Piano Recital OCT 2019 by Piano Recital Magazine

Piano Recital Magazine volume 1 issue 2

october 31st, 2019

this zine is taken care of by: ________________________ pianorecitalmagazine.tumblr.com instagram.com/pianorecitalparties vimeo.com/bigbag

Piano Recital Magazine Dear Reader, Thank you for tuning in to the second ever Piano Recital. This publication will appear at major, and favorite, holidays. You may ask why, and the spiritual, humanistic reason is that I adore holidays. The fortitude a single day has to conjure within us a human instinct to gather, take time off and spend time with community is awe inspiring. Of course, it doesn’t always pan out like that for us all. And conformity can really be creepy. But, the second reason for publishing on holidays is that it is usually a lovely, convenient, easy-to-remember date to mark calendars and that will motivate me to keep chugging along. Glad that you

Volume 1 Issue 2

October 31, 2019

are here. But back to the spiritual senses. At work, a colleague of mine reminded me, “everyday is a celebration,” and I agree. Everyday is a celebration and everyday we should say what we mean. So, please be on the lookout for a Turkeyday, Valentines, 420, and May Day zine etc. Be weary, a Chanukah issue won’t arise until I get a Jewish editor. And do enjoy the scraps of poems and outside excerpts, and let us know if anything can be better at this zine. We try our best to not take anything personally. In this Halloween issue, we introduce to you new material and new artists. Alex and Cody will sweep you away with their photos.

Alex’s are grungy, filmy, dreamy shots of rejectamenta, yes trash, and Cody’s are glimpses of his pit stops on the lookout for rocks to boulder and metaphorical mountains to climb. Both artists have had their fair share of travels this year. Between them, visiting Osaka, Saitama, Kyoto, Japan; South Carolina; and Portland. We look forward to having more photos and words from them in the near future at PRM. Alongside these photographers, I will debut an opinion piece called Freaky Fashion. I explain my observations on mainstream critiques on fast fashion. They’re astute and effectively bringing to light the fashion industry’s poor labor practices and irreversible environmental damages. However, these critiques over-simplify and leave out important economic history. It

offers only a black and white issue to millions of viewers on platforms like YouTube. Such campaigns have condemned the fast fashion industry without recognizing that it is alienating poor consumers as it hypocritically ignores similar wrongdoings of higher end brands. Did you know Uzebeckistan is one of the the top producers of cotton in the world? How do you suspect World War II has to do with this outcome? Yes, the Aral Sea is desertified and activists are talking about it, but what they say about it, who they address as victims, and how they say it matters. This October and holiday being spooktacular, has closed with impending fear over the two significant fires in California and other heated political debates. Kincade in the north is about 60% contained according to CALFIRE on this day.

So, in the final article of this issue, Piano Recital Magazine urges family to be fearless and calm, and to also think smart and for the good of the whole. Our hearts are with everyone whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s affected by the fires and power shutoffs. Magically, Halloween is equal parts scary and a time to be creative. The holiday permits us to change who we are on the outside with costumes and ritual union in the face of the caricatures and themes of death, gore, ghouls and gnarled creatures. Halloween plays with and honors the supernatural, the inevitability of fear and death. We have yet to investigate why adults love it so much. But yes, it is Halloween that teaches us to be fearless and to find courage within ourselves. Have a fun and safe Halloween yall. Until next time. xoxo, Andie Nguyen

Contents

Letter from the Editor Coloring Page 1 PHOTOGRAPHS Alex 4 Cody 7 WRITING Freaky Fashion To: Family EXERPTS AND POEMS Israel Lepiz Donnella Meadows Contributors & Pop up Recap w/ Brennen

COVER DESIGN

andie N. aka Big A

Find and color 5 birds (crows of 3, 1 chicken, 1 goose) a Tbone Steak a dog an insect a carrot top a non binary buzz lightyear a skeletonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s foot 2 vehicles a seashell an egg a triangle an alarm clock foureyes (piano recital logo) answers are on our blog

I was handed truth Scribbled in hand the final respite was Of handed man truth ribbled in handto march commanded e final respite through molten fears for eternity

man mmanded to march I knew that I was loved rough molten fears for eternity

from someplace of reflective light diseased knewand i was loved minds I sensed love om someplace of reflective light - IL d diseased minds

sensed love

ALex FRADEL

I don’t read much poetry hardly ever But I do know poetry when I see or hear it And when I think of the beautiful sacrifices you’ve made kind actions and human mistakes, I smile and my heart melts I also don’t write much poetry or letters to you at least not enough -BA

