The College Hill Independent — Vol. 45 Issue 7

the

Volume

45

Issue

07

11 November 2022

03 “I TURNED OVER” 09 “BRUTAL ART NOISE FREAKOUT” 12 UTILITY JUSTICE IN RHODE ISLAND

THE PARADOXICAL ISSUE

* The College Hill Independent

45 07 11.11

This Issue

Masthead* MANAGING EDITORS Corinne Leong Sacha Sloan Jane Wang

00 “BREAKING THE LOCK”

WEEK IN REVIEW Masha Breeze Nora Mathews

02 WEEK IN FORGIVENESS

ARTS Cecilia Barron Anabelle Johnston Lola Simon

Angie Zou

Masha Breeze & Nora Mathews

03 “I TURNED OVER”

EPHEMERA Chloe Chen Ayça Ülgen

05 AT LEAST, THIS I CAN KNOW

FEATURES Zachary Braner Ryan Chuang Jenna Cooley

Anabelle Johnston Sarah Kim

06 “LEFT SIDE NIGHTSTAND” Izzy Yang

07 FOOD THAT IS OUR HOME Roza Kavak

09 “BRUTAL ART NOISE FREAKOUT” Evan Donnachie & Dana Hernnstadt

11 NOT GUILTY Sierra Martin

12 RISING RATES Maru Attwod

15 THE HOLE Zach Braner

17 “FREE THE FOOD” Lana Hadžiosmanović

18 DEAR INDY Annie Stein

19 BULLETIN

From the Editors Even after Rhode Islanders elected Democrats up and down the ballot Tuesday night, questions are still swirling. Will Governor McKee be nicer to reporters now that he’s actually won a gubernatorial election? Will Seth Magaziner get a better haircut? Why does Little Compton hate weed so much?

LITERARY MadelineCanfield Tierra Sherlock METRO Jack Doughty Nélari Figueroa Torres Rose Houglet Nicholas Miller SCIENCE + TECH Justin Scheer Ella Spungen Katherine Xiong WORLD Priyanka Mahat Alissa Simon X Lucia Kan-Sperling Seoyoung Kim Maxime Pitchon DEAR INDY Annie Stein BULLETIN BOARD SofiaBarnett Kayla Morrison SENIOR EDITORS Alisa Caira Sage Jennings Anabelle Johnston Deb Marini Isaac McKenna Peder Schaefer

STAFF WRITERS Hanna Aboueid Madeleine Adriance Maru Attwood Graciela Batista Kian Braulik Mark Buckley Swetabh Changkakoti Laura David Emma Eaton Danielle Emerson Mariana Fajnzylber Keelin Gaughan Sarah Goldman Jonathan Green FaithGriqths Eric Guo Charlotte Haq Anushka Kataruka Roza Kavak Nicole Konecke Cameron Leo Kara McAndrew Morgan McCordick Sarah McGrath Charlie Medeiros Alex Purdy Callie Rabinovitz Kolya Shields Alex Valenti Julia Vaz Kathy/Siqi Wang Justin Woo COPY CHIEF Addie Allen COPY EDITORS / FACT-CHECKERS Ava Bradley Qiaoying Chen Dun Jian Chin Klara Davidson-Schmich Eleanor Dushin Mack Ford Zoey Grant Aidan Harbison Doren Hsiao-Wecksler Rahmla Jones Jasmine Li Rebecca Martin-Welp Everest Maya-Tudor Eleanor Peters Angelina Rios-Galindo Grace Samaha Shravya Sompalli Jean Wanlass SOCIAL MEDIA TEAM Klara Davidson-Schmich Britney De Leon Ayça Ülgen

COVER COORDINATOR Soeun Bae DESIGN EDITORS Anna Brinkhuis Sam Stewart DESIGNERS Brianna Cheng Ri Choi Addie Clark Amy/Youjin Lim Ash Ma Jaesun Myung Enya Pan Tanya Qu JerreyTao Floria Tsui Anna Wang ILLUSTRATION EDITORS Sage Jennings Jo Ouyang ILLUSTRATORS Sylvie Bartusek Noah Bassman Ashley Castañeda Claire Chasse Julia Cheng Nicholas Edwards Lillyanne Fisher Sophie Foulkes Haimeng Ge Elisa Kim Joshua Koolik Lucy Lebowitz Sarosh Nadeem Hannah Park Sophia Patti Izzy Roth-Dishy Livia Weiner Iris Wright Jane Zhou Kelly Zhou DEVELOPMENT COORDINATORS Anabelle Johnston Bilal Memon DEVELOPMENT TEAM Rini Singhi Jean Wanlass MVP Doren Hsiao-Wecksler — The College Hill Independent is printed

by TCI in Seekonk, MA

*Our Beloved Staff

Mission Statement

The College Hill Independent is a Providence-based publication written, illustrated, designed, and edited by students from Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Our paper is distributed throughout the East Side, Downtown, and online. The Indy also functions as an open, leftist, consciousness-raising workshop for writers and Inallseriousness,we’rethrilledtooqciallynamethe*coolestduo*artists, of and from this collaborative space we publish 20 pages of politically-engaged the 2022 Rhode Island midterms: the Sanchez brothers, Providence City and thoughtful content once a week. We want to create work that is generative for and Councilman-elect Miguel Sanchez and State House Representative-elect accountable to the Providence community—a commitment that needs consistent and Enrique Sanchez (who sat down for an interview with the Indy in Issue 5)! persistent attention.

While the Indy is predominantly financed by Brown, we independently fundraise to And, lastly, a question for Brown and RISD students: Rhode Island did support a stipend program to compensate staff who need financial support, which well on its midterms—what about you? -SS the University refuses to provide. Beyond making both the spaces we occupy and the creation process more accessible, we must also work to make our writing legible and relevant to our readers.

The Indy strives to disrupt dominant narratives of power. We reject content that perpetuates homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, misogyny, ableism and/or classism. We aim to produce work that is abolitionist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist, and we want to generate spaces for radical thought, care, and futures.

Though these lists are not exhaustive, we challenge each other to be intentional and selfcritical within and beyond the workshop setting, and to find beauty and sustenance in creating and working together.

01

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

WEEK IN REVIEW

Week in Forgiveness DEMOCRACY ALERT!!! We don’t usually like to get political here at Week in Review, but this week we saw a news story that we couldn’t resist: President America Jo Biben gave a gazillion dollars to people with student loans to forgive them for going to college! When I heard about this, I was like— blorpscuse me??? But then I thought, while we’re forgiving people, why not cut us some slack for some of the light mistakes we’ve made over the years?

So without further ado, here are our top ten things we think Presbyterian Bison should forgive us for in a legally binding way!

1. Being bad fundamentally! Oops, did we do that? Yes we did, if by ‘that’ you mean just having an essentially evil soul. Sorry not sorry; God just made us that way.

2. Wearing a ugly shirt :/ On Tuesday I wore a ugly shirt to my seminar (How to Be Rich in a Cute Way) and no one said anything but I really felt the vibe of the room shift when I walked in. Mea culpa Mr. Biden!

3. Starting a rumor…if you heard that sophomore and absolute beast Ugly Beth ate her twin in the womb, it might be because we made it up. Sorry Beth, but you wouldn’t let me borrow your glasses for my Halloweekend costume (Sexy Beth—like if Beth was sexy), so I had to take my revenge. In all fairness, you do kind of have a twin-eating smile. Love you girlie!

4. While we’re talking about the Beth of it all, I should probably also apologize for screaming “I saw Ugly Beth with the Devil!” in the street and trying to get everyone to try her for witchcraft. It just honestly didn’t make sense that she got chosen as the Brown University campus rep for Newports over me, because I’m so naturally coquettish and happy-go-lucky. Beth is a Camel Crush girl at best, so literally the only way she could have gotten that job is through a Faustian bargain.

do it. When I sang “Oh, mirror in the sky / What is love? / Can the child within my heart rise above?” my voice just didn’t warble with homespun yet incisive longing. Please forgive me as I listen and learn.

6. Single-handedly causing the Adderall shortage. I thought they were vitamins so I ate them all. Egad!

7. Double-handedly stealing! I caused a large collection of family heirlooms to go missing via me taking them with both my hands.

8. Tricking my neighbor’s son into thinking I came up with saying “wawaweewa,” which is famously the hilarious celebrity Borat’s favorite phrase. I took advantage of the goopiness of my neighbor’s son’s prefrontal cortex and I’m sorry! He thinks all cats are girls and all dogs are boys.

9. Muddying the sanctity of 3 out of the 7 holy sacraments :( 10. I cyberbullied the MacArthur genius grant committee, and I stand by that because they ultimately deserve it. I’m asking for forgiveness becauseIforgottomakefunofthosenerdsforhavingflatbutts from sitting in an ergonomic desk chair all day!

ILLUSTRATION IZZY ROTH-DISHY

5. Starting a Fleetwood Mac cover band without truly capturing their DESIGN TANYA QU whimsyandsenseofplay.Thisisreallydiqculttoadmit,because TEXT MASHA BREEZE I tried so hard to convey Stevie Nicks’ boyish charm, but I couldn’t

& NORA MATHEWS

VOLUME 45 ISSUE 07

02

“I TURNED

OVER”

