March 2022 Issue

Editorial Board CLAIRE SHANG, CC ’24, Editor-in-Chief SYLVIE EPSTEIN, CC ’23, Managing Editor KAT CHEN, CC ’24, Digital Editor TARINI KRISHNA, BC ’23, Publisher DANIEL SEIZER, CC ’22, Publisher HART HALLOS, CC ’23, Illustrations Editor MADELEINE HERMANN, BC ’23, Illustrations Editor ANNIE POOLE, BC ’24, Layout Editor BENJAMINE MO, CC ’23, Literary Editor ELIZA RUDALEVIGE, CC ’23, Literary Editor SAMANTHA SACKS, CC ’22, Podcast Director Senior Editors GRACE ADEE, CC ’22 SAM NEEDLEMAN, CC ’22 CY GILMAN, CC ’22 WILLA NEUBAUER, BC ’22 CHLOË GOTTLIEB, CC ’22 VICTOR OMOJOLA, CC ’24 ELIZABETH JACKSON, CC ’22 SOPHIE POOLE, BC ’22 NICOLE KOHUT, CC ’22 HAILEY RYAN, BC ’22 BROOKE MCCORMICK BC’22 LYLA TRILLING, CC ’22 DOMINY GALLO, CC ’23, Editor Emeritus Staff Staff Writers ALEXANDER AIBEL, CC ’23 MISKA LEWIS, BC ’24 EMILY BACH, BC ’24 JUSTIN LIANG, GS ’24 ZIBIA BARDIN, BC ’25 WILL LYMAN, CC ’23 COLE CAHILL, CC ’22 BECKY MILLER, BC ’24 IRIS CHEN, CC ’24 LEAH OVERSTREET, CC ’24 MICHAEL COLTON, CC ’22 ELLIDA PARKER, CC ’24 MARGARET CONNOR, BC ’23 ANNA PATCHEFSKY, CC ’25 ANDREA CONTRERAS, CC ’24 JAI QURESHI, CC ’23 CAT FLORES, BC ’25 MICHAELA SAWYER, CC ’25 SADIA HAQUE, BC ’23 SARAH SHAPIRO, BC ’25 JADEN JARMEL-SCHNEIDER, CC ’22 DARIYA SUBKHANBERDINA, BC ’23 ANOUK JOUFFRET, BC ’24 MUNI SULEIMAN, CC ’24 KELSEY KITZKE, BC ’23 SONA WINK, BC ’25 Staff Illustrators LILLY CAO, CC ’22 MACA HEPP, CC ’24 MAC JACKSON, CC ’24 HAZEL LU, CC ’24 VANESSA MENDOZA, CC ’23 SAMIA MENON, SEAS ’23 OONAGH MOCKLER, BC ’25

ROSALINE QI, CC ’22 AEJA ROSETTE, CC ’22 REA RUSTAGI, SEAS ’22 AMELIE SCHEIL, BC ’25 JACE STEINER, CC ’22 BETEL TADESSE, CC ’25 PHOEBE WAGONER, CC ’25 MAYA WEED, CC ’22 TAYLOR YINGSHI, CC ’25

TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S

Vol. XXVIII

FAMAM EXTENDIMUS FACTIS

Claire Shang The Blue and White Staff

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Chloë Gottlieb, Anouk Jouffret, Tarini Krishna, Brooke McCormick, Sam Needleman, and Sam Sacks

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Sam Needleman

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No. I

FROM THE STAFF Letter From the Editor Bwecommendations BLUE NOTES Cocktail People You are what you drink.

CAMPUS CHARACTERS Morgan Levine

Muni Suleiman

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FEATURES Staging New Futures Student ensembles do Broadway their own way.

Kelsey Kitzke

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An Underground Playground Discovering Barnard’s Movement Lab.

Hart Hallos

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ESSAYS Anywhere But Here Down the runway with Paloma LaMona.

Lara Smith

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Victor Omojola

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THE CONVERSATION Arie Esiri On Naija neorealism.

Chloë Gottlieb and Daniel Seizer

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AT TWO SWORDS’ LENGTH Am I Drunk Enough?

Nicholas Allen

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MEASURE FOR MEASURE Lily in the Gilchrist

Cy Gilman

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THE CROSSWORD The City, Squared

THE SHORTCUT Beginner Astronomy

Cover by Madeleine Hermann / Centerfold by Maya Weed / Postcard by Jace Steiner

@theblueandwhitemag

theblueandwhite.org

@blueandwhitemag

Letter From the Editor T

his is my favorite time of year—just before spring unfurls in full, when each new day of sunlight still feels like a gift to be marveled at and savored and accepted, tentatively. Soon, when spring is solidified, we might get lost in the world’s new backdrop; it’s better that the cast of winter remains, for a little. That we’re decidedly in between things allows us to see how the spectacle of spring forms, to find the processes explaining the sublime.

Our March issue is all about performance, which is to say this very balance of the organic and the orchestrated. For the most part, our writers, finding themselves in the presence of art and artists, take these pages to celebrate, to reveal and revel. It’s an exercise in ekphrasis, which is itself an exercise in attention.

Our four long-form Conversations are each about how art is presented and interacted with.

You’ll find Victor Omojola in conversation with director Arie Esiri in these pages, and the remainder online: Bella DeVaan and art history professor Anne Higonnet walk through the Met Costume Institute exhibit; Cole Cahill speaks to Daniel Alarcón about storytelling and Spanish-language podcasting; and Muni Suleiman learns from Bayeté Ross Smith what it means to be Columbia Law School’s artist-in-residence. In our Campus Characters column, you’ll find Columbia seniors with similar devotion: to poetry, for Morgan Levine, and playwriting and production, for Harris Solomon.

Other pieces praise the possibility of performance. A few page flips from this note, Muni Suleiman considers deeply both what diversity in theater looks like and how it might be achieved, starting with an examination of our campus ensembles. Kelsey Kitzke takes us into Barnard’s Movement Lab, where the ability to move becomes artistic inspiration and source materi-

al. And in our third installment of “Anywhere But Here,” our Cut-inspired column, illustrator-turned-writer Hart Hallos brings us to the Q to watch his suitemate in the prelims of New York’s largest drag competition.

And even for the haters of art lurking among our readership, I’d urge you to stay with us. After all, we haven’t forgotten about the important things in life. Our print issue opens with our Blue Notes, in which six writers tell us who they are through their cocktails of choice; it closes with Chloë Gottlieb and Daniel Seizer who ponder an age-old question: “Am I drunk enough?” Cy Gilman—vis-à-vis our trusty mascot, Verily Veritas—takes us through what must be only a lightly fictionalized frat rushing. And if you find yourself scrambling over spring break plans, our in-house sage Michael Colton has your back (somewhat).

With all this talk about performance, I’d be remiss if I didn’t briefly implicate myself. New to the job, I’m finding being editor-in-chief to be its own performance, chiefly one of competence. But it’s my favorite time of year, when things that will imminently become settled fact still feel precarious and precious in their newness. I’m marveling in and savoring every moment in this role and every piece in this magazine, and I hope you’ll join me in the latter.

Claire Shang Editor-in-Chief

Read our full March issue and more online at theblueandwhite.org!

Follow us on Instagram @theblueandwhitemag and Twitter @blueandwhitemag.

Contact us at blueandwhitemag@gmail.com to submit a pitch, Measure for Measure, or Shortcut.

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THE BLUE AND WHITE

Bwecommendations

To eat, to drink, to binge, to read, but mostly to chess.

Claire Shang, Editor-in-Chief: The StairMaster.

Caio Fernando Abreu.

Sylvie Epstein, Managing Editor: The Avett Brothers, “February Seven.” Salmon over sesame soba noodles.

Kat Chen, Digital Editor: Craig Thompson, Blankets. ELIZA, A Real Romantic.

Tarini Krishna, Publisher: Fotografiska. Laura Les, “Haunted.”

Daniel Seizer, Publisher: Danna Paola. FKA Twigs, Caprisongs.

Hart Hallos, Illustrations Editor: Buying, selling, and eating NFTs. Madeleine Hermann, Illustrations Editor: Dan & Drum, “Mona Lisa.” Chai lattes from Liz’s Place.

Annie Poole, Layout Editor: Peter Luger Steakhouse.

Benjamine Mo, Literary Editor: NYC Ferry, Astoria Route. Beach House, “Myth.”

Grace Adee, Senior Editor: Marry Me (2022).

Dominy Gallo, Editor Emeritus: Amia Srinivasan, “Does Anyone Have the Right to Sex?” Cy Gilman, Senior Editor: Julie Roset. Paper extensions.

Chloë Gottlieb, Senior Editor: Chess.com (the app). Beer Buddy (the app). Beer buddy (a friend).

Elizabeth Jackson, Senior Editor: The Open Ears Project (Spotify).

Nicole Kohut, Senior Editor: Summer of Soul (2021). Daisies (1966).

Brooke McCormick, Senior Editor: Call My Agent! (Netflix). Casa Magazines.

Sam Needleman, Senior Editor: John McPhee, “Giving Good Weight.” Propeller hats.

Willa Neubauer, Senior Editor: Leilo. Herman Melville, Benito Cereno.

Victor Omojola, Senior Editor: Station Eleven (HBO Max). Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven.

Lyla Trilling, Senior Editor: Hoop Dreams (1994). Peter Luger Steak House.

Zibia Bardin, Staff Writer: Benjamín Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World.

Cole Cahill, Staff Writer: Big Thief, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You. Iris Chen, Staff Writer: Jo Ann Beard, “The

MARCH 2022

Fourth State of Matter." Samurai Rebellion (1967).

Michael Colton, Staff Writer: Saba, Few Good Things. The Righteous Gemstones (HBO Max).

Margaret Connor, Staff Writer: The New Pornographers, “You’ll Need a New Backseat Driver.”

Sadia Haque, Staff Writer: Queens (ABC). Rachel Lynn Solomon, Weather Girl.

Jaden Jarmel-Schneider, Staff Writer: Getting your friends into chess.com without being credited.

Anouk Jouffret, Staff Writer: Joan Didion, A Year of Magical Thinking. Orville Peck, Dead of Night.

Kelsey Kitzke, Staff Writer: D. T. Max, “Hanya Yanagihara’s Audience of One.” Writing about being roommates with Illustrations Editor Madeleine Hermann for the Valentine’s Issue.

Justin Liang, Staff Writer: Chen Chen, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities. The Marías, CINEMA. Will Lyman, Staff Writer: Garth Greenwell, Cleanness. And Just Like That … (HBO Max).

Becky Miller, Staff Writer: Love and Basketball (2000). As Good as It Gets (1997).

Ellida Parker, Staff Writer: Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005). La Tigre, “Eau d’Bedroom Dancing.”

Michaela Sawyer, Staff Writer: Parliament, “The Motor Booty Affair” Muni Suleiman, Staff Writer: bell hooks, All About Love. Learning radical love.

Sona Wink, Staff Writer: Getting a concussion and listening to the entire Dune audiobook in the dark.

Hazel Lu, Staff Illustrator: Beach House, Bloom.

Danton Boller Quartet.

Vanessa Mendoza, Staff Illustrator: Tara Westover, Educated. Encanto (2021).

Oonagh Mockler, Staff Illustrator: Jeff Vandermeer, Annihilation. Ben & Jerry’s, Cherry Garcia.

Rea Rustagi, Staff Illustrator: Big Thief, “Breathe in My Lungs.” Ian Frazier, “The Vertical Farm.”

Jace Steiner, Staff Illustrator: Opiartsy, “Hyperpop for Cybergayz” (Spotify playlist). Enjoying moments.

Phoebe Wagoner, Staff Illustrator: Squishy yet chalky rubber grapes.

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Cocktail People

On spritzes two ways, elderflower and Negronis, Fireball and Jameson.

