Writing
The Black Nerd King
The following is my final product from Prof. Leon Dash’s Immersion Journalism class. Prof. Dash is a two time Pulitzer Prize winner, author of Rosa Lee and a great professor. Immersion Journalism allows journalists to conduct extensive, personal, in-depth interviews with a single person over multiple weeks, months, or years. Read more…
The Legendary Life of Bullet Bill
The blessed crowd retells his stories
But without the same grin and flare
The Marines born decades after him
Play trumpet taps for my grandfather
As his bride cries and leaves roses
For the man who made her laugh
It is rare to see my father cry
But my eyes are never my own
On grave days
Thoughts on a Flight to Italy
I traveled to Italy from March 20th through April 4th. I was fortunate enough to be hosted by four great friends: Giovanni Fiore, Miriam Sciascia, Jake Pepper & Alisha Young Leverette. I would not have learned as much or enjoyed my days in Italy to the degree that I did without their friendship. Thank you. I jotted some notes on my Blackberry while wandering Italy from its North to its South. I have transcribed a portion of those notes below. I wrote this while en route from Chicago to New York to Milano, Italia. Forgive any poor grammar or misspeeelingssss, but my hope is for the rawness to be part of the charm.
I don’t think you can write about something unless at the moment. The instant breathes. I sit in seat 30F on a flight from chicago to milan that connects I at jfk in nyc. I switched my seat to be able to press my child eyes against the window. The airplane’s windows are small but I can see the world. The bursting, gorgeous white clouds. And now new york crowded onto a point. I cannot see the twin towers. The clouds race across the sky as ocean waves or dashing armies. The neighborhoods surrounding nyc are geometrical. An ocean of clouds stretches further than my eyes can see. The bitchy stewardess forced me to turn off my cell phone, but she cannot stop me from dreaming my body out the window and writing later…We dip into the foam cloud bath. We dance in the clouds. They must be from God. I wonder what da vinci or shakespeare would write of flying if we could instantly transport them to seat 30F. None of their physical experiences were as alien to the frail human body as flying in a jumbo silver plane with its line of windows into imagination.
Many hours later…
Every time I see the wing of a plane from inside a plane, I think of that one Twilight Zone episode and worry about the possibility. (Hilariously, it stars William Shatner. I have posted that classic episode at the end. I recall my father introducing me to this episode and I also remembered the monster being a lot scarier than that cuddly warm bear.).
I am flying at dark night over europe. The ground is lit in hazy warm blankets of orange and in pinpoints of orange in others. The whole of the scene pretends to be the constellations and galaxies of the universe. Human constellations, with God’s constellations dangling in clear above the horizon. I spot rare towers of twirling white light on the ground.
A few hours later…
I am flying over the Swiss Alps at dawn. White snow covers them but patches of black break through. The horizon is from top to bottom light blue,yellow, orange, rose, purple, blue. The Alps shouldn’t be real. This can only be God saying good morning. The dawning sun grants pink crowns to the tallest heads of the Swiss. From afar I wonder whether the Alps are God saying to us, “But you can’t do this.”
Transient Power, Infinite Ideas
I recently read Edward Abbey’s Good News. The book describes post-apocalyptic skirmishes between good and evil in America. Some kind of nuclear war destroyed civilization. The West is wild again. I have not been able to find good discussion of this book on the Internet; I have a dim hope that this post will initiate some. I wrote an essay about the book, but I am only going to post a small portion of it.
Abbey makes frequent mention of brand names being dead and buried in the sand. Cars that used to be expensive and cherished line all lanes of the highway attempting to escape from Phoenix. Abbey mentions these decayed brands to show their insignificance and transience. The post-apocalyptic world does not value them. It doesn’t care for them. Human necessity and roots do not give a damn about them. They are transient. Abbey wrote:
They ride at a brisk walking pace, due west, up the broad avenue littered with fragments of paper and glass, flanked now with dehydrated palm trees, abandoned automobiles, decaying office buildings with sagging walls of lathing, chicken wire, stucco, crumbling bastions of cinderblock. Old voices speak from dangling signs, dead for a decade: Lou Grubb Chevrolet: “the Friendly Folks”; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; Ace Liquors; Goldwater’s; Ramada Inn East’ Fannin Makes It Move!; Big Surf; Food Giant; Yellow Front; Checker Auto Parts; McDonalds: “Over Two Hundred Billion Served”; Denny’s; Valley National Bank; No-Tel Motel: “Adult Movies in Every Room” . . .
Abbey’s description of decayed decadence reminded me of a poem taught to me by John Bottiglieri in my High School English class. Thanks, Mr. Bottiglieri. I coincidentally saw him a couple of weeks ago at the Ebert Film Festival. We attended Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg. It’s a cool and weird movie, my preferred flavor.
Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote a poem called Ozymandias in 1818. I love it. Ozymandias is another name for Pharaoh Ramesses the Great. The poem reveals the transience of power. It implicitly argues that ideas, like Shelley’s poem itself, endure. The genuine kings of humanity write or speak about ideas. The student rebels in Good News cherish the one remaining music record that they have. The piano player only wishes to play beautiful classical music until humans regain their sanity. Shelley purportedly wrote the poem for a friendly competition with Horace Smith. They wrote on the same subject and published their poems in the same magazine. I prefer Shelley’s poem. I was not aware of Smith’s poem, but it coincidentally relates to Good News. The conclusion of Smith’s poem has a “Hunter” wondering at the ruins of London in what could be a post-apocalyptic world or simply the fall of London as a major city. I have copied the two poems below:
Ozymandias – Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Ozymandias – Smith
IN Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desart knows:—
“I am great OZYMANDIAS,” saith the stone,
“The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
“The wonders of my hand.”— The City’s gone,—
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro’ the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
Soldiers of Good
The following essay is my submission for the 2009 Nick Kristof Win-a-Trip Contest. Every year Kristof takes a student with him to Africa on a reporting trip. Of course, I lost the contest. I did not expect to win, but I have delusions of hope in all aspects of my life. Enjoy…
I am a twenty-five year old boy from the suburbs of Chicago. I am a boy, because I have never left the United States. I am a law student at the University of Illinois, but I do not hope or plan to walk a predictable path. In recent months, my legs have grown a festering itch to travel. Aside from a few small gestures, I have done little to help anyone but myself. I now set out to change.
During my undergrad years I accomplished many things that allowed my parents to brag to their friends. I was a columnist for the Daily Illini; I started a blog that has blossomed to host many contributors; I participated in 13 public policy debates; I served on many committees and started a new student organization; I won multiple awards and I finished 3 majors. In law school I worked as former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar’s research assistant and have served on other committees. None of that matters. I used to boast of these things. Today, I do not. Who did I help? Where did I travel? No one and no where. I do not feel shame or guilt; I feel inspired and burning to change.
What makes my perspective unique and interesting? Nothing. But that is my value. There are many people in my generation who have humanitarian ambitions. However, many more people in my generation have chosen the safe life. Many of these people fit my description: white, middle-class and conservative. I grew up among that large swath of Americans who prefer to shop at the suburban Woodfield Mall for five hours rather than volunteer for an hour on Chicago’s South Side.
I see a battle between good and evil in the world, as well as large groups of apathetic gray. I have written a song that conveys this sentiment. I believe in the kind of righteous might that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy have promoted. I believe in pragmatic idealism and in the humanitarian good of economic development. I went to law school to craft a sword. I have many passions and journalism has always been one. Nick Kristof’s brand of journalism is righteous might.
I recently co-founded a Chicago crime data blog that empirically investigates the ingredients of violent and property crime. Nothing turns me on more than browsing international development statistics. Many scholars have produced great research, but we need more soldiers of good. The brand of journalism that Kristof practices inspires new humanitarians in the developed world. Although praise will sound disingenuous in the context of this contest, I hope to be one of many who follow Kristof’s position in journalism. He travels to the poorest places in the world and puts his family at risk of violence in order to show the most privileged people in the world a naked glimpse of the covert cruelties that still flourish in the blood of developing societies. I hope to do the same this summer alongside Kristof and someday I will do the same even without the good fortune of his aid.
When people ask me how I am doing, I reply, “I’m always good.” I justify the improbability of my claim by explaining that I judge my condition against all human life, not just against my neighbor. I cannot think of a cogent argument for why any single human life should be more valuable than any other single human life. Trivial and artificial boundary lines prevent humanity from efficiently allocating its vast wealth. How much more good would a couple of $700 billion international aid packages do for humans than a couple of $700 billion stimulus packages? Humans are humans. Writers will convince us of this.
My generation dances on a historical fulcrum. Previous generations had substantial wealth, but my generation has enough wealth to create the luxury and the duty to help people outside of our families, our communities and our borders. My grandfather said to me that every one should leave something good for posterity. He left grandchildren and the opportunity for me to become a natural-born world saver. Watch out – I am coming. The soldiers of good are on the march.
Irregular Word of the Week: Ganser Syndrome
This is an Irregular Word of the Week post both because the word itself is irregular and because I irregularly post words of the week, which makes the title of “Word of the Week” a lie.
Today I learned the phrase “Ganser Syndrome” from a cynical 1957 Time Magazine review of Jack Kerouac’s most famous novel, On the Road.
A pseudo-psychotic condition typically occurring in individuals feigning insanity and characterized by wrong but related answers to questions.
Left to Right: Lucien Carr, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs. Did they all suffer/prosper from Ganser Syndrome?
The Faces of Lonely Saints
Below I have pasted the lyrics to a song I’ve been working on for a couple of months. I recorded an embarrassingly rough version of it that features my sub-par voice and amateur acoustic guitar work. Eventually, I will post a recorded version of this song that I have more confidence in. The music is written in the key of Aminor. I use a I-IV-V progression until the words, “Running through the fields of your scattered daylight.” I-IV-V in Aminor is Aminor-Dminor-Eminor. Minor chords have a somber, melancholy tone. I transition to the major chords within the key of Aminor (ii-iii-vi) at the end in order to musically communicate the happy ending. Aminor and Cmajor share many of the same notes, so it allows for a smooth transition.
