“Peace in the Valley,” by Dawes (2009) 

I tend to be very meticulous with music. I usually like only a few songs by a musician, rather than their entire body of work. I also find music to be very emotionally engaging, so I avoid listening to music unless I budget time to focus on it because it affects me a great deal and will draw my attention.

Dawes’ album “North Hills” is one of the few full albums I enjoy as a unit. Lyrically, their writing reminds me a lot of Theodore Roethke, one of my favorite poets. Throughout the album, you travel through different impressionistic disillusioned emotional states, which culminate in “Peace in the Valley,” the climactic song in which the singer continues his search for balance and significance but doubts his ability to find it by changing his circumstances and ultimately its existence. That resonates a lot with the aporia of the preceding songs, and it very much connected with me as an undergrad. I think that melodically the way it spirals into instrumentals leaves no solid conclusion to the search and leaves us with a message that no apparent conclusion is ever final; that appeals to me in a world where many people propose easy solutions.  

“Xenogenesis” trilogy by Octavia Butler (1987-89) 

I am a big sci-fi fan, but I often find myself disappointed when aliens appear too human and too familiar.

“Xenogenesis” provides alien aliens. It is a trilogy in which aliens resurrect humans, who have become extinct from war, so they can unite with them genetically, end both their species, and create an entirely new species that will travel through the universe seeking genetic uniqueness. Not only are the aliens drastically different, with a completely different sex, gender, and mating system, but their physique and emotiveness were almost impossible to visualize, since the usual physical reference points were absent. Their priorities and values were unexpected (surprisingly, cancer cells with their metamorphic possibilities are their human attractant).

The novel’s focus on different themes, from violence to enthusiasm, to change, destruction, and alterity created a level of discomfort and bewilderment that especially appealed to me, and the author’s unapologetic forcing of the reader into unfamiliar experiences made me consider what it means to really experience an “other.” Books that challenge my expectations and my preconceptions tend to become some of my favorites. 

“Raise the Red Lantern” (1991) 

This has been my favorite movie since I was in middle school, and it opened up the world of Chinese cinema to me.

Set in 1920s China, it focuses on a new concubine’s life in a house of oppressive traditions that use superficial honors, like the title’s red lanterns, to control the women and encourage violent and tragic competition among the different wives.

Director Zhang Yimou creates a stifling and claustrophobic environment for the viewer and draws you in with constant ritual repetition so that your perspective quickly aligns with the concubines and you get the same desperate competitive feeling. His use of color helps; the whole movie takes place in a dismal gray, and the only sources of color are the red lanterns given to the favored concubine, forcing you to focus on the lanterns and traditions in the same way the lanterns are the concubines’ only focus. That type of intense emotional desperation created by that kind of filmmaking and aesthetic is what I look for in films.