MISC. VOL 133, ISSUE 1 by MISC. Magazine, Trinity College Dublin

Vol. CXXXIII, Issue I

Thursday, September 17th, 2026

CONTRIBUTORS

Eliora Abramson is a fourth year English the Irish branch of the SYP.

Marina Nicolaidis is Misc.’s Assistant Editor.

Studies student and the Editor of Misc. Maga- Mathilda Gross is Misc’s Culture Editor. She is a She is a final-year English student and previouszine. She previously held the positions of Edi- fourth year English student, and Deputy Editor of ly served as Assistant Editor of Corcra Magazine. tor of Corcra Magazine, Assistant Editor for The University Time’s Commentary & Analysis sec- Defne Öğüç is a third year Neuroscience stuThe University Tines, and Article Editor for The tion. She is also active as an illustrator for a variety of dent. She is also Misc.’s Science & Technology Trinity Journal of Histories. She has also contr- Trinity publications. ibouted to Totally Dublin’s The Goo Magazine.

Editor.

Zach Keenan is Misc’s History co-editor. He is a Eva O’Donnell is one of Misc.’s Erasmus edi-

Joy Aladejana is a third year English and Phi- third year English Literature & History student. He tors. She is a 3rd year English and Film student, losophy student who is currently Deputy Mdi- is also Features co-editor for Trinity News and a sec- currently doing an Erasmus semester in Budator of Misc., PR officer for Trinity Publications, tion editor at Trinity’s Middle East and North Africa pest. She has also contributed to the University and Deputy Arts and Culture Editor for Trinity Review.

Times and is working with the upcoming cre-

News. She has also contributed to The University Isobel Kelly is a third year Law and History student, ative non-fiction magazine Periphery. Times, and anthologies in collaboration with the and one of Misc.’s History Editors. She writes for The Maylea Palmqvist is one of Misc.’s Social EdMuseum of Literature

University Times and is Theatre Co-Editor at TN2 . itors. She is a second-year History of Art and

Vasiliki Batzoglou is one of Misc.’s Interna- Eve McGann is one of Misc’s Assistant Editors. She Architecture major with a minor in Film. She tional Editors. She is a third year Law student, has received a Student Media Award for Features previously served on the editorial board of the and has previously contributed to the Dublin Writer of the Year - News and Current Affairs and Trinity Social and Political Review and curUniversity Journal of Criminology.

been nominated for others incl. Journalist of the Year, rently both edits and writes for the Trinity Film

Dan Bowe is a final year Law student and a Short story of the year and satirical writer of the year. Review. Deputy Editor of Misc. Magazine.

Amélie McGowan is this year’s politics editor for Philip Theiss is a third year economics and so-

Lily Braumberger is a third year English Stud- Misc. She has previously been an Opinion Editor, Ra- cial policy student, and one of Misc’s Internationies, is (one of ) Misc’s Social Editors. She is also dius Editor, and Features Editor for The University al Co-Editors. He was previously the Comment Creative Director for The University Times’ Ra- Times. She has also worked as a staff on the Barnard Editor at Trinity News. dius.

Bulletin’s videography team.

Conor Ennis is a fourth year English student.

Photography

He is Misc.’s Community Editor. He is Head Ed-

Models

itor of Hearth Magazine and Podcast Officer for

ART Jessica Sharkey 7, 12, 15, 19-23, 28-30, 36

Lily Braumberger 25, 37

Chaya Smyth

10, 11, 19, 20

Isabel Maharg Bravo 27

Ava Swartz

8, 33, 35

Mathilda Gross 17

COVER Sienna Maree Eliora Abramson Joy Aladejana Averit Marlin Saskia McDonogh Mooney Amélie McGowan George Moore Ella Smith Naoise Smith O’Carroll

With thanks to Lily Braumberger Maylea Palmqvist

CONTENTS LETTER 4 EDITOR’S Eliora Abramson

18 FRESHERS’ GUIDE

5 MISC. MATRIX

26 A CONVERSATION WITH

THE ART OF ASKING ALONG Maylea Palmqvist

IN TURMOIL 9 THEATRE Isobel Kelly

THE THINGS WE COULDN’T LEAVE BEHIND

Vasiliki Batzoglou

OF 14 NEUROSCIENCE HANGXIETY` Defne Öğüç

CEMETERIES 16 ON Mathilda Gross

TCDSU PRESIDENT AMY KENNEDY Conor Ennis

DETOUR AS A MATTER OF COURSE Philip Theiss

NEW TOPOGRAPHY 30 THE OF VIOLENCE Amélie McGowan

I HAVE MUCH 32 ‘DUBLIN, MUCH TO LEARN’ An Interview with Donal Fallon Zach Keenan

LESSONS FOR LEAVING FROM THE SOUTH OF FRANCE Eva O’Donnell

UNREMARKABLE 36 AN LIFE Lily Braumberger

38 FICTION & POETRY

EDITOR'S LETTER

recently discovered the French term flâneuse, a word which means, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a woman who saunters, strolls, or wanders aimlessly through a city while observing urban life and society. The concept of the flâneur, from which feminine version of the word flânerie derives, was popularised by Charles Bauldeire. Flâneur, or this idea of wandering with no agenda is not a radical one. It can be traced back to Scandinavian word flana, or “a person who wanders.” What is radical, however, is the female version of it. In an article for the Paris Review, Lauren Elkin writes, “This is the radical move of the flâneuse: I will shop, or I won’t shop, but I am not defined by it either way. The barriers and expectations women negotiate in the city have called for a more active kind of transgression than idle wandering.” When Bauldeire used it, it was often synonymous with pity or laziness. When we reclaim it, we place power in our observations, our thoughts, and our feelings towards our cities. I spent this summer walking. Sometimes to places, but often it was to nowhere and to nobody. Probably like you, l can’t walk without my headphones playing music. Often though, there is a sentiment that listening to music constantly is a means to avoid one’s thoughts. I don’t agree. For me, it is a means to access my thoughts and to connect with my surroundings. I find that art, particularly the medium of music, brings me back to places, people, and moments with a single note. There are songs that I can’t play anymore because they sound like a long forgotten heartbreak. Inversely, there are songs I play that remind me of joy, of falling in love, of feeling brave. As I embodied my very best impression of a Parisian flâneuse along the streets of Dublin, I played as much music as I could. One of those artists I

couldn’t get enough of was Dolly Par- to understand ourselves and our ton. I, like many others, was heart- city. Maylea’s piece on the casual broken by the passing of Dolly. Her college invitation explores how music has soundtracked my life and we create community. History is just knowing her presence existed thoughtfully perceived by Isobel on the same planet as me was deep- as she looks through the continued ly comforting. Since her death, I’ve unrest of Ireland’s National Theatre. been reflecting on what it means to Eva and Philip set their attentions physically leave a place or a body and on impacts of international experiwhat it is that is left behind. For Dol- ences on the self while Vasiliki and ly, it was not her art that she hoped Mathilda contemplate home and would endure, but rather her phil- identity. Amelie examines the ways anthropic efforts. I hope Dolly knew in which culture contributes to viothat for so many her art is wrapped lence and Defne uses science to reup completely in her efforts to make assure us that observations of ourthe world a better and more hopeful selves are sometimes not the whole place. story. Another artist who accomThe reflections continue panied me on my walks was Charli into our Freshers Guide. We could XCX. On her track “Nobody Lasts not possibly express the complete Forever”, she includes an outro of an experience of Freshers week or interview with auteur and director even first year, but our senior ediDavid Cronenberg. As I walk and torial team made an annual attempt observe my surroundings, I hear in Joy’s introduction which is sure him tell her that “Some artists have to set the tone for the pieces and created art that has really survived week ahead. Eve lists everything a thousands of years and that’s fantas- Fresher might need to survive the tic but experientially, for them, they week, Dan explains the ins and outs are dead, they are gone, they are not of the large music scene at Triniexperiencing that…hear me assuring ty, and Marina spills her secrets to you that oblivion is freedom”. those beginning a new adventure As I begin my final year of whether it’s in a new school or a college, I wonder what, if any, mark new country. my contributions will leave or if I, At Misc., our observations like so many others, will be lost to are all we have. Our ethos of repthe pages of history. There’s a comfort resenting the miscellaneous experiin the idea of oblivion, in being for- ence of student life is realised only gotten. The good and the bad wiped through the power of what we as inaway. I do want to leave a mark, but I dividuals see. We wander, yes, but it hope it is nameless and echoes in si- is through the assumed aimlessness lent waves. My resolve, as I end my in which we find the words to share time in college, is to observe. To walk ourselves and our unique experiwith nowhere to go but everything to ences with others. After you flick see. through the pages our writers and In this first Misc. issue of the editors have poured their hearts out year, observations are at the fore- on, take a moment to truly observe front. In true Trinity fashion, two where you are. Look around you at of our articles on this issue feature the buildings, at the people, at the James Joyce’s Leopold Bloom, enact- sky. Read this issue, and after that… ed by Lily and Zachary who respec- go for a walk. tively utilise him as a vessel in which - Eliora

THE MISC. MATRIX

Want to contribute to Misc?

We are always on the lookout for new writers and artists. To get involved, email us directly at editor@miscmagazine.ie ; join our writers' group chats through Instagram, @tcdmiscmagazine, or head to miscmagazine.ie and fill out our 'contact' form.

THE ART OF ASKING ALONG Maylea Palmqvist explores the social politics of the casual university invitation, how to know where to go and with whom, and how to fake it ‘til you make it

here’s a particular kind of university afternoon that happens somewhere between the last lecture and the first drink in which nobody really knows what they are doing. It is 4 o’clock, your lecture with that professor who has the most monotone voice in the whole world has thankfully finished, you miraculously don’t have piles of laundry or dishes to do, but it is all too early to go home. You’re sitting in that little cement nook outside the entrance to the Boland watching yet another seagull sit itself on top of the immovable globe. Someone that you know from somewhere — a lecture? A society? A night out? Maybe just the accumulated familiarity of having seen each other around the arts block enough times — joins you in your nook. You know their name, where they’re from, what they study, and they’ve got some fun physical features, like 15 piercings, that’s helped you remember them. Someone else you know from somewhere else comes by and mentions the Pav. A few people are going later, “Come with us.” It is objectively a very short sentence and you say yes. Or you say, “Yeah, maybe,” which is not the same thing at all. Then, several hours later, when you’ve realised your room really does need a hoover, your phone lights up: an address, a time, a location, people are already there, and somewhere at the end of the text bubble appears the inevitable “if you want to come”. Suddenly, you are no longer sure what is happening because you could go, you were told you could go, but did they mean could in the ordinary sense of the word, or could in the strange social sense in which it means that nobody would stop you? It sounds silly but this is one of the great minor difficulties of being a person at university. There seems to be no official rules for knowing when you are invited somewhere. There is no little green tick beside someone’s name to tell you that you are definitely accounted for and a part of the plan. You simply develop a feeling for it, or pretend to. Perhaps this is why we spend such an unreasonable amount of time trying to decode the most unremarkable sentences. “We’re going later”. “You should come”. “If you’re around”. “Come if you

want”. It is possible to spend an extraordinary amount of time thinking about what someone meant by “if you’re around”, when, in all likelihood, they mean that they were going somewhere and thought you might enjoy coming. Still, it matters. Not necessarily because the words matter, but because the thing underneath them does. Do you want me there? There is something particularly high-pressure about that question at university because so much of university life is about finding out who wants you around and who you want around. You arrive with your old friends scattered across the globe, or perhaps without them at all, and suddenly you are surrounded by hundreds of people who are all doing the same quiet arithmetic: Who do I know? Who knows me? Who am I going for coffee with? Who would I text? Who would text me? For the first few weeks of September, the whole campus seems to be conducting this experiment simultaneously. People sit beside strangers and immediately begin trying to turn them into acquaintances, acquaintances become people you recognise, people you recognise become people you

There is always some sense that somewhere, at some point, the real university experience is about to begin and you can spend a surprising amount of time waiting for your life to become interesting

say hello to. At some point you realise you have started walking between lectures together. Nobody can quite identify when the friendship happened, it being beautifully made out of things too boring to remember. You do not usually remember the exact moment someone became your friend, you remember the accumulation of nothing: sitting beside each other, complaining about an assignment, going for coffee because neither of you wanted to go home yet, sending a stupid picture, missing the Luas, walking in the same direction, staying for one more drink because it was still too early to face your ridiculous flatmates. The people we end up spending a majority of our uni lives with are built, quite often, from very little. This seems worth remembering at the beginning of a new academic year, when there is a peculiar pressure to

make everything count. Uni is very good at selling the exceptional, with our Freshers’ Week and society balls, trips away, and that big group picture that circulates your Instagram feed for days afterwards. There is always some sense that somewhere, at some point, the real university experience is about to begin and you can spend a surprising amount of time waiting for your life to become interesting. When you first arrive, every new experience and every new person can feel like something you are supposed to do correctly. You have to push yourself, you have to make friends, you have to join things, you have to say yes, you have to make memories. You have to, somehow, become the person you imagined you would be when you pictured yourself at university. And then, eventually, you realise that this is just your life now. This feeling only hit me well into the second semester and I can’t pinpoint the reason why it took me so long but the long lists of ordinary things I’d do all day eventually led me to what I considered my every-day life now. Sat on a wall between classes protecting my overpriced lunch from birds, late to a seminar, in Lidl trying to use vouchers, complaining about the Irish weather to someone who will aggressively nod along, walking home with someone I met three weeks ago, sat around the dining

table playing card games with my flatmates. In the most wonderful way, friendship can be entirely unimpressive. Maybe this is where the invitation becomes more

