The Shift - Issue 7

SECOND THOUGHTS

ISSUE NO.7

APRIL 2023

ISSN 2719-6739

EDITOR IN CHIEF

Dominika Front

EDITING & PROOFREADING

Yousif Al-Naddaf

Dominika Front

Piotr Miszczuk

Sanaz Nouri

Maria Sawicka

Aleksandra Socha

Helena Żegnałek

And for the last time in her role as editor: Katarzyna Szyszka

ILLUSTRATORS:

Iga Chatys (on page: 19)

Jan Bodzioch (on pages: 1, 2, 10, 11, 16, 17, 22, 24)

Sanaz Nouri (on pages: 5, 9, 13, 14, 15, 26, 28, 30)

COVER DESIGN

Jan Bodzioch

DESIGN AND LAYOUT

Jan Bodzioch

Lead-in

Welcome to the latest issue of „Second Thoughts,” the online magazine where we delve into the complexities of the human experience from a variety of perspectives. In this edition, we explore the theme of „Shift” – a concept that touches every aspect of our lives, from the personal to the political. Whether it’s a small change in attitude or a major shift in societal norms, „Shift” is a fundamental part of the human experience, and one that is often accompanied by both fear and possibility. In these pages, you’ll find insightful essays, thoughtprovoking interviews, and personal stories that examine the many ways in which we can navigate change and embrace the opportunities it brings. So join us as we explore the power of „Shift,” and the role it plays in shaping our lives and our world.

Recently, there has been a worldwide stir with the launch of Chat GPT. It is believed that artificial intelligence will soon spark a technological revolution but experts also warn of the dangers of using such products. AI not only collects personal data, but can also convince people to commit suicide (you can read about it here).

As the theme of change also touches on technological developments and transformations, we decided that the lead-in to this issue would be written by Chat GPT. Have you realised that the text above was written by AI?

The viwes and opinions expressed through our magazine, social media, websites or any medium of information we send out are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the Second Thoughts student club. Any content provided by our authors and designers are of their opinion asnd are not intended to malign anyone else’s opinion or beliefs.

FOR SALE: Cisterns of (fire)water

Jan Ziętara

‘Qué son esos--,’ I’m frantically looking for the word for “vessel”. At this point I regret opting out of Duolingo notifications. ‘Qué son esos… recipientes?’ I’m asking a local granny and pointing at the large boilers atop her house. ‘Gas?’

‘No, chico. Contenedores de agua.’

They first caught my eye in La Ciudad. I put it down to the eclectic architecture of Mexico’s capital: the airport engulfed by a residential area, skyscrapers sandwiched between brick-built houses – the latter sometimes equipped with bulky blobs cosily nestled on the roofs. But what later turned out to be water containers wasn’t just a design choice – it was a necessity.

Last summer, the New York Times did a piece on extreme droughts in northern parts of Mexico. Since the implementation of the 2016 “Agua a tu Casa” [water to your house] programme, rainwater harvesting systems have become commonplace. The blobs do the job. But the fact remains – water is a hot commodity all over the country. The climate is changing and Mexico’s two main seasons, rainy and dry, are increasingly fitful. Access to safe water is not a given; sometimes it needs to be trucked in.

Now that we’ve established that water is scarce in MX, allow me to segue into the main subject: firewater.

A killer crop

What can you plant in the middle of a desert? Cacti, of course. You can shred them into fodder, turn into biogas or simply use

them to fence off your property. Cuisine may be their only weak spot. So is there a succulent that checks all the boxes?

Indeed, amigos, we’ve struck gold! Introducing: the agave. An equally multifunctional crop, drought tolerant, edible and, to top it all, one that can be made into commercially viable spirits – mezcal and tequila.

Is there a difference between those two, you may ask? It’s just like with a square and a rectangle... or maybe better, bourbon and whiskey – tequila is a type of mezcal, made specifically from blue agave. Mezcal, on the other hand, famous for its distinct smoky aftertaste, is distilled from a variety of agaves, which translates into unique and changeable flavours of the liquor. Of course, in both cases much depends on the terroir too, but I’ll leave the details to the food critics.

...made in a proper, copper pot

Plant. Cut, harvest, smoke, and crush. Add water and leave to rest. Then purify. Serve with a lime wedge and sal de gusano to taste.

Making alcohol out of agave is a laboursome endeavour, to say the least. The plants mature slowly – seven years in the case of the blue agave, and more for many others. Mind you, we’re talking about a one-time use plant. In order to process it, you need to unearth the whole thing! The sources are inconclusive as to the exact amount of agave necessary to produce a bottle of liquor, since that largely depends on the alcohol content of the drink. A rough

estimate is that anything between 10 and 25 kilos of it can be made into a litre of mezcal (100% agave; min. 40% ABV).

In the wake of a greater demand – and with the farmers’ hopes for a more regular income – agave plantations have straggled over the Mexican land. While some eight years ago a kilogram of agave was priced at around $0.20, in late 2022 it was almost eight times more expensive. Reaching astonishing highs of $1.50 (over PLN 6.50 at the time), the farmers are quick to react. The strategy is simple: plant more, harvest more. After all,

this trend will not last forever.

To speed up the whole process, many growers choose root cuttings as the technique of propagating agave. The offshoots mature quicker, undercutting the germination (that is, growth from seed) by a couple of years. The downside is that, because the genetic diversity is compromised, the plants are more prone to diseases. So you account for that – and plant more.

Whiskey certainly had its moment in the spotlight. Now mezcal is here to pick up the slack, and it is on its way to become

US’s most-purchased spirit by value, trailing only vodka. And the celebrities, hand in hand with big business, have sniffed out an opportunity.

Celebrity depletion

If you’re still doubting agave’s status as a cash crop, take a look at the list of celebrity liquors. It goes on and on, but for the purpose of this article I have put together a humble précis: Breaking Bad stars, Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston own “Dos Hombres Mezcal”; George Clooney has “Casamigos Tequila”; Mark Wahlberg advertises his “Flecha Azul”; The Rock sips on his “Teremana”, while Kendall Jenner sticks to her “818”; Michael Jordan’s “Cincoro” is jousting with Lebron’s “Lobos 1707”; all this while, comedians Tom Segura and Bert Kreischer have only just recently thought of teaming up for a tequila – sloppy!

Then there’s Jimmy Buffet, Kevin Hart, Thomas Rhett, Sam Heughan, George Strait, Eva Longoria, AC/DC, The Chainsmokers, Santana, Adam Levine, and Nick Jonas. And these are just celebrity brands.

By now, it is an open secret that these folks are more concerned with the revenue than the traditional ways of producing spirit – or the well-being of its producers. It might seem that all they care about are catchy names, bottle designs, and punt profiles. (No, on second thought, I am quite sure that those who know how to call “the dimple at the bottom of a bottle” borderline statistical significance…)

But celebrities investing in one of Mexico’s national products should be a good thing, right?

