AUTUMN/WINTER 1 2012
The rhetoric
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2
Editor’s Letter Dearest reader,
Y
ou have entered the world of the Rhetoric. It was not an easy world to create, springing first from flimsy thoughts and then slowly becoming substance before our eyes. Creating deadlines, writing for a public eye and trying to join it all in a common theme has certainly been a challenge! As with our own beginning, we present to you the theme of new beginnings. Creative writing, poetry, stories from around the world; we have packaged a little bit of art into a box and set it out in front of you. When creating this magazine, there was only one thing that I was really looking for: to show the world a piece of passion, through whatever source the individual artist felt possible. I wanted to allow the freedom to express anything youâ€&#x;re passionate about in a single medium and I hope that, in the end, this will be what has combined all of our pieces together.
Nelly Matorina 2 COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY VICTORIA SAVORY
CONTENTS 3
PHOTOGRAPH BY YANA BELOKON
THIS ISSUE Creative Writing
12
Dear person who stole my wallet
13
The Universe Meets Here: A Recollection of Beauty
19
A Technicolour Beginning
Music
82
Festival Review : Northside Festival
83
23
Dan Rutman: Sweetest Fruit EP
87
Resurgence
32
Jukebox Playlists
91
Words are like healing drugs
34
Forged Innovation
38
Poetry
96
Technology
44
Wisdom found on a hilltop
97
Africa, My Home, My Heart The emergence of a QR code
45
98
NFC Technology: the age of innovation
46
What happens when you melt music
100
Why did Google really buy Motorola Mobility?
47
Travel
48
Four Parts of Pangaea
49
Best Benches To Do Your Hoboing at This Summer
67
3
The guide book to hidden beaches, hamster wheels and the most creative duvet covers in existence
75
Reflective Writing 104 The Beginning to an End
105
Making every day a new beginning
109
Names and Places
115
Reviews
117
‘Kafka on the Shore’ Review
118
Spiked Movie Theatre Drinks: An Inception Review
119
CONTENTS/THEMATIC PIECES 4
23
19
The Universe Meets Here: A Recollection of Beauty
91
A Technicolour Beginning
Jukebox Playlists
13 109
Dear Person Who Stole my Wallet
Making every day a new beginning
34
Words are like healing drugs
Names and Places
115 119
32 105
Resurgence
The Beginning to an End
What happens when you melt music
4
Spiked Movie Theatre Drinks
100
PHOTOGRAPH BY SOFIA JUL
CONTRIBUTERS
CECILIE OLESEN 5
MALASHREE SUVEDI
NELLY MATORINA LYDIA DEICHMANN
NELLY MATORINA
Contributors
JENNIFER AHNTHY PHAM
WRITERS
ANNE ROLD CASSANDRA WEE
5
LYDIA DEICHMANN
SOFIA JUL
CONTRIBUTERS
6
JENNIFER AHNTHY PHAM
MEGAN PHIPPS
EDITORS
MALASHREE SUVEDI
CHRISTINA ELISE HOLM-LARSEN
MARIE JO MOLTRUP
6
LYDIA DEICHMANN
CONTRIBUTERS 7
ILJA MOISEJEV
PHOTOGRPAHERS/ARTISTS
YANA BELOKON
ELISAVETA SAMODUROVA ALEKSANDRA DUBROVSKA
MEGAN PHIPPS
JOE HONG SOFIA JUL
KASPAR CHRISTENSEN
VICTORIA SAVORY
VICTORIA SAVORY CHRISTINA ELISE HOLMLARSEN
CAROLYN ROTENBERG
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CASSANDRA WEE
BRENNA SENGER
THE RHETORIC. AUTUMN/WINTER 8
2012
FEATURES
northside festival page 83 PHOTOGRAPH BY ANNE ROLD
A day in pictures page 80 8
PHOTOGRAPH BY SOFIA JUL
FEATURES PHOTOGRAPH BY CASSANDRA WEE 9
9
get out of my dreams and onto my head page 39
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Creative writing DEAR PERSON WHO STOLE MY WALLET | THE UNIVERSE MEETS HERE | RESURGENCE | WORDS ARE LIKE HEALING DRUGS | FORGED INNOVATION
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PHOTOGRAPH BY YANA BELOKON
CREATIVE WRITING 11
Dear Person Who Stole My Wallet a letter by ANNE ROLD
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PHOTOGRAPHS ON THIS PAGE BY ELISAVETA SAMODUROVA
CREATIVE WRITING
