post- 03/05/21

In This Issue

Out West

jordan hartzell 4

Snowed In

Allegra friedman 2 Ellie jurrmann 5

Unfinding Meaning in Everything Moe Levandoski 5

The ManyColored Cure Annie cimack 6

TikTok Pirates

postCover by Connie Liu

MAR 5

VOL 27 — ISSUE 5

FEATURE

Snowed In the austin winter storm and its aftermath

By Allegra Friedman Illustrated by Chloe Chen

I

spent Valentine’s Day weekend snuggled up on the couch in Austin, Texas, with Jason, a guy I started dating a couple of months ago. That afternoon, the temperature outside had dropped from our usual 70 and sunny to a chilly 15 degrees. Jason and I huddled inside, occasionally looking out the window for the six inches of snow we were expecting, the most Austin had seen since 1985.

We waited out the cold by my fireplace, keeping each other warm and making s’mores. In recent weeks, we’d been spending almost every night together, and I usually enjoyed our comfortable silences.

But today, we sat awkwardly in front of the fire, avoi-

ding any mention of Valentine’s Day and what it meant for our exclusive, but poorly defined, relationship. He roasted the marshmallows while I assembled the sandwiches, burning my fingers on melted chocolate and wondering why my not-boyfriend wanted to introduce me to his family in South Texas but refused to acknowledge the holiday.

Frustrated, I got wine drunk and fell asleep in front of the fire. *** 9:22 a.m. – The next morning, I woke up to the sight of my breath condensing in front of my face, shivering.

The thermostat read 40 degrees. While Jason snored from the bedroom, I looked around: Power? Out. Toilet? Frozen.

Pipes? Burst.

The snow outside? Everywhere.

Overnight, Texans had cranked up their heaters in response to the record-breaking cold, pushing the state’s power grid to the brink of collapse.

As the only state in the U.S. with an independent grid, utility companies couldn’t transfer electricity in from other states. In-state gas-powered plants went offline, and uninsulated pipes froze and burst.

Letter from the Editor Dear Readers, I’ve been sleeping late. I want to recuse myself of guilt and say that I don’t know how it happened, but I do.

It started when college started, because everything was new and exciting and there was always someone to meet or somewhere to be. I shed the rigid, pre-regimented structure of my high school years—seven classes a day, with parents who expected me home and asleep by midnight—and realized that there were other options for how to live that I’d never thought to try.

Because I had a class across campus at 9 a.m., I spent my mornings regretting my late night (or rather, very early morning) escapades and vowing to sleep earlier.

Yet when the pandemic happened and all my life rhythms were given a second chance at reinvention, I didn’t fix anything. I was hundreds of miles away from Brown, so staying up late felt like a shred of personal control over globally uncontrollable circumstances, a quiet ritual that I’d carried home from Providence.

This week’s writers are similarly enchanted by how parts of our lives can change. In Feature, our writer walks us through how people came together (and fell apart) during the recent Austin winter storm. In Narrative, one writer recalls the good times of last summer, spent in Idaho with found family, while the other reflects

2 post–

Cursed Boba Flavors

on how sometimes, the ordinary is meant to stay just that.

Our authors for Arts & Culture talk about songs: about sea shanties, and about music’s illustrative power in the midst of a pandemic. And in Lifestyle, writers tackle the topics of mid-semester slump and the real meaning behind your favorite pair of white shoes.

Change is inevitable, but it’s hard to know what will change and what will endure. Between adjusting to my new college life, and then readjusting to being at home, and since adjusting to every other strange new ritual that the pandemic has prompted, I’ve realized that the systems and routines of my life are much more malleable than they seemed. It’s inspiring, because it implies that reinvention can come again at any time. And it’s interesting, because I’ve learned that I am much more capable of embracing change than I thought. But as I crawl into bed at 3 a.m., I’ve been wondering if that’s always a good thing. For what it’s worth, I promised myself I’d sleep early tonight.

zzzzzz,

Alice Bai

Feature Managing Editor

1.

Green apple tea with brown sugar boba

2.

Coffee boba. No. Just no.

3.

Eggnog boba

4.

Coca-Cola boba

5.

Matcha latte with milk foam ft lychee boba

6.

Water boba

7.

Orange juice boba for that chewy deliciousness with your Vitamin C

8.

Boba boba. Just a plastic cup full of tapioca, baby.

9.

AHA boba

10. Chai Tea Latte Boba. Very colonial.

FEATURE Millions of Texans, including me, awoke shivering, in the dark, and without running water.

10:17 a.m. – I could hear Jason’s teeth chattering before I saw him emerge from the bedroom. He checked his phone and saw that unlike many Austinites, he had gotten lucky. His roommate texted him that they had only briefly lost power, and their pipes were fine.

We made the ten-minute walk from my house to his.

