Unpublished Magazine | Issue 01: Adolescence

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d e a r c r t o r, ea I have thousands of words I’d love to tell you but sadly I would not have enough pages to do so. When I started Unpublished Magazine nearly two months ago I did not expect this much love and support from our readers, let alone being able to publish a zine so quickly. This community of readers has made me the happiest person in the world these past two months and I can’t wait to see how everyone grows as artists. I started Unpublished Magazine because I wanted to give you guys what my younger self never had - a platform to express herself on.

I chose Adolescence as our first theme because I truly believe it is one of the most important times of your life.

Everything you go through during those years is so raw and real that I felt it needed to be showcased, even the worst parts of it. You’re a grown-up, but still a kid at the same time. Whether it’s the people you meet, confronting loss, or learning more about yourself, adolescence is so much more than just ourselves and those years. What we learn in our adolescence can stay with us for our whole lives, and the memories we have often stay in our hearts for years and years.

with love, Unpublished Founder + Editor in Chief Rebecca Bloch

This magazine is dedicated to yours, mine, and our adolescent experience. Our team wants to celebrate the anguish, the euphoria, and everything in between... … like those car rides with your friends, screaming the words to your favorite songs at the top of your lungs.

Staying up to watch the sunrise and saying “I love you” but not knowing if you really meant it. The pile of butterflies fluttering around in your stomach and the 3 am dance parties in your room. Deep conversations about the universe and your heart skipping a beat at the sound of a text message. Writing love letters you’d never send and sticking your head out of the window and letting your hair go crazy. Doodling in the margins of your history notebook and smiling so much your jaw begins to hurt. That hug that you never wanna let go of and the ceiling staring back at you as you lie awake at

night. Falling in love way too quickly and getting your heart broken just as fast. Feeling like you’re on top of the world one minute and hitting rock bottom the next.

Discovering new answers to the question “Who am I?” every other week and being blinded by the flashing colored lights reflecting off of your friends’ faces at a party. Doing something for the first and last time, and feeling like the world is yours...because it is.

Adolescence feels like both everything and nothing, all at once. We feel alone, like no one understands what we’re going through. Yet, even in our extremely unique experiences, adolescence is universal — a universal rite of passage that makes us laugh, cry, feel, and grow into being.

This magazine was created for you, by you. And we hope you enjoy the journey.

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Adolescence is a struggle of accepting a body that the world tells you to hate. I used to hate my nose. A lot. I would spend middle school and early high school nights watching Youtube videos of women in their early twenties and even teens flaunting before and after videos of their new noses. I wanted it. I wanted a cute button nose. But, well, as genes have it, I did not get a button nose. Instead, I got a big nose and a ridge that sits happily on top.

I genuinely thought about saving up for a nose job when I turned 18. I would never have admitted that aloud back then. I was embarrassed to admit it and afraid that if I expressed my insecurity, others would begin to notice it even more. But now I am 20 years old and still have my nose I’m sure if I had the money, I would have been sedated in a chair with a plastic surgeon hovering over me. But, my wallet is painfully slim and my perspective has shifted. I honestly forget about my nose. It does not weigh on my mind the way it used to.

My middle school mind was plagued with, “Oh my god, everyone’s looking at it. Don’t turn your head, they’ll see your side profile. Can we retake that picture?”

But those thoughts are gone now. I am okay with my nose, not because it is any smaller or cuter, but because I redefined what it meant to me. I took the idea that a nose has to be a naturally beautiful accessory to your face and began understanding that to me, my nose is simply just...well, a nose. I get to breathe through it and put blush on it and highlight the tip with shimmery powders and put cute freckles on it whenever I want.

I can get cute golden hoops pierced through it and decorate it as I want. It’s mine. And the more space, the better, right?

As I got older, I realized that I love my personality more than anything else about myself. I make people ugly

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laugh, I make people smile, and I make people feel hopeful. I love that about myself. Along with that internal self love, I couldn’t help but find physical things to admire about myself. Afterall, my body is the vessel that allows me to enjoy this life and help others enjoy theirs. The lighter handed use of dipbrow on my eyebrows helped, too. I love my body. I love it’s curves and strength and soft skin and getting to decorate it with colors and ink. I love my eye color; they’re the same color as my mom’s-hazel. They are warm and full of life and exuberance, just like hers. I love my smile. It’s uniquely mine and mischievous and accentuates my baby-faced cheeks and lets me show people around me that I love them without speaking any words. I love the shadowed, not quite there dimple that I have on my left cheek. All of my siblings got dimples except for me, but I’m pretty happy with the barely existent one I have. It’s like a little surprise that you have to look real close for. It makes me more of a puzzle.

I don’t want to look in the mirror and ignore all of the wonderful things about myself and my face that my two favorite people gave to me--the features that connect me to the people I love most and have shared my whole life with; my family. I am going to have this face and this body my whole life. It is entirely mine, in all of its quirks and uniqueness. It is what people envision when someone says my name--so I want to own that vision.

I want to embrace and love that vision, because well, if I don’t, no one else will want to, either. I want to make sure that I am the first and foremost person loving myself before anyone else does.

I would not be entirely me without my goofy nose. I would not be my truest self. I would not be entirely the me that my friends and family and I love. I want to keep that version of me.

You and I will look like ourselves forever. It may take time, but eventually, we will all be okay with that. I hope you get there soon.

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You cried in the bathroom stall when you started high school. It has been four years since. You are finishing it now, you are still crying in the stall. But this is not all there is to your story. No, there is a middle part. The part that you wish to forget, that you hold on to the tiniest scraps to remember.

You are fifteen, where it all started. You used to dream about high school, how you were going to be a person that people want to be friends with. But instead, you miss middle school because at least there the world was smaller and people were less mean. You wait for the breaks to end in the bathroom stall. You hear people come and go and talk and laugh. You don’t remember the last time that you laughed so freely. Inside the stall, you keep reminding yourself that it will be okay someday. Someday feels too far away. Once, when a guy sees you in the class sitting by yourself he asks you why you are there instead of in the cafeteria with your friends. He does not ask this waiting for an answer, he wants to make you feel small. You feel your stomach clench every time you see him in the next four years.

You try to hold on to your childhood best friend but whenever you are together you can tell that you are past the expiration date. You make up stories in your mind in which someone takes care of you. You want to be held and loved. In an argument, your mother screams that you have a heart made out of ice. She tells you that you are incapable of loving. You believe her. Your 08

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You are sixteen, where it all changed. Your hands shake when giving a presentation, you get the lowest grade. You can’t shake off the feeling that you are not good at anything. The uncertainty of your future scares you. You start to write, not because you are good at it but because you can breathe a little easier once your thoughts hit the paper. Walking down the school halls alone terrifies you. So you keep singing the same part of the song to yourself for distraction. There is a girl.

She joins you for a group project. She tells you a funny story and it makes you laugh. Later that night you write that you are happy in your diary for the first time. The change is not sudden, yet, it feels inevitable. You feel unwanted around your friends from the previous year.

So, when she asks you to join them during lunch you follow her. The people around the table are loud and intimidating. You find it easier to stay quiet most of the time. You know you will stay there as long as she does.

Biology becomes your favourite lesson. You don’t have to share her with anyone in that class. She plays with your hair and you watch her do her makeup. She calls you all the time even though you both hate talking on the phone. That year you got drunk for the first time. In the summer something shifts. Soon all of your friends start to see therapists. They cry and you listen. Part of

you despises them when there is a scene every other lunch. You have suffered so quietly when all you wanted was someone to listen. You hate that part of yourself.

You know it is not their fault. So instead you try to be there for everyone at once. You finally figure out what you are good at. Your own sadness feels so far away.

You are seventeen, where it all seemed to make sense.

You have a best friend. And you still feel like you don’t belong anywhere but at least you have her by your side.

She keeps making up games to make you talk more about yourself. It does not come easily to you but you try. You will always try for her. You tell her about the bathroom stalls and the loneliness and she understands.

You are always afraid that you are going to lose her.

But you keep that to yourself. Instead, you let her rest her head on your shoulder and make plans for the bakery you are going to open one day. Her Fridays are reserved for you. You spend hours in cafes and ride the ferry a thousand times. You fall in love with your best friend. No one knows but you. It terrifies you that it will spill between your lips, through your fingertips. You write letters that you will never send. At some point, you come out to her. After that, you come out three more times to your friends. But never to your parents. Love suddenly feels like the answer to all your questions.

Even when you know she won’t ever love you the way you do, you still have her. It will be fine as long as you have her. When she gets a boyfriend you can’t bear to e 01 u

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classmates invite you to hang out together but when you are walking down a narrow street you are always the one that has to walk alone.

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look at her. She calls you and talks about him the way she used to talk about you and you never wanted to end the call more in your life. Your mother had warned you about this. You should have listened. Now, once again there is pain in your writing. Friday nights are not yours anymore. That’s when it starts. The anxiety that you are happy only when you have her. That you have built yourself around her and once she leaves you are back to nothing. But before you have the chance to fully collapse they break up. It is back to you and her. You forget your doubts a little too fast. All you are left with is the desire to touch her hands, to make her laugh.

When she tells you that she wishes it was only you and her in that room it feels right. Then, everything is wrong.

Listening to her cry over the phone for two hours takes something away from you. And you feel guilty. And you hate yourself for letting it happen. And you promise to keep her safe and happy. And it feels like you were put on this earth to take care of her. The enormity of your love terrifies you.

You are eighteen, where the story ends. You do not realize this until much later but at first, there are the good days. The days that were closest to your romanticized version of growing up. She makes you a birthday cake and writes you a card that you can’t stop rereading. You have a road trip across Europe. Screaming Abba songs from the top of your lungs while driving makes you feel alive. You go on a school trip to Italy and drink too many Spritz. The scar you got on your arm in Florence does not heal for another year. When you are all alone in London you realize your desire for independence, for leaving everything behind. But still, you spend hours outside the tube stations on the phone with her. Neither of you wants to end the call. You give her a love letter but only allow yourself to use the word “love” once in it. Later, you write her two more. You never tell her that they are love letters. You see right through the pain in her. She needs you. When she asks, you admit that you had a crush on her once. You tell her it was years ago. You tell her it was the tiniest thing. You regret this months later for you can never know if she believed you. Your friend group is different now, but you like it better this way. You finally feel like you fit in. You feel loved. Most nights the music in the bar is too loud and everyone is too drunk but you can feel your friend’s arm around you. You hear their voices crack while singing along in the concerts.

