6 — Saturday, April 29, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

MUSIC COLUMN

TV COLUMN

COMMUNITY CULTURE

If I could see all 
my friends tonight

Claudia Rankine to talk 
about ‘Citizen’ at Rackham

By LAUREN THEISEN

Daily Music Columnist 2017

I used to listen to “All My 

Friends” by LCD Soundsystem 
and dream about when I would feel 
nostalgic for it. If you have never 
listened to LCD, “All My Friends” 
is its magnum opus, a bullet train 
of a song that’s undeniably one of 
the best of its generation. Over an 
unstoppable, unchanging piano 
rhythm and the slowly increasing 
crescendo of drums, synth and 
guitar, James Murphy — the unof-
ficial spokesman of the lost, aging 
New York hipster — meditates on 
growing old while still trying to 
live the fast life.

“You spend the first five years 

trying to get with the plan / And 
the next five years trying to be 
with your friends again,” he sings. 
“We’re running out of the drugs,” 
he continues. “and the conversa-
tion’s winding away.” Then there’s 
the line that received crazed 
cheers at their supposed farewell 
show back in 2011: “To tell the 
truth / This could be the last time.” 
And the repeating refrain to close 
out the song — “If I could see all 
my friends tonight…” — before the 
music seems to disappear into a 
puff of smoke.

My senior year of high school 

was, of course, filled with good-
byes — but not really. I went off to 
a school that’s a 30 minute drive 
from where I grew up, if traffic is 
bad. I came here with over a dozen 
classmates I knew well. I still see 
several regularly, and I keep in 
touch with plenty more. I’m kind 
of proud of the fact that I have 

only really “lost” a small handful 
of friends, and even these discon-
nections felt more-or-less natural.

“All My Friends” was a fantas-

tic song, one that grabbed me and 
didn’t let go for seven-and-a-half 
minutes, but it never conjured 
up any specific memories. It was 
never mainstream enough to be 
a song I danced to with people. It 
never soundtracked a celebratory 
occasion. It mainly just stayed in 
my pocket on my “Top 25 Most 
Played” iPod playlist.

Through college, I always 

seemed to make a special point 
of listening to it at the end of the 
summer, usually when I realized 
I was driving around Livonia for 
the last time in a while. It turned 
into a ceremonial thing — I’d turn 
it up loud and try to inhabit the 
lyrics, even though I was usually 
just making a mundane trip to 
a grocery store or library. Each 
time, I felt like the song would 
touch some part of me that need-
ed to connect, but even though I 
enjoyed the goofy devotion of the 
whole practice, I don’t know if I 
can say that it ever quite moved 
me.

The line Murphy sings that 

always sticks out to me when I lis-
ten is the classic: “I wouldn’t trade 
one stupid decision / For another 
five years of life.” It’s tailor-made 
for a high school yearbook quote, 
and I always, every time I listen, 
think about whether it’s true.

2016 was the first year I started 

noticing the ages of celebrities 
who died. I subtracted my age 
from theirs and wondered what 
fraction of my life had already 
been lived — and whether I could 

comprehend the amount of time I 
theoretically had left. More press-
ingly, I checked to see if they were 
younger than my parents, and if 
they were, I searched for mitigat-
ing factors and tried to find relief 
in the revelations that these 
famous people smoked cigarettes 
or lived otherwise unhealthy 
lifestyles.

I have made a lot of stupid 

decisions in my life, only some 
of which turned out to be good 
stories later. There are hospital 
trips that could have been avoid-
ed; there’s that time I slammed a 
door on a friend and almost broke 
her mirror; the multiple times I 
spilled wine on carpets.

What I’m trying to say is that 

I don’t think I actually identify 
with “All My Friends.” Murphy 
sings like an everyman, and his 
arrangement is visionary, so 
it’s the kind of song any lover of 
music can appreciate. There’s a 
certain anticipation, though, that 
I have whenever I queue it up — 
I’m looking forward to powerful 
emotions. I’m ready to feel some-
thing that never quite hits.

