Writers@Grinnell: Douglas Trevor

By Mayo Sueta [email protected]

Last Friday, March 2, Writers@Grinnell welcomed author Douglas Trevor to campus to read from his newest book, “The Book of Wonders,” and answer questions about writing.

According to his website, Trevor’s novel “Girls I Know” won the 2013 Balcones Fiction Prize and his short story collection “The Thin Tear in the Fabric of Space” won the 2005 Iowa Short Fiction Award. He was also a finalist for the 2006 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for First Fiction. He has been published in The Iowa Review, New Letters and the Michigan Quarterly Review, among others.

Professor Dean Bakopoulos, English, introduced Trevor at the lunch as an “accomplished writer” who is “known around the literary community as an incredibly nice and helpful guy.”

Trevor first talked about his newest short story collection, “The Book of Wonders.” Each student at the event received a free, signed copy.

“I kind of wanted to step back from the process of … working in the form of a longer narrative because I wanted to find a different voice for this book I was trying to write,” Trevor said.

As Trevor worked on some of the short stories in the collection, he found a similarity between the themes.

“I [was] working on these two stories that seemed utterly entirely different, and [I realized] that, actually, they’re connected … because they’re both thinking about the relationships that we have to books, and the relationship we have to learning and the relationship we have through books with other people,” Trevor said. “I was sort of interested in that experience and I started to think … I’m going to do a collection of stories and they’re all having something to do with failed relationships to one degree or another and some kind of investment in storytelling or some kind of relationship that people have with books.”

After reading from “Book of Wonders,” Trevor answered questions that students had about writing. One student asked advice on how to cut down stories and get used to getting rid of sentences that may not be necessary for a piece. To this, Trevor answered that it may not be the worst thing to have to cut stories down. “It’s really hard because … we use the word revision but a lot of the time, we just use the word cut … because a lot of the time … what we do when we’re revising is, we take things out,” Trevor said. “So you might be the kind of writer whose early drafts of a ten page story is 30 pages long. And you just have to learn how to reduce, but it might be advantageous for you … to inhabit that and not feel like you need to short circuit that and try to leave things out before you know if you need them or not. It’s always better to have to cut something than to finish a story and feel like the story is empty in some way.”

Trevor added that the process of writing does not have to be linear.

“Write the part of the story that you’re most interested in first. … Inhabit that part and see what happens there.”

Douglas Trevor read from his collection of short stories “The Book of Wonders.” Contributed.

Zenizen and Madison McFerrin come to Gardner

By Kelly Page [email protected]

This Saturday, March 10, a capella future soul singer Madison McFerrin and nu-jazz-influenced musician Zenizen will perform in Gardner Lounge. Doors will open at 8 p.m., Zenizen will begin her set at 8:15 p.m. and Madison McFerrin will take the stage at 9:15 p.m.

Brooklyn-based musician McFerrin creates soul music with barely any instrumentation. Instead, she constructs music using her voice and the snapping or clapping of her hands looped over themselves, with what the New York Times described as “wonderful vocal dexterity, deftly swerving from sharp, clearly enunciated staccato bursts to fluttery, free-form melismata.”

McFerrin is the daughter of Grammy-Award-winning jazz musician Bobby McFerrin, whose popular song “Don’t Worry Be Happy” is the only a capella song to reach number one on the Billboard Top 100. McFerrin follows her father’s legacy of inventiveness in music. After studying at Berklee College of Music, McFerrin released two EPs, “Finding Foundations, Vol. I” in 2016 and the second volume in 2018. Vol. I maintains joyfulness as McFerrin addresses ex-lovers and expresses the need to love yourself. Her more recent release, “Finding Foundations: Vol. II” extends some of the same musical motifs as Vol. I, experimenting even more with layered a capella harmonies. Her track “Insane,” in which McFerrin sings about her obsession with a lover, shows her feelings through increasing tension and urgency built upon layered staccato harmonies, which provide a background for McFerrin’s lyrics. Since McFerrin started releasing music, she has been gaining attention from listeners and critics. DJ Gilles Peterson featured her song “No Time To Lose” on “Brownswood Bubblers,” his series of compilations of emerging talent. After that, she performed at the Arroyo Seco Weekend music festival in Pasadena, California.

