THE INDY

By Jacob Karr

At Brown University, any enrolled student, regardless of economic background, has the right to attend any class he or she wants. Most of us don’t just accept this—we embrace it and celebrate it. We put our financial aid policies on a pedestal. But is this a good idea? Certainly not, in my view. (Who am I, you may ask? What do I know of this world, and how it works? I wear piqué polo shirts and an arrogant grin: what more do you need to know?)

Instead, the number of courses one is allowed to take should be proportional to the amount of tuition paid, before university ‘subsidies’ and ‘redistribution.’ So, for example, as the scion of two super-successful Manhattan professionals who can actually afford to pay my way through college, I should be able to enroll in a full four courses. Should some poor kid from the South Bronx get such VIP treatment? Come on. Just because his or her parents are working three or four jobs in order to make ends meet doesn’t mean we (notice the ‘we’ here—I position myself within the discourse of those who hold power) should let him or her take three or four classes. If a student is only paying 1/4 of tuition, well then he or she can only take one class! Why should those ‘free riders’ be able to take advantage of our money, our hard-earned dollars? Restricting the right to attend classes to tuition-payers makes a lot of sense. Just trust me on this.

After all, what is a tuition payment? A tuition payment is an investment, and as with any investment, we expect a return. It follows that the more we invest, the more we should receive. Every academic program is funded by our tuition ‘revenue.’ This includes that Poli Sci class on ‘Prosperity’ I really wanted to take last semester but alas! A couple of damn first-generationers took the last two spots. (Don’t worry, I had Daddy make a phone call.)

We—the tuition-payers—should be the only ones who get to elect our professors, to choose the food we eat at the Ratty and to decide our own grades (our professors are of course nothing more than employees with PhDs). What about the welfare prom queens? Well, they can have our used books, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll give ‘em our leftover chicken fingers on Fridays.

Poor Students, how would you feel if you had money, and you were forced to spend it on your fellow classmates?  Yes, of course! I knew you would be just as enraged at the injustice of it all! Knowledge, like money, is power—in one fell swoop you are taking both away from us!

Many will say this is not fair since students on financial aid will have fewer opportunities to learn. Exactly! Poor people should have to work that much harder than us, and make better grades. Consider the old saying: “nobody spends someone else’s money as carefully as his own.” If you yourself are footing the bill for your entire education, you will have more incentive to learn. You don’t need better opportunities, you need better incentives! As you can clearly see, universal access to classes is as immoral as it is impractical, breeding bitterness in we ‘haves’ and creating a culture of dependency in you ‘soon-to-haves.’

In general, universal classage encourages people to think—at least in this ivory tower far removed from the concrete jungle—that we are all equal. This is a dangerous notion. When everyone studies, but only a small fraction pay most of the cost for those textbooks, those who don’t pay forget that my family has more money than theirs. This is unacceptable. Our institutions of higher education should reflect our society as a whole—that is, we should remind ourselves constantly of the vast economic gaps that separate us, and we should structure our university in such a way as to make those obstacles insurmountable. We should keep our academic classes as exclusive as our socio-economic ones.

While I am pretty pleased with myself for coming up with all of this so far, we must go a step further if I am to succeed in shoving my head entirely up your ass.

Course preferences should be prioritized according to the total sum of donations bequeathed to the university by a student’s grandparents. Think about it, because I know I sure as hell haven’t.

By Nupur Shridhar

PARTICULAR, by LOSTWAX Multimedia Dance, is an absorbing multimedia exploration of individuality in an increasingly crowded world.  Inspired by the algorithms used to model the flocking behavior of birds and fish, LOSTWAX director Jamie Jewett stages a compelling, entertaining, and strikingly human narrative, derived, almost paradoxically, from data.

Jewett’s choreography sharpens that edge between the individual and the mass body: his dancers swirl both together and apart, each new movement seemingly out of sync for a fraction of a second before the overarching rhythm, the shape of the entire murmuration, first becomes apparent and then beautiful.  There are moments of being lost, moments of self-discovery, and, perhaps, a moment of finding love — unique storylines skillfully spooled from the same set of tightly-wound mathematical formulas.

