Dear Readers,

The sages of yore once said that the only certainties in this life are death, taxes, and that one week in the semester where you get a little (a lot) too few hours of sleep, ignore all your homework during the weekend, and start to fall desperately behind in all your classes. How funny that that week always seems to reveal itself after the S/NC deadline… Oh well, it’s roughly three hours and nine minutes too late to worry about that right now. This past weekend, I helped Gendo Taiko host over 280 taiko enthusiasts from as far as Japan for the first East Coast Taiko Conference in four years.  Despite the dangerous academic space it put me in, I can say it was, without a doubt, worth all of the literal blood, sweat, and tears that went in. Without being dramatic, I would say that it was probably the pinnacle of my entire (three years) taiko-related life and one of the top three experiences of my time at Brown. I don’t know if the sages have any quotes about taiko, but I think they ought to make one after this past weekend.

This week in post-, our writers are reflecting on a few of life’s other greatest constants. In Feature, the writer reflects on her Nigerian heritage and how it is reflected in the filmic canon of Nollywood. Meanwhile, in Narrative, both writers are looking to their families as one thinks about the mysteries of philosophy and how it informs her relationship with her dad, and the other remembers her grandmother’s cooking uniting everyone on Sunday evenings. In A&C, one writer looks at the ever-present monsterization of female puberty in the horror genre, and the other recounts how platonic love is captured by boygenius. Finally, in Lifestyle, one author looks at the world from the view of her pet gecko and our other writer thinks about that all-too-relatable feeling of having a campus crush. And of course it wouldn’t be post- without a fun mini crossword—this week’s theme, presidents! The constant in this case is that mutual excitement we all feel about having a long weekend—president-related or not.

As I try to return to a state of sleep homeostasis in these coming days, I am thinking about one more eternal truth. I heard that those same sages, in all their immortal wisdom, also said something along the lines of “you should drop everything that you are doing and read post-, or maybe just at your earliest convenience.” I don’t know if they’ve ever been proven wrong; you should probably read post- ASAP. Just passing along their advice. 

Dozing at the desk,
Joe Maffa
Editor-in-Chief