In performance, she can be expected to pay tribute to the greats of music, like when she covered “Toxic” by Britney Spears at a recent show at Dartmouth College. She asks that the audience stand near her, to share in her music.

Also performing on Saturday is Zenizen, the musical project of Opal Hoyt. She is an Alaska native who has lived everywhere from Jamaica to Brooklyn, but records her music in Australia. The diversity of Hoyt’s past landscapes mirrors the variety of places her music brings its listeners. On the Zenizen Facebook page, Hoyt cites Minnie Riperton, Mariah Carey and London nu- jazz as her main influences. She also states that she “is committed to modern psychedelia, poetry and groove.” Zenizen’s songs are driven by melodic bass lines and hush drums, which provide a backdrop to her voice as it climbs and unfurls through her lyrics.

Her song “Follow the Leader” is based on her observations of a group of teenagers she saw in Australia. According to Pitchfork, “The song unfurls slowly and joyously, Hoyt’s voice lingering and echoing as she sings from the perspective of a group of friends waiting ‘with baited breath’ for a leader to guide their mischief.”

On a feature for Tidal, Hoyt lists five albums that have shaped her life, which included the soundtrack of Hairspray, “Spice” by The Spice Girls and “Black and White” by The Pointer Sisters. Though it might not be immediately obvious whether any sounds from these albums appear in Zenizen’s music, they are all reflected in Hoyt’s pleasing melodies, which pull listeners into her songs. Zenizen and Madison McFerrin will perform this weekend in Gardner Lounge. Artwork by Cassidy Christiansen. Grinnell Artists: Nandita Banik ’20

By Quan Minh Tran [email protected]

Nandita Banik ’20 started dancing at the age of two, and at the age of five and a half, she started to take lessons. From then, dancing has always been an important part of her life. She has experience in various genres, from Indian classical and Bollywood to hip hop, jazz and other contemporary dances. Her dance style, Banik said, includes a little bit of everything.

“Even though [Bollywood has] been coined as a dance form, it’s actually kind of like a fusion of different kinds of dance forms together. So it’s well-known to be uplifting and upbeat, but it has more variety to it,” she said. So far at Grinnell, Banik has performed Bollywood dances in Diwali, the traditional Hindu festival of lights, and the International Student Organization’s (ISO) Cultural Evening. She is also part of the Grinnell Bollywood Dhamaka club.

During her first year, her interest in dance led Banik to acting. She was assistant manager for a student production and took Introduction to Acting with Leslie Delmenico, theater. She found that her background in dance informed her acting.

“Actually, I’d say the acting has a lot of influence from my dancing. When I go on stage to act, I think my dancing background has helped me to bring [out] my facial expression and to be confident on stage,” Banik said.

Banik also expresses her love of dance through her YouTube dance videos. For her, dancing has always been a stress- reliever and in the past, it helped her get through difficult times. Banik started to make her YouTube videos when she found herself in a similarly stressful time in Grinnell.

“During spring semester my first year, I was really stressed [out] and [still] wasn’t used to Grinnell culture. So I started going to [the] Bucksbaum [Dance] Studio for fun and dancing on my own. And I made those videos and put [them] up for fun. I got good feedback so I just kept doing it,” she said.

She dances to a variety of songs, including Hindi music as well as American pop music. Her most recent video is of her dancing a form of Indian classical to “Young, Dumb and Broke” by Khalid. She makes note every time she finds a potential song that she may want to dance to or choreograph.

Banik acknowledges the difficulty of keeping such an independent project consistent while also keeping up with her other commitments. Sometimes it takes her up to a month to choreograph, dance, record and edit, reshooting until she is satisfied with her video. Nevertheless, the channel is building slowly but surely, and has been met with great praise. One of her recent videos, a cover on a song by a famous dancer, Kiran Jopale, received a shout out from the artist himself on Instagram.

“I picked up his choreography, filmed myself and put it up to my Instagram and just tagged him in it. I didn’t think he would actually see it but he did,” Banik said. “He was like ‘This is very cool and I want to put it on my story.’ So I sent him the video and he featured a link of it.”

