MiC

LEENA SHARBA MiC Columnist

It’s 6 a.m.: My mom has just woken up. I am sitting at the kitchen counter with a blanket around my shoulders, coffee cup in hand while lectures play on double-speed on my laptop. Finally convinced to go to sleep, I set my alarm in time for my 11 a.m. meeting with my internship supervisor, exasperated at the reality that this is what my life has become: zoom calls, sleepless nights, days in sweats, family arguments and isolation. Sighing, I scroll through my social media feeds, a nightly regimen, only to find photos of people on vacation, hanging out with friends, taking road trips… having fun. These photos fill me with anxiety — aren’t we still battling a global pandemic? Shouldn’t we be proceeding with caution? However, I also felt tinges of sadness and frustration because I am jealous — I wish I could have as much fun, but the pandemic wasn’t all to blame.

I am nearing my last semester at the University of Michigan and I cannot confidently say I have made many good friends here. I have two to three friends whom I speak to regularly,

Stuck In The Middle... Alone

meaning at most once a month since the pandemic. Nevertheless, my struggle to foster friendships and have a “normal” college life did not only start in March 2020 but has been ongoing since the beginning of my freshman year. My time at the University so far can be best described as a tug-of-war: on one end were my parents, and I positioned myself at the opposite end and extended a rope between us. As I was the first member of my family to attend college in the United States, my parents and I found ourselves in territories we’ve never been in before: Who gets to make the decisions about my outings? When is my curfew? Who decides who comes into my room and who doesn’t? When my parents held and tightly pulled on the rope, it meant constraining the freedoms I found essential: studying in friends’ rooms, staying up late and attending events without permission. To them, I was neither an independent adult nor a needy child. I had the responsibilities of a college student but not the freedom of one, an in-between space that’s not one or the other. They tugged the rope according to those expectations and when I felt that pull, I yanked even harder the other way. I often lashed out in defiance of my parents, tightening my grasp on the rope and causing tension to build. But no matter how much we pushed and pulled, no matter how sore our hands became and exhausted we grew, we stayed in place and made no progress in either direction.

I started questioning ideas supposedly fundamental to my identity: Why should I adhere to these rules? What does it mean if I didn’t? How did these rules come to be? Is this something all Syrians followed? What about all Muslims? What does our faith say about this? As I came into my own, I felt the weight of these choices growing like rocks on my shoulder. Often, I shared thoughts or opinions that made my parents worry, especially when I didn’t share their views on some of the issues most important to them. Instead, my actions and ideas were sometimes labeled as wrong and harmful from approaches to social justice to even my ideal career path. Additionally, due to the intersectionality of my identities — Syrian, Ismaili Muslim, immigrant woman — there was no community on campus that I closely identified with. I became a foreigner in both Syrian and American spaces, not enough of either to completely fit in. Most of my peers had a very different outlook at things: College was a monumental moment in our lives where we learn to be independent and find ourselves and dream about our futures. While I did identify with their sentiments and the idea of a transition, it was difficult for me to adopt that perspective. I could not be American enough for my peers’ advice and I could not be Syrian enough for my parents’ expectations. Even other Syrian Americans I knew had college experiences on the complete opposite side of the spectrum.

During the winter semester of my junior year, I decided to take a semester off because it all became too much to deal with while also being a student. It was unthinkable to my parents that I spend this semester anywhere but home, especially Ann Arbor — a place that to them, was full of bad influences. Staying home presented its own challenges. Two months into that semester, COVID19 hit and arguments erupted almost every day regarding questions of where I would be living for the hybrid academic year. Even as I grew and my empathy for my parents grew, it also had limits: I still could not fathom why they would not let me be on campus. Now, instead of being home for four months, I have been home for a year and five months. This period has only advanced my isolation and further distanced me and my friends. My social life was replaced by occasional facetime calls and once-amonth day trips I would take to Ann Arbor for visits.

