Bard issue 2

Marching to Their Own Beat

Editors in Chief: Riya Mirchandaney and Maya Varma Blog and Publicity Editor: Scott Stevens Content Manager: Katherine Lazar Writing Editor: Samantha Frenkel-Popell Layout Consultant: Lauren Jacques Photography Editor: Avalon Edwards Staff Writers: Anna Boonyanit, Natalie Jarret, Nina Chandra, Connor Van Ligten, Samantha Castaneda, Sara Varadharajulu, Vida Saffari, Kelly Buck, and Sylvia Chen

Contents Feminism in Gilmore Girls

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Between The World And Me Makena Lambert

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10

The Martian Ben Lasky

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16

Hamilton The Musical Food For The Soul

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22

Sibling Pressure EDM Playlist for Beginners

30

4

Diversity at Menlo Baran

36

29

‘The Girly Show’: An Analysis of the Role of Feminism in Gilmore Girls By: Kelly Buck Preface: I understand that, as a privileged white female, I am part of the group I am critiquing. I also understand that multiple definitions of feminism exist, and while I use one definition for the sake of this article, I am not negating the others or denying their societal implications.

Since its recent return to the world (compliments of Netflix)

Gilmore Girls, the popular 2000s ‘dramedy’, is getting more attention than ever. There are Buzzfeed posts. Podcasts. ATX panels. Fans have been calling for a reboot of the series, now off the air for about eight years, and a revival for four 90-min episodes has just been announced.

It’s easy to understand why the show is so popular. Among its many strengths, Gilmore Girls is exceptional in its promotion of feminist values, which, now seen often in 30-minute comedies such as 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, was, back in the 2000s, slightly before its time. Amidst an era of Dawson’s “The show is feminist, Creeks and The O.C’s, Gilmore Girls but not as feminist as bravely upholds feminist values. it could, and, in my Some of these are rooted in the show’s premise. The main character, opinion, should be.”

Lorelei Gilmore, is a “fiercely independent single mom raising gifted, Ivy League-bound daughter Rory”. Throughout the course of the show, Lorelei and Rory are always working towards their professional and academic goals. At the end of the series, upon graduating Yale, Rory ultimately decides to pursue her career as a journalist instead of becoming engaged.

Because of its premise and plot lines, Gilmore Girls is held up by viewers as a show with strong feminist messages. Yet, as Paris Geller would say, there is a “seedy underbelly” to this show’s social messages.

Merriam-Webster defines feminism as “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes”. While Gilmore Girls supports this idea in respect to the equality of wealthy, white women, the show confines their support to only this one group. In other words, the show is feminist, but not as feminist as it could, and, in my opinion, should be.

I understand that the setting and the scale of Gilmore Girls is restrictive. The show is set in a small town in Connecticut, so it is not surprising that the show lacks both racial and economic diversity. But, even within the setting of Stars Hollow, there is potential that the show ignores.

In this aspect, it fails to create true equality between the characters.

In short: Gilmore Girls only deals with the economic equality of affluent white women. True, Lorelei is shown as a strong business woman, but providing the funds for her own inn are her wealthy parents, and while Lorelei does work hard to afford private-school and college for Rory, in both of these situations she ultimately has to turn to her parents for money. These circumstances are a source of conflict between Lorelei and her parents, as she struggles to prove to them that she is capable of providing for Rory on her own, and was right to move out of her parents’ house to start working after she had the baby, rather than marrying Rory’s father. This decision is one of the defining characteristics of the relationship between Lorelei and her parents, and whenever it comes up in the show, Lorelei is always shown as the protagonist. In other words, we are meant to take Lorelei’s side on the issue, which is in a way taking the side of feminism. However, the fact that the resources of her parents are always available to Lorelei undermines the conflict. It is taking a plot point that could be based on feminism and turning it into a issue based more on personal pride and animosity towards her parents. In effect, Gilmore Girls is shooting itself in the foot in terms of its social goals.

“Gilmore Girls is shooting itself in the foot in terms of its social goals.”

In the same way that the lack of economic diversity in Gilmore Girls undermines its feminist messages, the lack of racial diversity has the same effect.

Gilmore Girls, as well as other shows created by Amy Sherman-Palladino, are known for being extremely white. As stated above, I understand that this has to do somewhat with the setting of the show. However, much like with the issue of economic diversity, the show takes what little racial diversity it supposedly has and does not use it to the advantage of promoting feminism. Even though the show has a plot for the character of Lane, Rory’s best friend and the only female major character who isn’t white, embedded with as many feminist points as those of the Gilmores, the show’s use of racist stereotypes makes these points less effective. Mrs. Kim, Lane’s mother, is presented as almost a caricature, notably in her faked Korean accent as well as her unexplained characterization as a strict mother, which it only ever (kind of) explained with the reason being her ethnicity. This characterization automatically makes Lane’s attempts to be independent less feminist.

Gilmore Girls also seems to have a problem with the LGBTQ community, with further weakens any feminist plot it has. True, the repeated homophobic jokes are written for laughs and are probably not intended to be taken seriously as the show or the network’s legitimate belief about LGBTQ rights; however, by literally writing off an entire group of people, the show is implying that the message female equality it so often promotes only applies to straight, cisgender women. Add two adjectives into the mix and you’ve got feminism for even fewer people.