But now, I’m ready for actual 

goodbyes. The friends I never 
really left in high school are 
getting jobs out of state. I just 
finished up my time at the first 
job I ever loved. I’ll leave for the 
summer without the certainty of 
returning to see the same people 
again.

I’ll finally be able to say “To 

tell the truth / This could be 
the last time and mean it,” and 
I can’t help feeling like at some 
point soon I’m going to listen to 
LCD Soundsystem and actually, 

Searching for hope 

on a TV screen

By MARIA ROBBINS-

SOMERVILLE

Daily Arts Writer 2017

According to author Claudia 

Rankine, the inception of her 
book-length poem, “Citizen: An 
American Lyric,” began with the 
question: “How did that happen?” 
Something of an investigation, 
the poem opens with secondhand 
prose poetry cataloguing the 
lived experience of racism among 
Rankine’s friends and colleagues.

“I just wanted to see if people 

were sensitive to the fact that 
every day in small ways, they 
were 
themselves 
engaged 
in 

actions that were annihilating 
other people’s human rights, their 
rights to be here as a citizen and 
as a person in the world,” Rankine 
said in a phone interview with the 
Michigan Daily.

As part of the Martin Luther 

King Day Symposium, Claudia 
Rankine, poet, professor and 
MacArthur fellow, will present on 
“Citizen” published in 2014. The 
event will take place in Rackham 
auditorium, hosted by the U-M 
Racism Lab. “Citizen” is the first 
and only book of poetry to ever 
be named on the New York Times 
nonfiction bestseller list as well as 
the recipient of the NAACP award 
and PEN Open Book Award. The 
poem explores the brutal lived 
experience of structural racism 
against Black Americans.

“Reading on Martin Luther 

King Day is always for me, 
an honor, because it puts me 
conversation 
with 
one 
of 

America’s greatest leaders, and 
not only a great leader in terms 
of Civil Rights, but for me he is a 
great leader in terms of human 
rights. He’s an example to us all,” 
Rankine said.

It is more than fitting that 

Rankine read on MLK day, as her 
work deals with the profound 
urgency of the country’s increasing 
need for humanity and reversal of 
racist policy and practice. The way 
“Citizen” challenges poetic form 
is inseparable from the way it 
challenges the forms of oppressive 
sociopolitical 
structures 
in 

American society.

The form of the poem is deeply 

interdisciplinary and interweaves 
personal narrative, image and 
news-style evidence. One section 
lists names of black Americans 
whose lives were taken by police 
brutality, the words fading from 
the page as the poem progresses. 
The poem is haunting and direct, 
elucidating the ways in which the 
recipients of such constant and 
inhumane treatment wear the 
oppression on their bodies.

As a recipient of a MacArthur 

Genius grant, Rankine will be 
broadening her commitment to 
interdisciplinary work in founding 
the “Racial Imaginary Institute” 
in New York, a gallery space to 
explore race.

“Our name ‘racial imaginaries’ 

is meant to capture the enduring 
truth of race that is an invented 
concept 
that 
operates 
with 

extraordinary force in our daily 
lives, limiting our movements 
and imaginations. We understand 
that perceptions, resources, rights 
and minds themselves flow along 
racial lines that confront some 
of us and give others unchecked 
power. These lines are drawn and 
maintained by white dominance,” 
Rankine, in describing the work of 
the Institute, said.

Although many read Rankine’s 

work as a call for social change, she 
explained that she does not think 
that the artist’s responsibility 
to elicit a certain reaction or 
response from an audience.

She put it simply: “I’m not into 

any prescriptive definition when it 
comes to being an artist.”

The book’s powerful statement 

on the experience of racism in 
America merges the personal 
and political in a way that has 
resonated with both timelessness 
and an eerie timeliness. The 
text places present-day micro-
aggressions against black lives 
and beside text and images that 
allude to the era of Jim Crow 
laws, all culminating in poetry 
that 
unleashes 
something 
so 

personally and persistently felt.

Near the end of the poem 

Rankine writes, “That time and 
that time and that time the outside 
blistered the inside of you, words 
outmaneuvered years, had you in 
a chokehold, every part roughed 
up, the eyes dripping.” In this 
moment, the immensity of history 
and politics upholds a visceral 
pain that is at once personal and 
shared.

