post- 9/28/2023

In This Issue

Gabrielle yuan

Cat Gao

2

Red Cover

The Beginning, Take Two

3

6

evan gardner

5

Eleanor Dushin

Anonymous 4

When Country’s Culture Wars Forgot Its Artists

Hours Were The Birds

First Year Blues Olivia Cohen

October Calendar 8

Will Hassett

Crossroads 9

postCover by Kianna Pan

SEP 28

VOL 32

— ISSUE 2

FEATURE

The Beginning, Take Two some intergenerational reflections on navigating college

By Cat GAo illustrated by Junyue MA “‘I dream backwards now. You won’t believe how

home. Before arriving in Providence, I had attended

only thing that felt safe. I called my mom. Within 10

backwards you’ll dream someday.’” (Marina Keegan,

boarding school for several years, where I’d been away

minutes, the machine was churning happily, and I

The Opposite of Loneliness)

for months at a time. Yet somehow, things felt different.

couldn’t have felt more relieved. Back in my dorm, I

Perhaps I was preoccupied with the notion that starting

folded shirts and trousers with the improved, space-

The first time I tried to use a washing machine

college was greater than just a technicality, like the

efficient method my mom had taught me a week prior.

in Champlin Hall’s fourth floor laundry room, I

one that marked the step from elementary school

My mother moved from the mining village of

was oblivious to the fact that it was already broken.

to middle school. No, this was something infinitely

Fengfeng, Handan to Beijing in 1981 at the age of 17 to

Fiddling with the appliance’s various knobs and

more significant. Unlike at boarding school, where

attend Peking University. Having lived in scarcity for

fruitlessly swiping my credit card into the scanner

everything felt more relaxed, starting college marked

her entire life, beginning a new chapter in a bustling

meant for student IDs, I couldn’t help myself from

the beginning of a brand new phase of life—of being.

city of over five million people must have been nothing

thinking: “Wow. This is really different from how it is

Starting college meant shedding the childish traits of

short of terrifying, though exciting too. When I asked

back at home.” Standing there in the tiny room under

high school and embracing adulthood. And there I was,

her about this, she agreed with a smile, laughing as she

glaring white lights, I realized I felt lost.

allowing an experience as mundane as washing clothes

recollected the events of decades prior. She described

to overcome me. Unsure of how to proceed, I did the

how, armed with two tiny suitcases filled with all of

I know and what I don’t, out with the old and in with

Anthony’s recent breakouts into the mainstream. Of

the new, seeking comfort and embracing discom-

course, we’ve got Lifestyle to round us out with a plan

fort—and I think I’m not alone.

for the new month we find ourselves in and a fittingly

***

It wasn’t even the first time I’d been far from

Letter from the Editor Dear Readers, This past weekend, I celebrated the big two-one.

Wahoo! You can imagine my excitement when our

Starting off in Feature, our writer compares her

lovely EIC gifted me with the heavy responsibility of

college experience to that of her mother, reflecting

bestowing this week’s mood, vibe, theme, what-have-

on the generational gap caused by time. In Narrative,

And here you are at the crossroads between two

you to our beautiful readers. Not so wahoo… just

we’ve got the age-old (actually Matrix-old) debate

life altering decisions: Will you slog your way through

kidding, love ya Kimberly. It’s weird being a “real”

between blue and red: One writer is reflecting on

another partly cloudy Thursday; or will you rock and

adult on a college campus, simultaneously feeling so

the struggles of embracing a new world in their first-

roll into the weekend by reading the wonderful pieces

wise, yet so immature. One day I’m putting on my big

year; the other finds herself far from home too, using

we’ve curated for you? In all my old man wisdom, I’m

boy pants to impart my not-so-wise wisdom to our

a red pillow to tether her to her past. Meanwhile,

going to have to suggest the latter :)

newest Gendo Taiko members (welcome Gen20!)

A&C embraces two sides of the same musical coin.

and the next I’m donning my hood in full sunlight

As one writer thinks about narrative versus emotion

like a rebellious pre-teen (sorry to all my high school

in Adrianne Lenker’s music, the other considers the

teachers). I’m towing the eternal line between what

political polarization behind Zach Bryan and Oliver

2

post–

named crossword (but you’ll get no hints from this editor).