There is a new cafe that you all love. There are plays that you want to see. You walk through the streets, arm in arm, with laughter and songs on your lips. The air is fresh and you feel free. You finally see the beauty of your hometown. Then, there are the bad days. Later you try to pinpoint the moment it all went wrong but you only keep going further back. You remind yourself of the letter she had written to you just a month ago before it happened. She was happy to have you then. But you know that there were seeds of uneasiness inside 10

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you long before then. You think of the long facetime calls you had when she was in London, two months ago. She had missed you. You keep remembering the laughter, the light touch of her fingers, the restaurants you were going to try out, the long talks over coffee, the holiday plans you made for the future. Yet, you also remember what you chose to forget. On the worst days, there was the slightly raised voice, the relaxation when another person walks into the room, the pause in the conversations, the messages left unanswered, the absence of calls, the way she would not meet your eyes... But there was a moment right before it all went wrong that you could tell your heart was going to break terribly. It was the moment you realized that her eyes did not shine when she saw you across the room. You had not realized the spark in her eyes until all you had left was the emptiness in them. In that moment, you tried to make things right. You knew what was coming and you would do everything to stop it. She knew too.

She let you struggle to understand what was going on, to try to fix your mistakes, to act as if it was possible to go back. You were in a movie theatre when you realized it was too late, when you received the message that made your hands freeze in a split second. You have no memory of the last ten minutes of the movie. After that, it was a mess. You could tell what went wrong but she denied it. She told you that she did not have the answer.

She told you she was not mad at you. She told you that she knew you tried. She knew you cared about her and it was not enough. You were not enough. Or you were too much. It didn’t matter, she did not want you.

At eighteen, you went back to the bathroom stall. You figured out what the pain on your chest that never left was. It was the pieces of loneliness you had left from all those years ago. You realized it had never left. You had been terrified of it for as long as you can remember. You had done anything to keep it closed in your chest. The pain was too unbearable to know that you have failed.

Inside the stall, there was only you and loneliness.

You were glad to not be by yourself. You could feel it’s embrace on the inside. Your heart was getting squashed and you let it. When it reached your toes your whole body felt warm. Too warm, too hot, on fire. You wanted to tell your mum that you had loved someone, that you were capable of love. That you loved too much that you ended up on the other side of it. But instead, you burned and burned until there was nothing but a pile of ash on the floor.

At eighteen you went back to the bathroom stall. This time you did not come out.

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Sixteen was a fever dream All wild rushes and delights I held my palm out for the world And it crushed my hand in things I did not yet understand Sixteen was a fever dream All wild rushes and delights I held my palm out for the world And it crushed my hand in things I did not yet understand

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Sixteen was a fever dream I held my hand out for you to reach You laughed in delight hearing the snap of my wrist in two

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Eyes gleaming Bright with naïveté And first love

You crush me, devour me Overwhelm me in your wake You’ve had your fingers around my throat since the moment we met Blinking the stars out of my eyes, struggling for breath I grip your throat Ivory skin under my smooth palm We laugh You kiss my fingers We make promises to one another with our tongues Speak them into existence First love is hazy and unpredictable Magical and serene The blunt force of your violence against my chest sends me back against a wall

You strike first You betray me first Sixteen is a fever dream I can’t get out fast enough I dip my head into the ocean But it does nothing to help Everything is still hazy My dreamlike state mocking me I strike second I turn my head, I cannot bear to look at you Look how you’ve forced my hand I lie beneath the moon Letting the waves lick at my ankles Almost midnight I can’t get out fast enough Midnight, The tide comes in, soaking me Leaving me drenched and shivering under the stars Seventeen is an awakening I am raw, cut open I long to dream again

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dear girl, i’m thinking of your room again the spider at 2am opened bathroom doors with yellow light peeking in spinning walls and stupid rhymes saying things we’ve said before the indescribable qualities of your mind’s allure bright scarves to dim the light the trucks driving down in the middle of the night i miss your sheets and pillows breathing the air from opened windows listening to songs that made us feel tall knowing nothing of the world, but longing to love it all our thoughts were liquid and we poured them out in glasses soft carpet and spilled wine i’m thinking of your hands and mine i’m thinking of your room again how vast our minds were at 2am - Jude Peisner

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“ ..The funny part was, as much as I hated her, I didn’t want her to leave. I felt more like myself with her there. Floral couches and palm trees. I looked at the world through rose tinted sunglasses lined in black. I guess my personality had become something like a cheap vegas hotel, a place where even the best people could undress themselves from their casual façades. She said people were drawn to me. I think by people, she meant herself, though she would never admit to it. I was her passenger seat. I was the blinds by her bed that remained shut.

Despite all that, she didn’t need me. Maybe she did. I’m not sure. I always thought she was in control, even when she wasn’t. Even when the yellow lines blurred into the night and the closest thing to romance was a handful of dead roses and two cigarettes worth of smoke stuck to her collar. Where did I stop, where did she begin? When did we blur like yellow lines on bad nights. When did I realize that streetlines were the closest I could ever get to the stars?

I don’t know. I don’t know who I am with her gone. When she was here I was hers. I have lost myself in her. Her blood was gasoline and would swallow my kiss like matchsticks, I was her flame. Her bubblegum. I trusted her hand more than my own, I trusted her with a knife to my throat or a gun to my temple, our story was just a game of russian roulette and I knew her finger was on the trigger. I just didn’t care.

I know you can never be more than collateral damage when your body becomes a warzone. She never loved me, she loved my compliance. She said she liked the fear in my eyes when I said please.

I hated her more than I hated myself.

I knew that dead roses were foreshadowing. Means to an end.

I knew that a house of cards can only last for so longthey crumble so fast when they burn.”

- Aurora Stefanic

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by Jyoti G. Laverack Six hundred miles away. Indie boys Winston and Brendon. Mysterious and extremely pretentious. They spell ‘favorite’ with a “u” even though they’re from the U.S. and say they don’t understand why we’re all on Earth. They think they’re not like other boys. We send bullshit paragraphs about socialism, our favorite authors, and how the next election is not going to go “swimmingly.” I use Thesaurus.com to craft responses.

We type in lowercase ‘cause apparently that makes everything look more profound.

I have to remember what I said last ‘cause sometimes I say the same thing to both of them.

“Ken Kesey’s work has really caused me to contemplate the passage of time.”

“Socialism can only work if we dismantle the existing institutional structures.”

One day, Winston doesn’t write back. I feel like I should be upset. I mimic the voice of Jennifer Aniston in romcoms, sighing and saying the familiar words to friends on the phone: “Ugh, he didn’t respond.”

Secretly, I’m relieved. The pressure of his loitering words, waiting for a response, is momentarily invigorating but exhausting. Feigning a persona of a depressed, pretentious girl leeching on his ego is hard work. He doesn’t know anything about who I am except that I was once forced to read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for English class.

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Still, that doesn’t stop me from seeking payback. It’s time for me to gain the upper hand here. Winston may not have responded to me, but I’m not going to respond back to Brendon. I guess I can consider this experiment in rebellion adjourned.

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Childhood ending means your seventh-grade crush dm’s you on Instagram— the bad boy with dark hair and darker eyes, he got suspended for jumping over the chain-link fence, they all crowded around as the recess monitor grabbed him by the arm, you yearned for him all through his in-school suspension, he would always push his floppy hair over his oily face and look up through his bangs with a smolder, one time you thought he was smoldering at you, he wasn’t, he kissed his girlfriend on a dare on the kickball grass, they all stared, you thought it was the harshest pain you would ever feel, blatant rejection in grating sunlight, (you never wore sunscreen like your mom said and your arms burned,) flash-forward to senior year and you’re crying, big sputtering gasps, you can’t catch your breath, sloppy tears swimming in your snot because they had chosen you, you over everyone else, they almost said they loved you (so close), but now they’re with her, harshest rejection in winter’s bitter glare, but that’s beside the point

—he says he can teach you how to skateboard, you type more words to him than you ever said in middle school, the conversation falls flat, you think of the both of you, not thirteen anymore

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by Lauren Knabel in an age where our innocence was robbed from us as quickly as possible, where flirtation became child pornography, where “jokes” became racial and homophobic slurs, where best friends turned into your worst critics, and where the neglect of falling into the trap of desensitization are shamed for it. in a time of life where we’re so close to finding that sweet craving of freedom, just to be told that you would become a slave to the government if you weren’t born in the right family to not have to worry about the ever-lasting tax on your education. in a new era with an unprecedented record of this time of life, constantly shown comparisons of what the world thinks you should be like, constantly talking to everyone and updating them on your day, seen as an outcast for not doing so. but what if, we stepped away from everything we thought we knew, what if we learned to put down the soul-clenching screen, and talked, and shared our stories, and went out and noticed the flowers, the smile on that strangers face, and the simplistic beauty of life and all the flaws and misdirections it brings us? would we all be happier? or is it too late for us? will we just become another generation of misfits doomed to die a meaningless product of a life pre-determined to fail?

it’s all up to us now.

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CITY TO STAGE CITY TO STAGE CITY TO STAGE INDIE BAND, NAUTICS, TOUCH ON HOW GROWING UP IN NEW YORK CITY HAS INFLUENCED THEIR CAREERS AND GIVE AN INSIDE LOOK ON THEIR LATEST EP THE GLORIOUS ESCAPADES OF A GREAT ESCAPE Transcribed by Kiara Lewis [Unpublished:] Tell us about yourselves. Where are you guys from? How did you guys form and come to be?

[Nautics:] It started initially with Van and Levitt.

I [Levitt] met Van in preschool in New York, we’re all from New York City, that’s where we all grew up.

I [Kenzo] met Van high school, then we were talking 22

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for a while because I wanted to do music and Van had more experience. I remember talking to him and being like, “Hey, can we do a band situation” and Van was like, “Well, I have a band situation” and I was like, “Let me be in that band situation.”

So then, the band included me [Van], Levitt and Kenzo, and basically all three of us were in a band and then eventually with Amir.

[Unpublished:] What are your biggest musical inspirations and do they affect the way you guys write and perform music?

