Dircksey Vol 9 Ed 2

CONTENTS CONTRIBUTORS

My government did this

Nour Seif .................................................................. page 5-6

Oh memory don't leave me

Jessica Schimpf ................................................................. page 9-10

Wrestling with the idea that I like wrestling now

Izabelle French ......................................................... page 11-12

My sentiments laid bare

Jessica Schimpf ................................................................ page 13-14

WAAPA Mail

Alice Broadhead ..................................................... page 15

Defining a designer

Eliza Von Perger .......................................................... page 17-18

Take a bow Vice-Chancellor

Evan Smith .................................................................. page 19

Staying relevant this Halloween

Dircksey Team ........................................................... page 20-22

Which ECU Campus are you?

Dircksey Team .......................................................... page 23-24

Codebreaker: Tav-less Dircksey Team .......................................................... page 25-26

Dircksey editorial team

Editor-in-chief: Evan Smith dirckseyeditor@ecuguild.org.au

Sub-Editor: Izabelle French

Marketing & Promotion: Lauren Reed

Graphic Design: Evan Smith

Contributing writers and artists

EvanSmith

Izabelle French

Nour Seif

Jessica Schimpf

Eliza Von Perger

Alice Broadhead

Content Warning

Dircksey may contain topics that can be confronting for readers. These topics include racism, homophobia, violence, blood, hateful language, death, animal cruelty and mental illness.

No individual trigger warnings are given in the pagesofthemagazine,soplease,takecare.

The opinions expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the Dircksey Editor, sub-editor, Edith Cowan University or the Edith Cowan University Student Guild. All reasonable care is taken to ensure Dircksey articles, and other information in the magazine, is current and accurate at the time of publication, however, no responsibility can or will be taken by the entities listed above, should an issue of Dircksey contain errors or omissions.

Dircksey acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which this magazine was created, the Whadjuck Nyoongar people.

If you would like to contribute to Dircksey, you can contact the editor at dirckseyeditor@ecuguild.org.au or https://dircksey.com/contributors/

My Government Did This

WRITTEN BY Nour Seif

My life paused on August 4th, 2020, at 6:07 pm. I remember every single moment. It replays in my head every single second, like a tape, stuck on repeat.

Three years since Beirut, Lebanon witnessed the World’s biggest non-nuclear explosion. Since 2,750 tonnes of highly explosive ammonium nitrate left 220 dead. Injured 7,000. Over half of the buildings and houses in the city and its suburbs were destroyed; my home included, the very one in which I was meant to be safe.

“Beirut’s Hiroshima,” left me devastated. My city had abandoned me, but my soul could never leave.

Later, as I was standing on the balcony, my grandmother’s faint cries for me to go inside before I get hurt, I watched people on the street try to wash the blood away. But it was futile.

It seemed like the entire city had a shard of glass piercing its heart, bleeding it dry.

For days, the city rained glass.

The calls, like the sirens, would not stop. The next week would consist of answering the phone every few minutes while picking up the glass from our homes and our bodies.

A few days after, when I was still cleaning the debris from my room, I found a bullet. One that belonged to my grandfather from WWII. He had kept it as a reminder. A reminder to not allow history to repeat itself. But there I was, 80 years later, a wretched image of him: a teenager once again on her knees picking up ruins and trying to bury the memories along with her dead.

I had spent 17 years in Beirut, but the city had become unrecognisable. The only familiar part was the distant hum of Fairouz’s songs: How did the taste of Beirut’s bread and jasmines become that of smoke and fire.

Beirut has fallen for the eighth time. But will it be able to get back up once more?

I am now an ocean away, and still, I wake whenever a plane flies above my home. I still sit up in bed, listening intently in case they sound louder, closer than usual. I think of my mother, who at 50 years old, still walks into my bedroom when she believes me to be asleep and kisses my hair, never knowing when our last moment will be. I think of my grandfather, who at 99 years old, still flinches and grabs my hand tightly whenever glass shatters.

