Boomerang Board:
Stanley Ward
Ivan Ryan
Giulia Martinez Brenner
Sam de Visser
Khoa Tran
Sophie Ryan
Senan Cullinane
Scope Board:
Vanessa Morgan
Yağmur Zubaroğlu
Fares Alwani
Malachi Shapiro
Cosme Mesquita da Cunha
Maura van der Ark
Writers:
Sam de Visser
Stanley Ward
Giulia Martinez Brenner
Rafaella Karadsheh
Caterina Zanardi
Noor van Asseldonk Chen
Vela Kaluderovic
Ricky Maggioni
Milena Stoilova
Harry Mills
Daniel Kamenkovitch
Artists:
Annelise van den Akker
Yağmur Zubaroğlu
Malachi Shapiro
Vanessa Morgan
Sofie Ryan
Akari Sakamoto
Lea Litvak
Vivian Liang
Above is the message we sent to Scope on our Teams group after we decided on a theme for this edition, which is a collaboration between our two boards. I’d like to thank the Scope board, and our wonderful writers, for embracing the theme and being willing to try something new. You might notice the writing has a bit of a different tone this edition. This is deliberate. In the monotony of these days, it’s good to shake things up. Open the door. Let some
I hope you are all safe in your dwellings, and comfortable in your
Yours Always,
Stanley Ward Editor-In-Chief
It all started with a silly little e-mail chain. In a long forgotten era, when this school was only a blip on many people’s radars, a giant social experiment still in its infant stages, there was only the email chain. Lost your keys? Send an email. Left something in a classroom? Send an email. Needed to leave an anonymous confession? You couldn’t, because the year is 1998, UCU is a baby, and the internet is only just starting to crawl into people’s lives.
UCU’s very first year book contains a ‘best of’-compilation of funny emails sent through The Chain. Compared to what we have now, these are tame—people losing keys, others replying where the keys are and giving an exact time and date of when they should come by because quickly sending Messenger texts is literally impossible. Compared to the wide variety of UCU-related Facebook pages we have now, that one hundred-person-wide e-mail chain seems horribly inconvenient, but also kind of nice.
UCU Students. UCU Events. UCU Confessions. UCU End of Year Memes Page. UCU Sales for Lekker Memes. UCU Rate My Cat. UCU Find My Plate. Another two hundred different pages I can use to bore you all to death with. The sheer plethora of UCU-related pages makes the email chain it all started with seem like a distant nightmare. In essence, we have done to ourselves what everyone claims to be so against: we’ve transferred UCU to an online sphere and made it so that nobody can ever escape. While the conversation about UCU’s reliance on Facebook is ongoing, even the platforms presented as alternatives seem to be chosen with the seeming online needs of the UCU community in mind.
What was UCU like before we moved all of it online? Naturally, the pandemic has accelerated UCU’s transition to the internet, for all the logical reasons, but it’s funny to think of what this place used to be like before massive UCU debates were moved to inadequate Facebook comment sections. I’ve done some browsing through old Boomerangs (did you know I’m in the Boomerang?) and they actually contain something that seems like reporting on things like GAs and the like. Now it may be a stretch to say that people cared more about these things at the time, because they didn’t, but could it not be said that there was way more incentive to attend them before wacky Twitter accounts and Facebook posts were dictating and documenting everything?
It may be reassuring for some to know that dumb requests on UCU internet pages were therefore made before these pages even existed in the first place. Hilariously enough, they are as much a part of UCU’s fabric of being as its campus, its classes, and its many committees. But the sheer expansion of UCU’s online presence, a natural consequence of the sheer expansion of everyone’s online presence, is kind of disturbing. With the pandemic still locking us in (#OneYearAnniversary!) we have more than ever turned all of UCU over to the internet and its algorithms.
Another fun thing: you know how all of UCU is interconnected now because of our Facebook pages? You know how you can get rice wine vinegar from a random unit by simply just asking for it, usually within minutes? You know how our social media has made supermarkets obsolete? You know how that’s seemingly impossible without the internet? You see those intercom phones on your unit wall? Well, a very long time ago those used to be connected to other units. You could call them through the intercom phones. Needed something from another unit? Just call them! In a way, the UCU internet has been around for much longer than it has actually been around.
The online identity of UCU, our interconnectedness, has been around for much longer than Facebook or even the UCU internet has. In some ways, this is a little depressing—lots of people seem to be dismayed by this Great Community due to our online behaviour, but this online behaviour isn’t just online. It’s our behaviour, like it or not. Facebook or no Facebook, the shitposting, the begging for random things, the useless debates, they’ll stay. Perhaps something to keep in mind when lamenting our stupidity next time—UCU dwells wherever it wants to dwell, and even without Facebook, or even the internet, it’ll find a way.