I’m not claiming that Gilmore Girls isn’t feminist; I just don’t think it deserves all of the credit it gets, when it only empowers one group of women. Part of this has to do with the era. Is it fair to place all of the blame for this perspective on the writers? No. Should we still recognize the for being socially progressive for its time?

Absolutely. Just remember— progressive 2004 is not the same as progressive 2015, and feminism does not end with Gilmore Girls.

If you haven’t read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, locate the nearest library and take this book home. Whether you have studied America’s racist institutions and culture intently, or whether you know nothing at all beyond “I Have a Dream,” Between the World and Me offers a personal glimpse into the fears of a black father in America, not to mention into Coates’ intellectual awakening as an important contemporary writer.

The book is structured as a letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 15 year-old son, Samori Coates. Some have compared it to James Baldwin’s book to his nephew, The Fire Next Time. The ideas that Coates brings to his book are so compelling and so beautifully written, that it is no wonder he has received the MacArthur Genius Award this year.

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Between the World and Me is a slim book, but thick with ideas. He writes about the social construction of race, the “American Dream” and its existence’s reliance on black bodies, how and ignorance of that reliance forms a major part of white privilege, and the stress of a person with a black body to be “twice as good” to achieve that Dream. It is a book at times hopeful about life, at times pessimistically realistic.

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The frequent addressing to “you” (to his son) made me as a reader feel included in Coates’ exploration and honest account of his experience in America with a black body. Coates shows a mastery over language that both argues for his views on racism as well as makes readers feel what he has felt. He repeats through the book a phrase I’d A never heard before: “people who think they are white.” I R b y S evie had heard of race as a cultural construct, but I hadn’t thought co w about how “whiteness” is also something one can believe themtt S tev selves into being. Exactly to whom Coates is referring is unclear (Does en he mean people with darker skin who assimilate into white culture? Peos ple with lighter skin like mine?), but that is precisely the point. Why do some Americans think they are white? Coates answers with another repeated phrase, the eponymous “between the world and me” — because feeling “white” may remove the barrier between an American and a country that represents “white views” as the majority.

Even if this belies the muddy history of “whiteness.”

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These are Coates’ rhetorical devices, ways of telling his story, that sweeps me into a life and a mind previously foreign to me, now somewhat closer to the rich content inside that mind. This is the mark of timeless non-fiction, or better yet, powerful literature.

But of course, Coates is actually addressing his son and other young people with black bodies in America. He writes about how reading writers that talked about racism earnestly saved him from the “plunder” of his own body growing up. Similarly, Coates passes on the wisdom he’s gleaned from being a serious thinker. He asserts that “the writer… must be wary of every Dream and every nation, even his own nation, perhaps his own nation more than any other, precisely because it was his own.”

The book also details how America’s success is built upon the exploitation of the black body, among other bodies. One example of this that stands out in the book is the murder of his friend Prince Jones by a white policeman. Prince was a college student who turned down Harvard, Princeton, and Yale for Howard University (a historically black university). The white policeman tracked Prince down through multiple counties around the D.C. area, culminating in a senseless murder by the side of the road. The policeman was returned to the force after the trial. This murder changed Coates’ view on the connection between the physical self and the internal self. He writes, “The spirit and soul are the body and brain, which are destructible — that is precisely why they are so precious.” For Coates, the cotton plantations, the Jim Crowe labor, and the present day mass incarceration are the greatest tragedies for the black body in America.

But knowing the history and the reality of the black body in America can be difficult. The American Dream is a beguiling, ameliorating fantasy; it is synonymous with “needing to be white” and with forgetting all the troubles that stem from the gross abuse of bodies. It wasn’t until Coates had neared his admission into Howard University that he realized that his “great error was not that [he] had accepted someone else’s dream but that [he] had accepted the fact of dreams, the need for escape, and the invention of racecraft.” It’s that inventiveness and clever refusal of reality that is part of the American Dream:

“[T]he Dreamers, at least the Dreamers of today, would rather live white than live free….To awaken them is to reveal that they are an empire of humans and, like all empires of humans, are built on the destruction of the body. It is to stain their nobility, to make them vulnerable, fallible, breakable humans.”

In fact, perhaps the greatest defining attributes of white privilege is that those with an acceptably white body have the privilege to always be ignorant of the destruction and vulnerability of the body, especially those bodies America has explicitly made in its history more vulnerable through legislation and misrepresentation. Coates writes to his son, “You have been cast into a race in which the wind is always at your face and the hounds are always at your heels. And to varying degrees this is true of all life. The difference is that you do not have the privilege of living in ignorance of this essential fact.”

It is interesting to connect the case of Prince Jones to Menlo. I began wondering how classmates, teachers, and faculty who do not identify as white feel with the historically white narrative of the Dream of endless possibilities. Education should provide contentment, a sense of place within the larger culture. But Coates describes how an education centered around white bodies pushed him away from school. The choice between joining a gang on the streets or joining the honor roll seemed not so different, seemed as submission to two hands of the same monster. I began to realize how educational systems sometimes feel as though they give a one-way definition to a fulfilling life. This mirrored one of Coates’ definition of the Dream, that it “thrives on generalization, on limiting the number of possible questions, on privileging immediate answers.” I was struck by the necessity of avoiding “immediate answers” in our curriculum regarding race and other matters we should be critical of. Why, when we read in freshman year Their Eyes Were Watching God by the venerable Zora Neale Hurston, did so many classmates quickly give up on empathizing with characters who spoke differently than them? Why did we focus on symbolism when our so-called educated, well-bred diction prevented us from feeling the characters as real, possible people? This is where I admire Coates as a thinker, as someone who claimed education as his own, as he read book after book in Howard University’s library, trying to understand for himself his body’s place in America.