Dear12Person Who Stole My Wallet, I hope that you are reading this right now, and you get a little bit of a weird feeling, perhaps a little cringing feeling in your stomach or warmness eroding from behind your ears, like I do when I get caught in an awkward situation. I don’t mean you any harm, as I think you probably stole my wallet because you are a weak person in some sense or another. Maybe you are a young guy, and you don’t have a lot going for you, and you are not very smart or particularly sexy, and you feel kind of inferior a lot of the time, so stealing things from other people gives you a sense of power. Maybe you are a young woman, and you like experimenting, and you get a little rush when you push yourself into situations where you could get caught, and you like to dance on that little line of insecurity that other people call morals and boundaries. Maybe you kept it, maybe you threw it out, it’s hard to guess even if you are a simple person to figure out. I hope, most of all, that you are a poor person, and that you really needed that tiny bit of cash that was tightly rolled and squeezed into the innermost pocket of the wallet. I hope you took the coins of foreign currency a
and exchanged them somewhere, because the Canadian
12 and toonies would probably add up to something loonies
you could buy yourself a small meal for.
CREATIVE WRITING 13
I wonder what you have been thinking about the items you found when you opened my wallet. Maybe you didn’t even look at all my little precious memories, all pushed together to fit a whole life’s worth of treasures into a paperback sized leather pouch of segregating rooms and secret zippers. Maybe you saw all the stamp-sized photographs and Polaroids of little children, of girls that I used to know when they and I were younger, boyfriends that I have loved, and that one odd photograph of a Mexican-looking man with a moustache that I found by a passport photo booth at a train station in Berlin. I wonder if you thought I was related to any of these faces, if I was a mature woman with my own children,
and
Maybe you
a
Mexican-looking
husband,
perhaps.
became a little intrigued, and since you
obviously don’t have an issue with going through other people’s personal things, you took out all my cards and pictures and notes and lined them up on a table somewhere. I wonder, when you looked at all my cards, whether you sorted them all afterwards, sitting them next to each other and making some kind of pattern or categorizing them. 13
PHOTOGRAPH BY ELISAVETA SAMODUROVA
CREATIVE WRITING 14
Maybe you made a color scheme, and put the brightly yellow health insurance card in one end, and the red blood donator’s card in the other, like I always do. My dad says that’s because I’m a creative person, and my sister is a practical person, because she always lines up her cards after the numbers on them. Maybe you took all the cards with my face on them and looked at my personal information, like my birth date, and tried to figure out what kind of person I could be. Maybe you went on the Internet and googled me, or maybe you tried to find me on Facebook. If you looked at my pictures, you probably also laughed a little when you saw my driver’s license photo. And then you probably wondered why it was Canadian, when I have so many Danish cards and my name is very un-international. I feel a little weird now, realizing that you know my name and my birth date and the name of my family doctor and the number you can call if you would like to talk to him between 8 and 9 on weekdays, or between 12 and 6 on weekends. I hope that you feel a little weird too, because it’s a lonesome feeling when you can’t share it, like so many other emotions. 14
CREATIVE WRITING 15 Well, Person Who Stole my Wallet, I might not have your bright yellow