[Nautics:] Ultimately we’re influenced by a lot of the basics like The Strokes, Arctic Monkeys and a lot of indie rock, pop bands that we grew up with or got influenced by later. I would say that we take into account a lot of

something else. I think the scene that we were in when we were in high school definitely influenced us a lot.

There were some great bands that we got to play with a lot and that we got to know. Watching what they’re doing now, some of them have gotten really successful and they’re doing great things so I think being part of that scene was really helpful. Growing up in New York afforded us that. We were influenced by a lot of who we were playing with. That’s what gave us a drive, as well, to be on someone else’s level while being at our own level because we were playing with great acts, too.

It was more competitive. Granted, I’m sure there were some people who were assholes along the way, but ultimately that competition was positive for everybody in this situation.

[Unpublished:] Where do you guys find inspiration for your work and how has it changed since you guys have been quarantined?

[Unpublished:] How would you guys describe your music? How has living in New York City and having like a childhood there influenced your music?

[Nautics:] We were playing shows at these venues when we were 15 or 16 without our parents just running into some weird people, listening to a lot of different music, and making connections. I think none of us would have ever met if we were somewhere else or doing

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more alternative music or different genres like hip hop and jazz. We also take influences from a lot of pop music because I think ultimately it’s not our goal to make the most obscure Alt Indie music. I think we do show a lot of appreciation for bands that are just in the mainstream. I would say that we do listen to a lot of mainstream music as a band and that does influence us.

[Nautics:] Just having a discussion and a discourse about music in general. What’s new often ignites further discussion of “What can we do to make our stuff new or interesting or challenge what we’re used to.” Even if it doesn’t always seem like that to the general audience who’s listening to our stuff, I would say that with each song we try to add something that we’ve been inspired by from someone else. We always try to throw a little something into the pot, even if it’s not very noticeable to anyone else, just for us to challenge ourselves musically, because ultimately trying to grow as musicians and artists is the biggest source of inspiration. We send demos and ideas like a top 10 hit that’s cool or that somebody likes or some really obscure song from the 80s. It’s a lot of really good collaboration that happens over the group chat now because we can’t get together and hang out. We love making music together but we’re all really good friends and that makes it really enjoyable.

We went to other colleges and we were already far apart from each other so it’s not a new concept, we usually only practice once a month. We don’t practice that much but when we do, like before a show or just wanting to hang out and practice, we really get a lot done. Whether it’s creatively or just hanging out as friends coming up with new ideas, adding to other songs and showing our ideas, it’s a nice little process we have.

I think that the new song is an example of what we’ve done a little bit more separately. A lot of that was recorded and mixed before this whole quarantine 23

situation happened but it still was recorded in a space where none of us were really in the same city at the same time or even the same room. I think whatever success the song has is secondary to the fact that we were able to achieve making something, even with the four of us apart.

[Unpublished:] Congratulations on your new EP, The Glorious Escapades of a Great Escape. Where did that title come from? How did the songs come to be and make the cut for the EP? [Nautics:] Our main goal is to make the most illiterate sentence just to make it as much of a mouthful as possible. Then we found that over time we had to do almost like an Iambic Pentameter kind of thing where it had to rhyme and it had to meet these criteria. We just try to make the most strange sentence and usually the one that has the feeling of the album or the message, whatever vague message it may be, gets picked by all four of us, the democracy. We also wanted to embody the journey of the spaceman on the cover.

[Unpublished:] We loved your idea about giving funding to the New York Food Bank. Can you guys tell me a little bit more about that?

[Nautics:] When we decided that we wanted to release a song during this time period I was talking with Van about, “I feel like it would be a good idea to donate the proceeds to a charity. I feel like we should be thinking about helping out the community that we grew up in, and that has given us so much.” So I started looking into different charities I really connected with and I found them, contacted them, and I gave them my idea. They were like, “That’s that would actually really help us out thank you so much,” and I was like, “It’s my pleasure because I want to do anything I can to help.” [​Unpublished:] If you could collaborate with any artist, ever, living or dead, who would it be and why? ​[Nautics:] I [Amir] like David Byrne, Talking Heads.

I really like a lot of what Bowie did initially, because any artists that would be able to transcend a binary in which they’re able become like an alien, which is kind of why I like David Byrne too. I really appreciate being able to become a sort of new entity through art, because that’s where I feel the most comfortable personally 24

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and I actually feel more comfortable on stage just experimenting and expressing myself in that way than I do just being a person walking on the street or in a room or just sitting. ​I feel like either Quincy Jones or Kevin Shields. I mean Quincy Jones just has a perfect idea of what tone sounds like on those albums, especially some of those early Michael Jackson albums. It’s just a beautiful production and it sounds like some of the best albums I’ve ever heard. Kevin shields because Loveless is just a perfect sounding album in terms of the guitar tone and just how giant it got and like the of opposite Quincy Jones almost. It was ugly but that’s really cool. ​I like the Bowie idea because I’m inspired by both his drumming and ideas. Definitely Arctic Monkeys, I love them. I love Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino, a lot of people like it, but I love it. [​ Unpublished:] If you guys could give any advice to indie bands starting out, what would you tell them? ​[Nautics:] In terms of making music with people I would say, find people who can vaguely play and you get along with. I think some great things will come out of it, it’s really about being friends with the people that you work with, it’s about forming a family through that. And I would not say that I was in anyway, or continue to be a good musician at all. But I think that is the thing that I’ve gained over the course of this, because you have to suck at some point. But I would say the one thing that I had pretty much off the bat was a close enough relationship with these three people. ​I think just enjoy it, you have to make sure you enjoy it. We’ll write some stuff or throw some chords down and get some ideas and they’re terrible, like really bad.

Just the process of getting that stuff out is cathartic and lovely. I think if you enjoy that process and you’re willing to do it a lot, then you’ll naturally get better. ​The one thing I say to people a lot is try not to compare your success to the person next to you because everyone’s always more successful than you, and everyone’s always less successful than you. I think it’s important to reach for goals, but not to let those goals define you and make that the part that’s enjoyable because that’s not what’s important. What’s important is the family, it’s the art, and it’s the music.

​[Nautics:] It’s so eclectic, it’s such a wide range. I would say that there’s probably the basics like The Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, The Vaccines, The Killers.

A lot of different things but I think we’ve definitely all branched out. Since then, I know that Amir listens to a lot of Kanye. Honestly, anything, if it’s classical music, if it’s 80s dance disco, if it’s some indie stuff. Anything that these guys recommend, I’ll listen to. My favorites are made up of Van’s a lot of the time, Van has the most diverse taste.

Yeah, I feel like an essential for me is probably Vampire Weekend. Then I’d have to go once again My Bloody Valentine, Loveless. I really like The Growlers, so good. ​I tend to like King Princess a lot. Charlie XCX is pretty

good. Also Dua Lipa, her new album is my favorite thing in the entire world. [​Unpublished:] Where do you guys see yourself in five years, as a band and individually?

[Nautics:] At the very least, I hope we’re still making music in whatever capacity that is. I still want to make music and I still want to play shows. I know that playing shows isn’t as much of a real-life situation right now but I think ideally, I’d like to be able to play for people and create new things and hopefully as a whole group together. We seem to have a knack for sticking together.

We’ll definitely still be friends in five years, unless somebody does something terrible.

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​[Unpublished:] Who are your favorite artists?

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by Anzac Park path by the river harris street to the beach i find myself back there sometimes esplanade cracked by the sun silver hands held me by night or by day i don’t think i remember played piano next door skinned my knees on the rocks that killed the mockingbird a generation of salinger’s children see, i know where i came from what i don’t know is where i’m going lotus-eaters bridegroom nights of love spring up and push aside youth’s gentle folly softer is what once was harsher now and distanced, too watership down i sink with you

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The lonely room, the outside sun, and the wall in between

by Joffrey Jesonis

I never got my r’s right. I remember placing my pencil down, watching it hit the paper chipping off the sharpened point.

I remember I would draw my r’s quickly, starting from the back handle and curling to the right and then up to make the hanging portion on the right of the letter. This would leave a little bubble in the spine of the letter. I would smile as I drew my curled r’s; I enjoyed the way my hand twirled to make them. I remember how the teacher would scold me every time.

I had dreams created in that lonely classroom. Dreams of being an author. But that meant becoming an English major and English major rarely made it to authorhood and if they did, they didn’t make much money. So I threw that dream away too.

I remember that empty classroom, only full of four other students sitting at the rounded table next to me. I remember having to take more time to read a book that everyone else sped right through. I remember the empty classroom with only four other students. I remember being the special kid.

The not as smart kid. The need-extra-help kid. The almost summer school kid. The dumb kid.

But the dream created in the lonely classroom never left.

They could scold the curly r’s out of me but never that dream.

In high school, I had to let go of words and their meanings.

Not regularly, but often enough, I would get called faggot or tranny. Now in college, I have few people that dislike me, but when they do the first word that they would throw to me was whore. These words never got under my skin because I knew they were true. I am queer, I am transgender, and I do sleep with more than one person. It didn’t bother me because the only reason they knew these things was because I allowed them to know it. The only word that truly hurt was the one I couldn’t hide.

No one called me this, but they didn’t have to. I could see it myself, the world called me this just by having me exist. It called me this through grades, report cards, lessons, and the way I drew my r’s. It called me dumb, and that was the only word that could crawl under my skin and tear it to shreds.

Why did that word hurt so bad? Was it because I couldn’t hide it? Was it because it was something I couldn’t own?

Something I couldn’t fight? Was it because it took me back to that lonely classroom, looking out the window wishing I was smart enough to be able to enjoy recess instead of review?

I settled on marketing. I could easily find a job, easily advance, easily make money and I was good at it. But good wasn’t good enough; I wanted to be the best.

I wrote in high school. I wasn’t amazing at it, I let my grades tell me that. But all I wrote in the classrooms were essays about global warming or cloning. I never got to sit down, let my fingers touch the keyboard, and allow all the thoughts I had molded inside my mind out through my fingertips.

I graduated high school with a 3.5 GPA while my friends had 4.7’s. I didn’t go to graduation. I sat at home, in the corner of my couch, wishing I was different.

I started school again that September at community college.