Illustration by Betel Tadesse Merry Spritzmas

“

I’ll tell you how we really do it in Italia,” she advises in a deep Florentine accent. I’m three hours into a yuletide bartending gig on the Upper East Side, and I am completely inundated with Italians.

“More Aperol,” she says after I pour two shots’ worth into a tiny, crystal coupe. When I reach for the club soda, a look of horror passes over her face.

“No,” she says. “Only Prosecco.”

I’m standing in a carpeted living room with my usual bevy of fixings—alcohol, yes, but also juice, garnishes, and the most expensive bottle opener I’ve ever laid hands on. On the bookcase behind me, there’s a MAGA hat and a copy of John McCain’s autobiography—signed, I can only presume. The host is a blonde housewife, her husband one of the rare Romans who thinks people still call themselves expats. The housewife interjects and steers my Aperol coach toward the canapés.

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I make somewhere between 30 and ten thousand more Aperol Spritzes—or Spritz Venezianos, as I’m told they’re called. For those craving a festive spin, I stealthily add a quarter-shot of sloe gin, well aware that if the Florentine woman sees me, she’ll have me sleeping with the fishes in no time.

“It’s an Aperol that knows somebody,” I joke as I hand a man the “Winter Spritz.” He smiles a little.

“Huh,” he says. “That’s actually funny.” Then he opens the Notes app and writes down that very joke without asking, or even paying me a cent.

It was around then I realized I had no idea what Aperol actually was. Bitters? But made of what—oranges? Or something sexier, like grenadine’s pomegranates? Luckily, I wasn’t outed. Not for not knowing that nor for committing the sin of having never watched The Sopranos. By the end of the night, my hands are a faint tangerine hue, having absorbed the mystery Mediterranean liqueur.

The expat hands me a tip: one hundred and fifty bucks, cash. Before I can pull my hand away, he holds on tighter.

“I’m sorry about the masks, you know,” he says.

“I know it’s the bartending agency’s policy and not you, but just know every time you put that on, they’re taking away your freedom.”

I look at the wad of cash in my palm. I look at him.

“Absolutely,” I say. I call out “Arrivederci!” and I’m off.

—Chloë Gottlieb The Perks of Sipping on Elderflower

L

ast summer, abroad in Copenhagen, as I strolled the streets and lapped up the 10:00 p.m. sunlight, I made my most important decision of the day: which neighborhood to explore next. These days, I shuffle from class to class, headphones on, shivering

THE BLUE AND WHITE

BLUE NOTES

Illustration by Brooke McCormick

MARCH 2022

The Penchant of Venice

A

gin and tonic has been my drink of choice ever since I allowed myself to acquire one. Of course, I copied my mother, a fact which she was unaware of until obliged to pick me up from a high school party. From the passenger seat, I drunkenly confessed the culprit of my inebriation.

Last July, after working in restaurants for a few months, two friends and I found ourselves in Venice, and my tastes traveled with us. The trip had been delayed by a full year for obvious reasons that were heartbreaking at the time but which now made, for someone with a late August birthday, certain adventures slightly more legal.

Clearly well-versed at directing wandering tourists, our hostel director offered us a map that resembled a landmine. Big Xs were drawn over well-trodden areas that felt more like constructed movie sets than pockets of a living and breathing city. At the upper-left corner of the page, he wrote out a list of recommendations, promises of authenticity. I made out an appealing scribble: “Cynar Spritz.”

Made with artichoke liqueur, dry Prosecco, and club soda, my Cynar Spritz tasted bitter and herbaceous and sprightly. As our ordered refreshments arrived, the mere sight of the Cynar’s light brown hue made it seem somehow more respectable than the bright orange Aperols that overpopulated café plaza countertops and just as respectable as the hearty gin

Illustration by Betel Tadesse

in the wind tunnels, mulling over my thesis and my inbox. Needing a change, I decided to pair a classic Danish summer beverage, the elderflower cordial, with the new Norwegian movie The Worst Person in the World, whose protagonist (not even remotely the worst person in the world, it turns out), is also a lover of summer wanderings through a picturesque Scandinavian city—for her, Oslo.

Elderflower is both a little precious and pretentious, just like seeing a movie at Film Forum. It sits squarely in a tier of cocktail accouterments that one would find only in a specialty-drinks-only bar where all the concoctions are $14 and made with egg whites, bitters, tinctures, or charred sprigs of herbs.

But as I discovered in Denmark, elderflower enjoys more mass appeal in northern Europe than in the United States, where it’s still rarefied. I was obsessed with elderflower-anything while in Scandinavia. The floral drink, pear, or maybe lychee-esque—just like the citrusy sea buckthorn (havtorn) juice that I consumed in equal quantities—felt, as the summer wore on, like something worth delighting in daily. And so I drank cocktails, sodas, and even sweet hard ciders infused with elderflower (the latter drink, called Somersby, was purchased from 7-Eleven, a more venerable purveyor of liquor in Copenhagen than in the U.S.).

In my New York kitchen, I paired an exceedingly beautiful bottle of St. Germain—an elderflower liqueur—with gin and lime, fusing two classic warm-weather ingredients with my new favorite flavor. The drink ended up strong and heady. It was more bitter than the cocktails I used to drink while people-watching in Copenhagen, but it still evoked a magical summer of diving into the harbor, break-

fasting on cardamom buns, and exploring the Danish beach town of Skagen, a dreamy, artistic haunt of a resort town at the country’s northern tip. Stateside, the taste at least cut through winter’s monotony.

—Brooke McCormick

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BLUE NOTES and tonic—a reaction that divulged both the youthful drive and my longing to appear cultivated in my drink decisions.

There we sat. We laughed; we basked; Emma ordered a Campari, a glass of wine, and an Aperol Spritz with an ease that exuded curiosity and confidence. Tupelo stuck to gin and tonics with an admirable loyalty for which I affectionately teased her, remembering the times she had mocked me back in the U.S. every time one was in my hand.

I suspect that the drinks perched upon those small tables, made rickety by the cobblestones below, had revealed our hopes for adulthood. For Emma, this had meant freedom and excitement; for Tupelo, a time of personal tastes, unanchored to family; and for me, a divestment from mimicry in favor of authentic desires.

—Anouk Jouffret

Illustration by Vanessa Mendoza

Illustration by Vanessa Mendoza

tan shorts that create all sorts of visible grooves beneath my pants. I spend the night readjusting the shorts to try and hide them. Three of us are angels, three of us are devils, and all six of us graduated from Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Jewish Day School two years ago.

I slither through the crowd toward an emptier room to recover from the sip in solitude. Wiping my mouth and searching desperately for water, I try to channel the graceful grimace of a middle-aged man drinking his nightly brew. He slams down the old fashioned and winces, pushing through fiery pain till he reaches a drunken bliss. Too bad I coughed up the entirety of my sip. There will be no bliss for me.

The bottle belongs to Daniella, another friend from BZAEDS. She’s dressed in a tight black SWAT team costume. Though we attended middle school, ballet school, and synagogue together, our paths have diverged so much that while she’s supplying assorted squeezy bottles of warm alcohol to the party, and I wouldn’t even begin to know where to acquire liquor, let alone have the ingenuity to disguise it in a decoy bottle. After a few minutes watching the colorful bouncing screensaver on the monitor in the home office, I emerge from the room ready to fake another sip.

—Sam Sacks

Playing with Fireball

I

squeeze the curvaceous gym water bottle into my mouth like an athlete in a Gatorade ad, which is to say I don’t dare touch my lips to the spout that four others had sucked. It’s a low-budget ad—we’re in a packed basement in Chicago, and in lieu of Cool Blue, we’re drinking warm Fireball, the first taste of hard liquor I’ve ever had.

It splashes the side of my cheek and slides down my throat. I cannot stomach the sweet, syrupy whiskey and start coughing immediately. My brown spittle dots the wrist of my white American Apparel long-sleeve crop top. I am an angel for Halloween.

Under my white skinny jeans I’m wearing a pair of

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Passing the Bar

S

ome months ago, near the 100th Street entrance to Central Park, in 100-degree heat, a schvitzy softball captain who had just led his ragtag team to victory broke a huddle by soliciting places to celebrate. Someone—probably a league regular who

THE BLUE AND WHITE

BLUE NOTES

T

he martini cries out for satin dresses exposing bare shoulders to the winter wind blowing into a sceney restaurant. The Manhattan demands a dimly lit nook on a brisk fall evening. Sazeracs crave

MARCH 2022

the cymbal of soft jazz in late spring. Of the classics, the Negroni is the least fussy cocktail. It doesn’t ask for a season or an aura.

I don’t have any good reason to order a Negroni instead of a boulevardier or a glass of Côtes du Rhône. Both might go better with steak frites. But only the Negroni prompted Sam Rockwell, upon Illustration by Brooke McCormick

ventured to the North Meadow once a year, no more, no less—suggested Tap a Keg. “My neighborhood bar,” whispered the left-fielder in the back.

Only the inept catcher, heaving with visible thirst, heard him.

I’d never said these words aloud, and they felt quite good, and as I steered the team to 105th and Broadway, I tried to explain myself to myself. A neighborhood bar is, first, a bar in your neighborhood. It is usually, but not always, a dive; it is dark.

It does not serve good food, but you can bring good food—Mama’s Too, Roti—and no one will mind.

Mine has a jukebox and a pool table; if you’re lucky, yours does, too. A neighborhood bar is not a local watering hole where everyone knows your name, but a dependable den of anonymity. Do they recognize you? Maybe, but they don’t care enough to think it through, and neither do you. During the shoulder seasons, you forgo the neighborhood bar in favor of a destination bar or a friend’s neighborhood bar, which you convince them not to forgo because you like to see other neighborhood bars so you can rest easy knowing that yours has superior, which is to say worse, lighting. You don’t stumble into your neighborhood bar; you trust-fall into its loving arms, in one fluid motion that starts in your apartment. And you do not order cocktails there, because they taste bad.

There it was, hungover from the aughts, sidling up to Serafina like the endearing stalwart inside— the one who doesn’t butt into your conversation but is ready to chat if you are. And there was the Jameson in the well, ready for me and some of the other twenty-somethings and most of the fifty-somethings. Some ordered so confidently that I imagined they came from whiskey stock. I don’t: My mom’s a hapless lightweight confined to hop-less craft beer, and if my dad nurses anything, it’s a charmingly sweet rum drink. They’ll never know the cold confidence of grabbing a thick juice glass and taking a clean swig. Neat or rocks, single or double—it’s my impossibly sensible treat, though that night it was the captain’s.

—Sam Needleman Equal Parts

seeing that my best friend ordered one at the East Village bistro Lucien, to say to the waiter, “I’ll have what he’s having.” Obviously, I had to go and order one, too. And as I sipped it through the evening, it somehow waged a war of independence against my dinner.

My inner contrarian wanted to stray from the espresso martinis that the TikTok influencers were fawning over at rooftop bars across the city. I had lost interest in the sappy elderflower gin and tonics that had marked my spring. The old Negroni was, surprisingly, a new adventure. It accompanied me through an afternoon of people-watching in the West Village, through sunset lounging at the pool, and into the burgundy booths of Frenchette in the fall. The cocktail enabled a seamless transition from summer to après-ski, curing both perspiring noses and aching muscles.

The Negroni strives to be easygoing. It’s open to variation in its quest for universal appeal: You can swap gin with bourbon, add a dash of bitters or a slightly charred orange peel, top it off with club soda, infuse it with chai. But venture too far—yes, I’m talking to you, mezcal fiends—and you risk upsetting its delicate liquor to liqueur balance. The one-to-one-to-one ratio of Campari to gin to sweet vermouth is more precarious, more sensitive, than the sturdy cocktail wants it to be.