health card or your picture ID or any images containing people you might or might not know, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t try to figure out who you are. The interesting thing is that, even though you technically know everything about me, information that is usually only shared with the government, doctors, and teachers, I might actually know you better because you are the person who stole my wallet, and I think it takes a specific type of person to do something like that. I hope you keep my little treasures safe and maybe try to figure out who I am, because I hope that the little memories, as ripped and worn and random as they are, might make me seem like an interesting person. I have given up the hope that you will return my things to me, my little precious collection of nostalgia and reminders, but I still can’t help but wonder whether you appreciate the irony in this situation. I don’t need your personal information to know you, when the things you do can show so much about the person you are. With regards. ш
PHOTOGRAPH BY YANA BELOKON 15
PHOTOGRAPH BY YANA BELOKON
CREATIVE WRITING 16
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PHOTOGRAPHS ON THIS PAGE BY ELISAVETA SAMODUROVA
CREATIVE WRITING 17
THE UNIVERSE MEETS HERE: A recollection of beauty
PHOTOGRAPH BY ELISAVETA SAMODUROVA
by malashree suvedi Souls; which are born of freedom and infinity, roam here. Theyâ€&#x;re wild, and fast. Etched with dirt, And bruised a lot, They smile their broken smiles. Their giggles are too articulate to be real, too divine to be false. Their movements are loud and precise. Souls; born to run, 17
CREATIVE WRITING 18
And move and turn, Lie naked and emancipated. “This is the point where the universe meets” she quivers, “everything is perfect.” You can taste the air, The universe meets here, Tears are pure. We aren‟t expected to follow rules here. All the universe asks of us is to exist. But, time seems to breathe in surety and breathe out existentialism. How does one find the surety that age and time swallow? Is there a way to stop time? Maybe there is, but honestly
‘But, time seems to breathe in surety and breathe out existentialism’
PHOTOGRAPH BY 18 MEGAN PHIPPS
CREATIVE WRITING 19
PHOTOGRAPH BY MEGAN PHIPPS
uttering „to exist‟ is the only answer to all of these musings. That‟s all we can do: exist. And swim in the nude. Let the water touch you in places you didn‟t even know existed, let it disarm you, and it let it engulf you. Let the sky above you become the reflection of your soul, and the water you in swim in the reflection of your depth. Say no words, but move your lips to the unheard song of the wind. I am not going after anything but my soul, Because Lo! And behold, 19
CREATIVE WRITING 20
It‟s drifting away. “But you are a soul” the universe sighs, “you are a soul, and you have a body. It isn‟t the other way around, how can your soul drift away? It‟s more likely that your body‟s being shed” That makes sense, in theory. But reality is a different story. However, it must be acknowledged that reality is an evil manmade construct designed to force societal norms upon wild souls. And the universe meets at this point, The muddy water anoints, As sighs of relief are heard. Pain could not help but flee and indifference soon died. After a while, all the wild, naked, free, divine souls had left was air. Air that tasted like truth and sounded like glory. Maybe, someday, you‟ll see the place too. Don‟t count on it though. As with all divine sightings; they are rare. Ш
20 PHOTOGRAPH BY ELISAVETA SAMODUROVA
CREATIVE WRITING
a technicolour 23
PHOTOGRAPH BY ELISAVETA SAMODUROVA
BY JENNIFER AHNTHY PHAM
beginning
Prologue
”I need a coin,” you say, your voice suddenly carrying the authoritative undertone that it has always lacked. She raises an eyebrow at you. “It’s the least you 23
can give me,” you insist stubbornly, and she sighs, a soft, indulgent exhale, and manages to dig out a grimy coin from the pocket of her shorts. “Here goes,” you say, before flipping it in the
air, watching it fall to the ground with the sound of finality. This is where your new life ends, where your world begins to lose something resembling colour.
CREATIVE WRITING 24
24
You wake up.
ILLUSTRATION BY CASSANDRA WEE
CREATIVE WRITING 25
You wake up.
hope that you have
smiled a little sadly.
