Figure Study

LIBERTAS vol. 23, no. 7

figure study

SATREBIL L E T T E R F RO M T H E E D I T O R S

Alyssa and I first met in the basement of Chambers on a Monday night three years ago, fresh to Libertas staff and eager to get involved. The staff was small back then and mostly seniors, so when the following year rolled around, there was no one left but ourselves and our trusty media editor, Madison Santos (miss you, bud!) to keep it going. We spent long hours together huddling over glowing screens, shouting at inDesign, and slowly learning what it means to create a student magazine. We had far too many ideas and were a long way from the magazine you’re holding in your hands today, but we went into the process with a strong sense of creative values that continue to drive our work.

We knew we wanted to promote a diverse range of student artists, and this year we have prided ourselves in publishing students who have never submitted to Libertas before in every single issue. We have sought to publish diverse content, expanding past the traditional literary magazine style and incorporating interviews, perspectives, and interdisciplinary pieces such as the “Math Art” in this issue’s Last Word. And finally, we’ve let our magazine serve as a critical and political platform, pushing ourselves and our contributors to view art not as isolated but as a significant part of our life on campus and beyond. In this issue, from the interview with Hani Zaitoun to Hannah’s feature on various styles of fashion and identity, we hope that we’ve stayed true to our mission and that the issue provides a starting point for continued thought and engagement.

The figure study theme arose initially from the figure drawing workshop that Libertas hosted in collaboration with Dr. Katie St. Claire and the art department. Several of the works from this workshop are displayed on this spread. The theme, in context with the workshop, evokes a particular artistic process: one of close observation and rigor, where the human body becomes subject to the strict training of the artist. At first you see a leg, a stomach, an arm resting on a hip. Then it becomes lines, shading, contrast, balance: once broken down and reconstructed, the image of the body takes on new styles and unique forms. We’re reminded of how our perspectives shift when art serves as the lens through which we understand our surroundings. You start in one place and end up somewhere entirely different from what you were expecting, and you find ways of representing the world that are new and surprising.

Figure studies rarely stand alone as finished pieces; they are far more about process than product. But then again, what art isn’t? As editors-in-chief, Alyssa and I have sought to embrace the idea that as student-artists, we are constantly learning, developing, and redeveloping our artistic identities. Especially when we’re in college, everything we create is a work in progress. Each piece we’ve published in Libertas has represented the hard work and maturing talent of one of your peers. We want to extend our utmost appreciation and admiration for every student who has submitted their work for publication in this magazine. We have aimed to publish every submission we receive, because all students willing to put themselves and their art out into the public deserve the support that Libertas can provide.

And to our readers, we thank you as well. Thank you for letting Libertas be a part of you lives, for letting it inspire you, start conversation, and give you hope or comfort in this stressful place called Davidson. Thank you for bearing with us as we’ve stumbled around, trying to figure out who we are as a magazine and where we’re going in the future.

We’ve been honored to be a part of Libertas’s rich history and to have collaborated with the expansive range of student-artists on campus to make the magazine possible. As we pass it on to the new generation of leadership, we know it’s in good hands and look forward to seeing what happens next.

All our best, Samantha and Alyssa Co-editors-in-chief

Sketches by Elisabeth Anthony

LIBERTAS April 2017

Judson Womack

Cover

Evan Yi

Leslie Chow Speaks from Inside the Trunk of Bradley Cooper’s Car Art

3

Interview with Hani Zaitoun

4

Claire Heartfield

Art Catching David

5

Léonie Kirchgeorg Lucas Weals

PRBs Drinking PBRs

9

Sarah Funderburg

No News is Good News

10

Henry Stockwell

Inside the Wardrobe Photograhs

11

Hnnah Fuller Hannah Fuller

Scissors Liszt Photograph

14

Vance Graves Thomas Waddill Meghan Rankins

I’ve Stepped in Many a River Art

15

Jon White JonWhite

GUT Symmetries: a book review Playlist: Staff Top Picks

17

Quinn Massengill Libertas Staff

An Indie Game Review

18

Bayne Brannen

Last Word

Rebecca Pempek

Kristen Koehler Libertas Staff

EDITORIAL EDITORS IN CHIEF Alyssa Glover Samantha Gowing CREATIVE DIRECTOR Hannah Fuller ART EDITORS Elisabeth Anthony Maddy Page WRITING EDITORS Claire Heartfield Mila Loneman Quinn Massengill Thomas Waddill Cordelia Wilks

special thanks to...

Faculty Advisors: Zoran Kuzmanovich, Paul Miller (emeritus), Scott Denham (emeritus), Ann Fox (emeritus) Previous Editors: Meg Mendenhall, Michael DeSimone, Jordan Luebkemann, Will Reese, Emily Romeyn, Vincent Weir, Mike Scarbo, Vic Brand, Ann Culp, Erin Smith, Scott Geiger, James Everett, Catherine Walker, Elizabeth Burkhead, Chris Cantanese, Kate Wiseman, Lila Allen, Jessica Malordy, Nina Hawley, Kate Kelly, Zoe Balaconis, Rebecca Hawk, and Hannah Wright

Founder: Zac Lacy

Leslie Chow

speaks from inside the

trunk

of

Bradley Cooper’s Car

i.

The first time I was called Jackie Chan, I realized a joke does not need a mouth to fill a room with glistening teeth; merely by my silent presence, laughter could paralyze a city.

Scene: the chink has disproven gravity.

See how he hangs himself not with a rope but a mispronunciation, how he observes, warden-like, his chandelier reflection in blue eyes.

We do not mistake L’s for R’s without purpose.

Consider: the possum plays dead so that its burned, furless tail is not put to the furnace again.

Consider: the jester knows why he is kept alive and dancing on his bloody carpet.

iI.

From this trunk, I am the oldest trope unfolding: clown confusing a requiem for ovation.

When I emerge, the cinema will see the joke’s flesh, peeled bare, storyboarded jaundice.

Scene: I bludgeon the heroes, Vincent turning the slug on the Ebens, but the audience already knows the punchline; they will walk away again, living proof of invincibility.

iII.

The panopticon is beneath my bones, every naked limb a prisoner, each eye a slit of shatter-proof glass.

I am the projectionist and the warden, the convict and the curtain.

EVAN YI

art by REBECCA PEMPEK 3

LIBERTAS, Vol. 23, No. 7

Hani Zaitoun on war, Syrian skepticism, and seeing through the American façade

Hani greets me outside of Summit. He is what people are talking about when they talk about a warm person. He already has so much to say about his day, his plans, and he speaks in way that makes you happy to listen. At first, I wonder if this energy is anxious in nature - we have so much heavy stuff to talk about - but every time I’ve met Hani, this energy is a constant. He transfers some of it to me, too. I don’t know, but I think it’s a special talent of his.

