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(04/18/13 9:49am)
“I believe in the Church of Baseball.” So begins Bull Durham, the 1988 film that captured the fervor and frustrations of minor league baseball in what many players consider to be the most accurate depiction of the sport. Coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the movie, Bull City Summer: A Season at the Ballpark and Beyond will chronicle the 2013 season of the Durham Bulls through blog entries, literary writing and photography. Additionally, beginning next February, Bull City Summer will display a culminating photography exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Art. The documentary project is the brainchild of Sam Stephenson, a visiting professor of Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill. Stephenson says that the idea came to him while at the last Bulls games of the 2010 season, where he was inspired by the stadium’s symbol as a microcosm of the greater Durham community.
(04/11/13 8:53am)
Arts editor Katie Zaborsky and Music editor Dan Fishman sat down in front of an audio recorder Wednesday to record Recess’ first podcast of the year: a music review of James Blake’s new album, Overgrown. Below is the transcript of the first couple minutes of the conversation.
(03/28/13 8:05am)
A few New Yorker’s ago, I read a piece by Joseph Mitchell—a contributor to the magazine for over 50 years—entitled “Street Life,” a mesmerizing, lyrical account of both New York’s well-trodden neighborhoods and its forgotten crevices. “What I really like to do is wander aimlessly in the city,” he writes. “I like to walk the streets by day and by night.” As much as I admire Mitchell’s impulse to breathe the city in at all hours of the night, content to be an active observer while the city pulses around him, my first thought wasn’t, “I want to do that.” My first thought was, “I can’t do that.” Psychogeography—the act of wandering through an environment and tapping into that carefree yet thoughtful aimlessness—will never be a luxury I can have. At least at night.
(03/27/13 6:00am)
Recess Arts Editor and Towerview writer Katie Zaborsky sat down for a bustling Sunday morning brunch at Mad Hatter’s Bakeshop and Cafe with Assistant Professor of English Aarthi Vadde. Halfway through her second year of teaching at Duke, Vadde has already garnered a reputation as a breath of fresh air for her progressive attitude toward the canon and her eloquent, encouraging demeanor. Vadde (pronounced “va-Day”) is currently teaching two courses in the English department, an undergraduate class, “The Contemporary Anglophone Novel,” and a graduate-level seminar, “Transnational Modernism and the Novel.” Discussing everything from modernist superstars to the merits of being an only child (“only children are smart, good people”), Vadde’s light-hearted humor and academic insights are evident both in and out of the classroom.
(02/21/13 10:34am)
Last week I bought tickets to see James Blake perform at Cat’s Cradle the day after graduation. I celebrated by revisiting Blake’s entire discography in what I later noticed was reverse chronological order. It took me a week to arrive where his back catalog began because I took a six-day siesta with “CMYK,” the title track from one of Blake’s 2010 EPs and my new favorite song of his. In his dizzying yet seamless arrangement of sounds, Blake samples a track that once overworked my iPod in much the same way—“Are You That Somebody?” by Aaliyah. Without a doubt, it’s this sample and previous attachment with Aaliyah’s music that makes “CMYK” so appealing, at least to me. And in a revelation that came soon afterward, I realized that some of my favorite songs also incorporate Aaliyah’s music to varying degrees: Kendrick Lamar’s “Blow My High” explicitly pays tribute to the late R&B singer and features an extended, computerized sample of her “4 Page Letter”; less noticeable is The Weeknd’s use of “Rock the Boat” to introduce his bare, seductive track “What You Need.” All of this is to say that art does not exist in a vacuum; every piece of artwork is inevitably derivative. But out of all of the artistic mediums—film, dance, visual art, literature—it’s music that has become the least obstructive to creative development via appropriation. A dubious honor, to say the least.
