The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Michigan in Color Wednesday, October 13, 2021 — 7 Altar: Finding beauty in loss R&B singer Kehlani has experienced a great deal of loss and portrays their resulting grief in unconventional ways through music. In their latest single, “Altar,” they celebrate the impact and the lives of those who have passed, emphasizing that just because a loved one is gone, they don’t need to be forgotten. This song feels incredibly personal because of my experience with loss. My aunt passed away almost six years ago and I still have a hard time coping with the fact she’s really gone. A picture of her and me remains on my lock screen just so I won’t forget what she looks like. My heart aches profoundly when I look back on the time I had with her. I think about everything I took for granted and the million different things I wish I could say to her and ask her. I wish that I could hug her again, see her smile and hear her infectious laugh in real-time. “Altar’s” upbeat tone, which challenges the somber tone that often comes with songs on grief, drives me to pay attention to the memories I have left of my aunt, rather than the heartbreak that remains. The song offers a sense of comfort and shows me that there is beauty in loss, so long as I grow to appreciate why I feel pain when thinking about her. “Altar” radiates warmth and happiness, expressing the power of grief and acceptance. It feels like a gleam of sunshine after days of seemingly endless darkness and storms. It reminds me that the reason why I’m still so insistent on keeping her memory fresh in my mind is that she taught me how to love so deeply. Instead of feeling regret from failing to enjoy the moments I shared with loved ones, this song challenges me to think about why I care so much about keeping them alive. Listening to “Altar,” or even thinking about its lyrics, challenges me to empathetically change how I perceive life without my aunt. People constantly say that loved ones who have passed are “gone, but never forgotten” and that they will live in our hearts forever. But I don’t think I truly understood what that meant until hearing this song’s lyrics. I try not to beat myself up over the fact that it is taking me so long to cope with her death, because as Kehlani so gracefully sang in her song, I’m keeping her alive, because I want to and I am able to. There is no reason for me to get over her death until, or if I ever feel the need to. The fact that a desire to keep her alive remains so strong almost six years later should empower me to keep going and honor her every day. My aunt’s passing still causes me pain. But being able to recognize, even for a second, that the reason why I may feel so much grief over her is that the love we shared for each other was profound when she was here, and remains just as strong today, is enough to get me through the day. “Altar” is not the first time that I have been pushed to view loss in a positive light, but I think that its message came at a time when I was finally ready to accept that grief doesn’t always have to be filled with shame and regret. “Altar” has aided my growth towards acceptance in ways I never thought possible. I am forever grateful to Kehlani for sharing this art. “Gossip Girl,” “Pretty Little Liars,” “Glee” and “Riverdale” are all TV shows that share two large similarities: They are incredibly popular and the main cast of teenagers is played by adults, sometimes 15 years older. There are many technical reasons producers choose to hire actors much older than the character they play. For one, most teenagers and minors under 18 can only work under a highly restricted number of hours due to labor laws. Their time on set has to revolve around their schooling, rest and meals. Actors under 16 also need to have a guardian on set as they work. But despite these technicalities, it is hard to justify shows like “Riverdale,” where the average age gap disparity between actors and the roles they play is a solid 8.25. It’s not the number of years that seems to be a problem, but more so the time frame selected. If a 58-year-old actor plays a 50-year-old character, the harm that reaches the audience is significantly less than if a 28-year-old adult plays a 16-year-old student, which also happens to be the age difference between Stacey Dash and her character Dionne Davenport in the renowned classic “Clueless.” This is because 10 years is a huge time difference when you’re younger. Most of us likely don’t change as much, physically or emotionally, when we go from 50 to 60, but when we go from 10 to 20, we may be practically a new person. Between the ages 10 and 20, we change physically and mature emotionally. Most of us start this time frame at the beginning of middle school and end it in our college years. Think about how much we changed in this period. A lot of us have the majority of our “firsts” during this time — first job, first year of college, first time living independently and so on. When a 15-year-old looks at the screen, at what they are “supposed” to look like according to the media’s latest beauty standards, they are comparing themselves to people, in some cases, nearly a decade older than they are. They are forced into reevaluating themselves because perhaps the small student in high school with a face full of hormonal acne feels they are supposed to look like a 30-year-old professional model. It perpetuates unrealistic standards, dragging a bag full of insecurities along with it. Being a teenager is hard enough as it is; we don’t need an increase in unachievable beauty standards. It’s not all just unachievable physical standards. Quite often, shows that revolve around high school life have a large added element of romance or sexual relationships. It’s not completely accurate to say high school is devoid of all romantic associations, but for most of us, it’s nothing as over-sexualized as Riverdale. Often, older actors are hired because of how unethical it is to have minors play out sexually explicit content. But there seems to be a much bigger, overlying problem: If you can’t get actual teenagers to play out a teenage character, chances are that your character isn’t doing what normal teenagers do. Watching this kind of explicit content forces teens who have only just started to figure themselves out to mature at a rate that may be too fast for them, a process that deprives them of reflecting