After our hands and feet had thawed, we celebrated the biggest snowfall in over 30 years by snowboarding down the slope next to Jason’s house, dodging waterlogged cactuses on the way down. Folks joined us on their makeshift sleds, using upsidedown trash can lids and paddle boards usually reserved for 100+ degree days on Lady Bird Lake. I hadn’t seen so many people from my neighborhood together since I moved there six months ago, in the middle of the pandemic.

Jason ran up the hill and jumped on me, leading to a make-out session that quickly devolved into a snowball fight. One of my snowballs was intercepted by a manic husky jumping in circles, realizing he had spent his entire life in the wrong climate.

His owner pulled him away, stopping to let us know we looked like the couple from a Corona beer commercial. We both laughed but said nothing.

I brushed the snow off of my jacket and started walking back towards the house.

12:22 p.m. – Back at home, we realized how serious the situation in Austin really was. As a community organizer, Jason was dialed into local mutual aid groups scrambling to make up for the government’s complete failure to respond to the energy crisis. Nonprofits around the city were temporarily converting bars and nightclubs into makeshift warming centers.

Others started organizing donation drives for shelters downtown, which needed more supplies for the countless people displaced by the storm. Concerns about social distancing fell to the wayside as complete strangers linked up to share water, food, and transportation.

I scrolled through my feed on the couch in Jason’s living room, resting my head on his shoulder.

We still had our parkas on and the lights off. Some neighbors messaged me on Nextdoor to offer free firewood, if we could safely reach them.

1:05pm – Despite seven years in New England, I never learned how to drive in the snow, and I had no intention of starting now. Thankfully, Jason had lived in Colorado for four years and had an all-wheel drive SUV, so we took his car to pick up the firewood and then groceries.

“See?” he said, “It’s not so bad. Watch how I’m

going over this spot here; it’s all about how you handle the corners.” I felt that familiar mix of attraction and irritation from him explaining things to me.

The attraction disappeared when he ran a red light; the irritation stayed.

1:11 p.m. – While we were driving, Jason got a call from his dad and stepmom, then one from his mother, all checking up on him. He went back and forth with them for a while and then abruptly hung up and cleared his throat.

“They were never actually together,” he said.

“My dad cheated on my stepmom when they were enga-ged, and my mom got pregnant with my brother.

They got married, anyway, but the affair never ended, and seven years later, I was born. We never talk about it, really. My grandpa had a secret family back in Mexico, too, and we don’t bring that up, either.”

I sat stunned for a minute, unsure of how to respond to this guy who had just unloaded his intergenerational family trauma on me during our grocery run. I wondered whether he would have opened up to me so soon under less apocalyptic circumstances, but I still couldn’t help liking the feeling that we were getting closer. Dread crept in, too, as I realized his hesitancy to call me his girlfriend might come from a fear of repeating his family’s mistakes.

Jason’s horn broke the silence when a Prius fishtailed and nearly collided with us. He sighed and put the radio on. “Before He Cheats” by Carrie Underwood started to play; I turned the music off.

Inside the grocery store, the shelves were already empty. People had quickly hoarded nonperishables and bottled water, and delivery trucks couldn’t make it in to replenish stocks. I grabbed whatever I could find: three six packs of sugar-free Gatorade for us; four boxes of tampons, five boxes of maxi pads, and two tins of Folger’s for the donation center.

Jason looked visibly flustered when he unloaded the pads from our cart, so I told the cashier clerk that I had an extra heavy flow that week. Jason turned bright red, and I burst out laughing.

3:06 p.m. – Outside the store, he tried to twirl and dip me in the parking lot. I slipped on a patch of black ice.

3:15 p.m. – We delivered the donations downtown. “I’m so proud of you,” Jason said as I got back into the car.

He tossed me a pack of Trident gum and kissed my cheek.

I was quickly realizing how unpredictably he reacted to whatever I did. He’d offer heavy praise and affection for little things like this, but if I asked one wrongly worded question about the obscure extreme sports he obsessed over or whatever polit-

ical movement he was reading about he cared about, I would trigger an hour of sulking and condescending lectures. I genuinely wanted to learn about the things he was so passionate about, but our conversations became a rigged game where asking meant I had already failed.

In the car, I responded by squeezing his hand and adjusting my jacket, not wanting to ruin a good moment by saying something wrong. We got back, showered together, and then had sex. Midway through, I looked over his shoulder at my jacket, draped over the chair by his closet, and saw the pack of gum poking out of its left pocket. I wondered if he was so quick to compliment me on little things because he thought they were all I was capable of.

We finished, and I got up to use the bathroom and bring him a glass of water. When I came back, he chastised me for letting my wet hair soak the pillow-case.

4:37 p.m. – Jason’s phone lit up next to me in bed when he got a text asking for help driving a few unhoused people to a warming center. I saw notifications from Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge. I pretended I didn’t see, but as soon as he left, I paced around his room. I tried to schedule an appointment with a plumber to fix my burst pipe; it would take two weeks.

4:58 p.m. – I drank lots of Gatorade and watched my phone, anticipating a call from Jason that his car had gotten stuck on one of the hills he had to drive over to get back. Then I turned my phone off, angry that I still cared.