The entire country was connecting the Blast to previous wars. As I sat in front of the television for days on end, listening to the names multiply - names of babies- one question was haunting every Lebanese: Was this another deliberate act of terrorism? Surely the fact that it was exactly 75 years after Hiroshima was a coincidence, right? A journalist with Al-Jazeera who was wondering the same described the scene and aftermath as “a nation stuck in a moment.” I continued to watch foreign officials send their sympathies as if that would rebuild my city. But none of them took the investigation further. They all turned back to their homes, shut the News off, and went to sleep knowing, and believing, that they were safe.

I remember my grandmother saying: “Three wars, endless assassination bombs; but never, never a sound this loud.”

But it was. And three years later, it still rings in my ears. As I go to sleep, I think of every generation before us, who has had to remove glass and blood off their floors and from their skin.

PHOTO: Gunduz Aghayev

PHOTO: BRIAN STAUFFER

ILLUSTRATED BY JESSICA SCHIMPF

Oh memory, don’t leave me.

written

and illustrated by Jessica

Schimpf

I can feel it now, the cool wind of emptiness. The breeze that picks up my heels and tips me slowly. It’s like taking a bath, stepping in and out, never wanting or craving the outside world

I cannot help but watch as life exceeds me, caught within the ether of memory and time. It breathes in and swallows me whole, the warmth of its tongue envelopes me.

I am home

Unyielding and strong in its vastness, Contracting in and out as I plummet down. My body lays thick with the past, I hold on tightly to its walls.

Is this home?

The walls begin to shake and diverge, stretching me thin and placid. I am loved here, I am safe here My name is etched on to its sternum Home, will you love me forever?

I slither through the belly, make my way down through the chasms. Something rattles within the walls, it sounds familiar. Home, can you hear me?

My fingers begin to burn through, I ignite and seethe with smoke. The walls flake away and leave me to rot I cannot bare the loneliness Home, will you please stay?

As it crumbles and falls

PHOTO: ECU

WRESTLING WITH THE IDEA THAT I LIKE WRESTLING NOW

WRITTEN BY IZABELLE FRENCH

As a not-cis not-straight not-man, I never expected to get into wrestling, especially WWE. Obviously, as a queer person, I am 100% into the homoerotic subtext of big, muscly, scantily-clad men (or women!) oiling themselves up before getting handsy with the other same-sex, scantily-clad opponent, with the match ending with one pinning both of their opponent’s shoulders to the floor. However, and especially as a transwoman, engaging with the hyper-masculine entertainment feels so out of character.

Despite this, over the past couple of months I have gotten deeply into wrestling. Like most hyperfixations, it started with an hour-long Youtube video essay, and has grown since. I’ve since jumped into the history of wrestling, I’ve been keeping up to date with all the Monday Night RAWs and storylines, I have a favourite wrestler, I have a somewhat nuanced opinion on John Cena; what has happened to me? What’s even the appeal of wrestling? Why do I care? And why might you care?

To address the elephant in the room, many people say wrestling is fake. And they’re right: it’s staged. The outcome of each match is determined long before either combatant steps into the ring. You know what else is staged? All theatre. Fun fact: it is way more rewarding to watch wrestling like a theatrical production instead of a sport, and for multiple reasons. It gives you more to watch for, instead of looking at the pure physicality, you can focus on the performance of either performer, or the evolution of both narrative within the ring and the greater storyline that the match falls into. Importantly, it also helps to separate the character from the person portraying them, which helps with avoiding that dreaded parasocial relationship. Joe Anoa’i, who plays the WWE’s current most hated wrestler Roman Reigns, had to stop wrestling for a period of time after an encounter with leukaemia, and a lot of the crowd had to reckon with the uncomfortable realisation that the person that they hated for so long had a real life human being behind it at all times. acknowledging that behaviour (until very recently).

But why do I love WWE? Why has it taken over my life and continually ruin my sleep schedule as I watch RAW highlights at 3AM? Simply put, I am a sucker for a well-written, heartfelt story, and am equally a sucker for insane craziness, and wrestling has both in spades. The story currently playing out with Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, and the Bloodline is some of the best narrative storytelling that the WWE has seen in a long while, with twists and turns and betrayals and Roman Reigns (who I mentioned before) bringing his A-game, utilising a tantalising amount of dramatic irony, teasing for years that he was going to betray everyone in his life and manipulate everyone who accepted him, but no one on stage acknowledging that behaviour (until very recently). It is artful, it is gut-wrenching, it is worth a watch. Zayn and Owens especially are amazing to watch if you want to see what a wholesome friendship looks like in a violent, testosterone-filled ring.