All my mom’s friends told me I was smart for this decision, all my peers questioned me for it. What they referred to as real college was scary. A classroom full of 4.7s paying thousands of dollars to stay 4.7s. Maybe community college was full of the less smart group. Maybe I didn’t want to be reminded of my high school struggles. Maybe I wasn’t ready to leave home to become the best.

Community college is not full of the less smart group. In fact, I’d consider them smarter. Community college was full of people while Universities were full of experiences.

In college, it wasn’t about who was the smartest. It was about learning what you wanted to learn for you.

For the first time, I could choose.

Words like faggot and slut never hurt because I knew for a fact they were true. Dumb hurt because I never knew if it was one hundred percent true because I was put in honor and AP classes and I did make good grades and I did have a good GPA. But still, when I got handed back the grade that wasn’t perfect I was taken back to that empty classroom.

So I wrote. I wrote between classes random plots and passages about feelings. I would share them with friends and expect criticism and instead get love.

If I was going to be smart, I had to be brilliant. But the days staying after class retaking math tests and the editors’ notes written all over my essays made me give up on that dream.

“Do people want to hear what I have to say?” I asked If I self-published a book I would lose more money than making it and that wasn’t smart. I remembered my grades in high school, how I failed each AP English test and lost the credit. I looked at the stories I had written on the screen in front of me; these weren’t AP tests.

Why was it so important to be smart? Because smart people made money.

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I often sat in the computer lab my friend Jacob worked for at my college and thought about my writing.

“Yeah,” Jacob answered, voice louder than the one in my head. “People want to hear what you have to say.”

I never felt smart in that lonely classroom. The lights were dim, the sun shining through the windows. Those passages of lights carrying images of children playing outside. That image was taken away with a curtain pulled over it reminding me I had to be better to play outside.

What was outside? What was separating me from those kids besides the thick brick wall? Happiness. They earned happiness and I didn’t.

But what did these pages hold; were they worth reading?

Would these pages let me outside onto the playground? Let me feel the sun on my skin?

It conflicted me. Only twenty people would buy the book, making not enough money to cover the printing, the cover, the hours spent working on it all by myself. But it made something worth so much more than money; it made me happy.

I wish I could tell that little child sitting at the rounded table, looking out the window with every hope in their eyes, that they could feel the sun if they let their dream be their passion. If they let go of the idea that being smart according to someone else’s judgment was the best feeling ever and help them understand the world so much better.

I could sit behind a desk, with my respected degree hung up behind me, and still look out the window and wonder what the sun would feel like on my skin. And I would be smart and still be left wondering.

In reality, the only thing that separated me from the students outside was the fact that I did need a little extra help with reading. But as I got older what separated me was the idea I clung to that being socially accepted as smart made not only my happiness but my worth. If that was true, I could never be worthy because I could never be perfect. What truly made me feel smart was what made me happy. Maybe my books won’t make me money, but they make me feel whole. They give me a rush of purpose and a smile that could never fade.

They make me feel brilliant. They taught me what the sun feels like.

I was stuck in the lonely classroom for eighteen years because I was taught to be there. We have to let go of this idea of being a perfect student. Life isn’t about who’s the smartest because a lot of times who is the smartest isn’t the happiest. Life is about finding what takes you out of that dimly lit classroom and keeps you in the sun. What makes you forget about harsh grades and GPAs. Life is about finding what encourages you to be happier rather than the better.

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by Lauren Vo

g el

My mother is a bouquet of purple flowers: Everything in its place, Shears snipping off stems Always ringing in her ears My father is the color of milky-green snot Frozen on his face after falling asleep Thanks to a banshee’s lullaby.

Purple and green Were the colors of my bedroom Back when our house Still looked old.

I was sentenced to a small square room And in the night, Strangled by wildflowers Plastered to the walls 30

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i l ik e m yo ra ng ej ui c e w it h p ul p ;

a grandma who’s tougher than nails and has got a knack for spending money that isn’t hers on rigged machines at casinos, but still gets you that candy your mama never buys for you after begging because she loves you to the moon and back. (you can’t blame her for her vices, being a black woman in the 60’s was a rough sight to see, let alone live). where heartbreak isn’t a rare sight to see because life has let you down one too many times for you to trust like you’re pushing infinite daisies, and nothing’s left to the imagination underneath the turbulent sunset of withering childhood. where eden’s garden is dying and god is drunk on the feeling of temporariness, and you

don’t care because you learnt long ago that it’s a dog eat dog world, and you’re a wolf lusty for blood. you know that the dreamers’ days died after the 80’s & 90’s and that the 21st century is like decapitated roaches, spewing their black blood all over your kitchen countertops; refuse hanging in the air. (while your bug hugging cousins desperately tries to save the brown beetles). but, it’s also the bittersweet fact that you understand that this is the future. that you know the bible reeks of misogyny and know your foreign policies and political stance, you know that everyone’s got a fear of apathy, but also understand it isn’t something bad to have. like you know all too well about the good the bad and the ugly; do you like your orange juice with pulp, too?

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it tastes like having a grandpa who smoked like a chimney and could drink alcohol like it was water but still built you that wooden jungle gym in the backyard, that was till’ his lungs were black with poison and kidneys worse than the times he lived through (at least, that’s how the doctor told it to us, a little more heartbreaking though).

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by Elaina Walters

The pit of my stomach overflows with orange popsicles.

It’s barely ten o’clock in the morning. Sticky wrappers scatter across my once-white bedding in a collage of leftover sweetness. My lips glisten, tainted with tangerine goo. The droning snores of a sleepless man clog the hallway. My cherub feet, chilled against the linoleum, pitter-patter into the kitchen. I shove a raisin in my ear to taste cinnamon on my tongue. The box of popsicles runs empty; my father doesn’t wake until nearly three in the afternoon. *** I sleep with every light on, burning the flesh of shadow creatures and night ghouls. Mom likes to tell me, “Eightyear-olds aren’t afraid of the dark.” Often I protest: I’m not afraid of the silly dark but what hides within it. I lay in bed illuminated like the flicker of a candle against an empty church. Before snoozing into dreams of stealing kisses from the boy caught eating crayons, I hide underneath the covers wishing my father was here to make fun of the clown hanging from my box spring. *** Right before my twelfth December, I bled into my favorite underwear. Once cotton-white and decorated with a pink rose, now soiled with the bloodshed of womanhood. Mom gifts me a box of Tampax Pearls, topped with a red bow. My father’s dog eats the tampon from the trash can, painting the carpet with its grisly remains of my shredded interior. He screams at me as if his anger will revert me back to my youth. Santa died and Christmas became scrubbing period stains from the 34

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living room floor. I mourn his death over mint-chocolatechip ice cream. *** My father sits across from me with his woman of the hour; he said her name was Ashley. She’s the sixteenth woman in the sixteen years I’ve known him. She has a face like a bulldog and smells like a truck stop drenched in vodka. I’m hidden behind a heap of fries and tenders, gnawing on my shoelaces like a primordial beast. I can see him touching her thigh underneath the table. Before Ashley there was Melanie, not to be confused with the woman before her: Melody. Then there was Cassie; the first one he slept with after (and during) his marriage to Mom. There were others, of course. I’ve hardly met them.

They sneak out through the cracks of our floorboards before I roll out of bed. He tells me he’s in love; I blow bubbles into my pop. *** We haven’t spoken in a while. He sends me the same birthday card every March. I’ve been eighteen for two years. I wonder if he still finds my lonesome socks behind the dryer and if Mom has kept its match stuffed into her drawer. Does he hear footsteps down the hall and taste cinnamon? Our family photos left to rot in a cardboard box, plagued with unfamiliar women attached to my father’s hip. Beside them is his little girl, her tongue splintered with apologies saved for her Dad. I pluck them out one by one, smiling at the red stain. I have become the clown that hides underneath his own bed: The child who bled orange popsicles.

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by Reece Herberg i felt immune to it all at first the incessant nail biting in crowded restaurants all the tied-up shoes hanging from power lines someone elseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hair clogging the shower drain i hold on for so long i see the small white house with the wasps back for the summer my scabs unpicked and as numerous as the tangerines from the tree in the next-door-neighborâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s yard i run through the fields

and collect dried wildflowers for the kitchen table today i taste the strawberries you were allergic to and will my throat to burn

hours are now a currency spent watching the paint dry from my bedroom window and pressing the lifeline on my right palm against the narrow glass until dusk drunkenly stumbles through the front door my hand instinctively clutches my stomach and i wonder when iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll stop feeling seasick from constant growing pains or if sleep will ever come as easily as it did that august. we walked barefoot once as children naked in the garden then in the mirror of the shared bathroom picking at the mountains and valleys of the skin until there was only the eyes and the pulse.

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by Emma Parker Salty air hugs salty skin and wraps it up in the tightest blanket, tucking it in and not letting go. Burning sand between our toes and burning sun against our faces when we drop our chairs in the sand and take off towards the water, racing each other and letting our breathless laughs get swept away by the wind before anyone can hear them. I leap over the tiniest waves and dive into the bigger ones before they can crash over my head; you follow a little farther behind and let the cool water splash against your sides until I grab your ankles and pull you under with me.

The distinct difference in the atmosphere above the water versus beneath it is such a magnificent juxtaposition; the rough waves that pull you back and then toss you forward as they topple over themselves are so different once you are under them. Beneath the 36

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waves is a bubbling silence and a soft sway that holds me like a hug, brushing against my skin and through my hair while I drift. I swim out until I can’t touch anymore, until the ocean is merely a rippling lake that never seems to end and the shoreline is nothing but a rainbow blur scattered with towels and umbrellas. I never stay out long, because I’m a strong swimmer but I get tired fast, and so I let the waves pull me closer to shore until I can stand with my head above the water again.

You and I boogie board and watch the surfers and let the sun turn our hair lighter while we toe at the sand at our feet, feeling for sand dollars and competing to see who can find the biggest ones and who can throw them the farthest. Usually you win and you think it’s because you play baseball, but it’s mostly just because I love the sound of your laugh when you beat me, so I let you.

by Kaisa Linn I was born in a small country that used to be part of the Soviet Union- it was no union. It was poverty and lack of opportunity and pain. And a lot of dead relatives.

