by Jackie Basu
So. The ceci n’est pas crew has thrown down a hefty gauntlet: do faux-pipe, faux-bed images have value or weight in our living world of bodies and motion?

Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time
For y’all have knocked her up.
I have tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe;
I was not offended.
For I knew I had to rise above it all
Or drown in my own shit.
George Clinton, “Maggot Brain,” 1971
It’s hard to say whether this kind of thing—making a case for [...]

By Andrew Zhou
Note: all headings represent the five compulsory components for an audition for piano at the undergraduate level at Northwestern University
I – a contrapuntal baroque composition equivalent in difficulty to a three-voice fugue
I perform a suite of Brahms’ late piano pieces for a recital held by my professor that evening at one of [...]

I.

In 1971, Don DeLillo published his first novel, Americana, within which a novelist, not the main character, fantasizes about his future life. He lives alone, in a remote place, venerated by the younger generation, sporadically visited by young admirers. I don’t know how many of DeLillo’s young admirers he actually receives in person, [...]