As I reflect on these past months, I realize I may have acted out of a lack of empathy — fixating on my own negativity rather than considering how my family was feeling too. I dismissed large compromises and efforts that my family had made for assimilating into “the American life,” like allowing me to go to my first sleepover or inviting my friends over for a surprise birthday party. I focused too much on our disagreement and overlooked the tremendous amount of love we shared that allowed my parents to sacrifice so much for us with big smiles on their faces always. While I positioned myself and my parents on opposite sides of the rope in this game of tug-of-war, I realized tugging was not a way to freedom, but letting go was.

Read more at michigandaily.com

Living as the Exception

ELIYA IMTIAZ MiC Columnist

Every so often I hear about Hazaras in Afghanistan. I just did last week — it was mostly children who died. I remember how Khaled Hosseini so beautifully and eloquently painted a heartbreaking picture of the recent history of Afghanistan. and how To this, students in classes at my predominantly white high school analyzed questions such as “why did Hassan and Ammar get treated so differently?” “What was the basis of discrimination and subjection for Hassan and his family?” Every so often I hear about a blast in Pakistan, and every so often I meet a family friend whose uncle, cousin, or sibling was killed in these blasts. Just yesterday, I found out about the Gilgit massacre of Shias, initiated over a difference in Eid dates. I stared blankly at my laptop screen wide-eyed, shocked at the abhorrent events, and shocked that I just heard of it. I think about what makes me different to freely practice my Shiism here, until I wonder — what is free when yes, I openly use a sajdiga for my daily prayer, but still have to hear the the classic ‘why do you pray on a rock’ joke, still have to feign toleration at events with the overall community when I hear “we’re allowed to marry Jews and Muslims, just not Shias.” Every so often when I hear the news, I turn to the only method of denoting solidarity in this day and age — Instagram social activism. This metric is by no means indicative of genuity, but is telling enough in the sense that many Muslims will post about all social justice issues, until it comes to Shias. Ironically, these are the same Muslims who retweet “when it’s Muslims, the world is silent”, as though oppression is a competition in the first place. For me as a Shia and my best friend as an Ahmedi, there’s another layer to that silence- when it is us, even Muslims will be silent. The sense of solidarity that ever so often arises among Muslims is always amazing to see, but a part of me knows that this same unity will never be granted to Muslim minorities.

Transparency in FKA Twigs’ “Cellophane”

MARIAM ODEH MiC Columnist

After a dormant three years, English singer-songwriter FKA Twigs has given me the first song of my playlist titled, “Banshee Vibes: I wanna rip my heart out and scream, but in a good way.” Her hit single “Cellophane,” an extremely vulnerable piano ballad centers around leading a relationship in the public eye and the toll it takes on one’s self-esteem and image. With a Grammy Award nomination for Best Music Video and named the best song of 2019 by Pitchfork, “Cellophane” unravels the raw human emotions that envelop love, loss, and everything in between. Twigs’ delicate and soothing voice offers a stark contrast to the song’s heart wrenching lyrics; uncomplicated words dripping with complicated feelings, pushing and pulling at all of our hearts.

FKA Twigs opens “Cellophane” with a series of emotional questions seemingly directed at her former lover, Twilight star, Robert Pattinson. It seizes our heartbroken souls from the start, ensuring Twigs is getting her point across without drawing it out while also engaging the slightly psychotic—like me—who listen to sad songs, especially at the height of their joy. Littered with rhetorical questions, accompanied only by the majestic keys of a piano playing in D Major paints Twigs in an anguished state, begging the question “Why was I not enough to be worthy of your love?” She goes on to repeat the chorus twice more in the middle of the song, pinpointing this message of worthiness in the face of adversity without explicitly stating it. Talk about self-esteem issues, sheesh.

Throughout the remainder of the song, Twigs uses very powerful, yet simple diction. Using repetitive verses like,

“They wanna see us, wanna see us alone

They wanna see us, wanna see us apart,”

She’s able to highlight the pain and vulnerability that accompanies the meddling and scrutiny of the world’s selfish eyes. During her three year relationship with Robert Pattinson, she received constant criticism and hate from Twilight fans who were upset that Pattison was no longer dating his white co-star, Kristen Stewart. I don’t know about y’all, but anything is still a better love story than Twilight, especially the beautiful Twattinson couple…actually, Pigs is probably our best bet.The criticism turned into racism, and fans all over the globe began targeting Twigs’ biracial background, comparing her to a monkey regardless of what she did. She also spoke on how this constant racist barrage made her feel dysmorphic for close to a year especially when she saw photos of herself.