Giving back to the community

There is one more piece to this puzzle, though. Think Parmigiano Reggiano, Champagne, or the Polish “oscypek”. They all have protected designation of origin (PDO) status. And though this designation is specific to goods produced within the European Union, Mexico has its own policies aimed at protecting and promoting its

quality products (Denominación de Origen, D.O.). Naturally, foreign companies – and the above mentioned private celebrity investors – would like a slice of the cake. But as long as the money is flowing, obtaining a PDO is just a spot of bother.

What does it mean in practice? The very policy that was supposed to protect the agave farmers and artisanal techniques of producing mezcal has had the opposite effect. Many family businesses simply can’t afford to pay top dollar for the PDO certification, and are thus unable to compete against “the real” brands with a shiny sticker. Large and celebrity brands were being handed formal legitimacy on a silver platter and they have eagerly capitalised on that fact.

In strive for sustainability – it might seem, though, only the sustainability of profits – the moguls have turned to compulsive hoarding. Planting their own agave makes them reliant on the farmers no longer, crowding them out in the process. What the big enterprises do, however, is they employ day labourers among the locals to work on the company’s land. For peanuts.

The agave is grown and distilled in Mexico, true, but is then immediately shipped away. The commission for the state is laughable. And for the local farmers it really doesn’t matter that Kendal Jenner’s brand’s distillery “runs on biomass and solar power” or that The Rock provides nutritional facts on the back label of his booze.

Legislative dry spell

Agave plantations in themselves are very much sustainable. The plants hardly require water, which makes them a perfect crop for Mexico’s desert regions. That said, the money-driven, excessive and relentless growth of these succulents negatively impacts the biodiversity of the land. While the Mexican government failed to introduce substantial policies to protect its national interests, foreign celebrity ad campaigns succeeded in portraying high-end goods as genuine artisanal products.

Jumping on the bandwagon of the premium alcohol craze, mezcal has become very popular in recent years, but Mexico already has the unsurpassable edge over any upcoming competitors. Its two states, Jalisco and Oaxaca, are responsible for producing the majority of the world’s tequila and mezcal, respectively. No commercial or state entity would bother to draw level with them. What Mexico should do then is step back and regain control over its heritage.

Looking after the manual workers at the plantations would be a good start. Then, raising the sustainability standards – the choice would be simple: the companies either turn to seed or go to seed. Next, the price of the PDO certification should be adjusted to the volume of liquor produced in each distillery, allowing family businesses to establish a foothold on the market.

Lest I forget – efforts to upgrade water infrastructure continue. Just last year, the National Water Commission launched tenders for the construction of aqueducts and water treatment plants for Monterrey and Comarca Lagunera (2nd and 10th largest metropolitan areas in the country). Though, it would not hurt to receive a little help, would it? I don’t suppose Kendal Jenner would finance an aqueduct in northern Mexico, but a tag saying: “1 bottle of my tequila = 1 rainwater harvesting system” sure does sound catchy! Oh, to dream big dreams...

I’m told that hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Right Now, Wrong Then

Magic Mike Turns Regular Mike

Jan Lubaczewski

On the eve of the premiere of the third instalment of the Magic Mike franchise, Magic Mike’s Last Dance, I want to take a look at the first part of the trilogy, which to me seems one of the most exciting films of the last decade in popular cinema. Even though Magic Mike XXL is a dreadful sequel, and I’m not even considering seeing the third one, there is something about the first Magic Mike film that grasps the idea of modern American culture in a way comparable to one film only, namely Spring Breakers (2012) by Harmony Korine.

Released in the same year, both were made independently, and both were advertised as a pop cultural spectacle that turned out to be something else altogether. Korine’s film promised a Disney-princesses-in-bikinisbeing-naughty show, but it disappointed the audiences with a slow-paced art-house commentary on modern culture. An hourand-a-half music video that used the language of popular culture to talk about the taste of its audience did not meet the viewers’ expectations. Spring Breakers is a masterpiece designed to be rejected, so it’s no surprise that audiences worldwide felt in a way betrayed.

Magic Mike is a different story. The film was a huge success (you can probably guess why), while telling a story of solitude, desperation, and disappointment in the American lifestyle. Mike (Channing Tatum) is a construction worker by day and a male stripper at Xquisite Strip Club in Tampa, Florida by night. He dreams of having his own business one day. He meets Adam

(Alex Pettyfer), a young man who’s about to learn the ropes of the stripping business. The story is semi-autobiographical and seems quite personal for both Tatum and Steven Soderbergh, the director. For one, Tatum worked as a stripper at the age of 19. They produced the film on their own, and Soderbergh’s lifelong fascination with his characters’ disillusion and economic struggle is visible throughout the film.

At first, it seems that the whole point of the movie is dancing. While admiring the music and casting choices, I couldn’t help but notice that there is something fundamentally wrong with how the dancing scenes are shot. Only after rewatching the film, I realized what it was. The music in these scenes is always played on the set. It’s a very deliberate choice, since it stands in opposition to all other scenes where music is added in the post-production. The stripping in Magic Mike mirrors the inner state of Mike himself. Sure, it adds to the naturalistic atmosphere and it makes the audience feel even more privy to a stripper’s life, but more importantly, it makes you realize and simply feel how artificial their job is.

It seems that Mike is lost not because of his occupation. He’s lost because he believes in the idea of his job actually improving his existence. Searching for a new way of life, Mike only succumbs to old habits, assuming that a bigger venue and equity will bring him closer to his dream. That’s why watching the end of Magic Mike is always painful. The change in Mike not only doesn’t bring him closer to his dream – it virtually makes the

dream impossible. The promise of love becomes the point, but the search for Mike’s identity has only just started.

The opening sequence of Magic Mike is spectacular. Matthew McConaughey’s “What Can You Touch And Not Touch” scene makes the audience understand that we can look at the bodies of the performers, but do we dare to break

the rules and touch them? The beginning invites us into the world of Magic Mike which we are merely observing and which we think we cannot touch. By the end, the lesson is learned, Mike doesn’t belong in this world, and we don’t even feel like looking anymore. Mike is a reflection of his audience: you can’t help but observe. But can you touch this?

To All The Keyboards I’ve Loved Before

Natallia Valadzko

Creamy, silky, smooth, crisp, deep, mushy, and also… thocky? What can all these specific adjectives even be used to describe? The title of the article won’t allow me to leave anyone in suspense: it is the sound of a mechanical keyboard.

These days, for some people, the way a keyboard sounds might be one of the deciding factors in choosing their peripheral device, besides the obvious compatibility or aesthetics. Not so long ago, a quieter typing experience was the selling point of many keyboard and laptop manufacturers. Currently, however, some would consider the near-silent outcome to be “without character” or just plain boring. This quiet typing is a property of a membrane keyboard that has one thin layer of silicone serving as the electrical contact point. It was introduced in the mid-90s because of its cheap production method, which was perfect for the equipment being mass-produced, bought, and used in schools, internet cafés, and offices.