The one group I have unreserved respect for (excluding emergency service professionals) are cooks. There is something about those who cook professionally, in both the hardiness of their attitude, but also their delicacy, which I have always been drawn to. The critic Jay Rayner has described cooking as bending ingredients to one’s will, and I agree. Ingredients can be brittle and difficult, and sometimes they require skill and force to be transformed into something worth eating. I like to think I have respect for food, and by extension, those who care for it. I am not alone in this, or in my fascination with one chef-turned-writer: the late Anthony Bourdain.
There is something about the rawness and honesty Bourdain injected into the fairly pedestrian world of food travel programs. I cannot imagine Gordon Ramsey attending therapy in Argentina, speaking honestly about his own suicidal thoughts, and interspersing them with shots of the same man enjoying slow cooked barbecue and cool beers in the sun. On Parts Unknown, this is what Bourdain did, and rawness seemed to be a theme for Bourdain’s final television project before his death in 2018.
On the 8th of June, Anthony Bourdain hanged himself in Le Chambard Hotel Restaurant Alsace in the French historical town of Kayserberg. It is a strange grief, mourning a television celebrity you do not know. Because I wasn’t necessarily mourning the real man himself; I was mourning the tragedy of his situation. That a man, gifted in his later years with an extraordinary life, could not outrun the darkness of his youth.
There is a particular scene of Bourdain trying to make Coq au vin with tough malnourished chickens, slaughtered by each crew member on a boat on the Congo River. “If you want to eat, you kill it yourself” he yells to the camera crew as the waters become choppy and night sets in. The power keeps cutting out on the boat, leaving Bourdain alone in the kitchen, cooking in the dark. Sweat dripping from his brow, television façade long abandoned, he struggles to bend the ingredients to his will.
I often feel like moments of darkness can be alleviated by better situations. A master’s program, a successful submission to a magazine, another few years aboard. But when I think about Anthony, I fear that no matter how far we travel, how much we try to live, we will always be destined to be left alone cooking in the dark.
Routine: bedtime playlist, bedtime joint, pyjamas, lip balm.
I wonder what my unitmates are doing right now. Eight other people living, sleeping, working, shitting. Days intertwined, separated by paper and cement. Sometimes I catch them walking down the hall, towel wrapped tight, leaving a trail of wet footprints. Sometimes doors are left open. Eight other people, such familiar strangers I now call home. Funny how things change.
Seventeen, Sharon Van Etten. Feel Nostalgic. Things really do go by too quickly. Hot take. There are moments that are stronger reminders and the knowledge becomes physical, this mortal knot tightens.
A life I have not yet had, bleeding, haemorrhaging, through a paper cut in time. Temps perdu, temps retrouvé, permanently inked on my thighs.
Eighteen year old me thought herself quite the intellectual. I wonder what makes things immune to regret. How are we expected to not cling to the past? To not hold onto memory? Any attempt to fool ourselves that things last a little longer.
My parents started another business. My father is now making bagels. You should know he is an extraordinary cook.
Not so long ago we were driving somewhere and he explained to me how he perfected his onion bagel.
His dad ate one every morning, standing at the kitchen counter, boxer shorts and butter. I never knew my grandfather. My dad played with recipes until the day he opened the oven and he was a child again. And unlocked that fuzzy outline of a man in boxers with onions on his breath. Funny how things remain.
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Growing up, I’ve always been told to never dwell on my past. However, I’ve recently come to the conclusion that I’ll never be able to avoid doing that. I’ve found that dwelling on the past makes it easier to move forward, especially when it comes to dealing with grief.
My grandma (suddenly) passed away a few weeks ago, and coming to terms with that has been difficult. When I flew home to spend time with my family, I couldn’t help but notice a gaping hole every time we visited my grandpa. The room felt quieter, empty without laughs at her witty remarks. Her usual spot on the couch looked odd without her sitting down, cosily wrapped up in blankets. To fill this hole, I’ve been revisiting the past. I remember her gentle smiles, and her soft laughs, and all the joy she brought everyone who knew her.
I could write a thousand pages talking about how incredible my grandmother was, but one thing I know was that she
was extremely smart. She was the kind of person who would read a book, and remember every detail years later. It came in handy during school, and she ended up skipping a year. She always wanted to be a nurse, and when the time came, she was offered the opportunity to study and train to become a nurse for free. However, her father did not allow it. Decades later, my grandma would still talk about how she was denied the opportunity to pursue her dreams.