TEXT ANABELLE JOHNSTON

DESIGN ANNA BRINKHUIS

ILLUSTRATION SYLVIE BARTUSEK

FEATS

The pain-pleasure paradox in masochistic chick-lit

03

To describe a zombie novel as a catalog of idleness may sound callous, but perhaps that is the point. The world is ending in Ling Ma’s Severance and her protagonist feels nothing; rather than contend with the logistics of survival, we bear witness as the world spins empty with her at its absent center. In the moments between mass death, Candace Chen drones on about her lackluster photography blog, her tedious corpotrilogy, Strong suggests that while agency and over,” Candace recounts). The same story is rate job, her malcontent boyfriend and the men individualism signpost the white male canon, iterated over itself, arriving eternally at the same who orbit their relationship. She charts her indifwomen have written outside and beyond such thesis: to hurt may be better than to feel nothing ference to sex (“Fucking was just seeing that arcs for centuries. (Outside of white literary at all. to its end, a white yacht docking”), to others’ discourse,IholdSeiShrnagon’s The Pillow Book surering“It ( wasasoundofpain,butresigned; as an example of artful meandering, in which +++ flattenedintomonotony…Suchasoundis the subject does not move towards Something mesmerizing. It comes into your body”), to the but through.) Though I detest the category, I see I search for rationale. It may be impossible to apocalypse (“Nothing happened. I waited and value in troubling the masculine plot structure, disentanglethisdisarectedgure fi fromneolib waited. I still wait”). centered around climax—or more crudely, male eral labor logics, which render the worker an Presented with her apathy, I turn inward, ejaculation.However,theflatteningoftheplot unfeeling cog in an ever-churning machine. in part from frustration, in part out of envy. arc by the likes of Ling Ma does not trouble the I turn to Mark Fisher’s language of capitalist While I feel burdened by a responsibility to systems which leave her protagonist powerless. realism, seeking answers in “the widespread act—a form of subjecthood I grimace and bear— Candace’s inattention borders on masochism, sense that not only is capitalism the only viable Candaceflattensherselfintoalandscapeupon such that her pursuit of feeling is displaced onto political and economic system, but also that it is which feeling may be projected. “I didn’t want others who may act on, against, or through her now impossible even to imagine a coherent alteranything. I didn’t need anything,” she proclaims as they please. Thus, the modern departure does nativetoit.Candace ” pourshoursintoheroqce matter-of-factly, though not without pride. Here, not lie in form but rather function: the disafjob, sleepwalking through meetings about the the expansiveness of anything looms against want fectedliteraryheroineofpopularction fi today latest Gemstone Bible edition. When presented and need. Abnegation becomes rejection and weaponizes her nothingness against herself. with the opportunity to leave New York, she I read a steeliness in this negation, such that Writer and critic Namwali Serpell writes refuses, not because she is anchored in the city nothingness is worn as an armor against desire. of this phenomenon, “The millennial wants but because she cannot conceive of anywhere With such statements, Candace shrinks into the to be wanted or to be abjected. Either way, the else.Herindirerencemaythenbereadasa perfect woman, evading the tension inherent focus is on someone else’s desires and actions, natural response to the larger pulverizing forces to being controlled by merely acquiescing. Such and the appeal seems to lie in inciting a feeling of the attention economy, a consequence of indirerenceembodiesaformoffemininitythat in them: you make them want to fuck you or the numbing process that accompanies labor equates desirability with cuteness—as articulated hurt you, while you escape the vulnerability of without purpose. She is swept into a spiral of by cultural and literary theorist Sianne Ngai—as wanting, which, after all, puts you in the posiinaction and response, not through enthusiastic “an aestheticization of powerlessness (what we tion of potentially being rejected, disappointed, submission,butaninabilitytogure fi lifeoutside love because it submits to us).” She explicates, judged, or taken advantage of.” Candace Chen or beyond. Resignation is then the inevitable outlining the desire to consume what is cute, the is protected by her pursuit of pain: through it conclusion of the oppressive logic of late capiwash of violence that the adorable other inspires she is valorized, she becomes invulnerable. In talism that has already subsumed us all. alongside expected feelings of tenderness and slim novels of desire and despair, the millenStillInd fi thisreadingdissatisfying,inpart care.Cuteness,shewrites,isacommodifica nial author may play out these fantasies before because I want/need to believe in the possibility tion of the relationship between ownership and an audience, articulating a need to be choked, ofescapingsuchsurocation,inpartbecausethis domination. I return to Candace, to myself, to hit, spit on, degraded, and most fundamentally, readingimaginesaflatracialplayingeld fi paved the willing submission that protects her from fucked.Suchwantmayrst fi readastransgres by gendered disenfranchisement. The experithe danger of intersubjectivity. Rather than loss, sive, though as with all repetition, it dulls with ence of womanhood is fundamentally racialized, shefacesself-inflictedpowerlessness, I trading time. Masochistic anti-heroines dominate new and the dismissive wave of late-capitalist logic can’t for I won’t. release charts: Raven Leilani’s Edie, Miranda imagines a neutral (white) landscape of being, Such methods of resistance have long been Popkey’s unnamed protagonist, Rachel Cusk’s upon which gendered inaction or violence may a hallmark of women’s fiction. Author and critic Rachel Cusk, Ottessa Moshfegh’s anti-hero, play out. The belabored worker is the belabored Lynn Steger Strong writes that stories in this Halle Butler’s Millie, the extended Sally Rooney worker is the belabored worker, so it is imaggenre often “are built in fragments, structured universe… (Before them, Sylvia Plath’s Esther ined. Her—be it Marianne Sheridan’s or Annie around failure, absences, passivity and lacks.

Greenwood, Joan Didion’s Maria Wyeth, Edith Ernaux’s—sexual deviancy, within this logic, They defy the novelistic demands for a certain Warton’s Lily Bart…) They are disenchanted is merely a rebellion against the holdovers of type of resolution; they land in spaces of confuwith their jobs, their relationships, their lives.

Victorian bourgeois discretion, or a part of sion and of questions, refuse to give clear lines They wander listlessly through unnamed cities, the Catholic imperative to transform desire betweencauseanderect.When ” addressing fall asleep at their desks, obey orders to the point into discourse through confession, or simply a the reception to Rachel Cusk’s sparse Outline of dissolution (“Turn over, he said. I turned

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

FEATS

continuous encroachment of public moderation the face of critic James Wood’s hysterical realism, into metaphor, means of achievement and upon the domestic sphere. But the map nearly her picture looming alongside his critique of escape. Candace’s passivity provides a blueprint aligns;Icanplotstolensexscenesamidstoqce White Teeth and proliferated across the internet, for white women looking to practice such obstipolitics and tightly wound social spheres. As or at least literary circles online. His argument, nance, a mode of being that one may dip into in such, the tension between sexuality and work naturally, rests on the idea that she shirks reality reaction to the drum of modern life. The East then serves as an example of the implicit control while insisting upon realism, that her writing is Asian feminine object is more than mere sex industrialization holds over women engaged in too overwrought with details and externality, symbol, she is a way of being in a world indifan undervalued and uninspiring form of labor. beforedeliveringanal fi indictmentofherworkferent to those without power. She escapes the I concede some degree of truth but see the as “all caricature.” Her characters too gratuitous trappings of asking for it,orersameansofacqui newliteraryinfluxofdisarectionasmorethan in their desires, her relationships too tightly escing while maintaining selfhood by asserting asideerectofsocioeconomicmalaise.Despite wound. When Irie, a young Black woman who that this pain is sensation devoid of meaning, neoliberal insistence otherwise, labor does not culminates a long line of strong-willed women accruing feeling while calcifying herself against render us all equal within the global production with milquetoast husbands, has sex with Magid vulnerability. In the wake of sex-positive femisystem.IreadCandace’sindirerencetopain, and his twin bother Millat in quick succession nism, sex-negative feminism, sex-agnostic sexual or otherwise, as a symptom of someresulting ( inanunidentifiablepregnancy,atleast feminism, radical feminism, liberal feminism, thingmore,oratleastsomethingdirerent. for the time being), Wood dismisses her actions Marxist feminism, political lesbianism and Confronted with the contours of my own otheras impractical and impossible, rather than political celibacy, postmodernist feminism (etc.), ness, and self-imposed expectations of apathy nuanced and deeply felt. As an active agent in her it makes sense one would become disillusioned toward such inarticulable non-belonging, I read own want, Irie is interpreted as un-human, and with self-advocacy, frustrated with the inherent racial melancholia in Candace’s resignation. Ling Smith is labeled as a storyteller blinded by her contradictions of existing within a system that Ma’s work arrives in a wave of Asian American own excess. Simply, Wood claims Smith writes denies want. So much simpler to disavow desire, literature—distinct from the politically charged too much. to smooth the creases of selfhood, to imagine works of Frank Chin and John Okada which Furthermore, Serpell writes of the asympshrinking along the horizon until you become appeared in tandem with a larger activist and totic pursuit of “Black pussy” throughout mere landscape, mere ornament. liberationmovement—thatgures fi raceashistory a and in popular culture: the biologic and subconscious othering, dispossession without anthropological dissection of anatomy in pursuit +++ displacement, estrangement without explicit of reproductive purpose, the pathologization violence. The contemporary Asian American of pleasure, the mechanics of shame meant to I grab a post-it and draw a circle, leaving the ends protagonist is haunted by not-belonging but subdueBlackfemininedesire.Sheorers“WAP” unclosed. At the start I mark pain, where I raise cannot reconcile herself through cultural reinteasantithesistosuchguring, fi thoughstill - artic my pen I write pleasure. I note numbness along gration,asthereisnounifiedhometoreturnto.ulated as pursuit of pain: “I wanna gag, I wanna the opposite pole and hand this to you, receiving Instead, she confronts a funhouse of projections, choke / I want you to touch that little dangly a blank stare in return. It is easy to imagine the self-Orientalizes, and denies herself kinship thing that swing in the back of my throat.” opposite of joy to be suffering, I try to explain. But out of a form of self-hatred that is articulated Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B invoke the it’s not. It’s nothing. Together we pathologize: ad nauseam by the likes of Cathy Park Hong body in their expression of masochistic want, whensureringfromamigrainethepatientseeks and Jay Caspian Kang. As Elaine Hsieh Chou claiming an agency rooted in inciting desire and anesthetic, not elation. We speak in sermons: writes in Disorientation, “She’d be split apart, mastering the pleasure/pain paradox. Serpell perhaps heaven and hell share borders, bounded nevercertainifthesubmissiveanddocile continues gure fi to situate Meg and Cardi’s claims together against the vast nothingness beyond. I inthemirrorwasareflectionofwhoshereally (“Swipe your nose like a credit card; I don’t cook, tell you about the times I’ve hurt, or have wanted was,ortheghostlyerectofsomeonetellingherI don’t clean / But let me tell you, I got this ring; to be hurt, or have mistaken pain for pleasure her entire life: this is who you are, this is all you Pay my tuition just to kiss me on this wet ass due to their sheer proximity on the nebulous can ever be.” Candace’s passivity then extends pussy”) within a larger economic system: “This map of feeling. I tell you that letting it happen to beyond personal preference, as she negotiates is hoeing in the era of neoliberal capitalism, me somehow protects me from it all. the stereotypes of the silent East Asian woman wheretheboundlessramificationofchoices— I don’t tell you that I am afraid to want while contending with the role of racial metaconsumerist, artistic, sexual—forms a thin veil because doing so leaves me vulnerable. I don’t phor. Apathy, in this reading, may be a form of over the material fact: we’re all hustling, we’re tell you how many times I have ignored my self-preservation in a society which repeatedly all selling ourselves.” Here she draws our attenimpulses, disavowed my compulsions, evaded reads one’s body as ornamental. Rather than tion to the articulation of excess and embodithe black hole of my own desire which always attempt invulnerability, characters like Candace ment tangled in the language of capitalism and sucks, always swallows. Instead, I dress up in may resign themselves to the dangers, and pains, commodity. This is not to dismiss such want; to Moshfegh’s words, “I did crave attention, but of objecthood. Sometimes there is power in not bearordedthesamesubjectivefreedomsasthe I refused to humiliate myself by asking for it,” ghting fi back. white male subject and overcome the fungibility and drape them around me, a satin cocoon. I implicitinmerefleshisanoble,worthwhile,andam caught in the vortex of my own fear of being +++ altogether understandable means of asserting too much, the swirling gyres which spin for agency. If one is to hurt, is it not better to want Asian women reduced to porcelain, embroidery, Both hypersexualized and de-sexed, the East it?Seekingpainprotectsagainsttheflatness silk. of So much easier to be acted upon than act, Asian feminine body appears in the public objecthood, the vast nothingness of unfeeling to be hurt than to hurt you. I read as remedy, imagination as an object of fetish relegated to that lurks on the edges of unconsciousness. sifting through the plotless landscape of unrethe realm of decoration. As theorist Anne Anlin Similarly, yet on the other end of the alizedwantandself-inflictedpowerlessness.