Interspersed between acts are clips from videographer Aaron Henderson, whose shots provide an intimate glimpse into the creative process: a dancer’s face during rehearsal, in that concentrated instance before — a leap?  A fall?  Often, the camera pans to a different face, a different arm, before a movement is complete, and in this way, Henderson draws attention to each dancer’s idiosyncratic, individual form even as he maintains his focus on the larger social body.

What gives the piece its particular edge of excellence, however, is the even-handed collaboration between Jewett and composer R. Luke DuBois, who also synthesizes real-time visualizations of his electroacoustic sounds.  DuBois’s score includes everything from a catchy wobble bass to the chaotic sounds of a kitchen drawer emptying onto a tiled floor.  Yet far from detracting from the choreography, the hypnotic soundscape illuminates each phrase: feet hitting the stage at the same time as a pulse of white cuts through a dark screen at the same time as the beat drops, bounces, and finally rolls into a corner of the room.

In this light, PARTICULAR becomes a multidimensional performance-organism, larger and more compelling than each of its individual collaborators.  Its curiosity with the intersection of emerging technologies, the body, and communication pushes toward something new, and arguably truer and more relevant, to this, our information-dense age.  

PARTICULAR premiered at FIRSTWORKS, October 26th - 28th at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence.

By Edith Young

In Napa, California, for nights in a row I fell asleep with the score of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks playing outside of my door. In Napa, I tasted little Mondrian pound cakes that would make Piet Broadway boogie-woogie in his grave. In Napa, I was asked out for a Shirley Temple by a boy whose name I had read in The New York Times years before. In Napa, I read the book he made from eavesdropping on park benches (we were both stuck on the woman who walked by while listing: “moss, a shower cap, and olive oil…”). In Napa, we were coated in violet by the harvest season sky. In Napa, I walked back from the Soscol Avenue bowling alley with Peter (who was Taran, but that night she was Peter) when she stole those balloons from the car dealership, and I never said anything about it until now.

In honor of Halloween (which is apparently 9 days long this year), I’ve been writing and soliciting haikus. Why? I’m not entirely sure. Maybe it’s because of the haiku’s simple beauty, but more likely that there are few reasonable excuses anyone could give me for not writing 17 syllables. Here are a few:

Whiskey Republic,

A cauldron of sweat and tears-

My sweetest pleasure

-GN

Halloween candy

Most of it is mostly wax

Tummy ache for sure

-SW

Dark pavement glistens 

with sweet and supple pumpkin

first bludgeoned, then left

-EV

Trick me and treat me,

slutty fake professionals,

your handcuffs aren’t real

-EP

Sexy cat costume.

I lost my kitty cat ears.

Oh now what am I?

-HB

Love me, caress me

ye holy ones molest me

fashion my crest please

-SB

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Yes, this was in response to the halloween prompt. If you understand what Sam Bresnick this anonymous author means, you will win 10 (TEN) pumpkins carved into a bust of Christina Paxson by yours truly. I am clueless.)

Inevitable-

a costumed freshman blacks out.

Bacchus has prevailed. 

-GN

Is it illegal

to trick or treat with a beard?

Why am I in jail?

-GN

By Jonathan Storch

This week’s issue features Drew Dickerson’s excellent interview with D.T. Max, the New Yorker staff writer who recently published a biography of David Foster Wallace, Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story. One of the things Max brings up is Wallace’s 1988 essay “Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young” (to be published as part of the collection Both Flesh and Not next month), which he describes (favorably) as “show-offy” and full of “weird pheromones.” I was intrigued and went a-Googling, and it looks like you can read the essay online. It’s worth checking out.

By Eli Pitegoff 

(Image:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mountainsgoatscropped.jpg)

Last Thursday at 6:30 pm I put aside the homework that I probably should have done and urgently called my roommate to borrow his car. A combination of my inability to plan ahead and a 9 o’clock Mountain Goats concert motivated this impromptu road trip to Boston’s House of Blues.

The Mountain Goats has gone through a number of transformations through its nearly two decade lifespan; starting as a five-piece band, it evolved into a duo and eventually the solo career of John Darnielle. Hailing Indiana, Darnielle is currently on a nation wide tour promoting the fourteenth Mountain Goats album, Transcendental Youth.