Toodles,

Joe Maffa

A&C Managing Editor

FEATURE the items she owned, she hugged my grandparents

exclusive to the Western world, but has spread across

goodbye, boarded the train, and was off.

the globe. In China, over 1.03 billion people owned a

Red Cover

on growing up, but never apart

Upon arriving at her accommodations, my mother

mobile phone and accessed the internet in 2022, and

discovered that there was only one crank phone

this number is expected to increase to 1.2 billion by

allocated to a building that housed over two hundred

2027. The differences between the era in which my

freshmen, all of whom were desperate to update

mother started college and the era we live in today

their loved ones that they’d arrived safe and sound.

are both stark and undeniable. I’m able to contact my

Waiting in that never-ending line was time-consuming,

mother whenever I want, and yet, in boarding school,

but coming across other means of instantaneous

my messages home were few and far between. At the

As I cast one final glance around my room, disappointment

communication, such as payphones, was virtually

time, I felt that independence was synonymous with

seeps into my heart. The unfulfilled part of me is saddened to

impossible at the time in China. My grandparents didn’t

separation. I convinced myself that I was always too

feel nothing more than a single, temporary drop in my chest

have many options, either. In fact, only an estimated

busy to call my mother, whereas the real reason for my

when thinking about moving away. It’s hard to miss something

0.38% of Chinese families had access to a phone in 1978,

silence was that I had created a rift between my school

that has already been tainted by the notion of change, such

and my grandparents, who lived in relative poverty,

life and my home life.

as my floral bedding smothered with clothes, or the emerald

by gabrielle yuan Illustrated by Lena He INSTA: @LiquidButterflies

belonged to the 99.62%. To speak with my mother, they

But existence is multifaceted. I don’t need to let

green rug I used to lay on for hours that’s now engulfed with

had to schedule trips to the community center, the only

go of my “old life” in pursuit of new horizons. I’m lucky

location with a public phone within a 20-mile radius.

to have a supportive parent who cares about how I’m

I yearn for the urge to cry—for a sign of acceptance or even

Planning these trips was also difficult: my mother had

doing. So whenever I have a chance, I message her. I

recognition that I will be leaving for the better half of the year.

a busy schedule and infrequent access to the singular

send her photos of my dorm as it gradually grows more

Yet nothing seems to touch me in the way that I have seen in

crank phone, which malfunctioned and broke after

and more decorated. I send her photos of the food, and

the movies, where the graduates leaving home exchange last-

two weeks. My mother could either send her family a

she guesses which photos were taken at which dining

minute hugs, tears, and laughs with high school best friends

written letter, a process that could take anywhere from

halls. I send her photos of the scenery, of particularly

and precious old neighbors.

one week to three months, or she could wait until she

beautiful mornings where the sun gleams onto the

The luggage I have indecisively wrapped and unraveled

next returned home and saw them.

boxes, luggage, and mounds of trash.

trees in a way that makes everything look blue and

and wrapped again equates to a total of five suitcases and three

My mother was forced to adapt to her new

gold. Through my messages, phone calls, and photos,

boxes. I wonder how much of my room and my past I intend to

surroundings alone. There was no way to debrief her

my mother has been experiencing college all over

bring to my new home.

days with her father, or to cry to her mother when she

again, albeit through a far different lens. Instead of

felt particularly alone. Still, being as strong as she is, my

urging me to take the most intensive classes offered, as

枕巾

mother adjusted quickly. She threw herself headfirst

she pressured herself to do at my age, my mother texts

mismatched dorm decorations. I smile to myself, thinking

into her schooling of French and international

to tell me that I should study whatever makes me feel

back to eighth grade, when my mother had first delicately

relations. And while she didn’t necessarily find any

best about myself. I am being given the opportunity

placed this upon my pillow. My eyes had physically hurt

overwhelming passion in these subjects, she grounded

to develop my love for what I love, while receiving an

from the exclamation of color declared by the pillow cover,

herself. She was working towards a greater goal—

amazing education that she worked her entire life to

so different from my floral comforter deemed trendy for the

one that culminated in securing a career that would

provide me with. And I know that whenever I need

plethora of boys I thought I would bring up to my room (zero).

provide her with the means to move her parents out of

support, the kind of support you can only receive from

Now the fabric of the cover feels flattened smooth, soft,

their rural, impoverished village, to somewhere more

your people, I know that they’re only a call away.

Peeking from the brims of one of the packing boxes is my : a Chinese pillow cover, resting lightly atop the array of

and worn-out. I recall the months of crisis the pillow cover has

comfortable. A place where they could finally relax. Yet

As Keegan writes in The Opposite of Loneliness,

gone through to reach that level of texture, carrying without

despite finally coming to call her new environment a

my mother is dreaming backwards. She is watching

complaint the entirety of my stresses, cradling my worries

home away from home, and making the lifelong friends

a lifetime of dreams manifest themselves in me, as

with ease. I’ve grown accustomed to this pillow cover over the

she still has today, she knew that something was

I begin walking down the same path that she too

half of my life I’ve spent asleep all these years, so on those rare

missing. She missed her real home, her support system

walked down 42 years ago. The rapid advancements

nights away from home, I can no longer sleep with the rough

of 17 years. It was a feeling that no amount of newfound

of technology may be unprecedented, but I can

patch of non-cotton pillowcases against my cheek.

joy could wash away.

personally testify that technology has succeeded in

My pillow cover is a violent red, supposedly a symbol of

Things are vastly different now. Both my mother

one thing: connecting people. The world now feels a

luck in Chinese tradition. It is a constant reminder of all the

and I live in America, and both of us have smartphones.