Cheng writes: imposed racial spectrum, Andrea Long Chu Instinctively, I recoil as Candace hesitates, waits, Our models for understanding racialized writes of the proliferation of (mixed) Asian charturns over—not out of judgment but because we genderhavebeenpredominantlyinfluencedacters whose want is not unruly so much as it is teeter along the same line in the sand. Too afraid by a particular view of bodies of African unformed. Within this constructed binary, the to leave, she submits to the crushing weight origins that has led us to think in a certain narrator as ornament—with incidental wants of staying, in this city, in this job, in this life. I way about raced female bodies, when there that are thus not central to the construction of don’t tell you I want to run, need to run, until my has been in fact something of a bifurcation the plot—embodies a contemporary malaise lungs quiver on the outer boundaries of feeling. within the racial imaginary between bare that is inherently racialized, as she responds Until my knees give out, until my ankles shatter, fleshandartificialornament. to powerlessness by merely submitting to it. until, on the brink of collapse, I arrive at the Just as Black femininity has been erased by a While Candace’s parents are both Chinese, ecstasy of overwhelming sensation, white light cultural logic that insists upon the sub-humanthe metaphor holds. “Opting out is not a real awash with the possibility, bursting from within. nessof“transitionalmereflesh,yellow ” femi choice,” Candace thinks when breaking up with You notice I bruise easily. ninity is made non-human through alignment her all-too-idealistic boyfriend. She submits, Most others revel in the opportunity to leave with objects and decoration. Both readings “there is nothing to do but wait. And Wait. And a mark. impress a kind of legibility on the racialized wait.” And wait she does. Alexandra Chang’s body that denies interiority, and establishes a JingJing waits, Elaine Hsieh Chou’s Ingrid waits, scale for femininity which leverages race as two Jessamine Chan’s Frida waits, Claire Kodha’s ANABELLE JOHNSTON B’23 wants someopposing weights, Black women representing too Lydia waits (even as she devours others). In thing. Needs something. much and Asian women not enough. As a result, waiting she makes fetish of silence and projboth are rendered vulnerable to violence, sexual ects,orinternalizes,indirerencetowardthe and otherwise, that is inextricable from objectiviolence that follows. Her racial dispossession cation, fi forwithoutinteriority,onecannotfeel onlyexemplifiesthegeneralsenseofalienation pain. Roland Barthes may suggest “where there that pervades her inner monologue, as she is a wound, there is a subject,” but refusal to read submits to something larger than herself. To be deeper allows the violent actor to view these pinned down, spit on, gagged, choked, penetraces as mere scratches on a surface. trated, dominated, slapped, hurt, is to belong, The novel, of course, complicates such even momentarily, to someone else. While her notionsinoreringaccesstoaninteriority—or rationalemaydirerfromCardiandMeg,theend imagined interiority—so frequently denied to result is the same: submission to pain. thesegures. fi IrecallwhenZadieSmithbecame I watch as both modes of arrival are made

VOLUME 45 ISSUE 07

04

TEXT SARAH KIM

DESIGN ANNA BRINKHUIS

ILLUSTRATION SYLVIE BARTUSEK

FEATS

AT LEAST, THIS I CAN KN W

05

On remembering and re-remembering I used to go to my parents’ room every night when I was a kid after my sister and I got our own rooms. I told myself I was a big girl and I could handle having my own room, but truthfully, I was scared. My eyes would open at what felt like the exact middle of the night when there was not a soul awake and the world was completely still. And a scared me believed the only people in the world that could possibly comfort me were my parents. I’d crawl out of bed, open the door, and walk down to my parents’ room at the end of the hallway, one handle-push away from seeing Mom curled on her side and Dad with his mouth wide open and snoring, one handle-push away fromenteringasanctuary.Asrelieffloods youwhenyoureyesfindthefamiliarfaceinan overwhelming crowd, so did the protection I felt when mom’s warm sleeping back brushed against mine.

Sometimes I would stand above my dad and whisper out to him, hoping he would let out a little grunt of acknowledgement, and that was enough of an invitation to climb over him and snuggle between the warm shoulders of him and my mom. But most times, all I needed was to see their chests steadily rise and fall as they breathed sat deeply, and then I could enter from the foot of the bed. Hands and knees would crawl toward in darkthe pillows, and I’d burrow myself between ness, but as vacuum when I them. The world was asleep so I should be too. long as the house went to bed so I think it started when I began having on the slanted street of as to not disrupt nightmares. Dad used to come in and tuck me Tara Drive was awake, the world me as I tried to fall asleep. I am realizing I was into bed, lean down and kiss my forehead, and was still awake. I could slip seamlessly into the four years old quietly tiptoeing over to Dad’s thenturnormylampasheleft,holdingthe cracks of the night, and for this period of my life, side or cautiously avoiding limbs hidden under door handle down until it closed quietly behind the world was never dark. I imagine this is what thecoversasIfinessedmywaybetweenthetwo him. I think about how scared I was of the dark blissful ignorance refers to or what they mean sleeping bodies. But anytime you ask a fourand I wonder if everybody felt the same fear about the joys of childhood that tarnish over year-old to do something discreetly, they usually that I did as a kid. I hated if the closet door was time as they are exposed to the crude reality of do the exact opposite even when they are trying even slightly ajar with a sliver of blackness that adulthood. Growing pains, they say. to be silent. I probably stepped on every squeaky seemed it could swallow whole anything that got Perhaps that is why I can fall asleep during floorboard.AsonelegclimbedoverDad,it’s near, of the unknown taunting me from across the Big Apple Circus or underneath the bed likely my other leg hit him; contrary to the the room. I hated the idea that there was space with a blue raspberry lollipop hanging out from eleganceandtactIconfidentlyimaginedhaving, underneath my bed where something could hide. the corner of my mouth as voices multiply and I probably instead tripped and stepped on legs Someone could be chuckling to themselves that concern grows more urgent in search of me. I andarmsallthewaythrough,finallycollapsing they could spring out at any time and I would be don’t mind dad’s snoring and I don’t mind when into my perfect nesting place. I am questioning left defenseless, isolated, perched atop my bed in Mai-Thanh and Tommy still have energy left in if it was the middle of the crisp and quiet night the center of the room. the night to do everything pretending they are when I would sneak into mom and dad’s room or I only slept on my left side. This way, I was theotherperson(whichreallyjustendsup if it in was fitsreally 20 minutes after they went to bed facing my door and could see the warm hallway of uncontrollable laughter because Tommy has and I would jostle them awake just as they were light stream in from the crack beneath, and that an infectious glorious laugh capable of making dozingor. was enough to make me feel safe. Eventually I your belly ache with laughter too). There is a Memories may distort and change, but what would learn to sleep on my right side to face the certain tenderness and peace to these moments if it’s about holding onto the things we know? three windows that looked into our backyard. where it feels as though this will continue It’s possible I stopped having nightmares after While my eyes grew heavy watching the treeforever. So when I close my eyes, it is as if I am the second week of sleeping in my own room and tops sway under the deep blue roof of sky and choosing the moment forever. This is it, I’ll say. didn’t need to wriggle my way into my parents’ the canopy of stars, the sounds of evening still This is enough. bed continually after. But I still did, and they surrounded the room. A tower of plates and Someone told me recently that your brain always let me. That much I know. While all I bowls in the sink would fall against each other as alters a memory every time you recall it. knew was the love and safety that I felt nestled one was picked up to be scrubbed; the vacuum Whenever you remember something, a detail between my parents, maybe they were pushed would whirr against the living room carpet at a ortwowillbeslightlydirerentbecausewe tomay the edges of the bed and never got good sleep steadypace;Dadwouldfindhisrhythmsnapping be remembering a time we recalled the event, when I muscled my way in. But they always let shut tupperware lids. and not the actual event itself. They say it’s like me stay, and I always woke up with them by my Maybe these are sounds of chaos, of unbethe telephone game and that our memories side. This much I know, and that can be enough. lievable clatter and are the exact opposite setting are capable of changing and this is normal and happens over time. you wish to have when you are sleeping. But SARAH KIM B’24 can sleep anywhere.

I am thinking about my old house that this taught me to sleep on my right side. I could sits on the slanted street of Tara Drive. I am turn over with my back against my room’s point wondering if Dad only vacuumed that one time of entry and sleep, soundly and peacefully like a after we had guests over and actually didn’t butterflystillwrappedinitscocoon.Theroom

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Izzy Yang R’23 “Left Side Nightstand” 24x12x20 inches, casted concrete, waxed steel, Swarovski crystals, freshwater pearls

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Food That Is Our Home For all children of immigrants who cried during their lunchtime at school because the food in their lunchboxes did not look, smell, or taste like the rest

Content warning: mentions of war, slavery, violence, and racism

Mexican American are highlighted by historians as they were the ones who mediated the borderlands between Mexican family traditions, U.S. citizenship, and consumer culture.

Even though these restaurateurs initially chose to call the food that they serve ‘Mexican,’ many Mexicans based in Mexico refused to acknowledge their authenticity. The tension between Mexican Americans and Mexicans reveal how the same food canbeimagineddirerently.OtheringofMexican American cuisine by Mexicans based in Mexico shows how such imaginations are not only sovereign and limited but also can force hierarchies between distinct ways of belonging.

Growing up in southeastern Turkey as a Kurd, my belonging to the state and the land that is present-day Turkey was constantly put into question. Being a member of the “Going for an Indian” is a widely used expression in biggest ethnic minority group Britain to describe going out to eat a curry, showin the world without a state casing the prominent place curry holds in British meant I was displaced. But even cultural, social, and economic life. In 2001, the late during the most challenging times, foreign secretary of Britain, Robin Cook, famously I was able to feel a sense of belongnational yet local identities of the immigrants. stated, “Chicken tikka masala is now a true Briting because I knew the best place to eat Second-generation Lebanese Mexicans started ish national dish, not only because it is the most baklava in Diyarbakir, my town. That place to cook pork in the same vertical fashion and popular, but because it is a perfect illustration of the was my home, and I belonged there. serve it inside corn tortillas along with a slice of wayBritainabsorbsandadaptsexternalinfluen I left my town at the age of 14 in pursuit of pineapple—a fruit indigenous to South AmerSuchculturaltraqcdidnotthreatenBritish better educational opportunities. Even after sevica—creating tacos al pastor. The story of how al identity, according to Cook, but rather proved enyears,youcanfindmesobbingattheairport tacos al pastor came to be a common menu item “multiculturalism as a positive force for [Britain’s] rightbeforemyflightisabouttotakeor,asI on today’s taquerías reveals how food is a cultureconomyandsociety.”However,thesimplification eat my last piece of baklava. The strong sensoal, social, and economic product that exists and of how curry came to be “a true British national rial associations evoked by food and practices evolves in relation to the happenings around dish” overlooks not only the struggles but also the around it are essential for all, but especially them. This makes immigrants integral agents choices of immigrants. for immigrant communities to create a sense in constructing a sense of belonging and comThe foodways of curry illustrate how gastroof home, even in environments that are hostile munities in new lands where their transnational nomictastesarefarfromfixedconcepts.Crosscul toward them. While food is an obvious point of and local identities unfold. Mexico is not the tural contacts and exchanges lead culinary borrowconnection between humans, it can also cause only place to which Middle Eastern immigrants ings, or in the case of curry, culinary colonization, separation by reinforcing who is ‘us’ and who is brought shawarma. The shawarma industry to form the basis of cuisines around the world. As ‘them.’ I hope to trace the stories of immigrants in Europe is estimated to be worth about 3.5 Njeri Githeri states, “assimilated food becomes through the foods that transcend the borders billion euros, despite challenges like the rightnaturalized and normalized in the course of time.” that divide us from them. Tacos, curry, gumbo, wing politician Robert Ménard proclaiming his While I think deconstructing the supposed ‘authenand soup joumou not only reveal the painful wish to see shawarma sellers ‘disappear’ from ticity’ of national cuisine has the potential to disstruggles, becomings, and belongings of immithe historic center of the city where he was mantle essentialist and static approaches to identity, grants in new lands but also their hope. These elected mayor. in curry, a food that captures the story of those who foods are only a few of the threads that weave The Mexican American taco became a immigrated to Britain increasingly after the liberatogether the collective human story; threads common element of the distinct regional tion of India and Pakistan from colonial rule, we see that speak of recipes from all cultures, carried cuisine after the Mexican-American War in the opposite. in memories, on folded and stained pieces of the Southwestern U.S. It grew out of colonial As curry houses became ensconced within Britpaper, in pockets and bags. They are like identity borderlands, eventually getting hyphenated ain’s culinary landscape, they took on an instantly papers, meaningful only to the beholders, fully with names such as ‘Tex-Mex,’ and ‘Cal-Mex.’ recognizable stereotypical image, from the charreal only once prepared, cooked, and eaten.