Ever since I’ve heard my grandmother talk about the opportunity taken from her as a child, I’ve learned that it’s sometimes hard to forget the past. No matter how far you go in life, you will always think of the past to think of the present, and wonder what could have been. Sometimes it brings clarity in the jumbled mess that comes with grief. Sometimes it helps you cope with the present. Either way, dwelling on the past might not be as bad as they tell you.
“It’s no celebration”. That was Frida’s call at 7 in the morning on the 8th of March 2018. On the brown carpet of our Bucharest apartment, the usual mess of socks, coloured pencils, and empty rakja glasses gave a curious backdrop to that statement. Frida’s even face, suddenly hardened by a calm but steady rage, felt alien to such a light setting.
We were a handful of international students, working in Bucharest for a local organization offering after-school services. We normally spent our mornings in an exhilarated panic, trying to come up with activities that would hold past our non-existent Romanian. While it was not unusual for us to chat over the origami patterns and the English quizzes, I am pretty sure that the conversation on Women’s Day had been going on for a while, possibly from the night before. So when Frida, the Mexican schoolmate a year above me, pronounced those words, I first overlooked them; took them more as a point in her argument than as a stand-alone statement.
I would find myself thinking more and more on what she had said as the day progressed. Events like Women’s Day, celebrations that had been present in my life since I could remember, had started morphing from the familiar to the political ever since I moved from my hometown, Bologna, to Duino. This north-Italian seaside village was the unexpected setting for the international school that thought it a good idea to send their pupils on volunteering weeks in Romania. The change had been mostly brought about by conversations with people like Frida, who possessed a knowledge and a will to share it I had never seen before. What she referred to that day, as faithfully as I can report it two years later, was that Women’s Day was not born as the festivity we have grown to know, but also that there wasn’t anything to celebrate
I hadn’t lived in a vacuum for 17 years. I knew about feminicides and rape culture. I somewhat knew about the gender pay gap. I certainly had learned a thing or two about gender roles, but the notion of things like “the patriarchy” still felt like an exaggeration. There was almost an expectation of gracefulness from my part: I did realize that getting mimosa flowers (the traditional gift on women’s day in Italy) was at very best a reductive form of appreciation directed at the literal half of humanity. Yet I thought that despite the rising feminicide statistics, despite the victim blaming in the media, we still ought to be nice and grateful for the thoughts of relatives and friends wishing us a happy day of being born the other gender. I also knew only half of the story, because I had been born in a place and within a skin that had protected me from experiencing most of those things in first person.
The type of reaction that I would have gotten at home for questioning a day like the 8th had always prevented me to move on from my assumptions. My parents stayed carefully away from the extremist jargon of those feminist collectives that stuck leaflets on the streetlights in the city centre. The idea that gender disparity was part of a bigger system shed worrying shadows over our own private lives. After all, recognizing that a system encompasses all of society means recognizing that you are to some extent complicit. Even the reassuring conception of the developed west, the first world of rights as opposed to the “rest”, on which my family’s left leaning discourse laid its foundations, shook at the notion that gender equality was not yet another victory of the societal and economic growth we had narrated for ourselves. I don’t think I would have ever moved past that perspective without Frida’s statement: it is no celebration.
The 8th of March is not a day of celebration but rather of commemoration. In the year of the conversation over the carpet between Frida and I, Mexico would see 891 feminicides and Italy 133. Of course these statistics only account for violent deaths and not those caused by other gender-related factors, such as deadly abortions, unsafe work conditions, and different access to healthcare. Not only must we acknowledge these deaths, but also the constant labour that watching over women’s rights requires – an effort easily nullified by governments and threatened by the ever-present guardians of the traditional family
There is an argument for celebration. Something that goes along the lines of “a day to recognize those who work every day to make it better”. It is true, to a certain extent, that Women’s Day gives visibility to stories and figures normally overlooked. But this take on the eighth of March neglects the power that rage and sorrow can have. In stating over and over the numbers of victims that pile up, in continuing to denounce assault and continuing to talk about it, we are not faulty of reiteration, nor of showing only the grim side: we are showing that first of all that this fight is still going, and we are giving that fight ground to take root in. There is action in remembrance, change in sorrow.
Dear S,
I don’t even know where to begin. I have not seen you in a month, since we decided that it was a good idea to stop talking. I don’t think about you everyday anymore. We have changed so much. Remember when you used to draw trees without flowers?
I had always been so scared of falling out of love. But the weirdest part of all is that it felt so natural. We have talked about this before, but I remember exactly the moment I fell in love with you, under that warm crimson sunset on the Portuguese coast. And I cannot explain how it went away.