little smaller, a little more tight-knit. I can take my

superstitious beliefs my mother has instilled in me. While

Communication between us is instantaneous. In fact,

mother with me on every exhilarating and enchanting

some measures I can’t help but feel burdened by, her act of

access to digital communication is a given for most

step forward—something that she could only dream

changing my bedsheets (oblivious to her intentions) to brown

Americans today, with about 95% of Americans owning

of doing with her own mother. Everyone is constantly

ones the night before opening my acceptance letter to Brown,

a mobile phone in 2018. The rapid boom of technology

embarking on new journeys that are lined with

has softened my heart for her little gestures. That night, I

over the past 20 years has been unprecedented, with

millions of past dreams. And now, we can venture far

watched her from a distance with the pillow cover in my hand,

the number of people with access to a mobile device

away without fearing that we’ll let go of who we once

puzzled and comforted at the same time, watching her care for

growing exponentially. Now more than ever, it appears

were. It’s a nice sensation, knowing that home can

me so strongly.

that digital communication has become the new

be tucked away in your jacket pocket. It’s like having

My mother is a radiant red—a fierce presence in my

status quo, with a new generation being taught to type

armor. Armor that feels like the warm hug of freshly

life. For as long as I have been breathing, she has been my

and write simultaneously. This phenomenon is not

washed laundry.

guiding force: from checking my homework problems step

Leaf-s 1. Japanese Maple 2. Without saying goodbye 3. Tea

“If it wasn’t for QuestBridge I’d be here on a D1 scholarship for instigating.”

4. The ones of grass by Walt Whitman 5. Kkaennip 6.

“Unabomber? I barely even know her.”

7. …a message after the beep 8. through a book 9. Eucalyptus (but specifically if u are a koala) 10. Blower September 28, 2023

3

NARRATIVE

by step through the sufferings of Kumon, to checking my temperature on nights I was so sick I couldn’t lift my head to sip her homemade chicken broth.

Like the red pillow cover, she could not stand the idea of blending in with anything or anyone, and she hopes that my presence among others is just as strong. Sometimes, the ideas of my mother and the pillow cover blend as one, overwhelming many of my true emotions and feelings: I am a writer: I am not my brother.

I am an introvert: I cannot command a room.

I want to cut my hair short: I do not want to keep it long.

Memories of my mother’s endless obsession with finding the art of success—her constant hovering over me, waiting for me to complete the tasks she had deemed important— urge me to remove the pillow cover from the box and leave it behind.

I think about the tears the pillow cover has held, the throws and yanks, as well as the many attempts to hide it whenever friends came over because it just wasn’t “cool” enough. I think about the times I have discarded it, determined to rest peacefully without the comfort of the pillow cover, and then found myself late at night deliriously retrieving it from the depths of my closet.

Now, as I arrive on campus for the first time, I am asked an intimate question right away: “Are you going to reinvent yourself?”

Other questions that follow next: “Will you go out to party more?”

“Who do you want to kiss?”

I shake my head to all of these existential questions of reinvention and find myself remembering all of the times I have hid the red pillow cover away from view—all of the times my mother has cried in her attempts to care for me in the best way she could.

Now, I do not keep the red pillow cover tucked away because I am ashamed. Instead, I know exactly what the pillow cover means, both as a symbol and against my cheek.

She whispers and guides me to chase feverishly after my desires. She continues to carry the weight of my burdens of school, friends, and balancing this new style of life from a distance.

Now, as I am waving goodbye to my mother, tears begin to slide endlessly down my cheeks, blurring my final vision of her. Don’t be fooled: these are the good tears. The kind of overbearing, suffocating, nose-clogging tears that I can smile through, knowing that I am growing up from her and the pillow cover, but never apart.

4

post–

First Year Blues I didn’t know college would be this lonely

by Anonymous Illustrated by Kimberly Liu At the beginning, it was good. It was exciting to be around so many new people, so many of them interesting, passionate, and unfailingly kind.

Campus was beautiful, the sun casting its golden glow on the old brick buildings, the grass bright and wet, the ancient towering trees scattering shadows like mosaic tiles. I had uprooted myself, like so many of us do, to attend this institution, carrying with me the boundless optimism that comes with a fresh start.

To some extent, I had anticipated the difficulties—by nature, I am introverted, reserved, a little quiet. From my whole life spent in the same suburbs, I only had a few very close friends. But in the weeks prior to move-in, my family and friends told me, over and over again: Everyone is away from home and starting anew; everyone will be having a hard time; everyone is looking for new friends. It will be okay.

I tried, I really did. At the start of orientation week I participated in events with a near-vicious determination, rapid-firing introductions, sitting with strangers in the dining halls, plastering a constant expression of amiability on my face.