Her seemingly effortless word choice and repetition gives the illusion of simplicity whilst her groaning, cracking voice bears the weight of the world and all its problems. The contrast between the delicate piano playing, while her vulnerable vocals shine through allows us to relate to her relationship problems, even if not at the same level as that of A-list celebrities. Twigs’ word choice, while reveling in the phrase “short, but sweet,” is extremely impactful and never overstays its welcome.

The anomaly of “17776: What football will look like in the future”

MEERA KUMAR Daily Arts Writer

Our time will come to an end. But what if it doesn’t? What would you do? Would you quit your job and travel the world? Take a nap? “17776,” a hypertext speculative fiction narrative by Jon Bois, proposes a different answer on behalf of humanity: play football. As a deeply conditional football “fan,” this piece has to be my favorite thing I’ve ever read (and truly, I believe that “17776” should be experienced with little prior knowledge).

Published online in 2017 at SB Nation, a sports-focused media outlet owned by Vox, “17776” is a deeply odd and oddly deep fictional narrative that questions how the scarcity of time affects existence. Set 15,755 years in the future, Bois creates a world where birth, death and the suffering in between ended on April 7, 2026. People live free of financial and health concerns; instead, in the United States, many focus their energy on an ongoing nationwide football game, where participants play or engage in fanfare. The story is narrated by three sentient space probes, who jokingly converse about the state of the universe while observing the game.

It’s unlike anything I’ve ever read. First, the format: a mixture of monthly calendars, group chat records, historical documents, podcast transcripts and Google Maps of a landscape different from our own. “17776” is a narrative that pushes the boundaries of fiction, especially on the internet: it’s one of the most well-known additions to the internet genre of hyperliterature, in which online fiction uses unconventional, expressive forms to convey its “function.”

While newly-awakened space probe Nine’s (Pioneer 9) group chat messages are formal, insistent and laden with question marks (most commonly “What?” followed by questions like “We don’t do anything, right?” and “This is the end, right? The end of this story?”), Ten’s (Pioneer 10) and Juice’s (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) texts are much more casual, with less grammar and more jokes, like this one about Lunchables: “neatly partitioned meats and cheeses appeal to me on an aesthetic level ok mfer.” Ten and Juice are deeply familiar with the state of the universe and have no sense of time or urgency — they don’t ask questions or bother with most things, really. Compared with Nine’s insistent questioning and existential dread, they seem uninterested in “serious” questions of the world around them. Juice would much rather discuss football, like many of the humans on earth.

The lack of “productivity” infuriates Nine, from the late 20th century, who begins angrily texting messages such as “I’m appalled… disgusted, I guess,” overcome with the lack of “purpose.” Ten and Juice then slowly and calmly text back, explaining to Nine that “wasting” time is simply impossible — time has ceased to be a finite resource, and life goes on forever. In “17776,” human beings are no longer under the jurisdiction of the natural world. But for creatures who’ve learned to define their existence with constraints such as time, money and physical ability, immortality is terrifying. Since, instead of uncertainty or stress, “boredom is their only enemy,” so humanity turns to sports to deal with being alive.

The sheer amount of thought put into “17776” is impressive. With plenty of newspaper clippings, historical facts and believable vignettes, the intricate worldbuilding makes the piece feel like an irreverent, entertaining study of history. Looking at historical documents such as certificates and newspaper clippings makes me feel like I’m trying to answer a Data-Based Question for my high school American history class again (in a good way, this time). The montages of documents over a course of 15,000 years have a way of making you feel incredibly inconsequential in their magnitude. Most of the “historical” vignettes narrated by the space probes’ group chat gave me genuine goosebumps, as I absorbed the stories in which people grapple with the pain of an endless existence. The tales weave in and out of the football game, making the unnatural seem profoundly mundane, and the every day seem truly otherworldly — an alwaysburning light bulb is sacred, and New York City has all but disappeared into an underwater ghost town.