5:40 p.m. – Jason walked through the door as I finished setting the table with dinner I’d made. I felt limp, the closeness that had been growing between us gone.

I poured two glasses, and we ate. Jason told me about all of the people who’d come together to help at the warming center, from techies, to soccer moms, to ranchers. I stared at his phone, face-down on the table, and barely heard what he said.

Wanting a distraction from the conversation I knew we needed to have, I asked if he wanted to watch Clue after dinner. He said we shouldn’t waste our time on something so culturally irrelevant.

Sometimes, Jason loved the things I shared with him; we binge-watched both shows from my favorite comedian, Hannah Gadsby, on Netflix, and he always asked to read my essays. But I felt my more “irrelevant” interests shrinking under his scrutiny. How could I sit and watch a movie based on a board game, while people in Austin were freezing to death? What value did my art, poetry, and stand-up sets have compared to his autobiographies about serious

“Imagine all the people, living side by side, they all have feet and hands.”

“Who's that little guy from the Danimals commercials. The short banana man. No—it’s called a monkey?”

March 5, 2021 3

NARRATIVE political thinkers and government officials?

I tried to show Jason. I shared an article with him that I’d written about why we need humor culturally, socially, and psychologically. I said that sometimes, having fun or enjoying something beautiful is enough.

That night, we watched the news instead of Clue and finished the bottle of wine. I kept looking for a plumber. *** The snow would melt four days later. More stories would come out in the days that followed about house fires and children freezing to death inside their homes. At the same time, local Instagram pages were flooded with stories of gratitude for strangers and fundraisers for business building repairs. I messaged the man on Nextdoor who had given us the firewood, thanking him again.

Somehow, while the rest of Austin came together, Jason and I had fallen apart. We broke up one week after I returned to my house. I said I wanted to be with someone who I could celebrate Valentine’s Day and watch Tim Curry with, and who wouldn’t be swiping for other options on Tinder after we’d decided to only see each other. I asked him why he had felt the need, and he said he didn’t know. I remembered our conversation in the car and decided I had nothing left to say. I still felt an ache the next day when I returned his things in a bag from our trip to the grocery store, remembering how we’d danced in the parking lot. *** It was 80 degrees out the afternoon I went back to my house. I took an ice-cold bucket shower, brainstormed a stand-up set about surviving the apocalypse with someone I just started dating, and laid in bed, letting my wet hair soak the pillow. The next morning, I did my laundry and returned my winter jacket to the storage closet, with the pack of Trident gum still in its left pocket. Jason texted me asking if I wanted to watch a documentary later. I said I was busy and watched Clue instead.

and James danced on the mountaintop, whooping

the hot sauce. We lounged on couches and beds and

together the way we all should do more often. We

floors and anywhere that we could be close.

said our prayers to the snow drifts with bloody iron

Later that weekend, there was a walk around

spots, to the Indian Paintbrush on the mountain

Phelps Lake: a picnic on the beach, a rocky outcrop-

ridge, to the marmots, too: May you find someone

ping for cliff-jumping, and a game of Phelps-ball

else’s cashews next time around. Amen.

where the water polo boys showed us how it was

That whole weekend was wildflowers. Aidan

done. A proxy last season for a D1 athlete. I laid on

packed whiskey but no hiking shoes; he shared the

my back in the lake, shallow breaths so my chin

tin of liquor when we stretched out on a rocky patch

would stay above the gentle lapping of the water.

on Saturday evening. “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool”

Eyes closed, thinking how lucky I was to have this

played from the only phone, which also had our map

moment, this summer living with half-strangers-

on it. Sleeping bag sunbathing while we mixed hot

turned-family. The day ended with bloody toes and

water into dusty dinner kits. When the whiskey and

sandwiches forgotten, mushed into the bottom of

stars set in, we retired to our tents, Will and me slipp-

my backpack.

ing into the familiar space never meant for a 6’4’’

A few weekends before, it had been Delta Lake,

frame. Stella forgot a sleeping bag; she and James

where James and Aidan scrambled up rocks to dunk

snuggled tight, wriggling into the dirt as they stretched

heads into streams: Adventure Time! We sat drying

fabric across two sets of shoulders. And there are no

on a rock, toes purple from the glacial water that

exceptions to the rule / Yes, everybody's somebody's

made our breath freeze in our chests like time had

fool…

stopped. Pass me the Pringles while I dried off in ***

the sun, watching Caroline and James hurl July snow-

The time right before dinner was sacred. Caroline,

balls at each other—two of the smartest people I

Stella, and I dug through suitcases for dresses

know, child-like and giddy and cold and real. Aidan

and skirts to share: none of us had packed for any-

snapped photos of us meditating and of the bear

on snowballs in july, onion dip, and found family

thing so sparkly. One in the shower with the door

hug James gave Stella from behind. We split up to

open, another with the mascara, and the last: Is this

run the fewmiles back down the trail, letting hips

color okay for summer, do you think? Semi-wet hair

track forward over open strides with open arms

by JOrdan HArtzell

pulled back over sunburnt shoulders, sun dresses

and hearts, too.

