" and the soulful medley "Peace of Mind/ Dreams Come True," were previews of her upcoming third album. I, and the rest of her audience at Newport, left that performance eagerly awaiting Portrait. When it was finally released in October, I made sure to listen in silence, and focused all my attention to the music.
Portrait opens with the jazz standard "You Stepped Out of a Dream," performed as an up-tempo bossa. Joy's band sounds comfortable and inviting. After some horn solos, the trumpets, trombones and saxophones play in unison over the chord structure. They are joined by another instrument, its timbre similar to that of a clarinet: Samara Joy's voice. When jazz instrumentalists play with singers, as a rule, they avoid playing the exact notes that are being sung. If singers are even slightly out of tune, it can make their otherwise tolerable pitch unacceptable. Never double with the singer. Unless the singer is Samara Joy. Joy confidently sings alongside the horns on Portrait, creating a warm, synchronized harmony.
In "Reincarnation of a Lovebird," Joy sings the somewhat obscure Charles Mingus tune in the fashion of an epic. She opens in eerie, a capella solitude. No sounds can be heard except her voice. Her tone is full and expressive to the peak of her range. The piano rolls in, and Mingus's complicated, and at times dissonant melody is an earworm. At the third part of the structure, the song's dark theme becomes reminiscent as the band slows down. In the final minute, the tempo is lost as Joy reaches the highest notes of the piece. This track is my favorite on the album.
"Autumn Nocturne" is a detour from her previous tune, but it feels right. Joy masterfully employs dynamics to make this beautiful ballad come to life. The piano lingers on chords for exactly the right length of time. The horns descend, complementing Joy's voice.
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