Anyway, as with past lyrics I’ve posted, I’m sure few will enjoy these :)
The Faces of Lonely Saints
Running through the woods of Wisconsin
I stumbled upon seven sad grins
Dining on the carcass of an angel
Her wings spread across the table
Her story in the child’s fable
A smile of calm widens her face
As the Mother welcomes her slumber to grace
The faces of lonely saints
The faces of lonely saints
The faces of lonely saints
Of romantics and dreamers, poets and healers
Of writers and readers, peasants and believers
Ride wild ride
Ride wild ride
Ride wild ride
I galloped to the East
A journalist of this war
A girl rides beside me
She’s Faith in pink ribbons
Running through the woods of Salem
I stumbled upon seven smiling saints
Dining on the carcass of a devil
His chest cut open,
His blood splashes and trembles
Hollow sadness narrows his face
As the Mother rejects his slumber to grace
The face of a lonely sinner
The face of a lonely sinner
The face of a lonely sinner
Of killers and cowards, kings and connivers,
Of rapers and dealers, rich and deniers
Ride wild ride
Ride wild ride
Ride wild ride
Running through the fields of your scattered daylight
I stumbled upon a child who smiled to me:
“I am the new dawn
I am the new dawn
I am the new dawn”
And all is calm
And all is calm
And all is calm
The faces of lonely saints
The faces of lonely saints
The faces of lonely saints
Special thanks to longtime pal and aspiring writer Mike Madden for help and encouragement with writing this song.
Why I am an overprotective dad
Or, how I became a paranoid who spends his time knocking down walls of his house and collecting assault rifles.
My daughter is 16 and a half. Yesterday I grudgingly agreed to let her ride in a friend’s car to go to a matinee movie. The thought scares me to death. We home school her because I think that the philosophy of our small school is you are either an adored, pampered, athlete, or you are garbage that will probably end up bad and knocked up and on drugs, and a drop out. My daughter is not a jock, but she is damn good kid, she likes computers and anime and video games, and I just don’t want her in an environment that treats her as a second class citizen. My wife went to a big school with something like a 5000 kid enrollment. I used to think that would be bad, but I have changed my thinking on this. The beauty of the big suburban school is that is seems like no matter what a kid is into, there is a peer group and a clique that shares the same interest.
She and her friends think I am an over-protective, paranoid, nut case (they are right – especially when it comes to my daughter. In fact one could throw the word extremely in front of each of those descriptors without fear of excess) Although compared to my neighbor I might not be the worst. My neighbor told me his daughter was out in her boyfriend’s car, in the driveway, “talking” for a little too long after coming home from a date. He put an end to the “talking” by walking out on his porch with his 12 gauge and letting one bang off up into the air. Apparently this is an effective way to break up “talking” and send a young suitor packing. I give it 9.8s for style points. Read more…
The end of an era – Andrew Mason says goodbye
Today the Daily Illini Opinions Editor, Andrew Mason, wrote a farewell column. I’ve had the privilege to get to know Andrew and to discuss many issues concerning the student body, the University, and the state with him. Andrew has a first class temperament, excellent judgment, complete journalistic integrity, and mighty pen. He has championed important student issues, and insisted on accountability from administrators. He takes bold positions, but always does so thoughtfully, with deliberate grace.
I will miss reading his work. In the seven years I spent reading the DI almost every day as a student, and the other three years I’ve continued to read the paper (one before law school, and two after), I believe that Andy Mason is probably the best writer to serve as Opinions Editor. I’ll miss having the opportunity to read his work on a daily basis.
Best of luck Andrew, and Bravo!
A Writer’s Toolbox–Point of View
Josh asked me about writing from a cat’s point of view in a comment on my Christmas story. Before I start talking about that, let me give you a warning–some people really don’t like “seeing behind the magician’s curtain”. If this is the case for you, keep going down the page and read about crooked governors and vitamin suppliments–I won’t mind. Here’s a disclaimer, too: I have had exactly one Rhetoric class and that was nearly forty years ago. The mechanics of my writing is to a college-trained person as a shade-tree hot rodder is to a guy working at Indianapolis. My work is all seat-of-the-pants stuff, making it up as I go along, so your mileage may vary.
That said, my stories, for me, come in two categories–ones that are easy to write and ones that are like pulling teeth. There doesn’t seem to be any relationship between the difficulty and how good they end up being–my gay werewolf story was painfully difficult, yet it is one of the best things I’ve ever written. On the other hand, there’s a short-short fairy tale that I wrote in two hours that ended up leaving audiences saying, “what the hell is he talking about?” I still haven’t found a way to end that one successfully. Read more…