If friendship is built from ordinary things, then inviting someone into those ordinary things might be one of the most meaningful things we can do

interesting than it first appears. If friendship is built from ordinary things, then inviting someone into those ordinary things might be one of the most meaningful things we can do. It is easy to think of an invitation as something reserved for occasions, birthdays, weddings, parties, a dress code or a venue or at least a vaguely convincing reason to leave the house. The best and kindest ones are far less glamorous. Do you want to walk over with me? Do you want to sit here? I’m getting food, do you want anything? We’re going to the Pav. I’m going to the library. Do you want to come? There is something almost embarrassingly simple about it, which is why perhaps that is why we are so bad at it. There will be people who seem to have made friends immediately, who already know where everyone

wondering why nobody has asked you to come is going and what everyone is doing. There will also be peosomewhere when, somewhere else, someone is wonple who go home after their first day and wonder whether dering whether they would be weird for asking you. everyone else has somehow figured it out already. There is a lot of pretending involved You pretend to be more comfortable than you are until you in being new somewhere. are, pretend to know where you are going until you know It is almost like a show or a facade, the way we put on campus like the back of your hand, pretend you have somethe outfits of our best selves. where to be until, eventually, you actually do I say this with no shame or judgement. Meeting people when everyone is a slightly Maybe we spend too much time trying to exaggerated version of themselves is half the excitement work out whether someone else has decided we beof September. Everyone is a little more confident, a little long, when belonging is often something much less more sociable, a little more willing to tell a story to someofficial than that. An accumulation of everything, one they have known for seven minutes. You pretend to big and small, that happens in your new life is exbe more comfortable than you are until you are, pretend hausting enough. The day becomes meaningful not to know where you are going until you know campus like because anything extraordinary happens, but bethe back of your hand, pretend you have somewhere to be cause someone is paying attention to it. Perhaps this until, eventually, you actually do. Something sweet about September we could stop waiting for belonging to all of us doing this together, underneath the performance announce itself and make it a little more ordinary, most people are hoping roughly for the same thing, just a little less intimidating, a little less dependent on somewhere to stop performing for a little bit. whether somebody uses exactly the right words. Honestly, this is the part of social life that we There is no perfect invitation. There is no precise sometimes make unnecessarily difficult. We are so scared point at which an acquaintance becomes a friend, of being unwanted that we become frightened of wanting no sentence that guarantees that you belong. anyone. We wait for people to prove that they want us beAfter all, there is fore we show that we want them, we do not want to invite something very nice about a university afternoon in which nobody really knows what they are doing. That boresome lecture is over. You have nowhere particularly important to be. The evil seagull is still sitting on the globe. Someone is going to the Pav. You’ll find that you feel confident and comourselves, we do not want to seem too keen, we do not fortable enough to join want to ask whether we are included, we do not want to them. risk discovering that someone we thought was our friend

Perhaps, this September we could stop waiting for belonging to announce itself and make it a little more ordinary, a little less intimidating, a little less dependent on whether somebody uses exactly the right words

considers us an acquaintance. So everyone becomes very casual, if you want, no worries if not, you can come if you’re around. The entire university social system could probably be held together by the phrase no pressure. But perhaps there should be a little pressure, and not the kind that makes you go to Drury Street for the fifth time this week when you want to stay home, or forces you to have a hundred friends, or tells you that the September-to-December stretch of the academic year must be the best four months of your life, but just the tiny pressure to be brave enough to ask. The strange thing about waiting to be invited is that everyone else may be waiting too. You can spend an entire evening 8

Theatre in Turmoil

Riots and Discontent in Ireland’s National Theatre Isobel Kelly peels back the history of Ireland’s National Theatre in order to understand connections between the continued unrest and the repercussions of those censorships on Irish art today

Theatre to have staged such a piece, alluding to the west he Abbey Theatre, founded in 1904, is one of my of Ireland as a place where murderers were taken in and favourite places in Dublin. As Ireland’s national made an object of local affection, was seen as a great intheatre, it has played host to numerous productions, sult and slight upon the nature of the Irish people. I find some more welcomed than others. 1907’s Playboy of the Western World (Playboy) and 1926’s The Plough and the it interesting to note how political outrage matched with a growing disquiet amongst audience members, which Stars were two of the more controversial productions. led to “demonstrations … not witnessed in Dublin for Although subject to the same riotous response by audia considerable period” as quoted in the Evening Mail. ences, the plays dealt with very different topics; Playboy Chairs beaten with sticks, shouts filling the auditorium, showcased the impact of murder on a small Irish village, whilst The Plough and the Stars covered topics including and a heavy police presence overshadowed the producthe 1916 Rising and the Irish Citizen’s Army (ICA). Both tion’s second and third night, with rudimentary instrustagings led to much anger and public outcry at the Abments forming the basis for this riotous response to the bey’s willingness to produce material that was deemed controversial material onstage. highly offensive and contrary to public opinion and Synge, suffering at that time from influenza and morals. The centrality of attempted public censorship being the most hated man in the building, sat amongst a through these riots is important to note and remember crowd braying for blood, listening to chants of “kill the when discussing them. Indeed, when considering the author.” Something that has always struck me strange is political and media commentary that surrounded them, the violence that was invoked, and the irony in what the one must consider the real aims behind these violent rioters chanted. One might assume that a crowd, so inevents, and the more sinister undertones that emerge censed at the depiction of Irish townspeople as harbourunder closer examination. ers of violent murders, would take this ire into account Written by JM Synge, Playboy is said to be loosein making their discomfort clear. Alas, violence depicted ly based on a story overheard whilst the writer was holon stage was answered with violence in the auditorium. idaying on the Aran Islands. A tale of considerable woe, The definitive aims behind this protest-turned-riot, even Playboy follows Christy, a young man seeking refuge whilst considering the politically conservative climate in a small Irish One might assume that a crowd, so incensed at the of the time, remain village, who unclear. The prevdepiction of Irish townspeople as harbourers of violent claims that he alence of violence, killed his father murders, would take this ire into account in making the deeply aggresin a fit of rage. sive and threatenStaged in a far their discomfort clear. Alas, violence depicted on stage ing language used more socially all raise the queswas answered with violence in the auditorium and politically tion - at what point conservative Ireland than we know today, such procladid a protest become a riot? Although the furore died mations naturally shocked the audience, with their ire down and took a turn for the better as show week proonly increasing as Synge creates a world wherein the logressed, the troubling matter of violence was not yet cal villagers support, rather than shun, the so-called titover at the Abbey. ular ‘playboy’. Lady Gregory, one of the founders of the 1926 saw the production of Seán O’Casey’s final Abbey and a respected dramatist in her own right, is said play in his Dublin Trilogy – The Plough and the Stars, to have noted to her co-founder WB Yeats in a letter that named in reference to the flag of the ICA. O’Casey was the inclusion of the word “shift” (slang term for women’s previously a member of the ICA, but left as he was opposed underwear and a then-risqué term to use in public) led to the use of violence in seeking a United Ireland. In conto consternation amongst audience members, offering trast to Synge’s work, O’Casey’s was deemed controverfurther fuel to their rising anger. sial from the start, with attempts made by governmental Arthur Griffith, then leader of Sinn Féin, derepresentatives on the Abbey’s Board of Directors to prescribed the story as “vile and inhumane.” For the Abbey vent its staging. Fearing a reprise of the violence seen in 9

ond night’s performance that gives an insight into the first stirrings of discon1907, tent. Holloway writes of how there were the scene in which an ICA flag is brought into a pub heavy alterawas received with disapproval by half a dozen women tions made to in the front section of the theatre with “two policemen the initial text, on the scene” as a result, although he fails to note what diminishing the exactly about the scene caused their distress on this ocmore “bawdy” nature casion. In examining his writings, a common thread of scenes in the pubemerges, namely that this particular scene was the prilic house. Censorship in mary cause of controversy throughout the production’s advance of production of run. The centrality of Rosie Redmond, a local prostitute, O’Casey’s work makes the latto the scene led to much moral outcry in later showings, er riots far more interesting to furthering calls for the censorship and removal of referconsider. Even having edited and ences to her trade. removed supposedly offensive mateThe Irish Times Emblematic of an Ireland that hugely struggled wrote of how the rioters with censorship and a deeply conservative view of “followed the example of the material that Irish audiences were to consume, their predecessors of the Playboy days.” Reports this same unwillingness to open up to new ideas suggest rushes (by a surand art forms led to a huge creative loss prising number of women) to the stage from the rial, the play still was deemed pit, with fist fights involving actors and audience memtoo controversial for the aubers alike. The riots became a vehicle, once more, for dience present. It further anger to be taken out on the actors on stage. Something raises the question as to that became very apparent to me in the context of rewhat level of sanitation the searching this particular production was the aggravated material would have had violence displayed towards the female actors, who were to undergo, in order to physically assaulted by numerous male audience memprevent such a response bers. Violent displays towards women, particularly as from occurring. they attempted to perform at their place of work, were O’Casey’s work was utilised as a means to demean and subdue. One could more explicit in quite reasonably suggest that these riots were not, in nature than Synge’s, and was fact, a protest, but instead acted as a cover for perpetstaunchly anti-ICA, a viewpoint that uating violence against women, under the guise of atjarred with that of the wider audience in attendance. Set tempting to keep the Abbey stage free from supposedly in a Dublin tenement between 1915 and 1916, the play controversial material. The number of women from the follows the lives of local residents, as they anticipate an audience who became embroiled in the conflict, is conIrish Republic, before their lives are torn apart over the cerning on one hand, and deeply sad on another, given course of the Rising. In considering O’Casey’s play, one the distressing nature of the vitriol leveled at the actressmust consider the reverence that was placed upon the es on stage. A play which, according to the Irish Times, leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, particularly in the early was about “the tragedy of women”, became that but in a years of the Irish Free State. Those who had been mardifferent way than was initially intended by the paper. tyred at the hands of the British Army were held in the As many similarities as the two riots held, unlike utmost regard, as indeed was the flag of the ICA. with the Playboy riots, Yeats came on stage in the midst Joseph Holloway, a prominent critic and diarist at of this violence to speak (rather shout) to the audience. the time, wrote a number of diary entries in relation to In a more humorous aside to this supposed “imprompthe riots that occurred around The Plough and the Stars. tu” speech by Yeats, he reportedly wrote the speech in His initial observations highlighted how he believed it fell advance, leaving the theatre as the riots kicked off to “far short of Juno and the Paycock” (another play in the deliver his words to the Irish Times, before returning Dublin Trilogy). However, it is his attendance at the secto the stage. On-stage, he is believed to have lamented 10

the “Irish Genius”, stating that the audience had “disgraced [them]selves again.” It’s hard to imagine counthese words would have had try, nevany real impact at that time on those present, er to return, however, it’s worth noting that, as with Playboy, the riots another Irish fizzled out as quickly as they had started. sent The riots appeared to offer a medium, though not talent abroad. “Bufa very productive one, for dissatisfied audience members to share their anger at the work they had witnessed. foonery and senti- m e nt” The very act of “riots” within the theatre on multiple oc- easy casions poses the question as to their ultimate aim, be- is what Hugh H u n t yond showing their anger, given neither of them result- claimed the Abbey Theaabolish upon its ed in the cancellation of production runs. In examining tre sought to Yet, despite all this, these riots, one must question whether the protests were foundation. one might argue that taking purely in response to individual audience members’ and going against the opinions on perceived slights on the people of Ireland, risks or whether it was the views raised in local newspapers status quo was what drove the riots that led to an influencing of public sentiment. Newspa- to begin, with the subject matter per coverage around the two eventsAlthough Ireland continues to be renowned highlighted various aspects of the as the “land of saints and scholars”, there contents of the plays. The Freeman’s Journal in 1907 decried the writ- still remains a disconnect in actually ing of Playboy, stating that it was funding these artistic opportunities “quite clear there is need for a censor in the Abbey Theatre.” The idea of censorship being all too serious and ‘real’ for brought into the theatre was referenced in another pri- audiences to handle. Riots that were mary source, that of Lady Gregory’s diary. Offering an short lived and only insight into the possibility of censorship and the lengths the Abbey would go to in order to protect their freedom temporary had a huge to produce the work they wanted to, Gregory discusses impact on both artlivelihoods. the importance of choosing freedom over monetary as- ists’ sistance. “If we have to choose between the subsidy and Emblematic of an our freedom, it is our freedom we choose.” As Ireland’s Ireland that hugefirst state-subsidised theatre, there appeared to be addi- ly struggled with tional pressure on the Abbey to maintain a certain level censorship and a of restraint in the work they produced. The provocatory deeply conservanature of the newspaper’s content further outlines the tive view of the mamore challenging aspects of public opinion at the time, terial that Irish audiences were in relation to these riots. Contextually, in today’s world, to consume, this same unwillingness to there is enormous pressure to conform to pre-existing open up to new ideas and art forms led to a huge creaideals and standards, many of which are outdated and tive loss. Equally, this same loss continually happens in irrelevant to a modern society. I’ve often felt that student Ireland today, with a huge amount of Irish talent having and fringe productions are some of the only places to to emigrate or relocate abroad in search of opportunities see the same levels of creative risk be taken nowadays, that are just not present here. Although Ireland continexploring more challenging material through an artistic ues to be renowned as the “land of saints and scholars”, there still remains a disconnect in actually funding these lens, similar to O’Casey. But what of the longer-term impacts of these riots? artistic opportunities. A long history of censorship in For both Synge and O’Casey, these riots and the negative the Irish creative sphere and beyond has served to stifle publicity generated as a result of their productions led to growth, under the guise of preserving the traditions and their being effectively “blacklisted.” Synge died in 1909, values of the past. These riots were a rebellion against a two years after Playboy, never seeing his talent nor the rebellion, although with a far worse outcome creatively, impact of his work be truly recognised. O’Casey left the than could scarcely have been imagined. 11