I am not sure how some Menlo kids may feel about Coates’ arguments, but we should think about what he’s saying, for they may have real implications toward how students feel about themselves. When Coates talks about Prince’s mother, who worked her way to be part of the collegiate, upper-middle class (in other words, to be a part of the culture that is also dominant here at Menlo), he talks about students like Prince’s discomfort with attending an Ivy League school. “Even when [their parents] succeeded, as so many of them did, they were singled out, made examples of, transfigured into parables of diversity. They were symbols and markers, never children or young adults.” Unsurprisingly, it is not healthy to be a symbol rather than a human being.

Apart from Coates’ brilliant ideas, I encourage everybody to also read Between the World and Me because of Coates’ writing style. It is lush and hypnotic like a father reading a bedtime story, but then at once formidable and lightning-like. I learned vocabulary and a writing style I appreciated very much. In a recent Guardian article, Coates reveals that he is cognizant of the effect language can have on ideas:

“…[I]f you are going to say something important about the world it is best if you try to say it beautifully. I don’t mean like picking flowers or writing on fancy stationery. I mean how you say it actually makes it a more meaningful piece of writing. I am going to push that further. It makes it a truer piece of writing.

What you are saying is: ‘Can I make somebody feel this in a deeper way?’

That was what I was obsessed with.”

For those of you who dismissed the content of the Black Lives Matter assembly from Sojourn to the Past’s founder Jeff Steinberg, perhaps Between the World and Me’s sound-level may seem more endurable, more tempered for your tastes. However, I warn you that it is not tempered in its language. It is still beautiful, but you may be uncomfortable with Coates’ revelations. I sure was. You can check out a copy at the Menlo library.

Makena Lambert: NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE

By Samantha Frenkel-Popell

Makena Lambert vividly remembers sitting on her couch last November, multitasking between writing an essay on Reconstruction era racism and watching riots erupt in Ferguson, Missouri. “I found it ironic that there I was, writing about racism in the 1800s, while modern day racism was unfolding right in front of me,” she recalled. “In that moment…

I knew that I wanted to be involved in the fight for justice.” By the following Monday, Lambert and fellow senior Sarah Rantz were marching down alongside hundreds of Stanford students in downtown Palo Alto chanting, “No justice, no peace. No racist police!”

Lambert has a kind smile that makes you feel instantly at ease. Her eyes light up as she speaks about the Black Lives Matter movement; it becomes clear that this issue is deeply personal to her. In the months following the initial Ferguson riots, she has marched in the streets of San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland with thousands of others to demand justice for the black Americans falling victim to police violence.

One protest particularly affected Lambert – a march from the pier to San Francisco City Hall. According to the Facebook event, over 5,000 people would be there. Lambert’s father agreed to let her go, but only under if she agreed to leave if the policemen were wearing riot gear. The policemen were dressed in their full riot gear when she arrived. Lambert describes this moment as “the first time I ever felt scared while in the presence of policemen.” But despite the large crowd, the protest remained entirely peaceful, and ended up being one of the best experiences of Lambert’s life.

After every protest, Lambert could always expect a well-meaning friend to text her asking her if she had fun, “as if [the protests] were some kind of celebratory parade.” This misconception frustrated Lambert – she finds protests to be the “farthest thing from fun.” To her, they are “exhilarating and upsetting, and at the same time… hopeful.” Lambert says the movement has taught her that law enforcement is not the only problem, but instead one aspect of a much greater societal issue.

In addition to her involvement with the Black Lives Matter movement, Lambert wanted to further her education regarding the history of racism in the United States. She took a weekly lecture series at Stanford titled “Race, Policing, and Mass Incarceration” which how racism today differs from that of racism during slavery, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement. Through this lecture series, Lambert is able to view modern day racism through a historical lens as well as a modern day one.

In the coming spring, Lambert, director of Diversity Angela Birts, and history teacher Carmen Borbón will be taking a group of students through Atlanta, Selma, Birmingham, and Memphis on a journey through the Civil Rights Movement. “I think visiting the historic sites like the 16th Street Baptist Church and the house where Dr. King grew up will provide a completely new perspective on the Civil Rights Movement,” Lambert says. She’s excited to explore the South, learn more history, eat soul food, and meet new people – and “know[s] it’s going to be a great experience all around.”

Lambert acknowledges that fighting for a cause you believe in can be emotionally and physically draining, but knows that she will be in the movement “for the long run.” And when you see her passion and drive for Black Lives Matter, it’s hard not to take her word for it.