Having grown up with dance, Banik cannot imagine a life without it. Still, she admits there was a time when dancing didn’t hold much value to her.

“I was going through the weird stages of transitioning and my body was changing and it was uncomfortable and I [hated] it every part of it. So between 12 and 15, I hated dancing,” she said. “But then I fell back in love with it. It’s like a part of my identity … that I couldn’t let go,”

While Banik has not had time to take dance lessons recently, she still finds opportunities to dance whenever she can. Currently, she is planning to join the big Bollywood group that performs at the ISO Cultural Evening every year. She is also working on two new choreographies, one of which involves dancing in high heels. While she admitted that she has not given much thought to dancing professionally, Banik smiled and added, “never say never.” Nandita Banik ’20 performs with Ridhika Agrawal ’20 at the International Students Organization Culture Evening. Contributed. “Drawing and Conversation” with Tara Shukla

By Zoe Fruchter [email protected]

Last March 6 and 7, Canadian-Iowan artist Tara Shukla offered Grinnell community members a rare look at her artistic process by hosting “Drawing and Conversation,” a part of the events centered around Faulconer Gallery’s exhibit “Making Life Visible,” which runs through June 10.

Shukla’s drawings are intricate and life-like. The works she contributed to “Making Life Visible” depict larger-than-life bones in delicate yet forceful detail.

“My drawings are simple but they have a long process, they take a long time to do. And that’s a part of the viewing experience, understanding that someone made these by hand … this is a way of highlighting that. Even though I make things that are finished objects they imply a process, so it’s nice for people to see the process,” Shukla said, in reference to allowing visitors to observe her work.

Shukla is originally from Canada, where she earned both her bachelor and master of fine arts degrees. She has shown her work throughout Canada, including solo exhibitions in Kingston, Montreal and Toronto. She moved to the U.S. to teach at a small liberal arts school in Colorado and then came to Grinnell. In Iowa, Shukla has held solo exhibitions at the Des Moines Botanical Center and University of Iowa hospitals. Her work’s inclusion in “Making Life Visible” marks Shukla’s third show at Grinnell, following “Animas” in 2008 at the Grinnell Community Art Gallery and “Intimate Nature” in Grinnell College’s Smith Gallery.

“Making Life Visible” is the product of collaboration between Leslie Wright, director of the Faulconer Gallery, and Professor Jackie Brown, biology. The show aims to explore how the visual image functions in both fine art and biology, and the intersections between the two disciplines.

“I was asked to participate in this exhibit because my work uses the format and syntax of scientific illustration. It isn’t scientific illustration … but it asks the question: what is the role of observation in art and what is the project of observation, of trying to find truth and what does that mean,” Shukla said.

Shukla reflected on the process of being observed as both fun and enlightening.

“I was here on community day so I had a lot of kids come in, and that was really fun because they wanted to know what all the materials were and how I used them,” Shukla said, gesturing to a container filled with charcoal pencils and smudging sticks.

She also noted that a wide variety of community members had come to see her draw including students, retired college teachers and even her friends.

“They know I’m always drawing but they don’t know what I’m doing so that was fun,” Shukla added with a laugh. Tara Shukla did a live drawing at Faulconer Gallery and engaged in conversation with gallery visitors. Photo by Sarah Ruiz.

Grinnell Orchestra to perform this weekend

By Ben Mikek [email protected]

On March 10, the Grinnell Symphony Orchestra, directed by Visiting Director of Orchestras Jaemi Loeb will perform its first concert of the spring semester. Loeb, who is leading the orchestra during the 2017-2018 academic year while regular director Professor Eric McIntyre is on sabbatical, will direct three pieces. Each piece has distinct musical, emotional and historical differences from the other two pieces.

The concert will begin with Charles Griffes’ “Poem,” featuring a flute solo by Kirsten Gillis ’18, who won the annual concerto competition to place this composition on the program.

“I’ve been playing this piece for over a year now,” Gillis said. “The orchestra has three or four months to learn it and play it, and that can be hard because [the] orchestra has so much less time.”

“Poem” communicates varying emotions.