For the first half of his se,t Darnielle stood alone on a barren stage. A drummer-less drum set and unmanned keyboard surrounding the jacket and tie-clad guitarist drew attention to the spareness of The Mountain Goats’ sound. His only accompaniment was straight-forward rhythm guitar and occasionally-too-screechy vocals. He confidently cried and shouted ballads, a collection of songs whose unifying theme was his feeling inadequate and insecure. The content of his work is unapologetically cheesy. Darnielle makes no effort in hiding this; he prefaced one song proclaiming “this one is about your true self, hidden under your skin that you can never really show anyone” and another with, “I wrote this song about treating clinical depression with satan worship”. The packed crowd ate it up, giving the sort of chants one might expect to hear across the street at Fenway Park.

The simplistic mob-response of the crowd did not give his lyricism a just response.  He is a rare musician in his ability to treat genuine subject matter, without contriving a “genuine” appearance. This was the show’s biggest success. In the latter half of the show, Darnielle was accompanied by a drummer, bassist, and horn section. He hopped and ran around stage with the grace of a high school debate coach, provoking some reaction from his fellow musicians. Unfortunately, the drummer and bassist seemed as distant from Darnielle as the audience, never achieving the type of cohesion one hopes to see in a group of performing musicians. Nevertheless, John Darnielle’s energy and unabashed confidence without the well-crafted cool-rock star persona of, say, Lou Reed, was refreshing to see.

By Lizzie Davis

I don’t miss 2005. It was the peak of a mini golden era for indie rock, but it was also the year I started middle school, and middle school sucks. I get the feeling that the members of Spoon and Wolf Parade are a bit more nostalgic for that time than I am. Last winter, head Spoon-man Britt Daniel and key wolf parader Dan Boeckner presumably got together as Divine Fits to reminisce about the heyday of their careers and happened to record an album on the side, A Thing Called Divine Fits. Despite my mixed feelings about revisiting the soundtrack to my tween years, I was convinced to see Divine Fits at the Met this week simply by being told to “just come. Like, why not.” Good point. But hey, they turned out to not be terrible! I mean, the highlights of the set were without a doubt the Frank Ocean and Wipers covers, but in the band’s defense, they played them really well. The Divine Fits originals were catchy too, I guess. I really liked the first song they played. I’d call it by its name, but I’m still not going to listen to their music to figure it out. If you’re interested, though, you should probably check out the album. That song was pretty good! You know what else is good, though? The smell of freshly baked bread that completely engulfs the block outside the Met. Regardless of my ambivalence towards the show, the journey to Pawtucket was worth it simply for the privilege of basking in that aroma. Amazing.

By Lizzie Davis

Image: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NDWGX_PGKqM/TADFeC-lTBI/AAAAAAAABGk/vR9kfzgzdZ0/s1600/lightningbolt_live-01.jpg

Last summer, Sam Keller, Tabitha Piseno, and Cordey Lopez united the most interesting experimental musicians of Providence with their lost brothers in the DIY diaspora for a 2-day festival called Providence Underground Freak Fest Eco Rave Shaman Slam— PUFFERS for short. Though the shows were successful, the future of PUFFERS looked uncertain until about a month ago, when murmurs of PUFFERS 2 began to spread through Olneyville. A lineup soon surfaced, and soon after Providence was plastered in fliers suggesting that both lint rollers and experimental music would be in high supply come September 22nd. All you had to do was find the mythical “Plastic Oak ForeST.”

So how did PUFFERS 2 happen? Lopez explained last year: “we just wanted to do something outdoors and kind of see what we could actually accomplish. This year, there was talk about doing it, but we never made a date for it, because there were a bunch of things going on. Finally, what happened was Lightning Bolt was looking for a show to play when they came back from tour and we turned that into PUFFERS. I think we lucked out, because [this is] a part of town that no one really cares about. The vibes from the beginning of the day was just to do whatever we wanted, not worry about too many legalities.There were 24 bands, and only 6 were from out of town. We picked the bands based on who we know, who we like and tried to break the bubble a little bit more and include people from a little bit outside of our scene, if you will.”