We chat, I order a coffee, and then we start to talk about war.

C: Wait, really?

Claire: So let us know your full name and where you’re from.

C: So do you believe that?

Hani: Oh, yeah, well my name is Hani Zaitoun. I’m twenty. I’m from Damascus, Syria. I was born and raised there, and I left Syria almost 18 months ago after the war got really intense there.

H: No, I actually think it’s not true! There’s prejudice everywhere.

But this is really what people think. I have a friend who’s a reporter who was in Iran, and he put up a photo for a protester that said, “Thank you, Mr. Trump, for revealing the true face of the United States.”

C: So if you could condense your relationship to Syria to a short statement, what would that look like?

H: Well, I would say it’s become really complicated. You sort of lose your attachment to a place when you move from one place to another, but you still have so much at home that’s irreplaceable, really, like family and friends. But ethnically, I will always be Syrian. It’s something I can’t negotiate. Actually, I grew up pretty apart from the community there.

H: Oh yeah, those were the Syrians on the side of the government, which was supported by Russia. Also, a lot of people felt like Trump was the real face of America. They thought that Barack Obama was a façade, and that Trump was what was there all along. It’s reinforced the idea that the Western World hates Muslims, is very intolerant, etc.

I have a friend who’s a reporter who was in Iran, and he put up a photo for a protester that said, “Thank you, Mr. Trump, for revealing the true face of the United States.”

C: What do you mean by that?

H: Even when I was there, I was pretty skeptical of the community there. I always felt like something was wrong with the community.

Then I left, and found the community of Davidson that’s pretty liberal and pretty diverse, but I’m still a foreigner. So in my home country, I was a native, but I felt detached from that community because it isn’t very liberal, and here in this liberal community I feel detached because I’m not native.

C: Yes, complicated is definitely the word. Then how was your relationship to the United States when you lived in Syria?

H: Honestly, the Syrian view of the United States is not pleasant.

The United States has always seemed like an enemy to us. Many people believe that the US has been plotting against us, really. This concept has kind of always been there. This is how I viewed the States, but when I got here I found out that it was absolutely different. I mean, the US is a country of immigrants. At least here people have opportunities. So, we are skeptical of the States but we realize that at least they have a better system in place than we do, and really there are an equal amount of liberal and conservative people - something we don’t really realize in Syria.

C: Okay, so let’s talk about Donald Trump.

H: Actually, some Syrians were happy about Trump being elected.

Poems by Elijah Midgette The Window by Jane McGehee

C: Oh, wow. So how did it feel to have him tell Syrians explicitly that they couldn’t enter the country?

H: It just felt so hopeless to be told that even those who have a visa and all the proper paperwork couldn’t enter. Even if you were a student! I had a friend who was on vacation in Spain and if the Supreme Court hadn’t blocked it, she wouldn’t have been able to reenter. So that’s why a lot of Syrians think that the United States has always had it out for us. And it was also really scary because I would have had to return to Germany, I wouldn’t have been able to study abroad, and I had to start thinking about where I was going to go this summer.

C: What do you think the rest of the presidency will look like?

H: I think that besides not granting anymore visas, the administration will be able to take advantage of a lot of issues such as healthcare and immigration in order to galvanize the like-minded people.

It’s all about power.

C: Do you have anything else to add?

H: I just think it’s important to remember that even though deportation and all of that is more visible right now, it has been going on for a while. Trump just doesn’t have a façade. He’s so blunt and honest about what he’s doing, and that makes it so much harder to accept.

Claire Heartfield LIBERTAS, V o l . 2 3 , N o . 7

4

Léonie Kirchgeorg

5

LIBERTAS, Vol. 23, No. 7

catching

DAVID Lucas Weals

After a few minutes in the car you got dizzy, your fingers and toes numbing up in a prickly sort of way. David had one hand on the wheel, his other arm bent backwards and reaching toward you and squeezing your left arm harder than he meant to squeeze it, because he was scared and you were his little brother and you were bleeding too much. It wasn’t right how much you’d bled already. Shelly sat beside him, kneeling the wrong way in her seat. She cooed to you, told you You’re so brave, Eddy, and It’s gonna be okay. Her lips looked wonderful. You remember their peaks and slopes, her dark red lipstick.

Another voice now: Eddy, kid, was the sun in your eyes?

Was it? You didn’t remember the sun. In the back seat your eyes ached from the pressure. You imagined fingers pushing them up into their sockets. David sounded so worried. His voice crackled like FM static. You told him he was right, it was the sun. He needed to think it was the sun— even if he didn’t believe it, he needed this affirmation from you. A feeling in your intestines told you that your brother couldn’t hear the real reason right now: that you had missed the ball because something in her face just wouldn’t let you look away. That sad, silent face.

A mouthful of spit, syrupy and copper-sharp, slid down your throat.

Three weeks later you turned thirteen on the same day the doctor took the bandage off your face. After cake and presents and cold apple cider, while your mom and uncle and brother talked in the kitchen, you stood silently in the first-floor bathroom: the one with the walls painted dark green and the soap that smelled like cinnamon. You stared at your face in the mirror and felt, for the first time on a birthday, like you really looked different. The bruises under your eyes—fat purple horseshoes just a week earlier—had rotted into yellow and brown splotches. Under the hanging light, they looked almost like freckles. Your fingers traced the bridge of your no-longer-twelve-year-old nose, your mind searching for the name of the passing route it now resembled. Eddy, run a post. Atta boy. Thanks, Dave.

But you’re getting ahead of yourself.

Before the baseball cracked your lateral cartilage and tweaked your septum hard to starboard—before David drove you and Shelly to the field behind Greg Pierman’s backyard—it was morning, and you sat crouched in the laundry room at the end of the hall, listening through the thin wall separating you from your brother’s bedroom. You knew Shelly was in there

with him. Her car was parked around the corner, the same place she always left it on Friday nights that summer. Mom was still a nurse at Sibley then, and she worked graveyards between Friday and Saturday that kept her too beat to notice if David had a girl over. But they snuck around all the same.

Saturday mornings you would crouch here and listen to the sounds of what you thought, at the time, was adulthood: the irregular pop of lips meeting and breaking away, bodies undulating slowly on crinkled bed sheets.

And recently you’d been hearing something different, something secret and nervous—a wet rhythm, like the muted claps of sweaty hands, and soft little moans that reminded you of how the Nelsons’ cat would purr when you’d pet her behind the ears.

