I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Brat Summer intersected with a period of serious political anxiety in the United States. The prolific lime green movement, a response to the cocaine-starved party-never-stops aesthetic of Charli XCX’s Brat, rode the wave of a rising impulse in our generation to party, cry and party again, such that the whole world scrambled to embody ‘brat’ itself. In the aftermath of a brutal presidential debate which raised existential fears over our generation’s future (to defeat fascism, to save our climate), it seemed that the only remaining option was to indulge ourselves at the withering end of prosperity.
It appeared a blessing, then, that the Democratic party would replace Joe Biden with a brat candidate — a progressive woman that would both beat Donald Trump and heed a younger generation. But we should be wary, I think, of the way in which liberal politicians leveraged the trending term to resituate themselves in the two-party system.
TikTok’s Etymology Nerd argues that ‘brat’ is a self-contained concept: “You can only gesture at what ‘brat’ really is by talking about other related concepts. … ‘Brat’ is something more, something ineffable that can’t really be captured with a cohesive definition.” It doesn’t help that the album constantly defies itself thematically — from the indifferent egoism of “360” (“I don’t f*cking care what you think”) to the vulnerable and doubt-filled “So I,” a heartbreaking tribute to late hyperpop artist SOPHIE.
There was never revolutionary potential in the Liberated Zone. I wrote in April that there were always two likely outcomes: that Martha Pollack would dismantle the encampment outright, as police did at Columbia and UCLA, or that she would trust in the existing cultural order to prevent the demonstration from reaching any sort of leveraged position in negotiations. Pollack’s stall tactics succeeded — ahead of the summer recess, the Coalition for Mutual Liberation called an end to the encampment last week.
That my piece received heartfelt recognition from within and outside of the encampment should indicate some acceptance by proponents of the Liberated Zone that the demonstration would fail. Did it mean nothing, then? Was it a disingenuous attempt by privileged Ivy League students to virtue signal, with little concern for its success?
A Twin Court rehearsal looks like a maze. Their Lincoln Hall practice room houses a delicately arranged set of Indonesian instruments which, according to Jack Neiberg ’24, were made for the 1964 New York World’s Fair and later loaned to Cornell by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The instruments lay in a perpendicular pattern, aligned according to their tuning, like a jungle gym through which the members of Twin Court traverse to experiment with new sounds.
“We weren’t trying to make a band,” says Wyatt Westerkamp ’21. Mandy Gurung, a local community member of the group, believes that the distinct sound of Twin Court emerged from a natural integration of ideas and members over time, driven by a pure curiosity for the potential of the unique instruments at their disposal. It started from the collaborative partnership of Jack and Wyatt, who met through the Gamelan ensemble organized by Prof. Christopher J. Miller.
It’s about time. See headliner A Boogie Wit da Hoodie, supporting guest Flo Rida and student band Paragon on the main stage at Libe Slope this Wednesday! Forget the lyrics to all of your favorite Flo Rida songs? We’ve got you covered.
1. Paragon: Harm — Live at Bailey Hall
Relive Paragon’s set from the 2023 Big Red Battle of the Bands!
This week, President Biden signed a bipartisan military aid bill that would send $26bn to Israel. The day after, the Coalition for Mutual Liberation claimed a portion of our campus’ Arts Quad as a pro-Palestinian liberated zone, in solidarity with other encampments at universities across the nation. Will it matter?
Levi Pierpont reached out to me after I cited his Guardian Op-Ed in my own piece about the death of his friend, Aaron Bushnell. We ended up having a conversation about his experience in the Air Force and the involvement of Buddhism in his decision to become a conscientious objector (i.e. leave the military due to moral principles). We also discussed Palestine and how the Philippine languages reflect an imperialist component to language diffusion. This is that conversation, continued.
Imagine if Paul Revere rode into Lexington only to realize that the British had already begun to sack the town. He continues into the fray: “The British are coming! The British are coming!”
This seems to be the situation of climate activism today. The British are already here: Some scientists say that we have already hit the “point-of-no-return” for the enduring health of our climate. The Paris Climate Agreement pinned it at 1.5 degrees celsius past pre-industrial levels. Now that we have smashed the ceiling, we are left to wonder why the sky didn’t fall.
I was in Atlantic City for a weekend with Kyle Wolf ’25. It was there, in the Bally’s hotel somewhere above the casinos, that I asked if he wanted to make some music. We both brought MIDI keyboards when we met at his car before the trip, pointing at each other like that Spider-Man meme.
Courtesy of Sofia Egol
He hadn’t made afrobeats before, but I was curious about his limits. We listened to Tyla’s “Water” for reference, and Kyle replicated the drums. I envied that he could do it without any serious effort — it was just a matter of listening to the first 30 seconds of the song and tapping the pattern on the piano. But he couldn’t let the song contain him; he let go of the reference and it became some sort of jazz fusion.
How do I drag my body home from campus on a weekday afternoon? With the help of “Sunshine,” off of Work of Art by Asake. A gentle release from academic anxiety: “Sun’s gon’ shine on everything you do.”
