SWAN | Expression in the Era of Trump and Pseudo-Masculinity
When I was much younger, around four or five years of age, I played soccer on a YMCA little league team. Yet, as I’ve been subsequently told, rare was it that I actually joined in and played the game...
View ArticleSWAN | Well Well Well Well; Thanks for the Memories Fall 2016
“Well this is some old-school, Ivy Leaguer, boys and girls, three-feet-on-the-floor stuff,” I thought to myself. We were going to Wells College for a semi-formal. My friend’s girlfriend goes there, and...
View ArticleSWAN | Not a Review of La La Land
I haven’t even seen La La Land, so this is not a review of that film. The picture accompanying this article is only related to the subject in spirit and is primarily there for bait to increase...
View ArticleSWAN | On Freaks and Geeks and Music
I would like to initiate this piece by making the rather bold assertion that Freaks and Geeks is a most profound creative portrayal of white, suburban and American high school life. Although it was...
View ArticleSWAN | Reflections and a Plea for Humanity(ies)
I find myself undergoing a mid-college existential crisis as I finish what has proven to be a rather formative sophomore year here at Cornell. It is not so much a cerebral catastrophe, one marked by...
View ArticleOn Ethnomusicality and Listening
Cornell’s Department of Music is an institution so wonderfully varied in its scope that one must step back from it occasionally and ponder the vastness of the thing. Once, in the middle of a piano...
View ArticleSWAN | The Artist’s Struggle
The last column that I wrote for this paper considered my own identity as a student of ethnomusicology and the importance of experiencing the art of different cultures. I was planning on broaching a...
View ArticleSWAN | Bowling and More Art to Augment the Debate
This past Sunday night, the United States witnessed yet again another worst mass shooting in modern American history. Dozens of people are dead, and hundreds of individuals will have the rest of their...
View ArticleKoyaanisqatsi Coming to Bailey Hall With Live Music
God, I hate Philip Glass.Well, that might be a little too harsh. For an hour I’ve been sitting in a chair listening to Glass’ soundtrack to the film Koyaanisqatsi, swept along by the frantic,...
View ArticleSWAN | Ithaca and Its Natural Waves
Last year I took an elective that touched on the study of sound design, or the ways in which sound is organized — or unintentionally disorganized — in various settings. A big philosophical topic of...
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