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Tag / concept album

Treading Water: Frank Ocean’s “channel ORANGE”

– PRIDE MONTH 2020 –

The apartment was empty.

None of Gwen’s pots rumbled on the stove, and Dania wasn’t holding any conversation in their living room. The sun shone through the window––in their haste to leave, none of the trio had thought to close the blinds, and keep the sun from discoloring the art on the walls. It was, on this hot summer evening, quiet at home.

The streets were not quiet. Protests across the country had flamed every night for nearly three weeks, met with violent responses from government forces and police squads. Images of burned-out storefronts and activists washing pepper spray from their faces had filled every social media timeline, to a degree never seen before in the modern political age. The last few years had been an impossibly stressful time, the conscience of the country bending to accommodate the strain being put onto it. But, at least to the other protesters who shared the street with Gwen, Eleanor, and Dania––at least to them, the dam had finally burst.

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Think About Today: Lyric Opera of Chicago’s “Jesus Christ Superstar”

“So you’ve seen the John Legend one,” Dania began, as they walked away from the imposing facade of the Civic Opera House.

“Yes, the live one NBC just did,” Eleanor said. “Which the Jesus in this version was apparently in, but I wouldn’t recognize anyone.”

“Well, duh,” Dania said. “On TV there’s a million people in the ensemble, and at an opera house he’s about a million miles from your seat. I could barely make out which apostles were which.”

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