The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com the b-side Thursday, April 2, 2015 — 3B FOOD COLUMN Eating to a sense of where you are A block away from my apart- ment in Rome, next to the barber and the stop for the 44 bus, is a small, red restaurant called Home Baked. When I first eyed it two months ago, I assumed it was just a normal café, the name due to the Italian love of English phrases like “Snack Bar” or “Happy Hour.” But Home Baked serves “American” food — you can get a latte there, or a bagel, or a bacon-egg-and-cheese. When my professors were introducing the neighborhood the first day of class, one of them mentioned Home Baked, and quietly advised us to “not let it become a crutch.” I harrumphed at his warn- ing, not because I thought it was wrong, but rather because I assumed it could never apply to me. I was in Rome, for Jupiter’s sake — why would I waste even one meal on American food? I couldn’t even fathom why Italians would go there, when they had cappuccinos and cornetti on every corner. But then again, I often find myself becoming obsessively, even fanatically locavore here in Italy. Not in a slow-food, “These onions were grown a mile away away and the chicken’s name was Beyoncé,” kind of way. It’s more a heightened sense of regionalism, an acknowl- edgement that Italy is, in a sense, made of many different countries. For a long time, this was a lit- eral truth. Italy was fragmented into various city-states. There was a Kingdom of Sicily. There was a Republic of Venice, whose power ebbed and flowed like its famous canals. Rome was, naturally, an independent territory ruled by the Pope. These mini-nations had their own governments, their own armies, their own culture, even their own loosely related languag- es. What we think of as “Italian” today is really just the dialect of Medieval Florence, which Dante famously wrote in. This system continued until the 1860s, when the various Kingdoms were pieced together (after many battles) to form one, Frankenstein-like nation. So vast were the cultural, economic and linguistic differences between the new citizens that one statesman, Massimo D’Azeglio, claimed “We have made Italy. Now we must make Italians.” And after decades of television, highways, education (and fascism), Italy has succeeded somewhat. But there remains an intense spirit of regional identity, with many people considering themselves Neapolitan or Roman or Sicilian before Italian. With all of this in mind, I always make a point of sampling the deli- cacy of any new city or region I travel to. In this food-obsessed and fragmented country, those two descriptors can be one in the same. And in the last month, I’ve made quite a journey. I started out in early March, in Calabria, the toe of the boot-like Italian peninsula. In the small town of Paola, where my bus had stopped on a windy afternoon for lunch, I hunted for something — anything — to eat indigenous to the area. Ducking into a small salumeria with two friends, I cau- tiously approached the counter and asked the grizzled proprietor if he had any ’nduja (ahn-doo-ya), the uniquely Calabrian cured pork spread made with red chilis. He broke out into a huge smile, and replied that he had a jar of his homemade version. A few euros later, and I received a plate with several slices of toast, thickly spread with dense, artery-red ’nduja. The fat seeped through the bread and glistened on my finger- tips, as I took less-than-delicate bites and felt my lips glow from those incredible peppers. It tasted like Calabria. Two days later, I took a ferry from the lapis-lazuli waters of Cal- abria, onto the periwinkle shores of Sicily. I could devote a bakers dozen columns to everything I saw and ate there, but my first meal felt the most emphatically Sicilian. In Taormina, a seaside town in the northeast corner of the island, at a restaurant named “La Grotta Azzura” tucked away in an alley, I waited a half-hour before the pasta arrived to the table on a silver plat- ter. Our scruffy Adonis of a waiter tossed the linguine before doling out the portions. The long noodles were coated with a silken sauce of cherry tomatoes, flakes of sword- fish, and caperberries the size of gumdrops. It was one of the most intense things I had ever tasted; those tomatoes, jiggled in a hot pan until they burst, were the most tomatoe-y tomatoes I’ve sampled. It tasted like Sicily. My next stop: Ann Arbor. I flew back there after Sicily, and in the days leading up to it, all I could think of was the food there. Not with dread or disgust, but hungry