For the first few nights, I attended the socials the university organized, hoping to meet people with whom I would really connect. But the socials turned out to be events completely without structure: We were tossed into a sea of fellow freshmen on the Main Green and left to fend for ourselves. Faces flipped before me like flashcards, their features hardly distinguishable in the dark, my mouth learning the same sequence of words— namefromdormmajor, every exchange ending as abruptly as it had begun. At the end of those nights I sat in my dorm alone, exhausted from the effort of being around so many people, troubled with the suspicion that nothing would come of all this work—the introductions and faces so easily

shifting back to strangers, sliding away.

How did I make friends in the past? I’d grown so used to my friendships back home; they were ships with hulls worn so smooth with age that all signs of construction had been erased. We grew up together. Our parents all knew each other. Now, my muscles were atrophied; it was a Sisyphean task to start from scratch and rebuild.

Whatever dreams I had of bonding with my orientation group quickly dissolved. It became clear that the group of twenty-or-so people organized for the sole purpose of facilitating firstyear socializing was going to do no such thing. We met for sessions that felt like class. Without the mandated icebreakers through which we learned each other's names—but not much else—we would have spent the meetings in complete silence. As the week dragged on, fewer and fewer people showed up.

I was always there. Because what else did I have to do? I had nobody I could readily text to make plans with, at least nobody yet—wasn’t that the whole point of orientation? Yet it seemed like everyone else was making friends fast: Large groups congregated on the green, eating together, walking together with such purpose, charging forward to some mysterious shared destination.

How did they make it look so easy? What was I doing wrong that meant I did most things alone, that when I sat outside to read or write I would be the only one by myself ?

Two blocks west of my dorm lies Prospect Terrace, a park in the shape of a small rectangle perched on a hilltop, overlooking the city below.

I came there nearly every day that first week, sitting on a bench behind the front railings with my arms wrapped around my knees, trembling, watching the setting sun douse the sky in vivid pinks and oranges like a blush, or a bruise. The summer before I left, my mom and I would go on evening walks around the park near our house nearly every day, setting out at golden hour and returning after dark. The chatter of her voice doling out college advice, the distant shouts of boys playing football on the grass, the soft rustling of the trees. The sweat underneath my shirt, the taste of cool water from the bottle she would

10. Blower NARRATIVE always uncap for me first, our looping path back to where we started. Now she was walking alone through the neighborhood. I sat on the bench and watched the darkening sky and wondered if she was doing the same, looking up, trying to find my presence in the streaks of clouds.

To others, it must have looked as if I was gliding through the week. I tagged along with groups to events. I almost always ate with others.

Multiple times as I walked to a dining hall with somebody else, I would recognize and greet familiar faces, and the person next to me would remark, “You know so many people!” How could I explain that these connections were all surfacelevel, that most of them I had never held a single real conversation with, hardly even knew? And these people I recognized: There was a persistent feeling that they already had their own groups, their own plans, and I did not want to intrude. Was I going to be stuck here, always on the periphery of social circles, never truly “in”?

Now and then I would be struck by a spasm of anxiety seizing my head and my stomach and my hands when I remembered: I had nobody here. Campus was an ocean in which I could disappear, and no one would notice. Everyday I was fighting to keep my head above the water.

University events, planned dates, shared meals— inevitably those brief moments of reprieve would end, and I would find myself close to drowning again. I longed for home, not so much physically as emotionally. I longed for a place where I could feel comfort and belonging, where I could be alone and not feel lonely, where I could feel the warmth of the knowledge that I was wanted; I was sick with longing.

Those slow afternoons where I would bike to my friend’s house carrying a slice of cake I had baked that morning. We would lie on her queensized bed, striped with sun streaming in from between the window slats, basking in each other’s company. Maybe we would watch a movie. Maybe

we would do dance workouts in her living room, get carpet burns on our knees. It didn’t matter— just having each other near was enough. And all those hours spent in bed with my cats pressed underneath my arm, warm and purring. Car rides to and from school with my brother driving while I watched the power lines race by through halflidded eyes. I thought it would last forever; now the longing was a constant ache.

Who could I confide in? In conversations with other first-years, I would make some feeble attempt, asking casually how everyone was feeling about orientation, how were they doing? Do you feel the same despair I do, are you lonely too, isn’t this all just so difficult? But the answers I got were always vaguely positive, some variation of “tiring but fun!” Anyways, maybe I was alone, maybe I was the only one struggling. Around me it looked like everyone had already found “their people.”

But I suppose this is a great paradox of beginning college: I never talked to anyone else about my isolation, my pain—I did not want to appear weak or unstable or “ruin the mood”— but I wanted so badly for someone, anyone, to do exactly that. I was miserable because everyone else seemed so happy, but to other people I must have seemed happy, I know so many people! Is this what freshman year is, just a terrible Catch-22?

Sometimes I want to be alone, because only then can I finally drop the act of pretending I am having a good time; but here I am never, never alone.