“[‘Poem’] definitely does have this somber feel to it, but there’s also really fun and uplifting parts of it,” Gillis said. “The beginning is very pensive — I feel like it’s thinking about what’s going to happen — and then all of a sudden you get hit with this fast stuff and it gets really fun.”

“Poem” will be followed on stage by an innovative modern composition, Richard Ford’s “Bolts of Melody.” This piece crosses the boundaries of art forms, musically referencing the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Loeb, who knows the composer who conducted the world premiere of the piece in 2011, has directed “Bolts of Melody” before. The piece contains “quotations from [Emily Dickinson’s] poems, and some sort of exploration of … the concept of finishing a work—what does it mean to be finished?” Loeb said. “That’s a thing that poets, writers, composers, painters, all kinds of artists really struggle with. To me that’s really fascinating because as a performer, that’s not so much an issue; its finished when you walk out on stage and do it.”

After this reflection on completion, the orchestra will close the concert with Prokofiev’s “Lieutenant Kijé,” originally composed as a film score in 1934. “It’s kind of like celebration music. It kind of sounds as if we were playing for some kind of wedding,” said Mayu Sakae ’20, a violinist. The piece, which maintains notes of humor from its cinematic origins, has deep historic roots.

“‘Lieutenant Kijé’ … from this standpoint sounds very Russian. In [Prokofiev’s] day, there were some naysayers about how Russian his music was,” Loeb said. “He had fled the Soviet Union, and in doing this movie score, he had high hopes of getting into everyone’s good graces.”

The concert, then, will attempt to unite three pieces from very different times and styles. Regardless, members noted teamwork helped the concert become reality.

“It’s really a group effort. … When everyone does it together, it’s just really awesome,” said Marie Spychala ’18, who plays the flute.

The concert will begin at 3 p.m. on Saturday, March 10. According to Sakae, there should be one simple takeaway.

“[The audience should leave feeling] encouraged or happy,” she said. “I guess it comes back to the positive attitude.”

The orchestra will perform on Saturday, March 10 at Sebring Lewis. Photo by Sarah Ruiz. Bob’s Underground Cafe hosts writer’s open-mic

By Chloe Wray [email protected]

The English student educational policy committee (SEPC) brought open-mic back to Bob’s Underground Café this week on Thursday, March 9, from 8 to 10 p.m., for writers and listeners. In previous years, open-mic nights were hosted at Bob’s on a bi-weekly basis. Historically, Bob’s open-mic nights have featured stand-up comedy, singing and readings. Since Bob’s has been on hiatus this year, closed until further notice, students have not had access to a casual setting in which to share their work or passion. “People at Grinnell are constantly creating things — we have an active student body that has ideas and creating an open-mic space I think is important for that, just to allow people to see what other people are doing and have that shared space,” said Megan Tcheng ’19, a member of the English SEPC.

For SEPC member Andrea Baumgartel ’19, the workshopping aspect of creative writing classes has been especially rewarding, and an opportunity that she feels may be hard to find outside of the classroom setting.

“Writing is such a solitary endeavor so when you get those opportunities to share your work and hear the works of other people and bounce inspirations off each other it can be a really great and supportive environment,” Baumgartel said.

While the open-mic was supported by the English Department, as the SEPC is encouraged to host events outside of its departmental tasks, the event celebrated the creativity of writers across majors.

English SEPC member Steven Duong ’19 encouraged people to share any works that they were proud of, whether it be poems, short stories or memoirs. Baumgartel, who attended the Concerned Black Students Showcase on March 2, said that she heard many poems recited and hoped that those students attend the event as well.

“Because poetry is such a large term, there are so many forms of it and so many ways you can write poetry and read it,” Baumgartel said.

“With that being said, we want range — people can read five minutes of something they’ve been working on. It can be in progress, it doesn’t have to be polished,” Tcheng added.

The event aimed to extend beyond students in the English department and invited faculty and staff to also attend. According to Duong and Baumgartel, both Professors Carolyn Jacobsen and John Garrison attended.

It was also important to members of the SEPC that those who just wanted to listen felt comfortable attending the event in support of their peers.

“I think our main goal is to try to create these spaces not just for students who are directly involved in the English department but to create creative space where ideas can be shared and just encourage that side of the Grinnell community to be active and find opportunities to share their work and get feedback and be heard,” Tcheng said.