anticipation, like a man about to be released from prison. And yet, I wasn’t craving American food, but rather the cuisines of Viet- nam, China and Mexico. My entire frigid week there, I ate nothing but bibimbop, burritos and baozi. It tasted like America. Italy and America are very different, gastronomically speaking. Not simply because disparity in ingredients or cook- ing methods, but more a matter of focus. If I could narrow “Ital- ian” food down to one ethos, it would be making things taste like themselves. An orange in Palermo tastes like a whole grove of oranges. A slice of prosciutto in Ravenna tastes like the pig was eating other pigs. I can only narrow down American food to an ethos of non-narrowness. Whatever it sacrifices in terms of intensity of flavor, it regains in diversity, for better or for worse. Since I’ve come back to Rome, I always look at Home Baked a little differently, trying to imagine what an Italian might think of it. Maybe they really do think of it as a for- eign invader, peddling fodder for flabby tourists. But maybe it’s an amusing little addition to the sta- tus quo, an occasionally fun treat, never a member of the family, but a good neighbor, nonetheless. Buonomo is eating a hamburger in Italy. To ask what’s wrong with him, email gbuonomo@umich.edu. Bringing the arts behind cell bars PCAP helps find beauty in unexpected places By HAILEY MIDDLEBROOK Daily Arts Writer When you picture prisoners making artwork, what do you imagine? Is it something dark, like a roughly etched skull inspired by some grisly tattoo? Or a bitterly quipped poem, dripping with edge and resentment? In a correctional facility void of color and the vivacious hum of life, it’s difficult to believe that creativi- ty can thrive — like plants, art must be tended to, pruned by its habi- tat and nourished by its creator. Beautiful art comes from beauti- ful situations, not necessarily in the literal sense, but abstractly: the artist seizes a desire, a motion, then encapsulates it. But first, he must have the knowledge to exe- cute his art, from hours of school- ing and practice. He must have the agency to learn, to rove and be inspired by his surroundings — all privileges that are unavailable to people who are incarcerated. Though in spite of this, prison- ers — perhaps more than anyone else — have a desire to create art, not only for self-expressive and rehabilitative purposes, but also because of a humanistic need to produce something of value. What makes something valu- able? We treasure Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa because of its antiquity and haunting realness; we prize our mother’s jewelry col- lection because of its sentimental- ity and hushed worth. We value our friends, our essays, the college acceptance letters we ecstatically received. We latch onto land- mark paintings in the Louvre and our own tiny trinkets of memory because of their uniqueness, for an object’s value comes from it being one of a kind. Sometimes the sheer knowledge of one’s own value is the tipping point between a deadly fall down the wrong path and the drive to do something great in life. Ashley Lucas, director of the University’s Prisoner Creative Arts Project, found herself teetering on this point at age 15, when her father was summoned to a long prison sentence. In his absence, Lucas floundered in school and drifted toward a rough crowd, struggling to find a purpose each day. “Theater saved her life,” said Phil Christman, Lucas’s husband and editor of the PCAP Literary Review of Creative Writing by Michigan Prisoners. “As a teen- ager, Ashley took refuge on stage and threw herself into acting. She eventually performed a one- woman play expressing the clash- ing emotions she had been feeling, which drew University attention and earned her a scholarship to study drama.” Realizing the power of art, not just as an outlet for creative expression but as the turning key to a meaningful, fulfilling life, Lucas was inspired to give the men and women incarcerated in Michi- gan the same experience through PCAP. Initiated by University stu- dents in 1990, the project has since expanded its outreach: hosting annual events, including the Exhi- bition of Art by Michigan Prison- ers; showcasing the best artwork and writing submitted by Michi- gan prisoners, as well as a juvenile art show; directing the Portfolio Project, a one-on-one program that assists prisoners in preparing portfolios of their artwork to pres- ent to judges and future employers, and the Linkage Project, which provides a creative community