Dorms and communal showers and dining halls and greens and libraries: in none of these spaces can I exist by myself. In none of these spaces do I find home.

But home isn’t a place you find, is it? It’s a place you build. On this strange and beautiful campus, I still feel fragile and leaky. I cry so often.

But I feel it sometimes, eating with somebody outside on a sunny day, learning to dance in Sayles, going on walks by the river—little glimmers of hope.

Hours Were The Birds how Adrianne Lenker’s intimate solemnity commands a room

by Eleanor Dushin Illustrated by audrey wijono Insta: @audreybellie In August, it rained for two weeks straight. I had only packed one sweater for a two-month internship, and the threads were thinning out at the cuffs. It was 1:30 a.m.—the latest I had stayed up all summer—and I sat in the corner of my host family’s guest bedroom.

I held the fading knit fabric between my fingers, telling myself I was looking for holes, not using it as a security blanket. I had headphones on, and “forwards beckon rebound” by Adrianne Lenker played for the twelfth time that night. My muscles clenched at the refrain. I didn’t have anything to cry about, but I cried anyway. Despite the looks of the scene, I was the happiest I’d been since being at Brown.

I deemed it an Adrianne Lenker summer.

Like other indie folk artists—Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, The Lumineers—Adrianne Lenker’s return to the pastoral provides an escape from a productivitycentered reality. She doesn’t shy away from the grub and grim of life and love; she speaks with as much nonchalance about bleeding and birth as she does about sleeping in the car. There’s a natural shamelessness to her lyricism and a coarse understated warmth to her voice.

Understatement itself is the core of her music.

In “Mythological Beauty,” a song she wrote for her band Big Thief, she tells the story of a young mother through domestic, everyday activities instead of overly verbalizing emotions. Her description of “shrapnel and oil cans, rhubarb in the yard” provides a more whole, unromanticized view of the scene than the previous line, “Rented a house in Nisswa,

September 28, 2023

5

ARTS & CULTURE

Minnesota.” Her specificity breeds intimacy, and along with frontal vocals and fingerstyle acoustic guitar, it seems as though Lenker is letting you in on a secret, almost whispering in the room with you. The highpitched vocals at the climax of the song don’t choke me up like the low and slow “Do you leave your light on?” I may not be or have a young mother, but I know what it feels like to live so on edge that you don’t want to turn off the lights.

Big Thief’s “Velvet Ring” follows a similar structure.

Although the story of a couple trying to make ends meet through prostitution carries plenty of weight, the more understated elements of their interactions are the main emotional charge. The song slows down as Lenker sings, “And I just wanna take you home / I just wanna take you home”—two lines that hurl me directly into the fetal position. Small displays of fear or hopelessness or childlike wonder with the backdrop of a more eventful, even chaotic, scene easily catch the ear. They guide the scenes from far-removed impersonal events to familiar feelings. +++ Lenker’s solo music, on the other hand, tends to abandon clear storylines and demand a complete reliance on emotion. The summer after I graduated high school, I started reading poetry. I had spent the last year searching for symbolism and enjambment whenever I read, but after a few poetryfoundation.org deep dives, I decided to stop treating my interests like assignments.

I started reading poems and sitting with feelings, not dwelling on concrete meaning and evidence.

When a friend introduced me to Adrianne Lenker in the second month of my first year at Brown, I took the same approach. I didn’t need to know exactly what she meant. I didn’t need to know what story she was telling.

I would cry either way. I subconsciously picked out small words (wind…lack…pray…cradle…) that drenched me in feelings I couldn’t name. Even without a definitive narrative, small words crafted an entire scene.

That’s the beauty in her songwriting: There’s a sense of irrationality to the intense emotions of her songs. It’s not as simple as relating to a breakup song. There’s little reason why a line about standing in the yard conjures strong feelings, but small descriptions, in or out of context, become the essence of her songs. Emotion takes precedence over rationale. +++ Some of Lenker’s most impactful lines are close to nonsense, only deriving meaning from their context.

The first verse of “ingydar” seems more like a clump of words than lyrics to a song at first glance: 6

post–

Fragilely, gradually and surrounding The horse lies naked in the shed Evergreen anodyne decompounding Flies draw sugar from his head In an interview with GQ, Adrianne Lenker says about the song, “Everything is constantly being born and decaying simultaneously. We're both growing and becoming, and also unbecoming and decaying simultaneously.” I don’t fully understand the lyrics as they’re written—I don’t know what anodyne is, if evergreen refers to the tree or the color, what the flies are really doing, or why she specifies that the horse is naked—but there is a certain biological element to the lyrics that guides me to feel a push and a pull. The push of a lush evergreen forest and the pull of the clinicalsounding “anodyne.” The push of a sweet sugar and the pull of feeling flies swarm around you. It isn’t the specific idea of birth and death that evokes a sense of optimistic hopelessness. It’s the more general idea of being surrounded by conflicting natural forces.