The Martian Starring: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Michael Pe単a, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sean Bean, Kristen Wiig, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Askel Hennie, Mackenzie Davis, Donald Glover

by Connor Van Ligten

Starring: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Michael Pe単a, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sean Bean, Kristen Wiig, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Askel Hennie, Mackenzie Davis, Donald Glover Director: Ridley Scott Written by: Drew Goddard Rating: PG-13 (strong language, injury images, and brief nudity) Runtime: 2 hr 14 min

he is left behind by his crew during an turns in an excellent

as Watney, who goes about his daily tasks with genuine enthusiasm despite the seriousness of his situation. Watney’s humorous musings about 70s music and other subjects during video logs sets a positive tone for what would seem to be a gloomy survival story. Not only that, but his use of botany and math as he “sciences the shit” out of his problems are conducted with glee, making the surprisingly accurate science of the movie a lot more fun. Even when met with setbacks that would crush many others, he trudges on and doesn’t quit.

This is one of Matt Damon’s best performances; the audience is able to connect with his genuinely likeable character during moments of triumph and frustration. The movie also has a great supporting cast

“Ridley

Scott’s direction is brilliant, depicting both the beauty and the danger of Mars.”

- Chiwetel Ejiofor and Jeff Daniels on earth with NASA, and Jessica Chastain and Michael Peña in space with the rest of Watney’s crew.

The crew is likeable and has natural chemistry with one another. Ridley Scott’s direction is brilliant, depicting both the beauty and the danger of other blockbusters like Gravity, but Scott still makes the technology sophisticated and interesting.

Overall, I would heartily recommend seeing The Martian to anyone remotely interested in the movie. It’s an uplifting tale of human NASA to enjoy the movie. Thanks to great direction, a fantastic cast, to enjoy.

On Deck with Quadeca: An Interview with Ben Lasky

By Scott Stevens B

en Lasky looks older than a freshman. Like his eyes, which cut through a deceptively unruffled visage, his clothing reveals something about his persona as a rap artist. Lasky wears a T-shirt printed with the album cover of Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly” that is an edgy black, quite stark in comparison to the muted grey cover of his understated sweatshirt. According to Lasky, his projected self as a rapper is more humorous, more playful than his interior self, because a “Menlo Park rapper taking himself seriously doesn’t really work.”

However, for all of the surface jokes going on in his songs, this Menlo student is throwing greater jabs at the world at large.

Lasky took time out of his morning break to give us a glimpse of what it means to be a “Menlo rapper.” He recounts to me the beginnings of his experimentation with rap music.

“A Menlo Park rapper

taking himself seriously doesn’t really work. ”

-Lasky

In 3rd grade, Lasky and his friends began to make parodies of popular rap songs like Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.” “At the time,” Lasky laughed, “I thought I was really good. I wasn’t at all, but I got less and less terrible.” I asked him how an artist can transition from not being aware of their skill level towards a more lucid place from which to assess their work. Naturally, artists will sometimes cringe at their own work right from the beginning, but will be motivated to get past their painful amateurism with intensive training. But for Lasky, the “illusion of being good got [him] to practice enough to be actually good.” By not worrying so much about his skill level, he became comfortable with his own musical and lyrical style. He grew out of making fun of older rappers and focused on making his own lyrics, learning how to infuse them with more meaning.

Although perhaps “grew out” is the wrong word to use with Lasky. He is acutely aware of the status quo, and he believes that there are many ways to go about achieving goals, whether those goals be artistic, or simply related to enjoying life. Lasky will use instrumentation to add to his lyric work. He used to attend piano lessons, but he realized that piano was more of an extension of himself, a gate to freedom. The lessons were not helping him figure out how to make piano work for him, so he quit. Now, he plays more piano than he did under the tutelage of an older figure.

“If someone

criticizes you, brush them off. It’s something you can show off.

”

He wants Menlo students to understand that they “can do more than just the conventional things. Not the same things, extracurriculars, sports.”

Lots of people in the Menlo community express that it’s OK to branch out of the typical daily two-hour soccer practices, the Mock Trial competitions, the Model U.N. club meetings. These are all perfectly enjoyable activities. But not many people will say in an interview, like Lasky, that they “don’t like the generalized Menlo community very much.” It is precisely because Lasky is so aware of his environment that his satirical wit is not something to “grow out” of, but an acuity to hone bravely as he passes through this school.

On the subject of the craft of rap, Ben Lasky thinks that finding the time for creative work is the biggest challenge. “A beat sets the stage for everything after,” says Lasky. It can be hard for him to make a beat from scratch when he doesn’t have enough time. Lasky cites his influences to be J-Cole, Logic, and, of course, Kendrick Lamar.

Some people may listen to rap music because they like the beat, because their friends listen to it, or because the lyrics in some way speak to them. To Ben Lasky, he appreciates rap as an art form because a rapper can “say a lot in a short period of time.” When he performed in Menlo’s middle school talent show in 8th grade, Lasky packed 1,000 words into a few minutes of performance, all the while energizing the audience with the song’s musicality. Lyrically, rap songs can be more expressive than traditional songs.

Rhythmically, they can be more complex.

Lasky’s message to other emergent artists? “Don’t treat it as a chore. It’s something fun. If someone criticizes you, brush them off. It’s something you can show off.”

Lasky will hopefully be seen performing at future events, perhaps inside and outside school. Check him our on Spotify, listed as the artist Quadeca.

Blow Us All Away:

Hamilton, An American Musical

By Riya Mirchandaney

At the start of Lin Manuel-Miranda’s iconic Broadway musical about feisty federalist founding father Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr (Leslie Odom Jr.) asks, “How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence, impoverished, in squalor, grow up to be a hero and a scholar?”