As the tide came, the tide left, softly and unexpectedly. We stopped sharing songs before going to bed. I stopped asking you about your day, and you did not pay attention to my political arguments at dinner. Holding each other felt like a mechanical motion, void of any real need of our skins to touch. But I still wanted you to hold me. I wanted you to hold me and whisper memories. I wanted you to make me laugh by dancing in the kitchen, and yet I knew that I’d have to force up the corner of my lip. How can I move on when I don’t want to let go? I tried. I tried, as if letting go was the result of looking forward, of forgetting the past. But I didn't really want to forget. I wanted to remember the first times we looked at each other differently, the nights when we moved to the music and your hair looked silver under blue neon lights. The way you only started drawing flowers in trees after you met me. Will you always draw them now?
I wonder what role we will play in each others’ lives from now on. Being friends has not really worked out, and it probably never will. Will you call me the day you graduate? Will I send you a picture if I finally travel to New Zealand? As you change, I will too, but not together. I can’t believe that my new friends haven’t met you. It is hard to imagine that to them, your name will simply be one of many in my stories. But there’s no other way forward. I keep trying, slowly starting to notice other people - terribly afraid. The fear of realizing that I am moving on makes me unable to let go of you. It means that I have to redefine myself, that I have to let go, somehow, of this part of me that will always be with you, that I have to stop involving you in all the decisions I make. What if I want to move on but I don’t want to let go? I live caged in purgatory.
We become individuals again. It all seems so natural, yet I’ll always remember that first moment I realized I was in love. That time when you ran towards the sea and the horizon seemed to come closer. The pink and orange intertwined in the sky and reflected onto the ocean, moving with it, as the waves went back and forward. And as the shadow of your body approached me, in those slow tired movements from having battled the forces of nature, I knew it. I suddenly just knew. On that evening of June, on the Portuguese coast with the sun completing its cycle, leaving behind the beauty of the day, the smell of seaweed, and the warmth of bodies that had not danced together, I realized that I did. When I am older, on warm June nights, I promise you that I will walk along the sea, and regardless of where you are and who I am, you will always cross my mind.
Something has gone terribly wrong. The friendly baldheaded Slovenian who had been our lift for the past two hours got a little confused by the Slovenian/Croatian border.
Approaching the border, there are usually two options.
Option 1: Do not cross the border into Croatia.
Option 2: Cross the border into Croatia.
Much like Bill Clinton, our Slovenian friend found a third way.
Option 3: Accidentally cross the Slovenian part of the border, panic, tell us to leave the car, and drive back leaving us stranded between both.
We’re in a new country now. It’s a small state, consisting entirely of some kind of police station, multiple checkpoints for passenger and commercial vehicles, and an under-construction duty free shop (UCDFS). The flat area we are standing on is flanked by walls of grey ragged stone. Not climbable. Besides, not only are we not kitted out for hiking, but the border security is also armed. On one side of our new home is the Slovenian border we have just passed. Before the border it’s all highway, where it’s not only dangerous, but illegal to flag down cars. On the other there is a road, passing through a ravine which leads to the Croatian border. There is no footpath.
To get a ride, a hitchhiker’s best bet is a gas station, but any car park is a potential option. Any place where you can accost people when they are no longer protected by the aluminium walls of their vehicles yields better results. People behave differently when they’re secured by walls. Walls, borders, oceans. Us and them. Us and the Other: the not-us. A petrol station is where we met our large Slovenian friend, who was returning from a nightshift in one of the many roadside casinos we’d seen billboards for. In our new country, no cars stop. These travellers do not seem interested in the goods and
wares (giant Toblerones, identical perfumes, whiskey) of the UCDFS. We stand in the UCDFS car park as the initial dusting of snow on the asphalt becomes a decent coating, and it is beginning to settle on our clothes. An umbrella is used as a makeshift solution – if the snow settles and melts into the fabric of our coats, it’s game over.
Despite the umbrella, it is starting to get very cold. There are three of us travelling together for safety reasons. The downside of this is that truckers (the most generous of the road users) are not legally allowed to carry three passengers. Two truckers have stopped to tell us this. Nobody else has stopped to tell us anything, perhaps too intimidated by the stone-faced security guards (who keep asking us to step away from the checkpoints) to park their cars in this no man's land. For two hours we fail to flag down a car. Each rejection wears down my hope in humanity - we are the tired, the (temporarily) poor, the huddled masses - please just give us a fucking lift.