The ceiling above you – the walls surrounding you – the sheets covering you;
kept for far too long, but it is also an unshakable gleam in the midst of black and white, so you grasp it,
Clearing out her things after a year and a half, she kissed the corner of your mouth and whispered that she
cling to it, pray that it will take you someplace else.
was sorry. You remember her pink lips, the yellow of the nail polish she wore.
they are all in varying shades of grey. You close your eyes, expecting the insides of your eyelids to be
This is your life: you have a job which you hate, but pays off your student loan, your
crimson – that is what you remember. Instead, it is all black, an abyss.
rent, your mother’s (futile) medical bills. Finishing law school, you had thought,
It takes you a few seconds to remember,
this is it, this is where my life begins.
this is your life. Stepping outside your door, you look up at the sky, look at the grass feet,
beneath your the banners,
billboards and posters littering the edges of the roads, thinking
blue green red yellow purple, hoping that colour will bleed into the world instead of out. It is a desperate 25
Back then, when you walked down the street, there would be colours (bright ones, mostly blue and green with an aura of hope).
You still see her, sometimes, when she walks past your desk, but she blends in with the grey behind her now.
In a way, the lack of colour is gratifying; without it, you almost do not recognise her at all.
Y
ou
You had a girlfriend,
begin to question whether your life actually ever began, simultaneously wanting to know and
who you thought you would marry. Instead, she took a look at you one morning and
being afraid; because what would it say about you if it turned out that you have
CREATIVE WRITING 26
spent the best years of your life in only a pre-life stage? On the other hand, if this truly is life – if it has begun without you noticing – does this mean that there will be no more beginnings,
that stuck
you
are here
until your miserable life ends?
O
ne afternoon, while you are still busy turning this over in your head, you take a shortcut home from work and somehow end up toppling over a young woman in the middle
of the street. Standing up quickly, you flush, offering your hand to help her up, but she needs none of your help. She looks at you for a long time, eyes boring into yours –
she has really striking green
O
26
PHOTOGRAPH BY ELISAVETA SAMODUROVA
CREATIVE WRITING 27
eyes – before she offers you her hand, her name. She runs off before you can give yours – as if already knows it.
her she
You awake one morning with a flicker something resembling rebellion your chest.
of
in
Looking around your room, you realise the change: there is
green, green of the tree outside your window, green of the forgotten tea mug on your night stand, green of the t-shirt you realise you are wearing.
Y 27
ou meet her again. It’s a
grey, dreary evening.
to a battered couch
The kind with wet sidewalks and the smell of acid rain. She watches you walk past her, hands in the
and settling down next to you, asks you in a cryptic manner whether or not you can keep a secret. You
pockets of her shredded shorts, legs wet, one foot bare. You hunch your back,
flinch, replying “yes” without even thinking about it, and she kisses the corner of
not wanting to draw attention to yourself. She looks at you, appraising your every
your mouth much like another girl did, once upon a time, but instead of whispering
move, so you stop. With a flick of her chin, she draws you into an old, unused
sorry, she whispers,
apartment, obscure dust swirling around your feet like fog, asking you, “Are you ready to start anew?”
You tell her you don’t understand what she is offering, but she shakes her head at you with a mirthful turn of lips, pulls you by your tie
“I need you”. It turns out that she is on the wrong side of the law, and that she does need you, but not in the way you might have expected. She is a criminal, the kind with light feet and easy fingers, who hides in shadows and always succeeds because what does is
– it’s a drug, a talent turned addictive. not for money
CREATIVE WRITING 28
S S
he wants to steal
into the archives of the corporation you work for, and for a moment, shame makes you angry, embarrassment that she has been watching the whole firm, and has singled you out as the one most likely to turn traitor. She smoothes the anger from your face with a soft palm, giving you a hesitant kiss on the lips, and you think to
yourself,
like
why not throw
think about new beginnings; you ask
caution to the wind?
your
life.
You
for a coin. In the end, you never
When you open your eyes again, the dust at your feet is not dust at
regret the outcome, because to you, it does not matter if she is using you; everyone
all, but specks of colour, golden dots from the fireplace, red from a plush carpet,
has been using you for as long as you can remember, and she is the only one willing to
rich brown of the leather you are sitting on. It feels nothing
give you something in return.