You heard it that morning, remember? Hiding in the damp behind the washing machine, you were surprised and happy to find the stiffness returning again between your legs. Lately you’d felt like your body was waking up to something your brain was slow to catch a hold of. Your dreams had grown deep and sticky, filled with complicated warmth and a feeling like your skin was being burned clean from the inside. More often than not you dreamed about Shelly, because she was there, and because she had long smooth legs and wore her shirts cut off just above her navel, draping off her breasts above those soft athletic shorts pulled up so high that sometimes from behind you’d see underneath them to an inch or two of secret flesh, curiously pale above her tan thighs. When you closed your eyes at night you imagined that small, pale curve: imagined climbing it until you reached something urgent and heavy.

After the last drawn-out sighs from the bedroom you heard the window crack open, whispering, thumbs fumbling to spark the flint wheel of Shelly’s Zippo. It was silver, with a little shamrock engraved on one side. David and Shelly always shared their cigarettes: a private indulgence your brother was careful to conceal. Back then you thought it was because he was afraid of what Mom might say. It would take you years to understand you were the one he’d been hiding the habit from.

The sound of the lighter was your cue to leave, to creep from behind the hamper and into your own room, to slip sneakers on over your tube socks and retrieve your mitt. You waited several minutes for David and Shelly to emerge, but they took much longer than usual. You would realize later, of course, that this was when she told him the news he didn’t want to hear.

LIBERTAS, V o l . 2 3 , N o . 7

6

catching

DAVID cont.

When David finally opened his door you opened yours too, glove in hand, a pleading look in your eye. You only did this maybe once a month—any more would have been pushy, testing your luck.

Usually David would laugh, and so would Shelly. All right, he’d say, let me make some coffee and find my glove first. But he just nodded that day. Something felt different. Shelly stood in the doorway behind him, not holding his hand or leaning against his shoulder the way she usually did. She smiled from somewhere far away, her face half-obscured by a tumble of red hair. * * *

Years later, in the summer that would see you turn seventeen (the same age your brother had been when he broke your nose), you watched David get punched unconscious by Jake Bratka. You were at a bonfire party on the banks of the Potomac, just below Lockhouse 8—a secluded spot where you and your friends could go to get drunk and stoned. David shouldn’t have been there, but there he was. Maybe he was after trouble. He whispered something in Jake’s girlfriend’s ear, put his hands around her waist, got cold-cocked. Your brother’s body crumpled into the mud and stayed there. Was that what he had wanted?

You propped him against a tree and splashed murky water in his face, slapping his cheeks: Dave, Davey boy, anybody home? He burped himself awake like a baby, breath sour from whiskey. When you asked him if he was all right—did he know where he was? could he stand?— your brother nodded without a word. It was the same nod he’d given you that morning from his bedroom doorway.

You thought of Shelly for the first time in years. She was long gone by then, sent to live with her aunt and uncle four years back, after her parents had found out about the operation.

It was around that time Mom had really started to worry about David, too. Never finished high school, losers for friends, couldn’t hold down a job. What more was there to say?

When you brought him home the night of the bonfire you tucked him into your own bed, in case he wanted to slip out the window in the morning without a rumpled duvet or a misplaced sock on his floor betraying to Mom that he’d crashed here the night before.

Which is what he did, of course.

You’re getting ahead of yourself again.

It rained when you got home from the hospital, a brand new face growing inside your gauze cocoon. David had lied to the E.R. staff, told them he was eighteen so they wouldn’t call Mom. He took care of the paperwork and Shelly drove home. Your brother let you take the front seat. Pull the mirror down, kid, he’d said from behind you, take a look. You look tough as hell. Shelly smiled a little, then. The scene in the waiting room had been tense. Something about the place seemed to make her especially nervous. She’d stare pale-faced at every nurse who walked by and slump lower and lower into her plastic seat. When she went to the clinic for the operation two months later she sat in a different chair, of course, though she remembers them as the same one.

Trauma has a way of collapsing in on itself like that. * * *

You never visited David the first time he went to jail. He was twenty-four and you were twenty, taking a year off from college to live with a girl on her friends’ farm in Massachusetts. Her name was Alexandra, but you called her Lex and she called you Ed. You wore 7

LIBERTAS, Vol. 23, No. 7

your hair long. She used to dance ballet. There was no air conditioning in the little farmhouse, and when the weather got hot everyone walked around practically naked. After rain your hair would lick your shoulders like a friendly dog. Lex would flow through her positions, her body made sculpture in the pale moonlight. She told you French words for her beautiful contortions.

Sometimes you and Lex would open the window in your attic bedroom to take rips from a dirty bong you kept on the bedside table, and once you had gotten good and high she’d set her face just a few inches from yours and watch the individual beads of sweat drip down your nose. Every time one reached the crazy angle halfway down, she’d tilt your head with her hands and let the drop fall onto her tongue.

After months of unanswered calls, your Mom had taken to writing you letters, all of which you’d been meaning to respond to. The letters sat in a pile on your desk next to their torn envelopes, except for the most recent one: a tiny note—dashed off in a hurried scribble—which you’d hidden in a wooden box under the bed. It read simply:

Eddy— Dave got arrested two nights ago. Cops said he robbed the Talberts on River. Had a gun in his waistband. No bullets but they said theres no difference. I dont know whats gonna happen to him E. Lawyer from the county says not looking good. Could be two years before hes up for parole. I sent you letters, not sure if they arrived. Not sure if this one will either but I had to write.

Come home soon if you can. Cant stand to be without you so long.

XOXO Mom

You told yourself she wasn’t as lonely as the letter made it sound— that she had your uncle to keep her company, and anyway she worked so hard she would barely have seen you even if you were around. Wasn’t that how it had been back then?

Hadn’t you walked in the front door with David and Shelly, your white t-shirt crusted down the front with blood like smeared red clay, and found the house silent? By the time Mom woke up an hour later you’d changed shirts, but she saw the bandage and her heart trembled in her ribcage. She stammered first, How did this happen? Where have you been?

Then her face got dark. She moved on David and shook him violently, screaming What the fuck did you do to my son? She thought David had hurt you on purpose. You tried to tell her it was all an accident, but your brother and Shelly were out the screen door and into the rain faster than you could work out what to say. Your mom hugged you tight and sobbed into your clean shirt. You remember how small she’d seemed, all of a sudden—how close to the surface her ribs and shoulder-blades felt through the back of her tank top. Something sharp and immediate hiding just beneath the skin.

Holed up in the farmhouse attic with Lex, drinking cheap red wine from jars and with your arm around her shoulders, you tried your best not to think about how similar the bones of her back felt under your fingertips.

You closed your eyes, and swallowed, and forgot. Strange how easy it was for you to just forget.