The Things We Couldn’t Leave Behind “I

t’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to Vasiliki Batzoglou do anything.” It is what the infamous character of peeks into the suitcases Tyler Durden shouts in Fight Club, and it’s what I have been trying to convince myself since moving to Dublin of international for my undergrad: let go of my past material things and students to find the most (un) make space for new ones. necessary memorabilia they carry For the first one and a half years of living in Dublin, I had no pictures of my loved ones hanging on the in their battle against homesickwalls of my Trinity Hall room. Only posters of random ness bands and a BDS leaflet from Fresher’s Week occupied my cork board. There was no trace of my pre-Dublin life. part of bring me so much comfort in my shoebox Although I blamed this absence on my procrastinating Dublin dorm? I had so carefully placed them in expertise, I my suitcase before leaving for DubWhy does memorabilia become more envied my lin, buried them in a box, and then flatmate’s pic-meaningful when we are physically further ignored them for a long time. Yet, tures of high somehow and for some reason, their away from what they represent? school friends value had now returned. Their power and relatives hanging across her bed that she looked at to transport me home felt stronger than ever. So I startevery night before falling asleep. ed wondering: why does memorabilia become more I knew that inside my dusted boxes filled with a ranmeaningful when we are physically further away from dom collection of receipts, museum tickets and other what they represent? tangible evidence of my hoarding habits, there were picThere is, unsurprisingly, some psychology betures I had stolen from my grandmother’s photo albums hind our attachment to things. As Christian Jarrett some summers ago. One melancholic night in February explains in The Psychology of Stuff and Things, by the of second year, I finally opened my very own Pandora’s age of two we understand the idea of possessing things. box. Between ages three and six, we emotionally attach ourThere were photographs of my grandmother in selves to objects, and by six we put extra value on objects her village garden, my mom’s fifth birthday party in a simply because we own them. In fact, teenagers place a tiny room full of cousins and aunts, and my great-grandlot of sentimental value on their possessed objects and father’s fierce figure standing between vines during the use them as identity anchors amid the passing emotion1960 harvest. There were more twentieth-century phoal storms of adolescence. However, as we grow older and tographs of extended family, along with a hundred difchange living environments, some of that attachment ferent emotions that seemed to come rushing back. shifts away from material items and towards people and I glued some of the pictures to my walls. Suddenrelationships. ly, I was surrounded by a mix of familiar and unknown From a blunt and practical sense, this makes tofaces, mostly dead or living far away from where I was. tal sense: stuff needs space, space warrants cardboard But why did photographs of a past I had never been a 12

boxes, and cardboard boxes translate into costly and effort-consuming storage. So, at that key juncture international students face before packing their bags to study abroad, comes the decision of what deserves a place in our limited luggage.

Dublin, as part of a Halloween costume. Then they went back to decorative retirement. This is the strange role of things we carry from home. An object becomes a metonym for particular moments, people, and places experienced with its owner. An object becomes metonym for particular Moving far away from the place and time those experiences gives it a new life. It moments, people, and places experienced with its of can listen when you need it and silently owner. Moving far away from the place and timeoffer you some comfort to fight homesickness. Or it can tell the story it carries when of those experiences gives it a new life a newly made friend walks in your room Such a ritual of self-curation is by no means an on a random Thursday afternoon and asks: “What are easy one. We are forced to decide which objects repre- those?” sent us, remind us where they came from, and, ultimateI do not know if my late great-grandfather’s ly, are the version of home we want to reproduce in our photograph on my wall may ‘speak’ to any of my Dublin new room. And it is not necessarily always the most val- friends. But to me, it is concrete evidence of a part of my uable or practical object that makes the cut. identity. Those identity anchors matter when you are I discovered this after asking some of my internation- constantly moving between countries, people, and genal friends in Trinity what they had brought with them. erations. Things of such sentimental value are also key What I learned was that their memorabilia often sat at to setting boundaries and establishing a private space opposite ends of the spectrum. within an unfamiliar environment. An international On the one hand were my French flatmate’s pic- student’s room can initially feel temporary and foreign. tures of loved ones from back home. An expected, yet A photograph or an icon can change that. The story benever over-saturated choice that acts as a reminder of hind the object is projected onto the space, transformthe solid friendships she has built throughout the years. ing a university sanctioned room into yours. On the other end of the spectrum, my Polish But there is another question hiding underfriend admitted that he had brought his pair of busted neath the importance of memorabilia and the nostalgia Converse shoes. They were filled with mud stains and it inevitably brings: when does holding onto home stop gaping holes accumulated during his high school years. you from experiencing the present? How does ‘home Why, I wondered, would you want to carry those stinky life’ make space for ‘Dublin life’? shoes all the way to the other side of Europe, even if you Do we eventually have to listen to Tyler Durden’s know you are never going to wear them? words of wisdom and let go? I don’t think so. The same bubble of question marks appeared You don’t necessarily have to choose between in my head when another friend told me that she had remembering home and living in the present. brought with her an Orthodox icon from a monastery in Objects can evolve alongside you. Romania, her home country. Her second message to me My flatmate did not let go of her photo colfollowed quickly: “this makes me seem religious when I lection. Instead, she enhanced it with pictures of the am not lol, but it will all make sense when I explain it to friends she made in Dublin. My Romanian friend’s Oryou”. thodox icon originally belonged to her pre-Dublin life, And she was right. but gained a new meaning precisely because she moved What matters is not what the object is, but how it away. And the Converse devotee eventually gave away activates our memory. his shoes to a friend he made in Dublin who desperately The icon had been given to her by a priest while needed another pair because her own were too tight. He she was waiting for her CAO results. Its blue background was the only one who truly let go. Even then, the shoes also happened to resemble the colour of Trinity’s crest. stayed within the Dublin perimeter, where they simply My friend is not religious, and the icon does not neces- acquired a new chapter, bridging the past and present. sarily carry a spiritual meaning for her. Instead, it beMaybe this is the somewhat flaw in Tyler’s words: you came a small foreshadowing of the decision that would do not have to lose your chosen memorabilia in the past take her abroad. Now, sitting in her Dublin dorm, it is a to begin a new life. Objects are not necessarily tied to symbol of home and the art and culture of Romania. one place, one person or one version of yourself. As life The same goes for my Polish friend’s Converse. slowly progresses in Dublin, objects gain their own perIt was never about the shoes’ practical use, but rather sonality—carrying the past while quietly collecting the about the mud stains they had picked up while taking present. They connect two lives, two places, two timeshortcuts to his secondary school, and the scrapes they lines. collected while he climbed abandoned buildings on Therefore, they do not deserve to be lost. weekends with his friends. He’s only worn them once in 13

The Neuroscience of Hangxiety: Were You Really That Embarassing Last Night?

Defne Öğüç explains what actually happens to our brains after a night of drinking and reassures us that things aren’t always as bad as we remember. Or are they...

e have all been there. A few pints with friends somehow turns into a night which makes you scared to look over your phone next morning. Snapchat notifications remain unopened, the group chat suddenly feels threatening. And, for reasons you cannot quite recall, your ex’s name is sitting suspiciously high in your recent calls. Then, along with the headache, comes the investigation. What did I say? Who did I talk to? And, most importantly, did I embarrass myself? Sometimes, admittedly, the evidence speaks for itself. But the crushing sense of embarrassment you feel the morning after drinking is not necessarily an accurate measure of just how badly you behaved. It is important to remember that alcohol itself can help create the perfect neurological conditions for anxiety, rumination and that strangely convincing feeling that you have committed some unforgivable social crime. So, before you decide that splitting a few G’s has irreversibly destroyed your social life, it might be worth asking what alcohol has actually done to your brain.

11pm: When “Maybe I Shouldn’t” Becomes “Why Not”? Imagine your brain as a car. Our brains work on neurons, brain cells that transmit information constantly firing. What makes the neurons fire depends on the chemical messenger, neurotransmitter balance in our brain. This makes the neurons more likely or less likely to fire. Therefore,we can think of the brain as the car constantly controlling acceleration and braking. The amino acid glutamate is the brain’s major excitatory neurotransmitter, it pushes the neuronal activity forward. So we can think of it as an accelerator. Followingly, GABA (γ-aminobutyric acid) is the major inhibitory neurotransmitter. It makes neurons less likely to fire, so in this analogy our brake. Our brain needs both. You wouldn’t want it to constantly accelerate, but you also wouldn’t want the brake permanently engaged, and alcohol –ethanol – interferes with both sides of this balancing act. Rather than simply “increasing GABA,” ethanol can also strengthen inhibitory GABAergic signalling in certain neural circuits. At the same time, it suppresses some of glutamate’s excitatory signalling, including activity through 14

NMDA receptors. In our driving analogy, alcohol can therefore make parts of the brain’s brake more effective while simultaneously interfering with the accelerator. This results in an overall shift towards inhibition, which is why alcohol is classified as a central nervous system depressant. As such, your reaction times slows down, coordination deteriorates and, as you drink more and more, attention and memory begin to suffer. But strangely enough, your behaviour might become less inhibited. Alcohol doesn’t simply turn the entire brain down equally; it also disrupts circuits involved in judgement and behavioural control. So while neuronal activity is being suppressed, some of the systems normally responsible for telling you “maybe don’t do that” are becoming less effective. And suddenly, calling your ex doesn’t seem like such a terrible idea.

2am: A Night Not To Remember (Nothing Good Happens After 2am) As night progresses and you drink more, another brain region becomes particularly relevant: the hippocampus. Hippocampus is a brain region that is particularly important in creating and storing memories. This brings us back to our accelerator, glutamate. The N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDA), which are found in the hippocampus are glutamate receptors and play an important role in neural plasticity and memory formation. Therefore, at high levels of intoxication, like having seven buzzballs or 12 pints, this disruption of receptors interfere dramatically with the formation of new memories (White, 2003). So now we are at a point where your judgment is impaired and your brain is so heavily intoxicated with alcohol that you are unable to have tonight as a memory. This is where the night screams like trouble and leads to a potential blackout. Blackouts can be fragmentary, leaving scattered gaps in memory that may sometimes be recovered with cues, such as the snaps your friends sent or “Wait, you seriously don’t remember doing that?” questions. Blackouts could also be en bloc, where an entire period of time is missing from the memory in a non retrievable way. And herein lies one of the perfect ingredients for tomorrow morning’s hangxiety: uncertainty.

Therefore, while you are unconscious lying in your bed, unbothered by the damage, your body and brain are having a less peaceful night. By the time your alarm goes off you may find yourself much more uncomfortable than when your head first hit the pillow. And unfortunately, this is exactly when the investigation begins.

10am: Good Morning Hangiexty Your eyes open. Headache. Dry mouth. Nausea. Fatigue. Then you remember. Or, perhaps more importantly, you don’t. This is where the physical hangover becomes psychological. “Hangxiety” might sound like something invented in a group chat between friends but recent research shows there is a correlation between being hungover and an increased negative affect in your mood and how some get it worse. Research carried out by Rothman et al suggests that psychological characteristics may actually influence how strongly people experience the negative emotional effects of a hangover. Rothman suggests that greater baseline anxiety, repetitive negative thinking, avoidant coping styles and difficulties with emotional regulation were associated 4-8am: System Tries To Go with worse negative affect during hangovers (2026). This is the part where you really start feeling the effects Back To Normal of staying out till 2, if you suffer from a blackout. You Eventually, after surviving the night bus home and don’t necessarily remember doing something embarcollapsing into bed, the sweet relief of sleep finalrassing. Sometimes you remember just enough to know ly catches up with you. Meanwhile, your blood althat you might have done something embarrassing. cohol concentration begins to fall as your body You remember entering the pub. You metabolises the alcohol from the night before. remember meeting someone. You vagueUnfortunately, passing out the second your head hits ly remember talking to them. Then.., nothing. the pillow does not necessarily mean you are in for a Your call history, however, remembers everything. good night’s sleep. Throughout the night your body So, were you really that embarrassing last is trying to restore the homeostasis, a relatively stanight? Possibly. Neuroscience cannot tell you the stoble condition for the human body to function healthy. ry behind whatever is sitting in your sent messages. This process is sometimes The crushing sense of embarrassment you feel the But the intensidescribed online as a simmorning after drinking is not necessarily an accurate ty of the shame ple “GABA crash” or “gluyou feel the next measure of just how badly you behaved tamate rebound,” but the morning is not neuroscience behind it is necessarily proportional to the severity of your crimes. considerably more complicated. With repeated alcohol Your sleep-deprived, physiologically stressed, and exposure, the brain can adapt to alneurochemically unsettled brain is trying to reconcohol constantly pushing its struct a partially remembered night while simultaneactivity towards inhibition. When alcohol is removed, ously being unusually vulnerable to negative emotion. these adaptations can temporarily leave the nervOn that note, of course, don’t forget to drink reous system overly active, hyperexcitable, which is why sponsibly. But it’s Freshers’ Week, you are in colanxiety and restlessness are associated with alcohol lege, and nights are bound to get a little messiwithdrawal (Becker et al., 2014). However, an ordier than planned. So when morning comes, open nary hangover after a night out cannot be explained the Snapchat. Face the group chat. And maybe, by this mechanism alone. Research suggests that the if you’re brave enough, check your call history. morning-after experience is, instead, a mixture of Just remember: everyone else is too busy investigating several processes, including disrupted sleep, alcotheir own questionable decisions to spend much time hol metabolism, inflammation and changes in brain thinking about yours and chances are, it wasn’t nearly signalling (Palmer et al., 2019). as bad as your hungover brain is telling you it was. 15 10