This new cuisine combined the novel cooking acteristic food served to interior decorations and techniques of immigrants with North American howstarpresentedthemselves.Eventhoughthe ingredientsandMexicansensibilities,reflecting curry houses were labeled ‘Indian,’ they were owned the emerging Mexican American identity. andstaredmainlybyBangladeshisandPakistani Having already begun to demand civil rights Moreover,thefoodtheyserveddireredfromwhati Immigrantscarrycomplexandlife-aqrming inthefirstdecadesofthe20thcentury, - Mex consumed in the Indian subcontinent and by most foodways—a term that connects food to culican Americans used their disposable income people of South Asian origin in Britain. Prepared by tural, social, and economic phenomena—with to invest in Mexican cuisine in the new lands. taking shortcuts and omitting ingredients, the curthem. These foodways are their memories and Formal restaurants replaced street vendors ries of curry houses ended up similar in style to one their dreams, creating an umbilical link between astheplacestogoforMexicanfood,orering another, lacking subtleties of original recipes. where one used to call home, where one is gathering and organizing spaces for Mexican Despite these shortcomings, according to Uma now in transit, and where one hopes to make Americans while acting as an upstanding public Narayan, an Indian feminist scholar, eating curry a home. Tacos are a great example of such a face to outsiders. In the meantime, Glen Bell, for white Britons “still meant eating India, or at foodway. While the process of culinary mixing the American entrepreneur who founded Taco least the ‘tasty’ India of spices and muslins, silk led by the immigrants can be traced back to the Bell, made his fortune catering to white Amerand shawls,” which was necessary to “provoke an combination of Spanish pork and Indigenous icans who were curious about Mexican cuisine imperial interest in incorporating this Jewel into the corn during colonial rule in Mexico, I focus on but did not want to enter Mexican American British Crown.” It is hard for me to feel comfortable the recent history of tacos. neighborhoods. when I hear the expression “going for an Indian,” Internationalmigration,specificallyfromThe experience of Mexican immigrants in since it conjures up images that hark back to the the Middle East to Mexico after the collapse of the United States is an example of the notion so-called glory days of the empire for some. Colothe Ottoman Empire, contributed to the story of “food citizenship,” meaning that when the nial thought process also lurks in Cook’s statement, of tacos. Immigrants from Lebanon introduced state’sdefinitionofcitizenshiphasfailed which its erases the agencies of South Asian immishawarma, lamb cooked on a vertical rotisserie, inhabitants, food can become an alternative grants by positioning them as passive in the process (yes, like in Al-Shami on Thayer Street) to Mexway to perform community care, responsibility, of turning chicken tikka masala into “a true British icansociety.Shawarma,servedonwheatflour and belonging, as explained by Njeri Githire, a national dish.” Yet, the standardized forms that tortillas, became known as tacos Árabes which professor of African American & African StudSouthAsianrestaurantsdecidedtoembraceaq translates to ‘Arab tacos.’ By the second-genies at University of Minnesota, in her book the agency of immigrant populations. These restaueration of Lebanese Mexicans, this technique Empire Bites Back. The contributions of Mexican rants portray the strategic choices immigrants made was made more local, a testament to the transimmigrant women to the process of becoming to build a customer base among a white population

TEXT ROZA KAVAK

DESIGN ENYA PAN

ILLUSTRATION ASHLEY CASTANEDA

CURRY

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an immigrant to the United States. During my firstvisittoAleppoSweets—probablybecause of how I smiled when I saw baklava even before I had ordered—the cashier asked me where I was from. When I responded saying Turkey, he asked whether I was Kurdish, only for me to findthathewasaKurdfromSyria.Thefamiliar ity he must have felt toward me was not necessarily due to my appearance; baklava itself gave us access to a shared community. synonymouswithhomeforHaitians.Itssignifi The intimate decisions we make about what cance goes back to Haiti winning independence we eat and the social and geopolitical boundthat was outright hostile toward their place in Briton January 1, 1804, ending the French colonial ary-work we carry out (or that is carried out ish society. rule.SandyDorsainvil,afirst-generationHaitian in our name) are strongly tied to each other.

While curry may have been incorporated into American who works on community developConsidering that states are the main perpeBritish cuisine as Cook claimed, “the desire to ment and cultural programming for the Haitian trators of creating an outgroup to establish an assimilate and possess what is external to the self diaspora, shares how during French colonial ingroup, and therefore, enforcing the borders did not extend to actual people of Indian origin,” rule, enslavers always had soup on Sundays and between us and them, I start to wonder more asserts Narayan. For many white Britons, food is enslaved Haitians were not allowed to consume about the role that they play in this discussion. the non-threatening, acceptable face of multiculturit.

Claims that states make toward ownership of alism.Whilemulticulturalfoodisarordedaplace food go against their dynamic natures as culturWhen Haiti gained its independence, bein the imagined British community, immigrants are al commodities—like the stories of tacos, curry, comingthefirstBlackrepublic,oneofthefirst not. Similarly, in Turkey, while the Kurdish borek, gumbo, and soup joumou reveal—and overlook things that now-freed people said was “Let us afilledpiemadeofthinflakydough,isoneofthe have the soup,” in a symbolic act of taking over the contributions of immigrants to how these favorite foods of the nation, Kurdish people are foods came to be. Even against structural chalwhat had been forbidden to them. “There is a denigrated as ‘mountain Turks,’ whose language is lenges posed by states, immigrants exact agency legend that every single pot on the island had reduced to a ‘dialect of Turkish.’ and power through the choices they make about soup on that day,” Dorsainvil says, creating Multiculturalism as either a culinary celebration food. While I acknowledge the importance of the foundation of what is now known as soup or a white consumer practice not only constitutes a reclamation of cultural commodities, especially joumou. While the soup’s main ingredient limited form of tolerance and prevents opportunities for groups whose existences has been contested, remained winter squash, which grows abunfor structural change but also denies, masks, and arI am worried about these attempts falling into dantly in Haiti and which enslaved Africans ticulates racism. For instance, in 2007, during Celebthe same trap of othering and erasure. were forced to cultivate, the soup that the slave rity Big Brother, a popular British ‘reality’ television As you prepare, cook, or eat foods that masters used to have should not be confused program, Indian Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty was capture such stories of immigration, you will with soup joumou. Soup joumou is distinctively attacked by other contestants including Jade Goody reconcile with the weight of pain caused by heartier and thicker than what a French version following a dispute about supposedly undercooked leaving the place you once called home. You will of the soup might look like. Contrary to the chicken. Many of the slurs directed against Shetty feel the hope immigrants hold on to and bring soup tradition of France, soup joumou includes revolved around food. Goody referred to Shetty as wherever they go. You will smile with signs of whole vegetables instead of puree, and is sea“Shilpa Poppadom”—poppadom is a common curry celebrating culture and overcoming struggle. soned with all kinds of spices, including the house appetizer—refusing to even learn Shetty’s You will follow the maps that reveal where peoScotch bonnet, a chili pepper that is ubiquitous surname let alone try to pronounce it. Later, when ple have been and how we have gotten where in West Africa and the Caribbean. asked why she called Shetty “Shilpa Poppadum,” we are now. You will also think, can all the food Gumbo and soup joumou are the result of Goody claimed that she wanted to use an Indian a social history and geography of foodways that that surrounds me hold a story of migration within? name and the only word she could think of was the allows us to see traces of multifarious struggles Recognize the power food holds as a political name of an Indian dish, adding “I love chicken curand adaptations, oppressions and liberations, tool and use it for good, to overcome borders, ry.” The story of curry in British society illustrates customs and cultures in something as mundane not to deepen them. the dynamic between intolerance and multicultural as the food we eat. The presence of everyday With respect to all the immigrants who shared celebration that many immigrants are left to naviobjects, sensory impressions, and familiar their stories through food in the interest of building gate, complicating the boundaries between diasporic routines is crucial to the feeling of home for all connections despite the unbearable oppressions they and historically dominant groups. of us. Considering how enslaved Africans were faced as the others. forced to migrate to the U.S. and Haiti, their everyday objects, sensory impressions, and ROZA KAVAK B’24 promises that pistachio familiar routines that once provided security to baklava will never let you down. their lives were left behind against their will.

Therefore, preparing, cooking, and eating food wasalmostboundtoacquireamoresignificant “Thereshallbeanoqcialstatecuisine.The role in restoring a sense of intimacy, safety and oqcialstatecuisineshallbegumbo.Itsuse normality. Gumbo and soup joumou carry the ontheoqcialdocumentsofthestateandwith legacy of enslaved African women conductthe insignia of the state is hereby authorized,” ing make-do cabin cooking in their quarters declared the Louisiana State Legislature in while also cooking in plantation kitchens 2004. Gumbo is derived from ki ngombo, which for the enslavers. Women cooking gumbo meansokraindirerentlanguagesanddialects and soup joumou is a prime example of across West Africa, okra’s place of origin and oppressed people practicing their agenthe homeland of many enslaved individuals who cy and countering the dominance of the were forced to migrate to Louisiana. Honoring exclusive colonial archives that obscured its name, the earliest recorded recipe for the dish marginalizedhistoriesintheoqcial narra includes okra as the main ingredient. tives of conquest.

While okra is attributed to thickening gum bo and giving the stew its body, such contribu+++ tion is often contested. Some gumbos achieve theirthickness,texture,andcolorfromaflour Baklava is still a part of my and fat mixture, roux, a technique used by the story as French as early as the 14th century. Roux-based gumbo is the reason why people argue gumbo to be derived from the French dish, bouillabaisse.

Another theory suggests that the usage of dried sassafras powder, called filé, as the thickening agent in some gumbo points to its relation with the Indigenous Peoples of Southeastern Woodlands,specifically,Choctaws,whosewordfor sassafras is kombo,andthemintroducingfilé powder to the French. Despite the claims of FrenchinfluenceinthedevelopmentofCreole cuisine due to colonial history, I agree with Lolis Eric Elie, a New Orleanian journalist and food writer, that attempts to minimize the African roots of gumbo arise from the racist assumption that “Africans either had nothing to contribute or were unable to contribute, based on the conditions of servitude.”

Attempts to minimize African contributions also overcrowd the discourse around soup joumou, a traditional food of Haiti. Soup joumou is

GUMBO & SOUP JOUMOU

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ARTS ILLUSTRATION JOSHUA KOOLIK DESIGN ADDIE CLARK TEXT EVAN DONNACHIE & DANA HERNNSTADT 09

The rise and fall of Providence noise rock collective Fort Thunder On the outskirts of Providence’s Olneyville, conforming to one genre, setlists were typically Eagle Square Plaza boasts a Price Rite, a Verimore piecemeal. A single concert would often zon store, a Sovereign Bank, and an H&R Block range from metal to anarcho-punk to electronic among other prosaic chain businesses. The music to indie rock to just “straight-up noise,” plaza is a mundane manifestation of modern Greenlee said. development,aflatparkinglotsurroundinga“At that time, there seemed to be a real plain brick building, a stock photo of a comopen spirit amongst anyone who was a musician mercialism-saturated, practicality-saturated in town, so when you would go to see shows, humdrum shopping center. But the facade of the itwouldn’tbesogenre-specific,”hesaid.“It unextraordinary veils what once existed in Eagle waslessabout,like,‘oh,thatgenredoesn’tfit Square: from 1995 to 2001, the now-developed into this bill.’ I think it made it an experimental strip mall was a pre-Civil War era warehouse kind of time, because people were free to move which housed the members of Fort Thunder, a beyond genre boundaries. But I do think it’s apgraduatRISD student-founded noise rock collective and propriate to think of noise rock as being a genre ing. Like much of the punk underground venue for Providence musicians that was key to what was happening in that scene in the ’90s and today, the collective was and artists. area, in the warehouse area of Olneyville.” predominantly white and male; of Fort Thun“It had a very ‘we’ll make our own rules’ The space itself was once a textile factory, der’s 25 total residents, just four were women, kind of atmosphere,” said Shawn Greenlee, a relegated by time to an empty warehouse. The none of whom were founding members.

RISD professor and alumnus who lived at Fort neighborhood, which was full of other historical As Fort Thunder started to gain traction, Thunder for several years after graduating, in structures now rendered almost derelict, bemore and more young artists started moving an interview with the College Hill Independent. came a hub for scrappy artists seeking space for into the warehouse, so many that several moved “There would be bands rehearsing at any hour music, visual art, and collaboration. The presacross the street to another warehouse, which of the day. If you wanted to sleep, you had to ence of these warehouses in then-underpopulatthey called “556” after its address—556 Atwells figureoutwhatwasgonnabeyouracoustic ed Olneyville was key to the rise of the experAvenue. Greenlee moved to 556 in 1997 after cocoon.” imental music scene in Providence. Musicians six months of living in Fort Thunder. could be loud without disturbing neighbors or “I think they’re probably making some +++ worrying about noise complaints. kind of lofts there now with some other name, “I don’t know that the Providence noise but a lot of folks moved in over there,” he said.