“It’s definitely like a guinea pig though, we haven’t done this before,” Duong said. Baumgartel added that the event has the potential to be carried over by future SEPC members in the years to come.

Students and faculty alike came to the writer’s open-mic, hosted by the English SEPC, to share their works. Photo by Elena Copell. Teams gear up for spring break competition in Florida

Cody Takabuki ’20 on the mound in Florida last spring break. The baseball team plays a busy spring break schedule. Contributed photo. By Chloe Wray [email protected]

This year, as has been the case since Athletic Director Andy Hamilton was a student at the College in the 1980s, the athletic department will be sending their spring sports teams to warmer weather for some game time and training. The men’s and women’s golf teams will be travelling to Arizona while the men’s and women’s track, men’s and women’s tennis, baseball and softball teams will be travelling to Florida.

“For some teams, the overall goal is really to get some games in, to brush up before we compete for the conference championship. And for other teams, it’s about getting the rust off and moving into the season, or in the case of track, keeping their training going,” Hamilton said. “From a student- athlete perspective, there’s a real freshness to this because in some ways they can really focus on their sport.”

The women’s track and field team, according to Head Coach Evelyn Freeman, is preparing for their outdoor season after a comparatively short indoor season.

“The trip helps us with the continuity of our training,” Freeman said. It also allows the team to train for events that are constrained in indoor practices, such as javelin, steeple chase, hammer throw, 400 hurtles and discus. It also serves as an opportunity to integrate new athletes transitioning from basketball or swimming into the team and test out athletes in events for which they have not previously competed.

The track and field teams will compete in a meet at Emory University at the end of their trip, as every team who takes such a trip must compete to comply with NCAA regulations.

“Most people go away for spring break, so we’re going away too,” Freeman said. “If we didn’t have the trip, then we would stay in Grinnell to train, and how many people are we going to hold in Grinnell for two weeks, when the weather’s not great and they’d rather be somewhere else?”

The trip fulfills a different purpose for the baseball team. Baseball Head Coach Tim Hollibaugh’s intent is to get as many games, 14 to be exact, during a period where there are not classes. Many of these games will be against other teams from the colder climates, including Illinois, Wisconsin and Massachusetts.

“The whole goal of break is to get a better sense of our team in terms of how we play, who is going to play — experience, get as many experiences against quality opponents as we can, and really just prepare for our conference season. We play an extremely difficult schedule but the whole goal is to learn from these experiences and eventually get better game by game,” Hollibaugh said.

Like most of the other teams, the track and field teams will take a week for their trip, and the baseball team will be away the longest at 11 days.

Students are asked to pay a per diem amount that ranges from $50-75, an amount that is subsidized by funds from the athletic department’s budget. Hollibaugh suggested that if athletes express need, there are funds available to offset their personal costs to make the trip accessible to the entire team. For teams like track, Freeman encourages everyone to come, but out of a 61-athlete combined men’s and women’s team, between 30 and 35 athletes will be attending this year.

“Although it’s a big operation to do this kind of thing, we’re trying to do it as cost-effectively as possible,” Hamilton said. The baseball and track and field teams will take buses to keep costs low for their large teams. Teams like tennis will only bring select players, such as those in their starting lineup. Some teams will rent out condos and cook instead of going out each night.

These communal living situations provide an opportunity for team bonding, which Freeman cites as particularly important, and a component to a team’s success that is often overlooked amid classes and practices. Since the teams will be on break, the coaches try to build in opportunities to go to the beach and relax in between practices or games.

“It’s an opportunity for our athletic programs to get really valuable athletic competition. Not every school in our league gets an opportunity to go,” Hamilton said.

Athlete Spotlight: Sriram Sugumaran ’21 Sriram Sugumaran ’21 is making an immediate impact on the tennis court. Photo by Reina Shahi.

By Quan Tran [email protected]

When Sriram Sugumaran ’21 reached his senior year of high school, he faced a decision that few student-athletes face in their career: to go Division 1 school or not. Academically, Grinnell felt like the best path to becoming a doctor, but athletically, life without competitive tennis seemed inconceivable. Although it wasn’t an easy decision, Sugumaran decided to try his best at balancing out the two.

