2B — Thursday, March 14, 2019
b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Society 
has 
had 
many 
cultural rebirths, and I have 
always wanted the same for 
myself. But not just a new 
chapter of my life. I waste 
too many hours pondering a 
literal rebirth — if I could be 
born again in another time 
and experience my personal 
renaissance 
in 
a 
different 
way. It’s a shame that the only 
renaissance I’ve been (un)
lucky enough to be present 
for is the rise of social media. 
Of course I got to be there for 
the phenomenon that would 
enable 
my 
mental 
health 
hitting the gutter in high 
school. It feels like I missed 
out on all too much.
What if I’d been born in 
1973, and got to grow up with 
the birth and golden age of 
hip hop? I’d be six years old 
when the Sugar Hill Gang 
dropped “Rapper’s Delight,” 
surely dancing to it with all 
my friends in front of the 
boom box at the playground. 
I imagine being fourteen when 
Paid in Full came out. I would 
close my locker and look to 
my friend beside me, wearing 
overalls with one strap off, and 
say, “Yo, you hear the new Eric 
B. and Rakim?” (According 
to my dad, who was indeed 
fourteen the year Paid in 
Full came out, this highly-

important question was on the 
mouth of every kid in school 
when he came back in the 
fall). Instead of crying over 
Mac Miller, I would have been 
there shedding tears when 
I first heard about Tupac’s 
untimely death.
I imagine if I’d been 16 at 
the height of drive-in movie 
theatres. 
It’s 
the 
summer 
of 1956, and I’m behind the 
wheel of my dad’s Buick only 
days after getting my license. 
Beside me is the most beautiful 
girl in the school, Tina Jane 
with the blond curls, and we’re 
watching “Rebel Without a 
Cause.” Inches separate our 
shoulders. Nothing is on my 
mind other than her, and I can 
hardly focus on the movie — 
I’m trying my hardest to keep 
it cool, making a silent prayer 
for my first kiss.
Maybe if I got to experience 
my 20s in the ’20s, I would be 
living in New York, freshly 
graduated and dancing for the 
first time at a lavish party on 
Long Island’s North Shore. I’d 
rock the brown wool, peak-
lapel, four-button jacket and 
a light pink cotton dress shirt 
with french cuffs. I’d match 
it with sleek brown cap toes 
and a diagonal striped tie — 
deep burgundy, forest green 
and golden brown. Relaxing 
on the balcony after hours 
of dancing, I’d look up to the 
stars, sipping champagne as 
the live music beat on, boats 

against the current, borne 
back ceaselessly into the past 
(“The Great Gatsby”).
Is there a place for me, even 
further back and farther away?
At my heart, I am a born-
and-raised product of the 21st 
century. At fourteen, I got to 
be there when Drake’s Nothing 
Was the Same came out — 
which is cool, but substantially 
less cool than experiencing the 
new Eric B. and Rakim. There 
was no glamorous first kiss in 
Dad’s Buick with a curly-blond 
bombshell — I took my first date 
to the regular movie theater, 
awkwardly held hands during 
“The Fault in Our Stars,” and 
only had a nervous “i had 
fun :)” text to show for it. My 
first party was not in a fancy 
oceanside mansion but in a 
cramped basement. There was 
no champagne, just Costco-
brand vodka and Mike’s Hard 
Lemonade. Admittedly, I don’t 
see any Gatsby-style roaring 
’20s parties in my future.
Maybe 
it’s 
not 
so 
bad. 
Maybe there’s no time better 
than now to grow into myself. 
After all, most of my closest 
friends are of racial and sexual 
identities that didn’t have a 
space in society until now, and 
I wouldn’t have become who 
I am without them in my life. 
I still do yearn for a rebirth, 
to get a taste of a pastime I 
never had. But my golden age 
is today, and I think that’s 
perfectly okay.

WARNER BROS. ENTERNTAINMENT
Ceaselessly into the past: 
Renaissance daydreams

DYLAN YONO
Daily Arts Writer

Binz

Solange

Columbia Records

MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW: ‘BINZ’

The best part about a new 
Solange album is that we’re 
always spoiled with movie-
quality music videos to go 
with it. And with her latest 
release, When I Get Home, we 
practically got a full movie, 
a precisely choreographed 
half-hour long companion 
piece and surreal love 
letter to the artist’s origins 
in Houston’s Third Ward. 
Solange 
dropped 
five 
minutes of it on YouTube as 
a music video for “Almeda,” 
stitching 
together 
the 
“Nothing 
Without 
Intention” interlude with 
the standout song of the 
album, a Playboi Carti-
featuring, jazzy flip on 
the chopped and screwed 
genre. The “Almeda” video 
is a well-oiled machine, with 
legions of dancers orbiting 
perfectly 
around 
Solange, 
Houston locales and even a 
fleet of DeLoreans.
While Solange deserves an 
immense level of respect for 
her dedication to precisely 

curating 
this 
mechanical 
aesthetic in her music videos 
and promotional material, an 
unedited and unrehearsed 
slice into the artist’s life can 
be a breath of fresh air. This is 