It’s a question that persists throughout: how does Hamilton, an orphan from a broken home in Barbados, with all the odds against him, rise up and leave an indelible revolutionary mark on this nation? Here’s a hint: he writes like he’s running out of time.

Based on the biography Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, Manuel-Miranda’s Hamilton is lauded for its historical accuracy (obviously the founding fathers did not speak in rhyme 24/7, but you get the point), telling both the story of a determined immigrant rising honorably to success and the story of a multifarious, very human, very flawed man. Hamilton may be some sort of hero, but he’s also stubborn, impulsive, and notoriously proud.

Hamilton’s story is told from multiple perspectives, beginning with a rap from his “first friend, [his] enemy,” who is also (spoiler alert) his killer, Aaron Burr. Between Hamilton’s hopeful arrival in New York and his fateful duel, we meet the charismatic, wealthy, and witty Schuyler sisters (Phillipa Soo, Renee Elise Goldsberry, and Jasmine Cephas Jones), elitist southerner Thomas Jefferson (Daveed Diggs), the wise and paternal George Washington (Christopher Jackson), and a whole other cast of characters including Lafayette (“America’s favorite fighting frenchman!”), and King George (the one we love to hate?).

Although often branded a “hip-hop musical,” Hamilton is more than just hip hop.

Always surprising and brilliantly fun, each song feels different, with the musical styles ranging from King George’s old-school Broadway to Thomas Jefferson’s r&b and impromptu rap battles in the cabinet.

Apart from the humor of the anachronisms, there’s something strangely profound about men and women in colonial clothing making “your mom” jokes. Hamilton is a musical deeply rooted in history, but it is also ultimately unquestionably present. There’s the feeling that our founding fathers are not so far from us, that the two hundred or so years separating our lives are irrelevant in the face of the timelessness of the American identity. Hamilton is a rarity: a musical with a cast of almost entirely people of color (save for Jonathan Groff as King George).

It’s not just impressive, it’s a reminder that immigrants have been integral to the life of this nation. And like it or not, that’s never going to change.

At the end of the day, preaches Hamilton, it’s all about “who lives, who dies, who tells your story.” I suppose Alexander Hamilton, in his grave, must be pretty happy that Lin Manuel-Miranda got to tell his.

Classical Music: Food for the Soul Anna Boonyanit

Most American teenagers have playlists on their phones filled with popular music.

From rock to rap, music is dominated by words. The clear lyrics make the music readily accessible to teens that grew up in the Internet age, and its brevity appeals to their short attention spans. Chances are you won’t be able to find classical music on their playlists, unless they’re listening to it while studying for an AP to “stimulate” their brains. For the most part, teens are bored by the lengthy passages of repetitive and meaningless sounds that never seem to cease.

Take a piece of Bach, for example. It’s basically a constant wave of noise at mezzo forte that lacks dramatic dynamics or variegating articulations, contains a few skittish ornaments and a complicated counterpoint that resembles an inscrutable math problem. How do people even sit through the one hour and twenty minutes of his Goldberg Variations? What a snooze.

I’m sure plenty of Spotify users would agree with classical music’s boringness too. When I was scrolling through some playlists of classical music, I noticed one that was titled “Sleep: 111 Pieces of Classical Music.” One of the pieces on that playlist was Rachmaninoff ’s famous 18th Variation from his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, a selection you’ll probably find used for at least one ice skater per Olympics. If you are lulled to sleep by music that makes an ice skater leap into her triple toe lutz and the blood within me churn with the singing violins and pounding piano chords that have pushed me up into the sky, soaring, gazing down over the earth, free from the grasps of gravity, kudos to you.

I’m not going to lie. I didn’t understand the power of this music immediately. When I was little, I, like most young pianists, thought classical music was mostly about the fast fingers and immaculate technique. When I was eight, I participated in a piano competition in which everyone played pieces that were more technically challenging than mine. As I listened

to them, my heart sank. I had chosen to play a little-known elegant Glière Prelude and a relatively simplistic Kuhlau Piano Sonatina. How in the world would I ever beat people whose hands flew wildly as they flawlessly played their fast and fluid passages? When the results were being announced, and I hadn’t been called for honorable mention, I knew I had no chance of placing.

Imagine my shock when the jury announced that I had won first place. Following the competition, I remember speaking to the judges and asking, “How did I win? Everyone played harder pieces than me.” The judges remarked that while, yes, my pieces were easier technically, my playing was much more expressive than that of others. And that was the first moment I began to understand what classical music was all about.

“What really matters, what really is true music, what makes someone’s heart sing or cry, is the emotional aspect of music.”

I don’t blame anyone for not understanding the deeper meaning of classical music immediately. After all, it took me five years of practicing for 25 hours a week to fully grasp the concept that it was okay to miss a few notes; those wrong notes were more satisfying than a note-perfect performance without impassioned substance.

I reluctantly began to spend less time on the easy parts – perfecting those notes and minutiae – and more on trying to interpret the music. We musicians are often afraid that others will harshly judge us for imperfections; I’ve known jury members in the world’s most esteemed piano competitions who have counted the number of wrong notes and have chosen to place one kid over another solely for a wrong chord.