“It was a sacrifice. I really wanted to play D1 because it validates all the hard work I’ve done all these years. But in terms of my future and my career, Grinnell offers me the best of both worlds,” Sugumaran said.

Now, nearly halfway through his second semester and only one month into his first collegiate season, he is making a major impact on the tennis court. Two weeks ago, after the Pioneers’ impressive 9-0 sweep at Macalester, Sugumaran was named Midwest Conference (MWC) Men’s Tennis Performer of the Week. To win such an award this early in his career was, to him, a validation for not just his individual performance but also the team’s hard work.

“I think I played well and it was nice to get the honor. It puts the spotlight on our team and puts Grinnell on the map in our conference,” he said.

Originally from Bettendorf, Iowa, he has played tennis as long as he can remember. He grew up playing basketball and swimming, but tennis has always been his focus. He eventually quit everything else altogether to focus on tennis when he reached high school, and saw a big improvement between his freshman and sophomore year.

Sugumaran’s abilities were no secret in high school. He went 80-3 in his career in singles, won the doubles state championships his junior year and his team made it to the state semifinals for the first time in 14 years during his senior year. He still holds six different school records, both in singles and doubles.

Like many first-year student-athletes, Sugumaran noticed the competitiveness of college sports immediately. Realizing that he could not take any opponents lightly at this level became apparent quickly. The intensity he discovered that he had to bring into every match is what has surprised him the most.

“There are some matches in high school I could get away with not having to give my best. But in college, in every single [match] I know I’m gonna play someone who’s gonna push me very hard. … I have to try 100 percent every single match and I know that no matches are gonna be easy for me,” he said.

Now that the tennis season is slowly transitioning to the outdoor season, Sugumaran — who plays a traditional serve-and- volley type of game — admits that there are even more variables that come into play in a single match. Especially outdoors, no two matches are the same. Players can be affected by the wind, the heat, the light or the mental aspects of the game. “I generally like indoor more than outdoor just because there are no conditions. … But outdoor, I’ve learnt to cope with a lot of conditions in terms of angle and how I hit my shot. Mentally, I know how to play outside a lot better,” Sugumaran said.

Tennis also runs in Sugumaran’s family. He has an 8-year-old brother who plays tennis, but he was the first one in the family that took tennis at a collegiate level so seriously. Balancing one’s first year of college with the pressures of being the number one player on a successful tennis team can take its toll. When possible, Sugumaran likes to create some free time that he can fill with free reading or chess.

In terms of choosing Grinnell, Sugumaran became familiar with the College through Director of Athletics Andy Hamilton at a tennis showcase in California. Hamilton had been watching him play for a few years, and encouraged him to pursue his tennis and academic goals at Grinnell.

When he reflects on his college decision, Sugumaran has no regrets.

“I love it here. Everything I expected is where it lies right now. In the long run, when I look down the road 20 years from now, I can say I think I made the best decision for my career.” Rueter’s Digest: DeMar Derozan’s public dialogue about depression disrupts mental health stigmas in sports DeMar Derozan of the Toronto Raptors recently opened up about depression. Contributed photo.

By Sam Rueter [email protected]

During NBA All-Star festivities in late February, Toronto Raptors superstar DeMar DeRozan made the most important shot of the weekend. All it took were six little words: “This depression get the best of me,” strung together in a tweet at five in the morning, for the midrange specialist to force the NBA community to confront one of its least talked about epidemics: mental illness.

DeRozan, who divulged in an interview with the Toronto Star that he has struggled with depression his entire life, is not the first NBA player to speak openly about his dealings with mental health, however, he certainly is the most famous to do so.

In 2012, first round draft pick Royce White made headlines when he announced he would refuse to sign with the Houston Rockets until they included a clause in his contract that would allow him to travel by bus instead of by plane. For White, flying was a major trigger of anxiety, and thus he thought the team had an obligation to accommodate his medical needs as well as teach administrative personnel relevant mental health training techniques.

The NBA and the Rockets disagreed with him, and soon thereafter White left the league, all the while maintaining that the NBA needed to improve its policies for governing and treating players dealing with mental illness.