On Cemeteries

Mathilda Gross muses on cities and where they bury their dead in order to understand cemeteries as sites of cultural inscription and memory (“One can survive everything nowadays, except death…” - Oscar Wilde, “A Woman of No Importance”)

ent aging bodies as monstrous while immortal digital worlds casually encroach on our everyday lives. Yet it is not only death but also dying which is being ampun Schöneberg, St. Matthäus cemetery sits between a tated from our cultural discourse. In her kitchen, my train station and a biweekly Turkish produce market. German grandmother who grew up next to a cemeKelp-like ivy clings to its large arched entry, and a soft tery reminds me: “death used to be a part of life.” After hill slopes through neatly parted rows. German graves her father returned from the war with a wound in his are leased for 25 years, the time it takes for bodies to stomach, her mother began working odd jobs to feed decompose. After that nothing but nails and rings retheir children. One of these jobs was collecting and main. reselling discarded cemetery flowers. My grandmothSt. Matthäus is not an unusual cemetery. There er, whose hands shake when she places food on the is a chapel in which funerals are held, peeling plastic crowded kitchen table, tells me that people used to die signs preaching graveside etiquette, and old men bendat home, and that afterwards, the community would ing over headstones to scrape at stubborn ferns. But if come and sit with the body and cook for the bereaved. you know where to look, all cemeteries are home to The corpse would often rest in the house for days becertain oddities. At St. Matthäus, stuffy Prussian nobles fore burial. This change in our cultural proximity to neighbor the empty graves of exhumed Nazi-resistance dying makes her uneasy, but it does not make her want fighters. AIDs victims rest in memorials a few meters to spend time in cemeteries. down the path from the This kind of meeting ground, sometimes In some ways, German cemBrothers Grimm.1In the found in cemeteries, is dying out in a eteries, always efficient and pragsummer, St. Matthäus matic, are an ironic place to explore culture obsessed with escaping death is nearly silent. Only mourning and mortality. On a sunthe occasional shout from the market or rush from a ny afternoon in February my godfather and I walk passing train disturbs the rustling green trees. When it through the cemetery on which he spent a large part of snows, as it has this winter, red plastic candles faithfulhis youth. In the 1980s, small-town cemeteries were a ly glow beneath a tidal drag of snow. space for outsiders: queer youth, artists, and members St. Matthäus, while much like every other cemof the punk and goth scenes. Now, his mother lies buretery, could also only exist here, in Berlin, between a ied here. After 20 years4, her lease is about to expire. A train station and a Turkish produce market. Nestled gruff cemetery grounds keeper has told my godfather just inside its imposing entry sits Café Finovo, the first that there is no reason to renew the plot, nothing but cemetery café in Germany, acting as a meeting ground a wedding ring is left of her. This is my first time at her for young people with a taste for the bizarre and old grave, and only the second time that I am meeting her. people who stop by on their way to tend graves. OrigWe have brought her flowers and carefully adjust the inally opened by cabaret artist and gay-activist Bernd shells lining the base of her headstone which my godfaBoßmann after the loss of his friend, Finovo was crether collected in her birthplace, Portugal. My godfather ated as a space for the living, “to pull life a little further speaks of her to me in a way he has not before. He tells into the cemetery.”2 Finovo means both beginning and me they will take what they can of her headstone back end. There is only one “n” in Finovo because Boßmann to her ocean-lined home after the grave is dissolved. It believes an ending “already contains the new within does not feel like we are standing over empty ground. itself.”3 Here, on jarringly colorful folding chairs and My mother named me on a cemetery, but not under the casual supervision of chainsmoking waitat St. Matthäus. My mother is a German Catholic but resses, life and death meet. she named me on the largest surviving Jewish cemeThis kind of meeting ground, sometimes found tery in Europe. There, between fallen trees and pebin cemeteries, is dying out in a culture obsessed with ble-lined headstones she found a German name for escaping death. From anti-aging interventions to bioher half-American, half-Jewish daughter. Friedhof hacking technology, many innovations seem designed Berlin-Weißensee lies in the city’s north-east, about 2,5 to distance those who can afford it from their mortalkilometers from the lake promised in its name. There ity. At the same time, body-horror blockbusters presis a lot of life on Weißensee–its 42 hectares of forest

and mausoleums are frequented by the surrounding of strangers, I could imagine their ashes washing up to neighborhood’s young families and joggers. Because me, the gates of the cemetery like a leaning shoreline. the dead are not embalmed and coffins are held toOr maybe, for the last three years, I have intermittently gether by wooden pegs instead of There, under green awnings and between the mossy graves of nails, death on Jewish cemeteries strangers, I could imagine their ashes washing up to me, the gates brings with it a flourish of plant of the cemetery like a leaning shoreline life which spreads, uncontained. For many German Jews, cemeteries like this found myself in (German) cemeteries because I moved one stand out against a background of memorials away from Germany, to Dublin. Cemeteries have long and cenotaphs. Between the walls of this cem-e been a space in which we mourn our dead and begin to tery lay the bodies of people who were burconfront mortality. But as a potential meeting ground ied as individ uals under their own between life and death, they are also places in which names. Weißensee in we can think about the way we want to live, particular was a place of and how we want to be remembered. Whenlife for Jews in Nazi Germany ever I am back in Berlin, I am pulled to my because it was protected by cemeteries. They allow me to acknowledge rumors that it was haunthow time has passed since I was last here. ed. In the documentary Im I have never been to a cemetery in Dublin. Himmel, unter der Erde, Instead, I find a feeling much like the one I Holocaust survivor Harhave in cemeteries when I lower myself into ry Kindermann explains: the Irish Sea every Sunday to swim. “For the Nazis, this Jewish A few days before returning to Dublin cemetery was shrouded in for my last year at Trinity, I went to Weißensuperstition. That is to say, see with my mother. We found eight Mathilthere were apparently rumdas buried there. Maybe there are also ors going around that someMathildas buried in Dublin cemeteries, thing wasn’t quite right there. but I have yet to find them. There is some kind of ghost…” On a Friday in July, I take the metWeißensee was haunted, not by ro to the Père-Lachais cemetery ghosts but rather people trying in Paris to see the graves of Gerto escape deportation. While most t r u d e Stein and Oscar Wilde. Père-Lachais, like Jewish cemeteries were destroyed St. Matthäus, rests on a small slope. Unlike St. Matby the Nazis, Weißensee–and those thäus, it is surrounded by a green area where ashes hiding there–remained largely undisare spread. It is one of the last days of the summer turbed. heatwave and only few people seem to be visiting the St. Matthäus and Weißensee cemetery at this hour. I share the shade in front of offer different ways of reading Berlin. Wilde’s grave with a woman my age; we shyTheir paths, like all cemeteries, ly gaze through the protective glass smudged retrace the world around with kisses at the offerings of those who us, neatly parted or overcame here before us. She sits down to write, grown, the interwoven strata of loI walk back towards the entrance gates. In the cal and personal histories. For the time that has passed, a group has formed, dressed in last three years, I have interblack and huddled around a woman in mourning, mittently found myself in half sprawled over the rope separating the path these cemeteries. Maybe from the green. They seem to undulate under this is because my Amerthe burning sun. The grass is streaked with ican grandparents, who white, almost like light breaking through both died in this time, the depths of coiling seas. I find another are not buried in a cemway back to the large arched entry, a gate etery. Counter to Jewish that is not overgrown with ivy and does tradition, they were crematnot rest between a train station and a produce ed, and their ashes are spread over different corners market. Somehow, the mourners have caught up with of the Arizona desert. In the days after their deaths, me. A watery breeze sweeps us through the gate like a I spent hours at St. Matthäus and Weißensee. There, tide rushing towards sun-warmed stones. under green awnings and between the mossy graves 17

FRESHER’S GUIDE Sonnets To Orpheus, Part Two, XII By Rainer Maria Rilke Want the Change. Be inspired by the flame Where everything shines as it disappears. The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much as the curve of the body as it turns away. What locks itself in sameness has congealed. Is it safer to be gray and numb? What turns hard becomes rigid and is easily shattered Welcome and congratulations on wanting “the change!” Being a fresher is an exciting endeavour in itself, yet truly being inspired by the flame means sowing, and then reaping the fruits of your labour. Despite this promise of Eden, starting a new experience such as college for the first time also entails feelings of malaise, loneliness, and stress. However, Freshers week is made simple once you feel tethered to the ground. During freshers there will be an expansive database of information at your fingertips. Luckily, reading on and gaining knowledge from our database will keep your feet on the ground! Pour yourself into our Freshers’ issue and bask into the knowledge that you seek! Pour yourself like a fountain. Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins. Every happiness is the child of a separation it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel, dares you to become the wind. - Joy

INSIDE Eve McGann lays out A PREPPERS GUIDE FOR FRESHERS WEEK Marina Nicolaidis shares her SECRETS FROM A SENIOR SOPHISTER Dan Bowe demystifies THE TRINITY MUSIC SCENE Eliora Abramson reveals SOCIETY’S TOP FOUR MOVIES ON LETTERBOXD

Fresher’s Week: A Preppers Guide In some of the most remote corners of the world, there are people who are preparing for the worst. When AI shuts down the grid, or climate disaster collapses existing social order, it is the preppers, above all others, who will be ready. - Eve

While I’m not sure if a doomsday event does occur that I will really want to be alive for the aftermath, there is still some logic in being prepared. But I’m a procrastinator and the purchase of my spearfishing-shotgun-bear-whacking-club is still pending on Amazon (CIA have taken a sizeable interest). So, in the meantime I think you, dear Fresher, are better off preparing for Freshers week and the mayhem of Freshers fair than the end of the world. After all, this will be good practice. So, here’s how to prepare for something that is much more impending and can seem equally daunting: Fresher’s week - a prepper’s guide. We’ve all been there, and trust me, I wish someone had told me….

A Reasonably Sized Tote or Crossbody Bag

Ditch the backpack. The concept of “doing homework” has been replaced by the concept of “going for a sweet treat”. Your bag needs to be just big enough to carry all the free pens you will amass, but small enough to still look as though you are not actually carrying anything.

Twine

This is essential for tying to the buddy you may or may not have brought with you - your friend, your mum, your comfort pet - so that neither of you get lost. Being separated can be super scary and if your p a l strays too far just give them a yank, and they’ll bounce right back.

A Fire Extinguisher

You can fit this in your reasonably sized tote/crossbody. If a member of Circus Soc offers you a flame thrower, you can be prepared if things get too *lit.

A Bow & Arrow/ Whistle

As the littlest fish in the pond, you need some form of defence. The seagulls have been preparing themselves all summer for this event. They’re craving fresh meat. When they inevitably attempt a dive bomb, blow on your whistle three times to summon Linda Doyle’s protection. Or, if you’re feeling brazen, - HIYAH ! - the archery club (I think we have an archery club?) may even recruit you or Trinity States & Facilities for their newly established department - department of war, I mean, defence.

A Pocket Dictionary -

You need to know what the acronym TCDSU/AMLCT stands for. Just kidding! You never need to know what it stands for. Still, when push comes to shove and it’s every student for themself in the brawl for the SU-sponsored free pizza, you can wedge the slices between the pages of the dictionary and Trojan horse your way to safety.

A First Aid Kit

In case your bow and arrow misfires. Offer a potential new friend one of your pocket hand sanitizers, or a gauze strip.

A Map

Of all the nearest exit routes in case you get cornered by an SMF representative asking you to join The Student Management Fund. (What is this fund and why does it need to be managed? What are shares? And equity? And “exchange traded fund instruments”??!) All I know is I’m too young to wear a quarter zip. Front Square gates will be your best bet. The *secret* wine cellar below the GMB may be your second.

A Tent

Get barricade at the stalls and snag some Lemon crepes while they’re still hot by camping beneath the Campanile overnight. The pages of your pocket dictionary will make excellent kindling. And you have your extinguisher to hand if States & Facilities catch wind.

*DING DONG* (my doorbell)! . … .Yay! My Amazon order’s arrived!…. A Flask/Discrete Water Bottle

You’re going to get thirsty. At night, avoid draining your sweet treat savings by smuggling your own Olympian juice into Doyles (if you’re brave enough to face JACK the Bouncer, that is). Alternatively, Diceys will always accept you provided you finish-thelyric-to-that-Benson-Boone-Tune.

A Portable Charger

Scanning all those QR codes to pay that two quid joining fee in exchange for a donut will deplete your battery fast. But if your phone dies, AND your backup charging pack, don’t panic. Remember you’ve got that twine, just give it a tug to retrieve your friend. And, if all else fails, Mindset is key. YOU GOT THIS. No matter how much you prepare, it’s natural to still feel a bit lost and overwhelmed. We have ALL been there. Try not to take anything too seriously and just remember to have fun; if you’re having fun, the rest will follow. Life is short (very short…according to some). Don’t be too hard on yourself (is your inner voice the same you would use to reassure a friend?). Listen to what YOU want. Take a risk, talk to a stranger. What’s the worst that could happen? Remember, it won’t be the end of the world. *This author wants to trademark the super catchy acronym: tnttitsajrthfiyhftrwf (Try to not to take anything too seriously and just remember to have fun, if you’re having fun, the rest will follow).

*This author has checked and wants to confirm that Trinity does have an archery club and it is doing very well. *This author wishes to inform you that TCDSU/AMCLT stands for Trinity College Dublin Student Union/Aontas na Mac Léinn Choláiste na Tríonóide (the Irish version). *This author wants to make it KNOWN that she has no problem with the SMF, it was just a JOKE. Please accept her LinkedIn request. *Linda Doyle is the Provost of Trinity. (this author does not know what a provost is or does).

*And Olympian juice is a reference to Pav lager.