As I’m writing this, it’s early September, and I’d be remiss not to mention Bray Wyatt, who, if you enjoy ARGs and creepypasta and crime podcasts, you’d have loved. He started out as a leader to this midwestern-rural-type murder-cult he formed with two of his friends, forming the Wyatt Family. Then he had this storyline with a fake kid’s show called Firefly Funhouse that featured these gloves that would turn him into a demonic creature called The Fiend that, among other things, killed John Cena kind of? It’s all very ridiculous, but Bray Wyatt was a great storyteller, an encapsulating performer, and by all accounts, an amazing person. He is the first wrestler I saw that really encapsulated that wrestling is an artform with a nexus of untapped potential. Rest well, Bray Wyatt.

Finally, though this hyper-fixation has taken a hold of me, there are still a lot of valid criticisms. Personally, I struggle to watch a lot of women’s wrestling because it has roots in fetish-fulfilment for straight men, which makes it uncomfortable at times. Sure, at its best, women’s wrestling has some of the most physical and entertaining performances in all of wrestling, but at its worst, it’s just white women in leather bikinis and spandex slapping each other. To that point, WWE is also overwhelmingly white at the moment, and to an extent, always has been. However, getting into that means getting into the biases and bigotry of the western entertainment industry as a whole, which is a large topic for this somewhat-silly article. Another time, maybe.

At its worst, wrestling can be based in outdated ideas of masculinity, but at its best, wrestling is a mix of surreal characters, insane physical prowess, and oddly-subtle drama to create a narrative full of raw human emotion and evil devil gloves. And I love it.

PHOTO: WWE

PHOTO: ECU GUILD

PHOTO: WWE

My sentiments laid bare

written and illustrated by Jessica Schimpf

My head hangs low as the wind licks my cheeks, the ache begins to settle in my chest. Her scent lingers on which it was confessed, the heart and skin, the veins and blood that leaks.

Her taste, it halts the longing of release, It’s true my love, your touch, I must protest, the ice bridges, it’s warmth I do request.

For you echo, and burn, your lust retreats.

Deceitful heart, wherefore art thou so cold?

The blade presses lightly against my palm, her body folds limply, she surrenders.

My heart, vanquished, therefore it was foretold.

The consequence of agony is calm, a single breath upon dying embers.

WAAPA MAIL

Dear my fellow WAAPA musicians,

The institution will beat you down at least once. It’ll crush your hopes and dreams at least once. You’ll doubt yourself and your choices many times. You’ll even consider giving everything up and just quitting.

But you WILL survive, just as I will.

I’m only just finishing my first year, and heck, I feel like I’m only barely surviving. I’ve had my own doubts, I’ve gone through burnouts (completely self-brought on, mind you) and I’ve seriously considered throwing in the towel and just giving up. But what’s inspired me to stay?

MUSIC. It’s what we all have in common.

It’s what we’ve come here to study, to create, to LOVE. And ultimately, it’s what ties me to WAAPA. I have a long, and undoubtedly difficult road ahead, but when things get hard, I come back to the sole reason I decided to come to WAAPA – because I live and breathe music. Hearing you in the halls of the practice rooms; it makes me realise I’m at home. And yeah, people have told me, and will tell you, that “it’s not enough” and that “you don’t need to be at WAAPA just because you love music” but hey, screw them. This is YOUR life, and YOUR musical journey. Whether I’ve come across you before or not, I can assure you, that you BELONG here, that you are TALENTED, and WORTHY.

The institution will bring you everlasting bonds. It’ll bring out the true musician inside of you. You’ll learn to make inspiring, changing music. And you’ll freaking love it. You’ve got this.

Defining a DESIGNER

WRITTEN & illustrated by Elisa Von Perger

It can be tricky to define what a designer does. There’s a number of layers to our title, and our process usually takes place over a longer time period than other roles. We collaborate closely with a director to develop the aesthetics and overall vision for a show, but on a deeper level we have an immense responsibility to build the world for the performers to live in.

