Thought Contagion: A Call-Out

Monica Sloan Leave a comment

Nearly nine months after their last single dropped, the British alt-rock band Muse finally released new content, a single called Thought Contagion. The lyrics revolve around the spread of ideas, holding that if an idea gains enough traction, then there’s no way to stop it from invading everyone’s lives, even if they don’t believe it–and even if it’s a bad idea.

Muse is no stranger to heavy-handed lyrics. Their last three studio albums–The Resistance, The 2nd Law, and Drones–relied heavily on current events for their lyrical themes, and their second-to-last single Dig Down included the line: “When God decides to look the other way/and a clown takes the throne….” It’s nothing if not overt.

At first, I was really bogged down by the heavy-handedness of Thought Contagion. Three verses of sentence-fragmented metaphors describing a dismal, apocalyptic scenario are broken by the choruses of, “You’ve been bitten by a true believer…by someone who’s hungrier than you…by someone’s false beliefs.” Not a lot of subtlety there, and it’s wrapped up in a lot of pessimism, such as, “Brace for the final solution.” Yikes.

It’s suffocating to focus on these lyrics. We all know what it’s like to have idea after idea crammed into our heads. It’s impossible to get away from hearing the ideology of people who just know they’re right. Idea after idea after idea, and they’re in our classrooms and homes and offices, in our social media and news and ads, in our movies and books and art. No one could spend a single day without at least inadvertently encountering the ideas of someone who believes they’re right with every fiber of their being. These ideas could be about religion, politics, science, philosophy, sex, art–if someone can have a belief in something for which they’d be willing to die, you can bet they’ll be yelling it loudly from all platforms of social media in an attempt to get it across to even one person.

While there’s nothing more annoying than listening to “someone’s false beliefs,” some of those false believers are getting through to other people. In a country where polarization is a driving force of media, anyone who was neutral on anything at some point has been “bitten” by one side or the other, shrinking the middle ground and forcing both sides of any issue imaginable to resort to extremes, in both beliefs and in the actions for which they call they call.

Muse can do better stylistically than the lyrics of Thought Contagion, but maybe this time they’re not going for poetic–they’re going for a call-out. They’re back on the dystopian track, taking our current situation and stretching it to its logical extreme: if we stop thinking for ourselves and let the momentous force of zealous ideologies take us over, then “it’s too late for a revolution.” Thought Contagion reminds us to take a breath, step back from the inundation of media (as much as we can), and think things through before blindly getting caught up in the storm of shouting matches before the shouting matches turn to nuclear wars.

 

In the Background

Corrina Lee Leave a comment

Something that I’ve noticed over years of procrastination and long sessions of studying, is that I can’t sit down to work without a solid backing track. The music varies, but my requirements do not. For productivity’s sake, the piece can’t be too attention grabbing. Instead, it should easily fade into the background, willing to be ignored for hours on end. But I am a contradictory human being, so I also want my music to be inspiring at other moments. I want it to rise up and give me the motivation to finish one more reading, one more math problem. Finally, I need music to flow continuously. The music should wind a parallel path to my thoughts. It should be in the midst of its own story while I am in the midst of mine. Services, like Spotify or YouTube, have the bad habit of leading you to unexpected destinations and unknown artists. Perhaps this is palatable, even valuable, if one was out and about in an exploratory mood. It is a musical adventure that I would be willing to embark when I am walking from class to class, with nothing else on my mind other than the lyrics of a song. The music in our ears matches the actions of our bodies, the thoughts in our mind. It helps define our feelings at a certain moment of time through other people’s words. But when I am studying, I feel trapped by other people’s words, other people’s ideas. I do not need another world intruding. It is a delicate relationship that I do not have nearly the energy to maintain. Someone with more care would, perhaps, put together complementary playlists, maybe painstakingly find songs that blend in theme and tone. But I am stuck between caring and uncaring, so I do nothing. Instead, I listen to endless compilations of classical music, loop movie scores, and replay albums. I have even in my most desperate moment listened to Spotify’s ‘Your Favorite Coffeehouse’ , a list manufactured mellow, that made me feel as if I were drowning in pillows. As an amateur music listener, I drift toward the generic and emotional. I am grabbed by obvious arrangements and even more generic lyrics. Sometimes, though, you just need a loyal friend chattering in the background. Someone to stay by your side through the tired midnights. It is a comforting presence, one that I can’t work without.

Why ‘Friends’ is a Terrible Show

vle Leave a comment

(Tv.com)

Sorry, but someone had to say it.

If you mention Friends, there’s a solid chance that a chorus of voices will excitedly shout that they too love Friends. The cultural powerhouse of the late 90’s still remains extremely popular, and I’m not quite sure why seemingly everyone is obsessed with it. Of course, everyone is entitled to his/her/their own opinion and it’s totally fine if you like it, but for me, Friends will never win me over. Here’s why:

  1. It’s simply not funny (anymore) – was it ever?
  2. It’s problematic – the gay jokes, the fat Monica jokes, the predatory misogyny, the toxic relationships, the casual brushing-off of Phoebe’s traumatic past…this could go on.
  3. There’s no diversity – all the main characters are white and heterosexual. Yes, Friends first aired in 1994, but it’s an unlikely representation of New York City and people living in it.
  4. The characters are all unlikeable – Ross is probably the worst one of all; he whines about his love life constantly, is a terrible father, and is, not to mention, boring. It seems as though none of the characters really have any redeeming qualities that outshine their individual faults.

Perhaps keep this in mind if you ever think about starting Friends…

Arts and Athleticism

mceste Leave a comment

It can be easy to think of dancers simply as performers. To most of the general public, the stage is the home of a dancer; it’s the space in which audiences see dancers the most. And it’s such a specific space, one that has been painstakingly groomed and placed to evoke certain feelings, tell certain stories, and convey certain ideas. Dancers are trained to inhabit that space in the most fearless, most beautiful way possible. The image projected to the public is one that has been airbrushed and edited, in a sense.