28
PHOTOGRAPH BY ELISAVETA SAMODUROVA
CREATIVE WRITING 29
G
radually, the world begins to resemble both reality and a highbudget movie – different from the previous colourless sequence. Colours are too bright and people too perfect. She is perfect, you think, as she teaches you how to move silently, how to steal without
PHOTOGRAPH BY ELISAVETA SAMODUROVA
29
detection,
how
to
“No no,” she laughs,
become a different person in front of surveillance cameras.
her good mood contagious. “See, when light hits you at a certain angle, not only does it bring out
“It’s a trick of light,” she explains to you when you express doubt, because
you cannot escape who you are,
or hide certain features, but your face can become either paler, or darker – and
have
then when they look through the tapes after, they never consider that you
done so a long time ago.
might not have been this colour at all”.
or
you
would
CREATIVE WRITING 30
PHOTOGRAPH BY ELISAVETA SAMODUROVA
You shake your head stubbornly. “They won’t only look at the colour though, they’ll look at my hair, my build, everything –” “That’s where you’re wrong,” she says softly, her eyes compelling you to believe her:
“In this world, everything is about colour.”
30
Y
ou’re good at this. The success brings her
joy, becomes a magnet between the two of you, and after a few months of working together, she puts her hands around your face, looks at you euphorically, kisses you fervently after every single job welldone. You realise somewhere along the line that it is not
because addicted
you to
are the
adrenaline that you succeed. She does it for the thrill, always, only the thrill;
you
do
it
because without your help, she will get caught. “If anything wrong,” she though mischievous
goes says, the smile
CREATIVE WRITING 31
tugging
at
her
lips
betrays her statement with a statement of its
of course it won’t go wrong. “Run”. own:
You drag her forward by the belt loops of her jeans, so you can knot your hands in her hair. You replace answers with kisses, paying special attention to the ivory of her jaw, to the rose spreading on
world, you experience
room they have placed
that
you in is lifeless and cold without her presence, reminding you of your earlier self so much that, for
she, in all of her bold, stark colours is all you can see. The night before you are caught, you wake up to warm, yellow sunlight playing in the tresses of her hair. You think to yourself,
no more beginnings.
Y
ou cross your arms. The
a moment,
you fear that the past year has just been a desperate dream. You shout for her; they tell you that she is in another cell next door. One of the uniformed
her neck, to the sore blue jewels randomly scattered on her arms. When you open your eyes, you realise that the world has changed yet again. First from black and white to vibrant colours, now someone has painted the world in muted shades. In this third 31
PHOTOGRAPH BY ELISAVETA SAMODUROVA
CREATIVE WRITING 32
men slams his fist into
confesses alone, that
naiveté, your narrow-
the table, repeating what he has been telling you for the past hour. “If both of you remain silent,” he
person will be let off with a six-month sentence, while the other can get up to ten years,” he continues,
mindedness:
says, frustration giving his words a menacing edge, “the court has sufficient
his grin becoming increasingly feral. “But if both of you confess, you each get
evidence to sentence the both of you to five years of imprisonment”.
three years”.
You know what comes next; the thought of it makes you flinch. The man notices, smiles sardonically. “If either you or the lady next door
You know this strategy; you studied law, you studied the probabilities, the possibilities, and you wrote a paper on the ideal answer, titled it
because you never added colour to your equations. You have no idea what she is going to answer, “I need a coin,” you say, picturing a soft, indulgent exhale and the weight of a grimy coin in your hand. ш
“An Analysis of The Prisoner’s Dilemma”. It hits you now, your
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PHOTOGRAPH BY ELISAVETA SAMODUROVA
TO READ THE REST OF RHETORIC MAGAZINE (trust us, the best is yet to come)
VISIT www.rhetoricmagazine.com /magazine
PHOTOGRAPH BY BETTIE SADAUKSA