(01/31/13 11:29am)
Through Sunday, Feb. 3, monologist Mike Daisey will be performing his latest monologue, American Utopias, at the PSI Theater at Durham Arts Council. In his one-man shows, Daisey presents his unique brand of storytelling in the context of contemporary theater—crafted yet extemporaneous, playful yet visceral. Recess Arts Editor Katie Zaborsky spoke with Daisey about his approach to storytelling, the difficulty in categorizing his work, and the monologue he is bringing to Duke and Durham. Visit Duke Performances’ website for tickets and showtimes.
(01/10/13 10:14am)
MUSIC
(01/10/13 10:05am)
My favorite lyrics in hip-hop come from the song “Brown Skin Lady” off the 1998 album Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star: “Damn she fine, I think I add the R-E in front of that/And she is she D to get with a cat like me.” What I like about it so much is that Talib doesn’t stigmatize a woman’s sexuality nor does he co-opt it for his own benefit. He recognizes her qualities beyond the physical, calling her both fine and refined, a clever way of showing how to compliment a woman beyond the superficial. The whole song is actually a powerful tribute to women, praising both beauty and poise. It’s characteristic of the type of hip-hop I listen to. But so is “There He Go,” a song from ScHoolboy Q that contains the lines, “Ass fat, throw it back, I can’t believe you wifing that/ Deepthroat, seven or eleven, she’s a double gulp.” This is the type of hip-hop I turn down when I roll up in the Whole Foods parking lot—not because I’m white, but because I’m a woman.
(12/06/12 10:40am)
Another year, another year-end music review from Recess. 2012 gave us a wide array of solid music, including an impressive selection from young electronic musicians (e.g. Shackleton, Holly Herndon and Laurel Halo) and many solid new albums from unironic rock groups (e.g. Japandroids, Swans and Ty Segall). Everyone’s already talking or talked about some of our favorites—Grizzly Bear, Frank Ocean, Beach House, the xx, Kendrick Lamar and Fiona Apple—so we figured we would use this space to talk about the albums that didn’t get as much notice. Obviously we can’t write about all of the albums we enjoyed listening to, so if your favorite’s not on here, go to our list online and add a comment. Without further ado, the Recess-approved albums of 2012:
(11/29/12 10:51am)
If any one person is responsible for reintroducing Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to a generation of readers all too content to label it as “insurmountable,” it’s Oprah Winfrey. She chose the book in May of 2004 as part of her book club, an unprecedented pick for two reasons: for one, she hadn’t read the book before assigning it, an Oprah’s Book Club first. Second, the book centers on an adulterous wife of a bureaucrat and the societal repercussions she faces in 19th century aristocratic Russia, a far, privileged cry from the Toni Morrison novels that frequently grace Oprah’s list. The novel is certainly a masterpiece, but Oprah did more than revive interest in a classic—she helped revive the market for translated literature. Anna Karenina the movie, then, is a translation of a translation, suggesting an even cruder derivation than most film adaptations. Yet director Joe Wright’s big budget drama doesn’t pretend to be faithful to the reader, a task that may actually be insurmountable. Instead, Anna Karenina is faithful to the moviegoer, reveling in the power of cinematic aesthetics on par with Tolstoy’s original prose.
(11/15/12 10:33am)
If you’ve ever followed any of the sex advice doled out by Cosmo magazine, chances are you’ve probably ruined a perfectly good banana. Today, the women’s magazine has a reputation that precedes itself; what was once a publication focused on sexual liberation and women’s empowerment has now descended into a parody of itself. Yet I still read it exclusively while working out on the elliptical machine at the gym. I choose Cosmo over other reading material precisely for its lack of substance, and after years of only using the pages as something to sweat on, Cosmo, in its infinite fruit-filled wisdom, lost its ability to get a rise out of me. Or so I thought.