Secrets from a Senior Sophister A dvice given to students moving away from home for the first time typically follows a pattern of both practicality and slightly condescending self evidence such as “practice budgeting”, “establish a routine”, and, arguably the most irritating from the list, “stay positive”. Nearly three years ago, I was packing my belongings in three over-sized suitcases, all of which contained the most crucial items listed on an outdated subreddit with the title “Help: Moving.” Throughout my relocation, it seemed as though the logistics of a transatlantic move was going to be my primary obstacle; as long as I was to buy the appropriate kitchen appliances and stick to renter-friendly poster strips, everything must and will fit into place. It was not until about two weeks after I had settled into my new space that the unfamiliarity of my surroundings hit me. Having already confronted my seemingly endless to-do list of small yet taxing duties

It was not the routine set of tasks that intimidated my transition; it was the fact that I possessed the autonomy to dictate, without restriction, how I would spend each day of the rest of my life

(ordering a leap card, losing said leap card, shamefully ordering again), I was left with a problem no website or online forum warned me of: I was completely and entirely on my own. This is not something I say in an effort to portray myself as a victim of loneliness, but rather as someone so overwhelmed by the newfound sense of independence that comes with leaving home that I almost did not know what to do with myself. It was not the routine set of tasks that intimidated my transition; it was the fact that I possessed the autonomy to dictate, without restriction, how I would spend each day of the rest of my life. In the classic first-year nature, I addressed this freedom without a n ounce of restraint or inhibition. My nights were spent corralled by the DJ set on the top floor of Doyle’s, drinking jugs of preternaturally bright-coloured cocktails in Spoons, and sleeping both soundly and guiltlessly past lunchtime. Some call this an average Fresher’s week; I call it my inauguration into independence. A part of me knew, though, that this carefree spirit I had adopted was no more a response to liberation than it was an 18

attempt to escape the uncertainty of what came next. While I feel no regret over my streak of late nights, I eventually had to recognize that I was the only one who could dictate what I did, when I did it, and with whom I did it. The reality was, as enticing as the idea of a night at the pub followed by a trip to my local chipper may sound, these habits would soon become a burden on both my wellbeing and my bank account. All this said, I do not believe this transition into a life away from home was in any way plagued by my so-called irresponsibility. If anything, going from one extremity to another (in this case, living under my parents’ roof to the word curfew no longer even existing in my vocabulary) emphasised that I held the power to create a balance between the two. Realising that I could still enjoy a Wednesday night in Workman’s and wake up in time for my 9am class the next morning was something I had to learn through my own experience rather than from the advice of well meaning others. This lesson, though, is not unique to those making a long-distance move–even my friends commuting to college from home have made reference to their struggle in finding a middle ground between complete freedom and structure. Whether you are a first year student moving across the ocean, across the country, or even just adjusting to college life from home, I advise you to take the advice you hear with a grain of salt. Hypocritical as that statement may be, learning to navigate the freedom that comes with living and or operating on your own is a lesson that can only be learned through experience. Establishing a perfect routine and a foolproof budget takes time, and I can guarantee that the words “stay positive” are going to feel anything but reassuring when you’re missing home or adjusting to a completely new life. From a final year who has lived through more trial and error than I’d care to admit, believe me when I say it is all a part of the process. Live it, learn from it, and for god sake, keep track of the damn leap card.

- Marina

The Trinity Music Scene: An Explainer I find it hard to imagine that there exists a student entering their first year in Trinity College Dublin who has not had the pleasure of encountering the viral Trinitones rendition of Stand By Me. The synchronised snaps and swing of the young a cappella group, clad in Calvin Klein suits (they have a sponsorship now!), garnered millions of views across various platforms. While it did little to dispel the reputation of Trinity students as posh across the rest of Ireland, it nevertheless provided evidence that beneath the austere old buildings and academic rigour of Ireland’s oldest university lay a music scene of some substance. But the Trinitones are only one part of it. Trinity has an orchestra, trad musicians, DJs, choirs, student bands and a fairly healthy population of people who will insist that

the music they listen to is considerably more interesting than yours. I’ve been fortunate in my past few years here in Trinity to have both participated and spectated the incredibly varied music scene that exists, and there are many little pockets which I wish I had known about and had been encouraged to go and see sooner. With that in mind, I wanted to provide this little guide to where to look out if you find yourself musically inclined. The scene is scattered across societies, gigs, the top floor of the GMB and the occasional Pav dancefloor, and it can be difficult to know where to start. Here, then, is an attempt to make sense of it. -Dan

The Belles The Trinitones might be Trinity’s most famous musical export, but they aren’t the only a cappella group on campus. The Trinity Belles are their all-female counterparts, with both groups sitting under the wider umbrella of Trinity College Singers. Founded in 2013 by Trinity music student Raeghnya Zutshi, the Belles began as a more informal and contemporary outlet for singers. Zutshi herself was a composer, conductor and arranger, and had already been involved in Trinity’s choral scene. That less formal approach has remained part of the Belles’ identity. Their performances favour playful arrangements of pop and alternative songs, brought to life by a group of exceptionally strong vocalists. The Belles have since become a regular fixture of Trinity’s music scene, performing at events including Trinity Ball as well as venues around Dublin. More recently, they joined the Trinitones at the Button Factory, a fitting pairing of Trinity’s two best-known a cappella groups.

Trinity Orchestra There is something slightly strange about a student orchestra which can go from playing Beethoven to Daft Punk and then find itself opening for Rod Stewart, but this has become fairly normal for Trinity Orchestra. Classical music remains at the centre of what they do, but the Orchestra has developed a second identity as a live act. Its repertoire has stretched from Beethoven to David Bowie, Pink Floyd and Daft Punk, while its festival appearances have taken it well beyond College Green. They have played Electric Picnic, Forbidden Fruit and All Together Now, and in 2024 even found themselves opening for Rod Stewart at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. For anyone arriving in Trinity with an instrument, the Orchestra is consequently one of the more obvious societies to keep an eye on. However, getting in is not quite as straightforward as simply turning up with your instrument. Auditions are competitive, with a limited number of places available each year, so it is worth keeping an eye out for audition dates early in the year.

DUD J DUDJ is Trinity’s DJ society, covering house, techno and electronic music more broadly. Alongside its club nights, livestreams and other events, the society runs beginner DJ tutorials, meaning you do not have to arrive in Trinity already knowing your way around a pair of CDJs. Members can learn the basics, practise using professional-standard equipment and eventually work their way towards playing society events, club nights and gigs around Dublin. The society also brings established names from the electronic music world into Trinity through workshops and Q&As. Previous guests have included DJs and producers such as Tommy Holohan and Australian producer Roza Te r - enzi, w hos e workshop focused on developing an individual sound as a producer. More recently, DUDJ has expanded beyond DJing itself. In 2026, the society teamed up with Engineering Society and Trinity Arts Workshop to build a full-scale hi-fi sound system from scratch, with students involved in everything from its design and construction to tuning. The project subsequently won DUDJ the award for Best Community Building Event at the Trinity Society of the Year Awards. For anyone interested in electronic music, whether you already DJ or have never touched a set of decks, DUDJ is probably one of the easiest places to start.

Music Soc, AltSoc and Top Floor Music DUDJ is not the only route into making music in Trinity. Music Soc and Alt Music Soc provide a home for the college’s student bands, giving musicians a chance to meet, rehearse and, most importantly, play live. There is a surprisingly strong lineage of Trinity musicians who have gone on to make music professionally, from Saint Sister, formed by Trinity students Morgan MacIntyre and Gemma Doherty, to musicians who passed through Trinity Orchestra, including Hozier and members of Wyvern Lingo and Spies. The current scene is perhaps best represented by bands such as Child of Prague, who began when Adam Tracey and Jack McDonnell met in their first year in Trinity before expanding into a six-piece. They have since built a following around Dublin and beyond, while continuing to play Trinity events. Then there is Top Floor Music, Trinity FM’s DIY gig series, which puts on live shows on the top floor of the GMB. It has become one of the more interesting parts of Trinity’s alternative music scene, giving student and emerging acts a space to play in front of an audience. Of the gigs I’ve seen this year, my personal favourite was the John Foley Prize band, a good example of the sort of thing that makes Top Floor worth keeping an eye on. For anyone arriving in Trinity who wants to start a band, find other musicians or simply discover some new music, Music Soc, Alt Music Soc and Top Floor are probably the best places to look.

Get Involved! There are plenty of other corners of Trinity’s music scene that I haven’t managed to fit in here. The Trad Society and Dance Society both deserve an honourable mention, as do the many people who organise gigs, play in bands or make music without ever joining one of the better-known societies. The main thing, particularly in first year, is just to go along to things. You don’t need to know anyone beforehand, and you certainly don’t need to be particularly good at whatever it is you’re interested in. Trinity has a habit of making its societies seem more intimidating from the outside than they actually are. Most of the time, you can just turn up and see what happens. 23

Society’s Top Four Movie Round Up There are enough choices to be made when you’re starting college for the first time. What outfit you will wear on the first day? (Everyone will remember it so choose wisely) Should you go to all your lectures? (Legally, Misc. has to say yes)Who should you sit next to? (This is now your best friend for the next 6-48 months) As a result of this potential onset crippling decision fatigue, it seems only right that I assist you in deciding which society you should hang your hat on. To avoid wasting precious energy, Misc. has decided to help out in introducing you to a few societies Hollywood style. We reached out to societies across campus and asked if their society had Letterboxd (not sponsored), what would their top four movies be. While some were quick to provide answers, some unfortunately did not respond to our request for comment so we had no choice but to take creative freedom (sorry!) - Eliora

Law Soc

Hispanic Society (as provided by the society)

(as provided by the society)

Y Tu Mamá También Relatos Salvajes Chabuca The Motorcycle Diaries

Legally Blonde 12 Angry Men Erin Brokovich My Cousin Vinny

DU Players The Spongebob Squarepants Movie Hamnet Teen Beach Movie 2 Challengers

Superbad Zoolander Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging The Holdovers

(as provided by the minds at Misc.)

The Hist

DU Gender Equality

(as provided by the minds at Misc.)

(as provided by the society)

Student Management Fund

(as provided by the society)

Saving Private Ryan Gladiator Ali Marie Antoinette

Literary Society

Little Women Barbie Drive Away Dolls A League of Their Own

The Wolf of Wall Street The Big Short Succession (yes it’s a show...we don’t know much about finance) The Social Network

A Conversation With TCDSU President Amy Kennedy Conor Ennis sits down with this year’s Student Union President to unveil the mystery behind the institution and find out what all students should know about their union

rinity’s Student Union is something that no matter sabbats is to be the sabbat… and the easiest way to make your involvement with it, you have an opinion on it. sure that other PTOs (Part Time Officers) are able to do It is unavoidable. However, that’s a good thing. “We’re more than I was able to do as a PTO is by being the perall members of the Union. Every member of Trinity is son who’s there to support them. That’s how I saw being a Union member”, current TCDSU/AMLCT president President, as a way to make everyone else’s jobs more Amy Kennedy reminded me, when I sat down in her of- effective.” fice last week for an interview. Kennedy is concerned with the understanding The room was decorated with political posters of the Union from the student body perspective. She and behind her, I could see the traffic on Dame Street. stressed the universality of the Union, speaking about There was still steam rising from her unlidded cup of how it is for everyone and not just those already investcoffee, one I can only imagine had cooled by the end of ed in it. “There’s a sense sometimes that it is very much our conversation. She was already typing away on her dominated by politics and social sciences students, that computer adorned with an “I love Lucy Dacus” sticker it’s people padding their CVs, which I would fundamenwhen I walked in. In my experience conducting inter- tally oppose as an idea. I can understand why people views, there’s this shift in a person’s energy when the ‘re- think it, but it’s, at least from what I’ve seen from the cord’ button is pressed. A stiff self-consciousness of how team this year, not true… we need to do more to meet they might be perceived. Kennedy remains calm and people where they’re at, so people can actually undercomfortable despite the phone’s presence on the table. stand that the reason we are here… is for them and not All that changes is her focus tightening, ready to take on out of any desire for ourselves.” whatever is ahead. Was she always this way? I asked Kennedy what she wished Freshers just “I kind of fell into the Union… I just happened starting at Trinity knew about the Union and she began to be told by one of my friends that no one was running listing the numerous ways students can get involved. for Gender Equality Officer. I was fairly involved in the First, she spoke about class representative elections, climate activist movement in my secondary school, and then the committees such as the Campaigns committee I was like fighting for the girls to be able to wear trou- and ENTs. Finally, for those who just want to be aware sers. So, I was like “okay, there’s some stuff in college that of Union activities, Kennedy mentioned how Comhairle I’ve seen, and things I would like to change.’” When she meetings are open access for any who want to “just come showed up to Comhairle ready for a walk-in, she found along and listen.” She wished for greater involvement out that six others were running and had to produce a across the board from all members of the college commuspeech to secure the position. At the end of the year, she nity, even those far along in their degrees: “It doesn’t have felt like she “hadn’t done enough.” This led to her run as to be the first week of first year that you say, ‘right now, LGBT+ Rights Officer last year where she was focused I’m going to start it.’ You can start at any time from any on the “horrifplace, and ic” treatment of “We need to do more to meet people where they’re at, so you can do trans students people can actually understand that the reason we are it in any by College way.” here...is for them and not out of any desire for ourselves” Health. It may be Finally, last term’s Sabbatical elections came easy to get involved but what does the Union even do? around. The greatest issue Kennedy had encountered Why should a person want to join these committees or after two years around the Union was the lack of time become a class rep? “If you’ve ever been pissed off beshe had as a Part-Time Officer. That coupled with not cause there’s no toilet paper in a bathroom, or because being listened to due to not being a Sabbatical Officer you’ve been at an event and someone has been weird to made running for President the only way to solve both you, that is why you should get involved… As a student, issues. “I didn’t know that I wanted to be President. It if you ever thought, ‘man, it would be great if this was was more so wanting to help people in some way, shape different,’ the Union is how you make it different. I think or form… easiest way to make it come from one of the that’s the fundamental reason that people should get in26

volved is because of a desire to make things change and a belief that they can be changed,” Kennedy told me. Kennedy referred to the 2024 BDS Encampment that led to Trinity deciding to formally cut ties with Israeli companies and research institutions as evidence of Union campaigns leading to change. The event was also a turning point in Kennedy’s political life that has stuck with her. “The Encampment is something that I always go back to when I’m like ‘man, I don’t know how I’m going to do this thing,’ because the Encampment was the first Union thing I ever attended. We had to break onto campus and I was like, ‘fuck, I’m going to get arrested.’ Firstly, we didn’t get arrested and secondly, we got what we wanted. I think examples like that should embolden students to get involved because of the fact that there’s always a way for us to make things change, we just have to figure out how to go about it.” Regarding community within the Union, Kennedy spoke positively about the relationships between the Sabbatical Officers and the Union generally: “I really enjoy the fact that people are willing to tell each other when they’re wrong and then come back and help the person work on how to make it better… that’s something that spreads across the Union, writ large, that even though… students politics, people are opinionated and will often disagree. There is respect and understanding for the fact that we disagree and then trying to come to a mutual conclusion.”