* * *

When David was in prison for his second stint you went to see him. Six months earlier he had dislocated a guy’s jaw during a drunken brawl in the parking lot of Union Jack’s, violating parole in so many ways it was hard to count. It had been two years since you’d left the farm and Lex for good.

You drove all the way to the Detention Facility in Cumberland to tell your brother that your mom was dead. You could have called, but the thought of telling him over the phone made your guts crawl. He took the news as well as you could have hoped. It wasn’t exactly a surprise: the diagnosis was almost a year old by then, and she’d run out of Stages two months ago.

He only asked you if she’d suffered, and you lied and told him no.

He didn’t need to know the truth. You had been there when she passed.

You had watched the last ragged breath slip out through her open mouth, free of the ventilator for the first time in months.

Mostly he was just glad to see you. He was still beautiful—David was always the pretty one, even before he put a permanent end to your face’s already tenuous symmetry. But he was not the same. You could see a ghost of him, sometimes, in the details: haunting the gaunt hollows of his cheeks, or flickering every now and then behind his heavy-lidded eyes, dancing along to a joke or memory. But time is cruel to boys like David. You could see it in his face, inked into the skin like some lurid tattoo. Your brother was broken. * * *

In the car on the way to the baseball field David played a tape of Led Zeppelin II. He knew every beat to the drum solo in “Moby Dick”— he could even mimic the moaning section in “Whole Lotta Love.” But this time he didn’t sing along.

Shelly always skipped through “Living Loving Maid.” Maybe it felt like a portent, a vision of a future she worried was inescapable. Livin’, lovin’, she’s just a woman. Maybe she just hated the riff. But on that ride she’d kept her hands from the dial, and you realized with an unexpected annoyance this was the first time you’d ever heard the song all the way through.

You hated the tension that had grown between them that morning. You hated him for being cold to Shelly and you hated Shelly (though you never would have admitted it) for ruining your morning with David.

The car ride was the best part: a time to drink coffee, shoot the shit, make plans that you all knew would never happen—What if we stole a school bus and turned it into an ice cream truck? What if we ran away and lived on Sycamore Island, just fishing and swimming with nothing to worry about?

The windows were down and you could smell cut grass, wet from dew, heavy and sweet with the scent of clover. David parked on the rutted dirt path next to the field and you all sat there in the car for a moment, looking out at the low mist over the grass. It was a hot day already.

Every day was balmy in the early summer back home. From the back seat you saw your brother’s face reflected in the rearview mirror. For a second it looked old—taut and burdened, drained of something vital. His face in the mirror scared you. * * *

They buried David in the winter of his thirty-second year, and snow fell all through the funeral, and the priest forgot his jacket. He gave his sermon through chattering teeth and he rushed through the scrip-

ture because he couldn’t stand the cold.

Most people weren’t there. By the time they’d found your brother’s body, slumped and broken in an alley behind a video store, there was hardly anyone left from his world to see him off. You’d heard from someone that Shelly lived way down Montrose Road now, in the hinterlands past Rockville, probably working at some strip mall. You wanted to look her up, to tell her about your brother, but the timing never seemed right.

Someone besides you and the priest did show up, though: a friend of David’s from prison. He said his name was Frank. He was much older than your brother, and heavyset, with a large mustache and moist, patient eyes. His gut protested against the buttons of his suit. He wore a hunting cap with fur-lined earflaps over his balding head. After the priest had said his piece, Frank asked you both if he could read something—a bit of Saint Ignatius’s Suscipe:

You have given all to me.

To you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours; do with it what you will.

Give me only your love and your grace.

That is enough for me.

When you asked him about it over coffee, after the service, Frank told you David had kept a postcard inscribed with that prayer above his bed, in the cell you hadn’t asked him to describe to you even once. You had never known your brother to go to church willingly—couldn’t imagine him finding solace in prayer. You sipped black coffee, swallowed it bitterly down, and tried to picture all the days of his life that he had lived in utter mystery to you.

What more was there to say? David had wanted to be enough for you. In the end, perhaps he was. * * *

You miss him now, not just when the snow falls, but in the early summer, too: when children take to the fields at Cabin John Park and fill the air with the sounds of balls slapping mitts, aluminum bats chiming their harmony against the cicadas’ ceaseless drone.

On mornings like these you try to be with David, though his memory gets further from you with each new summer. You sit on the screen porch, smoking a cigarette or two (the smell still reminds you of your brother’s car), and you close your eyes against the heat. You think of the baseball that broke your nose.

Where had you been looking? Why did you miss?

There’s a moment just before the impact—David is on the mound, his leg thrown back in an arabesque at the end of his pitch; Shelly blows the last bit of fur from a dandelion bloom, doing her best not to think of anything at all; you’re crouched behind the plate with your eyes fixed on Shelly, trying so hard to read her, to understand, to know her in the way we only dream of knowing one another; and the ball floats, motionless, in the humid air—a second of balance before it all changed.

Drink it in.

Soon the ball will finish its flight, the flower’s head will be left bald forever, and your brother will slip away and crumble into muddy riverbanks and asphalt parking lots and a cold clean hole in the January soil. Your nose will break and Shelly will lose something precious and then she will leave, and you will have to force yourself not to do what always came so easily: force yourself not to forget. The moment will fall, and no one will catch it, because it will only be real once it has fallen.

Raise your mitt, Eddy. Your brother tries to smile. Catch.

LIBERTAS, V o l . 2 3 , N o . 7

8

Sarah Funderburg’s

( 9

Pre-Raphaelite Brothers Drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon

LIBERTAS, Vol. 23, No. 7

)

PRBs

Drinking PBRs

NO newsis GOODnews To be twenty is to fall in love, he thinks.

To fall in love effortlessly and ardently. To fall in love in the sort of semi-permanent way that seems to be in keeping with the capital-R Romantics who line the shelves of his dorm room.

He spends most of his parents’ money on beer and films. He saves his own money for weed, an effort to maintain a sense of responsibility he hasn’t earned. He feels sad a lot. Far too often, he thinks, than is appropriate for a white guy attending his second private school. He practices mindfulness and self-care, not just because it’s hip, but because he can mock it because it’s hip, and therefore it won’t mean anything.

He won’t mean anything. He lives amongst the rubble of things bombarded with irony.

And if anything appears genuine, Jesus fuck he will satirize it.

He munches on Cheetos in the back of the classroom. Hung-over, he thinks mostly of the girl with whom he’s currently in love. He will not tell her.

He watches his friends laugh and thinks of all the other friends laughing without him, drinking bottles with flames firing from the cap and belting “that’s how it starts.” These friends never laugh in real time—they’ve developed the ability to laugh in slow motion. The camera is always inches away from their face as they make eye contact with the coolest person in sight.

