Editors' Letter
Visual by Vivian Chambers
Dear UA Readers,
Strangely, I spent the first of the month feeling very sad. Not in a depressing sort of way, more in a nostalgic and melancholic sort of way. The sky was a darker blue and my body felt heavier than usual. But in a way, I was also strangely happy. I kept finding myself smiling for no reason. I realized why everything felt different that day. It was just one of those days when I was abnormally and beautifully aware that I was alive. And at the end of the day I took a really deep breath of relief, and I smelt it—It was March.
March is my favorite month. The smell of it, the way the temperature changes, the way the sun shines differently. It feels like a beginning—like we’re being reborn into spring.
It also happens to be my birthday on the 25th, so I was literally born in this month. And every year, I begin again. You know how on your birthday people always ask you if you feel different? And you never do? When March comes, I always feel different. Like everything is cleared away, everything is fresh again, and my next chance is finally beginning.
Maybe it’s less poetic than I think it is. Maybe it’s just the changing of seasons, daylight savings kicking in. But I like to think of it as a new beginning, physically and spiritually. It feels clean. It feels as if you can smile again.
Melodrama was all about finding the fantasy in our everyday. Within movies, within books—we were looking for the drama in us. This month is different. I always think I want to be a girl in a movie. Yesterday, for the first time, I thought I’m better than a girl in a movie—I’m a girl in real life.
This month we’re real life people. We’re the people that our mothers gave birth to. We’re the people that got really excited when we lost our first tooth. We’re the people that were completely lost on the first day of freshman year. We’re the people that we are right now, wherever we are, whoever is surrounding us. The real life bodies that we can touch, that we can call by name, that we can move with. This month is about us in our human form. The way we were born.
Rebirth can mean anything. Every morning I’m reborn. Every season I’m reborn. Every year I’m reborn. I’m reborn within the minute. The past and everything we have ever gone through aren’t means to an end. Sometimes we spend so much time analyzing what has happened to us in the past that we forget that we’re still living. That we’re in our bodies right now. Today, right now, this minute, you’re alive. If you’re stuck in the past, find yourself again. You’re reborn every second, you don’t have to stay there anymore.
Take this month to find yourself again. Take this month to recognize the way you’ve been reborn each day. Take this month to look at yourself in a noncritical way and think this is the way I was born today—and fall in love with it. Because it is who you are. It’s who you are right now. It’s beautiful.
I love you all, very much.
-Vivian Chambers, Editor-In-Chief
Hey, UA readers!
Melodrama is officially over. After spending the month exploring some pretty deep feelings, we’re cleansing ourselves through the next few weeks.
March’s theme is Rebirth.
I’ve had this theme in the back of my head for quite a while now and was excited when we finally landed on it.
Rebirth: a renewed existence, activity, or growth; renaissance or revival
March is a time for fresh starts.
Restart, Refresh, Revival.
Rebirth brings to mind the Victorian era. Cherubim and angels. The colors gold, white, and blue. The romanticism of quotidian aspects. The symmetric beauty of strolling through an art museum. Going to the Met when it’s snowing. The smell and humidity of a rainy Sunday morning. The Roses of Heliogabalus painting by Lawrence Alma-Tadema. The abundance of flowers, the blossoming of souls, and the youthful romance of the existence.
Rebirth brings to mind the theatricality of a baptismal ceremony or any type of physical or spiritual cleansing. The duality between the excitement of change and the next stages of life and the period of mourning our past selves, shedding who we were to reveal who we were always meant to be, or are still trying to be.
Starting over can be terrifying. What if we do not like who we are becoming? How does one direct their steps when they cannot see the outcome? Or what if we loved who we were? How do we grow without losing our essence?
Maybe starting over or starting again was never meant to be a simple process. There is serenity in shifting one’s focus away from being cheerful, nostalgic, or reminiscent, to simply being. Being still, being present, being here.
This month I invite you to share with us what makes your heart swoon, flutter or be at ease. As always, I look forward to seeing your creations!
-Savanna Chada, Managing Editor
Dear UA Readers + Contributors,
Spring has been tied to the concept of rebirth for centuries. I don’t know about you, but I felt like I have been reborn a thousand times. When I learned how to read and a completely new world was opened up to me, when I listened to Bowie for the first time, when I saw The Birth of Venus in person, or the moment when I realized it was all going to be ok after a period of suffering. As a young adult, I feel like teenagers are constantly reinventing themselves. We dye our own hair, cut our bangs ourselves, and frequently change up our look. I’ll be going off to college in the fall, and I will be reborn. I’ll be on my own, and as scary as that may be, a fresh start is often what many of us need to find our spark.
I always find myself in a bit of a rut in winter. I have trouble doing a lot of things, creative things especially, but on the first unofficial day of spring, and the first day of the rebirth theme, my horoscope told me to make art, so here I am (not a huge astrology follower, but it is scary how accurate that can be sometimes). So, as we go into spring, let us all make some art together. The sun is peeking out from the clouds, the birds are chirping, and the flowers are coming out of the ground and being born again.
“It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want - oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” - Mark Twain