Past years have seen controversies that may have soured the feelings students have towards the Union, which Kennedy addressed. She spoke about being “furious at people in the Union on many occasions” herself but hoped to avoid any issues through better communication channels. “It’s mostly just about how we communicate our decisions to students and also communicate our decisions to each other. So that we are able to prevent those scenarios where there’s a bit of breakdown of trust, because ultimately the breakdown of trust is a consequence of a breakdown of communication where people don’t feel like they can tell people not to do things or feel like they can’t, I suppose, say why they disagree.” She was aware that some decisions she will make over the course of her presidency will not be popular with everyone. However, she affirmed a responsibility to serve the needs of the student regardless of whether it is aligned with her personal stance on the matter. “It’s more so a question of, ‘what are we as a democratic institution required to do?’… If I’m democratically mandated to do something that I don’t necessarily agree with… it is my job to follow through with that. What I mainly say to the students who do not feel represented by the Union… is use your voice. Get out and be heard about the fact that you disagree.” In the 2024 Trinity News post about the encampment, Kennedy can be seen in the background. She is a member of the crowd clapping for then President László Molnárfi and the President-elect beside him, Jenny Maguire. In a sense, Kennedy is an example of the same thing she advocates for, an average Trinity student who decides to partake in student politics to see what change will come from their efforts. It was only at the end of the interview that I saw her take a sip of her coffee, having been too busy with the conversation at hand. After leaving the office, I couldn’t help but think about the Lucy Dacus sticker. Kennedy types on the usual student laptop, adorned with signifiers of personal interests, while surrounded by political posters that speak to the position she is stepping into. It’s hard to imagine the Kennedy that stood in the crowd anticipated being the President, but she seems invested in motivating bystanders to find their voice. The year ahead will determine whether she succeeds. 27

Detour as a Matter of Course Philip Theiss reflects on a summer of allowing necessary lessons to be revealed rather than sought out

he Mediterranean was still and blue in the early afternoon light. Floating on my back and looking up at a sandy bluff, I had the perfect view of a Roman imperial villa in almost all its glory. What, today has been reduced almost entirely to its foundations, and to the rather ill-informed observer, might seem like not much more than a few crumbling walls and broken arches, was once a truly otherworldly edifice. Many moons ago, right before my eyes, stood eight hundred metres of cliffside imperial audacity. The Villa’s imposing facade sported boundless arcades, perfect to be aimlessly wandered around, and philosophised in. Beyond its outer boundaries shaded loggias wrapped around lush, leafy gardens that breathed perfume into the seaside air. There, if I had to guess, Nero himself once basked in that all-too-familiar shimmer of afternoon sun. Nero — who, like any traveller of the time, knew ancient Roman roads were slow and bumpy — stood on a gleaming marble balcony, gazed out at the sea, and realised that the perfect site for a secure deep-water port had been staring him in the face all along. Below his villa was the opportunity for a direct, smooth passage from Rome to the ends of the empire for him and all the excesses of his imperial entourage. For the assignment, Rome’s finest minds bent to his will, and their design was a masterstroke. It was adaptive, even empathetic in its quiet genius. To prevent the harbour basin from building up silt, engineers built breakwaters with open archways that let the tide flush the sand back out to sea naturally. This proved to be more effective, cheaper, longer-lasting, and infinitely more elegant than any run-of-the-mill brute-force barrier could ever hope to be. Drifting still, I opened my eyes. In front of me was the undoubtedly much less imposing current version of the “villa,” though I was also, in a sense, floating within what had once been its great harbour. As far as the harbour goes: it went. Not much remains but a small modern rock jetty leading out from some sandy, sea-washed ruins of the once-imperial complex. 28

Flipping over, I swam slowly for shore, my mind still drifting. I was technically supposed to be in Rome, writing a story about the city’s urban gardens. Floating like a piece of driftwood off the coast of Anzio didn’t exactly feel like a productive step in that pursuit. Luckily for me, I had all my questions regarding urban gardens answered an hour ago. Dr. Certomà and I sat on her balcony, surrounded by her own lush urban garden, where she showed me sources and potential contacts while we snacked on Taralli. I meanwhile nursed a large, cold Peroni given to me by the professor with a refreshing matter of course. The balcony’s green canopy made the afternoon feel blessedly suspended, and it seemed as if the summer heat had forgotten about us entirely. When I finally waded ashore, Dr. Certomà was long back on the sand, chatting with a cluster of local beachgoers. Despite being mid-chiacchiere, her conversation with them seemed to dissolve behind us as she simply fell into step beside me. We walked eastward along the beach, along a boardwalk dotted with ice cream shops and tabacchi and passed a restaurant or two jutting out onto the sand, staking their prime seafront real estate claim. We reached the harbour along a street of seaworn buildings, then turned down one along the sea. Jetty rocks piled between us and the water, we walked further until we came across some limestone markers, subtle and pretty easy to miss, commemorating the Roman harbour that once stood before us. With an unglamorous, yet seafront parking lot as my backdrop, the professor pointed out the elephant in the room. Centuries after Nero’s engineers had perfected their adaptive masterpiece, a pope — Innocent XII, but it hardly matters — decided to rebuild the port on the eastern side of the peninsula. A new harbor for a new era, or so it seems the thinking went. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it was not

nearly as dynamic or ingenious as the ancient Roman streets, there I was, packed neatly into the passenger design. Instead of working with the sea, the pope’s seat of Dr. Certomà’s red Fiat Cinquecento, an Italian builders tried to impose their will upon it. As a result, cliché if ever there was one, heading for the neighnowadays, the Port of Anzio Walking along the water’s edge, we passed fishing bouring town of Lido fills with sand every year. vessels of varying sizes, where weather-beaten di Cincinnato. Across the parking The unhurried lot and through some ware- seafarers moved ahout with the quiet competence evening brought us houses, we made it to the of men who had no use for notebooks or journalism to a charmingly decmodern port’s interior. Walking along the water’s orated apartment with large forward-facing windows edge, we passed fishing vessels of varying sizes, where and an open balcony. The door opened to the smell weather-beaten seafarers moved about with the quiet of good food and laughter, and I was swept in as if I’d competence of men who had no use for notebooks always been part of the scene. After helping myself at or journalism. Dr. Certomà explained that she does the aperitivo, I took a seat in a green chair. As we ate, participatory research with the fishermen, and it isn’t children darted between the adults’ conversations. easy. They’re wary of outsiders and skeptical of acaThe topic of my article eventually demics. The sand buildup that chokes the harbour arose. As I began to explain what I was doing is a daily reality for these men. The seasonal sandbar here, talking of urban gardens, Dr. Certomà either cuts off their income, or, for those willing to quickly elaborated on our earlier interview. The test it, enacts its toll in the form of scraped paint and room seemed to catch the gist. Then her daugha keel that will need a weekend’s worth of patching. ter, deadpan, said: “I don’t even know what you A bad season of silting can truly mean the difference do for work.” The room laughed. I laughed too, between a livelihood and a loss. thankful she hadn’t asked what I was doing for We left the fishing vessels behind, passing a “work”. I was supposed to be in Rome covering row of sailboat houses. We ducked into a time-honurban gardens. I was doing anything but. oured sailing club building and after a quick word On the train back to Rome that night, I sat on from the professor to a woman at the entrance, we the staircase of a double-decker car, in the only were shown inside. First up some stairs and then spot left, conveniently wedged between the through a big glass hall on the top floor, where a handrail and a bathroom with an overflowing cluster of elderly locals were engrossed in a game of toilet, the door swinging open and shut with dominoes. We passed through somewhat awkwardevery lurch. As people kept needing to pass, I ly, though they barely looked up anyways. Slipping kept needing to awkwardly get up and let them. past them and out onto the outdoor rooftop, we saw And somehow, between this and the fluoresthe whole operation open up before us: the marina, cent glare, I felt myself settle. The city began to the fishing boats, the jetty, the water stretching out seep back in: Rome, beautiful and grimy, gloritoward the horizon, and faintly, even some small isous and slightly off-kilter. Somewhere in it, the lands in the distance. gardens were waiting. With the dominoes clicking away in the airy I never did publish that article. The urban hall behind us, Dr. Certomà pointed at the eyesore of gardens of Rome would have undoubtedly ena sandbank. The great ugly mound of sediment had compassed their own lessons, but this afterno business being there and didn’t seem inclined to noon had led me nowhere near Rome, to a leave. In an attempt to address this, she explained, the lesson that revealed itself as soon as I stopped regional government launched a ninety-million-eutrying to find it. My day, as has my article, ro coastal maintenance program. This seemed like a yielded to the unplanned. The engineers of costly ritual of submission to forces the Romans had ancient Rome worked with their surroundlong learned to befriend. ings, harnessing the currents. The pope’s There was something wonderfully Italian builders, to the demise of posterity, were about it: pensioners playing dominoes while millions blind to such a way of doing things. And of tax money was poured into a losing battle with the the sea, year after year, makes its point. sea — with them in the best seats in the house to watch Turns out, I floated trustfully into a story it all unfold. Dr. Certomà turned and we walked back much juicier than the one I’d come to through the domino room, and down the stairs towrite. ward the exit. As we descended, she mentioned an aperitivo at a friend’s house. And after a short walk back through lively squares and quiet back29

The New Topography of Violence

Following a move to ban the possession and production of violent pornography, Amélie McGowan analyses the larger contributing cultural implications and how students are Content Warning: This article discusses and makes reference to impacted sexual, domestic, and gender-based violence

hen investigators rifled through then 38-year-old ingly innocuous sadism can have fatal endings. Long Lorcan Murphy’s computer, they found an unpast are the times of theatrical releases for adult films, surprising amount of pornography. Considering that and of high production quality. We have minimized sex his murder of Mackenzie Michalski resembled a level to a tripod, an unmade bed, and a woman with no face. of sadomasochism seen only in pornographic content, Unfortunately for women entering university, none were shocked at his online presence. it quickly loses its abstract qualities and becomes the Murphy was also found to have been previously default language of hookup culture. What sells online using a ‘spy pen’ and surveillance devices to film women as standard abusive tendencies has led its way into the in Dublin and beyond. He used one of these devices to bedroom. BDSM and choking are no longer negotiated film Michalski’s dead body as he lay with her for four preferences but a tax women must pay for participating hours post-mortem. In his legal defense, Murphy’s team in casual student life. argued that Michalski enjoyed BDSM, and claimed it The initially liberative elements of porn– once women was another case of ‘rough sex gone wrong’. pleasured on the big screen– are now free, amateur, and, Murphy was convicted in a Hungarian court in if you wanted, could be viewed on your route to work. 2024. ‘Teen’ images and infantilized imagery permeate the For many, the erotic appeal of watching pornogopening window of XVideos or PornHub. raphy is in the fantasy becoming a reality. Murphy sucControl is at the remedial center of this new toceeded. But ask any woman sitting in Trinity’s lecture pography. halls, and she’ll tell you he is not an anomaly; he’s just the The current state is not one of inclusivity but natural result of a culture of imposition. Women I know personally have felt the rather women must navigate on Young boys report being weighing inevitability that the report will introduced to such media and off campus. Michalski’s tragbefore even finishing priend up at the bottom of a recycling bin edy is an example of the mary school. A text chain new brutal, pornographic sexual terrain. One where or an algorithmic glitch could push a child from one strangulation and BDSM practices without consent are world to another. regularly used in casual encounters–and where seemIt’s no longer eroticism either, but rather aggres-

sivity disguised as lust. It’s difficult to mitigate when children are introduced to the sexual ‘standard’ in the classroom, but exposed to the ‘normal’ behind the screen. When an entire generation of young men arrives at Trinity and other Irish colleges, having learned most of their human intimacy from violent algorithms and of an infantilizing and pedophilic nature, campus becomes the primary testing ground. ‘Repeat exposure’, Peggy Orenstein writes in her 2024 New York Times feature, ‘can render the once appalling appealing’, when pornography becomes the default educational source. A study quoted by Orenstein, of 5,000 U.S. College Students, found that nearly twothirds of women ‘said a partner choked them during sex’. This extends beyond closed, domestic doors and into student accommodation and campus halls. The HEA’s national Speak Out dataset, collating disclosures across Irish higher education institutions, reveals that sexual violence and harassment accounted for 25% of all student-reported abuse. Between 2022 and 2024, students logged 55 reports of rape, 106 reports of sexual assault, and 108 cases of sexual harassment. That said, only 12% of students made a formal complaint to their university, and 4% reported to An Garda Síochána. It’s a less shocking statistic when we watch the evolving context, where violence is gradually being rebranded as a kink or bad hookup. Women I know personally have felt the weighing inevitability that the report will end up at the bottom of a recycling bin. ‘Sexual violence’ and ‘sex’ have become synonymous. In Ireland, the National Freephone Helpline found that porn ‘features the strangling of women, [...] verbally degrading them and spitting in their faces, among countless other acts of callousness and cruelty is now [...] freely available’. When over 60% of Irish men report watching porn regularly, and porn addiction has entered the Dictionary, many women are apprehensive about the next man who walks in their door. The regular vulnerabilities of student life compound this apprehension.