what we get with the “Binz” 
music video: 86 seconds of 
Solange spinning, popping, 
twisting and twerking in 
front of a webcam.
“Binz” 
is 
low 
quality, 
but it’s not low effort. To 
a particular eye, Solange’s 
movements 
could 
seem 

incredibly 
precise 
and 
purposeful, as she dances 
around in a variety of outfits 
that probably cost more than 
University tuition, but it still 
maintains a carefree vibe. 
There’s no better fit for the 
song — “Binz” breezes. It’s a 
lazy sprint, reveling in taking 
it slow. Solange doesn’t even 
bother to start her verse until 
halfway through: “I just 
wanna wake up to the suns 
and Saint Laurent / Hundred 
thousand 
dollars 
on 
the 
fronts and the blunts.” “Binz” 
is the sun breaking through 
the grey sky on a muzzy 
March day, warming us up to 
90 degree afternoons but not 
giving them to us quite yet. 
Solange is aware the summer 
heat will soon creep through 
the clouds, and dances with 
an incessant smile on her face 
for what’s to come.

— Cassandra Mansuetti, 
Senior Arts Editor

COLUMBIA RECORDS

B-SIDE: MUSIC

For much longer than I can 
remember, 
my 
grandma 
has 
owned a little blue cabin on the 
shores 
of 
Intermediate 
Lake, 
Michigan. And when I say cabin, 
I don’t mean one of those quaint-
yet-simultaneously-the-cost-of-
my-tuition cottages. I mean leaky 
roof, one bathroom, zebra mussel 
cabin. I mean memory filled, 
unconventionally beautiful, blue 
heaven cabin. This is the cabin 
where I grew up for one week 
every summer. I traveled up with 
my family, bunked with my sister 
(literally — we had bunk beds) and 
delighted in a whole week void of 
responsibilities and reality.
Every time I returned to my 
blue heaven, it embraced me with 
consistency. The rickety dock from 
little feet running to see crayfish, 
the crumbling fire pit from nights 
of s’more contests and campfire 
discussions, the sandy carpet 
from days spent making teetering 
towers and temporary tapestries, 
all reminded me of summer spent 
in sameness. Each year we spent 
in a similar simplicity: We would 
lounge on the beach, go into town 
for penny candy, visit Pirates Cove 

for mini golf, lounge on the beach 
some more.
But the most relaxing part of 
the vacation was not our little 
excursions, or lack thereof, but 
that it acted as an excursion from 
everyday life. That little cabin is 
where, for one week every summer, 
I escaped to a place untouched by 
time. No outside world existed; my 
worries of the approaching school 
year, friendship drama clouding 
my thoughts and fears of what the 
coming year would bring all faded 
away. Instead, my anxieties went 
out with the lazy tide, my worries 
melted under the summer sun. As 
I laid in the hammock with my 
book and ukulele, my little blue 
cabin harbored me from the only 
constant in my life: change.
We are always changing and 
growing, undergoing our own little 
renaissances. And that is a beautiful 
thing. The fact that we are always a 
work in progress means we always 
have the capacity to improve, 
learn and flourish. What typically 
prompts us to change are our 
experiences, whether we have a 
hand in bringing them about or not. 
Events that change our lives force 
us to adapt and evolve, leading to a 
change within ourselves. 
But while this constant growth 
does benefit us, it can sometimes 

be exhausting. Living in such a fast 
paced world forces us to change 
due to outside forces, not because 
we have any desire or reason 
to change. Rarely do we get the 
chance to stand back and think 
about who we have become and 
who we want to be. Rarely do we 
control our own renaissance.
But away from the real world, in 
the timeless blue cabin, I do control 
my renaissance. I can grow on my 
own terms. I can read books, play 
instruments, explore nature. I can 
stop and think and just be, which 
sometimes is the most important 
form of growth. While life comes to 
a standstill on the edge of the lake, I 
can decide where to go from there.
Of course, not everything can 
truly stay the same. The zebra 
mussels are still as annoying as 
ever, but the leaky roof has long 
since been fixed and the bathroom 
has expanded. And I never truly 
escape reality. But for one week 
every summer, I find shelter. My 
blue heaven has watched me grow 
up and move through my own 
renaissance, but it has always 
stayed the same, granting me the 
space to evolve in the ways I need 
the most, comforting me with 
safety and simplicity. My blue safe 
haven is where my renaissance is in 
my control.