—Tarini Krishna

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CAMPUS CHAR ACTERS Illustration by Mac Jackson

Morgan Levine

I

BY SAM NEEDLEMAN

have been lucky to know, in my four years of half-fledged college life, four full-fledged graduates of Beyoncé’s high school: two very tall dancers and two very short poets. They’re a buoyant bunch, and they have all assured me, unprompted and on separate occasions, that a public arts school in Houston is a special place to come of age. “H-town till I drown,” they say, and they seem to mean it.

They aren’t suburbanites like the kids supposedly from Boston; they aren’t malcontents of the Sun Belt sprawl like the kids from LA and Miami. They really do hold H-town down, and they do it artfully.

“It was a given that you were interested in something and doing something creative … you didn’t have to prove it,” short poet Morgan Levine, CC ’22, told me on a recent afternoon in Hungarian, gently knocking their more pre-professional peers here in the Northeast. It was getting tantalizingly warm, and hindsight was suddenly 20/20 for the ’22s. Levine, normally an energetic optimist, was expressing regret over time not well spent, people not met, literary salons not hosted. Above all, they seemed overwhelmed and perplexed by the careerism ensnaring their classmates, fellow artists included. They were making the classic case for art for art’s sake, and it’s never been so well-timed.

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“There has to be some kind of commune or arena where you can volley out creative impulses without having them be immediately hierarchized,” they said.

How to resist? Write an English thesis on ekphrasis, of course. What better antidote for post-grad pressures than artful descriptions of descriptions of art? Though postmodern poetry, especially Ashbery, is the central tile in Levine’s mosaic, their historical sweep is much broader. “The first ekphrastic description in the Western canon is Achilles’ shield,” they told me, insisting that the concept was porous from the get-go. “Even then, when you think about it, and the verbs that are being used, it can’t possibly be a direct representation. People are getting in fights and throwing shit in there! That cannot be going on in the shield itself.”

Fair point. And it’s not as if things got any clearer. “After Stein, you can describe a pin cushion by saying ‘sparkly sparkly sparkly’ over and over again,” they pointed out. So if what a poet describes ekphrastically isn’t necessarily a work of art—maybe it’s a text, maybe it’s an object, or maybe, said Levine, it’s the passage of time—then the lines between art criticism and literary criticism, between criticism and art itself, are quite blurry. Levine loi-

THE BLUE AND WHITE

CAMPUS CHAR ACTERS ters there, and anyone racing ahead or lagging behind befuddles them: “You’re gonna only look and not taste?” Spoken like an artist at school. “Everything should be together,” they declared. “My goal has always been to merge.”

It’s difficult, of course, for a senior to insist on this sort of merging when everyone around them suddenly seems more interested in mergers and acquisitions. “You kind of watch people’s physical contours shift,” Levine said, recounting with disappointment and defeat the endless job searches, which too often entail abandoning passions. They described their friends “flitting back and forth” between campus and the nebulous world beyond.

They offered an alternative, the one they know best: “Poetry is about creating and paying attention and allowing things to have a resonance beyond their physical contours.” A few hours with Levine serves as an edifying reminder—if you needed one at all— that consulting can’t hold a candle to poetry. For Levine, what can? Maybe going to Spain on a government-funded program, Ashbery in hand, Ben Lerner–style. If most post-grad paths are clichés, you might as well pick one that will let you eat good croquetas, go to the Prado, and break even.

They’ll be great at all of the above, I think. Levine tends not to traffic in superlatives, but I do: They are perhaps the best poet on campus, the smoothest barista at Journalism Joe, the most talented editor of the Columbia Review, and the host of the most sublime Central Park coloring parties. I hear that they also have one hell of a WBAR show and the best Instagram story on campus—a torrent of sumptuous reposts. “They posted my cake one time!” a Blue and White editor told me ecstatically, and, upon seeing the picture, I gave Levine as much credit for disseminating the glorious Maira Kalman–esque confection as I gave the editor for baking it. I imagined Levine, quarantined in Texas, periodically putting down Autobiography of Red to send spates of square pleasures to their followers.

Perhaps the only venue where they command more respect than Instagram is the Review, where they now enjoy a cushy emeritus perch. When they invited me to a recent meeting in Kent, I arrived late, bowed to all the literary heavy-hitters, set a three-minute timer, and bet myself a pint of mint chip Häagen-Dazs that “enjambment” would be mentioned before the beep. It was—and positively, at that! A rainbow-haired, turtlenecked Levine

MARCH 2022

mostly kept quiet, including during a fierce debate over a poem about top surgery, but their slow Houstonian nods said it all. “I feel like you’ve been sitting on something,” one of the more loquacious editors finally said, turning to Levine, and the old sage launched into a sermon that somehow held the room rapt while loosening it up. “Mmm,” said everyone, all at once. Next poem.

While the editors weighed a piece “for Pollock,” I watched one of them google Pollock. I thought about Levine’s admirable mission to read every plaque in the Met, not as a pretentious auto-didactic project, but as—you guessed it—a sort of poetic practice. I wanted them to take me there and maybe read to me, but our trip was stymied by homework and Levine’s formidable February social calendar.

At least we bumped into each other at an aprèsski–themed party in the wee hours of my deadline. While we lounged on a couch—vodka-cran for them, whiskey for me—I turned to them and demanded the highest form of ekphrasis: the party report, a genre at least as old as Plato’s Symposium.

Not all EC events are worthy of a drunken close read, but if hordes of seniors in white cable-knit sweaters don’t constitute an objet d’art, I don’t know what does.

“There are no flashing colored lights, which I consider a huge element of a good party,” Levine, ever the epicurean, said. “One bright white light— it’s like the moon. A bunch of people are moving!”

Levine’s buddy, by the door, motioned for them.

“Oh, shit. We’re gonna go.” And just like that, they were off to a party down the hall, their description still dangling as lightly as one of the cut-out snowflakes affixed to the cement walls.

“My way of accessing truth about the world … is by paying better attention,” they told me in Hungarian. After that chat, I told a friend that Levine is remarkably articulate. Just then, déja vù: I said the same thing to their face on Rockaway Beach a couple of years ago, stopping them mid-sentence, as if the spirit moved me. I had to say it! Even in languid summer conversation, their precision was astonishing, distracting. And as I caught myself marveling too myopically at their diction, I got a little anxious: Shouldn’t I be listening to what my friend is saying?

Maybe; too bad. Their words became, Stein-like, too vital and pleasurable to tamper with, like sea glass or the carrot salad that Patti Smith is known to eat at Uma’s, just up the boardwalk.

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F E AT U R E S

Staging New Features

Student ensembles do Broadway their own way.

BY MUNI SULEIMAN

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only learned of the Columbia University Black Theatre Ensemble in October, when it revealed its existence just to interrupt a quiet dinner with a friend. As an assistant director to their fall play Once on This Island, she had to cut our dinner date short to make rehearsal. So there I was on Low Steps, alone but with new knowledge. And as a Black student, it mostly left me perplexed—that such an organization existed at Columbia, but also that I’d been utterly unaware of this fact.

I wouldn’t hear much more of it until late January, when I spotted a call for writers posted in Lerner. The posters advertised weekly co-writing sessions for film and theater writers, workshops with film and theater professors, and a writers’ room— all part of the Ensemble’s IncluBIPOC workshop program, an environment of “positive creative growth, as we create a writers community here at Columbia.” With no demands for prior experience or skill, this was an open invitation not only into a world for Black writers but into the vibrant and supportive community that is BTE. …

In recent years, there has been growing mobilization directed at Broadway’s lack of diversity.

Though more Black actors have reached Broadway stages, those behind the scenes, including playwrights, also need diversified spaces. Plays and playwrights provide the voice through which acting is interpreted. If the narratives we place on the stage aren’t inhabiting diverse perspectives, we run the risk of undermining more visible efforts toward diversity.

Broadway flung open its curtains for the fall 2021 season to unveil seven plays by Black playwrights: Chicken & Biscuits, Pass Over, Trouble in Mind, Lackawanna Blues, Skeleton Crew, Clyde’s, and Thoughts of a Colored Man. The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2020 brought public demands to diversify the theater industry, and the season promised a meaningful change from the relative lack of Black-written theater on Broadway in previous years. But two years later, the commitment hasn’t stuck—as of

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now, Skeleton Crew and for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf are the only Black-written plays still running. The explanation for each ending varies—financial backing and the impact of the Omicron variant have played major roles. Nevertheless, there remains a clear difference in the amount of real estate Black and white playwrights are allowed to occupy on the “Great White Way.” For one, Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s Pass Over was the first play to open on Broadway since March 2020. After a pushedup opening date, low ticket sales triggered industry voices, even before the first show, to question the play’s ability to survive its limited run. All major theatrical productions are financially risky endeavors; given the institutional and cultural barriers that can make Black-written plays seem like even greater risks, this pre-existing instability makes such shows even more difficult to produce.

As I read more and more into these stories of professional Black theater, I was particularly intrigued by how the conversations on Black playwrights and

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F E AT U R E S diversity on Broadway mirrored similar conversations that I also was hearing on Columbia’s campus. …

Columbia’s connection to the professional theater world is twofold. On one hand, current members of Columbia theater spaces may become the famous actors, directors, and writers of tomorrow.

On the other hand, the way that Broadway looks right now plays a major role in influencing the future of the theater community—inspiring those

who see theater as a welcoming space while turning away those who do not. The theater industry’s racial and financial barriers, therefore, recreate themselves when there are no structural changes enacted to oppose them. While Columbia is an institution in which barriers to theater involvement are very much present, it is also a space for students to contest such barriers by encouraging broader participation in their theatrical groups.

Though optimistic about the accessibility of

Illustration by Kat Chen

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F E AT U R E S Columbia and Barnard’s Theater department, Kay Kemp, CC ’22, who helps lead BTE, noted the racial and financial pressures that potentially deter Black students, even those with high school experience, from engaging in Columbia student theater. “Theater is such a centralized, wealthy media,” they said, creating a need for an organization like BTE. “You cannot work in theater without a certain amount of exposure and backing.”

The same can be said of requirements upheld by clubs or productions prior to participation. When productions require prior experience, knowledge of the theatrical canon, or labor-heavy commitment, it can discourage those from marginalized backgrounds; such students are less likely to have had access to that prior experience, or may need to manage a job alongside academics and extracurriculars in order to support themselves.

Jane Walsh, CC ’23, has found similar issues in the audition process. She noted that, for hundreds of years, “theater has been, frankly, really not a diverse community just because of how it’s been structured with the casting, the audition process.

You have to know certain people to get anywhere.”

Walsh is the co-president of Latenite Theatre, an experimental comedy theater group that produces an anthology of eight to nine student-written plays.

Like BTE, it attempts to diversify its membership through a recruitment process that removes barriers to entry. The club maintains a casual audition process in which preparation is discouraged, bias training is done prior to casting, and production casts are large so as to include as many people as possible. “Shows are only better if you have a diverse range of playwrights, actors, directors,” emphasized Walsh. “[We] definitely try to do a lot of work toward it, but also I hope that we’ll never be complacent.”

Latenite and BTE share another rudimentary but essential practice: Both groups regularly put on student-written plays, rather than productions of canonical work. Walsh explained the significance of this long-standing practice: “I think sometimes so much of the theater world is so focused on redoing, that it’s so hard to break in anything you write to be seen anywhere.” Given the whiteness of the theatrical canon, frequent productions of student plays provide opportunities for budding writers of color to have their work performed, and for college theater spaces to diversify their material.

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For Latenite and BTE, then, inclusivity is not limited to making participation more accessible, but also making all types of participation acceptable.

Both clubs allow for first-time playwrights to write and produce their work without the pressures of being The Next Best American Play. One of Walsh’s favorite parts about Latenite plays, for instance, is that “there’s not a lot of emphasis on them being really good. The stuff we make is like stuff that’s just weird and halfway through.” Sometimes the plays don’t make any sense, and they don’t have to.