In this, the poet makes no 

real distinction between artistic 
intention that is or is not political.

“I think that politics are part 

of life so they are unavoidable, 
so we don’t need to go out of our 
way to avoid them or engage 
them,” Rankine said. “They’re 
part of our life, our history, our 
day to day living. They determine 
everything. I think writers and 
artists need to do what they 
do for themselves, to write 
from the place of most honesty, 
imaginative, possibility that they 
can envision themselves in, but 
they can’t avoid politics whether 
or not they think they’re doing 
it.” 

Rankine will be appearing 

both at Rackham Auditorium 
Monday evening and at the 
Institute for Social Research 
Tuesday morning where she will 
talk about her ongoing research 
on racism in America.

By BEN ROSENSTOCK

Daily TV Columnist 2016

In the past two weeks since 

Donald Trump was elected the next 
president of the United States, my 
weekly TV schedule has seemed 
less important than ever. Sure, TV 
is good for escapism, but in the face 
of such horrific things happening in 
the real world, whether I’ll catch up 
on “How to Get Away with Murder” 
or make time to binge “Transparent” 
suddenly seems trivial.

Of course, I quickly remembered 

that in times of political turmoil, 
art is more important than ever. 
A wealth of smart pieces have 
been written about this already. 
Genevieve Koski recently quoted 
Roger Ebert’s famous speech in 
which he claims, “the movies 
are like a machine that generates 
empathy,” arguing that by setting 
out to engage with every piece of pop 
culture we encounter, we become 
more understanding people. The 
Michigan Daily’s own Dayton Hare 
suggested that artists are obligated 
to “bring people together into the 
oneness of human existence.”

As I caught up on my shows 

recently, I realized that part of the 
reason I assumed Hillary Clinton 
would become president is that I 
watch an overwhelming amount 
of progressive, liberal-minded TV. 
Most of my favorite new fall shows 
have female leads — “Fleabag” and 
“The Good Place,” for example. Most 
of my favorite returning shows have 
predominantly female casts with a 
wealth of roles for women of color, 
like “Jane the Virgin” and “Orange 
is the New Black.” Hollywood most 
definitely still has a long way to go 
in terms of bringing marginalized 
groups to the screen — just look at 
last year’s Oscars controversy — but 
we’re in a period of unprecedented 
onscreen diversity. Being so used to 
that diversity, so used to the feminist 
beliefs I see regularly espoused 
on my favorite shows, has only 
emphasized how much of a bubble 
I live in.

Living in a bubble can have 

negative 
consequences 
if 
you 

assume the rest of the world is the 
same as yours, but I don’t mean to 
say that these progressive shows got 

Trump elected. With the impending 
Trump presidency, it’s crucial that 
we continue to work to populate 
the TV landscape with people of all 
races, sexualities, gender identities 
and ages. Still, though — in this time 
of darkness, I remember how far TV 
and movies have come, and it gives 
me hope.

Take the recent trend of casual 

abortions on TV. In the past few 
weeks, three shows have featured 
women who make the decision to 
terminate their pregnancies without 
fanfare or excessive agonizing. Too 
often, abortion is portrayed as an 
absolute last resort, a tragic decision 
that women should only make in the 
case of rape or some particularly 
vulgar circumstance. Lindsay from 
“You’re the Worst” may be a terrible 
partner and a terrible person, but 
ultimately her choice to get an 
abortion is the sanest choice she’s 
made this season. Lindsay knows 
it would be irresponsible to raise a 
child with a man who frequently 
revolts her, and it would be cruel 
to use a child to force herself into 
staying in a marriage she doesn’t 
really want.

Meanwhile, what’s revolutionary 

about seeing Lindsay or Paula 
from “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” or 
Xiomara from “Jane the Virgin” 
get an abortion is that these women 
aren’t rape survivors, or teens who 
accidentally get pregnant and have 
to “pay the consequences.” These 
are 
middle-aged 
women 
who 

emphatically don’t want to have 
more children, so they choose not to. 
It’s that simple.