DANA PIERANGELI / DAILY
Intermediate Lake, MI, 
or my little blue heaven

B-SIDE: COMMUNITY CULTURE

DANA PIERANGELI
Daily Arts Writer

I often find myself longing to 
live in another decade. My personal 
favorite? The ’70s. The heyday 
of rock ‘n’ roll, the golden age of 
hippie counterculture and the open 
passion for love that comes with it. 
My urge for this time travel comes 
at trivial moments in a day, such as 
when I’m in an elevator surrounded 
by five people all staring down at 
their phones, faces illuminated by 
harsh, unwelcoming blue light. 
Or when I’m walking through the 
Arb and see students in hammocks 
staring into their screens. When 
did life become so antisocial, 
the need for human contact and 
conversation replaced with small 
devices that now contain our whole 
world?
And that’s just it — I think 
my 
yearning 
to 
escape 
our 
contemporary 
world 
stems 
from technology. It’s a love-hate 
relationship, 
a 
double-edged 
sword. Our generation grew up 
at a pivotal time. We watched 
Saturday morning cartoons on 
CRT box televisions and marveled 
at flip phones 15 years ago, and 
now find ourselves setting screen-
time limits on our own devices, 
stored somewhere within reach 
at all times. We grew up in the 
midst of a massive technological 
revolution, and it shows. Turning 
to our screens became our study 
break, our escape from boredom on 
long summer days and our primary 
method of communication.
Technology is so ingrained in 
our lives that we forget what it was 
like to live without it. But there’s a 
great remedy.
***
Summer 
2014: 
My 
thighs 
graze against each other as I walk 
through the cobblestone streets, 
the humidity hanging in the air 
like a thick, woolen blanket. I’ve 
just finished my freshman year of 
high school (oh, the innocence!), 
a year mostly spent wearing my 
thick black curls in two pigtails on 

the sides of my head. I know you’re 
already thinking it so I’ll confirm it: 
They looked atrocious. My hair was 
the least of my worries, though, 
with the Italian country beckoning 
me to explore.
Rambling through those narrow 
streets, some so tight that cars can’t 
drive through, it’s easy to forget 
the world that we live in. When 
you’re surrounded by churches, 
plazas and statues built during the 
Renaissance, you start to believe 
that you’re living in it. Tourists 
with bulky backpacks leading 
their gelato-laden children by the 
hand fade into the periphery. Only 
the baroque buildings with pure 
white trim surrounding their sides 
remain. If I’d turned a corner and 
seen Raphael painting the “School 
of 
Athens” 
or 
Michelangelo 
sculpting the “Pietà,” I wouldn’t 
have been surprised.
Take, 
for 
example, 
the 
Pantheon. The colossal dome, built 
during the reign of the Roman 
empire in 27 BCE, sits in the center 
of the aptly named Piazza della 
Rotonda. Easily one of the most 
crowded piazzas in Rome, it took 
my family ten minutes to walk a 
hundred feet to the nearest gelato 
shop and stumble back to the 
center of the square. Sitting there, 
slowly numbing my tongue with 
the dark chocolate cream (the only 
gelato flavor I truly enjoy), I turned 
my eyes to the inscription on the 
front facade of the Pantheon: “M. 
AGRIPPA L.F. COS TERTIUM 
FECIT.” 
Translated: 
“Marcus 
Agrippa, son of Lucius, three-
time counsel, made this.” I looked 
back down and imagined this 
place as it was all those years ago, 
when polytheism still reigned and 
Roman citizens used the Pantheon 
as a temple. The gelato shop 
replaced with tumbledown houses, 
shambles compared to modern-day 
Rome. Whoever Marcus Agrippa 
is, he let me live in the past for 
a fleeting second, and for that, I 
thank him.
The same feeling overcame me 
when I stepped into Santa Maria 

Maggiore, a church nestled in 
the northern part of Rome, a city 
with over 900 churches. Churches 
are hands-down the best way to 
see Italy; we were told this by our 
taxi driver on our first day in the 
city in broken English with brief 
interludes of rapid Italian. But we 
got the jist: Go see the churches. 
Touring all of them would take 
forever, so our driver narrowed 
it down for us, promptly listing 
off the four most “important” in 
Rome. Santa Maria Maggiore was 
one of them.
I almost laughed out loud when 
I walked inside. Our taxi driver 
should have been named tour 
guide of the year. Sweeping marble 
columns towered over my five-foot 
frame, silently calling me to look 
up to the gold-leafed ceiling. The 
main passage and pews glowed 
with yellow light, but the dark, 
silent alcoves branching from the 
sides were much more compelling. 
Each one contained a statue or a 
painting — I found myself face-to-
face with countless Virgin Marys, 
baby angels and kings, sculpted to 
precision. What was it like to live 
here, during a period of such rapid 
advances in art? When people 
were drawn in three dimensions, 
not flat in typical medieval style. 
When a block of marble was all that 
artists like Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 
widely regarded as one of the best 
sculptors to ever live, needed to 
carve a masterpiece.
Travel is my method of fleeing 
from this era for a week or two, 
a way of living in another time 
while not really being there at all. 
It’s fleeting, but it’s eye-opening. 
I cherish everything from short 
road-trips to national parks to 
international 
flights 
because 
there’s nothing better than being 
in the thick of things, right where 
all the action happened. Gems like 
Michelangelo’s “Moses” in Rome 
or Bernini’s “Ecstacy of Saint 
Teresa” shine light on what the 
Italian Renaissance really was: a 
different way of living, a different 
world.

Finding freedom in Italy

TRINA PAL
Senior Arts Editor

B-SIDE: COMMUNITY CULTURE