Mechanical keyboards, on the other hand, are famous for their distinct click upon each key press. The difference between membrane and mechanical keyboards is the type of switch used for actuation, that is registering a keystroke. Unlike the layer of silicone (or rubber domes, as its modification), mechanical keyboards use a spring-loaded mechanism to press a physical switch. As a

result, instead of a soft and quiet key press, a mechanical keyboard produces a clickable sound and also provides tangible tactile feedback. Basically, because of the nature of these keyboard switches, a membrane would feel soft and “spongy” and sound rubbery and mushy. Meanwhile, mechanical keyboards can boast of delivering a “snappy” tactile response and a wide range of diverse clicks.

Nowadays, there are hours-long ASMRinducing videos, with hundreds if not millions of views, of people typing away at their clickety mechanical keyboards. While writing this, I am listening to one such video myself. Surprisingly, it turned out to be the perfect background noise for researching and writing. Unsurprisingly, I got an urge to get a mechanical keyboard for myself. And I am not (and will not be) the only one. In the last few years, the hobby of building your own mechanical keyboard has really taken off. There has always been a small bunch of tech enthusiasts who enjoy customizing

I can’t finish thi-

every piece of their gear, and yet mechanical keyboard customization has moved past the exclusivity of the tech-savvy.

For many, the hobby of customizing their own mechanical keyboard may have started with a Twitch stream, a YouTube video, or just one TikTok on their “For You” page. Despite all of them being video platforms, each has its own affordances, which results in different usage practices and algorithms for content suggestions. On Twitch, for example, one may come across a stream of a mechanical keyboard enthusiast (and entrepreneur) who is building a keyboard one switch and keycap at a time, while narrating and engaging with the chat in real time. Keyboard content on YouTube, on the other hand, may end up on your feed in the form of ASMR or videos with “desk tour” and “desk makeover” in their titles. A shorter version of similar content may land on your TikTok

“For You” page under the hashtags #keeb, #keebtok, or #customkeyboard. In under a minute, you can be presented with a welledited compilation of the typing experience of visually and aurally distinct keyboards for each day of the week, like one of the TikTok clips that was captioned “to all the keyboards I’ve loved before.” Alternatively, the whole clip can be dedicated to one mechanical keyboard with all the custom specifications included in the captions.

Personally, my first encounter with a custom keyboard was seeing a TikTok clip showing the process of changing plain keycaps for the ones that featured realistic character faces from popular video games and various simplified symbols related to them. Surely, video games are not the only inspiration for the keycaps; rather, it is an expected development considering that such sets may be directly sponsored by video game companies. The creativity of keycaps alone is infinite and truly mind-boggling. The keys for Esc, Ctrl, Shift, Alt, Enter, and a spacebar usually stand out from the alphabet keys by having their own color scheme and design. It could feature minimalist contrastive colors or cat paw prints. There is also demand for artisan keycaps, which are handmade using resin. Mechanical keyboards are not like laptop keyboards with a flat keypad; instead, keycaps for a mechanical keyboard are elevated enough to be able to house a miniature of a Pokémon or a tiny solar system inside the mold of epoxy resin. Among even wilder designs, there is a keyboard whose keycaps are made of artificial grass, which is supposed to impress not only with its visual aesthetics, but also the very peculiar tactile sensations. Glarses, an English YouTuber who is known for his keyboard-related videos, joked that if he could touch grass without going outside, it’d be game-changing.

The visual aesthetics of custom keyboards make use of keycaps, colorful cases and LED lights. However, the sound of a mechanical keyboard, which manages to enchant even the most unsuspecting people, has to do with switches. Mechanical keyboards have several kinds: for example, clicky, tactile, and linear that range in how pronounced the click is after the keystroke. Some keyboard customizers even use a mix of different types of switches to change the feel of certain keys.

The auditory feedback from a mechanical keyboard seems so crucial that a special word has been coined to describe the wondrous, ear-tickling feeling of pressing down a key. “Thoc” or “thocky” is an onomatopoeic word that may act as a measurement of how well different mechanical switches do the job of delivering the unique thoc so many people are craving now. Though there is also a degree of selfirony in the way some enthusiasts showcase their proud collections of clickety-clackety keyboards, as seen in the YouTube video titled “plastic inside a metal rectangle making possible pleasing noises.” While thoc may be a generally useful term, undoubtedly one would need a bigger word bank to capture the subtlety and nuance. For instance, there is a wide range of keyboard videos attracting viewers with such provocative titles as “does this keyboard remind you of raindrops?”, “what it feels like to type on marshmallows”, “raining

glass marbles”, “if Krispy Kreme was a keyboard…”, “when its silky n’ smooth... (Turn Vol. Up!)”

You may ask, what could be behind the increasing popularity of mechanical keyboards and the phenomenon of detailed content creation on the topic? Why and why now? Many keyboard experts have pointed out that the pandemic and switching to work from home might have been a trigger, as people were spending a lot more time with their equipment. When your home is also your office, it is possible that you’d want to find ways to switch up your workspace so that it could actually feel like a workplace. Other accounts of people starting the hobby mentioned “being able to feel something through retail therapy” or exercising at least some control by expressing their personality with the help of their PC peripherals, for lack of alternatives. Moreover, platforms like TikTok and YouTube made it very easy to find inspiration from other people sharing their desk setups.

As many “keeb” aficionados point out, there is no endgame; it’s a thocky fall down the rabbit hole. And in the times when technology seems to be increasingly proprietary and massproduced, this journey is prophesied to remain within a small community of designers, hobbyists, and enthusiasts who just enjoy building their own customized keyboards.

Things Kings do for Love

Marek Kobryń

“It was a love story […] He quietly accepts his suffering, never forgiving himself for putting his beloved wife through such torture in her final moments.” This is how British actor Paddy Considine describes the inner mechanics of his praised role as King Viserys I Targaryen in a recent HBO show House of The Dragon. This level of affection and dedication for the late wife bears some striking similarities to the attitude shown by Sigismund Augustus, King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania during the period known in Polish history as the Golden Age.

King Sigismund was being prepared for his role as a future monarch from a very young age. By the instigations of his mother Bona Sforza, he was crowned King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania while his father King Sigismund I was still alive and kicking. In 1546 Sigismund got married to Elizabeth of Austria, sister of Emperor Ferdinand I of Habsburg. Only two years later, the marriage came to an end, allegedly because young Queen Elizabeth was poisoned by the Queen Mother.

King Sigismund’s first marriage was arranged out of political necessity rather than a genuine affection between the future spouses. The case was quite different with the second marriage of the Polish king.