Lenker’s word choice extends beyond objects that match the energy of the scene. In many cases, the very shape of the word booms or snaps like a shovel in soil or corrugated iron shifting. The melody of the verse of “ingydar” bounces back and forth, echoing the lyrical push and pull. The round, open sounds in “anodyne decompounding” and “the spherical marigold terrain” fit together with the refrain: “Everything eats and is eaten, time is fed.” Cycles fall not necessarily within the semantics of the lyrics but within the phonetics of the words.

Such stark specificity and deliberate care given to the lyricism somehow leaves more room for interpretation. Where one person hears birth and death, another hears pressure from work and school.

Although she may include a small foothold, a root like the refrain or the title that establishes the theme, her music doesn’t require the acceptance of her intentions.

As verses branch off from the root, their malleability personalizes listening experiences. Even in sadness, her music is cozy because it feels personal. It meets you where you are. On the bedroom floor, “forwards beckon rebound” met me at a time when I needed to unbutton the stress I had stowed away. The next morning, it met me on its thirteenth play as I biked to work. A month later, it met me as I played with my roommate’s cat in our triple.

The last time it rained, I listened to Adrianne Lenker’s 2014 album Hours Were the Birds. As the title track played, I found myself everywhere I’d been while listening to the song: in my first-year dorm after

my friend texted the title to me, walking to class in the spring, and in my brother’s apartment over the summer.

The familiarity I felt the first time I listened to it carried into the last. I listened to the rain hit the trees outside my window as she sang the last line: “Isn’t this dandy? / I’ve got you, and you’ve got me.”

When Country’s Culture Wars Forgot Its Artists more indie than industry plant

by Evan Gardner Illustrated by Emily Saxl Ask anyone about the summer of 2023 and they will tell you it was the summer of Barbenheimer. What they won’t tell you, however, is that it was just as much the summer of country music.

Country music, while often maligned as a genre, owned the top three spots on Billboard’s Hot 100 in July, claimed number one in August, and started September in the top spot yet again.

Nonetheless, many in the media have been reluctant to label 2023 a genuine country music renaissance, possibly because of July’s number-one hit: “Try That in a Small Town.” The Jason Aldean song was completely unremarkable. While the song dropped in May, it wasn’t until the music video, released July 14, that the song began to climb the charts.

This newfound popularity was largely due to the onslaught of outrage at the music video, which features a compilation of clips of violent protests and Aldean strumming his guitar in front of a courthouse where a lynching once took place, crying out lyrics like: Cuss out a cop, spit in his face / Stomp on the flag and light it up / Yeah, ya think you're tough / Well, try that in a small town / See how far ya make it down the road / Around here, we take care of our own / You cross that line, it won't take long / For you to find out, I recommend you don't / Try that in a small town The song faced near-immediate left-wing pushback: Tennessee state legislator Justin Jones labeled the song a “vile racist song” and a “lynching anthem.”

The right-wing responded: People began purchasing the song, an archaic form of consumption in the streaming age, reserved only to drive a song up the charts to make a principled stand. Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called out

ARTS & CULTURE to his supporters on X, formerly Twitter, to explicitly request that they join in this act of conservative rebellion: Jason Aldean writes a song defending the values that ALL Americans used to share - faith, family, hard work, patriotism - only to be immediately sacrificed at the altar of censorship & cancellation. These are the same people who cheer songs like “Cop Killer” & the glorification of sex and violence in hip-hop. Stand strong against these hypocrites and opportunist frauds, @Jason_Aldean. It’d be a real shame if the song hits #1. We’ll do our part & play it at our rallies.

With America still in the heat of the Aldean saga, a new release from the upstart Oliver Anthony in August plunged the cultural commentators right back into round two of the country music culture wars. Anthony’s song took over the country music scene when he released a video playing his original song “Rich Men North of Richmond” with a microphone and a steel guitar in the middle of the woods. This emotional ballad of the working class man went viral, hitting number one on the charts, but quickly turned partisan when it received passionate social media endorsements from conservative influencers like Matt Walsh and Dan Bongino. Several weeks later, “Rich Men North of Richmond” even played at the beginning of the first Republican primary debate as the moderators posed the opening question: “Why is this song striking such a nerve?”

The left-wing backlash was quick to follow. The Daily Beast accused Anthony of promoting a “racist, Reaganite image of ‘welfare queens,” and Vox described the song as one long piece of “embedded racism."

This clean-cut political narrative of Anthony as the new right wing’s rising star faced one problem: the beliefs of Oliver Anthony himself.

In response to his newfound infamy, Anthony posted a video to X, insisting that it was “aggravating” to be used as a pawn by politicians who “act like we’re buddies and… fighting the same struggle here.” He even took direct aim at the Republican debate, saying, “It’s like, I wrote that song about those people, you know?”

When Fox News brought their new right-wing star Anthony onto Fox and Friends, he deviated sharply from their typical talking points, declaring that diversity is “what makes us strong.”