They never speak to each other—it’s not because they don’t want to, but because their audio track has been removed in favor of the most recent Migos single. It tested well with single white men ages 18 through 35.

At risk of caring about something, he writes it down. And cries. And remembers he’s writing at a desk provided by his second private school.

It’s fine to be sad, he thinks. Nothing morally reprehensible about it. Though he suspects the children in Africa who once shamed him for failure to eat his chicken nuggets would disagree. They wear the t-shirts of the team who lost the Super Bowl, a game he watched through one eye because he was driven to drink too much Budweiser by a debate about the political ramifications of a Budweiser commercial.

Jesus fuck, this Starbucks line is long.

But it’s worth it to exchange pleasantries with the barista, Karen. Or Kitty. Or Kanoe, with a K. He took his glasses off last night when he thought he might make out with a girl who accidentally brushed his arm while reaching for a Natural Light. He’s now unsure where his glasses are, but sure a coffee will help him find them. It’s clear the barista’s name is Karen, now, as he rounds the corner of the line and fixates

on a particularly plump-looking blueberry muffin. Karen… Karen… He thinks it would sound good with his last name affixed on the end.

Quite good. Potentially great, depending on her maiden name, which would be sandwiched in the middle. Maybe she’ll want to keep her maiden name.

What would you like? Karen asks him.

Despite his certainty her name is Karen, he steals a glance at her name tag, perched on her left boob. A good boob.

A Venti Pike’s Place, please, he says. And a blueberry muffin.

Would you like your muffin warmed?

She asks.

Oh, yes, he says. Definitely. I always like my… Karen has scurried away to put the blueberry muffin in the microwave.

Here you go, she says.

He pays solemnly and walks out. On the way to his car, he makes eye contact with as many people as possible. He does not say hi. He makes eye contact like they owe him something, like they’ve failed to recognize some great injustice or some ambiguous genius waiting to be discovered. Found. Uncovered.

He imagines that he will start his car. He imagines he will merge onto the interstate. He imagines he will find himself in the blind spot of an 18 wheeler, and he imagines the 18 wheeler will veer violently into his body, propelling him through his windshield and wrapping him around the limb of a passing pine tree.

He opens his car door and turns the ignition. He thinks about how one day he might enjoy attending a third private school, as he merges onto the interstate.

Fiddles with the music on his phone.

Next.

Next.

Inviting disaster, he smiles.

He has been looking for his glasses for about thirty minutes now, his hangover somehow worsening despite the coffee and muffin. Caked with mud and dried beer, the floor is sticky against his hands as he crawls past a couch that should have already been set on the curb. He thinks the floor must tell the story of last night in some poetic way—footprints, perhaps. Beanboots, Sperry’s, hipster shoes. He finds his glasses in a case of Bud Light, probably placed there by one of the versions of himself he’s never met. Hopes to one day, though.

Hopes to meet all of them.

He wipes his glasses and sees the girl who brushed his arm while reaching for a beer the night before approaching him on the sidewalk. He attempts to walk as normally as pos-

byhenrystockwell sible, cognizant that this attempt will likely have the opposite of the intended effect. One foot in front of the other. One foot, then the next. No looking down. A cool, smooth walk. A nod. A slight smile. One foot and then the next.

How would you rate your experience on Tinder? His phone asks him. Decidedly Romantic, he thinks, with a capital R. I find my 21st century existence vapid, hollow, superficial, and synonyms—but all that changed with Tinder.

He thinks, it really has turned my life around, pushed me to depths I didn’t know I could find, taken me down roads— Owen, his mother says. She’s sitting across from him, perched in the corner of a coffee shop in which he regularly hides from the throngs of undergraduates walking a little too slowly down Main Street.

Yeah? He replies.

So how are you? Tell me everything, anything. Classes, extracurriculars. What are you up to on the weekends?

I’m good, he says, and sips his coffee.

He opens his mouth as if he’s going to provide more details, but sips his coffee again. Real good.

How’s, um, how’s everything at home?

Business as usual, I guess, says his mother, affecting a cheeriness that annoys him a lot more than it should. But no news is good news on our end! God, I miss your mug around the house, though. She sips her chai, continues talking.

No news is good news. No news… good news. What a fucking stupid thing to say. Whoever invented that saying came up with it while staring at a shampoo bottle, lukewarm water running over his eyes like a fake waterfall in the lobby of a Courtyard Marriot. He was staring deep into the soul of the shampoo, into its aura, begging it to affirm the only sentiment he could think of that would justify how he felt. No news is good news. No news is good news. Closer now to the shampoo bottle, eyes up against it. His tears run, indistinguishable from the stream of the fake waterfall in the hotel lobby. The roar of the waterfall in his ears, the tears hotter than the stream itself. Say it, he screams at the bottle.

Tell me I’m right. Tell me I’ve finally come up with something that means something, something beautiful, something I can hold and it will hold me back. Water roars. The volume of it overwhelms, the volume of its sheer averageness, of how lukewarm it is. But the tears are hot. The tears are hot.

No news is good news, he says to his mother, and smiles.

One foot in front of the other. One foot, then the next.

LIBERTAS, V o l . 2 3 , N o . 7

10

I

nside the

Wardrobe

Hannah Fuller

A CONVERSATION WITH EVAN YI Hannah: Do you have a favorite piece of clothing/jewelry/or something that you love?

Evan: I have this tunic, I actually wore it yesterday, it’s from this Japanese brand called Kapital. They work with indigo dyes and utilize prints from Japanese culture but they also blend it with silhouettes from other cultures, and specifically the tunic is reminiscent of south Asian cultures. To me, it was a very gorgeous piece when I first saw it. I got it online – most of my wardrobe is curated secondhand designer, because obviously I can’t afford firsthand. Online, there are markets where, if someone wears something three or four times, suddenly they’ll sell it for like 10% of the value. When I first saw it, I thought it was such a gorgeous piece, but when I started to wear it more, it took on more meaning for me, for a few reasons:

First of all, it was really significant to me that it had Chinese characters written all the way down. It’s technically Japanese Kanji, but Japanese Kanji comes from Chinese characters, and for me, that was really beautiful, and kind of obscure – you can’t actually read what they’re saying. For me, that became a symbolic representation of how I understand my identity of being a Chinese-American, someone who’s distanced from his culture because of where I grew up.

