Dark Acadamia

There is only one more week left of classes at school before finals and winter break: everyone is in the crunch-mode term-paper-writing zone. The weird thing about the academic experience is that it carries one along, like the Hogwarts train, going from one semester to the next; time flies with terrific momentum into the next season. Part of the aesthetic appeal of scholarship and academia in general is this seasonality; this lull and rush from one holiday to the next propels a whole literary genre: Harry Potter, Brideshead Revisited, Never Let me Go, The Secret History, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Normal People—Dark-Academia genre novels all—they each stylize/fetishize the medieval calendar, as if everyone was under the aesthetic spell of on-rushing scholastic time. Halloween goth-style turns into thanksgiving, transforms into a gaudy Christmas super-mood and then it’s the new year and the new you all over again (until next fall). I do not mind being carried along like this. It’s nice to be told what to do and when to do it. Due dates and class schedule have a fine inertia: I’ve been listening to Scarlatti and shopping for some yummy cardigans.