“Noise” and “music” were almost synonymous scene would have developed in such a strong “There became these ‘satellite warehouses’ at Fort Thunder, but the concept of noise as way without the availability of massively huge around Fort Thunder, which were being popumusic began much earlier with the rise of punk mill buildings that were tailor-made for putting lated by people that stayed in Providence after rock in the 1960s. While folk musicians on the on insanely loud shows,” said Phil Eil, former going to Brown or RISD, or people that were West Coast were writing melancholic, self-reeditor of the arts publication the Providence from the area.” flectivesongs,rockmusiciansontheEastCoast Phoenix, in a 2015 interview with Warped Reality People would show up to Fort Thunder channeled their angst, anger, and boredom, magazine. at random wanting to move in, and would be and hurled it into the world through volume, Rent in Fort Thunder was cheap, but some relegated to living in the remaining corners of through discord, through shrieking instrumembers still had to work day jobs. Greenlee already occupied bedrooms. “There was a guy ments. The Velvet Underground’s John Cale worked at an industrial screen printing factory, named Leek or Lake or something, some dude said he “couldn’t give a shit about folk music whilemanyothermusiciansfoundjobsatcoree who just came in that nobody knew, and he just … Every song was a fucking question.” Sixties shops in the area. In a 2001 interview with Nest sat down in a chair; he sat there for a week or punk rock artists weren’t asking questions, they magazine, artist and Fort Thunder resident something and then he just left,” Chippendale were making statements. Loud ones. “A scream Jim Drain recounted how the founders briefed recounted in a 2016 interview with The Comics is always just that—a noise and not music,” each new resident: “There are no rules except Journal. “Things like that; some weird dude wrote psychiatrist Carl Jung in 1932, only to be for one … you can make as much noise as you sleeping over there.” disproven several decades later by the likes of want, any time of the day, and you can’t object Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, and the Beatles. to that.” Drain remembered the rule fondly but +++ In the ’80s, this style of music began to acknowledged that it “was hard when you had a surface as its own genre; “noise rock” was an job you had to get to at 8 a.m.”

Eventually, Fort Thunder started to garner experimental, avant-garde subgenre of the punk national recognition in the indie music world. rock scene. Dissonant, atonal, and, above all, People would come from New York or Boston loud, noise rock hijacks the traditional rock ‘n’ for shows that were held in the warehouse’s roll structure to create noise that exists solely performance space, an open area toward the for the purpose of distortion. back of the building.

The Velvet Underground’s 1968 album “Fort Thunder, I think, gave a name to ProvWhite Light/White Heat was one of the earliest idence, where people would want to come and instances of musicians embedding raw feedback play there,” Greenlee said. In fact, after several into their studio tracks; the band is often cited yearsofreachingouttobandsinordertofill as pioneers of noise music. Noise rock gained their performance space, bands started reaching real traction about a decade later, when bands out to Fort Thunder. like Sonic Youth and Big Black started experi“We were getting phone calls from all sorts menting more explicitly with chaos, noise, and of shitty bands,” Chippendale said. “We made a wailing electric guitars. In the ’90s, Nirvana rule that bands only play once, which was basiincorporated aspects of noise rock into their cally just to tell people so they wouldn’t call us music, and Sonic Youth, already prominent in anymore, but we’d let bands we liked play more noise rock circles, garnered mainstream poputhan once.” larity. Noise rock became its own entity as well Though a focal point of Providence’s as something ingrained in wider genres, folded +++ experimental music scene, its presence was into the broader concept of rock music. contentious among established Providence clubs Genreitselfwasmorefluidinthe’90s, Fort Thunder originally housed founders Mat and venues. By city standards, Fort Thunder said Greenlee, wearing a black sweater, black Brinkman, Brian Chippendale, Brian Gibson, wasn’t one of those established spaces; it wasn’t jeans, magenta-and-orange checkered socks, and Hisham Bharoocha. All were RISD stulicensed to hold performances, and, in the era and bright blue sneakers. Rather than a show dents, though Chippendale dropped out before of warehouse raves, law enforcement regarding

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drug use was a consideration. for the silkscreens, so if you were, like, taking warehouse living after that,” he said), but Fort “There was probably more concern from the a shower in there, it was all this old ink and Thunder persisted until 2001. After its shutpolice for cracking down on raves because of stur,”Greenleesaid.“Itdidnothaveaclean down,ratherthanmakingthespaceinto - arord the drug culture associated with that,” Greenfeel to it.” able housing, developers created a strip mall lee said, but a noise rock show at Fort Thunder Fort Thunder’s chaotic visual aesthetic was with chain businesses. “wasn’t a space where people just came to do a perhaps most apparent in its walls. Covered “This is a common story. These warehouse certain party drug. People were there to see the fromfloortoceilinginhomemadeprints, - post spaces fall into disuse, they become cheap music.” And the music was loud. ers, zines, mirrors, and found trash, the warespaces, artists start to move in,” Greenlee said.

“The sounds of Fort Thunder weren’t house’s walls were just as bold and abrasive as “Then, real estate developers start to watch delicate,” Eil said in his 2015 interview. “They its sound. where the artists are going, where they’ve popwere sweating, churning, ribcage-rattling nois“Everything was immediately critically biulated,andthenfigureoutthatthat’sthenext es. Aggressive and direct from the gut.” And zarre,” said comic artist Evan Sult after touring zone they can acquire and renovate.” nothing epitomizes this more than Lightning the space with his band in 1997. “There were After continued threats of eviction, the Bolt, the innovative noise rock band from Fort bike parts everywhere, in amazing colors … artists in Fort Thunder and other warehouses Thunder founders Chippendale, Gibson, and Therewerescreenprints,posters,cast-ors started from attending city council meetings to speak Bharoocha. “Marrying thrash-metal dynamics to projects…Therewerepilesofstur,anditwas against the idea of renovating. Though artists the anarchic irregularity of Japanoise [a genre a lot like a squat, but it was like a dream squat: and community members protested the develof post-industrial noise music in Japan], they all the records were good, everyone here was opment of the area, members of Fort Thunder were certainly one of the loudest bands I’d ever actively productive, all the posters were screenwere evicted in 2001 to make room for the strip heard up until that point. Their brutal art-noise printed and all the drawings were intriguing.” mall. freakoutelectrifiedthewholeroom.”

“When you’re in this environment, you start Lightning Bolt, still active today, is known to think like the walls,” Drain said in his 2001 +++ for their so-called “guerilla gigs,” where they Nest interview. The members of Fort Thunder playonthefloorinsteadofthestageasthe were thinking like the walls, drumming like the Fort Thunder was far from perfect; it was, ulticrowd gathers around them. They often improwalls, screaming like the walls, living like the mately, a space dominated by white men—but vise a large portion of their shows, taking cues walls. The fort even occasionally held costumed this wasn’t true of the artist collective scene from each other and letting the noise of the wrestling matches in which members would in Providence as a whole. A year before Fort moment take over the song. lock themselves in a cage and tackle each other Thunder was demolished, former 556 residents “It’s really exciting to not know what’s dressed in feathers, spandex, paper mache, and Xander Marro and Pippi Zornoza founded the going on,” Gibson said in a 2005 interview with more.

Dirt Palace collective nearby. With a focus on The Wire, “to hear something happening but intersectionality, the palace, to this day, serves not getting all the information, and knowing +++ as an incubator for hundreds of feminist artists. thatyoumighthavetofightyourwaytogetit Through Dirt Palace, Marro and Zornoza have … you’re getting all these people’s reactions, Fort Thunder, as well as 556 and other wareexpanded the legacy of artistic experimentation you’re seeing that people are going crazy in the houses in the area, weren’t meant as living in Providence. front.” spaces, but inattentive landlords and low rent “The Dirt Palace has helped to put ProvBharoocha left Lightning Bolt in 1996, remeant that artists could use these warehouses idence on the map in terms of big picture ducingthenoiserockoutfit’srangeofsound as to both cheap apartments and music studios. art world awareness of the culture in Rhode just Chippendale on bass and Gibson on set— It also meant that the buildings were often in Island,” Marro and but that didn’t take away from the band’s Zornoza said in a 2019 determination to make interview with feminist noise. magazine Got a Girl Crush, “Lightning Bolt has “and brought a feminist showed me the power twist to the story of of an extremely limited Providence’s freewheelpalette. And persistence ing underground that … ” Gibson stated in a often gets told solely 2007 interview with the through the lore of blog LotsOfNoise. The exclusively male projects duo has never stopped like ... Fort Thunder.” rediscovering and redeDirt Palace’s finingnoiseasart,with erortsdemonstratea Chippendale pushing new commitment the melodic and rhythtoward inclusivity mic boundaries of his in Providence’s art bass guitar and Gibson scene, showing that furiously pounding experimentation away on the drums for and collaboration in over 25 years. underground art spaces didn’t die with Fort +++ Thunder’s collapse.

Fort Thunder began as +++ a place for musicians to make noise, and though About eight months it expanded and incorpoafter their eviction, Chippendale and rated other art forms, it varying states of disrepair. Fort Thunder’s lock Brinkman visited the construction site that had never skewed from its initial purpose. wasbrokenforseveralyears;56’sfirealarm been Fort Thunder. Developers had “knocked a “Mat and I started this place because we would sound, unprompted, at any hour. big hole in the back,” Chippendale said. wanted to have shows and let things happen,” Itwasthisfirealarmthatledtothe - eventu “It was kind of amazing; it’s a weird sentiChippendale said in a 2020 Curbed article. “A al eviction of 556’s residents and its shutdown mental thing, just the two of us standing there,” place where we could be loud.” in19.Eachtimethealarmwentorinthe he said in his interview with The Comics Journal.

“We’ve blown a lot of speakers,” Brinkman middleofthenight,theartistsin56hadto“It filewas funny because they only knocked down said in the same article, “and a lot of shit gets out of the building and wait in the parking lot of our half of the building. We had one side; and broken.” Brinkman needed a place to defend the Dunkin’ Donuts across the street while the the other side was still standing there. It was himself from “the quietness of American bullfiredepartmentcheckedthebuilding.UPSand just like they took us out. Which is kind of funshit,” where he could retaliate against banal life FedEx drivers would be situated in the parking ny and awesome. Everywhere you looked, there with noise. lot for the night as well, and occasional parking were little pieces of pattern papers and little shit Noise wasn’t all that Fort Thunder did, lot baseball games broke out during the evacjust starting to blow in the air. It was almost though. The building was full of idiosyncrasies. uations. But the constant presence of people like they set us loose.”

Upon entering was a “big bicycle fabrication in 556, especially during the night, raised city zone,” Greenlee said, where one Fort Thunder oqcials’concerns.

EVAN DONNACHIE B’24 is wondering what membertoreapartbikesandthenre-configured Greenlee and the other artists in 556 started Leek or Lake is up to these days. them in various ways. An espresso machine alreceivinglettersfromthefiredepartmentabout lowedforaroomwithamakeshift‘coreeshop, inspecting ’ all of the units. Shortly after, they DANA HERNNSTADT B’24 used to take piano which members called Cafe Intelligentsia. There heard a knock on their door and tried to hide lessons in a silent Lutheran church. was also a room with silkscreen poster-maktheirbedsinanerorttomakethewarehouse ing materials, a kind of print shop where Fort look like a studio rather than an apartment.

Thunder members designed posters to advertise They were ultimately unsuccessful, and their shows. members of 556 were forced to leave. Greenlee “The bathroom doubled as a wash-out area moved into an apartment (“I was done with

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*Please be advised of potentially sensitive content*

NOT GUILTY LIT

Breath in. Breath out. Feel the iron on my wrists, sharp where it cuts into bone—Mom says I need to gain weight, mijo-mijo-mijo, what have I done to deserve the soft press of sincerity on my skin, be careful or bunions will sprout from the soil beneath your toes—if this is all I am maybe this is all I will ever be. Forever seventeen, sweat beaded in the corners of my eyes, acne growing like dandelions in my pores. I am no longer a child yet somehow forgiven, whosoever holds this hammer if they be worthy shall possess the power of Thor but I am not good and I am not worthy so perhaps I am fated to die. I’m going to die and I don’t want to die I don’t want that please Mama don’t let me die.