Having this piece of clothing is able to somewhat represent that, in a way…

[Secondly], this was my first piece that really pushed me into androgyny in fashion. Before, I curated more pieces that I thought I really liked to wear, but they were kind of within my comfort zone. This was the first piece that, when I wore it, it was suddenly pushing me to understand myself in a different way. It wasn’t just assimilating a piece

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LIBERTAS, Vol. 23, No. 7

of clothing into what I already thought was aesthetically pleasing, but instead it was pushing me towards a new aesthetic, a new self-understanding. I remember the first time wearing it around and feeling really beautiful in a way that I never did wearing all masculine clothing…

…For me, when I’m wearing women’s clothing (this is actually a women’s’ piece, the one I’m wearing), it’s more of a like a big funky idea – I really don’t care if you think I’m naturally feminine because I’m Asian. My comfort in my gender identity and my self-understanding is not compromised by my preference for androgyny. In fact, my comfort and preference for androgyny really solidifies my identity as a person…

I think looking at how fashion relates to other art forms is really fascinating--like architecture. I love architects – I’m really envious of them, as a poet. As a poet, I can write the best poem ever written, and people can totally choose to ignore it but if you’re an architect, people are forced to look at, live in, and engage with your work. It’s really inspiring – it’s about bringing others into your own internal world in a way that’s easy for them.

Fashion does something similar – in every moment, your canvas, in terms of your outfit, is changing. I’ve been really obsessed with this idea of fashion in motion – that your outfit isn’t just this static thing…

It’s an artistic expression that’s alive and changing as it goes. I think about the relationship between how I approach my poetics as opposed to how I approach my fashion, and the similarity is really that I see both as externalizing an internal truth about myself.

Hannah: Words aren’t always enough. Sometimes just physically existing in space is the most powerful statement of all.

Tell me about a piece of clothing or jewelry that you always come back to, and that you wear intentionally:

I wore these high-waisted bell-bottom pants yesterday that I got in London and I just felt like I was extra special—a character within myself but still myself if that makes sense?

-Elaine Ruth Boe

ARIELLE KORMAN The word “chai” means “living” in Hebrew and is a central symbol in Judaism. Readers might be familiar with it from the toast “l’chaim,” “to life.” I have a small gold chai pendant that I wear every day, to the extent that I feel rather naked without it. The word is surrounded by a hexagonal frame and a background that looks like a tree. You have to look closely to see the word, and yet people who are very familiar with it tend to recognize it as “chai” immediately. The necklace can serve as a conversation starter or point of connection with other Jewish people. It’s something I especially keep close when I’m in less Jewish spaces. It definitely serves a comforting role in those situations.

Mostly though, I like the simple power of constantly wearing the word “living.” Whatever I’m going through any given day, it’s a reminder that I’m alive, which is in so many ways a miracle. I inherited this necklace from my grandmother. Two years ago, I saw her peacefully pass away. I think about the energy in the room when that happened. I think about what it means to have that energy within myself every day. In that sense, I think of wearing the necklace as a challenge to celebrate that power and to use it well.

JULIA VINING This ring that I have, it’s my grandmother’s ring from Turkey and I never take it off. Even when I used to row crew I would keep it on and I’d get nasty blisters from it but I don’t know I just love it. It reminds me of my family’s history in Turkey and it’s also just a cool piece.

I made this skirt out of a pair of jeans. I cut them and then sewed them together.

-Josephine Cannell

JOSEPHINE CANNELL I got one dress while I was abroad in Stockholm, Sweden and it really exemplifies the Swedish aesthetic of black and textures. It’s long and mid-length with pleats, and the texture is soft to wear and comfortable but somehow it still looks nice. The top is a different texture than the bottom and it is higher quality too, so wearing it feels really nice. It really exemplifies the place that I loved so much to study and live in while abroad.

RYAN LEAK The thing I treasure most is a gift I got for Christmas from my girlfriend: A Michael Kors watch that’s gold with a red band around it. And that is my most prized article of clothing.

ELAINE RUTH BOE The first thing that came to my mind is the watch I have on. I got it from graduation from high school and my parents gave it to me, it was my grandmother’s watch. I’m named after both of my grandmas and one of them wore this watch throughout her life. I wear it everyday without fail.

I think shoes can make or break an outfit.

-Ryan Leak

Shoes: Julia Vining

LIBERTAS, V o l . 2 3 , N o . 7

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A CONVERSATION WITH SOPHIE WOODS AND VITA DADOO Hannah: Do you have a favorite piece of Hannah: I think of it as roleplaying, but people clothing/jewelry/or something that you interpret that as inauthentic, which it’s not. In love? the academic classroom setting we often talk about identity as a complex and layered thing, Sophie: I don’t have something I cling on to – I but then when we try to explore our identity in don’t take clothes that seriously. Even if it’s a its multiplicities in our everyday lives through nice thing, I try not to cherish it too much. I our sartorial choices, we are suddenly perceived recently lost a jean jacket that I liked and that as fake, inauthentic, or singular. If you’ve put hurt. But I do change my style a lot. too much effort into yourself, that’s seen as narcissism and if you haven’t put in any effort that Vita: I wear these four rings every day. I usually is seen as laziness. It’s hard to win. To me, the switch up the ones on my right hand the most, bottom line is that it’s about loving yourself— but every day, I have to be wearing earrings and loving all your different parts and personaliI have to be wearing my three rings. ties. It’s recognizing that you are not one single One is a gouda ring, another my mom gave me, thing, that you are complex. and one was a birthday present from my dad.

I also wear two gold bangles that my great Sophie: I really love contemporary art, and grandmother gave to my mom when she got there’s so much confusion around that field – married. They’re Indian – my people may think it’s dad is Indian – so these are silly, stupid, or doesn’t very traditional bridal bangles, make sense. But what and when I graduated from I love about it is that high school my mom just took it’s fun, like how I feel them off and gave them to me. about clothing – I enI never take them off. For me, in joy contemporary art terms of accessories, my rings, because, whatever the bangles, and my earrings are theory behind it, it’s definitely pieces that I need to something that can have in every outfit. It’s sort of make you happy that like a security blanket. I don’t you can look at all the feel put together unless I have time. I think that’s these things. I love jewelry. If enough for me.

I’m not wearing a ring, especially the ones on my right hand, I feel like I Vita: I think people sometimes lose sight of have a phantom limb. When I’m wearing sweat- the importance of beauty, and people have this pants, and not wearing rings or earrings, that’s sort of understanding of other people deciding how you know I’ve given up. beauty standards – an elusive thing that’s inexplicable and, in a way, ineffable. When you’re Hannah: How do your clothes and jewelry dealing with so many issues in the world, so make you feel? many problems including identity politics, politics in general, refugees, diaspora –you name it, Sophie: I think something we talk about all the I think if there’s one thing that salvages everytime is, when I put together an outfit (which re- thing and brings people together it’s beauty and ally doesn’t take long), I don’t do it for other the appreciation of beauty. This manifests itself people, it just makes me happy…Wearing differ- through literature, art, and even clothing. I feel ent outfits, things I put together, is something that people’s anxiety about fashion comes from that makes me happy. their anxiety of feeling guilty for indulging.