In March of 2019, I talked my way onto a FlixBus headed to Zagreb that was forced to stop for inspection. It was the conclusion to what, for me, despite the inconvenience was really just a holiday. An adventure. A way to kill a week off for less than 80 Euro. A pretty good story to write about. In May 2019 a migrant boat capsized and 70 people hoping to reach Europe drowned in the Mediterranean. It was the deadliest such incident in this ocean since January. A rescue ship that carried 30 survivors to shore was seized by the Italian authorities after docking - Italian waters are closed to such NGO vessels. The captain was investigated for aiding illegal immigration, and Matteo Salvini, Italy’s interior minister, tweeted from within the little aluminium walls of his mind. The tweet read “The ship has been blocked and seized; this will be their last trip. Bye Bye!” Last trip, as if it were a vacation. As if it didn’t end in lungs filled with cold water.
Something has gone terribly wrong.
Imagine you sit at a table, at rest, nothing missing, maybe even some friends or family around. Suddenly, someone moves forward and decides to light a candle. You observe how the person carefully makes the flame and gives the silent candle life, retreating into the seat with a sense of success. You stare into the newborn light. Fire has always touched you in a place of your mind you could only hardly grasp – a place on the edge to the realm of the unconscious and depths beyond. Always this constantly changing pattern of something which yet stays constantly the same: this magical flickering, the catching crackling, inevitable hypnotizing, of this entity given – or sometimes stolen - to humans from Gods above. You look at it carefully, listen to it artfully, feel its warmth curiously. Slowly, you start to lose the feeling of the chair you are sitting in, lose touch of time even. Slowly, everything else starts to become blurry. More and more the only things you know are you - and the living childish flame. You are alone with yourself, but together with the flame. Still it moves in mysterious ways - but it does not frighten, nor does it bother you, really – it only evokes awe. You sink into this marvellous play of the elements, and a smile finds and touches your face. Through your nose you breathe in, deeply and richly, and your body reacts accordingly. Sometimes, you realize faintly in the back of your mind, deep breaths are like little love notes to your body. So you sit and watch this tiny flame doing its play.
Quietly, a voice emerges. Soft in its tone, warming your mind like the candle does your heart. And as the voice grows strong enough, you hear the melody ask:
"If your life would be a flame, would you like it to be as much of a burning engulfing blaze as it can be, wondrous and a point of admiration, an explosion worth of writing down in the books of history; or rather a tiny but peaceful flame in a candle, providing light for a limited space but yet a source of evoking calm for the ones who can see and feel it, creating a sense of home?"
Which one would it be? Which one should it be? For you?
Breathe in. And breathe out. Step by step you come back. You feel your chair, feel the air of your living room, feel your arms and legs which apparently are still there. You open your eyes. The tiny flame bounces in its place, still, sort of happily and very much alive; as if it would like to say hello. You stand up. Breathe in one last time.
And your day continues.
by Harry Mills
Vmarkt Vegan Supermarket Zevenwouden 238, Utrecht
Cost: €(€€)
Price to Calorie Ratio: Variable
I’m not going to lie guys, it’s tough writing a food column in the Coronacene. With most restaurants having been shuttered up for the last six months I’m missing that classic restaurant ambience… the low lights and the soft music, the clink of glasses and the rustling of chairs, the snatches of conversation punctuated intermittently by clandestine whispers and bursts of unbridled laughter. Now, in their place, there is only the drone of the moped, the piercing trill of the bell, and the sad rustling of paper bags and plastic forks.
Do not despair, however, for there is an antidote for this gastronomic recession in which we find ourselves… good ol’ home cooking (one could call it dwelling cooking, but one should not). Now, before you put this down, thinking you do plenty of home cooking nowadays anyways and don’t need some dude telling you how to boil pasta, I’m not talking about bland, deformed carbohydrates coated in green sludge. I’m talking about a real FEAST, one rich in flavour, texture, and experience (but at the same time reasonable in price). I’m talking about… loaded fries. (Quick disclaimer that the loaded fries you are going to read about were inspired by Freddy’s Comfort Food in Rotterdam, column pending).