My grandmother was born in Siberia because her mother and aunts were sent there. Her sister died, she was just a baby and the journey was too degrading. My grandfather had to flee to the forest and he lived there for a long long time. In the ruthless winters and in the dammed summers. And in the end it didn’t matter. When he came out there was nothing to return to.

That’s why I feel so terrible for the way I am. I have been blessed by freedom and opportunity and I have never been happy.

I just can’t.

I’m seventeen.

And I’ve just seen too much to not be considered an adult.

When I was in the first grade I decided that I was fat and my face was appalling and I have considered that as a fact ever since.

And no matter how many therapists I see I still cannot change it.

soon enough my body started to burn.

I didn’t tell the doctors anything because I was ashamed.

I remember after hours of agony throwing up, the pain disappeared.

Then I realized- I had found the solution to my problem.

That’s when my eating disorder started to manifest.

That’s how I got rid of the pain once and that’s how I’ll do it again.

But that wasn’t the solution.

I had a problem that no one could see.

It was an invisible trouble literally eating me from the inside.

Soon after it started my father died of cancer.

And I realised.

I was the only one left for my mother. I was the only one in my family to be born in freedom and I was killing myself over an obsession that no one else saw.

No one else knew.

I had a perfect childhood and I never stopped to think about how much my parents wished they could’ve had a childhood like that. They had to stand in lines for hours just to get a loaf of bread.

I was fine with fading away, but I couldn’t. I am a patriot and my country needed me. It needed me to reassure the people of the greatness and happiness of freedom and life. Too many had died for a silly reason.

And I didn’t want to be next.

I snapped my fingers and candy would appear.

I am only seventeen.

When I was thirteen I got an idea for my body problem.

I started making pills at home of spices like turmeric and cinnamon and I would eat them by the handful. And

And I have enough shadows to drown the sun. But I won’t.

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ROAD M

by Isabel Sperry

Turn Left onto N Center Street (Drive away from IWU, see your friends in the windows of their rooms, look at Downtown Bloomington out your window, see Coffee Hound and Nightshop, remember Noam Chomski and bullet journal coffee dates) Continue Straight for 2.2 miles.

AP

Google Map Directions from 1409 N Main Street Bloomington IL 61701 (home) to 221 Woodchuck Lane Macomb IL 61455 (Home) This is the Current Fastest Route

Head East Towards E Emerson St (plug your phone into the AUX cable, take off your coat, blast the heat, pass the Walgreens where you anonymously bought your friend a pregnancy test the first week of freshman year, leave home).

Merge onto I-55 South (play “The Chain” on full blast, cry about a nameless, faceless boy).

Take Exit 145 for U.S. 136 Toward McLean/ Heyworth (stop at Dixie Truck Stop, get out, lock your car, see your mom reflected back in the window in your place as she made this same stop every holiday for 6 years, buy veggie straws, twizzler nibs, and red gatorade. You are now surrounded by cornfields – one step closer to Home).

Drive Through San Jose (realize that you are entering back into the sphere of your family’s influence. See the homemade “SPEED TRAP AHEAD .5 MILES” sign, drive at least 5 miles under the speed limit, remember the nice sheriff who only gave you a warning because he knew your dad, finish your gatorade, play “Philadelphia Freedom”).

Turn Right to Stay on U.S 136 (go through the McDonalds drivethrough, remember that this drivethrough doesn’t have hash browns all day, refuse to order anything else, leave dejected, hungry, and hash brownless).

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Turn onto Interstate 55 S/Historic U.S. 66 Ramp Towards St Louis (remember the impromptu concerts, last-minute trips to Chicago to see friends and the freedom of having no alarm set for the morning).

Continue on U.S 136 for 45 miles (call your mom, tell her you’re on your way, hear her excitement tinged with a little worry about the driving conditions in rural Illinois at dusk. Remember the first time you drove this route; 17, shiny long hair, denim skirt. Your parents in the front seats, you sitting with your headphones in, IWU information packet on your lap, the electricity that comes from being able to make a life changing decision coursing through your veins, feeling like an adult for the first time in your life).

Cross the Scott W. Lucas Memorial Bridge (feel a twinge of hereditary bridge-phobia, then remember that you actually like bridges, it’s your mom who fears plummeting into churning water in a metal trap. Bridges make you feel like you’re flying).

Turn Left onto Woodchuck Lane (pull into your driveway, unplug your phone from the AUX, the last lines of feel resigned and excited to be Lori and Chad’s daughter again).

You Have Arrived at Home

Turn Left onto Adams Street (look in the rearview mirror, pull your newly short hair into a ponytail. Feel the familiar turns of the road as your hands sit on the steering wheel. Look at the fields off the road that has carried you in and out of your hometown for the past 12 years. Remember the countless rides in the backseat of your parents car, waiting to be the one steering).

Turn Right onto Wigwam Hollow Road (see the stop sign that both your dad and grandma hit one summer. Turn on your brights to avoid hitting a deer. Drive past a house your family almost bought until they found a bat in the attic. Call your mom and tell her you are five minutes away).

Turn Left onto Jackson Street (remember when your dad yelled at you for calling Pfeiffer Hall Home. Remember how you promised never to make that mistake again).

Turn Right onto Washington Street (have a panic attack about the possibility of seeing your highschool ex-boyfriend when you go get milk tomorrow morning, decide to make your mom get milk instead).

Turn Left to stay on US Hwy 136 W (pass through countless little towns. Romanticize small town living in a way that you couldn’t before you lived in the Big City (Bloomington-Normal). Realize that with the anonymity and freedom of a new city you sacrifice warmth and community).

Turn Left onto US Hwy 136 W (realize that you are different from your mom. That while you share her smile and eyes, you have your own thoughts and opinions. Stew over that. Cry over that. Call your mom and tell her you are forty minutes away and that the roads are clear).

Continue Straight for 7.2 Miles (drive past a church with your name, think about stopping to take a picture. Do not stop. Say “I’ll stop next time.” Don’t).

Turn Right onto US-24 E/US Hwy 136 W (realize that home is different from Home. That while you love IWU, it doesn’t have Risk night or the smell of sourdough bread cooking or your little brother belting Frank Sinatra in the shower. Realize that Home is different from home, Macomb doesn’t have guitar hero night, cheddar bagels, or the freedom to sleep wherever you want.

Realize that Home/home is whatever you want it to be).

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Turn Left onto Candy Lane (drive past the hospital. Remember when a stranger came up to hug you, exclaiming “Lori! It’s been so long since I’ve seen you!” Remember explaining that you are not Lori, you are her daughter, picture her shocked face and your dad’s laughter).

Turn Right onto Grant Street (almost turn into the high school parking lot out of habit. Stop yourself at the last minute, instead, watch your 15-year old-self sit on the tennis court and cry over a boy you have since outgrown with friends you don’t call anymore).

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when i was 6 years old i’d watch from the kids’ table as my older cousins laughed with the adults over at the grown-ups’ table and i’d wonder what i would be like when i finally hit that age when i would, at last, be old enough to take my place at the grown-ups’ table when i was 12 years old i wanted to skip a year i spent my birthday wishing that it was my 13th i thought 12 was lame and childish and 13 was cool and sooooo mature once i finally hit 13 i’d have boys knocking down my door every friday i’d go out to parties and always hang at the mall with my girls face painted with lots of makeup i’d finally rule the school when i was 13 years old i thought i had finally made it i proudly wore the title of “big kid” like it was the crown jewels after my birthday party, i took a breath and said to myself “this is it, my friend. you can do anything go anywhere be anyone.” now that i’m 15 i long for the “good old days” a time when i was 5 when my biggest fear was what lurked in the dark and scraping a knee was the worst pain of all but then, at the same time, i wish i was 25 i could my have my own apartment and do whatever i like get up at noon, go to bed at five it wouldn’t matter - i’m the boss but then again, i’m sure i’d want to be 15 or maybe 33 40

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wishing th r

by Grace Copps

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PERSIAN BARBIE, DISCO SHRINE, SHARES HER JOURNEY AS AN ARTIST AND HOW ESCAPISM DURING QUARANTINE INSPIRED HER NEWEST SINGLE WANNA GET AWAY Transcribed by Nicole Sandoval

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[Unpublished:] Tell us about your song, “Wanna Get Away” and your idea behind it!

[Disco Shrine:] My new song is called “Wanna Get Away” and I thought it was the perfect song to release right now because it’s all about using escapism as a way to deal with your problems. I know it’s not the best way to deal with things, but I think it tends to be a go-to for a lot of people. I know for me, it’s been a solace to imagine all of the things that I could do, when quarantine is over and think about the things that I missed doing and how I want to do those things again. It’s about that nostalgic feeling of wanting to escape and do all the things that you never did before but also go back to the things that you love and appreciate them more.

[Unpublished:] Where does the name Disco Shrine come from?

[Disco Shrine:] It came super randomly! I was talking to a friend about this art piece where someone was breaking glass and mirrors, and they would put them back together in different shapes and forms. I thought “Oh my gosh, it’s like a disco shrine!” At the time I was trying to find a cool name for myself and as I started writing more, I felt like it was so perfect because a lot of my music is passionate. It’s not holy, but the idea of 44

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a shrine is really spiritual and passionate. At the same time, I want it to be a party and I want people to have fun and dance. I just want to spread good times and good vibes and so I feel like it’s a perfect contradiction between the two of those.

[Unpublished:] How did you start your music career?

[Disco Shrine:] I used to be really folky when I first started writing music. I wore floppy hats, long floral dresses from thrift shops, had long curly hair and used to listen to Fleet Foxes. ​I started making really sad folk music, and it was so much fun and a nice way to get all of my angst out, but when I would play shows a lot of people looked sad because my music was sad. I was tired of spreading that kind of energy so I took some time off and figured out what I wanted my sound to be. In that time I started DJing at parties and experimented, wrote, and worked with a lot of different musicians and writers. I figured out what I wanted my sound to be and then that’s when I released my song, “Up in the Air”.

[Unpublished:] Who inspired you to make music?

[Disco Shrine:] When I was 11, my older sister took me

[Unpublished:] How would you describe the music that you typically create?

[Disco Shrine:] It’s pop, but I feel like that’s such a generic way to describe it. I think the thing with me is that I have always loved experimenting, whether it’s with fashion, art, photography, and especially music. I don’t ever want to put boundaries on myself because I love collaborating and being inspired by other music and people. I think because of that reason, I make what inspires me and what speaks true to myself. My aesthetic is constantly evolving and there’s definitely some true things that I stick to, such as being a “tomgirl”.