cause the alternative is sleeping in a car or commuting three hours a day. When we’re inundated with Meta glasses footage of women stopped on the street, or insults like ‘whore’ or ‘slut’ becoming colloquially deceptive terms, ‘bop’, etc., we begin to see the market as its true unregulated self. One in which women, once again, become the figurative target. Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan is now seeking approval to legislate the epidemic. He released a Fianna Fáil policy document in 2022 for ‘tackling’ violence against women. As of mid-July 2026, O’Callaghan plans to introduce offences ‘relating to the possession, production or distribution of extreme or violent pornography, and acts of necrophilia’. The question then becomes: how can we regulate an industry so imbued with violence without biblically purifying it? It’s figuratively a band-aid, one in which students are left vulnerable to the mechanical and ossified systems on Trinity’s campus. It also ignores the campus as the transitional point between fantasy and reality, and as the ‘testing ground’ for sexual violence to paint itself as benign. New female students are the casualties in a burgeoning culture each year. Men who disregard will always find a way– as they did during the Censorship of Publications Act, and as they have done for time immemorial. Porn will become lucrative once it relies on illegal imports, underground video rentals, or cross-border travel. To ban it is to ignore the culprit entirely, and is unrealistic in the face of mass production. It seems for O’Callaghan, the proposal relies on a standard of morality which would produce no substantive change behind closed doors. There is an intentionality behind such ineffectual legislation against pornography– one which Catherine Itzin questions: why most are drafted ‘in such a manner as to be unenforceable.’ We must conclude, she writes, ‘that it has never been the intention to prevent the [...] distribution of pornography’. Legislators have long ignored a so-called ‘protected’ population in the country: students. However, the same bureaucratic walls which shield students also trap them. Rape culture can contaminate campuses more easily if the violence feigns itself as innocuous. There is a guise, a curtain, which must ultimately fall between sex and the definitive fantasy of rape, and the label we must begin to regularly use: abuse.

How can we regulate an industry so imbued with violence without biblically purifying it?

Men who disregard will always find a way– as they did during the Censorship of Publications Act, and as they have done for time immemorial

In the midst of a relentless housing crisis, gender dynamics are weaponized by circumstance. Some students are left to ‘shag or shiver’; to stay in a toxic or sexually coercive relationship simply to keep a roof over their heads forces women to tolerate pornified aggression be-

‘Dublin. I have Much, Much to Learn’:

An Interview with Donal Fallon on Walking Tours of Dublin

Social Historian Donal Fallon discusses the importance of exploring Dublin on foot with Zach Keenan

hen Leopold Bloom walks past the gates of Trinaccessibility for tour groups. Fallon mentioned one ity College, Dublin, in the ‘Lestrygonians’ episuch experience of being on a walking tour in Berlin sode of James Joyce’s Ulysses, he hears cries of “Up the in which he was constantly on and off the U-Bahn. For Boers! Three cheers for De Wet!”. The Boer connection Dublin, the story of something like Ulysses is one that with Dublin is one we walk past, and through, every day. must be, and can be, told on foot. This contributes to Fusiliers’ Arch, the archway entrance into St. Stephen’s a large part of how people from abroad connect with Green Park from the Grafton Street end, is colloquially Dublin, as Fallon contends that “people may not have referred to as ‘Traitor’s Gate’. Built in 1907, it commemoread him, but there is a broad awareness of Joyce”. He rates the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, a British Army infantry believes that people visit Dublin because “they’re conregiment comprised of Irishmen who fought with the scious of literature, they’re conscious of revolution, British against the Boers in the Second Anglo-Boer War and they’re conscious of the built landscape”. Howevin South Africa. On the other side was a Mayo man called er, they can often find themselves disappointed by how John MacBride who set up the Irish Transvaal Brigade in much of a European capital Dublin appears to be and October 1899 to fight with the Boers against the British. that “maybe the romantic idea isn’t always delivered on Having done my Leaving Certificate History proand Dublin in part can feel like any other capital city”. ject on this topic, I embarrassed myself by asking Dublin In the post financial crash era when Fallon first startsocial historian Donal Fallon if he would very kindly sign ed touring, there were few tour companies, and they my copy of his biography of MacBride. I often forget that often had freedom of movement. The growth of walkpeople might not share my love for Dublin social history, ing tours emerged from the rubble of the recession and Fallon points out that this is a key issue to tackle on as many people scrambled for any readily available his walking tours. His tour groups, made up of people work. With this came the emergence of free tours from all over the world, may not know anything about with tour guides working for tips. As a trade unionIrish history. As such, “one of the great skills tour guides ist, Fallon has an issue with this as he states that there develop is the ability to root Irish history into the broadshould be “minimal standards that are maintained” er narrative of human hisand that “people should be For Dublin, the story of something like Ulysses tory”. While tourists may making decent money for not be familiar with the is one that must be, and can be, told on foot what they do”. Some com1916 Easter Rising, placing panies, he points out, work it in the context of the First World War would elucidate across several European cities, employing tour guides its significance in relation to the breakdown of world emworking for tips. After each tour, a picture would be pires. taken with the tour group, not merely as a souvenir, Having begun as a tour guide as an undergradbut to determine the number of people on each tour. uate in 2010, Fallon has noticed how walking tours in The company would then take a percentage of the tour Dublin “have a very distinguished pedigree”. They ofguide’s tips by taxing them on how many people were ten feature at significant events and commemorations, on the tours. Fallon questions why Revenue has never such as the decade of centenaries. Bloomsday is celestopped this system, and he believes that Dublin City brated every year on the 16th of June as fans of Joyce’s Council (DCC) “has an obligation to step in and inepic embark on the same odyssey that Bloom and Stetroduce some kind of standards in the industry”. The phen Dedalus completed on very day in 1904. For many industry also faces issues of overtourism and a lack of people, walking in general and more specifically walking space in the city. Fallon admires the way Trinity has tours are how they engage with the city. Dublin’s comcountered this dearth of space with the introduction pactness means that “we do walk everywhere and we do of ‘Trinity Trails’ while simultaneously maintaining an think about walking around as a way of learning”. A jourinternal economy by hiring students as tour guides. nalist once told Fallon that “if San Francisco was made Despite being closed off to external tour groups, for the tram and Paris was made for the metro, Dublin Fallon finds Trinity useful for his tours by connecting was made for walking”. Many other major cities lack such it with wider world history. He likes to discuss the im-

pact of the French and American revolutions on Irish One day, he was bringing film students around Dubthinking, pointing out Edmund Burke as an example. lin, and they were talking about Dublin on the screen Fallon notes how “outside of people who study history and The Commitments (1991). He didn’t point it out or politics, Burke is not a widely known figure”, and yet but “Roddy Doyle moved across the traffic lights in the he was crucial to 18th century revolutionary thought. distance”. Such is the scale of Dublin that we are conLikewise, when he could come on campus, he would stantly bumping into people we know. Fallon argues point out the Postgraduate Reading Room, a memorial that “if Ulysses was set in any other city, it wouldn’t to the Trinity men who died in the First World War. The make a great deal of sense because there’s no way the letters NIKH marked on the front re- “Because it’s such a small lives of those people could’ve constantfer to the Greek goddess of victory. ly crossed paths the way they do”. city, there are inevitably Dublin, being surrounded by a hisThis is what makes Dublin such tory of revolution, bears a monu- moments where people of a significant city for social history. Alment to the First World War in the significance in the story that though the great wars and revolution heart of the city. However, Fallon bewhat attracts most people to histoyou’re telling walk by you” are lieves that “for the most part I think ry, the minutiae of people’s lives shines what visitors to Dublin like to see, they like to see a liv- more of a light on the period itself. Fallon found that ing city”. This differs from the experience of Venice and even these large events, such as the 1916 Easter RisEdinburgh where visitors get the feeling that they are ing, were “brought down to the individual” in the decnot in “the real city”. Walking through the Arts Block ade of centenaries. Regarding the participants of such in Trinity gives visitors this feeling, especially with the great events, Fallon feels as though we came out of this presence of modern art Although the great wars and revolution are what period “with a strongby the likes of Michael attracts most people to history, the minutiae of people’s er sense of who they Farrell, Robert Ballagh, were”. The contradiclives shines more of a light on the period itself and Mainie Jellett. tions of the lives of, for Outside of Trinity, Fallon explains how there example, union men who experienced 1913 lock-out are restrictions preventing him from showing his tour and then joined the Royal Dublin groups certain features of the city. The James Connolly Fusiliers showed that “things statue under the railway tracks opposite Liberty Hall weren’t really black and white, there’s a is poorly maintained, covered with and surrounded by huge amount of grey in all of these “graffiti, excrement, horrible smell of urine, needles”. stories”. Developments since the However, Connolly is key to the 1916 walking tours 1966 commemorations meant that and a figure widely known in Scotland and America, female participants in the Rising with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani even men- were finally given deserved attentioning him in his St Patrick’s Day speech. Similarly, tion and the mythical aura that Moore Street has experienced a “deliberate policy of abounded some of the men dereliction”. It has been “caught in this no-man’s land wore off as their personal lives between competing visions of development” as Fallon were explored. With this, Fallon put it, with the ever-changing plans to build a shopping is reminded of Philip Chevcentre there. In contrast, the W.B. Yeats memorial in St ron’s line from ‘Song of the Stephen’s Green serves almost as a rewarding space for Faithful Departed’ by The visitors. Fallon notes how it is “somewhere Radiators, “Well I don’t where people feel that they’ve found the hidden thing, mind that your heroes all and ultimately a big part of tourism is about that”. As a have wings but your territourist, “you want to go on a tour and feel like you saw ble beauty is torn”. The something that the locals know, and if you get that feel- variety in the way we ing it’s really really special”. study history serves sepaDublin’s compactness also comes in handy for rate purposes. However, this. Fallon describes how “because it’s such a small city, Fallon concludes, “dates there are inevitably moments where people of signifi- and facts and figures cance in the story that you’re telling walk by you”. This are one thing but why would particularly happen around 1916 tours where, and the impact of those on more than one occasion, he encountered a relative things on people’s lives of a participant in the Easter Rising who would hear is what interests me”. the tour on their way to a commemorative event and would interrupt by showing the tour group a medal. 33

Lessons for Leaving From The South Of France Eva O’Donnell reminisces on learning the importance of community and comfort from a summer in France and what she will take with her on Erasmus

hose airy, loping days of early summer saw an old Much to our dismay, we found we had arrived in a town friend and I discussing the future. The two of us whose only source of refreshment was an 18th-centuwere then at the far end of the run-up to our respective ry drinking water fountain, the sole boulangerie having and hopefully life-changing, semesters abroad. Having closed for the day at noon. Locals practiced a careful been bound to our family homes by Dublin’s rental cridisinterest in us while filling their tankards, as we sat by sis up to that point, Erasmus was both a daunting and the fountain with our backpacks and Ryanair-regulation tantalising prospect. We needed proof of concept of our outfits. In order to keep my backpack size-compliant, I ability to sustain ourselves living beyond the reach of was wearing both a maxi and mini skirt, which clashed our mothers. I came across a listing for summer work quite proudly with my short-sleeved flannel button-up. in the remote south of France, maintaining a B&B set I stood out in riotous disharmony against the careful in a 15th century monastery. In exchange for sweeping, geometric stone paths and gently waving oak trees. Just mopping, and dressing beds, you could live in a conas our hunger threatened the harmony of our friendverted gîte with your own terrace. The unabashed noship, Marie arrived, exuding the kind of composure I tions of the concept caught my heart immediately. My have only ever dreamed of. Her car had little embroifriend has never turned Having been bound to our family homes by Dublin’s rental dered pildown an adventure and lows in the crisis up to that point, Erasmus was both a daunting and two weeks later we had back seats, tantalising prospect booked our flights. In and smelled Goudargues, population 1,125, we would find out if we like she knew exactly what she was about. In comparihad what it takes to be self-sufficient. son, I was sleep deprived, hung over, and asleep against What I found there were many of the obvious the car window twenty minutes in. I was too tired to unlessons, like not to buy such an ambitious amount of derstand the French of her life story as she spoke with nectarines. (You will forget and they will rot.) We bemy friend, who has the advantage of being half-French came well acquainted with the holy trinity of student and fully fluent. cooking– fresh, tinned, and puréed tomatoes, out of I have a French accent that makes me sound which all manner of sauces, salads and sandwiches can far more adept with the language than I am, due to my be borne. But beyond the practical, I learned about what long-honed practice of mimicking Europeans for my it is to start somewhere new and unfamiliar, and create friends’ amusement. But once a conversation moves becomfort and community there. yond small talk, I am undeniably out of my depth. With Our suitably isolated spot of self-discovery was company, sitting outside bars, I would lapse into silence. suitably difficult to reach without a car. We got as close I could feel my elementary language level pulling the as we could by bus, then we had to throw our plans to group to shallower waters as I asked about school or the fickle winds of ride-sharing. Our saviour was named work. My companion charmed fluently, kindly translatMarie, and she drove a blue Fiat 500. We were to meet ing for me when conversation slipped beyond my reach, her two hours after our final stop on the bus. The bus yet this only solidified my distance. Lacking the vocabhad left us a ulary even to explain my discomfort, I appeared You are not known here, and you do thirty minute again as the quiet wallflower I had worked so hard walk from not know here. You can move through to evolve from. our pick- the world and trace new paths, unenYet a week in, after several evenings of beers and up spot in a bad French grammar, I learned that inevitably you cumbered by familiarity. small town must risk imperfect communication for the sake of called Tresques, but despite our best efforts to drag it out, connection. You could allow a language barrier to keep we were still significantly early. Having travelled 2 hours you in the shallow end. But you need to risk vulnerabilalready since getting off the plane, we were also ravenous. ity in stepping beyond it. Point, sing, wave, do what you