After the death of his first wife, the king fell madly in love with Barbara Radziwiłł, the sister of one of the most powerful Lithuanian magnates. This union, although founded on true and strong mutual passion, was opposed by practically everyone; from the nobility, through the court, to the king’s own mother. Unfortunately for the lovers, Barbara died only five months after her coronation. Although the cause of her passing was attributed to a fatal illness, some believed that the Queen Mother once again had assisted her daughter-in-law’s demise. However grief-stricken, the king had to marry once again –once again out of political necessity.

If Sigismund’s first marriage was deemed unhappy, then his third was clearly a disaster. To put it mildly, the king certainly did not hold his wife Catherine of Austria in high regard, with some even gossiping that the new queen repelled him physically. Was that the reason or did the king still love the late Barbara Radziwiłł? One can only speculate. However, the fact remains that Sigismund did not attend to his third wife despite pleadings coming from the Polish senate and even direct begging on the part of some of the deputies of the lower house of the Polish parliament.

Here the consequences of such behavior come to the foreground. Since king Sigismund was the last male member of the Jagiellonian dynasty, a dynasty that ruled both the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since the Union in Krewo in 1385, the connection between Poland and Lithuania would be severed after his death. Fearing that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania would eventually fall victim to the aggressive Moscovites state in the East if stripped of Polish help, Sigismund came up with an idea to bind Poland Lithuania politically with the 1569 Union of Lublin, which brought those two countries together for the next two hundred years.

Had King Sigismund’s love life

been a little bit more fortunate, enough for him to sire a son or a daughter with one of his wives, the subsequent stricter union between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania would not have been necessary. The king would not have had to incorporate the South-Eastern lands of the Grand Duchy, whose territories would encompass most of present-day Ukraine, into the Kingdom of Poland, all in an effort to force the Lithuanian nobility to agree to the union. After the incorporation, the rich lands of Ukraine became widely open for the numerous Polish nobility, who answered the call and emigrated to the Eastern frontier in search of wealth and fortune. And thus Sigismund’s love life had a direct and profound influence on the history of Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine.

Prima le Parole, Dopo la Musica

Have you ever been to an opera and wondered: why is this so weird? The tenor main character goes out onto the stage and half-singing-half-declaiming hurriedly explains the events of the last or next 15 minutes. He then bursts into a longish aria, where he repeats the same three phrases over and over again. He leaves, and the soprano heroine goes out to do the exact same thing. Suddenly, her alto bestie appears and they repeat the whole spiel together. The bass villain emerges and… you guessed it, he gives us another rushed plot summary followed by an aria with his evil monologue of five lines. The main hero catches up with everyone, and the crazy cycle continues. What is going on here?

Not surprisingly, to answer that, we need to go back to the moment when the musical genre of opera was born – or even a bit earlier. In mediaeval times, music, just like other forms of art, was generally austere and subordinate to its higher religious purpose. Or, in the case of songs performed by French troubadours, to its lower recreational purposes. However, with time, both musical varieties began to evolve in a similar way, with composers gradually making the melody more complex, and, crucially, adding new melody lines with new lyrics to the existing one. The result was the rise of

new musical genres, and among the hottest ones were the motet and the madrigal. The first one evolved from the church chorales, and the second from the ludic chansons, but they were both highly polyphonic, which is a fancy word for saying that they had multiple equally important melody lines, or “voices”.

The upside of this development was that the music became more intricate and interesting. The downside was that no one could understand anything. Some extreme examples of motets included the lyrics to different melody lines written in different languages and taken from different art frameworks – for instance, one line could be based on a psalm verse, while another cited a piquant French love song (it is entirely possible that the former practice was rather useful to conceal the latter). The Renaissance audience had a hard time following the substance of the polyphonic music even in its milder forms, and at some point the need for simplification prevailed over the appreciation of the form artistry. Enter the Florentine Camerata.

Also known as the Camerata de’ Bardi, the group gathered notable humanist thinkers and artists residing in Florence in the late 16th century. Their common ground, aside from Count Giovanni de’ Bardi’s patronage, was the idea of reviving ancient Greeks’ artistic style, especially in drama and music. This ambition was additionally fuelled by their dislike for the music of their times which they found contrived and unintelligible. The goal was to go back to the good ol’ days and recreate the music that was performed in

Katarzyna Szyszka

Greek theatres. But how did they know what ancient music sounded like?

Well, they didn’t. Their best guess was strongly influenced by the works of Girolami Mei, a scholar studying ancient Greece, whose best guess was that the Greek dramas were mostly sung, not recited, and that the music was a single melody line with simple instrumental accompaniment. How refreshing! How different from that modern overcomplicated noise that the composers nowadays call “music”! What a coincidence!

The group promoted their idea of reviving the classics in a new guise, which they called stile recitativo. As the name suggests, it was a style of singing which resembled reciting. That was achieved by creating a very simple melody line, based on just a couple of pitches, with long phrases of a single pitch being repeated. A singer’s voice was complemented by a rudimentary instrumental backdrop of single chords played sporadically on harpsichord or cello. Beginning to sound familiar?

The pieces composed in this style by the Florentine Camerata artists were called “monodies” (as in, singlevoice melodies), and although they realised the group’s founding principles, they were clearly not enough to satisfy the musicians’ appetites on their own. Soon, Jacopo Peri composed the first full-scale musical piece entirely in stile recitativo. Following the ancient angle, the subject was obligatorily mythological – Dafne, Apollo’s nymph. And because it was a collection of many short monodies, each of them a separate artwork, opus in Italian, it was simply called “works”, the plural form of opus – opera.

But right from the start, it turned out that long half-recited pieces were not as attractive as it seemed to the Camerata members – not to the composers, who wanted their work to feel somewhat more challenging, not to the singers, eager to show off their vocal skills, and certainly not to the audience (just imagine sitting through two hours of just the plot summaries, trying to follow them and not fall asleep at the same time). Quickly, a different kind of vocal genre began to evolve from the recitatives – an aria. Pleasantly melodious, expressive, and demanding performance-wise, it turned out to be a home run. However, the Camerata were anxious. What if arias just developed back into the form-over-substance kind of issue?

Peri was the one to meet everyone halfway – admittedly, not alone, but each big shift story needs its hero. After Dafne, which unfortunately got lost in the course of history, he composed another mythologythemed opera, Euridice (to be fair, Giulio Caccini put in his two cents too; a handful of his melodies were added to Peri’s work, and he actually worked on his own version of Euridice before Peri’s was performed, but got it staged only afterwards – it’s a whole different story). Half of the work was recitatives, which, although less interesting musically, moved the plot forward and explained the action to the non-attentive audience. The other half was arias, which sounded nicely and posed a challenge to the singers, but whose lyrics, often less comprehensible, were shorter, simpler, and more emotion-oriented than event-driven. Euridice is the world’s first surviving opera, it marked the beginning

of a new era in the history of classical music, but most importantly – it worked.