Let’s start at the bottom––not with the fries, but with the table. So, the first thing you’re going to want to do is grab your nearest Dutch friend and have them coat your table in tinfoil (this is likely to inspire an intense and somewhat perplexing blend of excitement, nostalgia, and even nationalism, so handle with care). Next, you’re going to shovel about two bags worth of fries onto the table (if your mother asks, these have been cooked via airfryer); extensive research has suggested that a mix of waffle and curly fries is optimal. Once the crispy, golden foundations of your culinary edifice have been laid, it’s
time for the protein. At this juncture, two paths lay ahead of you. On the one hand, you can go for the classic chicken thighs, fried to a succulent golden brown. On the other hand, you could go for a vegan option; seitan, to be precise. And now, a word from our sponsor (jokes, I wish… @capitalism please give me free food)…
Are you a vegan? Have you ever wanted to try vegan food? Have you never wanted to try vegan food because you don’t believe that it could ever be as good as its animal based equivalents? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of those questions then you’re in luck because a vegan supermarket just opened up less than 15 minutes away from UCU. Chock-a-block with vegan goodies––candies, condiments, meat and dairy substitutes, baked goods, and even a nacho pizza (in case one of your Italian friends has annoyed you recently)––Vmarkt is the ideal destination for anyone keen on a plant based pilgrimage. More germane to our loaded fries, Vmarkt stocks seitan, a type of wheat gluten which, when combined with veggie stock, yields a surprisingly realistic meat substitute that can be cooked in any manner of ways; for the purposes of the loaded fries we’re going for, well, fried.
Either of these two protein options are going to be coated––nee, slathered––in the sweetest, sourest, goodest kimchi honey butter sauce you’ve ever tasted (if you’re going completely vegan, just use vegan butter) before being draped elegantly atop the fries. Since these are loaded fries, we’re adding another sauce; this time it’s a molten cheese sauce (vegan version also sold at Vmarkt). Finally, adorn this glorious pile of goodness with a dusting of finely chopped spring onions and a smattering of toasted sesame seeds. And there it is, a feast worthy of Obelix. Before you tuck in, be sure to dim the lights, set your favourite Tiny Desk playing in the background, and bring out a couple drinks for you and your friends. Let the munching and mirth begin.
Welcome to our monthly column on what’s culturally popping in and around Utrecht! We hope you’ll be amazed or amused, or maybe even both. In this month’s edition, we will not be focusing on Utrecht, instead moving to new dwellings, so let’s not dwell on the past.
Apologies for the awful puns. All jokes aside, this month’s special edition in relation to the collaboration with Scope dwells us on the concept of ‘dwelling’. In our column, we’ve decided to interpret this as a space which is of significance to someone because they spend/ have spent time there, whether alone or with friends, on a regular (or at least repeated) basis. In this month’s column, Milena and I have chosen to each individually discuss a dwelling of cultural significance in non-Dutch cities to which we have a connection.
Ricky: Before moving to Utrecht I lived in Brussels for nearly 11 years. After my decadelong stay in the Belgian capital, I consider two iconic places in the city to be true dwellings: the
Grand Place and the Parc du Cinquantenaire. The Grand Place is situated in the middle of Brussels - or as close to the ‘middle’ as you can get in a city that has no real center. The stoney square is surrounded by ornate, gold-laden buildings which hundreds of years ago would have served as merchants’ guilds, the town hall, and important meeting spots. I consider it a dwelling because it was the go-to meeting spots with friends for many Friday night escapades, pub crawls, or even daytime strolls. In other words, when I think of the Grand Place, I think of time spent with friends. On the other hand, the Parc du Cinquantenaire is not a place where I personally spent much time while in Brussels. Yet, I would be remiss not to mention it as it served the very same purpose for many others - a beautiful, scenic, meeting place - that the Grand Place served to me.
Milena: For me dwelling is more related to the zoom-out of everyday life and zoom-in to a familiar, nostalgic place. With that being said, when I think of dwelling, my mind dwells
on my grandparents’ apartment in Bulgaria, in the middle of Sofia’s city center. I’ve spent many moments from my childhood there, either playing the piano with my grandma, running around with my barbie dolls or, most specially, staring from the window to the beautiful Alexander Nevski cathedral right in front of the apartment. A white church with vibrant shades of turquoise and gold fills my memories with nostalgia. When the weather was good, we would go out and walk in the park behind the cathedral. Nowadays, with my grandpa still living in the same old apartment many years later, I like to do the exact same thing; stand in front of the window looking at the beautiful cathedral and thinking back to the precious moments of my childhood.
This has been our brief, but hopefully slightly informative, take on the concept of dwelling! If you didn’t know about the places we mentioned, we highly recommend you save the names for a future trip as they’re definitely worth it.
Yes, I am going to write an entire column praising the Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson, 2001-2003) trilogy and nobody can stop me. I write this as a tribute to my many friends who just “aren’t into these movies” or even more blasphemous, think they’re “just okay”. Have these films been discussed to death? Yes, but as has become clear from these columns beating a dead horse is my favourite thing to do, so I will continue to do so by over-praising these three very famous, very popular movies one more time.