I 
also 
recently 
watched 

“Moonlight,” a film that’s so 
personal, layered and subversive 
that I don’t even know how to 
begin to explain its radicalness. 
“Moonlight” isn’t exactly a feel-
good movie, but I left the theater in 
awe, convinced that writer-director 
Barry Jenkins was capable of really 
changing the way people think 
about race and sexuality.

Of all the art I’ve taken in since 

Nov. 8, though, nothing provoked so 
visceral and immediate a reaction 
in me as the season finale of “Better 
Things.” 
“Better 
Things” 
has 

brought tears to my eyes in more 
than half its episodes, but I was still 
shocked at my own reaction when I 

watched the last scene. As Sam and 
her daughters sing along to “Only 
Women Bleed” by Alice Cooper, 
the camera cuts to a wide shot of 
their minivan barreling down the 
highway, a single line of text below 
closing out the season: “dedicated to 
my daughters.”

There was something about that 

line that made me tear up every 
time I even remembered it for the 
rest of the day — something about 
the simplicity of it, the way it felt so 
quiet and elegant yet so enormously 
important. At the end of the day, 
we want our daughters to feel like 
they’re understood and respected 
and loved — not just because they’re 
our daughters, but because they’re 
people.

As 
an 
upper-middle 
class, 

straight, 
white 
male, 
I 
am 

the apotheosis of privilege. If 
“Moonlight” profoundly affected 
me, I can’t imagine how it must 
feel to be a gay Black boy watching 
his own identity — an identity 
rarely acknowledged, onscreen 
or otherwise — come to life. And 
as emotional as it made me, the 
dedication in “Better Things” must 
mean more to the women who 
see it, women who are regularly 
denigrated 
with 
cumulative 

microaggressions and explicitly 
hateful acts of violence.

Of course, we can’t let inclusive 

TV trick us into thinking the whole 
world is this open-minded. More 
importantly, we can’t let ourselves 
subside into complacency just 
because watching a show with 
an all-Black cast gives us the 
superficial appearance of social 
activists. I’m not advocating for 
ignoring reality and being blindly 
optimistic about the state of our 
country just because “Atlanta” and 
“Insecure” have been renewed for 
second seasons. I just think that 
in a time when it can be so hard 
to even log onto Twitter without 
seeing some heinous news pointing 
toward massive societal regression, 
the increasingly progressive state 
of TV is a small, hopeful sign. 
Sometimes, all you need to regain 
your faith in humanity is a little 
sign: a shot of a Black boy drenched 
in moonlight, or a four-word 
dedication. Sometimes, little signs 
are all we have.

AMELIA CACCHIONE/DAILY

Poet and MacArthur Fellow Claudia Rankine talks about racism and her poem, Citizen, at Rackham Auditorium on Janu-
ary 16, 2017.

MARCH: Kendrick Lamar releases the 
socially relevant and musically brilliant To 
Pimp a Butterfly.

MAY: Mad Men concludes after eight 
years, ending an era in the golden age of 

television. 

FEBRUARY: “Hamilton” makes its off-
broadway premiere to a sold-out crowd at the 
Public Theatre. 

MARCH 2: “12 Years a Slave” wins 
the 86th Academy Award for Best 

Picture. 

MARCH: Chance the Rapper 
performs to a packed crowd at Hill 

Auditorium. 

SEPTEMBER: “Transparent” 
premieres on Amazon Instant Video. 

JANUARY/APRIL/NOVEMBER: David Bowie, 
Prince and Leonard Cohen, some of music’s most 

defining figures of the 20th century, pass away. 

APRIL: Beyoncé releases her magnum opus, 
Lemonade, a visual album. 

FEBRUARY: Leonardo DiCaprio wins his first Oscar 
for his compelling performance as Hugh Glass in “The 
Revenant.”

FEBRUARY: Moonlight wins the 
89th Academy Award for Best Picture. 

APRIL: Lil Yachty, Desiigner and 2 

Chainz perform at Crisler Arena for 

Springfest.

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