To realise just how well it did, go back to the opera pattern I’ve described in the beginning. Since the 16th century, the genre has undergone a lot of improvements and alterations (thank God). It has been the subject of many modern reconceptualisations and experiments, and has contributed to other genres, like the musical or film scores. But the most famous operas you are likely to hear in an opera house are still firmly based on this original structure.

In case it hasn’t been clear so far, I love opera. Many people don’t, and I get it – it’s often long, unevenly paced and repetitive, and thus silly, irritating, or boring. But that’s par for the course, given the context of this genre’s emergence and what motivated it in the first place. I hope that once you have learnt a little about all that, you will see it in a different light – as something quirky, funny, disarming in its nonsense and absolutely unapologetic in being itself. As I do.

Interview with the Vampire: Out of the Coffin and into the Streets

Alyona Shimberg

The last thing I expected in the autumn of 2022 was to find myself obsessed with a vampire franchise. It came to me as an absolute surprise that after the ridiculously hilarious What We Do In The Shadows (2014, dir. Taika Waititi) I still could treat any kind of non-satirical vampire franchise seriously. But, apparently, all it took was one dysfunctional gay vampire family (and one brilliantly written show) to realize that I’ve always been drawn to vampires exactly because of their queerness. I’m talking about Interview with the Vampire – arguably one of the best shows of the year that, sadly, got overlooked by most people who are not fans of the original books. The brilliance of it comes from the way it takes Anne Rice’s story – and the image of the vampire in popular culture – further in its representation of queerness and the struggle of being “othered”.

For anyone who’s unfamiliar with the story and hasn’t seen that 1994 movie with Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise which traumatized me as a kid (but also left me enchanted, though totally horrified): Interview with the Vampire follows Louis de Pointe du Lac as he tells the story of his life as a vampire to a journalist. Being a young man in New Orleans, he meets Lestat de Lioncourt – a vampire who offers Louis to become his companion. What follows is the story of Louis coming to terms with his new vampire nature, and the highs and lows of their complicated relationship with Lestat. Oh, and they also get a vampire daughter, Claudia, who just adds even more complications to the mix.

Vampires have always been gay. That’s not even a controversial statement, it’s just a

fact. Even though the image of the vampire has different folklore origins, the “modern” vampire’s first literary appearances were very homoerotic. In an 1819 short story entitled The Vampyre, John Polidori supposedly wrote his aristocratic seducer Lord Ruthven off the image of his friend, George Gordon Byron, who was bisexual. The famous Dracula was written by Bram Stoker, a closeted, most-likely homosexual and a friend of Oscar Wilde. It was released as a reaction to Oscar Wilde’s being convicted of sodomy and expressed Stoker’s fears and anxieties during the time. There’s even a lesbian vampire story by Sheridan Le Fanu titled Carmilla from 1871.

At the time when anything sexual was taboo, vampires represented the fear and temptation of forbidden sensuality in general, but vampire stories always had homosexual undertones. As expressing sexuality became more and more normalized, there was nothing more to fear; but the horror mixed with attraction in the depiction of vampires persevered, and it perfectly described the struggles of queer people. Then comes Anne Rice with her Vampire Chronicles universe and the incredibly homoerotic stories. Interview with the Vampire was first published in 1976, and the whole series stayed atop for more than 40 years. Here, we see vampires as outcasts; they live among humans but lead a life completely separate from humanity. They are forced to hide and be active only at night because the sunlight destroys them. When they stay in the same place for too long, they become the subject of suspicions, fear, and, eventually,

persecution, so they often move around to find new places to live and hunt.

The queer metaphor truly shines in The Vampire Chronicles. The image of lonely creatures in search of others of their kind resonates deeply with the experiences of queer readers. Anne Rice herself considered her vampires to be a “metaphor for lost souls.” For example, it’s very striking how Lestat describes his desire to be able to openly share his vampire nature – and the sheer joy he feels once he actually gets the chance to do that among some open-minded rock musicians in the 80s (who have probably heard weirder confessions). When queer audiences claimed the image of the vampire for themselves, not only has it become a representation of suffering, but it has also turned into a truly empowering symbol. Vampires are fast and strong, “the perfect hunters,” and they live by their own rules. They do what they want because no one can stop them. Definitely not the human police. They have their own community with its own rules, traditions and undoubtedly their own drama. On top of that, they’re super stylish and sexy. Clearly, vampires always had the potential to become the most queer of monsters.

The history of vampires in popular culture is intertwined with the history of the LGBTQ+ community, and the new adaptation of Interview with the Vampire makes a very important step further. It does not, in fact, follow the book word by word which allows for stressing the vampires’ queerness – which used to reside in the position of a metaphor – out into the light. Louis and Lestat are very much “out of the coffin” and unapologetically gay (or “nondiscriminating,” as Lestat points out). They kiss by the end of the first episode, share a coffin and raise a daughter together.

There’s a strong indication that Claudia is sapphic, too. She yearns for love and

connection because Louis and Lestat have each other, but “who’s her Lestat?” Claudia’s very passionate about learning more about vampire history and origins – all because she wants to find others like them, and in her search she once states she’s sure that Emily Dickinson was a vampire. It could easily be seen as “I know Emily Dickinson is a lesbian!” because Claudia gets it from the poet’s works. Claudia sees the subtext, and we all know what the metaphor is about. We’ll have to wait for the next season to see it stated more explicitly if the writers ever go there.

The other brilliant thing that the show does when adapting the source material is that the writers do not shy away from changing the things that not just aged poorly, but were frankly never that good to begin with. In the novel, which is set in the 18th century, Louis owns a plantation, and he and Lestat feed off the slaves at first. In the show, the events happen in the early 20th century, and Louis is a black man in charge of a prosperous, if not the most seemly, business. He owns a brothel. Claudia is Creole, too. Louis being actually a closeted black man adds many new layers not just to his character but also to his relationship with Lestat. It creates different kinds of inner struggles for Louis and more reasons for him to feel “othered,” which is what the vampire metaphor in the series is all about. It allows for more tension between these two because there are things about racial discrimination that Lestat, as a Frenchman born in the 18th century, simply cannot understand.

In the end, the vampire metaphor, now more explicit than ever, gets a new richness of flavour for the queer audiences to savour. It enabled more audiences to see themselves in the story and connect with the characters more deeply.

P.S. Be vampire, do crime.

“I” Looking Down on “i”: Poetry of Brenda Hillman

Katarzyna Czajkowska

The “I” grammatically towers over the entire world. No other pronoun in the English language has the privilege to be capitalized. Is this how we see ourselves? This little grammatical detail speaks to our culture’s praise of individualism and emphasizes the overblown ego. It puts us at the center, marking our importance. Since language has an enormous impact on how we perceive and act in the world, even this ostensibly insignificant feature may turn out to be a bigger issue than one might expect.