Though nearly every kind of music and human was represented in some capacity at PUFFERS 2, one thing was in short supply—students. Lightning Bolt is a relatively famous band. You’d think that college students would want to come see this famous band. However, besides the 20 or so familiar faces from College Hill, this was not the case. This was particularly interesting, given that a number of Brown and RISD graduates were the masterminds behind PUFFERS.

A few Brown seniors sitting a couple feet outside the show’s perimeter explained that they biked down to see Lightning Bolt, but didn’t know about any of the other 23 groups playing. One of them said that though he was really excited to see Lightning Bolt play, he had difficulty convincing other people to come with him. When asked about why the majority of Brown students are uninterested in the local music scene, he explained that they most likely just aren’t aware of it. “Most people would probably be into it if they knew it was here,” he suggested.

Well, now you know it’s here. Interested in what’s happening west of the hill? A good starting point would be with Humanbeast, a local duo that sounds like Grace Jones with a soldering iron. They mercilessly attacked their keyboards, one half of the band standing atop an amplifier and the other, clad in a shiny latex cat suit, instructing the captivated crowd to dance..

As far as out of town talent goes, the night confirmed that there really is no one out there like Buck Gooter, a twosome of a very different breed. Buck Gooter consists of two dudes, Terry and Billy. Terry, who could best be described as R. Stevie Moore’s creepy uncle, pounds on a beat-up and distortion-washed acoustic guitar and howls, while the significantly younger Billy plays radio feedback and climbs on the shoulders of audience members. They share vocal duties.

Though they’re only from Providence in spirit, the Buck Gooter dynamic is indicative of the local all-ages culture. Though in most other cities, an all-ages ethos is meant to enable the involvement of under-21s in music and culture, here it seems that it’s baby-boomers who benefit most. Chris Veader, of local punk legends-to-be Power Masters, explained, “It’s funny, because I’m friends with the kids my age, but I’m also friends with the 50 and 60 year olds. I love rock stars that do tons of heroin and drugs. They’re actually great role models, in the sense that they tell me all about what it’s like to be on heroin so I don’t have to do it.”  

Bridging the gap between 20-year-olds and 60-year-olds is none other than Lightning Bolt. If it feels like the two Brians have always been here, it’s because they have. Though Lightning Bolt is slowly approaching their 20th anniversary, at PUFFERS 2, they showed no signs of slowing down. Brown students, RISD students, random old men and local punks collectively lost their shit as soon as Chippendale’s mask came on. Though it started to drizzle right before their set, the precipitation mysteriously disappeared about 10 seconds after Brian Gibson got to work on his bass. Though it returned in full force an hour later, I’m pretty sure Lightning Bolt fucking stopped the rain.

“There’s always been a lot of great people making a lot of cool stuff, and I think that PUFFERS is a definite testament to the truth of that statement,” Lopez said. “For how small the town is, there’s a lot of people doing stuff. There are less spaces now than there used to be, but it comes and goes, in ways. There will always be somebody in the warehouse.”

By Greg Nissan

Last Sunday I headed to the Pawtucket Public Library for a screening of Uproar in Pawtucket: The Story of Fanny the Elephant, the latest addition to the Elephants in Rhode Island series (yes, that’s a real thing). The documentary outlined the life of Fanny the Elephant, who resided in the Pawtucket Zoo from 1958 to 1993, when she was moved to a conservancy for the last 10 years of her life. A few things I got from the film: people really like to feed elephants twinkles, which is a questionable move at best. Outside of a few activists, Pawtucket citizens were quite angered that Fanny was moved to a conservancy where should could be around elephants and graze all day. A constant source of reason in the film was local activist Eclipse Neilson, who seemed to be the only who realized how much it sucks to be a gigantic animal in a zoo that was rated as one of the nations’s worst. This movie also featured the biggest weight loss success story I’ve ever heard - upon her relocation Fanny lost 1,800 pounds. One of my favorite details was that Fanny was officially renamed “lil’ Rhody” at one point, but the name never caught on. I wonder why. Go to www.rielephants.com to find out about upcoming screenings and find the answer to all the elephant-related questions you might have.