...if there’s one thing that salvages everything and brings people together, it’s beauty and the appreciation of beauty.

Vita: I really can’t get stuff done unless I’m wearing something I feel comfortable in. A lot of people would define comfort as a leisure outfit, but for me comfort is knowing that I’m the best version of myself out there…I do think there is a stigma of trying too hard, trying to put out a whole persona. But I don’t feel like I have to shapeshift…

If your clothes could talk, what would they say?

13

Hannah: To me, it means so much more when people compliment your outfit or your style, than when they tell you you’re beautiful. The difference is that they’re complimenting something you did rather than something you were born with and have no control over. It’s the distinction between being acknowledged for possessing aesthetic value versus being an active agent in making that aesthetic value. It’s empowering to have your work acknowledged.

“That one hot business “I think they would “Wear me in a different dress is bullying us.” probably be arguing...like kind of way” No it’s my day, no it’s MY - Arielle Korman day!”

- Josephine Cannell

LIBERTAS VOL. 23 NO. 7

- Ryan Leak

“I think they would be speaking all in the same language but with different accents…But I think they all understand each other [when they are talking].”

- Elaine Ruth Boe

cissors S

Liszt –

Closeted, I used to not allow myself consent to touch my BOOB It should not even be there Gay men DON’T have boobs, rather bulging pecs This hunk of flesh did not belong, my chest entirely too large I desired to take scissors to my whole large self

Liszt – In your chest your bright and terrible blossom – The women who melt And wilt with wanting – Great wooden caverns that throb With Phrygian opiate Flying and falling and folding Into the wildraw throng – The square root of heaven – Where do you go to be hollow?

Where do you go to collapse?

Vance Graves

To start anew But I realized with time that my body should be no secret My presentation is not my self-worth

Thomas Waddill

I will touch every inch of myself And I will feel damn good about it

Photography by Meghan Rankins

LIBERTAS, V o l . 2 3 , N o . 7

14

art by Jon White

Oh I’ve stepped in many a river, accidently, Unbeknownst before my step An unsteady stone or muddy hazard Slipped my foot from rock or bank Sunk shoe and sock in shallow water, Silty creek seeps through sneaker Soaking full a threadbare sock Filling the cracks between my toes With a frigid and panicked regret Oh I’ve stepped in many a river, or creek near my home To prove my courage plenty, though agility in lack On holiday hikes between dinner and dessert I hop between rocks against my father’s better judgment Which comes not in words but a patient looking-on As my stunt goes awry in splash and clamor The recklessness of boyhood brings his family laughter.

Oh I’ve stepped in many a river Because I’ve wanted a better view Of river’s fine masonry and well-tended garden And river’s poor prisoners more trapped than a young boy In a confining cell ever pulled by gravity And I’ve stepped in many a river Inconsequentially Where I may pat my one wet foot On a sun-baked stone warm enough To suck away the cold and I’ve stepped ungracefully into breathtaking water, Where sunlight beams break through rhododendron leaves to call the spirits home.

But I’ve stepped in many a river, unfortunately, In bad weather and poor timing Made to walk home to a squishy wet beat each meter a reminder of my mistake Oh there’s river plenty to stumble in Everyday a jump to time not right

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LIBERTAS, Vol. 23, No. 7

I’ve Stepped in Many a River Jon White

Oh I’ve stepped in many a river Angrily, When I wanted to keep my feet dry But my godforsaken foot slipped into That pool of frigid, fucking pond water And I’ve stepped in many a river That stole my mind away from whatever Philosophy or quandary that would do me no good And focused my attention on a soaked foot, a reminder to remember who I am, And where I’m walking, And how wet my foot is.

But I’m thankful to that river because After removing shoe and sock, I looked Around me and saw The pine trees: Standing very tall and solid and far away, And I saw The seven different kinds of grasses Very small and close, and I don’t know What they are called or where they come from, Aside from right there, under my feet But I give them the names of my friends And I feel better now, thinking of my friends And small grass and tall trees and I’m thankful for the water that soaked my feet And now instead of spilling over Silly thoughts I can sit and sense The free feeling of nature before Walking home again and seeing those friends Whom I named the grasses for And I’ll step in many more a river Because for an educated man I never do learn very fast and it’ll probably take many more lessons before I understand but by then I might enjoy stepping in those rivers, and I’ll stomp in them or dance in them, soaking not only my feet, both feet, but my entire legs, and maybe if I learn to love stepping in the river I’ll decide to find the place where the bottom sinks down, and I’ll throw my head underneath and I’ll let the water clean me, flowing between me and under me and through every hair and pore until you may think there’s not much of me left, because a good two fifths of me floated down the river to find settlement in some far away field in Beulaville, where that part of me could at least do some good fertilizing some cash crop, but now my foot is slipping and I’m feeling weak, so please offer me a branch to grab and pull me out, and take me home, before I’m swept away

Oh and in my better days, I’ve stepped in many a river.

But now I need you to look after me, This one night or two, And feed me a hot meal Like you’ve always done, Until I can walk on my own again and feed myself, Then when I’m strong, I’ll run to Beulaville and pull in the harvest, So I can repay you for caring for me Then and all the times before, And when I come back to you You’ll surprise me, waiting, standing In the river, current up to mid-shin And I’ll meet you there in the river And offer the money I made, But you’ll offer your hand And as we stand like that, Both giving all we have The river will rise Past our knees, Past our thighs, Until we’re washed away Somersaulting through white water As the river deepens And we will sink in the deep water The water darkening to black, Slowing to stillness, Until my toes fall into sand, and your hand Falls into mine, and we both push off And ascend in due time to the blue-ish water above, where the sun beams break through rhododendron leaves seeking to redeem our evaporating beings, and as the sunlight draws us from our home, I’ll give the water one last flick With my biggest toe, A playful touch to say “I wish you well”, and “have a good day” as it whisks away my final goodbye

LIBERTAS, V o l . 2 3 , N o . 7

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Playlist: Top Staff Picks

GUT Symmetries: a book review

In GUT Symmetries, Jeanette Winterson dives into the cliché of an adultery-initiated love triangle, utterly redrawing the lines of this over-done dynamic. In the beginning, two physicists, the English Alice and American Jove, initiate a love affair. After Jove reveals the affair to his wife Stella, she seeks to confront her husband’s lover. Rather than a bloody battle, Alice and Stella’s first encounter becomes a cosmic collision, and the two women launch into a love affair of their own.