This established hierarchy is missing from Brenda Hillman’s poetry. In her most recent book, Extra Hidden Life, among the Days (2018) she contests the hegemony of the ego. Her I’s are not capitalized in most of the poems. On the other hand, she introduces a “shorter i” that attempts to diminish its referent and decenter the human subject’s position in respect to other beings.

The centralized human condition is challenged in the poem “Angrily Standing Outside in the Wind”. There, Hillman experiments with the notion of the self and draws our attention to the previously mentioned pronoun:

The shorter “i” stood under the cork trees, the taller “I” remained rather passive; the brendas were angry at the greed […]

The “I” is severed into two entities. The narration is later continued through the two “brendas”, individual manifestations of

Brenda Hillman’s self. This strategy moves Hillman away from the self-centered mode of experiencing and relaying. When instead of speaking in the first-person singular, she writes “we thought”, she confronts the constraints put on us by our own perception. The moment an attempt is made to split the self, suddenly there is no room left in our usual self-absorbed spot, and we are forced to move and stand outside.

In the poem “Species Prepare to Exist after Money”, Hillman once again decenters the self in order to contest the conventional hierarchy of beings. Wood rats and crows also “come to life” through Hillman’s anthropomorphic metaphors. But they are not the only life forms given agency. The poem highlights the microbiologically justified fact that bacteria are not simple organisms mindlessly pushing through matter. On the contrary, they are active beings, they have agency, and even though we cannot comprehend their language, they communicate, too. They do so through quorum sensing that enables them to modulate their density by means of gene regulation. The poem illustrates this phenomenon with a description of bacteria who communicate by color; for example, bioluminescence is one of the examples of quorum sensing. Other instances include biofilm formation or virulence – the ability to cause harm to host cells.

After listing the shades in which bacteria communicate, Hillman mentions how humans assign meaning to those colors, pointing out our often ineffectual attempts at

understanding the significance and meaning coded in the language of non-humans. Interestingly, this fragment can be used against the poet herself. After all, Hillman’s poetry attempts to interpret the languages of non-human species and translate their communication into our language, which could be seen as discrimination in favor of the human perspective. However, I can see the reason behind this anthropocentrism. Hillman’s texts pay attention to the differences between all the species and their respective means of communication. The poems convey the impossibility of a given species to assume a different perspective than its own – and it holds true of humankind too. Hillman’s poetry puts forward a solution to the egocentric point of view –namely, acknowledging that other beings have their own perspectives and languages.

Her technique is rather unique. Instead of imposing the anthropocentric viewpoint to comprehend the experiences of other beings, she uses the anthropocentric discourse as a translating tool in order to communicate these experiences. In such a way, she does not put herself in a position of power, but makes room for other voices and outlooks. For example, Hillman’s method can be seen put into practice when she abandons conventional metaphors

which attribute human properties to nonhumans. In the poem “Extra Hidden Life, among the Days”, Hillman talks about extremophiles – organisms able to survive and even flourish in extreme environments. Some of those organisms have the ability to break down matter and since they are the only ones capable of doing so at certain extreme conditions they are used as tools for removing environmental pollutants. In the poem, Hillman compares extremophiles used by people in bioremediation with workers who protest against their working conditions. The workers’ revolt and ability to survive despite the harsh working conditions correspond with the astounding resistance of the tiny organisms to high and low temperatures or high pressure. The two existences, human and non-human, share their endurance.

Hillman overturns the anthropocentric hierarchy by ascribing non-human characteristics to humans.

The second part of “Species Prepare to Exist after Money” starts with memories of her father and their relationship. As the topic shifts, so do the metaphors. The speaker says that her father thought her to be a sensible person and would often say that she had “the

chemical for sensible”. The metaphors have turned around and now the properties of bacteria communicating through chemicals are projected onto the human heroine.

Although all of the metaphors are born from Hillman’s perspective, she does not reside at the center of the poem. There is no hierarchy between the juxtaposed entities. They all belong to her experience and are interwoven, giving each other meaning. And yet, the focus is shifted and distributed among various beings present in the text.

The view of humanity as an epicenter of the world is challenged once more towards the end of the poem which refers to James Joyce’s daughter, struggling with mental illness. Hillman includes Joyce’s comment on the deteriorating condition of his daughter who allegedly “turned away/ from that battered cabman’s face, the world.” The poet is not able to turn away from the world so she concludes: “- i didn’t turn away because i don’t know/ where it is, it is all over,”.

Our assumed centralized position can lead us to believe that we are separate from our surroundings, but how can we turn away from something we are in fact part of? We humans, our civilization, technology, and cities, are just as much part of nature as any forest, field, or lake. We cannot turn away from the world, because anywhere we turn the world will be there, and even if we try to do so, we will end up harming not only others, but also ourselves. If one part of the world is forgotten or dismissed, the other parts to which we would turn will someday disappear.

The idea that we are somehow outside of nature can also make us blind to the amazing agency that the non-humans possess. When we see ourselves as the only subjects in this world we might start to think that the world cannot exist without us, as if our perception and role was greater than that of other beings. That is a misconception, since we are not the only beings that make up the world. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing shows in her book The Mushroom at the End of the World (2015) that non-human

creatures are also active participants in world-making: “landscapes more generally are products of unintentional design, that is, the overlapping world-making activities of many agents, human and not human. […] Humans join others in making landscapes of unintentional design.” For example, when writing about Jakob von Uexküll’s descriptions of how a tick experiences the world, Tsing notes: “Working with the tick’s sensory abilities, such as its ability to detect the heat of a mammal [...] Uexküll showed that a tick knows and makes worlds. His approach brought landscapes to life as scenes of sensuous activity; creatures were not to be treated as inert objects but as knowing subjects.” And when we look at the extremophiles from Brenda Hillman’s poem “Extra Hidden Life, among the Days” and how vibrantly active and interactive with their surroundings they are, it is hard to think of humans as the only agents in this world. Hillman suggests that we might not be as essential for Earth’s well-being as we may believe:

i think

of extremophiles , chemolithoautotrophs & others with power for changing not-life into lives , of those that eat rock & fire in volcanoes , before the death of the world but after the death of a human

In this vision, life on Earth continues and is just as vibrant and busy without humans. The poem questions the ostensible superiority of the human species, but at the same time it reminds us that we will not be able to go on if other inhabitants of the earth disappear.

It is possible to think of the term “our planet” in two ways: on one hand it can mean that the space we inhabit belongs to humans; on the other, that it belongs to humans as well as non-humans. But the notion of property involved in this phrase is a part of the human world only. When Hillman asks in the title of her poem: “Whose Woods These Are We Think”, the question brings

up the issue of how humans, once again, through a self-given right, put such a strong emphasis on their importance in the world. We see ourselves as separate from the rest of the universe that makes us feel as the sole owners of the Earth. We forget, however, that our bodies are always entangled in the Earth’s life-sustaining systems. Karen Barad talks of this entanglement in the preface to Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007): “To be entangled is not simply to be intertwined with another, as in the joining of separate entities, but to lack an independent, self-contained existence. Existence is not an individual affair.” She then concludes that this intra-action “mak[es] it impossible to differentiate in any absolute sense between creation and renewal, beginning and returning, continuity and discontinuity, here and there, past and future.” We cannot escape this net of connections. Nature is also us.