But it shouldn’t be this way. Of course too many wrong notes or memory slips are distracting, but I’m certain that any person in their right mind would take a performance with multiple wrong notes with singing melodies and majestic rubato over a robotic performance of Chopin.

I’ve noticed that in piano competitions, I almost always place higher when I miss a few notes because

those performances are the times when I actually let go of that technical mind set and understand that I as a musician have one duty: to be the one who translates the composer’s written notes into emotions and concepts through my sounds. I am the medium, the bridge between the music and the audience, the one who recreates the magical sounds invented centuries ago. And damn it, maybe I will blatantly miss that climatic fortissimo chord in my quest, but a satisfying chord that pierces hearts is what music is about.

It isn’t about immaculate technique, pristine Presto passages, or the world’s greatest voicing. Yes, those all play vital parts in a performance, but what really matters, what really is true music, what makes someone’s heart sing or cry, is the emotional aspect of music. Maybe, in Beethoven’s second movement of the Opus 81a Sonata programmatically titled Abwesenheit (Absence), it’s the devastatingly desolate minor opening that brings you back to the lethargic days following your grandmother’s death. And a few lines later, those acrid sforzandos, which culminate your anger at God for subjecting this tragedy upon you, that melt away into those mysterious even-keeled sixteenth notes that rise up like a leaf

floating towards heaven, in that oh-sosweet, modulation to the freshest D Major key, so that you’re taken back to those days when your grandmother was still there and her death was all just a distant dream. Or maybe it’s not really about your grandmother’s death, but rather seeing an uncle sitting behind those heavy steel bars; his once vibrant blue eyes tamed to a droopy gray, his dimpled smile long gone.

That’s the beauty of classical music.

Neither image is wrong or right. But as the listener, you get to actively participate in interpreting what is your own version of “uniquely right.” There are no words or explicit meaning attached to it as in popular music. Likewise, as an artist I have my own volatile imagination that will likely not match up with anyone else’s in the audience.

My one intent is to conjure my emotions.

For one piano competition, I played the melancholy Haydn Variations in F minor.

One audience member came up to me following the performance and told me, “The breathtaking sadness in your piece made me cry.” There is probably no way, I, as a nine-year-old, would have been able to touch a stranger to that degree through any means but classical music. Other genres often don’t have this sort of poignancy and tend to be dominated by banal lyrics, such

as the profound truths expressed in Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe: “Hey I just met you/And this is crazy/But here’s my number/So call me maybe.”

Furthermore, this implicit emotion that classical music elicits can literally provide spiritual sustenance. Alice HerzSommer, formerly the oldest Holocaust survivor, survived the horrors through music. Because she was a professional pianist, she was allowed to remain at Theresienstadt, a feeder camp for Auschwitz, which had many Jewish intellectuals and celebrities who were treated relatively well for German propaganda. During her time there, she was allowed to give 150 concerts, performing mostly the set of Chopin’s 27 Études. The pieces saved her life both physically and emotionally, allowing her to escape from

To a time where we lived in a normal civilized life. We [were able to hope] and be convinced that the war [would] finish and we [would] go back home.”

I used to wonder how people would sit through the one hour and twenty minutes of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. But I now see why people savor it. His music is more complex than that of most composers.

But the piece’s genius intricacies – the vivid color spectrum, harmonic ferocity, competing, yet subtle inner voices – make it, in John Eliot Gardiner’s words, “music in the castle of heaven.” And no, you will not understand that if you listen to Bach while toiling away at a physics problem; you can’t be truly focusing on one or another simultaneously. So here, I leave you with a diverse Spotify playlist with some of the greatest works ever written. Maybe float through clouds with the hazy opening of the Brahms “As the listener, you get to actively B Minor Intermezzo or participate in interpreting what is your gallop with the vibrant harmonies in a light-hearted own version of ‘uniquely right’” movement of a Dvorák quintet. You might not love reality. She recounts, “You can actually go every single note, but I promise you will into another world, which is a lot nicer than not hate all of it if you listen with an open the one we are living in. These concerts, mind. Works, such as the thunderous twothe people are sitting there — old people, century-old Beethoven Fifth Symphony, desolated and ill — and they came to the continue to fascinate us today. But today’s concerts, and this music was for us our number one hit single, Drake’s Hotline food… Through making music, we were Bling, will likely be forgotten in a mere few kept alive.” One of Mrs. Herz-Sommers’s months. fellow Holocaust survivors added, “It was a kind of moral support. It was not entertainment. It had a much bigger value.

We were transported into a different time.

“Why Aren’t You More Like Your Brother?”

By Samantha Castaneda and Nina Chandra

Do the words “You’re just like your sister!” or “Why aren’t you more

like your brother?” sound familiar to you? Often times, us younger siblings will encounter comments like these regarding the differences between their educational paths and the paths taken by their siblings. As we are both the youngest children in our family, we think we have the worst end of the bargain, and wanted to see if that belief could change. So we set out to find how sibling pressure was interpreted by both younger and older siblings in the Menlo community and finally answer the age-old question; is it better to be the oldest child or the youngest child?

After interviewing freshmen at Menlo, our general consensus was that younger siblings feel pressure to be just as academically accomplished as their older siblings. Meg Reinstra says she has “never actually been told to be as good as [her] sibling, but [has felt] the pressure nonetheless”.

