Currents Magazine Winter 2015

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
MARIELLA RUDI
Territorially, Malibu is where the spectrum of the California
Dream ends. But what happens when you put a college in one
of the most enviable real estate markets in the country?
As cultural-ambassador Kendall Jenner tweeted back in January
2012, “Malibu is the happiest place on earth lol.”
According to Jenner, we have already peaked in terms of
reaching the last frontier. This notion becomes truer the moment
your eyes set on the cliffs dropping into the Pacific’s horizon
from your perch on campus. As life-long Waves, the ocean
forever will serve as metaphor for the future. It is impossible for
us to ignore the tacit impact the ocean and the Pacific Coast
Highway has had on our education and personal growth.
In my application to Pepperdine, I wrote about Joan Didion’s
“Slouching Toward Bethlehem,” as the archetypal Californian
collection of essays, and its impact on my Angeleno adolescence.
She remade the California that I’d always seen but never
understood. She painted devastating and stylish portraits of
Malibu, Los Angeles, and California, and in turn, commented on
the modern-American condition.
Didion, who lived with her writer-husband and daughter in
Malibu in the ‘70s, reported on the people in Malibu and her
experience with the fabled coastal town.
While acknowledging some committable cardinal sin of letters
from the editor, I will now quote my college application: “It’s special
because California was a myth before it was a state. Millions
of dreamers fled to my home: at first for land, later for gold,
and eventually for fame. Every day I wake up I’m living someone
else’s dream.”
Pepperdine only amplified this notion of living the dream.
Hashtags and Instagram posts alone can attest to this fantasy.
In a journalistic compulsion to come full circle in my narratives,
I want to bring my journey back to Didion. Like my literary idol,
I used my homegrown skepticism as a way to not get sucked
into the illusion.
teeming suspicion that we will always be outsiders looking in.
With our diploma comes a fluency in PCH’s roadside vernacular.
Malibu, a 27-mile stretch of coast synonymous with fame,
luxury, and affluence, belongs to the daily puns of the Reel Inn
Fish Restaurant and Market, the Crazy California-style Mr.
La Salsa, and the multi-million dollar homes we will never see
behind great walls of shrub. A drive down PCH often felt like
escape from a home that was never really ours.
In preparation for this issue of Currents Magazine, I read every
article of every issue I could find in the Morgue (the Pepperdine
Graphic Media archives). From chronicling the day-to-day
operations of a fledgling campus radio station and its ragtag
group of operators to the sorority-indoctrinated Ring-by-Spring
phenomenon to countless debates dedicated to “Pepperdine
walking the line between academics and religion,” Currents has
served as fodder to the student body’s creative ambition and
curiosity. My research led to the conclusion that this magazine
has one job: to capture the zeitgeist.
For this issue, we hoped to do our job with an emphasis on the
personal narrative. While still reporting on the local flavors and
idiosyncrasies, we uncovered internal testimonies and stymied
dialogues. We wanted to put a spin on the problems and conditions
of the college student today.
We let the outsiders do the writing. We captured images that
express the paradoxes of fashion, art, and nature in Malibu. We
had fun with every process, and we hope that shines through
the pages.
Unlike Kendall Jenner or Joan Didion, I haven’t figured out what
Malibu means to me. I only have a host of memories and associations
that hopefully this magazine helps to preserve.
Mariella Rudi
As Malibu transplants, Pepperdine students cannot escape the