Illustrated by Claire lin IG: curatedby.claire

that would look nice with the hors d’oeuvres. We

Redfish Lake wasn’t quite as cold, but Max wore

were stronger in that three—they do say it’s in

a black sweatshirt to shield the wind, looking back

numbers, you know—but we beelined for the bar

over his shoulder to check that anyone in tow was

We all say that the drive from Jackson to Sun

and the hips of our friends, any-way. Most days it

still upright. Waves, then an orange flag held straight

Valley is something special. It takes us out past the

was jeans, sweaters, freckles from the afternoon,

up to keep boats away from the bobbing, wet head.

cratered rocks, lunar wasteland, and brush speckling

and dishes passed through a line of soapy hands

We piled onto the back of the boat to give the surfer

the hills that flatten down into the Idaho borderlands.

following a meal I could never reproduce. I am still

a nice curled wake, mountains dropping with the

Through that atomic ghost town, past the “Ice Cream

convinced that Mrs. G is a saint, patroness of pati-

beat of an Italian discotheque Cooper had picked.

9 Miles” sign—red like the cherry on top of the milk-

ence and caramelized onion dip.

A single block of cheese, a bag of Sour Patch Kids,

Out West

shakes we wait in line for. It is windows down so the

***

and a disposable camera saved for a Saturday just

wind can tangle up our hair, shouting the lyrics and

James dipped his head down when he hugged

like this one. James snoozed on my shoulder for the

taking the turns too fast. The mountains start up

Stella, like he knew that she was the sun and he

drive back while Caroline rubbed aloe on a sunburn.

again one by one, lone and pinkish in the distance if

couldn’t look for too long. For her birthday, a few

Max had the boat tucked away quicker than we

it’s late afternoon. Into Wyoming, the trees get denser

of us went out for backpacking supplies and

could clean up: he’s been doing this for a while.

and roadside signs point to trailheads as the drama of

came back with a large inflatable parrot and two

the Teton Pass opens. Up and over, a pause at the top

cases of beer. That birthday evening we all cooked

I want someone to look at me the way Max and

to capture on camera the moment and the bugs

together in the kitchen: Cooper swirled wine and

James look at fireworks. They’ve got their hands

mashed into the front of the car after so many miles

shuffled through songs. Stella was intuitive with

clasped under their chins with these big goofy grins,

of sitting in the passenger seat with a knee tucked up

a dash of this and more of that in a big pot, Where

standing closer to the pop pop bang than every-

against the car door. Down the pass, through the log

is the nutritional yeast? James munched on salt

one else. They looked back over their shoulders at

cabin towns, past the grassland that rolls right up to

and vinegar chips because he hadn’t eaten all day:

us, ignoring the ashy Sun Valley history the visitors

the steely ladies: Grand, Middle, South.

***

I forgot! Caroline came up the stairs with wet

don’t know as well. There were pretty girls in

One time, we saw them from behind: Sunday

hair and hugged someone round the waist. Someone

pretty bathing suits, RV kids in Chacos, moms

morning alpine church. Breakfast was Hurricane

set the table and we made a toast. More wine all

and dads who do remember the ash and asked us to

Pass, and lunch was raisins, tuna, and the pound of

around. Vegan tacos, which Max and Will piled high

slow down with the firecrackers. There were cans

pretzels Aidan had packed and never opened. Stella

with cheese and sour cream. Cooper and I shared

in the yard, a die table with a half-drunk strawberry

4 post–

NARRATIVE seltzer on the corner because Will and I lost the last

thought, or even consider the pattern on a puffy piece

cherries and smooth dark chocolate pieces in Cherry

game but by that point we were more than half-

of polyester to represent a defining element of her

Garcia, and immediately order it. I want the world

drunk ourselves and didn’t bother to clean up.

identity. And “the roots from which I came”?! I didn’t

around me to shape how I feel and how I live my life, not

Quite the pair, everyone said.

know internal monologues were supposed to match

the other way around. I cannot continue making oceans

the diction of AP English Language rhetorical analysis

of small puddles in the street everytime it drizzles

essays. But I digress.

because not everything has to be layered with infinite

But we cleaned up better for dinner: Mrs. Goldman’s baked trout, Caesar salad in that big wooden

nuance and meaning.

bowl that doesn’t really fit in the sink but looks so

The comforter may have seemed like a huge deal

nice on the counter. Homemade ice cream sand-

to me, based on how concerned I was about every

To begin an exercise of just being present in the

wiches, buns to scrape off the ketchup-y stains on

detail of its appearance, but that’s how I am about

world, I step outside. I see leafless trees with branches

the plates, left from the dozens of burgers Max had

pretty much everything. I’m aware that a song can

like fingertips, reaching up as they try to touch the

flipped. Someone’s dogs ran around, someone’s

be pretty even if its chord progressions don’t relay

sky. I feel the cold winter air blow hair into my face as

uncle took shots with the kids, and someone else fell

some sort of subliminal message, but my habits say

the wind pushes me slightly forward, almost like it’s

asleep and missed the fireworks—but I heard they

otherwise. I can have a favorite flavor of ice cream

trying to lovingly force me into the great unknown.