Kemp similarly emphasized BTE’s commitment to versatile productions, noting that they accept “people who are like, ‘I want to direct this thing.’

We’re just like, ‘Then direct it.’ Everything that we’ve done has been—this was a passion project from somebody. Was on the board or wasn’t on the board, it doesn’t matter. If you want to do theater, we’ll make it happen.”

While Latenite and BTE have made likewise efforts to make theater spaces more accessible, they’ve approached making them more diverse in different ways. They’ve created internal structures that differ not only from each other but also deviate from professional theater practices: At Latenite, that takes the form of color-evasive theatrical spaces, while BTE has created an identity-conscious space.

Typically used in reference to theatrical casting, as well as hiring practices at large, the term “color-evasive” refers to the disregard of one’s race, ethnicity, and/or gender, or not finding these identities relevant to a position if it does not explicitly call for specific identities. Latenite undergoes an anonymous submission process in which “everyone has the fair chance to have their play be selected,” and “people will discuss the plays for what they are,” as Leul Abate, CC ’23, Latenite’s co-submissions commission chair, described. Anonymity is maintained for as long as the writer wishes, at times even extending well into rehearsal, so qualifications like writing experience are not emphasized in the submission process.

For all it may do to reduce bias and requirements of experience, though, an anonymous and color-evasive process by definition cannot guarantee that a diverse array of playwrights are included in the anthology. Identity-consciousness, on the other hand, acknowledges and embraces that identities— including but not limited to race, ethnicity, and gender—can inform how a role or position is ful-

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F E AT U R E S filled. It goes beyond the concept that anyone can write a play and join their community, consciously recognizing and actively working against the barriers that specifically impact Black, Indigenous and Playwrights of Color. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, BTE wishes to develop as it dismantles: Another primary aim for the group is to further the theatrical artistry of its participants.

It was through BTE, for instance, that Kemp was able to turn their experience with whiteness in the theater world into a source of creative inspiration: “I acted, and then got to college and was like, ‘Oh, there's nothing on this campus that I want to be in.

Because there’s nothing on this campus for me.’ I went back to writing when I was like, ‘Well, nobody's going to make that but me. There’s nobody on this campus who’s making work like that right now.’”

The organization functions both as an artistic and a mentoring space, especially through projects like the IncluBIPOC workshop which—at the time of writing—remains open for any Black and other writers of color. It not only provides the resources for those who wish to develop their theatrical interests, but also establishes an identity-based community outside theater. Kemp described BTE not only as the Black Theater Ensemble but also as the Black Teaching Ensemble. “I feel like an important thing about [the IncluBIPOC workshop] is I am listed as the head writer, but that does not mean that I’m not learning,” they explained. “It actually means that I get the opportunity to learn more from these people who are new and have fresh voices and ideas.

I'm not teaching anything. We’re all sitting around and teaching each other.” It’s these aspects of BTE’s environment that contribute to Kemp’s description of BTE as a community theater.

Formally, Kemp is BTE’s resident playwright, as well as one of its co-presidents, alongside Madison Hatchett, BC ’22, and Emily Ndiokho, BC ’22. In practice, the ensemble’s structure is much more decentralized, with the distribution of artistic work far more fluid than the rigid roles assigned on paper. Those who might otherwise feel unwelcome in theatrical spaces are thus offered an opportunity— not only for bit-part participation but for immediate immersion in the creative work of the ensemble.

They might be experiencing, for the first time, that ideas outside of theatrical convention can be celebrated, as opposed to shunned.

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“That’s extremely important—learning how to collaborate with people,” said Hatchett. “You don’t need to have experience ... You’ll learn just by the virtue of being in that space.”

Distinct from an approach that deemphasizes the quality of the plays to endorse creativity, BTE’s communal ethos and decentralized structure not only includes students without a traditional theater background, but also recognizes what they are capable of. Kemp summarized BTE’s messaging: “We’re making art like, ‘Hey, we think that stories are really valuable. We think that your story is really valuable, and we want to make it easy for you to tell that story. I want to give you tools. We don’t want to give you a framework, but we want to give you tools.’”

The depth of BTE’s communal support structure—artistic and otherwise—allows its members to produce something audiences might not see anywhere else on campus. …

Even with the inclusive approaches of BTE and Latenite, there are still difficulties in trying to diversify theater on Columbia’s campus. For one, a strict timeline for auditions means that, even if one wanted to include as many people as possible in a production, there’s a limited time frame for recruitment. Moreover, there still remains larger institutional barriers within and beyond the university itself that these clubs cannot overcome themselves.

“We can’t change what’s going on at this university for people of color. We don’t have that capacity if we tried … we have to change the way that we’re making work to make it more accessible to those people,” Kemp reflected.

But BTE and Latenite are still valuable, serving as the campus conduits for stories. A “safe and restorative space,” as Hatchett described BTE, allows more people into the industry as well as the audience, whether theater is a long-term career aspiration or not.

“Just because some of us on this e-board want to pursue theater full time doesn’t mean that you have to take theater extremely seriously,” said Hatchett, in a reminder that these student ensembles value theater as process and not product. “You don’t have to be a theater person just to have people that you have fun with. That’s what rehearsal spaces are designed for.”

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F E AT U R E S

An Underground Playground Discovering Barnard’s Movement Lab.

BY KELSEY KITZKE

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efore I could step into Barnard’s Movement Lab, I had to take off my street shoes—a reminder that in some ways, this is a dance studio like any other. Upon entering, I wasn’t greeted by a typical studio’s floor-to-ceiling mirrors, wall-mounted bars, and panoramic windows.

Instead, the Movement Lab features stage lights, sound systems, and six different projectors—four project onto the walls and two onto the floor.

Even as I found myself struck by the artistic possibilities around me, the bottoms of my feet tethered me to the cool dance floor—an uncanny convergence of the digital and the tangible. Of course, this is just one of the University’s many state-of-the-art performance spaces. But what distinguishes the Movement Lab from other venues is its dedication to exploring the intersection of movement and technology.

Tucked away behind an inconspicuous white door on the lower level of Milstein, the Movement Lab’s learning environment stands in stark contrast with the bustling study spaces and classrooms above. Curiosity in college is most often channeled toward predetermined goals: We learn new skills to complete a project, write a paper, take an exam. The Movement Lab, however, is designed to encourage “lateral exploration,” as associate director Guy de Lancey called it. Others used the simpler word “play.” The Movement Lab is a place for playing—with the technology, with bodies, with space, and prioritizing discovery over the final product.

That’s how Noa Weiss, BC ’21, the Lab’s post-baccalaureate fellow, explained the eclectic array of equipment we came across during my tour. Weiss turned on the six projectors, each displaying a different looping video of a serene landscape. The videos are often used at the weekly meditative Stillness Lab, one of the most common ways that non-dancers interact with the facility.

Jellyfish floated below me, a cat jumped through swaying tall grass in front of me, and lava poured down the volcanic rock to my right. When I mentioned that I couldn’t imagine what lava could

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possibly sound like, Weiss used the studio sound system to demonstrate its crackling. Oh, and these are the skeletons, he added, pointing to the two long black bags of complete human skeletal models. A human anatomy class meets here, too.

First conceived during the development of the new Milstein Center, which opened in 2018, the Lab was proposed as a space on campus to give physical form to the intersection of art, movement, and technology. “We thought it should be like a sandbox,” de Lancey said, “just filling it up with all the latest technology.” The Lab’s equipment constantly evolves to meet artists’ desires.

The result is a highly flexible space especially beneficial for the student artists-in-residence (SARs) that the Lab hosts each semester.

Last fall, the Lab’s adaptability had a clear utility: In becoming somewhat of a film studio, dance majors could shift their thesis projects from the stage to the screen. But the Lab has since been able to resume a broader range of in-person activities. And as a space dedicated to the creative utilization of technology alongside bodily movement, the Lab is poised to challenge what the return to the “physical world” even means.

As opposed to other “movement labs” on campus that understand bodily movement through scientific research, Barnard’s Movement Lab attracts more artists than scientists. Still, these artists represent a wide variety of artistic and technical backgrounds. Current SARs Eli Duncan, BC ’22, and Sophie Paquette, CC ’23, highlighted that the Movement Lab and its technology have provided some freedom from the restraints of their other artistic disciplines, allowing for a new kind of engagement with art and the physical body.

A combined architecture and visual arts major, Duncan uses the Movement Lab to experiment with virtual reality. It’s a rare opportunity for him to act upon his passion for the crossroads of architecture and installation art. “It’s really exciting—the idea that you can just take anything that you make on the computer and then instantly

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F E AT U R E S enter into it physically, or somewhat physically,” he said. Initially, Duncan used VR to “test out” ideas for the “real world,” but he described that playing with the technology has allowed him to discover an entirely new visual language. He’s become fascinated with the uncanny juxtaposition of real images and surreal transformations, describing a software process that projects photos of real textures (like close-up images of flowers or food) onto three-dimensional virtual surfaces to create a bright, colorful, and chaotic viewing experience. Rather than gawking at the hyperrealistic techniques in classical paintings, Duncan is interested in seeing the flaws the technological process reveals in his art.

Though she has a background in creative writing, Paquette said that her interest in the Movement Lab stemmed primarily from her experiences as a roller skater. When she took up skating a few years ago, she discovered her body could move in ways she hadn’t experienced before—a form of creativity that didn’t require being hunched in front of a computer screen. When we met, she showed me the bright purple roller skates that she’s carefully painted and tweaked herself, a manifestation of her artistic approach to skating and her interest in construing meaning through movement. Recently, Paquette has been utilizing the Lab’s motion capture suit to project her movements onto an avatar displayed on the Lab’s walls, experimentation grounded in themes of learned movement and muscle memory.

Paquette joked about the motion capture technology’s imperfections: As she moves, the avatar might completely contradict her movements, its arm impaling its torso or otherwise splaying wildly. “It’s just a different way of thinking about my movements that they’re being read, like they are legible, but also that they’re being transformed [by the technology],” she said. But she also highlighted how the technology’s imperfections are a big part of its potential: “It doesn’t matter if my movements aren’t super perfect because they’re going to be warped through the avatar anyway.”

While motion capture might seem physically alienating as a medium, it lets Paquette pursue a new kind of artistic embodiment in which she’s learning the body rather than operating it.

In part because of his architecture background, Duncan resisted the idea that this technology

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connects the digital and the physical worlds.

“When you’re in a space, you feel like you can pick up on the presence of things that are physically around you, and VR is a completely visual medium where there's no actual mass or volume that surrounds you,” he said. Sometimes, though, VR plays tricks on your body: Your arm tingles when you put your hand through a virtual wall or you feel like you’re falling as you walk down a virtual hill. Sound is particularly tricky, Duncan explained. “There’s so much that we absorb and process about spatial environments like based off of the sound that we hear, and so I’m definitely really interested in using sound as the main property that kind of keeps it grounded.” In the VR experience Duncan is building, you maintain an understanding that the world you’re in is virtual—he’s not trying to trick you into its tangibility. But the experience also forces you to surrender to how your body and brain will try to make sense of the nonsensical. As a result, it’s the imprecision in the technology—its failure to create a hyperreal experience—that shapes the artistic process and product.

The Movement Lab maintains a close relationship with the dance department, where director Gabri Christa is also a faculty member, and with the campus’ dance community. Dance and art history major Sophia Fung, BC ’22, emphasized the Lab’s specialness as a campus performing arts space. President of CoLab Performing Arts Collective, a group dedicated to building a community for creators of all kinds to present their work, Fung hosts its semesterly showcase in the Movement Lab, where she is also a SAR this spring.