(10/25/12 8:15am)
On Overly Dedicated, Kendrick Lamar’s 2010 mixtape that caught the attention of his current mentor Dr. Dre, he admits, “The hardest thing for me to do/ is to get you, to know me, within sixteen bars.” With Section.80, his first independent album, Kendrick teased many possibilities of representation: a dutiful observer of his generation’s pitfalls, an empathetic poet reciting character studies, a Black Panther Party revivalist, etc. On good kid, m.A.A.d. city, he extends himself to inhabit an identity bigger than any one person—Compton. Structured as a concept album that uses the city as a physical and emotional roadmap to navigate Kendrick’s past, good kid answers the question of who Kendrick is with where he’s from, uniting the two in a fascinating, undaunted narrative.
(10/18/12 8:18am)
A couple of months ago, some of the other Recess editors and I sat down and watched High Fidelity, a movie I’ve probably seen at least half a dozen times since I rescued it from a Wal-Mart discount movie bin a few years ago. If you’ve ever seen High Fidelity, you know that it’s entirely quotable from beginning to end: the movie is narrated by Rob Gordon (John Cusack), a hyper-reflexive, misanthropic music snob who consistently doles out gems such as, “Liking both Marvin Gaye and Art Garfunkel is like supporting both the Israelis and the Palestinians.”
(09/27/12 8:25am)
On Nas’s summer LP Life is Good, he appointed himself as hip-hop’s Don, a seasoned Escabano-puffing kingpin who presides over the industry from atop; on 2011’s Watch the Throne, Kanye and Jay-Z declared themselves as hip-hop’s unstoppable emperors, daring anyone to question their rule. In 2006, with so many artists claiming hip-hop as theirs, and so few writing music that represented its audience, it often felt like the genre needed to be rescued from the clutches of aristocracy. Lupe Fiasco emerged as its savior. His debut album Food and Liquor tackled the Iraq war, unearthed forgotten subcultures and transformed Chicago into a living, breathing body scarred by inner-city struggles. His new album, Food and Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album Part 1 suggests a continuation of such craftsmanship, and while that’s sometimes true, the comparison is ultimately misleading.
(09/20/12 7:10am)
Beginning at 7:30 p.m. tonight at Motorco Music Hall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz will be reading from This Is How You Lose Her, his collection of short stories released earlier this month. The book centers on interwoven stories of love and heartbreak and revisits characters from his previous works Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. As with all of his works, Diaz writes in the context of the Dominican-American experience. Recess Arts Editor Katie Zaborsky spoke on the phone with Diaz about his evolving view on love, inspirational movies, and MIT.
(09/06/12 9:09am)
What do you do when you wake up and find your girlfriend has asphyxiated on her own vomit from a heroin binge the morning after you two promised to get clean and run away into the sunset?
(09/06/12 9:04am)
Julia Holter
(09/04/12 9:06am)
In keeping with Duke’s ongoing commitment to multidisciplinary performance, the Department of Theater Studies will host two theater groups that combine digital technology and interactive media with live performance.
(08/30/12 7:54am)
Founded in 1976, The Regulator Bookstore is a 9th Street cultural staple that serves both Durham and Duke’s growing literary community. Independently run and community-oriented, The Regulator hosts some of Durham’s premier literary events and provides locals with a diverse selection of essential classics and new releases. With a flood of new titles hitting the shelves in the next few months, Recess asked The Regulator co-owners and its longest-serving employee about their most anticipated books of the fall season.
(07/02/12 4:17am)
In the mid-90s, alternative rock experienced a surge of third-wave feminism with the emergence of some of the most powerful frontwomen in rock: Brody Dalle of The Distillers, Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Shirley Manson of Garbage. Labeled “edgy” and “rebellious,” these women embodied the defiance and individuality that record companies now routinely inject like bad-girl cream filling when they manufacture the newest pop sensation. And that’s exactly why Not Your Kind of People, Garbage’s fifth studio album after a six year hiatus, sounds like a relic of a grittier era. In a music climate where artificiality has become so pervasive that it feels “real,” Garbage’s energy is palpable, their energy organic and their talent wholly authentic.