Hillman’s “Beneath a Dying Coast Live Oak” further exemplifies this connectedness, together with the great sadness that comes when it is ignored:

there was the love you could not ive without, & you had lost it, though you stood inside the life that gave you life–

She highlights the fact that we are not standing outside, being separate from the world, but we are rather inside, as one of nature’s components. And because of this unity of beings, it is impossible to live without some attention and respect for one another. If it is lost, then we are lost too.

Extra Hidden Life, among the Days pays close attention to the often overlooked beings that slip unnoticed through our everyday life. Brenda Hillman stays mindful of those unobtrusive life forms and understands the importance of their existence. She stresses how closely our experience is connected with the experiences of other species; and that we are inseparable as we form one ecosystem. By marking the significance of all beings, Hillman distances herself from the human ego and rejects the anthropocentric position, giving more room for other beings. Her poems urge us to rethink the position and space we so often take up in the world. Hillman’s poetry is a manifesto of standing together with other inhabitants of the Earth, whom we too often mistake for our tenants.

The Fear of Inevitable: The Problem of Underrepresentation of Older People

Adrianna Bartoszek

I suddenly realised that I’m awfully scared of getting old. I’ve even caught myself identifying with Dorian Grey who chose a young body over his soul’s salvation. Maybe it’s just my vanity, but I know I’m not alone in this. I had the opportunity to interview people in their 20s about ageing. No surprise here, most of them were terrified of it. I realise that it is not because of our generational shallowness and the focus on appearances, but because of the sociocultural depiction of the elderly.

Our society is fascinated by youth. We value it, we mythologize it, and we tell magnificent stories about it. Social media, advertising, cinema, and literature are full of beautiful young people: their voices, their stories, and their bodies. They take up almost all of the space, making old age invisible. Actors and (especially) actresses over 50 star in major roles far less often and, interestingly, there is less diversity in the casting of older characters. Representations of elderly people in British movies do not reflect the age profile of the population. Furthermore, fashion and beauty product advertising mostly target younger clients. Models over 40 rarely appear in ads and they are almost completely absent from runways.

The media produces and consolidates stereotypes. A simplistic image of the elderly that portrays them as boring, inactive, weak, and unattractive is so prevalent that people tend to unconsciously embody it. Most of the positive representations are also stereotypical and inaccurate: To be considered entertaining, one has to

overcome every possible difficulty associated with being old and instead fit into the ageist cliché. In other words, the stereotypical positive older character should actually behave and keep an approach to life as if they were 25 years old, because “age is just a number”. The lack of proper representation causes extreme difficulties in accepting the inevitable process of ageing, which is often defined as unquestionably negative. The anti-ageing industry makes us believe that we must prevent any signs of maturing because only youth is beautiful and valuable. Ageing is not just considered unattractive; it is basically unacceptable.

If older people don’t meet the expectations of our society’s beauty standards, they must remain hidden and invisible. We all can’t help but keep in mind the image of the “ideal body” dictated by mass media. Slim, fit, proportional, and, above all, young. Some believe that maturity marks the end of the oppressive body image promoted by the media in one’s life. Being mature or older means that one doesn’t need to fit this standard anymore, and is free from expectations that we connect to this ideal depiction. No more pressure, no more judgmental looks. Or no looks at all? It seems that at this point society’s pressure fades away. Still, I can’t help but think that it is not just freedom that our elders gain, but also social invisibility.

There is a prominent lack of proper representation of the elderly in general, but what remains the greatest taboo is sex and nudity. Older people are stereotyped as

asexual and their bodies as disgusting. In horror movies, older women are portrayed as horrifying and abominable (think about The Shining and the lady from the bathroom!). In stories directed at children, old and unmarried women play the villain part (Ursula in The Little Mermaid, The Evil Queen/Old Hag Grimhilde in Snow White). Both of these typical depictions are based on the belief that women don’t have much to offer to society after they are past their reproductive period. On one hand, it is falsely believed that they can’t, shouldn’t, and don’t want to have sexual relationships. On the other hand, the media also pigeonholes sexually active mature people, portraying them, for example, as MILFs and DILFs. One reason

the subject of the older body and eroticism is largely unexplored in mass media. Even within the body positivity or body neutrality movement, the subject is marginal. I believe it has an impact not only on older people, who may unconsciously internalise and embody these stereotypes, but also on younger generations. We perceive ourselves through culture. We identify with fictional characters, relate to people on social media, and see the world in a certain way because of our cultural background. However, it is not only what we see that shapes our perception, but also what is hidden.

Of course, there also exist some exceptions. One of the recent examples is Good Luck to You, Leo Grande directed by Sophie Hyde, starring Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack. The film explores the subject of mature women’s sexuality. In a scene that may be considered the film’s culmination, Nancy (played by Thompson) stares at her completely naked body in the mirror. The scene is considered by many as brave because it displays something that usually remains hidden. It breaks the taboo. However, “brave” is not an entirely positive word in this context since it implies that the nudity of a mature actress may be something shameful and excludes the neutrality of the body. However, the director and the actress

aimed to show exactly that: neutrality and authenticity. It is not surprising that it shocked the audience. We are so used to the picture of the “ideal body” that anything different becomes hyper-visible.

Hopefully, the topic will be explored more in the near future. I believe we need to see accurate, realistic and positive images and representations to become more aware of ageist stereotypes and to accept the process of ageing. Maybe now, when our society itself is ageing, it’s a good time to try to change our perspective on youth and old age: to define them not as a binary opposition, but as a continuity.

Warsaw: Not a Beginner’s Guide

Julia Krzeszowska

The bus is stuck in a traffic jam on an entry road to Warsaw. 40 minutes pass and we don’t move. The bus driver steps outside and lights up a cigarette.

‘There’s really no need for smoking when the air’s so dirty here,’ says the lady sitting next to me. ‘I can feel a scratch in my lungs just now.’

Something stirs ahead and cars around us start moving. This is when I first hear the sound that in the following days I will come to associate with life in Warsaw – that long, angry car honk. From everywhere and at once. It doesn’t mean “watch out”. It’s a hostile “hurry up”. The bus driver stomps out his cigarette, and we drive off.

I feel a scratch in my lungs too, but it’s probably the air conditioning.

‘Where are you from again?’ she asks.

I tell her. South-east. Small town, that kind of place where everybody knows everyone. At 10 pm on a weekday it becomes a Wild West, tumbling weeds rolling down the main street. Crossing the park at night feels like walking through unclaimed land.