She highlighted both the Lab’s access to an array of technology and its intimacy as a performance setting, particularly for experimental or unconventional works. “I think that a lot of artists are drawn to the kind of expansive ideas that you can have in the Movement Lab, because you can have so much more interaction between, say, yourself and the projection, as a mover,” Fung said.

While the Movement Lab emphasizes fun, curiosity, and play, it doesn’t shy away from the biases this new technology can initiate and illuminate. The Lab isn’t pushing a world in which technology rules supreme over our lives and bodies; it’s invested in critiquing the racial, gendered, and classed implications of the world of

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F E AT U R E S technology.

“This technology is new and exciting and pretty accessible and also so racist,” Weiss said while discussing the Lab’s work with media artist LaJuné McMillian’s “The Black Movement Library Potrait Series.” The October installation consisted of motion capture representation of Black performers from their online archival project Black Movement Library, designed to push against the

underrepresentation and misrepresentation of Black movement in existing databases.

It’s exciting to play with the latest technology, to wave at your virtual avatar and see it wave right back. But as de Lancey noted, the Movement Lab’s always been about more than marveling at the latest gadgets: “If we get past the first phase of wonder about it—like, there’s you waving, what does it mean socially now?”

Illustration by Madeleine Hermann

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E S S AY S

Anywhere But Here Down the runway with Paloma LaMona

BY HART HALLOS

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re you pro or anti gender norms? If yes, you might have heard of a little something called drag, which has been sweeping New York City ever since Season 10 of Rupaul’s Drag Race aired in 2018. Kidding! The drag scene’s recent influx of performers is no joking matter. Local competitions offer students, artists, and twinks vital exposure and connections in an industry where Exxposure and Connie Xtions might be the names you need to know to get booked.

Enter Paloma LaMona, CC ’23, who started performing in drag in June of 2021. In her first competition that September, she placed fourth and earned the judge’s gushing praise. But Paloma doesn’t just perform—she designs and makes her own costumes, does her own hair, and mixes her own performance audio. To walk into Paloma’s room is to walk into a veritable drag atelier: Wig heads gaze proudly over a floor dotted with pins and sewing patterns, and the entire back wall disappears behind a packed clothing rack.

It’s a slight change from two years ago, when Paloma and I (famously) lived on the same John Jay floor. But there might have been signs: Juliàn, Paloma’s out-of-drag identity, didn’t not wear heels to our 8:40. Since Paloma’s birth, I’ve followed her to gigs and competitions around the city—including last month, for a preliminary round of Lady Liberty on the third floor of the Q. Maybe it was food poisoning from the night before, or maybe it’s because I’m an empath, but something about the night felt special. You want to find out why?

Okay, but you’ve got to control your erection. …

5:39 p.m.: Paloma and I decide to meet at an up-and-coming psychedelic brunch palace that plays God to day-in-my-life-NYC TikTok: Carlton Arms Suite 8A. It’s also where we both live, and where I often run into Paloma and their whirring sewing machine on late-night trips to the bathroom.

6:52 p.m.: A knock on the door reveals itself as Dominique: Paloma’s roommate, a makeup artist and SEAS student. She’s shimmering in a mintgreen slip and matching sparkly eyeshadow, sip-

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ping Fireball from a Dixie cup. I opt for blue Gatorade, memories of vomiting in the communal bathroom still fresh.

7:10 p.m.: The next knock is Paloma and her boyfriend/dutiful drag helper, Julian. Both carry a huge bag stuffed with supplies; I spy an entire roll of paper towels, some boating tape, and a lavender Telfar mini. My eyes refocus on the huge pink poinsettia in Paloma’s hair—somehow chic when paired with a black knee-length down jacket and hot pink Crocs. We walk briskly to the subway, Paloma nervous about missing the 7:30 call time.

7:25 p.m.: We discover that we’re missing black eyeliner, which Paloma had planned on using to add a beauty mark. Possible solutions include a packed eyebrow pencil or Dominique and I doing a mad CVS dash, but the pencil is too light, and Paloma wants us to be able to enter together. The beauty mark is abandoned.

7:39 p.m.: Paloma goes straight to the dressing room upon arrival. Dominique, Julian, and I check out the empty second floor, which will host the sex party Qruisers later tonight. The floors and walls are Despicable Me black, decorated with graffiti and papered with posters of Elvira and hunkily-rendered cartoon characters. Passing by a Ned Flanders with particularly bulging pecs, I realize it’s okay to be gay.

8:06 p.m.: The third floor is also classic Grucore (Grore?): cold black walls, vaguely industrial fixtures, and a high ceiling where iridescent plastic snowflakes dangle loosely. The pre-show crowd is us and the DJ, who sways somberly while puffing on a Juul. He’s wearing a cropped gray hoodie and black mesh boxer briefs layered over white cotton briefs, so the pre-show music is incredible.

A club mashup of “good 4 u” and “Watermelon Sugar” plays, and everyone in the room simultaneously cums. Shaken from the collective orgasm, I stagger down blue-lit stairs to the first floor—a jazzier vibe, think big velvet curtain—to get cash.

A possibly-bearded man (though I could be projecting) performs intensely on the piano, but no one is paying attention. Above the bar, stock footage of Earth as seen from outer space plays.

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Illustration by Phoebe Wagoner 8:15 p.m.: Dominique and I decide it’s time for a drinkey-poo (industry term!) at the third floor bar. I ask someone whose porn I’ve watched on Twitter if he is in line, and he replies, “Yes,” in a way that makes it clear he is extremely attracted to me. In a pleasant and possibly sex-party–related surprise, I spot blue Gatorade behind the bar and get one, receiving with it a small gray puzzle piece. The mural across from the bar features two boys in medieval-esque attire (neck ruffles and jockstraps).

8:25 p.m.: I ask Julian how he thinks Paloma is feeling. “Nervous,” he replies. Tonight’s prelim consists of a runway, a performance, and a lip

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sync between the two top-ranking contestants.

Lady Liberty is a staple competition in the NYC drag community: Winners earn scene recognition and have been known to appear on a certain RuPaul drag show.

Tonight’s hosts, Brita Filter and Nicky Doll, introduce the judges, seated with a bird’s-eye view above the stage.

8:34 p.m.: The first contestant walks the runway in a satiny, pastel bodysuit embroidered with rhinestone avocados. Midway through, she pulls an actual avocado out of her bra and hands it to someone else in the front row. Obviously, I am crushed. I realize the “runway” of Lady Liberty is a small stage three feet above the ground, which contestants ascend via apple box and descend via shaky staircase. Brita offers an arm to contestants who seem like they might snap an ankle.

8:42 p.m.: Paloma is the eighth and final contestant to walk the runway. She’s adorned in cascading tiers of ruffled bandana fabric: blue, pink, white, pink, and blue again. Brita clocks the trans flag reference immediately.

What Brita doesn’t know is the painstaking process and repeated dorm floor consultations that went into choosing each specific shade.

The judges don’t know that each tier was hand-ruffled by Paloma over weeks of latenight lounge sewing sessions, or that the entire outfit, including matching headband and shoes, was rhinestoned by Paloma and Julian during finals season. Still, I watch the crowd nod approvingly as phones are rushed out of pockets to record the moment. As Paloma exits the stage, Nicky Doll reads the description she wrote for herself: “A little hood, a little classy, and proud of it.”

9:10 p.m.: Performances begin with live singing that leaves the audience unstirred. After each number, contestants walk around collecting tips in a plastic fishbowl. Audience favorites include the highest jump split I’ve ever seen and a TikTok-themed performance.

9:39 p.m.: Paloma is the final performer of the night. When she walks out in full Dora costume

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E S S AY S to the Dora theme song, a judge rushes down from their seat to tip her before she has even started lip syncing. The performance follows Paloma as a grown-up Dora: working at a job she hates, getting fired from said job, disappointing her parents, and drinking tequila. One of Paloma’s earrings—a gold bamboo hoop, worn for both the runway and performance—falls off midway and clatters to the ground. But when she kicks it determinedly offstage, sending it flying into Julian’s lap, the audience cheers. I glance at Brita, whose beam is unmistakable.

9:47 p.m.: Dominique and I nab another round of drinkey-poos during votey-poo time. Every puzzle piece cast into Paloma’s fishbowl fills me with a little bit of hope—until I notice one contestant’s bowl is conspicuously empty. It’s almost as chilling as the half-shaved head I just spotted in the crowd. Dominique and I savor the final minutes of votey-poo time by dancing alone near the bar (in a cool way), and I spot a Grindr match but don’t approach after convincing myself he was catfishing me. Cue the And Just Like That … theme song, hun!

10:02 p.m.: Brita and Nicky call the contestants up on stage, where Paloma, who drunkenly “fell” at the end of her performance, has a spot of blood forming through the knee of her tights. After a lot of gay drumrolling (in which gay people do a drumroll), the top four are announced: the second contestant, the fourth, the one who performed the TikTok number, and … Paloma! We absolutely lose our shit. Another round of drum rolls (less gay but more vers), and the fourth- and third-placing contestants are eliminated—leaving Paloma, holding hands with the other TikToking member of the top two. Later, Paloma will tell me that “people in the scene” told her to prepare for the top two lip sync after her Dora performance, but onstage, her surprise seems genuine.

10:13 p.m.: The top two lip sync is a classic drag anthem—“Levitating” by Dua Lipa—that even Brita admits has too many words. Both of Paloma’s knees are bleeding through her tights now. Still dressed as Dora, she claps to the beat, mashes my face with her hand, and steps over her opponent’s onstage barrel roll. Before I can process what’s happening, the song is over and Nicky and Brita are announcing the winner of Lady Liberty: PALOMA LAMONA! I watch Paloma’s

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face crumple as the space around me dissolves into cheers. Dominique and I jump up and down together; I get squashed amidst a crowd of people trying to get pictures; DJ Double Briefed-Up whispers (shouts) into my ear: “Your friend is such a fucking star.”

10:30 p.m.: My proposal of c’mon guys let’s just check out Qruisers for a little bit is roundly rejected (virgins!), so Dominique and I chat with contestant Lori Lu as we wait for Paloma. She teaches music to children, and says that they love her drag—“they want to touch everything.” As we leave the bar, someone hands us t-shirts wrapped in plastic. I ask what they’re for, and he mentions something about it being our lucky day. When I see what’s on them—No SHIRT, No SHOES, No GENDER, with a small Corona Beer logo underneath—I can’t help but agree.

10:52 p.m.: Paloma’s blood spots are growing slowly, but she’s more focused on recounting the night—were people living, can you believe that judge tipped her, why would someone barrel roll?

Most importantly, she is already starting to plan what to wear for the semifinals. There’s a future here that is impossible not to feel excited about. A name—Rupaul—flickers excitedly and nervously on our tongues as we fantasize on the subway ride home.

11:34 p.m.: Paloma gets her first taste of the glamorous life of a Lady Liberty winner—a wig cap duct-taped to her hair. Quora offers no help, so Julian takes matters into his own hands, cutting Paloma’s hair in the dorm bathroom. Paloma winces as she cleans her knee scrapes. She will later reflect on the evening as “pain. But also good things happened.”

1:07 a.m.: We end the night in the lounge of Carlton Arms 8A, eating Koronet Pizza and watching Too Hot To Handle. If I were more poetically inclined (sorry: lame), I’d highlight the circularity of the moment: The very space where Paloma made her runway outfit from scratch, mixed the audio for her performance, and so often works on her craft is, for tonight, the space where she can just enjoy the win. But all I can think about is the delicious taste and widespread variety of Corona©’s new line of 2022 Pride Products! With new Hard Seltzers That Use They/Them Pronouns, everybody can join in on the fun—because life is a cele-GAY-tion! #Ad.