I was a kid when I watched this trilogy for the first time (I’m gonna discuss them as a unit, because that’s kind of what they are—Fellowship of the Ring is the best one, though). This probably greatly contributed to my sense of wonder for these movies, and probably also why I, and many others, still find them so enjoyable today. But my love for this trilogy goes much further than that.
Many of you have at least heard of these films, or seen them re-imagined in memes or parodies - they are almost the quintessential ‘epic
fantasy’, after all. But Rings was based on a story written in the 1950s and therefore forms the basis of what the fantasy genre really is. The elves, dwarves, fantastical worlds and societies, cliché-ridden battles between good and evil: it all originated with the books these films are based on.
The original literary work these movies are based on is a CHONKER, and it’s a miracle that Peter Jackson managed to adapt them as well as he did. It’s abundantly clear that this was a passion project to its director, and it shows. Everything, from production design to the special effects to the music to the acting to the screenplays is something I really can’t describe as anything but peak cinema, pretentious as that may sound. Yet I’ve gone on and on in these columns about how film is personal, about how sometimes, the sheer passion that has gone into a work may override its actual quality and make it seem better than it objectively is. These movies are so filled with character, feel so deeply personal, that I think they make a prime example of that phenomenon.
I do understand why some people aren’t into these movies at all - you will hate them if you don’t like mystical worlds with magical creatures. The storyline does come from the 1950s (shockingly not the most progressive of times) and some plot elements can feel kind of cheap. Yet that doesn’t take away from the visual marvel of its practical effects, its beautiful New Zealand locations, terrifically choreographed action, and its extremely well-crafted world that was so skilfully transferred from J.R.R. Tolkien’s books.
Some of you may have heard of the Hobbit trilogy (2012-2014), in many ways the polar opposite of Rings. Retaining much of its creative team but lacking all of the heart and passion, watching these alongside the Rings trilogy really shows what those subjective qualities can do to a work of art like this. Is my view tainted by nostalgia? Sure, but nobody can deny the sheer quality of this trilogy, the love and passion it was made with. So please at least attempt to watch it, if only for that reason. And fine, you may “just not be into them”. But they’re really more than “just okay”.
“Just a reminder that when Shakespeare was quarantined because of the plague, he wrote King Lear.”
I saw this tweet at the beginning of corona and it stressed me out immediately because while I am typically a bit of an underachiever, I still have this twisted tendency to want to overachieve. What this meant in this case specifically was that I started thinking about all the ways in which I could be working on something great and then did none of it. It made me feel weird because while I hate the concept of ‘rise and grind’ with the burning passion of a thousand suns, I couldn’t help but feel a little jealous of the people who still seemed to be thriving and Doing Things. But then when I really think about it, I don’t think anybody is really thriving. We might have found ways to distract ourselves or make the day-to-day more bearable, but life is still not what it used to be and let’s be honest, adjusting is hard.
So what I’ve recently been thinking more about is how I can get going for real. Because I’ve done the freakout, breakdown, depression, and whipped TikTok coffees (in that order) and what I’ve come to realize is that being able to care about things is really the key to getting going. And for the record, when I say ‘getting going’ I’m not talking about ‘getting more work done’ or ‘subjecting myself to neocapitalist ideals of productivity’, but rather the kind of getting going where you’re doing work that you don’t actually mind doing. Doing, making, or creating things that matter to you.
Last edition I wrote about escapism, but where do we go when we’re fully in the moment? Call it jaded, corny, tacky, whatever… but after a long day of staring at screens doing one menial task after the other, sometimes it helps to find sources of inspiration that seem to give your days a little more purpose or meaning.
So, dear campus dwellers, this week I bring you my own small collection of great albums made in little dwellings in the hope that maybe,
just maybe, they’ll help you get going.
Some think he sounds like a robot, others reckon he’s the literal son of God. Either way, this album is something special. Jacob’s debut album is a mix of original pieces and covers where he not only arranges everything but also does all the instrumentals and vocals himself. There’s no questioning his technical skills, but more inspiring is arguably the exuberance of music making which you hear in every track. He made the whole album in his childhood music room, but the joy of making music stretched far beyond those four walls. His enthusiasm is frankly, for lack of a better word, contagious.
Noname
This is an album that has stuck with me ever since I first listened to it. With features from the likes of theMIND, Ravyn Lenae, Smino, Xavier Omär and Eryn Allen Kane, Noname manages to capture the joys and losses of growing up and into yourself, love, heartbreak, and all the little idiosyncrasies in between. The album was finalized in two Airbnb rentals and has the recognizable warm sounds of a Saba, Cam O’bi, and Phoelix production. It’s an album that sounds like homecoming, and one that I come back to whenever I need reminding that sometimes greatness is just honesty and the ability to capture nuance.