That evening I get the keys to my room in a shared flat. My flatmate is out and I aimlessly wander through the rooms, trying to familiarise myself with the place. There are leftover trinkets after the previous residents: chipped mugs, cutlery, stickers on the fridge, and messages scratched on the surface of the kitchen table. Nothing like what I saw in the photos. The flat feels unloved, but maybe it isn’t unlovable. I spent the first days scrubbing the grease off the bathroom tiles, scrubbing the grease off the cabinet doors, cleaning, vacuuming, coughing up the dust. And so here I am: in the midst of a real estate crisis, on my own, making a place for myself in this metropolis of 1.9 million.

In the past 15 years, housing prices in Poland more than doubled. The minimum wage tripled, though it doesn’t exactly mean Poles are three times richer. The standard of living in Poland is increasing, but it is also true that wages rise to even out the fallout of inflation.

However much can be said about the current situation in the housing market, my

experience is that of a student. According to a recent survey by Forum Akademickie [The Academic Forum], 80% of students have taken up some kind of job during the past academic year. Still, students’ earnings make up about half of their budget. The other 50% is financial support from the outside, e.g. family or partners. The Polish Business Roundtable estimates that over 65% of students who work earn PLN 3000 net, or less, per month. The average monthly cost of renting a room in Warsaw is PLN 1500; double it and you have the cost of renting a studio flat. Not every student who leaves their hometown to go to university can be accommodated in a dormitory. Plus not everyone wants to.

The hours of scrolling the websites follow the hours of messaging the landlords and making arrangements on the phone. There is a pressure that comes with finding accommodation in due time. The clock is ticking, September is drawing to an end, and the most inviting offers turn out to be outof-date. Those who have been hesitating for too long have to settle for what is left. One can hardly negotiate. No pets. But maybe? No, no pets. 11 square metres, 2 rooms and a bathroom. Will rent immediately. Perfect location – 9th floor (no lift). Or: lift, but no heating. Looking for a roommate. After general renovation. Metro station, bus and tram stops nearby. Deposit required. Ready to move in. Bargain price. Bills not included. Interested in a long-term lease. THE AGENCY’S REMUNERATION IS COVERED BY THE SELLER ONLY!!! Quiet neighbourhood: elders and young mothers (think infants weeping through paper-thin walls and telenovelas on full blast). Too far. Too expensive. Too inconvenient. Too bad.

I discover that my neighbour has a taste for The Beatles and that he is renovating his flat, including the room adjacent to mine. At seven sharp he puts on the music and starts hammering the wall. By now I know the songs by heart. “Ob-la-di, ob-la-da,” sings Paul McCartney, “Life goes on. La, la, how the life goes on”.

I still forget there’s no natural light source in the hall – unlike in my family house – and lock myself in the dark when I come back from the lectures. Sometimes it gets claustrophobic. The too-fresh, chemical smell of my cleaning spree holds for a few days. Airing the flat doesn’t help, and most of the time it’s too cold to keep the windows open for long. Small closed places, just like small towns, hold onto every past sensation; while open spaces, like large cities, are where change is always happening.

Before I moved in there, I knew Warsaw from books. A city with the quality of a legend or a folk tale told through the works of Polish writers: Prus, Żeromski, Tuwim or Twardoch, to name but a few. It turns out Canaletto’s paintings were a suggestion on how to rebuild the city after WW2, not a blueprint. That city isn’t there anymore. There is a different city with the same name, standing in the place of the old one.

The best way to get to know a place, my friend used to say, is to get lost in it. So I take walks around the neighbourhood. I pocket my phone and let the landmarks choose my route. The red-brick facade of Hala Mirowska [Mirów Market Hall] catches my attention. Here, the protagonist of Twardoch’s Morfina [Morphine], Konstanty, goes to buy food. It’s the year 1939, the 14th day of the German occupation, and Warsaw is a rubble dump. Torn-away pavement slabs clutter the street. “Crazy prices, a kilo of bread for one-seventy zloty,” he notes. PLN 1.70 was something different back then, almost a century of inflation and deflation cycles ago. Still, I wish I could see bread for that price on a supermarket shelf today.

Konstanty buys some chocolate – 12 zloty for a bar – and wanders off. I wander off too. Somewhere between Hala Mirowska and the Mint of Poland building on Grzybowska, I spot the sign: CIEPŁA STREET. “Papa was from Ciepła,” Żeromski’s doctor Judym tells the Polish-speaking women he meets in Louvre. Not without shame and disgust: “My father was a shoemaker, a bad shoemaker on Ciepła street.”

But where was I? Where am I now? In the maze of skyscrapers that grow bigger the closer I approach them, glass walls close over me. I was going straight ahead, I know, following the spike of the Palace of Culture, but I ended up on the wrong side of the city centre. I am confused, look around, and spot a tram stop. I hop on the next tram that arrives, paying no attention to where it is headed.

“What happens in my head: / The rush, the dash, the sparks, the links,/ Merry in the top and the heels,/ The merrier on the turns!” marvels the speaker of Tuwim’s poem To the Critics, as he rides the front platform of a tram. The city is in bloom, booming with life at every corner. Although it’s May for him and October for me, I understand the thrill of a new beginning. The joy of a beautiful day. Autumn does its own wonders to the cityscape. “The city transfixes me to the core!” Tuwim writes.

Night falls quickly and the neon signs begin to speak. They beckon, “Come! Don’t think twice, Happy Hour is whenever you visit.” Oh, the glitz. A firework shower of colours. Only the brightest stars turn up in the night sky. Cars smudge, and red brake lights jump on the speed bumps. A group of elderly men on electric scooters speeds down the street. An ambulance blares in the distance. It gets closer, and the noise overwhelms the scene for a moment. A flash of blue flits past me and slips into the traffic. The silhouettes of the trees turn plain black, and the dark silhouettes of pedestrians seem so eerie when they’re deprived of all the usual detail.

I turn around to see who’s walking behind me. It’s my shadow, split in the lamplight –fooled me again. The wind is getting colder, the hour is late, and I feel I’ve had enough.

I walk in circles searching for the entrance to my apartment block. My phone is dead and I grow uneasy. Memory is fleeting, the streets are plenty, and they seem to change their layout on a day-to-day basis. I pass the flower seller perched on a park bench for the fourth time and he gives me a look.

Finally, I find the right door. From the light-up staircase to my flat, my shadow walks in first, and I follow.

At night, I toss in bed. I haven’t slept well since I moved here. It’s the noise. The city never stops its conversation. Electric drill speaks to the wall. One wayward dog outshouts another. Tabby cats yowl in the dumpster. Cars pass by my window. Their headlights sweep over the ceiling and disappear as if they were waving me a quick goodbye. It gets so late it’s early again. Cue: the sun. My neighbour plays The Beatles and Paul McCartney sings. “Life goes on. La, la, how the life goes on.”

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