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T H E S H O RT C U T

Beginner Astronomy

BY LARA SMITH

T

he first time I see a sky full of stars (and I mean real stars) I am around eight years old and visiting my grandparents in southern Germany. I say real stars because the light pollution in New York City, where I grew up, leaves the entire night sky a grayish yellow, no shining specks in sight. Before I see stars in Germany, they are a novelty that featured only in big, glossy printed pictures my father keeps on the glass dining room table. The pictures are taken from his telescope, the Calypso, the product of a doctorate in astrophysics he completed the year I was born. His relationship with stars proves to be confusing for me. In preschool, when I am questioned about my father’s profession, I respond: “He’s an astronaut.” When other preschool kids eagerly ask follow-up questions, I insist: “Yes, yes. He has been to the moon.”

Throughout kindergarten, on evenings where I am lucky enough to be allowed TV, I watch animations of orbits on educational DVDs. I sink into a big brown leather armchair in front of my father’s television, folded up so that my knees touch my chin. Mesmerized, I watch the digitized planets slowly spin around the sun while the tiring drone of the narrator fades in and out of my awareness.

Sometimes I watch the same episode three or four times in a row, staring at my dusty reflection in the black screen before the automatic replay begins. The visuals stick: long after these astronomy programs have ended planets continue to orbit around my mind.

I have my first existential crisis at the age of seven while washing my face in a marble bathroom. I am blowing bubbles in the water that I cup to my face, absorbing the slight echo, the darkness of my cupped palms, when, suddenly, the remarks of a DVD narrator speed through my brain. The disembodied voice reminds me how space expands in infinite directions, endlessly. For the first time, I am aware of my ability to think. I understand myself as a mind, contained in a body, contained on an earth, contained in a universe, contained in … something unknown? My legs start to shake. I think I feel the forward motion of the planet barreling through the universe. We stand on a tiny dot covered by layers and layers of the unfamiliar, like a Russian doll. In

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Illustration by Jace Steiner

my mind, tremendously large and colorful planets spin together, shrinking smaller and smaller until only a starless night remains.

I pass out on the floor.

The summer night I first see stars in person, I am lying on an old orange and green checkered blanket with corners so tattered that the threads dissolve into the grass beneath it. Beside me are my younger cousin, Hanni, and a neighboring farmer’s daughter.

Both are fast asleep. Distant wisps of adult conversation blow towards us with the wind from the patio.

The barbeque has been abandoned, it seems, after the group opened yet another bottle of wine. The musky and familiar scent of cigarettes overwhelms my senses as I lie there, trying to capture the enormity of the universe in a single image.

After the guests leave, I pull the soft quilt over me.

The shutters of my grandparents’ windows close. I listen for the start of my mother’s car in front of the garage and imagine her driving back to her apartment in the dark, headlights illuminating the road ahead of her. Everyone is drunk and happy and asleep. Crickets converse in the neighboring wheat field as I lie on the dewy grass letting the wetness soak through my clothes. I feel exposed under the stars which shine over the entire world and, like bil-

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T H E S H O RT C U T lions of glimmering eyes, see everything we do. I lie with my arms outstretched, offering them all there is to see of my soul.

Years pass and, under the dull yellow night skies of New York, less and less light infiltrates my life. At sixteen, I end two difficult years of substance abuse by overdosing on my bed. In the throes of a drug-induced psychosis, I am floating in a universe similar to the animated replicas I saw as a child. Here, millions of light-years away from earth, I do not hear the 911 call or the ambulance’s arrival. Instead, everything is eerily quiet and I can reach out and touch the darkness with my warm, shaky fingers.

Months later, I am kayaking and whitewater rafting down the Colorado River with a rehabilitation program. During the day, I find myself caught atop the slimy river rocks, feeling my blood course through me like the murky water between my fingers and the current underneath my kayak, pulsing go, go, go. I fall in love, badly, with one of the instructors. At night, I lie next to a new friend, Emma, squeezing her soft, fleshy palm. One night I wake up early and see the entire Milky Way like a belt around us. Under the Colorado night sky, I think of the blind hands searching in the dark on my bathroom floor, on my bedside table, for the little round tablets of ecstasy that made my life worth living. And, suddenly, I am a child again at my grandparents’, and, suddenly, I am blowing bubbles in my palm. This is all me, I realize. In the early morning hours, for the first time, I reconcile my adult weight against the early abandonment of my mother.

That September, when I return to New York, I face a haunted city. Afforded the opportunity to move, I take it. I apply to an international school in Germany. There, I find a room with a long, cement balcony, and big, glass windows. During frequent rainy days, I hear nine different languages spoken in my dorm. When the weather is warm, my friends and I go out on my balcony after class to read or tan. Once it gets too dark, we sneak bottles of wine in the sleeves of our jackets and return to sit on the concrete, still warm from the day’s sun.

During a quiet weekend of my second semester at school, I decide to spend a night with my grandparents, who live less than an hour away. The house remains unchanged—like a tomb, dark, cold, and damp. Their voices take on an underwater quality, a fogginess that comes with the territory. My senses abduct me back into childhood. I stare warily at

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each object my grandmother sets before me. “Eat,” she says, pushing my plate closer. Hours after they have gone to bed, I remain sitting at the poorly lit kitchen table, brushing crumbs off the floral oilcloth and taking sips of my grandfather’s stale liquor.

I drive back to school that night in the dark. I am tipsy and drive over the speed limit. Once I hit the halfway mark, I pull over on the empty autobahn and find myself splayed over the concrete, suffocating. I throw up onto the black tar road and stare at my spoiled shoes. I focus on breathing in and out.

Ein und aus.

Half an hour later, when I am in sight of the campus lights, I park the car and walk across the cracked street flanked on either side by fields of growing wheat. The wheat swishes in the wind. I let my tipsy body sway with it. Once I arrive, the dorm is empty.

Everyone else has signed out for the weekend. They are backpacking through the rainy German countryside, completing a wilderness certification. As I walk past the dark and vacant rooms, I discover that one light is still on: Andi’s. I jog back to my room and then return to her door, swinging a crate of dark beer by my side. Nights in March are still cold in Germany, so I lie across her narrow bed while she ransacks her closet for warmth. We pull layers of sweatshirts over our black clothes and don her duvet like a joint cape, the final insulatory measure. Andi fishes a weathered plastic bag from under her bed, filled with sample-sized bottles of tequila. “Mother’s milk,” Andi toasts. Mother’s milk, I reply.

Out on the balcony with Andi, I use an app like a telescope against the night sky. While talking in soft voices about the things in our lives we cannot understand Andi and I are at first unable to follow each other's fingers and line of sight. Hesitantly, I try to name the figures in the constellations. Eventually, the basic planets elude me. I feel like a child once more as I reach out to touch Andi’s hair, sleek and black and impossibly straight. It threads between my fingers as I touch the back of her neck. Silence falls between us. Supported by a red beanbag, withered from snow, wind, and sun, Andi and I sip our foamy beers with numb hands. My red knuckles sting as I bring them closer to the heat of my body. Around us, the night stretches endlessly. I feel myself drop.

This is me, I want to tell her. This is my life, I want to show. This is what I’ve gone through. These are the things that I cannot forgive. But I am too deeply cradled. To break the silence now would be irrevocable.

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N

Arie Esiri

On Naija neorealism.

BY VICTOR OMOJOLA

I

f Arie Esiri, SOA ’19, were to make a Nigerian sci-fi film, there would be no flying cars. Instead, “things would just work,” he says. “There would be buses that come on time. There would be well-paved roads. There would be a healthcare system. There would be an education system.”

It is this optimistically pragmatic vision of society that enables Esiri’s first feature, Eyimofe (This Is My Desire), to flourish. The film offers a dual portrait of a mourning engineer and a financially burdened hairdresser. Depleted and drained by corrupt government and rigid gender norms, the pair envision futures beyond Lagos, in Madrid and Rome.

Duality is a recurring theme in Esiri’s personal life—he co-directed Eyimofe with his twin brother, Chuko, who wrote the film. While Arie was perfecting his craft in the dungeons of Columbia’s Dodge Hall, Chuko was doing the same a few stops down the 1 train at Tisch. Though Eyimofe is not the brothers’ first collaboration—their short films Goose (2017) and Besida (2018) premiered at the LA Film Festival and the Berlinale, respectively—the work has proven a star turn for the filmmaking duo. In a glowing New Yorker review, Nigerian-American novelist and Columbia alum Teju Cole called the film “a study in goodness,” both “artful and luminous.”

Eyimofe, which premiered at the Berlinale in 2020, took home Blackstar’s Best Narrative Feature prize in Philadelphia and five awards at the African Movie Academy Awards, including Best Director. Most recently, Eyimofe was nominated for Outstanding International Motion Picture at this year’s NAACP Image Awards and will be released on the Criterion Channel in April.

I intentionally forgo any detailed visual description of the film because I find it all quite hard to describe. Shot on stunning 16mm, Eyimofe brings out the tireless thrill and textured timidness of Lagos. I suggest seeing it for yourself.

Esiri spoke to me while at work for Blacktag, an entertainment platform based in New York that he described as enabling “alternative Black cre-

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ators to make and tell their stories without any filter or having to pander to any sort of Eurocentric agenda.” Our conversation left me thinking about some of my favorite things—things which, I have also since realized, are simply difficult to define: home, film, Africanness, neorealism, and the fifth floor of Dodge.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. …

The Blue and White: Your Instagram handle is nepahastakenlight. Most Nigerians will probably chuckle or shake their head at that. But for people who might need more context, could you explain the significance of that handle?

Arie Esiri: NEPA is the Nigerian—well, was the Nigerian electrical power authority. I believe that’s what the acronym stands for. But whenever the power or the electricity is cut off, which happens regularly in one day, usually for an extended period of time, that’s something that we used to exclaim in my childhood, growing up: “NEPA has taken light.”

And when I first had to do my email and write an email address—I don’t know how old I was, like 13 or something—for whatever reason, that's what came to me: nepahastakenlight@hotmail. com. And it’s the exact number of letters that they allowed you to use at the time. And it stuck. It’s a wonderful reminder of home and a not-so-wonderful reminder of home as well.

The other day someone sent me the Instagram handle “NEPA has brought back light.” And I was quite amused by that.

B&W: What can you say about the state of the Nigerian government right now?

AE: A bit of a letdown, really. I always say in Nigeria, we talk about politics as much as the British talk about the weather. I’m just constantly baffled.

We have infinite amounts of resources, I think, to have a fairly functional state. But the powers that be just seem to thrive off the chaos. I think there’s business in it as well. There’s lots of business to be made where things don't work. So yeah, the gov-

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N ernment is frustratingly as entrepreneurial as the people. And we just kind of need them to just do their jobs, which they don’t.

But beyond that, I think … we’re beginning to understand that it’s something that we’re going to have to try to change as citizens, which is what we were seeing with ENDSARS. I'm just hoping that the politicians will start reckoning with some of the things that they’re putting us through, that they hear us eventually. But it’s a constant plotting.

B&W: Speaking of electricity and fixing things, we can turn to the film, right? We have our protagonist, who’s an engineer. He’s working with wires.

He’s trying to fix things constantly. But Eyimofe is also a film about immigration, yet our protagonists never leave their city, let alone their country.

It’s centered around Italy and Spain, but it doesn't center Italy and Spain. So I’m curious: Why tell a story about characters who fail to fix? They fail in their mission of leaving Nigeria.

AE: Because I guess that’s life. Part of the ambition to keep everything in the country—and sometimes we refer to the film as an intramigrational story—was to keep the focus on the lives that the people are living and the circumstances that push them out. It was also important to understand—in the context of migrational films— how we are most often seeing these movies made by people that are not from the place, that are particularly interested in the trauma of this journey, which usually happens on the boats or in the detention camps on some border, whether it’s Algeria or on the other side of the Mediterranean, wherever it is. The journey, I think, is what has persisted in the landscape of migrant films. As people that are indigenous to this place, where we have a lot of people that are trying to get out, I think it was important for us to keep everything within the one place and understand that these people are not making these decisions lightly.