Additionally, “17776” remains the only true “utopian” piece of literature I’ve ever read; absent of suffering, it’s impressive that the piece so thoroughly captures attention without the traditional ideas of “conflict.” Instead, it draws readers in through thorough worldbuilding, crafting a reality wholly different but strangely similar to our own. Ultimately, within the story, many Americans turn to football to pass the time, like we always have. Many, including Nine, could easily call playing football a waste of time. But, in our world and theirs, humans’ need for sports goes beyond expectations of productivity and profit; Bois shows us that to unite in this fashion and bring uncertainty and excitement to a life filled with mundanity is anything but useless.

Read more at michigandaily.com

Squid becomes its own narrator on ‘Bright Green Field’

DREW GADBOIS Daily Arts Writer

It feels like the name Squid has been circulating around the music blogosphere for half a decade at this point. The band has maintained an almost elusive aura, only sparking further intrigue with every subsequent single and EP released. What’s more, the music they were trickling out to the public evaded any surefire categorization, to a point where critics and enthusiasts alike have piled them with other oddball U.K. groups as something they call “New Weird Britain” — which is just a fancy way of saying “unclassifiable guitar music from across the pond.” Although, if we’re to take this niche seriously, the associated bands are certainly making a statement this year with shame and Black Country, New Road already releasing critically hailed projects. However, if there is any record that people were expecting from this supposed subgenre, it is Squid’s debut.

Bright Green Field follows the pattern of the music Squid has been teasing up until now, which is that it doesn’t really follow any pattern at all. Without a doubt, there will be people who simply call it art rock and move on, but that would be a strong generalization of what the band manages to construct. Bright Green Field is an album so dedicated to the concept of “no idea is a bad idea” that it

fully commits itself to throw everything at the wall. Naturally, this is quite a risky endeavor, and for the less prepared, this surely would have been an unmitigated mess. Fortunately, it would seem the last five years have properly conditioned Squid. Bright Green Field successfully avoids the pitfalls of such a process and amounts to one of the most unique rock albums this year, and on their first go no less.

Of course, Squid’s inspirations come through clearly — Talking

Heads and Pere Ubu are two that come to mind — but it’s the instability of how these influences are combined and transfigured that demonstrates the group’s originality. For example, the track “Boy Racers” starts with a groove and adds layers of guitar riffs into something both upbeat and off-kilter. Much like some of the other lengthy tracks on the album, it builds pace and alters itself several times, but then gives out abruptly halfway through into something that can only be described as if Throbbing Gristle decided to take up vaporwave. It’s unbelievably bold, totally irrational and expertly executed. Another track that follows this mold is “2010,” with its complex guitar patterns — sounding straight out of In Rainbows-era Radiohead — that switch to allout thrash metal on a dime. It’s one of the best songs on the album, acting as a perfect centerpiece to the chaos.

Lyrically speaking, Squid likes to keep things compact and esoteric. It’s a bit of a nebulous effort to try and decipher some larger connected meaning. However, an overarching theme of corporate mundanity and its stale purposelessness does pop up across the album. The track “Narrator” describes the desire to dictate one’s direction in society, with vocalist Oliver Judge chanting out to the world “I’ll play my part” as if expecting some universal reply. The song “G.S.K.” is a direct reference to the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline and goes on to create devastating imagery about a “Concrete Island.” This strange duality between the bombastic fun of the music and the crushing core of the lyrics contributes a certain mood to the album as if someone took a happy face and stapled the smile in place. Perhaps the Bright Green Field they are referring to is actually astroturf.

When it was announced that Squid was signing to legendary electronic label Warp, it only added to the immense anticipation that the band had already accrued. Warp has built a reputation for signing nonelectronic groups just as they make their big breakout into the musical landscape; they did it for Grizzly Bear, Danny Brown, Battles, Stereolab, Broadcast, Yves Tumor and countless others. With Bright Green Field, Squid is staking their claim as a member of this list.

Courtesy of Julian Wray