for adults returning from incarcera- tion. PCAP also organizes collabora- tive workshops within correction- al facilities and urban high schools for theater, creative writing, art, dance and music, driven mainly by small groups of University under- graduates. Facilitating these work- shops is a richly rewarding way to get involved as an undergraduate, not only because they give volun- teers insight into the justice sys- tem and allow them to tune their own artistry, but also because of the impact they make on those incarcerated. At the book release and read- ing of the Literary Review on Sunday, Barbera Montez, wife of Steven Montez, read the essay “Confluence” on the behalf of her husband, who wrote it. Before beginning, she addressed PCAP by saying, “Thank you for giving the voiceless a voice. Even more, thank you for listening to what they have to say.” The Literary Review, published annually, is a compilation of the best creative writing submissions from prisoners, as voted on by a large group of readers in the Ann Arbor area. I was fortunate to be one of the readers for this year’s volume, working with Christman, assistant editor Denise Dooley, copy editor Ian Demsky and oth- ers to determine which works to publish. Submission criteria are simple: anything goes, from poet- ry to essays, as long as the con- tent is not explicit enough to shut down PCAP. “Really, criticisms of the Department of Corrections should be made,” Christman said, explaining what can and cannot be published. “But there’s a big dif- ference between writing a memoir about how bad prison food is and saying that you want to harm a particular officer.” The fact is, writers write from experience. It only makes sense that frustration, confinement, isolation and homesickness are recurring themes among submis- sions. These themes come even more alive when reading the writ- er’s personal statement — a note to the reader that often describes the circumstances that led to his or her prison sentence, told in heart- breaking honesty. For me, these notes made it dif- ficult to reject submissions; I won- dered what Christman thought. “Deep down, you know that these are people who have been told ‘no’ their entire lives,” Christ- man said. “But you have to look past this and read them critically like anything else. The crueler thing would be to accept every- thing — it would devalue the writ- er’s integrity.” “One time a writer we published asked me, ‘Are you all just doing this to be nice?’ It broke my heart,” Christman continued. “He wanted so badly to be taken seriously that it was impossible for him to believe that we heard him, that he had made something beautiful.” The man was Thomas Engle, a talented writer who has been featured in several volumes of the Literary Review. Having now returned from incarceration, Engle appeared on Sunday to read his own story, “Jim.” I was able to catch Engle on his way out of the Art & Architecture Auditorium, where the reading was held. I hoped that he could reveal how, despite being removed from much of life’s beauty, creative inspira- tion still thrives within prisoners through PCAP. “Their minds have been untapped — they have the focus and determination of those that have had no chance to express their talent,” Engle said. “The sad and lonely have a story to be heard.” Though the sad and lonely may be imprisoned in body, they cannot be confined in mind. The mission of PCAP is to sift through the feel- ings of hate, of hopelessness and hurting, to seek a light and pull it shining to the surface. GIANCARLO BUONOMO SINGLE REVIEW Rihanna said she wants her eighth album, currently referred to as R8, to be “time- less.” Not long after, we get “Bitch Bet- ter Have My Money.” Will every- one still be “turning up to Rihanna while the whole club fucking wasted” in 40 years? I mean, I probably will be, but I may be a poor judge of timeless- ness. Rihanna gave us her time- less “FourFiveSeconds,” and I am happy to see Riri return to some of her signature thump- ing in-you-face fighting lyrics. She knows she is hot; we know she’s hot; and she knows that we know that she’s hot. The beats are surprising minimalist for producer Kanye West; without any deep bass drops, this song gets its flow from Rihanna’s lyrics and their delivery. Her flow is infec- tious, especially in lines such as “Louis XIII and it’s all on me,” and “Shit, your wife in the back- seat of my brand new foreign car.” At first listen, the song may sound as if it lacking a catch, but after a few more plays it will have listeners chanting along. I