A UK hip hop classic recorded mostly in lead vocalist Mike Skinner’s Brixton home. When it comes to getting the sound right, Skinner talks about how he cleared out a wardrobe in his house to create a makeshift vocal booth, using duvets, pillows, and mattresses to soundproof. This album is full of vivid imagery delivered over a banging collage of beats sure to get your head nodding. The sound is raw, singular, and inimitable, with at its heart an unrelenting demand to be heard.
by Vela Kaluderovic
A conversation with my mom repeats in my head for hours. Details remembered, facial expressions burned into memory. I said things I shouldn’t have, I didn’t think fairly, I wasn’t kind enough to her. In the past few months this repeats itself over and over again, and I can’t make it stop. I feel guilty, horrible, angry at myself, for a fight my mom has forgotten about almost as it was happening. I dwell, uncontrollably. A study conducted at the University of Liverpool identified rumination and self-blame as the biggest predictors for the development of depression and anxiety.
Rumination, or dwelling, can be beneficial –when we reminisce about causes of life-affirming emotions, for example. Short-term negative rumination, such as worrying a lot about a test, thinking about an impactful conversation, is usually used to gain new insight about problems we face and is reflective, brooding in nature. It is only when this negative rumination becomes frequent, that it becomes depressive. It starts to interfere with the day-to-day goals we set for ourselves, makes it hard to experience positive emotions and takes abnormal and overwhelming amounts of time to get through. We feel like we’re on autopilot and have no control over feeling low, we believe we deserve it. There may indeed be a physiological cause for this, and a way out.
A meta-analysis conducted by Zhou et al. suggested that the default mode network –DMN, is involved in depressive dwelling. It is an interconnected series of regions in the brain which become active when we daydream or lose ourselves in thought. The study found that people who are dwelling on autopilot show a significant increase in DMN activity, making it far more difficult to pay active attention to our surroundings. However, correlation is not necessarily causation.
It is still not clear why we dwell, but current consensus is that it may simply be an unsuitable strategy to try and cope with certain emotions. Again, reflecting on our past choices can be good, if we do not harbor too much guilt towards ourselves. Depressive dwelling is a punishment undeserved and unnecessary. Whatever the purpose, consequences of it are negative. It has been found to affect memory and information processing. Negative memories are more likely to be remembered long-term and memory is overgeneral – we will remember a period as being inherently negative, instead of one event which caused those negative ruminations in the first place. I may have bitterly fought with my mom for a few hours, but this did not lead to anything traumatic or negative in the hours following it. New information is more difficult to deal with – a ruminator will not be able to forget or ignore information they learned recently, even when told it is of no importance.
Our autopilot rumination is a cyclical punishment no one deserves, so how can we help ourselves out of it? Marcus Aurelius’ advice to ‘dwell on the beauty of life’ may not be too helpful, as it can be read as the equivalent of ‘dude, just look on the bright side’. If you and I are alike in our dwelling disasters, then these seemingly silly solutions may have an impact: Distraction and Meditation (oh yeah, and maybe therapy). Do something with your hands: cook, sew, bake, paint. Derrida and Heidegger wrote their ruminations down and found the pen to be a vessel that let those thoughts exit without damage. Meditation has been proven to decrease DMN activity and may help you regain control over time. Communicate your dwelling to someone, in whatever capacity you can: outside perspective can be healing when our self becomes an unreliable narrator.
Putting one’s self under scrutiny is an important part of growing up. But it has its limits. Being kind to yourself, having empathy through your own misdoings, is vital, especially in the world we’re in today. Remind yourself of your strengths, realize that the dweller in you does not seek growth; it seeks unreasonable punishment. To grow is to accept that, well, of course you are not infallible, and that mistakes are to be let go of once the consequences fizzle out.
Giulia: "My place, whatever that means"
Vanessa: "If my neopets are still alive"
Cosme: "This question"
Sam: "The Dutch elections (and yes the red is from my voting pencil)"
Sofie: "My laptop:))"
Khoa: "This painting"
Stan: " The meaning of Charlie Kaufman films"
Malachi:" how long I can make €33.65 worth of groceries last"
Ivan: "How to actually clean a fridge"
Yağmur: "Bleaching my hair"
Boomerang uses wind energy printers
The Boomerang is a periodical newspaper. It comes out eight times a year. This is the sixth issue of the academic year.