There is so much care and thought behind each and every detail on stage, whether that be the colour of a ribbon or the pattern on a china plate. The largest part of our role would be during the creative development process, which can happen as early as six months to a year before a show opens. During this time, we research, read, sketch, and model-make to try to capture what this show must be on stage. Once this is established, we spend hours model making, drawing up plans, and creating documents, which we pass off to the relevant departments responsible for creating our vision.

It’s a process that we invest a lot of time and energy into, and we follow along closely throughout the weeks leading up to technical and dress rehearsals, after which we open the show. Both set and costume design have their own specific processes and responsibilities which need to be followed, and it is always a joy to witness the final product come together on stage.

STAYING RELEVANT THIS HALLOWEEN

OUR TOP COSTUME PICKS FOR THIS SPOOKY SEASON

Take a bow Vice-Chancellor

Edith Cowan University has been home to many a scholar over its several existing and developing campuses, across the southern hemisphere. This trans-continental community stems from ECU's global vision to provide steadfast education to any student ready and willing.

At the helm of this vision is current Vice-Chancellor (more commonly known as VC), Professor Steve Chapman, a mysterious and unknown figure to most students, but a near-decade long patriarch and key contributor to the ECU community.

The VC is a decorated scholar, boasting an impressive career and an array of qualifications and commendations - he is literally a Commander of the British Order (meaning he at one point probably met the late-great, Queen Liz).

He has also held many positions within the tertiary education sphere, having been the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Heriot-Watt University, the VicePrincipal of the University of Edinburgh, and Chairman of the Funding Policy Committee of Universities, Scotland.

With over 200 scientific papers, an Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry and numerous key-note speeches under his belt, what more could we as a student community ask for in a leader?

Since joining ECU in 2015, the VC has been across the opening of new campus buildings, the establishment of intercontinental campuses (shout out to ECU Sri Lanka), ECU's increasing world unviersity rankings, the highly-anticipated ECU City campus, and most notably, guiding the university through the Covid-19 pandemic.

So why are you, the reader, being subjected to this piece on someone you probably barely know? Well, recently the VC announced his intentions to retire later next year. With his exit, a new VC will be elected to carry ECU through its next phase of life.

But for a student like me who has been at ECU for the last 5 years, and who will soon be exiting the tertiarty world. I just wanted to say a quick thank you to the VC for his contributions to university life. It hasnt always been easy on us, but in the end, it has been worth it. So thank you VC for the last decade, and good luck to whoever comes next - you have some pretty big shoes to fill!

WRITTEN BY EVAN SMITH

PHOTO: ECU

WEIRD BARBIE HAYLEY & JUSTIN

DWIGHT SCHRUTE WEDNESDAY

MET GALA ACID TRIP

BARBENHEIMER

MR QANTAS

ANY NIC CAGE ICON

MATILDAS PLAYER

SPIDER-PEOPLE

MEGAN TARANTINO CHARACTER

COCAINE BEAR GYM BRO

DOJA CAT DEMON JOHN WICK

WHAT ECU CAMPUS ARE YOU?

Have you ever woken up from a restless sleep, tossing and turning over the haunting question: which ECU campus am I? Well now you can rest easy, you’re welcome.

Q1: Choose what you would most likely have for breakfast.

A: Cornflakes

B: Monster Energy

C: Toast with nothing spread on top

D: Cinnamon quinoa with freshly cut fruit

Q2: Why are you studying?

A: To hopefully have a career that pays well

B: To hopefully have a career that will treat me like the scum of the earth, but I love what I do so it doesn’t matter

C: To make a change in the world, for the better

D: To make a change in the world, for the worse

Q3: You find yourself with someone who desperately wants to fight you. What do you do?

A: Try and resolve it with words. If that doesn’t work, then beg and plead for my life

B: Take ‘em on, I watched an MMA fight 3 years ago, I know what I’m doing

C: Let them get one punch in so they feel some sort of resolution before running for my life

D: Pull out a gun

Q4: Choose one of these dance moves that I just made up.