don’t know if this bitch has Rihanna’s money, but I will gladly throw her my $1.29 to have this sure-to-be hit in my music library. -CHRISTIAN KENNEDY ROC NATION VIRGINIA LOZANO/Daily Artwork created by prisoners as part of the Prison Creative Arts Program. By CATHERINE SULPIZIO Senior Arts Editor The evaluative index for scary movies is rarely their ability to be re-watched. Even the scariest disintegrates under a second viewing — neither makeup nor special effect nor narrative arc can launch itself very far without the element of surprise propelling it. “It Follows” is different. Traditional scares still abound in the film, mechanized by the now-famous score and figures that loom into central focus. But just as “It Follows” raids the toolbox for formal techniques, its real sticking power is less synthetic. “Sticks” is a fitting word. After all, the fear “It Follows” generates isn’t of the atomized variety, like in a movie like “The Conjuring” where the monster can be categorized, and there- fore predicted, by its phenome- non. The monster of “It Follows” is formless: With no backstory or recognizable figure, the monster is a flytrap for the characters’ various psychic configurations. Fathers and mothers take on the nude form of “it,” a trick which exploits our visceral disgust to anything Oedipal. The movie harnesses yet another Freudian principal, the uncanny. On one hand, unheimlich, its German term, connotes the familiar and at-home; on the other hand, its second meaning refers to the concealed and secret. So the word itself holds a dialectic set of meanings at its pole and antipode: the domestic and the strange. Under the uncanny, the entire landscape becomes fair game for this ambivalent hold. “It Follows” plasters pulpy references across the screen — female protagonist Jay’s lurid blonde hair and lingerie glisten in the moonlight while she makes seamy love in an old sedan’s backseat. But the film’s most potent chemical for the uncanny is nostalgia. Teen crushes are imbued with life-or-death stakes; childhood friends band together to ambush the monster like the gang in Scooby Doo. Though Michigan natives will recognize some locations, the suburbs are indistinguishable from Anywhere, USA. Most importantly, parental figures are reduced to generic peripheral blurs that hover in the background. And instead of thrusting the teens into the realities of adult- hood and responsibility, the monster is an extension of ado- lescence. After all, the purely physical aspect of sex is not the ground that the monster preys on. Rather, it’s teenage sex’s clearinghouse of lore — its urban myths, its allures, negotiations and anxieties — that produces the monster. Even the name “it,” which is all one can call the monster, turns a condition into a taboo. If a 30-year-old contracted “it,” she would go to a doctor cov- ered by ObamaCare or take the morning-after pill. But for the adolescent sequestered from the adult world’s decisive rationality, the monster festers. This dark side that dims ado- lescence’s halcyon glow marks “It Follows” ’s turn into the uncan- ny, because there is something off about the world. Unlatched from temporal referents, the film derives its nostalgia from cans of soda with brands that don’t exist and a strange e-reader nestled in a clamshell compact, all cast under a Polaroid hue. The result is a familiarity that is hollow, a nostalgia that rings false. Even the camera lacks a grip on iden- tity. In one shot, Jay, tied down to a wheelchair, shudders. And almost imperceptibly, the camera shudders as well, as if it forgets who it is. It forgets what its job is too. During moments of suspense, the camera discards its role to telescope details with a hyper- aesthete’s eye, lingering on vivid green grass à la “Blue Velvet” or a shock of shimmering hair. In another much talked about shot, Jay and company talks to a school administrator as the camera scans the office in a slow, 360-degree circle of paranoia, trying to appre- hend if “it” is among the strangers in the room. The evaluative index for a scary movie comes down to “does it scare you?” “It Follows” doesn’t just scare, it crawls under your skin and casts the film’s aesthetic gaze on everything you see. I saw “It Follows” twice. The first time I jumped more, the second time I was no less engaged. The adrena- line spikes are exhaustible, but what pervades is the sense of dread — not an accelerating anxi- ety, but a deadening gloom. The uncanniness of fear in ‘It Follows’ FILM NOTEBOOK A- Bitch Better Have My Money Rihanna Roc Nation