I’ll experiment with being more girly and sexy with some of my releases and music but I still have this punk vibe that I feel like I grew up with. I love contrasting things and if that’s an aesthetic, then that’s my aesthetic.

[Unpublished:] How did you end up getting signed to a French label opposed to an American label?

[Disco Shrine:] I’m not with them anymore but I did my first release with Kitsune. Kitsune is a clothing brand/music label and they were really popular when I was younger. They broke Years and Years, Two Door Cinema Club, and were responsible for a ton of indie UK bands. I followed them for the longest time and I would always listen to their playlists and find new music through them. When I released my new song, a friend of a friend knew someone at Kitsune, who was the A&R there. I sent an email to them and they got back to me saying they loved my song and at the time, they were doing a collaboration with the NBA and asked me to be a part of it. They flew me out to New York and I performed at their launch party.

[Unpublished:] You describe yourself as a “Persian Barbie”. Where did that label come from?

[Disco Shrine:] I feel like it’s my alter ego and performance persona. I dyed my hair blonde a year and a half ago, and ever since then, I’ve felt so free. It sounds so silly but I felt like something that was inside of me could finally come out and I embraced the diva inside of me. My first song, “Up in the Air”, was about my parents immigrating to America so I’m very proud of where I came from and my Persian heritage.

[Unpublished:] Was your family always supportive of your career choice?

[Disco Shrine:] It’s so difficult because there is so much pressure on you when you’re a first-generation American. My parents struggled and, in turn, they don’t want me to struggle.

I’m really lucky because my mom has always been supportive of me, and she just wants what’s best for me. After I wrote “Up in the Air” and my parents saw what it was about and what it was inspired by, I think that secretly made them proud.

They’re appreciative of me and my art, but I think that with the Persian culture there’s always gonna be an underlying feeling of needing to be a doctor or a lawyer.

I still feel that today, but I’m blessed and lucky that my parents are supportive.

[Unpublished:]​How did you balance going to school at UCLA and your music?

[Disco Shrine:] It’s hard because college is so crazy, you’re under so much pressure, and forced to try to become successful. I think what people don’t realize is that the arts help you do better. When you have some sort of an outlet like that, it’s going to help your overall performance and act as a form of therapy. I put music on the side burner because I was focused on getting straight A’s and what’s going to make me money. If I had spent more time writing music, I think that I would have felt happier, less stressed, and gotten fewer wrinkles and gray hairs in college.

[Unpublished:] Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

[Disco Shrine:] I want to be making music still, and I want to be able to make a living off of it. I want to be making music that resonates with people and makes people happy. I really don’t care about fame. All I care about is that I’m able to make a living doing what I love and that I’m able to spread some sort of a positive impact on people’s lives.

[Unpublished:] What advice do you have for someone who wants to pursue a creative career?

[Disco Shrine:] Knowledge is power. With any sort of art, there are so many pieces that go into it, but if you don’t know those pieces or at least try and learn, then you’re constantly going to rely on other people.

It’s empowering if you learn your way around your work and learn the different steps. The second thing that I would say is that there’s going to be people out there that don’t like what you do. All that matters is that you like what you do. Be confident in your work and don’t look towards anybody to validate you.

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to my first ever concert and it was a Madonna concert.

We were all dancing and I honestly feel like that was the beginning for me. Gwen Stefani is also a huge inspiration for me. I’ve loved her so much since I was a kid and I love that she’s so fearless with everything. She also contrasts a girly girl style with tomboy style and I feel like that’s so me. However, Madonna was definitely the start of it all and it was meant to be.

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by Shannon Silverthrone i did what i had to do. i did what i had to do. i did. i say this over and over again like a fool’s mantra under the covers of someone else’s baby blanket. it’s covered in ducks. i did what i had to do i did i did i did and it’s still in my room and i am still 6 and terrified and the

closet door is creaking open and the floorboards are creaking and i am under my blankets holding my breath and my cat is under my blankets holding his breath and i did what i had to do i did what i had to do i did what i had to do i did what i had to do and it hurts so so so bad and i shouldn’t be like this i shouldn’t be like this i shouldn’t be like this oh god i shouldn’t be i shouldn’t be here and i am 8 holding a kitchen knife to my throat and sobbing and my cat is dead. buried in the backyard. under the hammock. and my cat is dead and i want to be dead and i am 18 and alone in bed and still learning how to have a voice and i am sobbing. i am sobbing. my mother did her best but it wasn’t good enough and that’s okay it’s okay for me to say that it’s okay that i acknowledge that sometimes your best isn’t good enough and sometimes people get hurt and that’s okay. there’s no grave to leave flowers by.

i don’t wanna talk about this anymore. let’s talk about trees. i go on late night walks with my father—a form of atonement—and if he’s drunk enough he’ll talk about the trees. he says they listen to us and they feel us and sometimes i think he’s crazy and other times i wonder why he’s crazy and my eyes burn. my mother never comes on the walks. we never talk about what he’s done, on those walks or in the house. we never talk about it. we never talk about anything except for when my mother tells me we need to talk about it and then ignores me and i don’t want to talk about it. i don’t even know how to start. i don’t think the trees know how i feel. how can they? When i don’t even know.

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by Shannon Silverthrone i am cutting my fingers off at the knuckles and begging. the floor is splintering under my feet. the pavilion asks for waterâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;its throat is parchedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and you split your skull in half on the church pew. here, drink all ye who are thirsty the bibles bellow, ripe with song and tears. my grandmother says prayer is good for the soul she says soup is good food she says i should keep my mouth shut and my head down and my hands to myself so i cut off my hands and my wrists and peel myself in half, skin from skin, bone from bone, until i am a perfect reflection of nothing at all. symmetry is a myth love is forsaken a heart is a wretched thing to have, you say, and tear mine from my chest. we are better off within it without it. i pick up nothing. my hands lie cold on the dirt floor and bury themselves. my grandmother steps backwards into a grave and covers herself clean and holy, the church pews regurgitate my blood into your head and your skull knits itself back together. the doctor stitches my fingers back on, knuckles to knuckles skin to skin bone to bone, and laughs loud

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by Lauren Vogel If trauma is a tornado, I’m dorothy.

Swap the ruby slippers for reeboks, Keep the dress.

Red hair rotted brown And fragile bags like woven baskets under my eyes My limbs belong to someone else, Much like my friend the scarecrow.

A botox needle in a haystack that she’s stuffed with, I’ve pulled cattails from her mouth sewn shut.

Apples make a hard clunk!

When they hit you in the head.

Punished for being hungry And blamed for being fullThat is the life of a woman Our job is our weapon, The housewife flies on a broom Scared of water like her daughters Glinda is good and pretty Trapped in a bubble blown by teenage boys We traveled through hell, all of us, To find a Wizard who only knows heaven And beg him to heal us Click your heels as much as you’d like You’ll never find home If you haven’t already got one.

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by Julia Shokier Why do people envy their youth An idealized version of nail-biting Itching and scratching pantomimes ClichĂŠs and sentimentality A blind eye to hazy tribulation.

Detestable and repugnant references to overused sunflowers and the colour of Heaven.

Falsifications, platitudes that One believes theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve created.

Yet, I cannot help but wish for that very consciousness.

For something to desire To search for a much-needed happiness A past I can call my own Those who take grainy photographs and streak in their wispy memories

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painting over the undesired in order to create a new Are the enviable prey I want them More than I want my tight skin full coloured, with slicked hair and privacy without fingerprints Youth.

I want someone to make me feel young again More than I desire the actual agility or the painful truth that adolescence brings.

Make me long for something beyond nostalgia.

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by Josie Patch

Coming of age films have been popular for decades, you can name a dozen or more from each, but none touched on the struggle of growing up the way stories do now. Teenagers have always searched for representation in the media to let them know they’re not alone and to give them something to shape their personalities around. Think of your favorite coming of age movie – there’s a good chance it was released after 2010 and an even better chance that you watched it countless times and tried to copy everything about your favorite character. Emotional, raw coming of age movies moving into the mainstream media has had a huge influence on our generation. They all have different ways of capturing what it means to be a teenager, but one thing they all have in common is the emphasis on the experiences that shape us, the emphasis on the moment. For example, the infamous tunnel scene in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, when they’re driving under the city lights blasting “Heroes” by David Bowie, and Charlie writes “And in this moment, I swear, we are infinite.”

We’re all searching for the moments where we are reckless, or heartbroken, or purely in love with being alive. We idolize the misunderstood characters who complain about their smalltown life and dream of making a name for themselves. We

want to sit on rooftops and stargaze with our first love, we want to run away and have the summer of our lives before going to college, we think we’re supposed to have as much fun and make as many mistakes as possible before the clock strikes midnight on our childhood. We see ourselves in these characters, so much so we come to mimic them. We think well, they’re just like me, so why haven’t I had my moment yet? I’ve spent most of high school waiting in anguish for mine, and now that I’ve graduated, I feel like I wasted my formative teenage years not doing anything memorable. I look back and I can’t name a time where I felt like the main character. We feel like that’s what’s supposed to happen and that our childhood has an expiration date. Now there’s a whole generation of kids who are going to grow up feeling like they’ve missed out on the experiences of a lifetime.

Maybe I’m alone in this, but I feel like there’s now a checklist for coming of age. It goes like this: you have a small group of friends who are all nonconformists like you, you spend your time hating the close-minded people you grew up around, you do crazy thing with your friends (parties, midnight drives, spontaneous trips), you have a falling out with your parents or best friend, you fall in love and out of love, you reach several epiphanies while isolated from said friends or parents, and most importantly you have to do it all before you graduate and go to a fancy college and move away forever and become a successful lawyer/artist/actress/whatever. Okay, so that’s not how they all go, but the point is, a formula for being a teenager is born. Although nobody really believes high school is the best four years of your life, and as much as recent coming of age stories stress that fact, we still feel pressured to make it memorable. In reality, high school is merely a footnote in your life. In four years, it won’t really matter what you did and with who, unless you’re a convicted felon. There isn’t a formula for coming of age, and there is certainly no right way to grow up. There isn’t a time limit on coming of age, you have your whole life to make memories and develop your personality.