ALEX FRADEL 6

Cody LE

Freaky Fashion We in the world have a pollution issue. Air, waters, lands steam because of the piles of discarded junk and manufactured waste plating the surfaces, coasts and even forming ocean islands. The junk isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t any kind of junk, it is toxic, pushed aside and dampening the cries of environmentalists instead of fueling their lobbies to the White House. Studies and activists revealed in the last decade that the second largest contributor to pollution is the fashion industry. This idea is fairly mainstream now. On Youtube, TedTalks on the sub11

WWII has to do with our clothes by Andie ject number with millions of views and their cousins, fashion diy bloggers, are on the crusade against the fashion industryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s damages to the environment and poor labor practices everyday. To add on to the notion that it is mainstream to buy and make eco-consciously in fashion, many new fashion, eco-focused companies have emerged because of this strive for a better planet. For example, shoes are made of plastic from used bottles, wearable glitter is biodegradable, companies claim to use materials and labor practices that are fair and sustainable. All companies like such as brought

up by this one ted talk are technologically revolutionary in creating products and management styles that divert waste going into landfills and better the lives of its workers. These companies, like Everlane, Dadigonia, and others, I’d say seem to be doing successful. Their non-retail compatriots are the organizations you may be familiar with, B Certified and Cotton Campaign. Now while many sources on the internet tout this revolution on fashion and the textile industry, many of the companies they denounce still exists. How could their efforts make such a little dent? Has the wave only washed over metropolitan cities in progressive California and blue states? What I found interesting is the attack the mainstream has had on fashion specifically cries to the public about companies well known like H&M, Primark and Forever 21 and dubs those as prime examples of Fast Fashion. While do-

ing so, It hasn’t nearly called out the incredible issues high fashion also commits. Because of Fast Fashion’s status as lower class, serving a large population for affordable clothes, it is easy to deem it dirtiest of them all in terms of contributing to pollution. In my research I’ve found that name brands are not so innocent! In the rest of the essay, I will touch briefly how World War II has to do with the rise of cotton growth in Central Asia. The environmental damages onto which the mainstream media has latched preside in Uzbekistan, a country that used to be lands under the control of the U.S.S.R. (up until the 1991). The main critiques have gotten far in denouncing materialism, greed and corner cutting of many companies that has led to the overcultivation and desertification of the Central Asian sea, the Aral, but fail to address the history that has to do with the reasons why.

the U.S.S.R. government irrigated from the Aral sea for cotton in the first place. It is important to dive into history because then, we can realize how to get people who buy from fast fashion and people who hate fast fashion to join hands on this environmental issue!

Anti-Fashionistas are Livid and Making you feel BAD In a 2018 BBC documentary, “Fashion’s Dirty Secret” Stacy Dooley, the journalist and host takes a tour across a barren, blue-white sea bed. She poses questions to the locals what it was like before, and reports that there are no fish left, children and families are ill with respiratory diseases, and land was desertified, meaning unable to produce crops. 13

Based on that documentary, it was clear that the pesticides and irrigation use had poisoned the land and people. And the lass comes back to the UK to interview strangers on the street, asking them if they knew how much water it took to grow the cotton for their denim. It was awkward for many, and enlightening for others. For me, I was in shock still from the images from the desert sea. The BBC narrative is similar to many other campaigns against fast fashion in such that they find an environmental catastrophe and link it with the consumers’ duty to buy responsibly. What they say in “buying responsibly” they mean “don’t buy from fast fashion” “don’t buy too much” “get with the programme, c**ts” Funnily enough. I’m not sure if it is a gendered campaign.