on who they really are and who they want to be in the future. As my mother struggled to force open the door that had been sealed for months, dust blew through the air. The purple walls in the garage were no longer the pretty lavender I loved, but a gloomy gray from the layers of dust and faded memories. I turned to the right and looked for the white car my grandfather used to drive my brother and me in. I was met with empty space and a reminder that the car was sold. I’ve been in that car less than a handful of times. But when I was, those were some of the few moments I was able to spend with my grandfather. He’d drive us to the only mall in our small town — a mall that also functioned as a hotel, restaurant and playground. I’d run into the ice cream shop that only sold the wrapped cones that you could find at every store and grab one from their freezer, finishing it before my grandfather even had a chance to pay. Then we’d make our way up to a red booth in the top-floor restaurant, my favorite in all of India, and eat the same meal I get at every restaurant — naan and paneer. My brother and I would share the food and each order a different flavor of lassi and split. We’d be the only ones at the restaurant, which makes sense since I now realize the food was mediocre at best. But at the time, I thought the food was the best in town. The entire restaurant would smell like a mix of every spice, ironic since the food was bland. The empty garage connects to my grandparent’s office. I stepped over the broken door frame that guarded the office and noticed the layer of gray dust coating my foot. The green walls looked the same as they did the last time I was there — untouched. After my grandfather passed, the office became a time capsule, opened only to enter and leave the building or as a room for my grandmother to speak with my grandfather’s old clients who kept coming to talk about their case files from years and years ago since he was their lawyer. The normally crowded room filled with loud clients from all over town was uncomfortably silent. When I entered, I hesitated before I looked up to see his empty chair and cleared desk — a desk that was normally covered in case files. My brother and I would sneak around and peek into the office when my grandfather had clients over. We’d move the curtain that covered the dividing glass door and quietly laugh from the living room, joking about the clients who’d glare through the door. Then, if we were bold, we’d open the door and bolt into the office. We’d laugh or pretend there was something important to tell our grandfather, but we really just wanted to get a look at the clients and eavesdrop. The living room was the same shade as the garage. Pictures of all the grandchildren, our parents’ weddings and the Hindu gods my grandmother prays to every morning covered the wall. Splotches of water damage covered the top parts of the walls, and the previous paint job shined through them. I wasn’t allowed into part of the attached dining room and bathroom because the ceiling had collapsed there. The window behind the box TV was too small to let in a lot of light, and it was distorted so people couldn’t see inside and we couldn’t see outside. The window in the back blocked off any ounce of sunlight because my grandmother covered it with blankets for a reason I forgot to ask her about. But even with the dust and the damage and the covered windows, the room was still oddly bright from the nostalgia and joy that beamed from the pictures. I would spend most of the time in my grandparent’s living room when I was at their house. My brother and I would lay on the cot and watch Harry Potter movie marathons all day with the air conditioning pointing directly at us on high so that when the power went out, the room would stay somewhat cold until the air returned two hours later. We would wait patiently for the power to come back and the minute it did, we would continue our marathon, never moving from the cot. Our grandmother would come and give us homemade dosas and chutney for dinner, and we’d scarf it down in the living room as the marathon played on. I walked past my grandfather’s locked bedroom — it sent a slight shiver through my body — and made my way to the bedroom my mother and aunt once shared. The red paint was peeling off the walls, and the only working light was the sunlight hitting the distorted windows. A few crows sat right outside the window cawing, breaking any silence in the room. The hot air burned my skin. The fan and air conditioner no longer worked. A sadness loomed over me when I saw the murals my brother and I painted as kids tattered from the aged paint. I took a breath in and was hit with the pungent smell of mothballs, a smell so familiar to me, yet, one that I hadn’t smelled in years. The windows were covered with my cousins’ paintings from when they were little, over 25 years ago, dull, but still intact. Whenever I visited my grandparent’s home in India, my entire family including my aunts and cousins would all sleep in this room. We’d watch TV and talk for hours. My grandmother would tell us her best stories as I played with my toys. She’d talk about my parents and my aunts and my uncles. She’d tell me about my cousins who were all much older than me, and the things they did when they were little. Just before leaving to go back to my aunt’s house (12 hours away by train), I went out onto the terrace. I was met with burning dry air, hotter than that from my mother’s room. The sun was beating onto the concrete, so every step I made burned my feet. The brightness blinded my eyes for a short second while I adjusted from being inside a room of darkness. The clothesline that we used to dry our clothes every few days had fallen and was laying on the ground. My toy scooter sat in the corner next to the fallen line, unusable, completely rusted and dusty. I looked to the side and saw the other entrance to my grandfather’s room. A large heavy silver lock held the door closed. I stared at it for a few minutes with a pit in my stomach as my mind went blank. The same emptiness in my head I felt years before at his funeral. Design by Grace Aretakis Design by Meghana Tummala MARIA PATTON MiC Columnist Teenage characters should be played by teens, not decades-older adults The pink house on that one street SYEDA RIZVI MiC Columnist ROSHNI MOHAN MiC Columnist Read more at MichiganDaily.com Read more at MichiganDaily.com