Breath in. Breath out. My wrists are bare.

All courtrooms look the same: gray hair balding at the temples, wrinkles thick with pity and derision. Not everyone is old but someday they will be. They get to be. You never think about words until they become you, but I might, but one day I will, but I’m thinking of maybe—we don’t get but and we don’t get maybe. We get will and won’t and the endless, gaping hole of never in between. Or at least I thought we did.

I think I’d prefer it that way, thrown like cattle into an unforgiving tide (I never learned how to swim but someone could still teach me,

DESIGN AMY LIM

ILLUSTRATION HAIMENG GE

SIERRA MARTIN B’24 is learning about forensic psychology.

TEXT SIERRA MARTIN 11

alarms set for seven and not a minute later you hear, blankets spread wide onto the sand—pushed me into a wave once and laughed when I came up spitting, ver hijo no da miedo no tienes miedo solo piensas que lo eres, maybe he was right because I haven’t felt scared since not even when I should have, when will I ever feel scared if I wasn’t scared then what have I done what have I done) but we don’t always get what we want. Maybe we never do.

Last month I read a book for school, something with yellowed pages and a cracked spine.

I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.

Maybe God found me in the space between my prayers and my pleading—please Lord don’t let me live, close my eyes to the weight of the things that I have done—and opened His ears to listen, glanced over my trembling frame and realized that He’d forgotten something. You’re looking the wrong way, kiddo. Relayed my message to the people who deserved to hear it—but people isn’t the right word, is it, what do we call those who speak in truths we cannot name—and left them alone to cast their judgment.

Last week my mother wrapped her arms around my shoulders, pressing her thumbs in the divot between bone and sinew, said in a sun-warm whisper: it’s all over now. I opened my mouth to respond but my lips couldn’t form the words,mouthtoostirforthesoft,woolenfeel of a yes. I said instead—it shouldn’t be.

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RISING RATES The fight for utility justice in Rhode Island

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DESIGN RI CHOI

n August, the hottest month on record in Rhode Island, 75-year-old Providence resident Brenda Taylor endured what she described to the College Hill Independent as “the very very hottest of times.” Taylor, who Taylor in predominantly low-income, non-white livesaloneinasecond-floorapartmentinareas South like South Providence are also exposed Providence, said she could rest each evening to the worst of the pollution created by energy only by running the air conditioning in her providers. “We need to address who’s being “We’re paying in so many ways,” Monica bedroom for a few hours before going to sleep. harmed right now by this system,” Viveiros Huertas, an energetic social worker and enviSouth Providence has much less tree cover than said. “And we need to make sure utilities are ronmental justice activist in Providence, told the whiter, wealthier neighborhoods, making it even arordabletohaveatrulyjusttransition.

Indy.” “We have all the downfalls of having toxic hotter through the summer’s two heatwaves.

At a public hearing in September, activists’ polluters in our neighborhood, yet we have Though she was cautious with her enerdemands for Rhode Island Energy—the state’s thehighestratesofshut-orsbecausewecan’t gy use, by the end of the season, Taylor found main electric and gas provider—to bear the arordtheutilities.”Huertasisavocalresiden herself several hundred dollars behind in utility costs of rising prices were dismissed by the Pubof Providence’s Washington Park neighborhood, payments. Eyeing her most recent bill, Taylor lic Utilities Commission (PUC), a government where she lives with her husband, a carpenter recalls thinking, “My eyes are getting big, did body that oversees private utility companies. at a local union, and their four children. Their I use this much electricity?” She says she puts The commission decided instead to draw on family’s home is just a short walk away from a halfherfixedmonthlyincometowardrent. government funding and money secured by cluster of gray factories and energy facilities in Withinflationandotherexpenses,thesedays Rhode Island’s attorney general as relief for the the Port of Providence, which merge into the she seldom has enough to pay her utilities in increases—allowing Rhode Island Energy to sky behind them on an overcast day. But their full. Now, with utility company Rhode Island keep earning as usual. sharp chemical smell is harder to miss.

Energy increasing electricity prices by the highGovernor McKee and the PUC assert that These industries’ emissions have created a est annual percentage seen in decades, Taylor these payments will alleviate the impact of mix of toxic air pollution that has sent Huerwonders how she’ll make it through the winter. the rate increase for the state’s lowest-income tas’ children and neighbors to the hospital for households, which they say will actually see a asthma. Washington Park has one of the highest +++ reduction in utility payments this winter. Howasthma rates in the state, and Rhode Island has ever, activists highlighted how these measures the fourth highest asthma rate in the country, Since October, Rhode Island’s electricity prices work in the interest of the utility company. They according to the CDC. In a pattern of environhave gone up by a historic 47 percent and gas say the measures are deeply inadequate in the mental racism seen across the United States, by 15 percent. Camilo Viveiros, director of the face of a broken system, especially for the workcommunities like Huertas’ and Taylor’s South George Wiley Center, a grassroots organizing ing-class Rhode Islanders who won’t qualify Providence, which are largely home to people of groupthatfightsforutilityjusticeinRhode for aid. Activists emphasized that the funding color, receive the worst of the pollution.

Island, told the Indy that it is “unacceptable to erectivelysubsidizestheutilitycompany—their Most of Rhode Island’s gas supplies are proincreaseratesthatwillcausemoreshutors, profits ” andpollutionlevelsstayhigh,while cessed in the Port of Providence, where facilities leaving many without heat and electricity and Rhode Islanders carry the cost. have grown rapidly in recent years. As the direcdirectly harming working-class Rhode Islanders. tor of the local environmental justice group, the And even as they pay higher rates, people like +++ People’s Port Authority, Huertas has been at the

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forefrontofthefighttoopposetheexpanded because of a dependence on foreign, and espemake it seem like the company doesn’t make a natural gas infrastructure in her neighborhood. cially Russian, natural gas and oil.” According profitatall.Butitdoes.RhodeIslandEnergyis She points to a paradox: The energy developers to the World Energy Outlook 2022, regions with allowedtomakeaprofitbyinvestingin - infra “constantly [say], ‘we need to build these things “higher shares of renewables were correlated structure (things like transformers, wires, and because they heat your homes.’” But now that with lower electricity prices.” Fossil fuel prices poles) and earning a return on this investment. utility bills are so expensive, this same comare volatile. Years of delays in a decisive transiThe PUC publicly reports this data as a Return munity struggles to pay the bills to warm their tion to renewable energy are at the core of this onEquity.(Thisistheprofitacompanymakes, homes. crisis. divided by the value of the shares in a compaThe reasons for the energy crisis are glony.) In 2018, Rhode Island’s utility company +++ balized—but that doesn’t mean that local earned a 4.8 percent Return on Equity. In 2021, decision-makers shouldn’t be held accountable. they made just over 10 percent. “If they have The cost of natural gas and other fossil fuels Viveiros argued that utility rates are “things shareholders, they are obligated to make a profhas spiked around the world over the last year that humans create, the economy is a manit,” explained Viveiros. due to pandemic supply chain disruptions, made, mostly white-man-made thing… and In September, activists called on Rhode COVID-19 economic recovery measures, and a we can push back against it.” The structure of Island Energy to absorb the increased costs of continued reliance on fossil fuels—all of which private utility companies means that the costs fossilfuelsbyreducingitsprofitmargin.Monica were exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. Ted of electricity are passed directly onto ordinary Huertas expressed frustration that although Kresse, communications manager for Rhode residents. “This is the historical result of moconsumers will face higher costs, Rhode Island Island Energy, told the Indy, “The New England nopoly power and corporate power asserting Energy likely won’t have a reduction in their regionhasbeensignificantlyimpactedbythe itself,” said Roberts. profitsnextyear.Astheutilityregulator,the ongoingconflictinUkraine.”Heexplainedthat Rhode Island Energy is a regulated monopPublic Utilities Commission has the jurisdiction especially in the winter, New England relies oly. This means that it is not legally allowed to to require Rhode Island Energy to reduce its on the same supplies of natural gas imports as makeaprofitontheactualelectricityand profi gas tmargin.ToddBianco,ChiefEconomicand Europe. it distributes. Kresse said, “We work to secure Policy Analyst at the PUC, told the Indy that the Timmons Roberts, professor of environmenthe lowest possible price and pass it along to commission did not consider reducing the limit tal studies at Brown University, told the Indy thecustomerwithoutmark-uporprofit.”Utility on a company’s return on equity because no that “we’re facing this crisis of energy costs … policy is somewhat confusing, and this can legal arguments were made in favor of reducing

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people in the community, grassroots organizations, people at the forefront, making those decisions. We’ve laid out what we need,” said Huertas.Theclearestcallfromthosefighting for utility justice in Rhode Island is a Percentage Income Payment Plan, or PIPP. This program only inadequate but also serve as subsidies for would cap the proportion of a household’s the fossil fuel industry, protecting the utility income that can be spent on utilities between company from its decision to rely on natural 4 and 6 percent. This is crucial to stopping gas. “We have too long subsidized the industry, “low-income folks [from] paying disproportionnow is the time to allow the fossil cabal to exit ate rates,” Viveiros explained. it. He said “it cannot rule on that issue at will. gracefully,” said Central Falls resident Lorraine Other states such as Colorado, Illinois, The return on equity was not within the scope Savard in her testimony. Huertas echoed this, Maine, New Hampshire, and New Jersey have of [September’s rate increase] proceeding.” saying that this relief funding was “welfare for allimplementedaPIPPtosignificantsuccess, During September’s hearings, Viveiros the companies” and that it should be going oftenreducingtherateofutility-shutors.Ac emphasized that activists are tired of being distoward “environmental justice rather than [to] cording to Bianco, the Public Utilities Commismissed by technocratic and legal arguments that ... paying the polluters.” sion “would certainly consider a PIPP if it was mask the lack of political will to create an enerThe second large sum will go toward the filedwithus,”butlegislativeactionisneededt gy system that works for low-income people. He lowest-income ratepayers, but according to create one. Under the current laws, the commistold the commission that “if you feel like you Viveiros, only “a very narrow group of people” sion cannot order or approve a PIPP unless the don’t have the legal, administrative authority to will be protected by this. Qualifying people will utility company puts one forward, he added. do the right thing, you should resign.” receive an approximately $50 credit on their The George Wiley Center has been advocatDecember and January electric bills, through ing for a PIPP since the 1990s. Again and again, +++ moneysecuredbytheOqceofEnergyRetheirerortstohaveonepassedintheRhode sources. Finally, a monthly $6 customer charge Island House and Senate have been thwartDuring the hearing, more than two dozen peoon residential and small commercial bills has ed. Viveiros said legislators in the state aren’t ple described the negative impact the hike will also been lifted. According to a statement from committed to fair utility systems: “What we’re haveonincreasingutilityshut-ors;people’s Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee, these meareally lacking is the political will to grapple with health, livelihoods, and dignity; rates of homesures will alleviate the impact on Rhode Island’s how we actually create more of our own energy lessness; and the environment. most vulnerable. in ways that would be equitable.” In light of the Huertas told the Indy, “We need to reduce Ted Kresse of Rhode Island Energy said to rate hikes, Viveiros is imploring legislators to the rates and have the companies suck up some the Indy, “Fortunately, for our most vulnerable call an emergency session to implement a PIPP. of these prices.” But ultimately, the Public electric customers, there should be almost no Rather than using state funding to cushion Utilities Commission ruled that “Rhode Island increase compared to last winter’s rate.” But utility companies from the price of fossil fuels Energy had complied with the procurement many people who need relief won’t qualify while making community members pay, Huertas plan … and was therefore legally entitled to for it. “The majority of working-class people, says Rhode Island needs to be putting money cost recovery,” according to Bianco. Instead of struggling people, that are not low, low income, toward closing down polluting industries, like listening to calls to reject the increase or require are not going to be protected,” Viveiros said. those in Washington Park, and equitably reducRhode Island Energy to take on some of the Working-class families who are in debt will also ing carbon emissions. Huertas has emphasized costs, the commissioners worked out a number be hit especially hard. “Let’s be clear: if [the the necessity for community-driven renewable of sources of funding to provide customers with PUC] would have rejected the rate increase, energy and climate adaptation programs like immediate relief for this winter. they would have been protecting many, many weatherizing homes so they use less gas and Thelargestsumofmoneyisaone-orpay more consumers,” he continued. installing heat pumps and solar panels. mentthatwilltake$64orallRhodeIslanders’ Huertas’ family won’t qualify for inStill, a PIPP or infrastructure changes will electricity bills, likely in November. This money come-based relief. “There are some people that not be enough. “We’re not going to get out of comes from settlement credits that Rhode Isare right at the cusp like myself and do not qualthis by having any one magic solution. We’re land Attorney General Peter Neronha won from ifyforanytypeofincentives.We’resureringas going to have to have social movements that well… we don’t qualify because we’re not at the the sale of former utility Narragansett Electric keep accountability, honesty, transparency quote-unquote, poverty level,” she emphasized. from National Grid to PPL Corporation. But as across the whole realm of our public utilities, Even with her income as a social worker and her energy prices remain high in coming winters, a we have to have cooperative energy programs, husband’s salary as a carpenter, she has never single month’s relief will do too little, argued and we have to get utilities out of the market,” beenabletoarordtopayautilitybillinfull.