were great.

without it meaning that I’ve lost my air of sponta-

It’s not that deep, Ellie, I have to tell myself. I try

neity. These thoughts probably make it seem like I

this again. This time, I try to think only in terms of

wasn’t very spontaneous in the first place.

what I can see and feel, pushing aside the analogy. The

Unfinding Meaning in Everything

most of the time, it's not that deep

My version of acting on a whim, though, is

grass is vibrantly green. The sky is bluer now that the

always accompanied by an extensive analysis after

snow has finally melted under the comforting warmth

the fact: how my instincts may reveal qualities about

of the sun. As I walk back toward my dorm, the wind

me that even I wasn’t aware of. It often feels like my

blows against me, this time sending sand straight into

brain is a novel that I did not write, and I’m only a

my eyes. Unlike the wind from before, this wind is

reader trying to interpret the author’s message as I go.

bitter and mean and harsh. It almost seems like it’s

The leafy green comforter is a quintessential example

been wind all along and nothing more than that.

by Ellie Jurmann

of how my brain operates, but that was also a time

I’m not trying to change who I am, not by any

Illustrated by Jeffrey Tao

when even I recognized that little meaningful

means, but I fear that I’ll miss out on the simple

interpretation can be obtained from such thoughts.

pleasures in life by convoluting and contorting them

But how do I go about changing? How can I think

into meaning. I want to tell stories that are beautiful

about a pair of colorful socks without it being a mea-

because the words flow nicely, because the imagery is

As I scrolled through countless pages of maroon,

sure of my social growth as I’ve learned to outwardly

vivacious and evocative, because what I write reminds

lavender, and navy blue blankets, I began to draw

express myself more, even in the smallest of ways? Or

others of the beauty in their own life, and because

conclusions about college students: most prefer

a ballpoint pen without it symbolizing the potential

meaning will always exist, regardless of whether I

simpler styles, maybe some ruching or small white

for greatness within me that awaits its release, when I

force it to the surface or not. I still love my ivory and

polka dots, but nothing too attention-grabbing that

pen a New York Times bestseller or a solution to one

sage green comforter that’s covered in foliage because

could possibly throw off the balance of their room.

of the Millenium Prize Problems? This nonsense that

of the beauty in the significance I ascribed to it, but

But what color did I want my comforter to be?

I spew, these absurd yet all-encompassing metaphors,

who says I can’t love it simply because it’s aesthetic-

Surely I couldn’t order one of the ones from Brown’s

are the fabric of my existence. I know no story to tell

ally pleasing? Maybe I just like the look of plants

catalog—everyone else would already have those,

that isn’t hijacked by them. They manipulate all that

and greenery, and my love doesn’t need to be anything

and none of their designs made me jump for joy. I

is real in this world as my convergent lens of a brain

more than that. Either way, I’m ready to, at the very

love the color yellow: it’s the color of my aura, but its

produces a virtual image of reality that’s all I can see

least, give a real try at viewing life as it is without

sunshiney-ness made it ideal only for my best, most

from a perspective far too close to the source.

the weight of the countless figurative and intricate

“Twin XL comforters for college dorm room.” Hit search.

cheerful days and not quite as fitting for the minutiae of my daily life, which is full of ups and downs.

I could continue to provide countless instances

meanings I wring out of it. I’m ready to write my own

where I find symbolic meaning in anything from

story, one where the roots from which I came are

I wanted to stay grounded, remind myself of

molecules to mountain ranges, but that’s exactly what

hidden but not forgotten. As the world blooms

who and what made me the person I am whenever

I don’t want to do. When I listen to music in my room

around me and demands for its beauty to be taken

I look around my room. I thought to myself: “I want

as I unwind at night, I want to focus on how the strum

in, I’ll stand outside and reach up with my fingertips

my comforter to be covered in green, leafy branches

of a guitar can sound so soft, so calming, and could

to touch trees coming back to life, soon to bejewel

to remind me of the roots from which I came.” And

even stop time if I let it. Or how the singer’s voice is

themselves with the sweet scent and powder pink of

that’s exactly what I ended up buying. But what the

so beautiful that he could be singing the ABCs and

cherry blossoms.