We believe this pressure stems from growing up listening to stories about the high standards that older siblings set, and is reinforced by equal parts pressure from parents and school itself.

Reinstra states that being a youngest child has “made [her] feel that [she] needs to work harder and that [she] must be doing something wrong if [she’s] not as good as [her] brother is”. Although several younger siblings agree with this message, we believe there are also perks to being the younger sibling. An anonymous source says “being a youngest child can also be good; parents don’t make the same mistakes twice” and Jose Castaneda, a Menlo alum, says “the mystery of college becomes less abstract and more real [for younger siblings]”.

After interviewing younger siblings, we turned our attention to the older siblings to see if they could change our opinion. Once we got to hear out the perspectives older siblings had on sibling pressure, we were surprised to hear that they thought the pressure to be to the younger sibling’s advantage. Jose Castaneda believes that “[siblings are] forced to follow in [older sibling’s] footsteps, with parental guilt serving as a motivating and constricting factor,” but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing. Castaneda expresses that “parents should be able to demand younger siblings to follow similar paths [as an older sibling’s]” because he, as an older sibling, has already created a guiding course for his younger sister at Menlo to pursue a similar progression to his and is content that he is able to provide a model for her to thrive and succeed in a previously unknown environment. He also says that sometimes a younger sibling has a large advantage over the older sibling as he “did not have an immediate family member who had undertaken the prep school and university path.”

After polling information from these interviews, we have come to the conclusion that being a youngest sibling is equally as bad as being an older sibling. Younger siblings feel pressure to follow the standards set by their older siblings, and older siblings don’t have the advantage of a guiding person to help show them how and where to create a path.

We agree that no matter what sibling you are, or if you’re an only child, everybody faces pressure and stress, and we all just have to deal with it.

The Beginner’s* Guide to EDM 1.

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Do You Go Up by Khai It’s Strange by Louis the Child Sun Models by ODESZA (feat. Madelyn Grant) The Buzz by Hermitude (feat. Matay & Young Tapz) Powerful by Major Lazer You & Me by Disclosure x Flume Hey Mami by Sylvan Esso (Big Wild Remix) Collapse by Zeds Dead (feat. Memorecks) Sexual Healing by Marvin Gaye (Kygo Remix) I Got You by Duke Dumont (feat. Jax Jones) High by Peking Duk (feat. Nicole Millar) Blue Jeans by Lana Del Rey (RAC Remix) Five Hours by Deorro Backseat XE3 by Kendrick Lamar x Weathin

* created by a novice listener

Diversity at Menlo

what we bury un

:

der our beds and

Sara Varadharajulu When people think of diversity, their minds automatically jump to race; though both are very much tied together, a discussion of diversity is different than a discussion of race. A community is not diverse because it has skin colors that represent all arches of a rainbow. An environment with different races is not simply “better” because there are a variety of races; it’s what that diversity entails that benefits us all. When a community is like a Jelly Belly Factory, out emerges a splendor of cultural values, traditions, food, religions, and opinions that we wouldn’t be exposed to otherwise. But when we try to mask our differences under a veil of liberal lace and “politically correct” comments, all we end up gaining is a statistic that makes us believe we meet Bay Area standards. At Menlo, there’s an epidemic of saying what is expected of us. We are so careful to tiptoe around offending people that ultimately we end up saying nothing relevant at all. Diversity is a topic that deserves the respect to be discussed with true opinions, even if just for a moment…

In our Menlo society, diversity is simply believed to be imperative--but very few people have stopped to think, “why is diversity important?” Diversity in a community shepherds in a plethora of new perspectives. Junior Lauren Chan, co-president on Menlo’s diversity club, commented, “I used to think diversity is race and just having people of different races but I learned at SDLC that diversity is actually a bunch of different identifiers...race, religion, sexuality, gender, all the things that make us who we are.” It’s not really our fault that we view diversity as only race or a statistic. This worldview is evident in every Menlo Magazine, every college brochure that yearns to scream, “we’re diverse! Look at us! We’ve got one student from each race hanging out as friends!” But a number has no benefit.

Diversity doesn’t matter if the If we can’t hear each other student body is split into isolated because of the deafening noise factions. “Even if Menlo had a of conformation and the barriers huge population of black students, a huge population of Asian students, a of the unknown, we are nothing huge population of native Americans, more than cliques lounging on the same fake-grass.

Pacific Islanders, it wouldn’t matter unless they are all interacting.” If diversity can be quantified into a quota, then Menlo is relatively diverse-- but people don’t benefit diversity unless everyone interacts. The reason diverse communities are preferred is because of the variety of worldviews. If we can’t hear each other because of the defying noise of conformation and the barriers of the unknown, we are nothing more than cliques lounging on the same fake-grass.

Though people don’t like to admit it, friend groups are tied to specific socioeconomic levels; in turn, socioeconomic levels ultimately define the majority race in that group. I am guilty of this too—being in the same socioeconomic level as your friends makes life eons easier. You’ll most likely shop at the same stores, live in similar houses, be involved in overlapping extracurriculars, and you’ll most likely think about money, cars, etc. with similar perspectives. You won’t have to hide excessive wealthy or tiptoe around people from a lower class. This uniformity with groups fosters comfortable relationships among friends, so it is only human that we do this.