can do to make yourself understood. On a night away in thing to attend, do, or be. The formlessness of this new Montpellier, through a mix of French and mime, an old situation was frightening in comparison. Beyond our gay man and I discussed his six children by two different morning cleaning shifts, I had nothing to hold myself mothers. I thought my translation was crossing some sig- to. So, I called my mum. She told me I needed to ‘put a nals, but my friend confirmed that I indeed had the right shape on things.’ She was right– In order to stay sane in end of the stick. Had I not chosen imperfect grammar any environment, you need to be aware of what spaces over silence, I would never have found out that the only you need, and shape your life around them as best you child he likes is his 24 year old daughter, because she is can. Have a spot for when you need comfort, a routine both a lesbian and a drummer. When you reach further for when there’s work to be done. Look at the functions than you think your language can hold, you can find con- that your daily activities serve for your wellbeing, and nections in places you would never have known! find a shape for them in your new life. In Dublin, when When I arrived in Goudargues, I felt immediat- I’m lonely, I ride the bus. The union of a common desly, as I always do when travelling, the sharp relief of an tination with total strangers goes some way towards identity unstuck. You are not known here, and you do holding me together. So, in Goudargues, I went to the not know here. You can The union of a common destination pharmacy. I didn’t need anything, but move through the world with total strangers goes some way I joined some wonderful strangers in a and trace new paths, uncollective perusal of face cream. towards holding me together encumbered by familiIn a few days, I will be arriving in Budaarity. In Goudargues, I was a hundred different people. pest for the beginning of my Erasmus. With sub-zero At the market, I was a disaffected local. Washing my feet Hungarian and a penchant for leaving heated saucein the lavoir, I was an exhausted, pre-industrial era moth- pans unattended, I am quite suitably nervous. Yet, from er of four. After four drinks in Montpellier, socially daz- my time in France, I am assured that community and zling. Six glasses at the local guingette, risking expulsion. comfort are possible anywhere. Goodbyes can tear you In our kitchen I was a jilted lover, chainsmoking to Nina apart, but they leave you with a new path back to yourSimone. In bed, in the dark, I was afraid and alone. self every time. Our monastery was kept company by a chateau and an old farmhouse. This cluster was surrounded on all sides by an unbroken collision of grass and sky. Despite my excitement about an untethered identity, I was immediately and undeniably afraid of that uninterrupted horizon. It was all so very quiet. In Dublin, my life is a race of late nights and opening shifts. There is always some-

An Unremarkable Life:

Leopold Bloom, The Everyman, and Things That Do Not Matter

Lily Braumberger examines a culture obsessed with exceptional experiences and what James Joyce’s Leopold Bloom can teach us about the value of the ordinary

he categothat a private life consists of. This is perhaps why “orrisation of dinary” is not quite an adequate way of categorising what is “ordipeople. A group can be ordinary, a demographic can nary” is rather be ordinary, but an individual is considerably harder to contemptuous, contain within such confines. The moment you know although it is inwhat or who it is that occupies their thoughts, the label variably presentbegins to lose its usefulness. ed as a term of Leopold Bloom is, then, a remarkable example, democratic afindeed, one of literature’s greatest. By almost every confection. The orventional measure he is unremarkable. An advertising dinary person is canvasser in Dublin, married to Molly Bloom, whose presumed to be infidelity occupies a good deal of his consciousness the common throughout the day. He has lost his father, worries about punter, the repmoney, thinks frequently about food, possesses an inresentative cittermittent curiosity about the world around him, and izen, the useful individual whose particularities have spends a great deal of time walking from one place to been effaced until they can be made to signify something another. He is neither suspiciously powerful nor accomlarger than themselves. An extraordinarily convenient plished, and Joyce gives him none of the attributes by abstraction, mind you, because once a person has been which a literary protagonist might ordinarily be distinreduced to what is presumed to be typical about them, guished from the mass of people moving alongside him there is very little left to account for except their usefulin the streets. ness as an example. It is worth separating Ulysses from the tiresome Literature has historicalLife is largely the accumulation of habits, prejudices, bodily ly shown a marked preference for people whose significance is sensations, memories, irritations, appetites, and thoughts presumed to precede them: mon- that appear to have no particular claim upon history and yet archs, saints, prodigies, the politconstitute almost everything that a private life consists of ically disgraced, and the romantically doomed. Even the lives of less distinguished people idea that ordinary life becomes valuable only once you become respectable subjects for fiction, provided their learn to romanticise it. There is no need to turn the baordinariness can be made to conceal some distinction. nal into the beautiful in order to defend its place in litThe forlorn boy possesses an unusual sensibility; the erature or life. If you were asked to recount an ordinary bored housewife conceals some great emotional caTuesday, you would probably only remember the things tastrophe; the provincial girl is waiting for her excepwhich seemed to separate it from every other Tuesday tional love worth dying for. The implication is flat- We choose to narrate backwards because living tering, but also limiting. A life becomes worthy of forwards offers no indication of which ordinary this sustained attention only when it can demonmoment will eventually acquire prominence strate that it was never truly ordinary after all. The genuinely unremarkable person presents a and discard the rest. Yet while it was being lived, the more difficult problem. There is no distinction to unsupposedly consequential and the completely forgettacover and no exceptional event waiting to vindicate ble occurred in much the same fashion. One thing haptheir value. Their importance cannot be borrowed or pens, then another, and you have no reliable means of achieved. Life is largely the accumulation of habits, knowing which one will follow you home. prejudices, bodily sensations, memories, irritations, apThat being said, Ulysses does not need to manupetites, and thoughts that appear to have no particular facture a more consequential version of Bloom in order claim upon history and yet constitute almost everything to make him interesting; instead, it follows him closely 36

enough that the distinction between consequential and inconsequential begins to seem far less tenable than it did from a distance. Perhaps this is one of the reasons the novel’s relationship with Homer is so useful. The Odyssey is the most famous example of organising a life around extraordinary action. The comic disproportion between the cast of characters is obvious, but what’s underneath is of more interest. Joyce subjects the heroic model itself to a reduction in scale, suggesting that its literary modes need not belong exclusively to the extraordinary. They can be found, too, in the movements of a man who has spent a day doing nothing. This is part of the larger revolution Joyce and

least not in the sense that we tend to imagine dignity in literature. The “everyman”is recognisable because he is stripped of the peculiarities that Joyce preserves in Bloom. I hesitate, however, to deem this inspirational. His life is not a demonstration of how to appreciate the present moment, nor is he some literary patron saint of the mundane. He does not walk through Dublin with heightened awareness that his ordinary existence is secretly meaningful. The importance here is imposed by Joyce’s attention itself, not by Bloom’s own understanding of himself. He does not distinguish, throughout the narrative, beThere is no dignity to having a mind, at least not in the tween those aspects of his life which deserve our consideration and those sense that we tend to imagine dignity in literature. The which do not. “everyman” is recognisable because he is stripped of the The banal is therefore not a category of things which possess some hidden peculiarities that Joyce preserves in Bloom profundity. Joyce’s stranger insistence his modernist contemporaries introduced into the hi- is that the banal does not cease to exist because we erarchy of literature. The older narrative instinct is se- have become bored of it. The remarkable thing about lective: it privileges events which advance the plot over Bloom may therefore be that he remains entirely unthose which merely occur in the intervals between such remarkable. significant moments. Joyce, however, does not grant narrative importance only to what propels the plot. The point of his more exacting method is that the mind moves associatively, involuntarily and rather stupidly. We tend to construct the self retrospectively, selecting from the disorder of experience those moments which appear capable of explaining what came afterwards. An impulse not without its vanity, given how readily we imagine our lives as a sequence of recognizable chapters, as though we might identify the precise afternoon on which we become a different person. The failed relationship becomes a period of growth. The uneventful summer becomes, somehow, “a simpler time”. We choose to narrate backwards because living forwards offers no indication of which ordinary moment will eventually acquire prominence. Joyce’s decision in this matter prevents his protagonist from becoming an “everyman”, that rather lifeless literary figure whose principle function is to reassure us that we are all fundamentally alike. Bloom is far from a representative specimen of humanity, and much too peculiar to serve as one. His mind is full of what we generally keep out of polite accounts of ourselves such as, petty grievances or fixations, embarrassing desires, unintelligent opinions, and so on. There is no dignity to having a mind, at 37

Fiction & Poetry Destination City Chapter One

Elena Stack Martin

ightfall was only a fleeting passenger in the summer time—light, light, navy, and breathable— unlike in the winter where it would evict the sun from the sky entirely, without compassion or remorse. Down in the orange tree-lined streets, fruits cooled, leaves swayed, and the lights of the Giralda went out for the AM while the occasional vespa wheezed through the narrow, cobbled streets. Two orange dots blinked in the open, denim sky as they flew away into the distance, further and further from her bedroom window. Marilu, restless in her tossing thoughts and turning body, blinked back as if trying to accelerate time, and teleport onto that plane, wherever it was headed. Her flight to Dublin was in six hours but she had not been able to stop her thoughts from racing as this unbound sleeplessness produced an undefeatable nausea within her, like she was a bottle of wine being turned upside down over and over again. She would change, she could escape, even for a little while. That was what she was going to try and do, anyway, in Dublin, as an actress. And as a person? Her bedroom’s salmon hue was swallowed by the fade of the night which gulped the warmth of the day, digested it, and blew it back in a cool sigh which nicked the curtains so that, from outside the fifteenth floor of that apartment, appeared two pink tongues flicking mockingly at the sleeping city. Farewell, adios. Tuesday would happen as usual for most Sevillians tomorrow, and Tuesdays would still be Tuesdays in her destination city, only Marilu would change for each one that she would pass through thereafter. Marilu did not sleep on the flight either, too busy with thoughts of going away. What about her English? How would she get on? Had she packed everything she needed? Where would she sleep the first few nights in Dublin? Would she miss home? Would her sister remember her? She would have to return in a year to take care of Miriam and support her mother who cooked and sewed and ironed for the neighbours for extra cash. Would she ever forgive her for never returning? No, she would return, there wasn’t a choice. Dublin was only for a year, for better pay, for more opportunity, and then she would return, like a new person. How new could she become? Would she ever be able to face her old self, after all? What kinds of lovers would she have? Things were not going to last very long with Manuel, she thought, 39

because of the distance. Alba López García warned her from Paris of the dangers of distance. She, who curated her relationships like she curated exhibitions, told her friend that, whether it is kept or whether it is rejected, distance is distance, and cannot be consolidated. The exhausting anchors of telephone boxes and phone cables, scratched out words and torn letters that cannot paint the pictures of reinvention of the self, reattachment to new surroundings…The careless utterings of an expensively painted mouth. She was always far better off than Marilu, no matter where she went, no matter what she did. All these thoughts came and went for Marilu like flashes, and nothing stayed. She was too sleepy, but full of bustling excitement and inspiration. She reached for her new notebook where she’d kept a list of telephone numbers, a list of what she’d packed, and a list of recipes, which she admired as artefacts of who she was in that moment, on that flight, before changing, before becoming someone new and letting go of the spaces that had been holding her down. She tore out the page of telephone numbers, crumpled it up, and stared at it in her hand before uncrumpling it and rewriting her mother’s and Alba’s telephone back into the inside cover of her notebook. On the next page, she began to write affirmations: I am beautiful, I am worthy, I am successful, I am a captivating actress, I am an artist, I am attractive, I am ambitious, I can love, I am loved, I know exactly who I am. She stopped there and stared at her spell before marking the date and closing over the notebook. She always had to be doing something to keep her mind busy: writing notes, adjusting her clothes and her hair, learning lines, working at the café theatre, tidying, reading. She was reading her second Clarice Lispector novel at this time, A Passion According to G.H. Lispector matched her feeling of being up in the air, in an in-between space, somewhere thin and fragile and admittedly lost. Lispector felt shapeless, fleeting, full of spirit and wonder, and experimental. “Pero hay algo que es preciso decir, es preciso decir.” What did that even mean? What were her stories about? What was Lispector trying to show? Marilu could not tell, but only embrace the sensations of Lispector’s chaotic words, and allow them to pass through her like a white cloud. Osmosis. Somewhere in between the lines, Marilu fell asleep in the sky.

When the Fever Opens its Mouth Fizza Abbas

I had a fever so bad last year I hallucinated a little red bastard living in my mouth. Teeth, eyes, attitude — the whole package. He acted like he was paying rent. Asked for a mop. Said the enamel was dusty. Complained about the temperature. I let him stay. Didn’t have the strength to kick him out. He curled up on my tongue like it was a hostel mattress. Every time I coughed, he complained about the noise. When I fell asleep he started humming a lullaby in a voice that wasn’t mine. It sounded like a mother I don’t remember having. By the next morning he’d grown bigger. Meaner. Left little scratch marks on the roof of my mouth like souvenirs nobody asked for. Doctors said

“hallucination.” Said “viral psychosis.” Said “you need fluids.” They always say fluids like hydration can fix a collapsing life. When the fever broke the creature left. Didn’t say goodbye. Didn’t leave a note. Just took something red with him and I haven’t figured out how to get it back. Some nights I still feel him. A tenant thinking about renewing the lease.