Fast forward a month later, and the country scene is dominated by someone else: a mustachioed man from Oologah, Oklahoma named Zach Bryan. Bryan is a different kind of country star. He presents not as a wellgroomed industry pro (like Aldean) or a fire-bearded man fresh out of his deer stand (Anthony); instead, Bryan is a clean-cut former Navy man and outspoken

against transphobia.

A country star who fights national foes abroad and transphobes at home is a rare commodity in country music; so, unsurprisingly, the progressive country music stans jumped on Zach Bryan as their hero. Popcast, the New York Times’s culture podcast, declared that Bryan had gone viral on “progressive southern internet,” and an article in The Atlantic praised Bryan’s ability to “somewhat fit the mold of ‘alt country’ singers who capture the NPR crowd.”

Perhaps at no point was the progressive-king-ZachBryan discourse stronger than when he was arrested three weeks ago in Oklahoma. Naturally, his public arrest for obstruction of a law enforcement officer during a traffic stop ignited endless discourse about Zach Bryan’s views on law enforcement. After Bryan posted a video about his arrest, one X user responded, “Zach Bryan really said ACAB without actually saying ACAB as many times as possible in his story and that is so slay of him.”

But Bryan, much like Anthony, is not the political icon his fans may think he is. In his written statement about the arrest, he apologized for his disobedience and insisted that he “support[s] law enforcement as much as anyone can.”

He even clarified his initial remarks about transphobia in a now-deleted Tweet saying, “yo I don’t support transgender people attacking swimmers I just have family transitioning and have blood to defend here.

No one threaten me pls.” For Zach Bryan, opposing transphobia means protecting the family unit—a longstanding theme of country music and conservatism— more than it means advancing any progressive agenda.

And his new, self-titled album is coursing with sentiments that are distinctly anti-progress: The first track of the album is a spoken word poem titled “Fear and Fridays,” in which he says that he has “learned that every waking moment is enough and excess never leads to better things / it only piles and piles atop the things that are already abundantly in front of you.”

The drive for more change, for always moving faster, and for a solution that lies just around the bend is not a universal fix for Bryan; instead, it is a cause for great fear. He sings about how what we already have is enough, and how moving ever forward does not signal “progress” but redundancy: It “piles and piles” until the life we once knew becomes obscured.

Bryan’s political valence is not the only area in which he differs from his peers in today’s industry.

While many mainstream country artists like Morgan Wallen seem to be turning to big pop sounds with roaring choruses, Bryan’s are more like the hushed

confessions of a man scribbling away at his notepad in a cabin somewhere. Bryan’s raspy and whispered breakout hit “Something in the Orange” sounds more like a Noah Kahan or Passenger song than a country and western anthem. So it was no surprise when, this past weekend, he released his first collaboration with Noah Kahan and the two voices flowed together perfectly.

These two men are indie artists at their core— their nature-filled aesthetics and subtle whines of loneliness portray them as men of the outdoors who, like Oliver Anthony, are fundamentally independent.

These are artists who defy both easy vocal and social categorization alike.

When Zach Bryan’s mug shot goes viral, then, it seems less likely that he is an ACAB radical leftist, and more likely that he is reigniting a long tradition of the outlaw country artists of the past who refused to conform: men like Merle Haggard, who sang “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive,” or Willie Nelson, who sang “Hard to be an Outlaw.” While the polarized politics of a modern landscape defined by tribal loyalties to the left or the right may be new to the 21st century, the story of the lonesome cowboy who doesn’t fit in and will never want to can be traced back through centuries of country and western music.

As country music critic Grady Smith said about Zach Bryan’s brand of country music, these songs fall not on “the spectrum between right and left,” but on something that transcends politics: the divide between “establishment versus independent.”

Neither Bryan nor Anthony has found their team—politically, or socially—but perhaps this is what country music has always been about. Historian Bill C. Malone explains in Ken Burns’s Country Music, country music “spoke for a lot of people who were being forgotten, or felt they were being forgotten.” Neither man feels like he belongs in the current iteration of America, and maybe that’s a radical political message.

Or maybe, as Anthony sings, it is simply a feeling that resonates deeply with “people like me, and people like you.”

Beyond the cooked-up controversies, perhaps country music’s latest boom could be a reflection of a large portion of Americans who feel that they, too, no longer belong. Maybe Zach Bryan was the number one album not because of chart-rigging stans like Aldean’s, but because more and more Americans are feeling socially and politically homeless, a feeling that resonates deeply when Bryan croons, “Hey driver, you can drop me off anywhere.”

September 28, 2023

7

LIFESTLYE

October Calendar

by Olivia Cohen Illustrated by emilie guan INsta: @emilieguan42

SUN

MON

TUE

WED

THU

FRI

SAT

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

take the midnight train goin' anywhere

play checkers

make caramel apples

visit a pumpkin patch

paint pumpkins

go leaf-hunting

have a fall picnic

doll up the ugly, bruised one you brought home yesterday

then leave the pretty ones on your desk to rot because you’re too sentimental to throw them away

a lil’ wednesday evening main green charcuterie board?