For the most part, being a teenager is mostly just plain boring.

We still live with our parents and the little freedom we do have is focused on our screens. Why do we romanticize the awkwardness of adolescence? Everyone is growing in weird places and going through weird phases. We’re irritable and dramatic and lazy. If there’s anything we’re supposed to be, it’s that. You can’t expect to have your shit together by age eighteen. It’s easy to forget that these coming of age films aren’t a mirror, you can still feel represented in the media without shaping your life around them. Your coming of age is personal and unique to only you, there isn’t a clock counting down the minutes you have left to discover yourself.

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When I was eleven, a family friend let me watch Mean Girls with her for the first time, and I was immediately obsessed. I thought it was the best movie I’d ever seen, despite not understanding half of what was going on, and I wanted to be just like Cady when I was in high school. Later on, I got around to watching Clueless, The Princess Diaries, A Cinderella Story, Freaky Friday, etc. You know the drill. I loved everything about these totally ridiculous teen movies and truly thought that was what to expect in high school. As a preteen, I expected everything to be sunshine, glitter, and crop tops. Being a teenager was portrayed as goofy and carefree. I wanted to be the quirky unpopular girl who took off her glasses and became a hundred times prettier. With the onset of the 2010’s came a new kind of coming of age story; ones that showcased the ugly sides of being a teenager: bullying, mental illness, low self-esteem, and unrequited love. Unlike early 2000’s comedies, movies like The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Fault in Our Stars gained popularity because they actually took teenagers seriously. In contrast to the silly misadventures of teens in the 2000’s movies, they didn’t sugarcoat the harsh reality of high school. I was going through a rough time with my own mental health, and movies like Perks made me feel seen. I no longer wanted to be like the plastics or the protagonist in a Hilary Duff movie, instead, I wanted to be a depressed small-town teenager who snuck out to smoke cigarettes or dated some bad characters.

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F I N D IN G

Transcribed by Nicole Sandoval

[Unpublished:] What was the process of writing your song, “Feels Like Home”?

[Tiffany Stringer:] Initially, the idea came to me in the summer of last year. I was starting to learn how to play guitar and I just came up with this little guitar part. I started singing onto it and I had written the pre-chorus and I really liked it and felt like it was special. Sometimes when things are really special I can’t do anything else because it has to be perfect. I stopped doing it for a long time because of that. I went home to visit my family in December and was sitting there and thought “I’m just gonna write the words, I’m gonna do it”. My boyfriend normally produces my songs and I kept telling him to work on this song and we couldn’t get around to it. So then quarantined started, and I had nothing to do, so I thought “you know what? I’m just gonna do it”.

[Unpublished:] What is the song about?

[Stringer:] I wrote the song about my transition from living in Texas to moving out to LA and how that’s changed me. For a long time, I really loved who I was back home in Texas and I feel like I’ve been trying to get back to that carefree joy. It’s really hard because we grow up and shit happens and we don’t have those pure eyes. Instead of trying to get back to that place, it’s about letting that go, starting over, and deciding “Okay, who do I want to be today”?

[Unpublished:] How did you first get into music?

[Stringer:] I’ve been dancing my whole life and in the fourth grade, I did theatre. Through that, I realized that I loved performing and singing. In the ninth grade, I auditioned to be a Kidz Bop kid and weirdly enough they were holding rehearsals at the place where I took voice lessons. I ended up becoming a Kidz Bop Kid and I toured the U.S and I would sing the pop songs to all the kids. I realized that I loved performing, I loved pop music, and I want to do this for the rest of my life. So that was a big thing for me and Kidz Bop might have been my awakening.

[Unpublished:] Who inspired you to make music?

[Stringer:] I listened to Britney Spears a lot. Watching Britney Spears wasn’t really about the songs but more 56

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about her larger than life performances. I was obsessed with it and I would watch her Las Vegas show at four years old. I also got into Gwen Stefani and No Doubt because I found a lot of love for my voice in hers. I fell in love with Charli XCX and Lorde for sounds in music because Lorde is so cinematic and it’s beautiful and sad but I love the juxtaposition. I find inspiration in everything and it’s about following what makes you feel giddy and excited.

[Unpublished:] How would you describe the music that you create?

[Stringer:] I feel that at this point, every song has been it’s own and that’s because I’ve been figuring it out. I want to make dance music because my favorite moments in life have been dancing with my friends. I want to make music to facilitate those moments for people.

I forgot that I love dancing, and I was pushing that part of me away for a while. In quarantine, I started making Tik Toks because it was so silly and was bringing me so much happiness in such a dark time. I want people to feel free, dance, and laugh. I feel like genres are going away and it’s just about who we are. When I talk about it I call it indie-pop because I’m an independent artist and I love pop music but I also want to try new things. I feel like indie holds the idea that one can do whatever one wants. However, I am such a sucker for a catchy pop tune and something we can all sing along to. So, indie-pop.

[Unpublished:] You seem to be really into nostalgia!

Why is that so appealing to you?

[Stringer:] I’ve always really been in love with coming of age movies and the narrative of us growing up and seeing life in a different way. I feel like in high school people get their first sense of freedom but without the heaviness of paying bills and the world hasn’t hit you yet.

It’s this nice little sweet spot of having everything good without everything bad. I don’t necessarily think that’s only in high school I think that’s just where we get the first taste of it. I remember getting into my car for the first time, listening to Lorde’s Pure Heroine album and feeling like nothing could touch me. I’m a big believer that if you find a feeling that you love, hold on to it.

a d ove

if yo uf in that you l fe eli , h ng old on to it

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by Caitlyn Phu Answers provided by real teenagers. Not actors. Or Sparknotes.

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“ Complete bullshit.” “ Confusing... Like everything we used to know is being challenged.” “ Stress. Stressful. Fuck load of stress.” “ Like traveling on a winding road with many stops, some good, some bad, trying to get to a final destination.”

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“ Having the wrong priorities.” “ It’s like you’re in a party bus with your friends but that one girl you hate plays shit music on the aux.” “ Being sleep deprived.” “ Not knowing if you are stressed because you are ugly or if you are ugly because you are stressed.”

“ Feeling like you are always on the outside.” “ A constant identity crisis.” “ A tough transition to get through, but worth it.”

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But, finding yourself means experiencing life in a way you never have before. You find yourself not caring at all sometimes (like when you keep forgetting to do the dishes) and caring too much other times (like when you can’t sleep because you can’t stop thinking about that stupid thing you said).

We are always learning... whether that means learning the importance of bullshitting an analysis of Catcher in the Rye or learning that you should maybe wear headphones next time you steal wine from your parents at 2 AM and decide to dance to your favorite song.

It’s thinking in you’re in love because you both have the same favorite movie. It’s finding a song that makes you cry for no reason. It’s having your first, terrible kiss. It’s feeling so distant from your parents that it hurts. It’s trying a dating app for the first time because you’ve always been curious.

It’s deleting the app the next day because you can only take so much small talk. It’s staring at your body until your brother pounds on the door because he has to pee.

It’s feeling not good enough. It’s feeling like you’re on top of the world. It’s deciding you’re atheist, then praying to God right before your AP History test, then thinking that God hates you after you fail. It’s accidentally texting your crush something too personal and willingly giving yourself blunt force trauma. It’s getting to sit outside at night with your friends and talk about where you all think you’re going to be in 10 years. It’s realizing that so many coming-of-age movies lied to you. It’s trying to find your passion until your brain is numb. It’s searching for your place in this world, or at least some kind of identity that will make these years of crying, laughter, and confusion all worth it.

Being a teenager is stepping into the deep end of the ocean for the first time. It can be lonely, it can be terrifying.

But, it’s life. Sure, right now, most of us can’t wait to get out of this awkward, frustrating phase of existence. But, isn’t some part of us also so scared of growing up and leaving it behind? Maybe my biggest fear is that I’ll never be able to experience life like this ever again. But, here we are, experiencing all the ups and downs together. And soon, we can look back at everything that has happened, everything that has changed us, and ask ourselves again:

What is like being a teenager?

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It feels like these are the few years where we really get to find ourselves. We aren’t permanently defined by anything yet, for better or for worse.

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SWIPED RIGHT R RRIII G GH H H TTT TOO MANY TIMES

Transcribed by Rebecca Bloch

18 YEAR OLD ROMANIAN FILM STUDENT, VERONICA LUPO, MAKES SHORT FILM COMMENTING ON DATING AND RELATIONSHIPS IN 2020 [Unpublished:] Tell us about your background and background in being a filmmaker. What’s your story?

[Veronica Lupo:] I was born in Romania, but I moved to New York when I was 13. I’ve always been into film and photography, but I really started my passion in film when I was about 14. My passion started after watching the movie A Beautiful Mind and ever since then it’s always been film for me. Throughout high school I studied Fine Arts and now that I’m in college, I study film at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

[Unpublished:] Where do you get your inspiration from when making films?

[Lupo:] In general, it’s really all from real life, and from my friends. I always try to hear people’s stories about life. I think that’s the most important thing you can do for film. It’s the real stories and real people that inspire me.

[Unpublished:] Do you plan on going into the film industry? Do you know what you want to do in the future or is this more like a hobby?

[Lupo:] No, this is definitely what I want to do for a very long time. It’s where I see myself being. I’m learning writing and I want to continue doing this for a long time.

I’m planning on continuing my studies and then just starting to work and make as much as I can.

[Unpublished:] Do you know specifically what you want to do?

[Lupo:] I really want to continue going into writing. I’m also very interested in cinematography. I mean there’s so much you can do in film.

[Unpublished:] How was the process of creating your short film, Tell ‘Em? [Lupo:] It has been a very long process. I started writing the script back in November, and it took six months to come to a final draft so I went through about 11 different drafts of the movie. I was getting feedback and changing the story up including the characters so I think the longest process was definitely writing it. The writing took the longest part but the casting was also a big part of it. I got about 300 people who wanted to be in it.

It took about a month in itself figuring out the right kind of people. After the casting there was figuring out the location. That was something more difficult to do in New York City because it was quite expensive. It is very personal to me and I wanted to make a location to be the room of a teenage girl so we ended up doing it at my house in my actual room. I had a lot of my close friends helping me along the way and my aunt is a script supervisor so she was helping us with that. Preproduction was very long and complicated but it all came together in the end. All the actors were amazing and had

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such great chemistry. I don’t know how it happened and it was kind of like a miracle that they all had chemistry. It was just so great between them that we actually felt like they were friends for such a long time.