“

”

Unfortunately, these categorized friend groups are a reason for racial stereotypes: we don’t view other friends groups by socioeconomic level; our eyes only notice the majority race. So when we glimpse them sulking in the corner by the trashcans or driving around their polished Mercedes Benzes, we automatically associate these activities with the race. Some of these expectations might be negative, some of them positive, but nevertheless we associate them with race instead of understanding that it mostly depends on socioeconomic level (on that note, we shouldn’t be connecting characterizes with people at all because we are all different).

I cannot deny that Menlo is working tirelessly to bring diversity to our community. Junior Sunia Sadeghi states the change is visible: “Our 6th grade class was a lot less diverse than the 6th grade class today.” But that transformation is exceptionally convoluted, especially when varying socioeconomic and educational levels are involved. When we attempt to “diversify” our population, not only are we welcoming in people of different races, but also backgrounds.

When people aren’t aware of the connection between the two, that’s when stereotypes form. For example, when someone of minority is brought in from a low-income neighborhood with an inadequate middle school education, it is borderline impossible, even they are tirelessly diligent about their schoolwork, to adapt immediately.

Not only has the education standard risen, but also the culture of Menlo is most likely extremely different from anything they have experienced. There’s a lot of adjustment that to be made, so it’s no surprise that many people struggle in their first years at Menlo.

Even people from the middle school, who are extremely familiar with Menlo standards and values, flounder like fish out of the sea when they transition to the high school (my situation exactly).

But when we see that person in a class, performing poorly on tests, we do not think, “they haven’t had a good platform to begin with”, we automatically assume “wow, they need to study more”. And that’s when we begin sewing the association of that particular race with “slackers”.

“We don’t view other friends groups by socioeconomic level; our eyes only notice the majority race”

The only way we can transform our ignorant factions into a community is by taking initiative. And I don’t advise sitting with someone new at lunch everyday or barging into conversations with “With acceptance, unfamiliar people. Because that’s simply not possible. Most of us are stressed, we can slowly and overwhelmed, (and if you’re like me) and organically change our uncomfortable with the unfamiliar; we community’s atmosphere” need our stable friends to be our water wings. And quite frankly, it’s difficult to have a diversity of socioeconomic levels in one friend group because that only compounds on our existing tension. We already have to purify every word we say at this school, so naturally, among our friends we want to be appallingly honest.

My suggestion for unification is to just understand people better: try to realize where other people are coming from before you turn to your left to gossip with your friend. If you see someone sitting alone, include her. If someone approaches you, talk to him. If someone is walking alone, walk with her. You don’t need to make a Herculean effort to transform your entire life and throw yourself into dark pits that might or might not have flesh-eating snakes. That’s absurd and shouldn’t be expected of anyone. With acceptance, we can slowly and organically change our community’s atmosphere.

I must commend Menlo on its efforts to incorporate diversity into our school. Their progress is evident in our faculty—age, race, background, gender, our teachers are like variegated Halloween candy. But there’s another population of adults that haven’t met those levels of amazingness: parents. Due the timing of parent meetings, usually only one type of parent can attend: a rich stay-at-home mom. And when parent activities are held at 10 am on a Wednesday, of course only a specific group of people can attend. Most fathers are working. Mothers from a middle class or lower class background cannot take off work to attend a parent-hike. So most of our student-related decisions are left to a faction that is not representative of all the students that attend this school.

As much as they may try to do what is right for the student body, they cannot effectively gauge the needs of other people outside their sect. That’s probably why we have vineyard vines shirts at our Menlo bookstore. Which honestly, makes me, and others, extremely uncomfortable because it’s just another reminder that I’m not quite Menlo material.

Unlike diversifying the student body, this problem easily fixed. It would benefit Menlo to change these parent-social times to evenings or weekends so ALL parents can be involved. That way, decisions can be made that are relevant and necessary to all students, not just the select few.

I mentioned this before, but Menlo’s a garden for liberals. Our biggest lack in diversity is not physical, not economical, but political. Junior Cameron Kay comments, “I wouldn’t say that all of Menlo has the same political view, but everyone seems to agree when they are talking to each other.”

Many people feel like that their lips are stitched together with conforming thread because at Menlo we are supposedly liberal Democrats. People can’t express their views since they have been repeatedly reminded that their views can’t exist unless they want to face the glare of judging eyes. Why do you think the mostly the same people speak at assembly? There’s nothing wrong with being Republican. Or being conservative. And it would serve us well to remember that.

“We all make race in itself c

When the next diversity club meeting rolls around, I encourage everyone to attend. We all make Menlo diverse; a race in itself cannot be diverse. Diversity club co president, Lola Anderson, states, “I just want to make sure that everybody knows that anyone can come this to diversity club for anything. Diversity club isn’t centered about having every minority in one place and then talking about it; it’s about having everybody from many different viewpoints.” Diversity club is not for a specific race, a specific religion, a specific type of person, no, it’s for all of us and everyone one of us. Unless the student body cares about accepting everyone, no matter their political view, the administration certainly shouldn’t have to care. The world is composed of millions of people, all dependent on one another for survival. Food, textiles, electronics, everything is part of a global market. Though we might not realize it, at Menlo we are just as dependent on each other to have a strong community.

Menlo diverse; a cannot be diverse.”