They’re not just waking up and saying, “Oh, you know, I fancy being in Italy tomorrow. Or Spain.”

There are a set of very particular circumstances that push everyone away, but ultimately, they have something to lose by leaving: family, identity, all those sorts of things.

That’s why it was important to keep them there, I think. But also because that’s part of the story. Many people decide not to leave in the end

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or don’t get to the point of making that perilous journey. Many are fortunate to escape that and find meaning back home and purpose in a way to make do. Many, sacrificing a lot, like Rosa does.

Unfortunately, in this story—as it is with many stories—the road that the women walk is a much, much more complicated one for various reasons.

B&W: You mentioned other stories. I’m always curious about what texts—so feel free to mention not just films, but also, mention films—filmmakers are thinking about, consciously or subconsciously, when they’re crafting their own projects.

AE: My twin brother, Chuko, wrote the film. He mentions a lot James Joyce’s The Dubliners. I think for him, that was just sort of the feel of the place.

The feel of Dublin in his work, I think, was something that he wanted to emulate filmically, as far as the way he treated Lagos. Just like the relationship to a place. I know that that book was very, very important for him. And he loves Dickens.

He’s a really, really big fan of Dickens.

But film-wise, we looked a lot at New Taiwanese cinema. So the works of Hou Hsiao-hsien and particularly Edward Yang. I think of a movie like Taipei Story, which is a very, very pivotal reference for this movie. Again, that’s a film where you are completely immersed in the city through the choice that the filmmaker is making and how he’s staging his scenes. I come out of that movie feeling like I have some understanding of this city that was completely foreign to me in every sense of the word.

I talk a lot about films that give you permission to make other films. I think Ousmane Sembène's Mandabi is that film that sort of helped me see our film. There’s a really beautiful part of the movie, where there’s an exchange of money. And the hands are moving at a slightly slower frame rate to the rest of the film. So it’s like a very mild, slow motion. And that was visual language that I used or I borrowed to speak to—or rather, to elaborate on the various bits in the film where we have people that are doing work, that are engaged in some kind of manual labor. And they’re very hard to find actually. I don't think I’ve said this in any of my interviews, but it’s an easy thing to miss. They’re things like the laundromat that Rosa and Grace visit before Rosa’s date. They prepare these coal irons. And I think that was shot in slow motion. There’s a lady that’s, I think, pounding

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N yam or stirring a big pot of what we call poundo, which is sort of like the powdered version of yam, the floured version that you meld and make into a type of fufu. That happens in slow motion. And there are a few other bits, a few other things that happen in slow motion. That was born from that film. That really, really helped me see our movie, I think, in a real way.

B&W: Absolutely. I wrote down a quote from Wole Soyinka. He said that “the Lagos of today is what preoccupies, agitates, repels, and seduces and from wildly different causes. Lagos is truly a Joseph city, a garment of many colors, textures, and stylists.” How did you capture the wide coalition but also intense colors of Lagos?

AE: Simply just by letting it exist in the frames.

A lot of the wide shots that you see in the film or the stuff that takes place in busy market streets or in some of the busier neighborhoods—a lot of that wasn't fully choreographed. My first AD will disagree with that. We definitely had people planted in different places, and we got people to do things again in many instances. But the market scenes, for example. Or, I think the scene where Rosa is walking through the market stalls and trying to sell her perfume.

B&W: Beautiful shot.

AE: Our actor Temi Ami-Williams did that for real. And we were in a balcony somewhere far off in a really long lens, relatively hidden from the crowd. And she was really trying to sell it. And I think towards the end of the thing, someone goes, “How much?!” Someone actually asked her “how much is this thing?” and she just said a price. [She] was like, “2,000.” All of that was a genuine interaction. Someone was genuinely trying to buy the perfume. Our whole thing was to turn up somewhere in Lagos and shoot the scene and not control too much of what was happening in the background. And I hope that helped give a sense of the city, of its rhythms. But then, in the scripting, we carved out quieter moments as well because they do exist in Lagos. I think it’s very easy to go to Lagos and make the place look overly energetic … handhelds, whip pans and all that kind of stuff.

We weren’t interested in portraying the scene that way because I don’t think that’s how I experienced it. So that was it really. Not controlling what we couldn’t control and controlling what we could in smaller, more intimate spaces.

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B&W: Yeah, I think you definitely see that. There’s something about the film that, like you’re saying, you feel the intensity and the dynamic nature of this space.

But you do have a certain stillness of the camera at times. I think that was really neat.

I do want to ask about your time at Columbia, specifically.

Someone mentioned to me recently—and I’m not sure how tongue-in-cheek they meant it— but they said that you get your cinematographers from NYU and your directors from Columbia.

And you obviously got an MFA in filmmaking from the School of the Arts. But let’s say for an undergraduate at Columbia who is lamenting the lack of technical instruction that they’re receiving in their classes, how do you see the film and media studies, the history, the theory playing into the student’s eventual work with film production itself?

AE: I think at Columbia the program is a little bit more academic than it is at NYU. And you just have to understand whether or not that is going to be useful to you or not.

I had come from a background working on set, so when I was getting ready to go to Columbia, I was already working as a camera trainee and in camera departments and working on the gaffers and that kind of thing. And for me, I think going to film schools was a more intellectual pursuit. For example, our film was a multi-protagonist film. And I studied multi-protagonist structures, which my brother didn't do, right? So in Christina Kallas’ script analysis class, we literally spent weeks looking at various types of multi-protagonist stories,

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N

Illustration by Rosaline Qi

MARCH 2022

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N how they are put together on a script level, the general concerns of the mode of filmmaking and in various themes, tropes, that kind of thing. And all of that really informs the way that I gave notes on Chuko’s writing, and it changed the script a good amount, I would say, just having that understanding and having studied that.

I think it’s very, very helpful as well, not to go from film undergrad straight to an MFA. I think it’s always helpful to have some kind of world experience, doing something or anything else. Recently, I’ve been talking about how I feel—feel free to cut me off if I’m rambling too much.

B&W: You’re okay.

AE: I feel like there are filmmakers that understand life. And I think that there are filmmakers that understand movies. And I think it’s better to be a filmmaker that understands something about life as opposed to just being someone that it’s just cinema that you’re doing and you’re just recreating your favorite films or versions of that.

And some people do that successfully, but I think it can be quite a burden to bear when you’re just an undergrad filmmaker and then you’re an MFA in film and it’s just film, film, film, film film.

And you're not experiencing what is happening around you or getting a moment to understand how life is rendered in real-time.

B&W: I’ve had similar conversations with film friends lately about that distinction. With certain directors, you can tell that they were trying to make a movie. And other directors, it’s like they were trying to make art, I feel. That was their primary motivation.

Also, you just mentioned Dodge, and yeah, Dodge fifth floor. It’s really a wonderful place.

I get the sense that you and your brother get along well. It’d be hard to make a feature film with someone who you didn't get along with. But I am wondering, were there moments on set when you guys did disagree on things?

AE: I mean, of course, yeah. I mean, there were moments. It’s so funny, I remember doing a short film with him and we argued over whether or not we should show a sandwich in a particular shop.

And that was a really funny one because the DP was from NYU. And then the person running sound was from Columbia. And there was this complete divide of, like, schools of thought.

There were very few times on set that we had

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disagreements. But occasionally, I would go and say something to an actor and the actor would be like, “Oh, but your brother just said something else.” And I'd be like, “He did? Ignore that.” That maybe happened a couple of times.

But for the most part, we have the same references, we love the same films. Chuko showed me the movie that made me decide to start directing.

We’re constantly sharing. So it’s mainly fun. And a lot easier to make movies together than not.

B&W: Which film did your brother show you?

AE: Bicycle Thieves by Vittorio De Sica.

B&W: That’s one of my favorite films as well.

You mentioned in past interviews the importance of Vittorio De Sica and other Italian neorealists.

But there is a quote from Bazin, who said, rhetorically, “Is not neorealism, primarily a kind of humanism, and only secondarily a style of filmmaking?” Assuming that you do agree with that, I’m wondering in what ways you hope your filmmaking embodies neorealism as a greater philosophy and ethos?

AE: Embodies neorealism, did you say?

B&W: Yeah. And in philosophy and an ethos, as opposed to just technique. You know—depth of field and long takes.

AE: I think the whole idea is just to create cinema that allows life to unfold in real time before your eyes. I was saying recently in another interview that we actually kept moving away from cinema and coming to real life with certain things.

There were certain scenes that were written … very cinematic. I keep using this scene as an example: the mourning scene when, for Mofe, the tragedy happens. And Mofe in mourning—he originally, in the script, was experiencing that on his own. And then it made sense … to have this quiet soliloquy. And it’s dark and moody. And it’s a very interior kind of moment. But it wasn’t true to life. The decision to be in on the experience of this person in this situation in this societal context was way more interesting … than the cinema version of that.

In essence, it’s relying on everything that the culture gives and trying to find some kind of truth to the scenes and … maybe we stay true to the neorealist fabric of making films, which is kind of anti-cinematic in that way. But, of course, you are conscious of the frame and how removing cinema also is full of manipulation, manipulating the im-

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N age to make this cold thing feel real and lived in. I think that’s the power of these movies. They really take you to a place and you’re lost for an hour, an hour and a half, in a specific world. Asghar Farhadi does that so well in his movies. I saw A Separation when it came out and I remember coming out of that movie and forgetting that it was all in Farsi, that I hadn’t experienced that in my own language. But I fully understood what was happening on a human level. And I think that’s the most important thing. There is a manipulation in that as well. You are still using cinema, you are still using shots, and depth of field or lack of depth of field to get that effect. And I think, yeah, the realist and the neorealist films that achieve that are the most successful.

B&W: That scene in particular, after the tragedy and the family is singing the hymns in that hallway. I watched this movie on a Friday, and then I showed it to my family the next day. It’s one of those moments that feels like you’re holding up a mirror: A moment that you know so well that you haven’t seen on screen before.

You mentioned A Separation and that same filmmaker’s new movie A Hero just came out, so I’m wondering what your favorite 2021 releases were.

AE: I haven’t seen many films this year, unfortunately. I’ve been dying to see Drive My Car, which I will be seeing on Sunday. But I have a funny feeling that that’s going to take the biscuit just from everything I’ve heard. But I’ll be seeing that with my brother, who I haven’t seen in two years since the lockdown. So we’ll be seeing each other in London, and we’ll be going to watch this movie.

So I wish you’d asked me this question after that just so I could put it against everything else.

Benedetta, I thought, was crazy. I thought it was a bonkers movie. But you know what? I saw a film that I really—that I loved. It was a movie by Panah Panahi called Hit the Road. That was it. I really enjoyed that. I really enjoyed Macbeth as well. I was oddly inspired by it. I think also just the Coens not doing something together … I think it struck in that way as well. I don't know if he’s ever made one without his brother. So I think it resonated in that way. And I think that I had some kind of special attachment to it for that reason. But also it was just great to see this spectacle, I hadn’t been in the cinema for a while and I just really enjoyed

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how it was rendered—the staging, you know? I just thought it was superbly directed. I wish I’d given you more titles and movies. That’s what this is telling me—I should have seen more movies.

B&W: I’m excited for you to see Drive My Car. I don’t want to give anything away but it’s insane.

I’m going to end with a Sembène quote.

AE: Nice.

B&W: He says, “The artist is a mirror. His work reflects and synthesizes the problems, the struggles and the hopes of his people.” So, what are some of the problems, struggles, and hopes that you think today’s generation of African filmmakers are reflecting? How are African filmmakers today being mirrors?

