WRITING SAMPLES
1. TWO FILM REVIEWS
Federico Fellini (Structuralism in Fellini Satyricon)
[In the foreground, archetypes simply walk up to the camera;
explode; then fade.
Mute signifiers, who never learned to speak, only to gesture,
strike historic poses and we suck words from mouth holes.]
Lina Wertmuller/Seven Beauties (The Female Object)
[“There is a little Schubert romanticism in every woman’s heart.”
No matter how “cruel and sadistic.”
Is the message, then: That man naturally exposes
his deepest romanticism, but woman’s romanticism is hidden?
If so, the Virgin Mary is the whore assumpted.
An insane asylum is another form of assumption.]
2. MOSE
From a SERIES of personal observations:Chicago's N. Halsted Street/Addison Street
/Lakeview Community during the last 10 years of the 20th Century.
[Word on the corner? Mose is just out of jail again.
Some Black John tried to beat her up and take her money.
She went to jail. He’s in critical condition in Weiss Memorial Hosp.
They say Mose torched the trick’s Lexus out on Montrose Harbor. ]
3. ARTIFICIAL IMPERIALISM
[The failure of nature to provide limitless abundance drove
American capitalism inevitably to an ecology of death
wherein artificial economies, technologies and environments
ultimately dispossessed humanity from any sense of
connectedness to nature.]
4. MISSISSIPPI DELTA BLUES
[In the last parking spot, a visual mnemonic peg is pulled.
A bright, blue Chevrolet C/50-8366 Blue Bird school bus
fills me with longing. It is heavily decorated, bearing
all manner of signage in bright yellow against a deep blue field:
“Mississippi Delta Blues” reads the front bumper.]
5. CLOSING
[On and on she rambled: “I’m just so tired of people dying….
Then you have to be nice and visit the family….”
I was in no mood to hear it.]
6. McNEIL
[“O, Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! My babies! Help Me, Jesus, Help Me!
O, My Jesus Christ! O God! ….”
Not a single motorist stops.]
7. SAXONS
[No one speaks English, and I do not speak German.]