As I write this, many things are happening. A new academic year is here with new opportunities for greatness. We are organizing calendars, intensely prowling for the perfect clothes, ending romances that no longer serve our vibe, hunting for accommodation, resetting diets, declaring new love that promises warmth for the winter, and setting goals. The sun has set on the summer of Charli XCX’s album Brat and a soft chill ushers in the fall of demure, and we are still — in every way we can — trying to keep it all together and  save ourselves from suffering.

There is also me, Divine Angubua, your new Arts and Culture Editor, and I have my goals. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about pain, which is another name for pleasure. Music and madness; lecture halls and cathedrals; photography and the corrupt impulse to capture and entrap; beautiful bodies and haunted houses; the abject and the perverse swimming inside a clean, cold iced caramel macchiato. Everywhere I look, I see things layered on top of each other, sliced and cut like loaves of sweet bread — and how I wish to talk about it all! 

As your editor who is also a writer, I want us to poke and peek where we shouldn’t. As your editor, I want us to run a bit feral. In our new Love and Sex column — now renamed ‘Sex and the Univer-city’ — I want us to unearth our sexy secrets and play in the wet, warm, slimy dark. In our film and TV column, I want us to place what we watch within a context and against a canvas so that the picture becomes a clear work instead of a mumbo-jumbo about aesthetics and cinematography. In our new humour column, I ask that we test our facility for alchemizing outrage, grief, horror, and the mundane into something laughable, familiar, and approachable. 

Our music column shall be partnering with students from the Faculty of Music to bring you exciting commentary and coverage on campus events and popular music culture. We shall be keeping up with our artists and creatives, too, scouring theatres and galleries to bear witness to the creative ambition of the people of our school. I ask that you join me, us, in this task of appreciating the gift of community.

As U of T students, it is our duty to shape our lives as we wish them to be. It is also our duty to show ourselves who we are: our ugliness, fabulousness, anxieties, hopes, and dreams. I want us to keep ourselves in mind and support each other by writing about each other. 

There is much in store for us this year, so let us unfurl, oil those fingers, and get to work.