Part of the joy in reading GUT Symmetries lies in its humor, in its irony and wit. The premise itself is rather hilarious—of all professions, it’s a pair of physicists who embark upon a sensual, mystical affair. Winterson intersperses flashes of humor among moments of intimacy, such as a conversation between Stella and Jove while stranded at sea about Neil Armstrong’s moon landing: HE (Jove): We rolled over to look at the astronaut, stepping clumsily in his dumbbell suit, picking up rocks for NASA. ME (Stella): It was history.

HE: You were naked and the night was cool.

ME: It was a long way to go for a rock.

Winterson’s writing is as genius as her characters themselves, and exchanges of dialogue read like poetry. She posits horror, including cannibalism, alongside heartbreak, and invents wonders such as a pregnant mother who swallows diamonds until one is embedded inside her child. In perhaps my favorite line in all of fiction, Alice comments on connection: “The probability of two worlds meeting is very small. The lure of it is immense. We send starships.

We fall in love.”

At the end of the novel, Alice has a revelation that weaves together the narrative in such a way that it competes with the Grand Unified Theory that Alice studies.

For a page-turner both sophisticated and satisfying, look no further than GUT Symmetries.

Quinn Massengill 17

LIBERTAS VOL. 23 NO. 7

1. Sarah

(Sandy) Alex G

2. I Did Something Weird Last Night

Jeff Rosenstock

3. Pod Tune 4. Destroyed by Hippie Powers 5. Mildenhall 6. Goodbye Space Cowboy 7. Urban Photograph

Whale /Human Collaboration Music Project Car Seat Headrest The Shins La Based Urban Cone

8. Footprints

Sia

9. Around U

MUNA

10. Colors - Stripped

Halsey

11. À la folie

Michael Nyman

12. Fish Beach

Michael Nyman

13. Pleasure 14. Bite Back 15. Capable

Feist Diet Cig The Wild Weeds

play. sp o tif y.com/us er/libertas davids on labased.bandcamp.com soundcloud.com/podtune

AN INDIE GAME REVIEW

Night in the Woods is a quirky indie game. So quirky, in fact, that I feared its reliance on a sense of hipstery whimsy rather than any real substance. Fortunately, my qualms were quickly assuaged. However, the developers definitely focus on narrative rather than gameplay, which means it’s not a game for everyone. Mae, the protagonist and only playable character, returns to her small hometown of Possum Springs after dropping out of college for undisclosed reasons. Although the plot may seem somewhat cliché, the richness of the characters and the eerie undercurrents of a mystery provide the narrative with more than enough material to keep it interesting. There are a plethora of characters: some are best friends with Mae, others relative strangers. And yes, the cast is made up of anthromorphized animals. The creators take this step with the same license as artists like Art Spiegelman, including non-anthropomorphized animals as well. So that you play as a cat, but your neighbor has a pet cat. Still, the characters in the game recognize themselves as animals and difference in species doesn’t seem to matter to them; there are no animal puns to be found.

The gameplay is set up like a regular 2D-platformer, but there is little platforming to be done. Instead the bulk of the game is spent simply hanging out with other characters in the game and learning their stories. Sure, there are small—comically simple— mini-games involving shoplifting, playing bass or putting together a dismantled animatronic mascot. But they simply add to the story rather than comprise the overall gameplay. You won’t always be having fun when you’re playing. I might complain that it can be a bit slow, if it weren’t for the fact that the slow-pace contributes thematically. Small towns are boring, yes—but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything there. There are tons of secrets discover. In fact, I feel like there’s a lot that I missed. The game even forces you to miss out on some experiences. On a given night, you can choose to hang out with one friend or the other. Neither choice is better.

You simply learn more about a certain character, which is its own reward. I found myself spending more time with one friend, and

was left wondering what I could have learned about the other. Additionally, the dialogue choices result in different conversations.

So even if I do spend a night at the mall with a friend, I may miss a certain story element based on what I choose to say. There are some stories I expected to uncover, but never did. And choosing to spend the afternoon with a certain character is not the only choice you’ll be making. In addition to the casual hangouts and parties, there are sinister happenings in the town of Possum Springs that will certainly reward the patient player with traditional intrigue and excitement.

And if you’re ever bored, the art style may be enough to keep you absorbed. The creators of Night in the Woods have opted for a two-dimensional style inspired by the likes of Richard Scarry and Mary Blair that is at once familiar, and all their own. The art is made all the more beautiful by the gorgeous lighting system that feels almost starkly real in comparison to the cartoonish graphics. The animation, whether you are balancing on telephone wires, jumping in the air or destroying fluorescent light bulbs with a baseball bat, feels and looks fantastic.

Then there’s the music. Surprisingly enough the same person who coded the game also composed the soundtrack. This is especially surprising given how fantastic the music sounds. From the very first moment, the music sets the perfect mood. It not only captures the mood of each locale, but matches the tone of the game, often sounding like an underground indie band. It’s not overly simple, and is markedly different from other soundtracks.

Night in the Woods is lovingly made and is almost certainly grounded in the creators’ real-life experience. It’s the kind of game you can analyze. Powerful moments exist in every corner if you’re willing to find them. If you’re just looking for a fun game to distract yourself from the bleakness of life, this is not the pick. But if you want to lose yourself in a very full—but perhaps equally dismal—world, have a play.

BAYNE BRANNEN

LIBERTAS, V o l . 2 3 , N o . 7

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LIBERTAS last word KRISTEN KOEHLER, “MATH ART” 6

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“Math Art” displays selections from Dr. Tim Chartier’s MAT 315 class. The first few images represent basic MATLAB commands, like drawing shapes and rotating them about a fixed point. The more colorful image is a Newton fractal, which is a boundary set in the complex plane that is created after applying Newton’s method to a polynomial. Do you understand the images now?

Neither do I. (Dr. Chartier – if you’re reading this, I’m just kidding).

– Kristen Koehler

Create your own math art!

From literature to mathematics, art takes place across all sorts of disciplines. Now, thanks to your staff at Libertas, it’s your turn to be the artist. Plot the given coordinates on the graph to form an image.

(6, 1) (8, 2) (9, 2) (10, 2) (10, 3)

(11, 5) (11, 7) (9, 7) (7, 7) (6, 7)

(5, 6) (4, 4) (3, 3) (2, 2) (0, 1)

(-2, 4) (-3, ,2) (-5, -1) (-6, -1) (-7, -2)

(-7, -3) (-6, -4) (-4, -4) (-4, -6) (-3, -7)

(-1, -7) (-1, -5) (-1, -4) (1, -3) (-1, 4)

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