Anyway. It is extremely important to know the ramifications of our industrialized habits and economy. Not only can we see what desertification can be avoided, we can trace where we failed as humans to look out for one another. It is even better, however, to make sure we are not viewing things as black and white. Today, our critiques modeled like BBc’s are common. They produce a clear cause and clear effect on mega polluted waters or mega deviated communities. What I’ve seen in reaction to these claims and the claims in general, is that there are mainly attacks on Fast Fashion brands now. Because of this, new companies are arising that fight pollution etc. So while one is put down, another goes up. But I believe another is unscathed. Like the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The Ugly is the haute

couture brands. The ones that rarely appear in these campaigns against the fashion industry at least to my judgment. This occurs because, conveniently, as the fast fashion brands produce cheap clothes and are clearly cutting corners, we don’t dare point our fingers at the High-class brands. Mainly European, with rich consumers. High fashion brands aren’t that much different from Fast Fashion I assue you. Believable yet hard to prove tales live on about how high fashion brands copy from the poor and reap millions of dollars as they claim them art. High end also creates “minimally” and “exclusively,” which heightens their clout and people buying unnecessarily high-priced items that go out of fashion, just as Fast Fashion. Factually, the brand Gucci sells their clothes marketed as genuine italian, when the products are not manufactured in Italy, only

the leather comes from Italy and finishing touches are added there. (TPain’s School of Business, s1ep3.) High fashion also exports their labor. Why is that not obvious? Why are we obsessed with the fact that fast fashion does it?

Pesticides and the Farms Race during the Cold War Pump Venom The Aral sea used to be a vast body of water that spanned Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Once a source of fish, other wildlife and fertile grounds, the Aral now is dried up, and the sediments have toxic levels of aluminum that whip into dust storms. Apparently, on the dried sea bed is contaminated with aluminum which scientists discovered as an ingredient in the pesticides used in the cotton fields in the southeast region 15

of the country. What some of you may know is that the country of Uzbekistan generates, grows and harvests the majority of our world’s cotton today. Cotton, the material used for most of our everyday clothes, towels, home furnishings, became a crop for the U.S.S.R. to tout its prosperity as a central economy during the Cold War, which began after World War II in 1945. The satellite Uzbekistan was not a country but a territory that The U.S.S.R. colonized and controlled. It is just south of the present day Russian border (see map). Cotton, to the U.S.S.R. would show the world of its prosperity. It is called White Gold in the area, a signifier of its loaded importance. In 1954, the Soviet ruler Kruschev amped up irrigation to the cotton fields from the two rivers that would have flowed into the Aral Sea. “Mo-

tivations for this monoculture were largely political; not only did the Soviet want to erase dependence on foreign cotton, but it also sought to demonstrate its ability, through hard work, to “develop a glittering southern showcase of socialism.” DAM! So you’re saying, investing in cotton growing was to rub it in the US face? In the United States we were doing the same intensive farming to snub also, but instead of cotton, put the pesticide grown produce in supermarkets (a new thing at the time) to prove the benefits of Capitalism/Free market. Freakonomics has an entire podcast on this. And upon listening, I learned that the U.S. government poured financial resources into the food sciences to create GMOs and pesticides and monocultures. The episode went on how this farms race paralleled the Space race, you know Sputnik and Apollo 11. Through these races for quantity 17

and distances, The superpowers, U.S. and U.S.S.R. were fighting to influence their citizens and the world. By the way, you can’t have monocultures without the use of pesticides. This is because with monocultures, every plant has the same genetic makeup. When one plant gets sick, the plant will fall to the disease or pest rampantly without pesticides. Almost in all arenas of industry and manufacturing, the U.S. in WWII had an interest and say. The American government emphasized working in collaboration. According to The Company by John Kenneth Galbraith, “Wartime governments everywhere ordered management and labor to collaborate in order to boost productivity and prevent the strikes that had marred the 1930s” (115). It was ingrained in the U.S. before the Cold War to mechanize and produce more for the troops and efficiently. What the US message to

the communist side of the world was fettered with deceit. While American supermarkets planted retail stores in the U.S.S.R. to begin their pro-capitalism campaigns and help business people and change Soviet-controlled farming techniques, cotton was chiefly how U.S.S.R. would race back to claim its dignity. I bet that the monoculture practices, as an idea, were exported alongside these hopes to spread capitalism and influenced the Soviet government to grow cotton as a monoculture. But the result was a sickly population, impoverished and reliant on cotton farming when the U.S.S.R. collapsed in 1991 and as the world demanded more cotton. So now, the desertified Aral Sea as I mentioned, is a topic of discussion that proves the Fast Fashion industry as environmental leeches. All I want to leave is a little history and

complaints why we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t blame the Higher End. I hope to figure out more about this, these are just the beginnings of my thoughts