A: The Sea Monkey

B: The Baboon Getting Shot Out Of A Cannon And Landing On A Pile of VHS Copies Of Brokeback Mountain

C: The Shimmy 2: The Reckoning

D: The Worm, But Backwards As Well At The Same Time

Q5: Choose your least favourite colour out of the following options.

A: That brown on cigarette packets

B: Salmon pink, the pink of cowards

C: That specific off-white that everything is nowadays

D: Lavender. I have hay fever

Q6: What language would you like to learn?

A: French

B: German

C: Mandarin

D: English

Q7: Final question! What’s your favourite aspect of being alive?

A: That other people are alive as well, and I am able to experience life with the ones I love

B: The autonomy of being able to do whatever I want, and that at the drop of a hat I can just drive up North and start a new life

C: That I can experience things both new and old, create memories, and take it all in

D: Bold to assume I favour this torment

Mostly A:

Joondalup – In a world of extremes, you’re painfully average; the loudest item in your closet is beige. This isn’t to say that being average is bad, and in fact being average means more-often-than-not you have a stable job, a roof over your head, and are generally successful in most ventures, like grocery shopping. Don’t let the capitalist society tell you otherwise, you are perfectly fine where you are.

Mostly B:

Mt Lawley – How are you going, legitimately? Have you taken your meds today? When was the last time you went outside, drank some water, or got direct sunlight? You’re unstable in a way where you pretend it’s aesthetic and charming and cute, but trust me, it’s not cute to smell like second-hand weed and monster energy.

Mostly C:

Southwest – You are a middle child, if not in actuality, then in spirit. You often feel underrepresented, unheard, unloved. Holding on to your childhood teddy most nights alone in a single bed isn’t how you thought your life would go, but if the universe has plans, why go against them? Right?

Mostly D:

City – People whisper about you when you walk past them, your dazzling aesthetic thinly veiling a sheen of mystery You’re on the front of every magazine, your face on billboards, your opinions being debated on twitter. But when you look at your reflection, only you know what looks back: a hollow shell of a human being, empty and devoid.

CODEBREAKER

SUSPECTS

TAV-LESS: A MOUNT LAWLEY CAMPUS MURDER MYSTERY

(This is a work of fiction. The Mount Lawley tavern probably closed because of a boring yet painfully stressful managerial reason.)

BACKGROUND

Detective Lawley, pursuing his dreams of becoming a dancer at WAAPA went to get drinks at the premier university tavern the Edith to celebrate another great day of dancing. However, when he arrived, he saw the dead body of the bartender, a miss Vicky Timm, with blood pooling around her blonde head of hair.

Detective Lawley lept inside to find four suspects, arguing about what to do. “Should we get rid of the body?” one says.

“It’s causing a dreadful mess.”

“Let us mourn first, Prudence! Timm was the Edith’s blood and bones! I’m out of a job!” another retorts.

“Shush, please, let the Law(ley) do its work,” the detective interrupted. The four suspects fell under an intimidated silence, as Lawley pulled out his magnifying glass and gathered clues.

The pizza cutter was at the bar. The schooner glass was not found at the pool table.

Professor Saxophone is best known to sit at a booth.

Guild Rep. Mailer’s fingerprints were found on the pizza cutter.

Bestie Kidd had never been to the freezer at the Edith.

A frozen pizza box was found in one of the booths.

A shattered pint glass was found beside Vicky Timm’s body.

Guild Rep. Mailer (she/her) - ECU Guild Representative, emailed Vicky Timm once

Bestie Kidd (she/her) - 3rd year education student, BFF of Vicky Timm

Manager Hops (he/him) - manager of the Edith, employer of Vicky Timm

Professor Saxophone (they/them) - senior Jazz lecturer, grandparent of Vicky Timm

...so you're telling me that i con contribute to the premiere ECU student magazine the for free?

i sure om, shocked-girl.jpg! not only that, but for those who wont more timely articles about the events happening at ECU now, Dircksey has a brand new website at fl/fllf!lJO<ii� .c.n

where contributors can even submit videos, music, and other various digital media

wow thank you so much, actual hugo weaving!

no problem, shocked-girl.jpg. now to soy my famous catchphrase: um uh kochow-obungo