hell, Ellie?! I can’t help but think my parents must

it would still give me chills. When I walk into Ben &

have dropped me as a baby because no person with a

Jerry’s, I want to glance at the menu for a second, feel

brain that functions properly would ever have such a

a sudden craving for the sweet and ever so slightly tart

The ManyColored Cure

music, color, and the fine line between coping and escaping

by Moe Levandoski Illustrated by Elliana Reynolds At a jazz band workshop years ago, a charming clinician with a single earring told us about the splashes of red he saw each time our drummer hit the cymbals. I remember feeling a little envious, because I too wanted the music to filter through my brain and manifest in fireworks of color. But even though my neural connections don’t produce spontaneous color sensations, I’ve always been convinced that every song corresponds to its own real and imagined world of feelings, places, seasons, and colors. My Spotify playlists (numbering in the 200s at this point) are almost all built around these elaborate abstractions. They begin with one song painting a vivid picture in my mind’s eye— driving through the Arizonian desert at dusk, for March 5, 2021 5

ARTS&CULTURE

example, or a desolate, snowy field swallowing up a warm cabin—and my almost compulsive drive to collect all the music I’ve ever heard that feels that same way.

Ever since my subscription to Spotify Premium became my most treasured possession during my first year of high school, I’ve been engaging in a kind of musical escapism. When my anxiety started to get the best of me, I’d immerse myself in alarmingly peppy acoustic indie pop. When the extended Iowa winter siphoned out my soul and left it in the roadside slush, I’d make playlists of swing tunes and pretend I was on a balcony in Paris, watching trees bloom in spring.

In her book Bluets, Maggie Nelson ponders Plato’s idea of color as pharmakon. When I read it a couple of weeks ago, I was tickled by Plato’s conviction that painters are “mixers and grinders of multicolored drugs.” I’d love to assume that role, but I’ve never quite figured out how to wield the elusive power catalyzed by the right amount of pigment squeezed out of the right tubes. Having fallen under the spell of colors mixed by others, though, I’m certain that Plato was onto something. Every once in a while, I find a song whose particular tincture intoxicates me such that I find myself listening to it on indefinite repeat.

Maggie Nelson contemplates, as many have, what it means that pharmakon can translate to both “poison” and “cure.” Color, of the kind that tints the edges of a melody and carries me out of my bedroom and into the mountains, is a drug. That’s for sure. But I don’t know whether, in this age of widespread loneliness, color is a cure for my yearning or a poison that taints my reality with the blue of nostalgia. *** hasta la raíz - natalia lafourcade The huapango rhythm of “Hasta La Raíz” reminds me that spring will come when I need that reminder the most. Yo te llevo dentro, hasta la raíz. [I carry you inside me, to the root.] Natalia Lafourcade’s voice fills a wide open space, runs off the leaves of trees and seeps into the soil. I like to think that when I play this song aloud in my room, my houseplants—struggling next to my egregiously drafty windows, trying their best to make it through the Providence winter—are listening. Natalia’s tender harmonies, layered, twisting, flowing like a brook over algae-covered stones, make my heart feel green. My thumbs, not so much—but, inspecting my monstera’s leaves while “Hasta La Raiz” plays in the background, I plant a tiny seed of hope for spring. my gal, my guy - darlingside Darlingside’s sweet, formerly–college-a-cappella chorus of voices lights a little blue flame behind 6 post–

my solar plexus. A happy/sad banjo riff and an octave slide on the bass rouses the memory of wind irredeemably tangling my hair on a boat off the west coast of Ireland. I wake up alone, am I in Amsterdam or Tokyo? Sometimes I am floating over the ocean on a well-placed major seventh, sometimes I am speeding through Copenhagen’s cobbled streets on a bicycle, the four chord reinforcing the wheel spokes.

Sometimes I’m just lingering on the pedestrian bridge, taking in the snowy Providence skyline with my earbuds in. Sometimes the blue is only solitude. But as Maggie Nelson points out, “loneliness is solitude with a problem.” I put on my feet, walk out the door into a busy street. If only. ojos del sol - y la bamba Luz Elena Mendoza’s mellifluous vibrato illuminates a golden afternoon. The song’s gentle, eighth-note guitar strumming reminds me of days spent next to the open window in my childhood bedroom last summer, watching the garden bloom and relishing the warm breeze. It reminds me of a summer I haven’t lived yet, when I’ll spend my days next to the open window in my bedroom in Providence, watching a different garden bloom and feeling the sun on my face. Eres como el viento, el viento que me lleva. [You are like the wind, the wind that carries me.] Maggie Nelson writes that “nearly all cultures have considered yellow in isolation one of, if not the least attractive of all colors.” But “Ojos del Sol” proves that if you just find the right shade, yellow can be the very thing that buoys you through the loneliness. c2.0 - charli xcx The grating, metallic sounds that undergird Charli XCX’s “c2.0” feel the way I feel when I think of all the friends that I wish I could hug. “c2.0” is the accelerated, musically euphoric child of Charli’s song “Click,” remixed by A. G. Cook. While “Click” is a swaggering ode to one’s clique simply being all that, “c2.0” is a manifestation of both the anxiety of being separated for an indeterminate amount of time and the intoxication of colorful memory.