Society views different subjects and activities in different categories: humanities, STEM, sports, the arts, etc. Our culture likes to separate and categorize in order to define and rationalize all of the different ways we communicate, act, and live. Yet, many things live at the intersection of these categorizations. Dance, for example, is not just a practice in performance, but also a study of artistry, intelligence, and athleticism. To say this, of course, brings up an age old question: are dancers athletes? Can art and athleticism truly be combined?

I believe the difference between art and athleticism isn’t the work that they do. In fact, dancers and athletes do a lot of the same work, physically and mentally. Our bodies are pushed to their extremes: jumping higher, being physically active for longer, turning more, running faster. We spend hours and days and months and years fine tuning our muscles, stretching and strengthening and turning them into precision instruments. We push ourselves mentally to believe that we can do things we’ve never done before, to believe that there is more in us after we feel extreme fatigue, to believe our bodies are capable of so much more than we know currently. The purpose of this work, however, is different: the goal of an athlete is to be the best they can be so their team can succeed and win in the game, match, or competition. The purpose of dancers’ work is to perform onstage, to transcend the fatigue and exhaustion to create something of beauty.

Marvel Universe

Jordan Brown Leave a comment

The newest Marvel Movie, The Black Panther, is coming out this weekend (2/15).  This movie is the last one to come out before the much anticipated movie The Avengers: Infinity War.  This new Avengers movie will bring together the entire Marvel Universe to try and defeat a common enemy: Thanos.

The Avengers: Infinity War will feature and bring together characters from the majority of the Marvel movies since Iron Man in 2008.  This first Iron Man movie rebooted the Marvel brand.  In the first several Marvel movies after Iron Man each one faced a new and different villian, the movies do not seem to connect much.  As the movies continued they began to mention other Avengers and superheroes’ names to show that they are aware of each others existence and that they are indeed in the same universe.  The first Avengers movie that came out in 2012, and was the first movies that truly connected some of the characters.  At that point the main Marvel characters were Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor.  Iron Man has remained the main Avenger throughout the Marvel reboot up until the movies in 2017.

Since the start of the Marvel reboot in 2008, Marvel has greatly expanded their universe.  After the second Avengers movie they have branched out to show other characters than the major four of five with movies such as Ant-man, Dr. Strange, and more recently, Deadpool.  These movies all seem very different and to be fighting very different enemies.  As the universe expands, the villains get bigger and the audience can slowly see connections between villains through subtle comments and calls from their bosses.  This foreshadowed that there could possibly be a connection through the villians in these seemingly different movies.

There has also been many crossovers or cameos of other superheroes in single superhero movies.  The most recent example of this is Thor: Ragnarok featured Thor, but the Hulk was also a major part of the plot and the movie.  Spiderman Homecoming also heavily featured and depended on the timeline of Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ironman.  These cameos and features of other characters in each others movies show how dependant they are on one another.

This dependence on one another is a thread that was slowly entwined into the franchise since 2008.  It started out subtle and will now end with a big bang in 2018 when all of the characters come together to fight the same powerful enemy.

Snow Fall

Corrina Lee Leave a comment

Snow falls from the heavens like a thousand discarded angels. Snow falls to land on grey pavements and yellowed winter grass and disappear in a few short-lived moments. Snow falls, feather-like, onto my face and leaves gentle scrapes of coldness on my skin.  I breathe out. My revenge melts some of my tiny antagonists. But still snow falls. They are drawn in an ever downward spiral. I am no longer sure where they come from. The invisible grey sky is secretive and perhaps, more importantly, I no longer care. I only want to keep walking through the blowing sheets of falling whiteness until I finally reach my destination. But even that has become unclear. Snow falls, making distances and time stretch longer into infinity.

Somewhere, I sense other beings, bravely traversing the winter storm, with faces tucked into warm coat collars. They make no sound, other than the muffled crunch of boots on fresh powder. No one dares to exchange words as we hurry past each other. The snow is deafening in its silence. The great University and its students are cowed by the weather. The distinguished brick buildings are thrust underneath fluffy caps, transforming them into childish caricatures of their normal selves. They surely cannot withstand the impact of a thousand icy cuts. Soon, they must fracture and crack. Their pipes becoming brittle and bursting. I imagine the world around me exploding silently, unseen as I walk by. Perhaps there will be no warm haven awaiting me. Perhaps it, too, has already been broken and absorbed. My imagination strives against the cold that numbly urges me to stop. Snow falls ignorantly past me. Sometimes, I spot footprints where they should not be, in four-foot-deep drifts. I also spot cars where they should not be, making slow progress through greying slush. The machines do not belong here, in this natural world of cold crystal and hot, humid breaths. Those passengers watch the snow from behind a barrier, separated from this pure battle between woman and Earth.

It is usually so easy to ignore or at least compromise with the weather with t-shirts when it becomes too hot or umbrellas when it rains. But when the snow begins to fall in earnest, it exploits every vulnerable chink of our armor. Every minute in the snowy air becomes another reminder of all that we have built as protection, and how useless it all proves. The plows push futilely, only able to move snow from place to place. Its presence accumulates. It comes and leaves of its own accord, gradually melting from existence. Ashes to ashes, water to water. We treck through this ethereal gift with heavy boots and track it into the soggy carpets. We kick it to the side and ignore it. But as I take a final look upwards, at the snow, falling, a ridiculous wonder fills me. Snow falls as I enter the building. Snow falls eternally on unseen spinning tracks. Snow falls, and I wish I could fall with it.