Viveiros. He also pointed out that this sum was said Viveiros. “There’s no way we’re going to Now, looking toward the colder months, she is owed to Rhode Islanders even without the rate get out of this without some bold, local, cresaying, “Let me put 50 bucks on this electricity increase. Utility justice activists like Viveiros ative action by looking at the ways we can get sotheydon’tcutitorandletmedo50dollars’ believe this money secured in the settlement non-fossil energy here in Rhode Island.” worth of food shopping—just stretching, nickshould have been spent on providing relief elling, and diming.” during the transition to renewables, rather than MARU ATTWOOD B’24 won’t be gaslighted. to keep intact a rate increase driven by fossil +++ fuel prices.

Rhode Island residents gave testimony “There cannot be environmental justice without arguing that these relief measures are not

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E THE H T H HOLE How a scientific concept became an icon

which is the speed you need to reach in order a number of experimental observations, most to overcome the gravitational attraction of an recently the EHT image and LIGO’s detection object, like a planet or a star. When Newton of “gravitational waves,” ripples in spacetime published his theory of gravity, astronomers had produced by the collision of two black holes. already considered the abstract possibility of an Physicists think there is a supermassive black We are obsessed with black holes. They are one object so massive nothing could escape its gravhole at the core of every galaxy, including our of the few concepts in modern science that make itational pull, no matter how fast it was going. own, and that black holes may in fact be crucial the leap from academic problem to $165 million But it wasn’t until Einstein published his theory to galaxy formation. sci-thriller, fi courtesyofChristopherNolan’s of general relativity in 1915 that this possibility 2014 movie Interstellar. Picture books have been reallythreatenedtheunityofthescientificanother definition made about black holes, as have Disney movies, worldview.Therst fi exactsolutiontoEinstein’s andthemeparkrides.OnYouTube,sixdirerent theory created an exception to its own logic: But science does not belong only to scientists, popular explanations of black holes each have presented by Karl Schwarzschild that year, it and black holes have a larger life outside the more than 20 million views. In 2019, when the mathematically allowed for matter to become so academy. Another history of black holes would rst fi imageofablackholewasproducedbya condensed its gravitational pull would approach trace the birth of a concept with its own memetic network of eight telescopes all over the earth’s infinity.Thismeansitsescapevelocitywould force and power of cultural attraction to a surface, the blurry orange ring made front page too, until even light could not travel fast enough dungeon in a fortress in India in 1756. Here is a spreads at The New York Times, The Washington to get free. The region would be totally dark, moment in history like the crossing of the event Post, and The Times of India. invisible to the rest of the universe. Actually the horizon. Private soldiers of the British East India Butblackholesaremorethanascientific problem was more acute: since space and time Company were forced to abandon Fort William wonder. In the paradox of modern life, where are understood to be intertwined as a single after refusing to leave per their treaty with the profound uncertainty exists alongside a sense fabric—spacetime—in general relativity, the Nawab of Bengal. Between 60–120 soldiers were of impending doom, black holes have become a extreme gravity of a black hole punctures reality captured and held in an underground guarddefiningculturaltouchstone.Theyhavecometoitself. It creates a ‘hole’ unmappable by coorhouse approximately 252 sq. ft., without air or represent, in the public and intellectual imaginadinates or chronologies, breaking the back of water. The dungeon was called the “Black Hole.” tion, the God-shaped hole in the Western world, the “most beautiful theory of all,” and dashing It was an atrocity of war, described in a gruelinked by the history of the concept itself to the Einstein’s wish for a logical, coherent universe. some (and possibly exaggerated) account by one imperial origins of modernity.

The only evidence of a black hole would be its of the few survivors.

The notion of a black hole as an all-consurroundingerects,whatthephysicistJohn Soon the story of “The Black Hole of suming primordial maw, an almost Lovecraftian Wheeler compared to the Cheshire cat: “it fades Calcutta” was imprinted on every British horror stalking our reality, has begun to change. away and leaves only its grin.” subject’s mind. According to Partha Chatterjee, New science has transformed our understanding Einstein did not believe it was possible, and historian and anthropologist at Columbia of black holes: They may not be as absolutely he spent much of his later career denying the University,thiseventbecameBritain’s -justifica inescapable or destructive as was once thought. disturbing consequences of his own theory. But tion for launching a full-scale conquest of India.

Isitpossibletond fi newpossibilitiesfor by the 1960s, black holes had been shown to be The British erected a monument to the victims at ourselves in this metaphysical upheaval? possible under normal conditions, and physicists the site, which was torn down by Indian nationeven had a theory of how they might evolve: from alists and rebuilt several times, until its permadefinition spent stars collapsing under their own weight. nent relocation to a disused churchyard in 1940, Thisiswherethe‘classic’definitionofblack where it remains today.

A black hole is not a thing, it is not a place, it is holes comes around, and the language used to While British rule dragged on, “The Black not an event, it is not a theory: it demands all describethemcomesorthehinges.Wehave Hole of Calcutta” slipped into metaphor, and the superlatives physicists and science writers “the attraction of disembodied mass,” (John became a popular saying to refer to any dark can throw at it, but none of them seem to stick.

Wheeler), “the boundary of the causal past of orsurocatingplace.Intheearlyth 0 2 century, Erik Curiel, a philosopher of science, concluded futurenullinfinity,Steven (” Hawking)andone an American astronomer named Robert H. in a 2019 paper: “Most physicists, I believe, notorious physicist, John G. Taylor, following the Dickie would use the phrase around the house: know what a black hole is, right up until the logic of black holes to a “liberating conclusion”: his daughter remembers when they lost somemoment you blindside them with the request for “in the beginning there was no beginning; in the thing, he would say, “It must have slipped into adefinition.” future there will be no future. Man is at one with the Black Hole of Calcutta!” In 1960, Dickie According to the conventional story, black the black-hole Universe.” compared the strange ‘Schwarzchild objects’ to holes come from the concept of escape velocity, Today,blackholeshavebeenconfirmedby the Black Hole of Calcutta, according to physicist

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sensethatmeaningitselfisnite, fi thatnothing lasts. Hawking accepted the implication of his ndings fi andarguedweliveinauniversethatis emptying itself out.

Another school of physicists, headed by Leonard Susskind (now at Stanford), tried to nd fi awaytorepairreality,andinthelast0 1 orsoyears,theynally fi succeeded.Througha chain of mathematical reasoning that draws upon Einstein’s work on wormholes, Leonard Susskind and Juan Maldacena have shown that information may actually be preserved on the surface of the black hole—plastered, in impossibly dense inscription, on the event horizon.

Moreover, the particles radiated by black holes maycontainthisinformation,andcarryitor as the black hole evaporates. The stunning resultstransformthescientificconceptionof black holes: over the course of the black hole’s life, every piece of information that it consumes reemerges, in total if not intact. Hawking himself admitted in 2015: “They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought. Things can get out of a black hole, both to the outside, and possibly to another universe. So if you feel you are in a black hole, don’t give up. There’s a way out.” the black-hole universe Hong-Yee Chiu, originating the term in its aboutblackholesseemstot fi withthe-post modernscientificsense.Thusafoundingtrauma modern condition, an irreconcilable rupture ofmodernityhadltered fi overthecenturiesinto in reality that echoes the abandonment of the the label for gaps in our reality. “grand narratives” that once provided the West It’s easy to call this a coincidence, and withaunified,coherentworldview—religion, from the perspective of science it is. But, again, the nation, the family. In the same way that blackholesarenotpurelyscientificobjects. black holes prove that general relativity cannot Theyhavebeenabsorbedandrefiguredintoa be a complete theory of reality, the atrocities of cultural symbol on the strength of their appeal the 20th century mark fatal weaknesses in the to the modern imagination. The terror and civilization that now prevails everywhere. “At violence of the reality we now inhabit seems the heart of all of our conceptions of a spacetime answered by the mute horror of black holes. singularity is the notion of some sort of failure,” Before the First and Second World Wars, pious Curiel writes.

Europeans considered the Black Hole of Calcutta a “festering spot of history,” an aberration in the the black hole information paradox march toward progress. Primo Levi, the scientist and writer who survived the Holocaust, rediJohn Wheeler summarized his pioneering rected this use of the term when he wrote of the description of black holes in 1967: “A black hole “Black Hole of Auschwitz.” has no hair.” He meant that black holes were The experimental poet NourbeSe Philips simple, mathematical objects—perfectly round has written an essay called “Black W/holes,” an featureless spheres, all of them identical. In the examinationofracismorganizedaround-defi 1970s, Steven Hawking unraveled this picture. nitions from Steven Hawking’s A Brief History of Hefoundthatblackholesgiveoratinyamount Time. It is common for psychologists to describe of radiation, that this radiation grows over time, depression as a black hole (rates of depression and that, in the long run, black holes evaporate. being one symptom of modern dysfunction, This led to the question: What happens to everyand psychology potentially being another). thing that fell into the black hole? According Sciencection fi hasmadeblackholesaliterary to Hawking, all of it was lost, simply vanished subgenre, serving to narrate what one group of out of existence. However, quantum mechanics critics has called “metaphysical silence.” The requires that information is never lost. In prinblack hole has become a convenient metaphor for ciple this means that every process in nature is subjectivity overall, both for today’s Christian reversible: The information encoded in a book evangelists (Austin Fischer: “We are black is theoretically still encoded in the patterns of holes—walking, talking pits of narcissism, selfatoms emitted by burning it. But if black holes pity, and loneliness, pillaging the world around take all the matter that fell into them with them usinadesperateattempttoll fi thevoidinside when they disappear, that information would us”) and radical philosophers (Slavoj Zizek’s be unrecoverable. Here again, black holes seem “void of self-relating negativity”). Something to physically embody the modern dilemma: The

Reviewers in 2014 criticized Interstellar for using love as a cop-out. At the end of the movie, MatthewMcConaughey’sspaceshipfliesinto a black hole, where, instead of meeting certain doom, he is able to see the threads of time. He knocks a watch from a bookshelf in his daughter’schildhoodandcreatesthebutterflyerect that allows the movie to happen, somehow preserving a future for humanity. This was viewed as cheap, a classic deus ex machina, even cringeworthy in its evocation of ’60s ‘love is all you need’ sentimentality. It failed to meet the stakes of a black hole.