Instead of “smash[ing] at [my] eyes to reproduce lost color sensations,” I listen to this song and watch its synthesizer-induced rainbows scatter across my ceiling. I miss them every night, I miss them I miss them I miss them, Charli sings, a simple invocation of my—our—insoluble yearning. *** Right now, as I wile away the hours on long, solitary walks through Providence, reminiscing about the times when I could instead wile away the hours savoring a latte in a cafe or staring at Pissarro’s painting of cows in a field at the RISD Museum, music contains a particularly potent

elixir of emotions. Notes of nostalgia and longing, euphoria that illuminates the mundane bits of life in isolation, little soaring bursts of freedom that replace the kind I used to get from looking out the window of an airplane or closing my eyes in the middle of a wild, beating party. I try my best not to abuse that last feeling or dwell on the first, but rather to lean into the sounds that make me feel content with this limited form of life.

Although I haven’t mastered the mixing of color myself—when I mix each song’s pure, vibrant color with the others, it still sometimes ends up a muddled brown mess—I am trying my hardest not to get “trapped in any one bead” of the manycolored necklace of life. All of my moods lately have had at least a little blue mixed in, but they’ve also been yellow and green and red and purple and rainbow. And that’s the beauty of it—colors are not discrete or static, but can flow and mix and transform just like emotions can. Maggie Nelson concludes that whether pharmakon means poison or cure is a matter of translation. And so, when the urge to hide from my loneliness behind the music strikes, I remember that I can choose to make it medicine and let its vivid hues paint me a picture of tomorrow.

TikTok Pirates shanties on the high seas of the internet

by Annie Cimack Illustrated by Meera Singh ig: meeracle_art A few months ago, my friend sent me a TikTok. The video, captioned “When I hand my brother the aux,” features a man named Promise Uzowulu (@strong_promises on TikTok) and his brother sitting in the car and listening to music. If you’re familiar with TikTok, you may already know where this is going. His brother is blasting a sea shanty called “The Wellerman,” and Promise is not having it. At least, not at first. But, over a short sequence of videos, we see Promise begin to enjoy the shanty more and more. By the end, he’s not only feeling the music, he’s even singing along and performing backup for his brother.

It’s a fun video, but there’s a specific reason my friend sent it to me: I’ve been a fan of shanties for about three years now. It’s hard to admit, but it’s true. I began listening to sea shanties ironically, and then I fell down the rabbit hole. Shanties are kitschy and melodramatic, and I thought they were funny. After a period of resistance, they’ve made their way onto a playlist of their own that I listen to fairly regularly. Sure, I’m still a fan in a joking sense, but the line between listening ironically and listening for legitimate entertainment has begun to blur.

Of course, I wouldn’t play my shanty playlist at a party, but if I’m just hanging out with a friend, why not? When it comes to sharing shanties with other people, I am Promise’s brother. In fact, my sister sent me the same TikTok a day later, along with a text message saying that this is what it’s like to live with me. I’ll take her word for it.

I blame Spotify. For those who aren’t familiar, the Discover Weekly playlist is generated each Monday and is based on your listening history. Sometime during my senior year of high school, two years before the TikTok trend, the song “Northwest Passage” by Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers (a somber recounting of a failed sailing expedition)

popped up on my Discover Weekly. To be clear, I was not a fan of Canadian folk music, had never heard of Stan Rogers, and there was no reason for this song to be on my playlist. Yet, there it was. I thought it was hilarious. I remember sitting at one of the vinyl-topped tables in my high school’s library, checking that the room was empty, and playing “Northwest Passage” for a friend. Somehow, over the course of playing it again and again for other people, I grew to kind of like the song, and that was the beginning of the end.

I found a YouTube playlist called “A Collection of Sea Shanties (vocal only)” and began using it for background music while I did schoolwork. In the playlist’s description, the creator, Matt Dearing, explained, “There are far too many videos with cheesy and otherwise childish sea shanties, so I compiled some real shanties that only have vocals.” Dearing’s tone in the playlist’s description caught me off guard.

Clearly, there was a community of dedicated fans out there. It seemed silly that anyone could take something as niche as shanties seriously enough that they would be offended by less authentic ones.

Yet, by the time I got to Brown, I was strangely wellversed in shanties. Once, while sitting on the Main Green during a warm fall day, I noticed that ARRR!!!, Brown’s pirate themed acapella group, was practicing. I then realized that I recognized the shanties they were performing, something I found equal parts embarrassing and impressive.

While it may seem strange on the surface, on some level, the recent rise in the popularity of shanties makes sense. For one thing, they’re extremely catchy. They were originally used by British and Anglo-American sailors in the 19th century

to help them keep time in their work, hence their strong beat. On board the ship, there were certain jobs that required the crew to move as one, so they used shanties and “sing-outs” in order to synchronize their efforts. Additionally, shanties have a structure that make them especially easy to sing. In practice, there would be a member of the sailing crew known as the “shantyman.” The shantyman is the soloist.

He’s the one in charge of singing the majority of the lyrics and leading the song, and the rest of the crew chimes in for the chorus.