Aside from DeRozan and White, the only other headline-worthy moment related to mental health in the NBA was when Larry Sanders, a dominant and athletic man, walked away from his $44 million contract in 2015 because he needed help with anxiety and depression. At 27 years old, Sanders was in the prime of his career.

Due to the prevalence of mental illness sufferers in this country, it is relatively surprising that it is not a bigger topic in basketball and sports in general. According to a recent study by the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI), about 1 in 5 adults experience mental illness each year. Statistically speaking, that would mean that there could be close to 100 players on NBA teams right now dealing with mental health issues while receiving little or no help from the league and their franchises, who are not obligated to provide specific training programs or treatment plans to address such issues.

Though outside pressure is mounting to recognize the legitimacy of mental illness in schools and workplaces, in the locker room and on the court, it is still very much a taboo subject. Admitting to an invisible illness can be emasculating, and thus player health is restricted by archaic definitions of masculinity which are often propagated in media publications and by the players themselves. This false equivalency of mental anguish with weaknesses, probably deriving from the invisible nature of such afflictions, does a disservice both to sufferers and those who attempt to treat them. “It’s one of them things that no matter how indestructible we look like we are, we’re all human at the end of the day,” DeRozan told the Toronto Star following his initial tweet. “We all got feelings … all of that. Sometimes … it gets the best of you, where times everything in the whole world is on top of you.”

This kind of vulnerability from a professional athlete is especially refreshing considering the way in which the media celebrate their toughness — often framed as problematic war and battle analogies — and lambast their moments of humanity, their tears and their misses and their failures.

As such, the NBA must do everything in its power to accommodate the needs and wishes of one of its most vulnerable populations of players, many of whom may be scared to admit their struggles for fear of ostracization, stigmatization and degradation.

If young kids and fans can follow DeRozan’s lead and learn that it is okay to struggle, and, more importantly, okay to talk about it, then hopefully the national discourse surrounding mental illness in America can change for the better.

Dusty – 3/9/18 — Phoebe Schreckinger ’19

Horoscope: The Signs as Witchy Singers

Aries: Björk Taurus: Charli XCX

Gemini: Marina Diamandis

Cancer: FKA Twigs

Leo: Stevie Nicks

Virgo: Grimes

Libra: Taylor Momsen

Scorpio: Lana del Rey

Sagittarius: Azealia Banks

Capricorn: Lorde

Aquarius: Siouxsie Sioux

Pisces: Sky Ferreira

— Sister Aurora Impulse

Loudspeaker: The “Hounds of Love” are h(a)unting me In 1978, a 19-year-old Kate Bush released her debut single “Wuthering Heights” on the EMI label. The eerie, falsetto- driven tribute to Emily Brontë’s equally unsettling novel was an unexpected hit, climbing to No. 1 on British music charts and remaining in the position for four weeks. This momentous event kicked off Bush’s career, firmly entrenching her in public consciousness as a daring and new voice in British music. What made Bush’s music so remarkable was not only its creative heft, but also her age and gender. It was particularly unusual for a young woman singer to gain such critical and commercial success, but also to do so by performing her own deeply personal and idiosyncratic material. The music industry at this point was dominated by male performers, songwriters, producers and executives. The female singers who enjoyed success did so by performing material written for them by men rather than their own creative visions. But Kate Bush’s work flew in the face of this traditional order, combining her own deeply personal and innovative songwriting with unique instrumentation. It allowed for a creative vision that was uniquely hers rather than one purely at the behest of record companies or male writers.

Bush kept up a period of intense creativity after the release of “Wuthering Heights.” She embarked on a number of major creative projects, creating four unique and boldly experimental records from 1978 to 1982. Though none of these records reached the commercial success of her debut single, they enjoyed remarkable critical success, leading one reviewer to call her albums “wholly unfettered mistress-pieces.” 1985 marked Kate Bush’s seventh year in the public eye. After a disappointing commercial debut for 1982’s “The Dreaming,” perhaps her most experimental album, Bush retreated to her family’s farmhouse in East Wickham. In one of the barns, she constructed a large 48-track studio, allowing her to create music as she pleased. In the three years between 1982 and 1985, Bush took several months away from music to spend time with her family and boyfriend. She was creatively spent until January of 1984, when she began recording demos for a new album that would go down in music history. After a few years of planning and recording, Kate Bush re-entered music in 1985 with “Hounds of Love.”