[Unpublished:] Did you pull from personal experiences when you were writing Tell ‘Em or did just you come up with the idea?

[Lupo:] Yeah, absolutely, actually the way the idea originally started was after a breakup. I went through a period of experimenting and trying to figure out my own identity. And let’s just say the experiences I’ve had were disappointing so I started being interested in this whole idea of love, dating and romance especially with people who are young. So I was more attentive to the stories my friends were telling me and people surrounding me and I took on all these frustrations that all of us were relating to and that’s how I wrote them. It is all very much inspired by my own experience and my friends’ experiences.

a story about bad experiences that lead to growing up and what it means to be a young and to be a teenager learning from shitty experiences. I want people to know that finding your identity, dealing with love, and hookup culture is part of growing up and helps you figure out who you want to be. One important thing for me was to show diversity because I wanted to make it true to life.

I wanted to show different ideas, different sexualities, genders and races. I wanted to show them all together through this one thing which is friendship, which was the theme of the whole film.

[Unpublished:] Do you have a favorite part in your short film?

[Lupo:] I don’t want to say I have a favorite part because they are all my favorites because they’re all very personal. The whole story means a lot to my friends and I so it’s hard to choose because they’re all so different and personal.

[Unpublished:] How do you think your short film portrays adolescents and teenagers today?

[Lupo:] Well my hope is that with this short film, anybody can relate to at least one small thing in it. It’s

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Usually, everyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s asleep. The house falls silent and motionless. No more obligations, and no more outside interruptions of reality rudely knocking on your door.

Well, I guess it usually barges. Reality never learned her manners.

I believe time slows down at night. Episodes of your favorite show just stretch on, and you can just let the next one play, whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the rush? All of the hallways, all of the space, all the time in the world, it all belongs to you. After midnight, the world shifts. And you can do whatever you choose.

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Even the little creatures outside, tucked away best they can from the frigid air, are asleep. Your home is draped in a thick, black cover of impenetrable sky that will soon be dissolved by morning sun rays. No outside distractions--only blurred and dimmed street lights flickering and blinking like as though they’re trying to keep their eyelids open.

At night, there are no rules. You can eat candy, any deserts, any portion sizes, any pints and it doesn’t count. No one saw except for you and I surely won’t tell anyone. You can brush your teeth for a drowsy 30 seconds, or the overachiever of precisely two minutes.

And even better, you don’t have to floss.

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AND

RECLAMATION REFORMATION

by Francesca Pavluk

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Influenced by the insouciant nature of the surfers and skaters of the West Coast, surf rock seamlessly marries traditional punk rock with catchy, upbeat riffs and lyrics that transport the listener straight to the beaches of California in the ‘60s. This genre begs the listeners to not take any aspect of it seriously and that’s the beauty of it.

The main perpetrators of this movement, a band known as Surf Punks, developed surf rock on the basis of fun, cynicism, and the derision of gate-keeping traditional rock fanatics. Sadly, the band’s flippant haughtiness ultimately became its hamartia; they were dropped from their label in 1980 when the lead singer, Dennis Dragon, skipped out on a gig to go surfing instead. While onbrand for Dragon, his stunt caused the band to lose its popularity to the ever-growing subgenres of rock throughout the late 1900s, leading to the disappearance of surf rock for about 40 years.

Enter the early 2000s: the youth is betrayed by technology, a failing education system, and the constant feeling of never being good enough for a world that does not and will never root for them. Much like any other era in history, the feelings of the youth manifest through their music: swing music in the 20s, doo-wop in the 50s, and R&B rap in the early 2000s. Through the years, subcategories of a blend of indie, rock, and alternative music start to emerge, and young people are graced by bands like The Vaccines, The Buttertones, Surf Curse, Skegss, and FIDLAR. The Vaccines set the stage in 2010: simultaneously rough and dreamy, they

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offered lyrics of of optimism and a beseechment for the return of youth, “If at some point we all succumb, for goodness sake let us be young.” (Wetsuit, 2011). This song, the musical equivalent to an adolescent coming of age movie, tells of a teenager’s worries of getting older and not enjoying his youth enough as he could have. While this may seem more somber than Surf Punks’ playful lyrics, it stems back to the crux of surf rock: the romanticization of your formative teen years.

Irresponsibility, naivety, and the fear of becoming your worst enemy: older. The synthy a cappella intro sends the listener to a movie-esque scene: running towards the ocean on an overcast summer day with your best friends, feeling the magnetizing call of the beach begging you to stray away from the monotony of normal life, “Put a wetsuit on, come on, come on / Grow your hair out long... / Put a t-shirt on / Do me wrong, do me wrong, do me wrong” (Wetsuit, 2011). This song embodies the teenage fantasy of a summer road trip with your significant other, wind-swept hair curly from the sea salt, bronzed skin, and never looking back on the life you left behind. While typically idealistic and virtually unfeasible, these themes offer a space of escapism for young people that spites the impracticalities of itself for the sake of hope. While the listener may feel that their years of youth are fleeting, they can delve into the quixotic world that surf rock has created for them.

Surf Curse and FIDLAR represent the ludicrousness of surf rock through lyrics such as, “‘Cause I’m born and raised in the USA / And I just scream and shout / That I’ll Never Sell Out... / Wait, how much?” (40oz. On Repeat, 2015). Mocking other shallow rock stars that put fame before music, FIDLAR’s hyper self-awareness of the trite themes of surf rock is what makes their music so powerful. It is a way for the youth to scream, “Yes, I know it’s cliché, but it’s who we are.” What other bands will poke fun at their own music as they’re singing it?

One archetype that encompasses a large portion of surf rock is the banal “teenager in love.” Confusion, awkward romantic encounters, and unrealistic sexual fantasies; that’s what Surf Curse demonstrates perfectly, “I want a goth babe in my life / I want someone I can bite / I want to listen to The Cure / I want to tell you that I’m yours” (Goth Babe, 2015). What more could a naive adolescent boy want than the typical manic pixie dream girl constantly represented to him in the media? Ah, the joys of teen boy fantasies.

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Skegss builds off of this dynamic with a song that brings the listener straight back to their most uninhibited spring break memories, “Spring has sprung in the Summer / All the girls take off their clothes / Though I’m aware they’re so much finer / We do go so slow” (Spring Has Sprung, 2017). A carefree ballad to the inhibitions caused by a teen’s first memory of being attracted to girls, “Spring Has Sprung” shows the confessional nature of surf rock.

While some may take these lyrics for what they seem to be, I see them as a multifaceted representation of the dichotomy of adolescence. There lies a constant pull between refusing to grow up and wanting so badly to mature, and the product of this battle is the genre of surf rock. Between the cries of “Don’t take this seriously, it’s just for fun!” you can see the questioning, the pacing back and forth on your bedroom floor, the sweaty palms after you send the text that maybe you shouldn’t have sent... or should you have? It’s the empathetic nature of music that draws the listener in, almost as if the lyrics are a best friend saying, “Yeah, I’ve been there too.”

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It’s quite easy for genres like this to be swept under the “unimportant” rug by the music industry, mostly because it’s composed of ostentatious lyrics and tinny guitar riffs that are incorporated purely for the purpose of making the song ear-catching. This type of criticism is nothing new for the youth of the modern age. We’re accused of killing the newspaper industry, the plastic straw industry, and even the napkin industry. We’re berated for enjoying avocado toast and then scolded for being too involved in politics. If a young person is caught wearing an AC/ DC shirt, they’re quizzed on how many songs they know to ensure that they are “cultured” enough to be wearing the shirt. Since Millennials and Gen-Zers have been blamed for ruining just about everything, I say we ride out the wave of surf rock for as long as we can. Although the lyrics seem shallow, the bands seem too cool to take music seriously, and the themes are filled with platitudes, surf rock represents the reckless, awkward, and beautiful strangeness of adolescence in the modern era - and that’s something we can never ruin.

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2:37 a.m.

It’s dark and I feel as if I’m the only one awake in the world. I can hear the ticking of watches I never seem to wear and the hum of the air conditioner as I lie here. I feel as if I’m preparing for the end of an era and it hurts.

3:09 a.m.

It wasn’t real. It didn’t feel real. It didn’t become real until she said aloud that she was leaving and then I realized that my best friend was moving 1,715 miles away from me and never coming back.

3:46 a.m.

My biggest fear is that I’ll forget it. I’ll forget it all. I’ll forget the small details and the moments of laughter. I’ll forget the way the world looked and how it smelled that day and what I felt when you looked at me or when I was sitting next to such beautiful people or when I felt loved for the first time. I’m afraid I’ll forget.

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4:28 a.m.

I can’t sleep. All the memories and the people in my life are swirling around my head and I’m overwhelmed with emotions and confusion as to how I ended up here: the moment I have to say goodbye because I never thought it would come. I can’t help but think of the people I love and the ones who made my days bearable and the weeks memorable and the weekends unforgettable and made me feel alive. I’m overwhelmed because it’s all about to end, and I’m on the verge of the unknown.

“You’re going to do such great things.”

I’m terrified that I won’t. That I’ll amount to nothing or that I’ll let everyone down or fail the dreams that my parents and friends had in mind for me. I’m scared I won’t be enough to do what I love.

“What if I don’t? What happens to me then? Will I still be great in your eyes?”

5:58 a.m.

I wonder when it was that I grew up because I can’t seem to remember when the seconds turned into years and when the dreams turned into plans and when I found such a strength to begin building a life for myself. I wonder because I can’t remember when I finally began breathing and living my life for me and when I first felt the sun’s warmth on my skin or when I first felt loved.

I wonder because I wish I could go back and tell the scared thirteen-year-old girl that when she grew up, her life would be more than she could’ve ever imagined and that she would finally be able to breathe.

6:36 a.m.

time used to feel endless as if it couldn’t move fast enough as if there was too much of it, now it feels absent as if there’s none left and it went by far too quickly

7:00 a.m.

An era of my life is ending and I know it’ll never be the same again and I wish it could all slow down. For just a second, so I could relive it all one last time before life continues and everything changes.

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