Contributors Harry Campbell Marie Foss Ethan Glazar Liz Van Horn Haley Levin Sam Levy Cam Lind Sasha Lyubashevsky Nisha Mani Bridget Mcginn Hannah Megery
2
Table of Contents 4 6 10 12
schedules kwur week 2020 in circles merch
3
4
5
punk
monday
faced out synthetic sun sisser 6 candylion
wave
tuesday
non euclidean geometry the lizardtones haley woolbright wiseacre
hip-hop
headliner
dj aaron morris j americana the domino effect
sinwat carsen codel anarbor
wednesday thursday
bearchella
friday
Kam reo chris mardini
aalisha jai lacy wilder carsen codel
7
2020 in Circles by Cam Lind
“And that’s the problem with a closed door.”
10
Sitting on the sheets of my childhood best friend’s extra dorm bed, my hair wrapped in a towel and my feet in wool socks, his voice wove its way through the thin walls. I hopped to the laminate floor and slid to the door. Peeking my head out, I saw my friend’s suitemates nestled between boxes, sitting in a circle around a speaker. They were silent, feeling Mac’s voice permeate the air from wherever he was over a year after his death. I shuffled back into the soft sheets and listened to Mac’s bittersweet posthumous return until my friend appeared in the doorway. I got up, pulled my snow pants on in a daze, and learned how to ski. I wouldn’t regret missing anything.
“If life is but a dream, then so are we.” Walking to class in mid-January, the bitter wind slapping me in the face as I huddled further into my puffy jacket, he reminded me of the new year. Piles of leftover snow littered the frozen ground like the bits of clinging homesickness making my chest ache. His music swirled through my ears as I took out my phone, and quickly removing my right glove, snapped a picture of a creamsicle-colored bike to send to my dad. I stuffed my phone back into my pocket, swung open the heavy lecture hall door, and started sweating as the rush of hot air enveloped my layers. As I shuffled through the fourth row, stuffed with backpacks and jackets, my phone lit up beneath Mac’s gray face. “I miss you.” Slipping into the auditorium chair, I smiled. “It ain’t that bad, it could always be worse.” Walking along the u-shaped streets of the neighborhood adjacent to mine, the thick St. Louis humidity pressing against the back of my neck, he made me reminisce on the summer that had passed. I had wandered these same streets for three neverending months, mostly alone and completely dreaming. Circles had appeared behind my eyes that morning, Mac gently reminding me to listen to a friend’s pain. He was right, I had it pretty good. I settled on a bench at the edge of a grass triangle, across from a patch of wispy pines which had quickly become my favorite scene. A tiny head peeked out from behind one of the tall pines, and a little boy’s wide eyes stared back at me. Noticing his brother darting past, or averted by my smile, his nervous laugh twinkled and he ran across the soft grass. “There’s water in the flowers, let’s grow.” Hunched over my computer, another year almost over, I can hear him in everything I say. It’s the end of the semester, when everything feels like it will never end, but his voice comes back to me. Close to the microphone, just him and a guitar. Now it’s dark outside and the rain comes down in sheets, riddling the alley outside the storm windows with uneven puddles. A squirrel scurries across the windowsill and leaps to the reaching tree branch that looms over the parking lot behind my building. The branch bends with the squirrel’s momentum but it hangs on, letting the tree fling it up towards the last of the fall’s wet leaves. I watch it fly through the gray sky and land on the slanting roof across the alley. I admire its persistence and keep typing.
11
12
13
12
MERCH
13
12
13
kwur.com