But perhaps Christopher Nolan saw possibilities the critics did not. The movie refuses to regard black holes as pure negativity, a void which turns stars and people and love into nothingness.Sure,itfailsassciencection, fi but all stories fail. All theories fail. Black holes have come to represent this indomitable failure. The wider cultural history of the concept reveals its deep connections to the collapse in the West of frameworks of meaning, and its colonial reverberations.

It now appears black holes are not cosmic Others. They are not “bottomless pits of nothingness,” as Overbye wrote in The New York Times last month. Black holes have memories, they grow old and die, and they speak with the universe in cryptic radio emissions that carry the details of everything inside them. In other words, they’re hairy. Interstellar’s ending, then, canbeseendirerently:notasshavingawaythe reality of black holes and the crises of modernity, but following one among many strands of hope.

ZACHARY BRANER B’23 is spaghettifying.

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Lana Hadžiosmanovic´ B’24 “FREE THE FOOD” Zine

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DEAR INDY

nts: Creati ve Conu ndrums Prese

T

he life of an artist is a difficult life, a life of struggle and pain. I would know, because Sam Stewart is the artist who designs and illustrates this column, and his life is full of struggle and pain due to the fact that I constantly yell at him to make it look better.

This week, I’ll be tackling your conundrums of creativity. Fear not, dear artists: the difficulty/struggle/pain will be worth it for the sake of your art. The layout of Dear Indy always looks great, and Sam only cries a little bit!

Indie, Dear

I ju piec st had Dea a e r In ried s were n art s die, h a wan I’ll ne mazi ow, a it’ll t to s ver cr ng—to nd it w eate o am pro tart as a v al a e that someth anythi azing huge n , rt, but I alrea ing new g as g and n success o o dy r may . b eac ecau od aga w I’m My be I h s i ed m e I’m n. I worsho uld d find y peak too sc on’t a . an Dow ew I love red L hob v nhi ove, by… isull fr om Her e

in a o turn eek, t e v a h next w ock. I ers’ bl ction class t should I t i r w I have ry for my fi for it. Wha ut! bo sto as short ve zero ide t to write a a a h h and I ? Tell me w do Love, e ck M Unblo

Dear Bad Poets Society,

.

scenario

ILLUSTRATION SAM STEWART

I could dive into some kind of long speech about how there’s no such thing as ‘good’ poetry or ‘bad’ poetry, but who are we kidding.

Some poetry is just not good. Let’s stop pretending. If you say you’re bad at poetry, I’m taking your word for it.

While bad poetry exists, the good news is: it doesn’t matter! I don’t think you need to be discouraged at all. If your poetry is serving a purpose for you, then that’s cool, not embarrassing. Your poems don’t need to go anywhere. No one needs to read them. You don’t even have to read them after you write them. If I were going to write a really bad, cliché poem about your dilemma, it would end with a rhyme like

DESIGN SAM STEWART

Have you ever heard of adaptation?

It’s like plagiarism that’s allowed.

Pick your favorite old-timey text, like Pride and ejudicPr , and then rewrite it so that everyone has an iPhone. Now it’s a brilliant commentary on the intersection of new technology and antiquated social values!

Here’s a di erent strategy: In order to tell a good story, you need to live a good story. This is an awesome strategy, because you can be making the most preposter ous, ill-advised decision of your life, or wreaking general havoc, or crying hysterically, and then just tell yourself, “This will be such good material for my workshop piece!”

Alternatively, you can write a witty romance about a mysterious woman named Indie with whom the narra tor (which is obviously you, everyone in your class can tell) is deeply in love.

Dear Indie , I lov e to write terri bl p emba e at it. T oetry, bu his f rrass cour act i t I’m ing, ag s writi ing, but and a li pretty ttle d ng. H I stil is l some o thing w do I r want to econ k with eep cil be go knowing e loving I’ll n od at ever it?

L ove Bad Poets , Socie ty

How do you think I felt writing such a stellar Dear Indy Issue 1 knowing that I would then have to produce Dear Indy Issue 2? And then issues 3–7? Don’t even get me started on forthcoming issues 8–10.

The act of creation is a perpetual risk, but it’s a risk you have to take if you want to keep expressing yourself in the way you love. I love expressing myself via advice column, and in order to keep doing that week after week, I can’t let myself feel like the Indie writing issue 7 is competing with the Indie who wrote issue 2. I shouldn’t even be thinking about how great issue 2 was at all. On top of that, if I were to produce a hypothetically bad issue 8*, it wouldn’t cancel out, say, the sweeping achievement of issue 4. I would just have to keep going, knowing that the only way to truly have peaked would ies *Apolog be to stop creating altodish n a tl for ou tical gether. hypothe

TEXT ANNIE STEIN

Dear Unblock Me,

Dear Downhill from Here,

the journey is more important than the destination and thefinalproductislessimportantthanthe process of creation.

Wait, maybe that’s kind of good…

VOLUME 45 ISSUE 07

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Arts

BULLETIN

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Upcoming Actions & Community Events

DESIGN ANNA BRINKHUIS

TEXT SOFIA BARNETT & KAYLA MORRISON

ILLUSTRATION ANGIE ZOU

Every Wednesday Starting 11/2 @ 4:30-6:30PM: Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM) Organizing Circle Workshops Are you community rights minded? Attend Providence Youth Student Movement’s youth leadership program workshops to learn about grassroots organizing, abolition, leadership, and more! Reserve your spot at bit.ly/ocworkshopsform.

Location: 807 Broad Street, Room 430, Providence, RI 02907

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Monday 11/14 @ 3:30PM: The Crown Act Join the youth-led advocacy group Providence Student Union for a workshop/conversation on the ability to wear our hair the way we want, as well as a discussion on the Crown Act, a law which prohibits discrimination based on hairstyle and hair texture. Fill out this link: bit.ly/psu-programs to let them know you are coming.

Location: 769 Westminster St, Providence, RI 02903 Monday 11/14 @ 5-6:30PM: Become a Driver with AMOR’s Transportation Team AMOR (Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance) is an alliance of community-based grassroots organizations mobilizing to end state violence against the community. AMOR’s Transportation Team provides transportation services for people in need of accessible and timely transportation to important events or meetings such as court dates, ICE check-ins, or detention center visitations. If you want to become a driver for this program, sign up to attend the virtual training here: tinyurl.com/ drive4amor.

Location: Virtual

All Day until December 22nd: Art Exhibition: Perceptions of Organizational Change, through a Kaleidoscopic Lexicon of Color Jazzmen Lee-Johnson and Deborah Spears Moorehead, two Rhode Island-based artists, havecreatedsite-specificartworksthat respond to the Center for Public Humanities’ historic wallpaper, Les Vues d’Amérique du Nord, which features false depictions of Indigenous people.

Location: Main Hall in the Nightingale-Brown House,Benefi 357 tSt,Providence,RI0293

Saturday 11/12 @ 10AM-12PM: NaNoWriMo Sprint Day B/I/POC Creatives Write-in Hosted by What Cheer Writers Club, join fellow Rhode Island writers taking the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) Challenge at this series of free in-person writing sprints. Meet fellow writers and keep up your writing momentum for the month! No need to register, just feel free to stop by.

Location: What Cheer Writers Club, 160 Westminster Street Floor 2, Providence RI 02903

Saturday 11/19 @ 2:30-4:30PM: Collaborative Zine Workshop Zinesareanempoweringmediumwhereartistsandwriters - findexpres sion and community outside of mainstream publishing. For this workshop, engage with What Cheer Writers Club and local artist Zooey Kim Conner at Binch Press / Queer.Archive to learn about how zines can be used as a tool for knowledge sharing, participate in drawing and writing exercises, and learn the basics of zine assembly and binding. Participants will also get to take home a copy of What Cheer Writers Club’s collaboratively designed zine. Reserve a free spot on Eventbrite at tinyurl.com/ collaborative-zine-workshop.

Location: Binch Press / Queer.Archive.Work 400 Harris Ave Unit F, Providence, RI 02909

Mutual Aid* & Community Fundraisers *Mutual aid is “survival pending on revolution,” as described by the Black Panthers. Join in redistributing wealth to create an ecosystem of care in response to a system of institutions that have failed or harmed our communities. +

Support RI Family Donate at tinyurl.com/help-ri-family Support a family that is part of the Pioneer Tenants Union, a group that stood up to a slumlord’s derelict living spaces. Donate to help this young family pay their legal bills and find a new place to live.

+ Donations needed for a Housing Activist Tuesday 11/15 @ 6-7:30PM: New England’s Original Inhabitants: Donate at tinyurl.com/donate-2-hope Thanksgiving Myths The Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE) club at Brown is Come join this conversation hosted by John B. Brown III, the organizing this GoFundMe for a fellow housing activist. This friend of HOPE’s NarragansettTribalHistoricPreservationOqcerfortheNarragansett is facing eviction and recently lost his job and had to pay for eye surgery. Donate Indian Tribe and the Tribal Medicine Man, and Dr. Robinson, who’s to help him out of this stressful situation. served for 30 years as State Archaeologist for Rhode Island at the RI Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission. This will be a discussion + Black and Pink Providence’s Fundraiser for Tunji aboutthe“firstThanksgiving,its ” placeintheAmericanimagination Donate at tinyurl.com/help-tunji and historical narrative, and how it was made possible by the generBlack and Pink Providence, a non-profit organization working towards prison osity of Indigenous people. Sign up to attend at this link: tinyurl.com/ abolition, is raising money through a GoFundMe for Tunji. Tunji is formerly thanksgiving-myths. incarcerated and recently lost his job.

Location: Community Libraries of Providence: Rochambeau Library, 708 Hope Street, Providence, RI 02906 + Amenity Aid Rhode Island Tuesday 11/15 @ 7:30-9:30PM: UpRiseHer’s Feminist Book Club Join UpRiseHer, an organization aimed at empowering women, for their Feminist Book Club, which meets every second Tuesday of the month.

The club studies female authors and their books that explore feminism.

Sign up to attend here: tinyurl.com/upriseher-bookclub.

Location: UpRiseHer, 335 Hope Street, Providence, RI 02906

Donate at amenityaid.org/donate-money Amenity Aid works to provide hygiene resources to marginalized communities and low-income people in need. On top of serving individuals, Amenity Aid partners with local shelters, food pantries, anti-domestic violence organizations, and other community groups that support underserved communities to distribute hygiene resources.

+ Sunday 11/20 @ 10AM-2PM: Revive The Roots Volunteer Days ReviveTheRootsisagrowingnon-profitorganizationadvocatingfor openspaceandcaringforapieceoflandbuiltorofcommunitysupport.

The organization is hosting weekly volunteer days, where you can aid in their annual production, trail maintenance, habitat restoration, or community-building projects. Get a free ticket on Eventbrite at tinyurl. com/revive-the-roots-volunteer. + Location:Farnum 374 Pike,Smithfield,RI02917

Project LETS Providence COVID-19 Relief Fund Donate at projectlets.org/covid19 Project Let’s Erase The Stigma (LETS) is working in coalition with various grassroots organizations in Rhode Island to support marginalized groups in our community in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. All donations will directly help individuals, children, and families meet their basic needs.

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Queer & Trans Mutual Aid Providence Venmo: @qtmapvd; Paypal: qtma.pvd@gmail.com / Info: tinyurl. com/qtma-pvd QTMA PVD is a small, volunteer-run mutual aid fund for queer and trans folks in the Providence, RI area. They do payouts once per week and have distributed over $80,000 since their founding in June 2020. They currently have over 30 outstanding requests for aid and would appreciate any donations!

Do you have an event, action, or other information for the Providence community that you’d like to see shared on this page?

Email us at indybulletinboard@gmail.com!

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Ocean State A$$ Mutual Aid Fund Donate at tinyurl.com/oceanstateass Support sex workers statewide. Priority is given to BIPOC sex workers, trans sex workers, and sex workers who have been impacted by the pandemic.