There are different shanties for different shipboard activities, such as heaving and hauling. For instance, “Roll the Old Chariot Along” was traditionally sung while sailors heaved weights using a large, spinning winch called a capstan. When you listen to the song, it’s clear and driving, and you can envision a crew stepping in time, spinning the capstan to haul anchor. Another shanty, "Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her," a ballad lamenting the leaving of not a lover, but a ship, was typically sung while the crew pumped water out of the ship’s hold when it came into port at the end of a voyage.

When ShantyTok went viral this winter, I thought it was entertaining, but I wasn’t completely amused. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I was also a little bitter. Sure, now that shanties were popular on TikTok, everyone loved them, but I had been a fan before they were popular. I felt like that annoying hipster complaining about being ahead of the trend. To my horror, I realized that I was beginning to understand Matt Dearing’s protectiveness over the genre. I had become the angry old man warning my friends against “cheesy and otherwise childish sea shanties.”

“I may not know what the finished product will be, but I do know that I can find out. I am, after all, a strong, capable woman who can manage 1,000-piece puzzles.”

—Anna Harvey, “Small Pieces, Big Picture,” 2.28.20

“One by one, we filed onto a little balcony just outside the window and stood in the cool evening, watching the sunset in silence. We soaked in the sun making its descent for a few minutes, then crawled back inside, and knocked out the last of our work.”

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Olivia Howe a FEATURE Managing Editor Alice Bai Section Editors Andrew Lu Ethan Pan ARTS & CULTURE Managing Editor Emma Schneider Section Editors Kyoko Leaman Maddy McGrath

Eventually, I realized that I had become the very shanty fan that I had mocked not too long ago, and I had to take a step back. I’m not a 19th century sailor, and have no real claim over shanties. And I don’t blame people for thinking they’re fun. They are fun. Most importantly, they offer an escape, which I think we are all seeking out at the moment.

It’s hard not to imagine yourself sailing the high seas when you listen to a shanty; you can almost smell the salt in the air and feel the wind as it carries you across the ocean. To listen to one is to be transported back in time to the deck of a sloop. Shanties are songs about missing home, a hard day of work, longing for an old partner, all feelings produced by the movement and isolation of travel. A typical transatlantic voyage could take between six weeks and three months, and during that time, sailors were largely stuck aboard their ships. The journeys themselves were perilous, and I can only imagine the boredom passengers must have felt. To some extent, we can draw connections between our experiences with quarantine and a sailor’s journey.

I think that we’re all feeling a little adrift at the moment. Perhaps it’s fitting that shanties should make a reappearance now that many of us are confined to our rooms and missing those we care about.

In addition to escapism, shanties are about camaraderie. The shanty is designed to be sung as a group. Back in the day, it was meant to bind the crew together, to entertain them while they worked. Today, TikTok users duet videos of other shanty singers, layering a bass rendition of the shanty over a tenor over an alto. A line of windows extends out, showing us all the contributions that the community has made to the piece. You can see that this is still a collaborative effort. Instead of bringing folks together in the physical sense, TikTok shanties have brought people together virtually. Do I get a little annoyed when someone adds in an instrument that isn’t authentic to the time period? Yes. Do I feel like a shanty snob when I get annoyed? Also yes.

In the late 1800s, the steamboat was the undoing of the shanty tradition. Due to the increased mechanization, there was less need for workers to heave or haul in unison, and therefore less need for shanties. Shantymen were no longer necessary, and the position was abandoned. This winter, shanties experienced a revival, and I think we’re the better for it. However you listen to them, whether with an ironic or unironic appreciation, they have an entertainment value that’s unlike any other genre of music. They deserve the recognition, frankly, and I’m happy they’re getting it. That said, now that shanties are mainstream, I’ll have to find a new music niche. I’m considering cowboy campfire songs.

NARRATIVE Managing Editor Minako Ogita

COPY CHIEF Aditi Marshan

Section Editor Siena Capone Christina Vasquez

Copy Editors Emily Cigarroa Samuel Nevins Eleanor Peters

LIFESTYLE Managing Editor Caitlin McCartney

SOCIAL MEDIA EDITORS Tessa Devoe

Section Editors Kimberly Liu Emily Wang

Editors Kelsey Cooper Julia Gubner Kyra Haddad HEAD ILLUSTRATOR Jolie Rolnick Joanne Han Chloe Zhao WEB MASTER Amy Pu

—Sarah Lettes, “Forever Leung,” 3.01.19

CO-LAYOUT CHIEFS Briaanna Chiu Jiahua Chen Layout Designers Lily Chahine Sharlene Deng STAFF WRITERS Kaitlan Bui Siena Capone Dorrit Corwin Eashan Das Danielle Emerson Jordan Hartzell Ellie Jurmann Nicole Kim Gus Kmetz Liza Kolbasov Elliana Reynolds Adi Thatai Victoria Yin

Want to be involved?

Email: olivia_howe@brown.edu!

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