AE: I can’t speak for everyone. All of our situations are so different.

I try to lean on the hope part of that quote, because escaping the problems and the struggles, it’s just very hard.

But this is why other De Sica films like Miracle in Milan are so important to me as well, because I do want to lean a little bit more on fantasy and try to imagine and depict a Nigeria that I would like to see.

I think part of the struggle, again, infrastructurally, just means that making movies back home is hard. That’s what we want to try and change or undo. We just want to remove the barriers that make making films at the scale that we would love to difficult. That’s the main challenge for us right now. It’s like, how do we make it feasible to make work, to keep producing stuff, and to be ambitious in our imaginings of our country? I think that's what we’re maybe up against the most. We have to fight to be able to make the films that we want to make that show our country the way it is and the way we want it to be. I think right now that that's what we are struggling with—being allowed to speak freely through cinema. And in order to do that, we need to be able to dream, and dream big. And to be able to do that we need to have the right things in place. And a government that is working for us and systems that are working for us and allowing us to do that. And everyone benefits, right? Like, we get more stories, we get more money put into that industry. And hopefully, we also get to change the way we see ourselves and others see us, but most importantly, the way we see ourselves.

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AT T W O S W O R D S ' L E N GT H

Am I Drunk Enough?

BY CHLOË GOTTLIEB AND DANIEL SEIZER

Negative 9:30 p.m.: Calling all senior nite sluts!! U know the drill: cocktails at ours before Amity. We’ve already started drinking, have you??

I

book it out of Uris upon receiving this text. Senior Night only sort of gets fun at 11:30 p.m. when mass heads start to show. So, we have to be at the pregame no later than 10:30, which leaves me an hour and a half to fight for a shower slot, cook and eat a meal, perform my signature Sexy Eye Twitch to seduce the bodega guy into giving me a deal on White Claws, put on the same outfit as last week, submit a discussion post, and get fucking sloshed.

I’m halfway undressed by the time I reach the EC lobby. I toss my clothes at my suitemate and dive headfirst into the asbestos-riddled communal shower. I frantically rinse my body of the Remedial Frosci grime, in anticipation of the Amity Hall filth. I know I will never be clean enough. Once my entire body is slick with moisturizer, I begin the Sisyphean task of texting the pregame details to everyone I’ve ever met. emma if u dont come im gonna kms. Amity is always packed but never with anyone remotely likable, so it’s imperative that I corral the troops.

Towel wrapped around my body, I stir my tequila-soda-lime with one hand and submit a homework assignment on Courseworks with the other. I set the toaster to high to start making my world-famous Olives On White Bread. It’s the quickest way to get carbs inside your body (other than beer). I’m running behind and my suitemates are already debating which of their three Going Out Tops matches tonight’s energy. andrew make sure u bring the fckin margaritaville machine tn. The olives don’t go down easy, but down they must go.

It takes roughly the length of the new Twigs album to get a group of six out the door and to the pregame: Hair needs to be straightened to within an inch of its life and pits must be waxed raw, all while downing three Trulys. Mask, wallet, Senior Night punchcard—the checklist of essentials rests in my fracket’s trusty pockets along with my beer-

32

for-the-road. Hey michael On My Way! meet us on 113? There’s a word in German that means “The subtle shame felt when drinking from an open container in the elevator next to people on their way to Butler.” This is that.

The front door to the pregame is ajar, and thank God for that because half of us are about to piss our pants.

I say hi to my Lit Hum nemesis, my marriage pact, and the girl I’m scheming on (platonically).

I’m handed a margarita and use it as a chaser for a shot of Jäger. It’s still not enough to bear the conversation with that weird dude from my NSOP group who told me he could tell who was circumcised just from looking at their face. yeah i think it’s apartment 3C but just listen for Drake. I finally understand the Law of Mass Action from chem when the pregame clears out in 30 seconds. I’m somehow stuck waiting to pee for the fourth time.

Outside of Amity and with 30 people in tow, I cut in line with Isaac, who told me last week he would never show his face here again. The bouncer is checking vaccine cards but not IDs tonight, so I’m expecting lots of freshmen who are awaiting a package from China. I toss my jacket on a pile of about 60 others and hope for the best.

With God and poppers by my side, I slither my way to the far corner that has a bit more oxygen. I am not drunk enough, but along the way I encounter the ancient Amity Hall Scrolls of Knowledge.

Scrawled in Muji pen: A Visitor’s Guide To Surviving Senior Night* 2 drinks A schtickle of shrooms A 5 mg edible 3-6 more drinks Poppers to taste *You may black.

I compress steps two through four in a mere seven minutes. I take a swig of my gin and tonic …

THE BLUE AND WHITE

AT T W O S W O R D S ' L E N GT H

Affirmative … YOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! Fucking. Love. This.

Song. I hear it literally every week and every single time it sparks the same amount of boundless joy. There is no greater high on God’s green earth than this bar mitzvah playlist the DJ plays every Wednesday. Anyone who's anyone is here; the entire men’s heavyweight crew team, every Barnard sociology major, and some “forever young” GSers.

Someone texts me asking where I am. i am quite literally here, r u?

Every Senior Night attendee has a personal journey they must follow to Illustration by Oonagh Mockler get to the bathroom.

It normally involves three classmate run-ins, two brawls, and a minute where you have absolutely lost anyone you know. This is my Vietnam. Tonight, I’m dodging one couple mid-coitus and all the people who haven’t texted me back. The line is infinitely long, but by the time I reach the front I haven’t actually seen anyone enter or exit the stalls. When my twink and I finally reach our turn, someone throws a large female condom at my head, shouting, “Enjoy the clam shack!”

As I leave the bathroom, Straight Michael hands me a beer. I place it on my head. “No,” he says and holds it to my mouth. “Like this.” Right.

He makes it abundantly clear, borderline offensively so, that he is not buying me a drink, there’s just a $20 minimum here. And I shouldn’t get any fucking ideas. i’m by the really tall guy, do u see me. Someone spills poppers into my drink, but it’s already down the hatch. When the DJ plays “Cheerleader” by OMI, I see new colors. Rachel, im gonna live FOREVER My entire body is fully torqued and a nice gentleman is teaching me how to dougie. Someone

MARCH 2022

taps me on the shoulder. Oh my god, Isaac’s here?

Isaaaaac. I need to take him to Chef Mike’s Sub Shop. He deserves it. Our sweat mingles as our bodies become one, united by the free abandon found only in da clerb. Someone shines an iPhone flashlight into my pupils and a look of horror flashes across their face. I don’t know why. This is what senior year is all about.

The drinks are hitting, the windows are sweating with condensation, and my suitemates are starting to give me the look. The goodbye-to-all-that look. I suggest that we stay until the next bad song. It’s not my fault they are all fucking bangers! We stay another 35 minutes.

DJ Doesn’t-Have-Spotify-Premium turns on the mic and throws out some bday shoutouts. Inexplicably, he yells, “WHO SIGNED THE COLUMBIA HEALTH COMPACT?” Scattered yelps and groans arise from the crowd. When the beat drops, he screams, “WELL YOU’RE ALL BREAKING IT!” Oontz oontz oontz. So true, king. This is our cue to leave.

On the way out, I pick up my coat. It is absolutely drenched. Doesn’t matter—thanks to the magic of binge-drinking, you never notice the cold on the walk home. I fill out my green pass.

When you do it this late, it lasts forever! I open a text thread with an unknown number which I’ve already texted my full name and social security number to. I double down, lov yu girlie let’s get lunch see you next wendfesday. I dump my body in my dorm bed. Finally, I can pass out to Sex and the City. (Obviously the original, not the reboot, And Just Like That … airs on Thursdays.) Thinking I’m logging into the HBO portal, I type my username and password into a discussion post on Canvas and publish it for the whoooole class to see. I just wnt to see carrie and bigggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhl;l;l;l;l;l;l;;l;;;;;;;;;;; L;; ;;l; ; ‘’’

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MESAURE FOR MEASURE

Lily in the Gilchrist

BY NICHOLAS ALLEN

... I was sitting in the Gilchrist in the that smile from corner in the back another storm there minding myself when who walks in another place but Lily in her with bear stew leather-lace coat and her architect son... and rubber heels yes lightning followed there by blazing like Lily a band of rattlers behind the blizzard, and cowboys she striking swinging in Gilchrist’s gloom with women for a moment with wings, before abandoning teeth flashing like it again, no more the snow-stained snowmen, never lightning behind an Easter dress, she them, but what leaves her coffee was I to do and camel soup but carry on I see her leave our life behind and leave with her – drinking rain I turn to watch and eating smoke? myself watching us floorboards thrashing rumbling now leave without as the band tumbles Me in from the white, all this in the town of Paint in the heart of the desert mind you, tumbling in like the flakes outside the warp-windowed wall... suddenly my glass is hollow and nothing else to smoke so up I step on over to Ray who fills me up and slips a pack, Lily blazing me a stare from the other end and I see my reflection in her painted nails again then back in the corner I see her blazing all the other cowboys as many looks as Illustration by Maca Hepp she can sell, and I remember

34

THE BLUE AND WHITE

The City, Squared

BY CY GILMAN ACROSS 1. Seize by force 6. Old-school school teacher 10. Bitter craft beers, briefly 14. Purchases at University Hardware around move-out time 15. Bubonic bug 16. Cum in cum laude 17. Amazonian queen?

18. “Woe is me!”

19. Soothing succulent 20. Becomes chronic 22. Fundamental unit of speech 24. Fred's neckwear, in Scooby Doo 27. Follows Stella 28. Portraitist Alice of a 2021 MET retrospective 31. Quatrain scheme 33. Generally defined as 1/16 teaspoon 34. Sch. home to Cornel West 35. Political alignment of 8chan users, probably 37. It goes between tic and toe 38. Former Laker Gasol 39. State formerly part of Portuguese India 40. Obamacare, abbr.

43. Headless Sleepy Hollow inhabitant 45. “Rough Translation” broadcaster 46. Carnival Cruises and Icy Hot spokesperson Shaquille 49. End-of-sem feedback for a prof.

50. Cross words, abbreviated?

51. How many student-workers are paid 53. Coca-Cola and its peers 55. Like the author of this puzzle at 3 in the morning 57. Like many banned books 61. “Zip-___-doo-dah...”

62. Where you might get a CUID replaced 65. Senior Night host, briefly 66. Classes 67. Zuko’s uncle in Avatar, the Last Airbender

68. Organization with IQ-based admissions 69. Greens and blacks, for example 70. Conspicuous consumption?

71. Possible cause of EC fire alarm DOWN 1. Radio station home to “Looong Sooongs” 2. Cast member’s part 3. Econ major’s dream job, for short 4. Darwin’s Theory of ______ Selection 5. Putin’s political forbears, in a way 6. CU School of the Arts deg.

7. Each and every 8. Swing a scythe, say 9. Writer Gessen for the New Yorker 10. “___ That Way” 11. Add in heaps 12. Kind of weight or war 13. “Jesus H Christ!”

21. Directionless magnitude 23. Dickensian child 25. More than right

26. LA’s La Brea ___ Pits 28. Commonly severe allergen 29. It’s four after Delta 30. Cancel button 32. Whopper alternative 35. Renowned Harlem venue 36. One who plays with their hands 40. Conservative Coulter 41. CAVA workers are trained in it, abbr.

42. 45-across host Shapiro 43. It will hold your horses 44. Politician Perón 46. “Actually, hold up!”

47. Pool plaything 48. California state motto, via Archimedes 50. Structural twin of a compound 52. Writer Mishima 54. Frequent development between housemates 56. The Yukon, for one: abbr.

58. Altoids vessels 59. “You never had ____ good!”

60. What the C stands for in CYMK 63. Drink often separated into “naughty” and “nice” batches 64. “Your” of yore