8

9

10

11

cook some chili

drink hot apple cider

make a fall playlist

go to a haunted house

everyone talks about the charlie brown christmas tree, but what about the charlie brown pumpkin? buy a disfigured, unwanted one and give it a loving home <3

so beautiful yet so difficult to eat

12

13

14

make a leaf garland

make a campfire on the beach

(except go during the day so you can look at the pretty changing leaves!)

go on a bike ride

ok, so this one may not be 100% legal, but i won't tell if you bring the s'mores

go out and enjoy the peak of leaf-changing season according to the farmer's almanac (the more you know!)

19

20

21

have a solo fall photoshoot

light a pumpkinscented candle

have an apple pie bake-off

if only for the heavenly smell

run into your crush and wish you were never born

literally all you have to do all day

what's better than baking? making a competition out of it!

do some holiday shopping in advance

23

24

25

26

27

28

make a fall cocktail (or mocktail)

watch a scary movie

jump into a pile of leaves

go on a horseback ride

tour a winery

make pumpkin soup

it's friday night somewhere, am i right. . .?

whoever decided coraline's other parents should have buttons for eyes needs professional help

it's not as fun as it used to be, but you have to do it once a year for the nostalgia

classes? never heard of them.

put spooky decorations on your door

29

30

31

run a 5k

make hot cocoa and read a book

do your homework.

duh!

the smiths own the month of october. i don't make the rules.

15

16

17

18

go to a fall festival get lost in the corn maze

reemerge from the corn maze

make pumpkin bread

still you, but. . . different

22

…and instantly burn the roof of your mouth on it

beat the sunday scaries and lace

8

what’s more fall than checkers?! the board is literally plaid!

post–

sit back & recover from artwork!

whoever walks in the front of the group is the alpha friend

hey, here’s something to do with those crumbling, week-old leaves in your room: make festive fall artwork!

you may have missed your mwf classes yesterday, but you haven't missed any t/th ones yet. . .

let the trick-or-treaters know you're open for business

i'll bet you a snow globe that christmas decorations will already be on the shelves

and burn the roof of your mouth…again

LIFEST YLE

Crossroads

post- mini crossword 13

by Will Hassett

2

1

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Down

Across

1 Sweet & salty sandwich staples

file format for Canvas 1 Common submissions

5 Nickname for Brown's northernmost 7

dining hall Lesser-known alley, intersects 2D near Le Creperie

8 Underwater detection system 9 With Kit-, chocolate & wafer favorites

2 Better-known street, crosses 7A near

Citizen's Bank 3 Ortega or Fischer

4 Perspire, panic, or plug away 6 Acronym for 15 Soviet-era states

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Kimberly Liu

“Somehow, we collide at these exact moments, in these exact ways. Whether or not we’ve met before, somehow we spark an iteration of love. Isn’t that a beautiful idea, that we’re all in love with little bits of each other?”

—Kaitlan Bui, “Head Over Heels” 10.01.21

“I am home, perched in a rusted wooden chair with scars of use across it. Tomorrow’s homework is sprawled on my floor. I am home, yet the isolation strengthens. The house I’ve grown in — Laura Tamayo, “Exile” 09.30.22

Section Editors Emily Tom Anaya Mukerji

FEATURE Managing Editor Klara Davidson-Schmich

LIFESTYLE Managing Editor Tabitha Lynn

Section Editors Addie Marin Lilliana Greyf

Section Editors Jack Cobey Daniella Coyle

ARTS & CULTURE Managing Editor Joe Maffa

HEAD ILLUSTRATORS Emily Saxl Ella Buchanan

Section Editors Elijah Puente Rachel Metzger

COPY CHIEF Eleanor Peters

NARRATIVE Managing Editor Katheryne Gonzalez

Copy Editors Indigo Mudhbary Emilie Guan Christine Tsu

SOCIAL MEDIA HEAD EDITORS Kelsey Cooper Tabitha Grandolfo Kaitlyn Lucas LAYOUT CHIEF Gray Martens Layout Designers Amber Zhao Alexa Gay STAFF WRITERS Dorrit Corwin Lily Seltz Alexandra Herrera Liza Kolbasov Marin Warshay Gabi Yuan Elena Jiang

Aalia Jagwani AJ Wu Nélari Figueroa Torres Daniel Hu Mack Ford Olivia Cohen Ellie Jurmann Sean Toomey Sarah Frank Emily Tom Ingrid Ren Evan Gardner Lauren Cho Laura Tomayo Sylvia Atwood Audrey Wijono Jeanine Kim Ellyse Givens Sydney Pearson Samira Lakhiani Cat Gao

Want to be involved?

Email: mingyue_liu@brown.edu!

September 28, 2023

9