Like all of Bush’s music, this record would be fiercely creative. “Hounds of Love” is ultimately two discrete, separate pieces of music, as the album consists of two distinct sides. The first side consists of more accessible, traditional art-pop tracks, while the second is a progressive symphonic suite about the fear of drowning while drifting in water. The first side of the album lends the album its name, and all of the five tracks on this side would become classic Bush tracks. Its opener, “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” tackles Bush’s complex relationship with gender politics and femininity. The “deal with God” in the title is Bush’s request to “swap places” with a man, so that the two may understand each other’s perspectives, asking the lyrical question “we both matter, don’t we?” The song gradually grows in orchestration, starting and ending as a rollicking opener to a boldly experimental album. The album’s title track is next. “Hounds of Love” opens with a quote from British horror film “Night of the Demon” — “it’s in the trees, it’s coming!” Comparing the feeling of love with being pursued by hunting hounds, Bush’s vocal acrobatics are on full display as she imitates dogs howling and reaches an apex of passion when she declares she will “throw her shoes in the lake.”

The remainder of the first side is equally daring. “The Big Sky” is a song about misplaced childhood and finding pictures in the clouds. “Mother Stands for Comfort” sees a return to the disturbing in Bush’s work, a song about a mother murdering her child. “Cloudbusting” is an equally bizarre tribute to Austrian psychoanalyst-meets-American inventor Wilhelm Reich, who invented a gun to shoot at clouds to make rain, the aforementioned “cloudbuster” of the song. The wide array of topics and themes is indicative of Bush’s creativity as an artist and musician. But for the unique lyrics and perspectives offered in these songs, they all generally follow traditional pop formats and are particularly accessible within Bush’s larger oeuvre. The flipside of the album, titled “The Ninth Wave,” represents some of Bush’s most experimental work. The entire second side consists of this experimental suite, the protagonist of which is drifting in the ocean with only a lifejacket to keep her afloat. The first song of this suite, “And Dream of Sheep,” describes to the listener that she is unable to sleep since she will drown, but “can’t be left to her imagination” because of what she will see. It is followed by “Under Ice,” a dream of the protagonist about the mysterious things that drift under ice floes while people skate on them.

As “The Ninth Wave” continues, its protagonist is slowly pulled under the water and begins to drown. Her hallucinations grow more strange and violent as she is deprived of oxygen. The unsettling fantasy of “Under Ice” is followed by “Waking the Witch,” which begins with a chorus of voices and whale sounds commanding the protagonist to wake up from her dreaming, before breaking down into a wildly orchestral and disturbing series of accusations — a chorus of demonic voices declares her to be “guilty” of the crime of witchcraft. By “Jig of Life,” a conversation between the drowning woman and her future self in English pastoral style, there seems a real risk that she will die a drowning death. Her future commands her to “C’mon and let me live, girl!” as she pleas for the opportunity to live. But even this pleading does not reach her. In “Hello Earth,” reminiscent of funeral dirges, organ hymns, and orchestral music, the drowning woman is on the verge of death as rescue teams attempt to find her and “get her out of the waves.” She has disconnected from her body, her consciousness floating as her life ebbs away and she sees the Earth below her. In a mournful nod to her Catholic upbringing, Bush includes Gregorian chants and Irish music as part of this focus on dying. But even as she is close to a drowning death, she gains renewed strength and survives in “The Morning Fog,” the closing track to “The Ninth Wave” suite. As the more upbeat and pop-inspired song concludes, she promises she will tell all her loved ones how much she loves them and will live her life more fully in response to her near-death experience. Thirty-three years after the release of “Hounds of Love,” it is a record that remains startling in its subject matter as well as its sheer originality. As the album concludes, the listener is not only confronted with a lesson on the value of living fully but the full scope of Kate Bush’s creativity and artistic innovation.

— Maxwell Fenton ’19